John O. Hayden Walter Scott The Critical Heritage The Collected Critical Heritage Early English Novelists 1996

  

THE CRITICAL H ERITAGE SERIES

  General Editor: B.C.Southam

  

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major

figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a

particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes

to the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition.

  

The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of

criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary

material, such as letters and diaries.

Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to

demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death.

  

WALTER SCOTT

THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

  Edited by

  London and New York

  

First Published in 1970

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1970 John O.Hayden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,

now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,

or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

  

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  

ISBN 0-203-19771-2 Master e-book ISBN

  

ISBN 0-203-19774-7 (Adobe eReader Format)

  

ISBN 0-415-13427-7 (Print Edition)

General Editor’s Preface

  The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near- contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures.

  The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly for many of the highly-productive and lengthily-reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality—perhaps even registering incomprehension!

  For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear.

  In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access, and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged.

  B.C.S.

  This book is for Mary

  

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS page xiii

  7 JANE AUSTEN : a comment 1814

  13 GEORGE ELLIS in Quarterly Review 1815

  87 The Lord of the Isles (1815)

  12 Review in Augustan Review 1815

  86

  11 WORDSWORTH on Scott’s first novels 1815

  85 Guy Mannering (1815)

  10 Review in La Belle Assembleé 1815

  79 The Field of Waterloo (1815)

  9 FRANCIS JEFFREY in Edinburgh Review 1814

  75

  8 MARIA EDGEWORTH : a letter 1814

  74

  67

  xiv

  6 Review in British Critic 1814

  62 Waverley (1814)

  5 Review in British Review 1813

  56 Rokeby (1813)

  4 COLERIDGE : a letter to Wordsworth 1810

  52

  3 Review in British Critic 1810

  35 The Lady of the Lake (1810)

  2 FRANCIS JEFFREY in Edinburgh Review 1808

  25 Marmion (1808)

  1 Review in Literary Journal 1805

  1 The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)

  INTRODUCTION

  90

  

The Antiquary (1816)

  14 in Quarterly Review 1816 page 98

  15 Review in British Lady’s Magazine 1816 104

  

The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816)

  16 Review in Critical Review 1816 106

  SCOTT

  17 in Quarterly Review 1817 113

  18 in a serious mood 1818 144

  

Rob Roy (1818)

  19 Review in European Magazine 1818 146

  E T CHANNING

  20 . . in North American Review 1818 148

  

The Heart of Midlothian (1818)

  21 Review in British Review 1818 165

  22 on the novels 1819–23 172

  

Ivanhoe (1820)

  23 Notice in Monthly Magazine 1820 177

  COLERIDGE

  24 on the novels 1820s 178

  

The Monastery (1820)

  25 Review in Ladies’ Monthly Museum 1820 185

  

Ivanhoe (1820) [cont]

  26 Review in Eclectic Review 1820 188

  27 A shepherd’s tribute 1820 195

  J L ADOLPHUS

  28 . . on the works and their authorship 1821

  197

  29 surveys the novels in Quarterly Review 1821

  215

  

The Pirate (1821)

  30 Review in Examiner 1821 256

  

The Fortunes of Nigel (1822)

  31 Review in General Weekly Register 1822 page 261

  SCOTT

  32 : plot construction and the historical novel 1822

  263

  

Halidon Hill (1822)

  33 Review in Eclectic Review 1822 269

  

Quentin Durward (1823)

  34 Review in New Monthly Magazine 1823 272

  HAZLITT

  35 : Scott and the spirit of the age in New

  Monthly Magazine 1825 279

Woodstock (1826)

