Essays in Little Part 12

Why not, indeed? But Mr. Lever was a successful Irishman of letters, and a good many other Irish gentlemen of letters, honest Doolan and his friends, were not successful. That is the humour of it.

Though you, my youthful reader, if I have one, do not detest Jones because he is in the Eleven, nor Brown because he has "got his cap," nor Smith because he does Greek Iambics like Sophocles; though you rather admire and applaud these champions, you may feel very differently when you come to thirty years or more, and see other men doing what you cannot do, and gaining prizes beyond your grasp. And then, if you are a reviewer, you "will find fault with a book for what it does not give," as thus, to take Mr. Thackeray's example:--

"Lady Smigsmag's novel is amusing, but lamentably deficient in geological information." "Mr. Lever's novels are trashy and worthless, for his facts are not borne out by any authority, and he gives us no information about the political state of Ireland. 'Oh! our country, our green and beloved, our beautiful and oppressed?'" and so forth.

It was not altogether a happy time that Lever pa.s.sed at home. Not only did his native critics belabour him most ungrudgingly for "Tom Burke,"

that vivid and chivalrous romance, but he made enemies of authors. He edited a magazine! Is not that enough? He wearied of wading through waggon-loads of that pure unmitigated rubbish which people are permitted to "shoot" at editorial doors. How much dust there is in it to how few pearls! He did not return MSS. punctually and politely. The office cat could edit the volunteered contributions of many a magazine, but Lever was even more casual and careless than an experienced office cat. He grew crabbed, and tried to quarrel with Mr. Thackeray for that delightful parody "Phil Fogarty," nearly as good as a genuine story by Lever.

Beset by critics, burlesqued by his friend, he changed his style (Mr.

Fitzpatrick tells us) and became more sober--and not so entertaining. He actually published a criticism of Beyle, of Stendhal, that psychological prig, the darling of culture and of M. Paul Bourget. Harry Lorrequer on Stendhal!--it beggars belief. He nearly fought a duel with the gentleman who is said to have suggested Mr. Pecksniff to d.i.c.kens! Yet they call his early novels improbable. Nothing could be less plausible than a combat between Harry Lorrequer and a gentleman who, even remotely, resembled the father of Cherry and Merry.

Lever went abroad again, and in Florence or the Baths of Lucca, in Trieste or Spezia, he pa.s.sed the rest of his life. He saw the Italian revolution of 1848, and it added to his melancholy. This is plain from one of his novels with a curious history--"Con Cregan." He wrote it at the same time as "The Daltons," and he did not sign it. The reviewers praised "Con Cregan" at the expense of the signed work, rejoicing that Lever, as "The Daltons" proved, was exhausted, and that a new Irish author, the author of "Con Cregan," was coming to eclipse him. In short, he eclipsed himself, and he did not like it. His right hand was jealous of what his left hand did. It seems odd that any human being, however dull and envious, failed to detect Lever in the rapid and vivacious adventures of his Irish "Gil Blas," hero of one of the very best among his books, a piece not unworthy of Dumas. "Con" was written after midnight, "The Daltons" in the morning; and there can be no doubt which set of hours was more favourable to Lever's genius. Of course he liked "The Daltons" best; of all people, authors appear to be their own worst critics.

It is not possible even to catalogue Lever's later books here. Again he drove a pair of novels abreast--"The Dodds" and "Sir Jasper Carew"--which contain some of his most powerful situations. When almost an old man, sad, outworn in body, straitened in circ.u.mstances, he still produced excellent tales in this later manner--"Lord Kilgobbin," "That Boy of Norcott's," "A Day's Ride," and many more. These are the thoughts of a tired man of the world, who has done and seen everything that such men see and do. He says that he grew fat, and bald, and grave; he wrote for the grave and the bald, not for the happier world which is young, and curly, and merry. He died at last, it is said, in his sleep; and it is added that he did what Harry Lorrequer would not have done--he left his affairs in perfect order.

Lever lived in an age so full of great novelists that, perhaps, he is not prized as he should be. d.i.c.kens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, were his contemporaries. But when we turn back and read him once more, we see that Lever, too, was a worthy member of that famous company--a romancer for boys and men.

THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took a fis.h.i.+ng-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle of St.

Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected in the lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the lapping of the water against the boat, the cry of the blackc.o.c.k from the hill, and the pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there. So I read "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the middle of the scenes where the story is laid and where the fights were fought. For when the Baron went on pilgrimage,

"And took with him this elvish page To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes,"

it was to the ruined chapel _here_ that he came,

"For there, beside our Ladye's lake, An offering he had sworn to make, And he would pay his vows."

But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band,

"Of the best that would ride at her command,"

and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of lonely green hills. Harden, where her ally, Wat of Harden, abode, is within twelve miles; and Deloraine, where William dwelt, is nearer still; and John of Thirlestane had his square tower in the heather, "where victual never grew," on Ettrick Water, within ten miles. These gentlemen, and their kinsfolk and retainers, being at feud with the Kers, tried to slay the Baron, in the Chapel of "Lone St. Mary of the Waves."

"They were three hundred spears and three.

Through Douglas burn, up Yarrow stream, Their horses prance, their lances gleam.

They came to St. Mary's Lake ere day; But the chapel was void, and the Baron away.

They burned the chapel for very rage, And cursed Lord Cranstoun's goblin-page."

The Scotts were a rough clan enough to burn a holy chapel because they failed to kill their enemy within the sacred walls. But, as I read again, for the twentieth time, Sir Walter's poem, floating on the lonely breast of the lake, in the heart of the hills where Yarrow flows, among the little green mounds that cover the ruins of chapel and castle and lady's bower, I asked myself whether Sir Walter was indeed a great and delightful poet, or whether he pleases me so much because I was born in his own country, and have one drop of the blood of his Border robbers in my own veins?

It is not always pleasant to go back to places, or to meet people, whom we have loved well, long ago. If they have changed little, we have changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was "The Lady of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no poet like Sir Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read most of the world's poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott is outworn and doomed to deserved oblivion. Are they right or wrong, the critics who tell us, occasionally, that Scott's good novels make up for his bad verse, or that verse and prose, all must go? _Pro captu lectoris_, by the reader's taste, they stand or fall; yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that the Waverley Novels are mortal. They were once the joy of every cla.s.s of minds; they cannot cease to be the joy of those who cling to the permanently good, and can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses, and the leisurely literary fas.h.i.+on of a former age. But, as to the poems, many give them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow that the poems are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric and narrative. Now, the fas.h.i.+on of narrative in poetry has pa.s.sed away for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek; by perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we not to read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the epics, nay, even of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into vogue. This accounts for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's lays. They are spoken of as Waverley Novels spoiled. This must always be the opinion of readers who will not submit to stories in verse; it by no means follows that the verse is bad. If we make an exception, which we must, in favour of Chaucer, where is there better verse in story telling in the whole of English literature? The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of the Lake," do so because they dislike stories told in poetry. From poetry they expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic of style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except so far as life can be criticised in action, are alien to the Muse of narrative. Stories and pictures are all she offers: Scott's pictures, certainly, are fresh enough, his tales are excellent enough, his manner is sufficiently direct. To take examples: every one who wants to read Scott's poetry should begin with the "Lay." From opening to close it never falters:--

"Nine and twenty knights of fame Hung their s.h.i.+elds in Branksome Hall; Nine and twenty squires of name Brought their steeds to bower from stall, Nine and twenty yeomen tall Waited, duteous, on them all . . .

Ten of them were sheathed in steel, With belted sword, and spur on heel; They quitted not their harness bright Neither by day nor yet by night: They lay down to rest With corslet laced, Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; They carved at the meal With gloves of steel, And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred."

Now, is not that a brave beginning? Does not the verse clank and chime like sword sheath on spur, like the bits of champing horses? Then, when William of Deloraine is sent on his lonely midnight ride across the haunted moors and wolds, does the verse not gallop like the heavy armoured horse?

"Unchallenged, thence pa.s.sed Deloraine, To ancient Riddell's fair domain, Where Aill, from mountains freed, Down from the lakes did raving come; Each wave was crested with tawny foam, Like the mane of a chestnut steed, In vain! no torrent, deep or broad, Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road; At the first plunge the horse sunk low, And the water broke o'er the saddle-bow."

These last two lines have the very movement and note, the deep heavy plunge, the still swirl of the water. Well I know the lochs whence Aill comes red in flood; many a trout have I taken in Aill, long ago. This, of course, causes a favourable prejudice, a personal bias towards admiration. But I think the poetry itself is good, and stirs the spirit, even of those who know not Ailmoor, the mother of Aill, that lies dark among the melancholy hills.

