teenth century our forefathers looked | nran off the stage; when to wear a to Covent Garden or Drury Lane for rich dress, to carry a sword, to be able the wares which we now procure from to make an elegant bow, and to be the nearest circulating library. Be-skilled in the management of a cane sides the Restoration dramatists, the and a snuff-box, went so far to constiplays of the two Colmans, Cibber, tute a gentleman. All this could easily Murphy, Macklin, and Cumberland, to be taught ; and “the true grace of it," say nothing of Goldsmith and Sheri- which honest Mike Lambourne laments dan, constituted their world of fiction; that he never could acquire, would and long after the novel had begun to not be much missed in a large and compete successfully with the drama not over-lighted theatre. As manners, for popular favor, the latter continued dress, and general demeanor became to be esteemed the superior depart- simpler and plainer, and the representament of the two. tion of a gentleman or a lady came to depend less on externals and more on qualifications not so easily picked up, the task of the genteel comedian became more and more difficult, and his efforts to accomplish it less and less successful.1

The causes which led to the decline of the old eighteenth-century comedy and the establishment of the novel ou its ruins have been variously explained. One reason may be found in the commonplace fact that, as the number of readers increased in proportion to the Moreover, with the closing of the number of playgoers, it became better Continent against Englishmen, a great worth while to write for them; and change took place in the habits of the that, as the sphere of criticism en- English aristocracy, who, as soon as larged, "the town" lost its exclusive the London season was over, used to pretensions to occupy the chair, and flock to Paris. They had now to seek the theatre that literary and fashion- their amusements in their own country, able halo which had encircled it, with a and the line of demarcation between brief interval, from Elizabeth to Anne. the rural squire and the man of fashion Sir Walter Scott himself, in his essay lost much of its sharpness. Lord Fopon the drama, has given his own view pington and Sir Brilliant Fashion of the decadence of the English stage adopted the pursuits of country gentoward the close of the last century. tlemen, and the lower classes of the He thinks that the comedy of the territorial order caught in turn the tone period was French in origin and con- of the higher. In "The Poor Gentlestruction, and that with the decay of man," written in 1802, Sir Charles French models it naturally languished Cropland tells the steward of his Kentand disappeared. We suppose he ish estates that "he must hunt in would have said the same, though he Leicestershire - 'tis the thing." This did not say it, of "the comedy of in- is the first mention of the metropolis trigue," or what he calls the Spanish comedy. The one left no more successors than the other. But may it not be said that for the success of social comedy, or the comedy of manners, ou the stage, more lights and shades are required than are furnished by modern society; stronger contrasts, a more formal and ceremonious carriage, more distinctive and more striking costumes? At all events, this much will hardly be disputed, that it must have been easier to act the part of a gentleman on the stage when there were so many distinctive marks of the gentle

of fox-hunting that we know of, in polite literature. Here was one fertile source of "business" cut off at once from both actor and playwright. The country gentleman in London robbed of his money or betrayed by his wife, the victim and the butt of wits and gamblers, was for many years a stock character on the London boards, and his disappearance left a vacuum in the dramatic repertory which nothing could fill up. The simplicity of modern man

1 We need hardly say that these remarks have no reference to the present stage, where ladies and gentlemen appear in characters of all kinds.