  36 Review in Westminster Review 1826 290

  SCOTT

  37 on his imitators 1826 299

  38 : burlesque as criticism 1827 302

  39 on Scott 1828, 1837 304

  GOETHE

  40 on Scott 1828, 1831 306

  MACAULAY

  41 : Scott as historical novelist 1828 309

  42 An early voice of dissent 1828 310

  STENDHAL

  43 on Scott in Le National 1830 318

  PEACOCK

  44 : Mr. Chainmail and the enchanter 1831 321

  45 : a French obituary in Le Globe 1832 326

• SAINTE BEUVE

  46 on historical romance in Fraser’s

• BULWER LYTTON

  Magazine 1832 328

  47 Scott’s intellectual qualities in Monthly Repository 1832

  332

  W B O PEABODY

  48 . . . defends Scott’s poetry 1833 336

  49 : Scott as moral hero in Tait’s

  Edinburgh Magazine 1833 340 J G LOCKHART

  50 . . on Scott 1837 342

  CARLYLE

  51 : the amoral Scott in London and Westminster

  Review 1838 345 BALZAC

  52 on Scott 1838, 1840 373

  53 : Scott prepared the way,

  British Critic 1839 378 BELINSKY

  54 , a Russian contemporary looks at Scott 1844

  379

  55 WORDSWORTH ’

  APPENDIX

  67 R .

  H . HUTTON

  : Scott as man of letters 1878 481

  68 JULIA WEDGWOOD : ‘the romantic reaction’, in

  69 RUSKIN : ‘Fiction—Fair and Foul’ in Nineteenth Century

  1880 522

  70 TWAIN : Scott as warmonger 1883 537

  :

  Cornhill Magazine 1874 475

  ’

  S NOVELS

  541

  549

  SELECT

  INDEX

  550

  66 GEORGE BRANDES : morality as drawback 1875 478

  on Scott’s place in literary history, in

  S

  60 MRS .

  later views 1844 page 381

  56 A question of history in Fraser’s Magazine 1847 382

  57 WALTER BAGEHOT on Scott in National Review 1858 394

  58 H .

  A . TAINE

  on Scott 1863 421

  59 HENRY JAMES in North American Review 1864 427

  OLIPHANT

  L . STEVENSON

  to the defence in

  Blackwood’s Magazine 1871 432

  61 LESLIE STEPHEN : hours in a library with Scott in

  Cornhill Magazine 1871 439

  62 A centenary view—Scott’s characters, in Athenaeum 1871 459

  63 A late centenary view in London Quarterly 1872 469

  64 GLADSTONE on The Bride of Lammermoor 1870s (?) 474

  65 R .

Contemporary Review 1878 499

  

Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank T.M.Raysor for permission to quote from his edition of Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Criticism (1936); Oliver and Boyd for permission to quote several passages from Tait and Parker’s edition of The Journal of

Sir Walter Scott (1939–47); A.P.Watt & Son for permission to quote from

  W.G.Partington’s edition of The Private Letter Books of Sir Walter Scott (published in the United States by Frederick Stokes Co., copyright 1930 Wilfred George Partington, copyright renewed 1958 by Audrey Mary Ormrod); The Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, for permission to quote from V.G.Belinsky’s Selected Philosophical Works (1956); the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for permission to quote from E.L.Grigg’s edition of the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1956–59), from Ernest De Selincourt’s edition of The Letters of William and Dorothy

  

Wordsworth: The Middle Years (1937), from R.W.Chapman’s edition of Jane

Austen’s Letters, 2nd ed. (1952), and N.C.Smith’s edition of The Letters of

Sydney Smith (1953); and Charles Scribner’s Sons for permission to quote

  from Sidney Colvin’s Memories and Notes of Persons and Places (1921); Calder & Boyers Ltd. for permission to reproduce the translation of Stendhal’s ‘Walter Scott and La Princesse de Clèves’ (1959).

  James T.Hillhouse’s account of the reception of Scott’s novels and James C.Corson’s annotated bibliography of Scott were of inestimable value, the former especially in composing the introduction, the latter especially in the selection and location of items. A debt of another nature I owe to the Interlibrary Loan Department of the University of California, Davis, Library: Vera Loomis, Susan Moger, Mary Ann Hoffman, Jeri Bone, and Loraine Freidenberger. Their professional competence and expedition were essential to my project; their friendliness obligates me still further. I would also like to express my appreciation to my colleague at Davis, Mr. Elliot Gilbert, and to an old friend, Mr. George Dekker of the University of Essex, both of whom read the introduction and made suggestions for its improvement. A generous grant from the Humanities Institute of the University of California provided me with the free time necessary to put together this edition.