The spirit is stirred throughout by the chivalry and the courage of Scott's men and of his women. Thus the Lady of Branksome addresses the English invaders who have taken her boy prisoner:--

"For the young heir of Branksome's line, G.o.d be his aid, and G.o.d be mine; Through me no friend shall meet his doom; Here, while I live, no foe finds room.

Then if thy Lords their purpose urge, Take our defiance loud and high; Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge, Our moat, the grave where they shall lie."

Ay, and though the minstrel says he is no love poet, and though, indeed, he s.h.i.+nes more in war than in lady's bower, is not this a n.o.ble stanza on true love, and worthy of what old Malory writes in his "Mort d'Arthur"?

Because here Scott speaks for himself, and of his own unhappy and immortal affection:--

"True love's the gift which G.o.d has given To man alone beneath the Heaven.

It is not Fantasy's hot fire, Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly; _It liveth not in fierce desire_, _With dead desire it dock not die_: It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind."

Truth and faith, courage and chivalry, a free life in the hills and by the streams, a shrewd brain, an open heart, a kind word for friend or foeman, these are what you learn from the "Lay," if you want to learn lessons from poetry. It is a rude legend, perhaps, as the critics said at once, when critics were disdainful of wizard priests and ladies magical. But it is a deathless legend, I hope; it appeals to every young heart that is not early spoiled by low cunning, and cynicism, and love of gain. The minstrel's own prophecy is true, and still, and always,

"Yarrow, as he rolls along, Bears burden to the minstrel's song."

After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far more ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse written.

Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His friends reproved him, but he answered to one of them--

"Since oft thy judgment could refine My flattened thought and c.u.mbrous line, Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, And in the minstrel spare the friend: _Though wild as cloud_, _as stream_, _as gale_, _Flow forth_, _flow unrestrained_, _my tale_!"

Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse--forth from the far- off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the same stormy sort, and many a "c.u.mbrous line," many a "flattened thought," you may note, if you will, in "Marmion." For example--

"And think what he must next have felt, At buckling of the falchion belt."

The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion" might have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose could never give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of Flodden Fight in "Marmion," which I verily believe is the best battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the stand of Aias by the s.h.i.+ps in the Iliad, better than the slaying of the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the hunting of the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down valley, with which the "Lady of the Lake" begins, opening thereby the enchanted gates of the Highlands to the world. "The Lady of the Lake," except in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid metre than that of the "Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion."

"Rokeby" lives only by its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn, the "Field of Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuira.s.siers. But all the poems are interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of "Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on _these_ far more than on his later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest poets who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as wild and free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy carolled, or witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to the world, music with no maker's name. For example, take the Outlaw's rhyme--

"With burnished brand and musketoon, So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold dragoon That lists the tuck of drum.

I list no more the tuck of drum, No more the trumpet hear; But when the beetle sounds his hum, My comrades take the spear.

And, oh, though Brignal banks be fair, And Greta woods be gay, Yet mickle must the maiden dare, Would reign my Queen of May!"

How musical, again, is this!--

"This morn is merry June, I trow, The rose is budding fain; But she shall bloom in winter snow, Ere we two meet again.

He turned his charger as he spake, Upon the river sh.o.r.e, He gave his bridle-reins a shake, Said, 'Adieu for evermore, My love!

Adieu for evermore!'"

Turning from the legends in verse, let it not be forgotten that Scott was a great lyrical poet. Mr. Palgrave is not too lenient a judge, and his "Golden Treasury" is a touchstone, as well as a treasure, of poetic gold.

In this volume Wordsworth contributes more lyrics than any other poet: Sh.e.l.ley and Shakespeare come next; then Sir Walter. For my part I would gladly sacrifice a few of Wordsworth's for a few more of Scott's. But this may be prejudice. Mr. Palgrave is not prejudiced, and we see how high is his value for Sir Walter.

There are scores of songs in his works, touching and sad, or gay as a hunter's waking, that tell of lovely things lost by tradition, and found by him on the moors: all these--not prized by Sir Walter himself--are in his gift, and in that of no other man. For example, his "Eve of St.

John" is simply a masterpiece, a ballad among ballads. Nothing but an old song moves us like--