ners and the undemonstrative character | mankind are born. Such reflections do of modern passion, even at its deepest, not necessarily represent the habitual make it almost impossible to place mood of the poet. In Scott's novels, upon the stage a play which shall ex- at all events, we should have said that actly reproduce the life of modern cheerfulness was a conspicuous feaclubs and drawing-rooms. Many other ture; while as for lack of faith, it is causes were at work at the same time difficult to understand how any one to undermine the popularity of the could bring such a charge against Sir theatre; the Evangelical movement, Walter Scott. Mr. Ruskin seems to for instance, is said to have exercised a rely on the fact that Scott could not very injurious effect on its fortune. bring himself to believe in the Bodach Thus, by the end of the century the Glas, or the White Lady, and that in drama was tottering on its throne, and" Woodstock" he does his best to fast giving place to its rival. Fielding make such credulity ridiculous. But and Richardson mark the epoch when by the word "scepticism" something the rivalry may be said to have com- more is usually meant than a disbelief menced; with the appearance of in ghosts and spectres. Mr. Ruskin "Evelina," ‚""Castle Rackrent," "Mar- here seems to be falling into the same riage," and "Pride and Prejudice,' "kind of mistake which he has made the scale began to turn decisively in about Scott's antiquarianism. He also favor of the novelist. The authoresses refers to some fancied evidence of it in of these works, however, transferred Scott's behavior on the death of his only comedy from the stage to the wife. But seeing that Scott in his prilibrary. The master who was to com-vate journal, intended only for his own plete the process and do the same for eye, speaks of the mysterious yet certragedy and the historic drama was yet tain hope of seeing her again in a betto appear. The vacant niche was wait-ter world, we cannot allow that Mr. ing for him. Scott stepped into it, and Ruskin gains much by this appeal. became the Shakespeare of the nine- Certain it is, however, that it could teenth century. He did with the novel have been neither melancholy nor infiwhat Shakespeare had done with the delity which won the heart of a nation drama, and ever since his reign the drunk with victory and bathed in glory, novel has held incontestably the first and boasting itself favored above all place. nations by the hand of God.

It is curious to find two such men as Ruskin and Newman giving such widely opposite accounts of Scott's original popularity. Mr. Ruskin has a theory that Scott was the representative poet of his age in virtue of his sadness and his scepticism-a strange description of Scott, surely, as well as of his age. Neither sadness nor scepticism was the prevailing note of the English people during the first quarter of the present century, whatever they may be of the last. And even if they were visible in Scott, we should have to look elsewhere for the secret of his influence during the fifteen years that followed the great war. But are they visible in Scott? All poets alike dwell at times on the brevity of human life, on the vanity of human wishes, on the sorrows and disappointments to which

To the great mass of the English people eighty years ago, "That Christ had risen from the dead was as sure as that the sun had risen that morning. That they would themselves rise was as certain as that they would die, and as positively would one day be called to judgment for the good or ill that they had done in life." It was with a faith of this kind that Scott had to reckon, and it is nonsense to suppose that he could have leaped into popularity as he did, had his works exhibited the faintest traces of scepticism.

Thus we see that everything was made ready for Scott. The march of literary events naturally led up to him, and prepared the way before him ; while, at the same time, the trumpet that woke Europe from its long repose – tuba mirum spargens sonum — stirred the public mind to its lowest depths, and taught it, one might say, to expect him.

literature of the eighteenth century; | umph, created a reaction against it not to faithlessness, but to the craving equally spirituelle and imaginative with for a fuller and deeper faith, which the welcome accorded to its beginning, sympathized at once with Scott's pic- and swept men's minds back on a flood ture of the Middle Ages, "setting be- of passion to the ages of faith and orfore his readers visions which, when der, of feudal chivalry and romantic once seen, are not easily forgotten, and loyalty. Scott, we say, had the benefit silently indoctrinating them with no- of both tides, of both the flow and bler ideas, which might afterwards be the ebb. The one produced the necesappealed to as first principles." This sary thirst; the other gave it the reaccount of the matter is nearer the quired impulse in his own direction. mark than Ruskin's; but it is not an exhaustive one, and leaves much to be added before the argument is complete. It is here to be noted, that as the two great events in modern history are the Reformation and the French Revolution, so we see Shakespeare directly following the one and Scott the other. The sanguine, buoyant, adventurous, and enthusiastic spirit which marks the Elizabethan age, and was the nat- Other circumstances contributed to ural result of the rupture of old bonds the formation of that national taste and the dawn upon the human mind of which Scott took at the flood. But we a new era, had its counterpart, to some have said enough about the making of extent, in the highly wrought tone of the Waverleys. We have endeavored public feeling which became apparent, to show that a variety of causes comboth at home and abroad, about the bined to produce both an intellectual middle of the reign of George III., and moral condition of the public mind, when so many eager minds hoped so which made it ripe for the genius who much that was never to be realized. was about to appear upon the stage. What is more remarkable is, that while But the completeness which the public both Scott and Shakespeare were found in Scott, what they were unconlargely indebted to the moral and spir-sciously craving for, was due to the itual effects of the new movement, neither was himself in sympathy with it. Shakespeare was a Catholic, if not a Roman. Scott's heart was in the past. But he reaped all the advantage of the two meeting currents: the one which made men long for something new; the other which led them to seek for it in what was old. The excitement, the looking forward, the stirring of the blood, which followed the early revolutionary outbreak, wearied men of their accustomed intellectual diet and of the established literary models. The insults heaped on kings and queens, on gallant gentlemen and delicate ladies, the Пpiaμikai тúxa of great old houses and falling kingdoms; the sacrilege, the selfishness, the vulgarity, and the insolence which marked the later stages of the great democratic tri