  My thanks also to Mr. Stephen Arroyo and Miss Karen Kahl, work- study assistants who have been a great help in preparing the text, and to Mrs. Susan Freitas, my indefatigable typist.

Note on the Text

  The materials printed in this volume follow the original texts in all important respects. Lengthy extracts from Scott’s poems and novels have been omitted whenever they are quoted merely to illustrate the work in question. These omissions are clearly indicated in the text. Typographical errors in the originals have been silently corrected.

Introduction

  I Intensives and superlatives are the devices of the puffing book-jacket, not the terms of sober literary history. No one, in any case, pays much attention to such extravagant descriptions. How then does one draw attention to the extraordinary popularity of a writer like Sir Walter Scott? Bald statements must suffice: no writer before him had been so well received by his contemporaries—ever.

  Scott’s unprecedented popularity is perhaps best shown in a singular fact about the publication of the Waverley novels. They were printed in Edinburgh and copies for the English market were then shipped from Leith to London on a packet. What the reviewer in the Literary Museum had to say in 1823 about one of the occasional delays of the boat makes the point directly:

  

Rarely, we believe, has the fury of the winds and waves been deprecated by more

numerous wishes than were lately put up for the safety of that vessel which sailed

from the north, freighted with the impression of Peveril of the Peak.

  Now, he continued, it is safely docked, and in a few hours the book ‘will stand blazoned in immense capitals in the window, or on the doorposts, of ₁ every bookseller in the metropolis’. The publication of each Waverley novel was an EVENT, albeit a frequent one, and the weekly literary journals often had copies shipped down at some expense by coach to beat their competitors in reviewing the book.

  The number of contemporary reviews of each novel was large; from ten to thirty reviewing periodicals gave attention to each. The popularity of the novels can also be seen in the correspondence and diaries of the time: scarcely any were without some reference to ‘the author of Waverley’ or to his works. In short, there was no lack of materials to select from in compiling this volume.

  There is, of course, the reception of Scott’s poetry as well as his prose to contend with. His verse romances, such as Marmion and The Lady of the

  

Lake, have never been as popular as his novels; although they continued to enjoy a considerable sale, when Waverley appeared in 1814 the poems were eclipsed. But when they first appeared, they provided a good sample of the sort of applause Scott would encounter when he turned to prose; and so to reflect this early popularity, a scattering of reviews of the poetry has been given in this volume. Much of the criticism is, furthermore, far from contemptible. At least on the negative side the sort of things are said that should have been said.

  But although the treatment of Scott’s novels is emphasized in the documents that follow, the later discussion of his verse is given more space than can be defended by citing its popularity then or now. Scott’s poetry was relegated by many Victorians to the status of children’s reading; and yet others, some few of their commentaries selected here, made interesting attempts to find approaches to his verse which would entitle it to adult respect and appreciation.

  As for the commentaries on Scott’s novels after his death, the problem is one of volume; for considering the normal posthumous erosion of an author’s popularity, there was not much decline in interest in the Waverley novels throughout most of the nineteenth century, even though by 1860 newer techniques in novel writing had made much of Scott’s writing appear clumsier than it seemed to his contemporaries. The terminus of 1885 has been chosen as the approximate date by which Scott ceased to be popular with the reading public at large. Some of the later documents are included as illustrative of certain trends, but on the whole they contain valid criticism in their own right.

  II Some knowledge of the publication history of Scott’s works can help our understanding of his contemporary reception. His poetic career began more or less with his first major original work, The Lay of the

Last Minstrel, a verse romance published in 1805. In spite of flaws in

  the story and in the versification and diction, the poem was generally well received, probably because, as Carlyle pointed out (No. 51), Scott’s poetry stood out against the bleak poetic background of the time, the insipidity of William Hayley’s verse, the uninspired didacticism of Erasmus Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants, or the silliness of Della Cruscan lyrics. At least The Lay had a certain vigour and sharply drawn descriptions. It ran through fifteen editions by 1815, in any event, and was followed by the still more successful Marmion

  (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). According to John Gibson Lockhart both the last-mentioned poems ran to at least 50,000 copies ₂ by 1836.

  But in 1814, having detected a slight decline in his poetic popularity which he himself attributed to the rise of Byron’s, Scott published his first novel, Waverley. Much the same situation that obtained for poetry in 1805 existed for the novel in 1814. Besides Jane Austen, whose anonymous novels caused so little stir, and the more popular Maria Edgeworth, there was no other living novelist of interest; much of the fiction of the time was manufactured by the Minerva Press for circulating libraries. Consequently, fiction no longer enjoyed a high standing. Although Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were mentioned with respect, the genre itself had fallen in the estimation of the early nineteenth century.

  Scott singlehandedly revived the reputation of the novel and showed that novel-writing could be a lucrative profession. According to Lockhart, it took five weeks to sell the first impression (1,000 copies) ₃ of Waverley, but by the end of the first year six editions had appeared.

  

Old Mortality (1816) sold 4,000 copies in the first six weeks, Rob Roy

₄

  (1818) 10,000 copies in the first fortnight. The Fortunes of Nigel (1822), however, makes both figures look comparatively insignificant. Archibald Constable, Scott’s publisher, made him the following report on its arrival in London in May 1822:

  

A new novel from the author of Waverley puts aside—in other words, puts down for

the time, every other literary performance. The Smack Ocean, by which the new

work was shipped, arrived at the wharf on Sunday; the bales were got out by one

on Monday morning, and before half-past ten o’clock 7,000 copies had been

₅ dispersed from 90 Cheapside [his London agent’s address].

  And as for Scott’s income from his publications, Lockhart claims that in ₆ 1822 the novels were bringing in between £10,000 and £15,000 per year.

  The speed with which Scott produced his novels and other works partly accounts for these very large sums. Between July 1814 and July 1818, six Waverley novels were published, but in 1819 and the early 1820s the novels appeared every four to six months. Indeed, Ivanhoe and

The Monastery were published about two and a half months apart. The

  reviewer of Quentin Durward in the New Monthly Magazine (No. 34) did in fact complain, in his capacity as exhausted reviewer, of ‘the announcement of “Another Novel from the Great Unknown”’.

  The Waverley novels were published anonymously, the second and following ones being designated as ‘by the author of Waverley’. Most reviewers saw through the anonymity but played along by referring to the author as, among other things, ‘The Great Unknown’, ‘the Enchanter of the North’, ‘the Northern Magician’, ‘The Scottish Prospero’, and even ‘the Pet of the Public’. Some reviewers, nevertheless, occasionally retailed rumours of other authorship: Thomas Scott (Sir Walter’s brother in America), Mrs. Thomas Scott, and a ‘Mr. Forbes’ (No. 16); and, in view of the great productivity, the collaboration of several unknown authors was seriously proposed.

  The importance of the anonymity is perhaps exaggerated today, for anonymity seems to have been a literary phenomenon of the age. Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, Byron’s English Bards,

Beppo, and Don Juan, and various works by Jane Austen, Thomas

  Moore, Samuel Rogers, Robert Southey, and Charles Lamb, together with a few verse romances by Scott himself, indicate the kind of strange attraction anonymity held for Romantic writers; and of course almost all the literary reviews were unsigned. In many cases there was an additional reason for the literary anonymity: satire, political attacks, or literary experimentation called for the cloak of mystery. In the case of the Waverley novels such motives seem largely missing; and in view of the unprecedented popularity of the works the reviewers often expressed puzzlement at the anonymity. When the veil was finally lifted in 1827, Scott claimed in his preface to The Chronicles of the

Canongate that the anonymity began as ‘the humour or caprice of the

  time’ and was continued after the success of Waverley in order to avoid the dangers of immodesty incident to literary popularity.