fact that he, like Shakespeare, was a poet, with the power of dipping everything that he touched in that mystic atmosphere which criticism seeks in vain to analyze, which can make the dry bones live, and the kings and heroes of the past our own contemporaries. Considering the temper of the people, both here and elsewhere, as it was in 1814, and the antecedent circumstances which had partly contributed to form it, only a poet could have been accepted as its new literary interpreter; and it was by turning his poetic genius to a new species of composition that Scott achieved his splendid triumphs. All this has been hinted at before. Both Mr. Lang and Professor Masson, and above all Mr. Keble, refer to it. But scarcely sufficient prominence, in our own opinion

at least, has hitherto been assigned to | barns. The explanation of it is that

it.

The Waverleys may be divided into historical novels and novels of contemporary life and manners, which had either been witnessed by Scott himself, or described to him by others from their own personal reminiscences; and the historical novels again may be divided into those which are founded on feudalism, those which relate to the period of the Scottish Reformation, and those which are inspired by the deathless interest of the great Stewart romauce. One or two there are which reject this classification, and many of those which come within it run into each other. But it is sufficient for our present purpose. Let us begin with the epic of feudalism.

a

Scott, like his own Waverley, habitually lived two lives. In one he was the man of the world, the man of letters, the cheerful hospitable host, the zealous modern politician; in the other he was the old feudal proprietor, the old Lowland laird with his heritable jurisdiction, charged with the maintenance of law and order in his district, position which Scott esteemed far more highly than that of a Tasso or a Shakespeare; and a link in that great chain of government and authority which has been called, by more impartial witnesses than Scott, the noblest which mankind have ever seen. The one world at times was as real to him as the other. When he withdrew to it to commune unrestrictedly with his own One great charm which pervades all thoughts, it was as if he retired to some Scott's feudal novels, independent alike grey old castle or monastic ruin, there of plots, incidents, or characters, is our to walk with the dead, who came, consciousness, as we read them, of obedient to his sermons, to tell him their deep and simple sincerity. If it all the story of the past. is the highest art of the poet, whether epic or dramatic-and the historical Multa modis simulacra videt volitantia Waverleys are only prose epics-to obtain such a complete mastery over the reader's imagination as to transport him for the moment into the midst of the scenes and personages described, Scott went beyond them, for he transported himself. He drew, so to speak, from the inside. He takes captive not only the imagination of his readers, but his own. He is as much the dupe of his own creations as they are. If we compare "The Betrothed

miris

Et varias audit voces fruiturque deorum
Colloquio.