  Whatever his motives, or lack of them, the reviewers sometimes saw the anonymity as part of a wide scheme of what was called ‘book- making’—profiteering by either raising the price or padding the contents of books. Scott had demonstrated that novel-writing could be big business and was often accused of ‘bookmaking’. The mystification concerning authorship was sometimes attacked as just a further gimmick to attract attention and sustain sales. Another ploy, in the view of the Monthly

Magazine, was used in publishing St. Ronan’s Well:

  

The Scotch publishers latterly hit upon a puffing pretension, which, whatever

may have been its plausibility or success, is, we fancy, by the work before us, likely

to be thrown back into disuse. Thus was it: they forwarded an early copy to some

favoured and friendly editor, who culled out its pretty passages, and thus beguiled

  

the press into general commendation upon special provocatives; while the eager

readers in town were formally apprised, by daily advertisement, that the new novel

shipped from Leith was weather-bound, while each morning ensured a variation of

₇ the needle. But the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow!

  Whether a plot by Constable or not, several of the weeklies plagiarized (from the Leeds Intelligencer) excerpts from the novel and praised it, and then were forced to rescind their verdicts in a second review.

  As we will see, Scott’s poems and the novels ‘by the author of

Waverley’ encountered considerable adverse criticism. And yet, as is

  usually the case with criticism, it seems to have had little influence on its subject. Scott’s careless errors continued to the end, and even the new, complete edition which he supervised beginning in 1829 shows no major revisions, only a large number of minor stylistic changes. Scott’s view of his own writing is unassuming, almost degrading: at times he saw it largely as amusement. His prefatory remarks (Nos. 32a, b) and his self-review in the Quarterly (No. 17) are self-defensive; in several of his poems, moreover, he had tossed back taunts to his reviewers, such as ‘flow forth, flow unrestrain’d, my tale’ (in the introduction to Canto III of Marmion) and ‘little reck I of the censure sharp/May idly cavil at an idle lay’ (in the epilogue to The Lady of the Lake).

  Almost any other writer of the period would have exposed himself by such taunts and self-defences, to the charge of in fact caring a great deal about the flailings by his critics, but Scott’s personality, along with his poco-curante view of the writing profession, provides contrary evidence. Benjamin Robert Haydon, a painter of the period, and an acquaintance of both Scott and Wordsworth, compared the two. Anyone’s modesty would stand out against the background of Wordsworth’s notorious egotism, but Haydon’s remarks are, I believe, revealing nonetheless. Scott ‘is always cool & amusing’; he ‘seems to wish to seem less than he is’; his ‘disposition can be traced to the effect of Success operating on a genial temperament, while Wordsworth’s takes its rise from the effect of unjust ridicule wounding a deep self estimation’. ‘Yet,’ he continues, ‘I do think Scott’s success would have made Wordsworth insufferable, while Wordsworth’s failures would ₈ not have rendered Scott a bit less delightful’. Such a disposition is not likely to be affected much by criticism.

  The contemporary reviewers of Scott’s works had much to contend with. They confronted a careless, indifferent, and anonymous writer who ground out novels at an unprecedented flow for a voracious public which would not likely pay much attention to adverse critics anyway. In one sense, the reviewers were facing for the first time a modern phenomenon—the best-seller.

  III From the period of Scott’s contemporary reception, roughly 1805–32, an enormous amount of data has survived. Well over 350 reviews of the novels alone exist, and mention of Scott and ‘the author of Waverley’ crops up everywhere in the correspondence and diaries of the period. To include as large and as representative a selection as possible, the letters chosen are largely those which contain criticism of the works in question; and plot synopses and quotations, which so often formed a large part of the reviews, have been omitted and described in brackets.

  The reception of Scott’s poetry by his reviewers was uneven, ₉ sometimes placid, sometimes stormy. After the favourable reception of The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the five major verse romances—his major poetic works—were subjected to considerable scrutiny. The Lay of

  

the Last Minstrel (1805) enjoyed a generally favourable reception, while

Marmion (1808) encountered a good deal of opposition, in spite of its

  popularity with the reading public. The high point of Scott’s relations with his critics came with reviews of The Lady of the Lake (1810); the enthusiasm can be seen in the review in the British Critic (No. 3). The publication of Rokeby (1813) provoked a slight dip in Scott’s reputation, and the reception of The Lord of the Isles (1815), published after Waverley, must have confirmed all Scott’s fears about the demise of his poetic career. Even his friend George Ellis has not much good to say for the poem in the Quarterly (No. 13). A later ‘dramatic sketch’, Halidon Hill (1822), received mixed reviews; the review in the Eclectic (No. 33) seems to me a fair estimation of Scott’s dramatic powers of dialogue and characterization in the ‘sketch’, seen on so much larger a scale in his novels.

  The criticism of his poetry was a fitting prelude to that encountered later by his novels; in fact, as we shall see, the same criticisms were made of both. On the negative side, there was his incredible carelessness, the grammatical errors and padding. Perhaps the best exposure of this sloppiness is contained in the review in the Literary Journal (No. 1), where the very facile versification, the poor rhymes, and the obvious metre are also examined. The other side, a defence of Scott’s versification, can be found in the British Critic (No. 3). Francis Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review (No. 2), made a special onslaught against the inconsistency and unnaturalness of the characterization, the insipid heroine, and the poor plot construction. The charge of ‘bookmaking’, moreover, is frequently on the list of Scott’s offences read off with boredom or frustration after the first few publications.

  At the end of Jeffrey’s review there is a political note sounded in his attack on Scott’s niggardly praise of Charles Fox, the deceased Whig minister. The Edinburgh, like almost all other reviewing periodicals of the time, had a partisan bias. That bias, however, took a form which is often misunderstood, for the two parties, Whig and Tory, were not opposed in basic principles; they shared an aristocratic view of government. Neither party, consequently, was as heated in its antagonism toward the other as were both parties toward the dangerous revolutionaries of the time—those who, whether Jacobins or Radicals, threatened to unweave the political and social fabric. Shelley, for example, received what appears to have been prejudiced treatment at times as payment for his revolutionary views. Scott, as Tory member of the two-party Establishment, had little to fear from the political prejudices of the reviewers of either party when they were rendering a purely literary assessment. It was only when partisan political issues crept into his own work that reviewers of the opposite party, like Jeffrey, would attack. And this situation did not arise all that often.

  But there was also a positive side to the account of the reception of Scott’s verse. There was almost always praise for particular passages, for Scott’s descriptive powers, and sometimes for his display of the manners of past ages. Instances occurred, especially in the fashionable magazines (No. 10), in which this praise was mindlessly unalloyed with any of the criticisms noted above; but most often the praise and blame were mixed and the beauties said to be sufficient compensation for the flaws, a position not often taken by critics of Scott today. Coleridge’s letter (No.

  4) criticizing The Lady of the Lake is indeed modern in its almost total dismissal of the poem.

  It is not accidental that contemporary criticism of Scott’s verse and novels shares so many points in common. As was pointed out by J.L.Adolphus (No. 28), Scott’s relatively ‘unpoetical’ style was easily transferred from verse to prose, and Mrs. Oliphant later in the century (No. 60) saw the same close relationship and that Scott needed the novel form to expand his sense of character.

  Like the earlier verse romances, Scott’s first novel, Waverley (1814), was a success with the public, and this success won critical endorsement from most reviewers. In its enthusiasm the Antijacobin

Review was led to hope that Waverley presaged a revival of the novel

  and Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (No. 9) noted that it put all other ₁₀ contemporary novels in the shade. Even though it is not always stated, there is a sense that something new had happened; several reviewers remarked that Waverley would definitely not be relegated to the shelves of a circulating library.

  The general points of praise and disapproval of Waverley, some of them already sounding like echoes from critiques of Scott’s verse narratives, form the beginning of a list which was to become familiar to readers of contemporary reviews of Scott’s novels. There is bountiful praise for the characterization, descriptions, the easy, flowing style, the display of past manners, and for particularly fine scenes. The adverse criticism consisted of objections to the obscurity of the Scottish dialect, the poorly constructed story, the tiresomeness of Scott’s bores, the historical inaccuracies, and the very mixture itself of history and fiction. As we shall see, the last-named objection was to stimulate controversy throughout the nineteenth century. Waverley, furthermore, was identified by almost every reviewer as Scott’s work.