But Scott's imagination alone would probably not have enabled him to reproduce the manners of the past with such marvellous effect had not reason lent her aid as well. In all the novels which are founded on feudalism we feel that we are in company with a writer who appreciates not only its picturesque effects, but also its sterling "Ivanhoe " with "Harold " or merits. Thus, while gazing on the "The Last of the Barons," we see the gorgeous array of "Fancy's gilded difference in a moment. The latter clouds," we have a solid substratum of are elaborate pictures on which the political truth under our feet, of which, greatest pains have been bestowed; consciously or unconsciously, we feel every detail carefully worked up, and the effect in an increased sense of the historical accuracy as far as possible author's earnestness and moral honrigidly observed. But there the esty. Objections taken to Scott's rep

or

achievement ends. There is no illu- resentations of medieval life on the sion. Scott lulls us into a dream ground that they are inaccurate in wherein we see the figures move and detail were not likely to interfere with speak, mingle in the battle and the the popular appreciation of them. It chase, and glow with the passions of is said, for instance, that he did not love, hatred, and revenge, as plainly as understand Gothic architecture; that Lovel saw the tapestry suddenly wake his antiquarian knowledge is often at into life in the Green Room at Monk-fault; that the language he puts into

the mouths of his feudal personages is | between the good and the bad in the

age of loyalty. We see the bright side of the picture in Quentin Durward and Damian de Lacy; the dark side in Front de Bœuf and Brian de BoisGuilbert. The pure honor, the unwavering faith, the generous devotion

wholly unlike anything they ever used; that in his account of the relations between Norman and Saxon his history is erroneous. Who cares? If we get the spirit of the age, we can dispense with the letter. If we get the general effect, the grand outlines of feudalism, of Damian; the prompt obedience to we can spare the upholstery. Scott the voice of knightly duty exhibited by himself has explained the principle on Quentin Durward, are to be set against which he acted in regard to the lan- the abduction of Rebecca by the Temguage of "Ivanhoe," "The Be-plar, the torture of the Jew by Front trothed," "The Talisman," "Quentin de Bœuf, and the violation of Ulrica by Durward," and others of the same the Norman conqueror of Torquilstone. character. He tells us that some compromise was inevitable. His characters must speak a language which his readers could understand, while it must be sufficiently far removed from that of modern times to sustain the illusion. We need hardly enquire whether Scott achieved this object. His dialogue sometimes wants variety, it never lacks reality.

No; the "historical conscience" of the public has never been shocked by Scott's delineations of feudalism; and all the other flaws which have been detected in it by antiquarians and ethnologists have been whistled down the wind by the general reader as points of no interest to himself, whatever they might be to experts. The spirit of Shakespeare was not caught less faithfully by the men who wore wigs and laced waistcoats than by those who wore trunk hose and doublets. We may fairly object, perhaps, to "the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison." Yet this marked incongruity did not interfere at all with Maggie Tulliver's appreciation of the parable.

We may add in this place that antiquarian or archæological criticism bestowed on a series of historic romances like the Waverleys, seems altogether out of place when addressed to the general public. If Scott has given us such pictures of historical events, or such estimates of historical personages, as are calculated to convey false impressions when false impressions And here we must pause for a momay be mischievous, and seriously per- ment to notice the strange confusion of vert our judgment on political or reli- thought into which Mr. Ruskin has gious subjects, that is fair matter for been betrayed on the subject of Scott's criticism and worthy of general at- antiquarianism. He supposes him to tention. But many of the objections be ridiculing in "The Antiquary "the raised to Scott's feudal pictures are same tastes and researches to which fit only to be discussed by a society we owe the feudal novels. The differof antiquaries, where, no doubt, they ence is enormous. Who would conhave a legitimate locus standi. We do found the devotion of a lifetime to the not mean that such faults have any collection of such lumber as choked claim to go entirely unnoticed. They up Mr. Oldbuck's study with that revmay be brought before their proper erence for a great system of governcourt; but that is not the general pub-ment and society which was the moving lic. Has then that division of the historical novels which belong to the feudal period exercised any such mischievous effect as the one supposed ? We answer unhesitatingly in the negative. Scott has held the balance quite evenly between the good and the bad in the age of chivalry, as he has done

spring of all Scott's historical pictures. They required "costume," as Mr. Ruskin elsewhere admits. That may be correct or incorrect; but it is only an accessory, not an essential. A passion for traditions and relics, because they are associated with the poetry of history, may be carried too far; but it