  Reviews of Guy Mannering (1815) and The Antiquary (1816), the following two novels, continued favourable on the whole. Although the typical adverse criticisms made of Waverley continued too, the praise ran only slightly abated. Several reviewers, however, thought that Guy

  

Mannering was more like a common novel of the time, especially in the

  story. The predictions and their fulfilment, the main conventions objected to, were specifically criticized, partly for encouraging superstition, partly for being improbable. J.H.Merivale, in the Monthly Review, did not object to ‘gross improbability’ in a romance, but

  

…in a species of writing which founds its only claim to our favour on the

reality of its pictures and images, the introduction of any thing that is

diametrically contrary to all our ordinary principles of belief and action is as

gross a violation of every rule of composition as the appendage of a fish’s tail

to a woman’s head and shoulders, or the assemblage of any others the most

₁₁

discordant images on a single canvas.

  John Wilson Croker, reviewing The Antiquary in the Quarterly (No. 14), noted that the absence of predictions in that novel gave it an advantage over Guy Mannering, for he ‘felt little or no interest in the fortunes of those whose fate was predestined, and whose happiness or woe depended not on their own actions, but on the prognostications of a beldam gipsy or a wild Oxonian….’

  The criticism of the predictions began a habit of objecting to the supernatural machinery in the novels. Likewise, the comparison of each novel with Waverley (and later with all the earlier novels) began in reviews of Guy Mannering. From this point on, even if a Waverley novel is thought not to measure up to its predecessors, it is most often said to be yet better than most, or even all, other contemporary novels. The British Lady’s

Magazine in its review of The Antiquary (No. 15) began still another critical

  tradition by remarking that the author was merely repeating his characters with different names.

  The next publication, The Tales of My Landlord (1816), consisted of two novels, The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality. The former was attacked on almost every count; Old Mortality was generally well received by the critics. A second attempt to fool the public as to authorship—the Tales did not carry the caption ‘by the author of Waverley’—was a total failure: they were invariably identified as being clearly in the same series. The complicated frame of the novel was generally thought clumsy and pointless, even by Scott himself in the Quarterly (No. 17). Most reviews continued the praise and blame given the earlier novels, but the Critical

  

Review (No. 16) is especially good on the plot, characterization, and

dialect of Old Mortality.

  Scott’s mixture of history and fiction had previously been discussed only in a general way. The accuracy and value of the historical aspect of the novels was applauded in reviews of the Tales, but an attack by Dr. Thomas M’Crie (a Scottish seceding divine) in the Edinburgh Christian

  

Instructor was so severe that Scott felt it necessary to defend his delineation

₁₂

  of the Covenanters in the Quarterly (No. 17). The new genre of the historical novel, moreover, was discussed by several reviewers. Two of them pointed out that the mingling of fact and fiction required that historical accuracy not always be followed strictly. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh

Review praised Scott’s use of historical events to develop his characters and

  his making ‘us present to the times in which he has placed them, less by his direct notices of the great transactions by which they were distinguished, than by his casual intimations of their effects on private persons, and by the very contrast which their temper and occupations often appear to furnish to the colour of the national story’. For, claimed Jeffrey, the conventional historian exaggerates the importance of events; most people’s lives are not much affected by great events and ‘all public events ₁₃ are important only as they ultimately concern individuals….’ Scott himself had something to say on the subject of historical novels in the Quarterly (No. 17).

  Rob Roy (1818), the next novel ‘by the author of Waverley’, on the

  whole enjoyed a favourable reception. As was to be expected, the characterization received the brunt of attention. E.T.Channing in the

  

North American Review (No. 20) noted that the individual characters are

  never given in a lump but slowly unfold themselves. Channing, furthermore, denied that there was any repetition of characters, and several other reviewers agreed. Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, as well as some other reviewers, objected to what he considered the improbability of Die Vernon’s delineation:

  

A girl of eighteen, not only with more wit and learning than any man of forty, but

with more sound sense, and firmness of character, than any man whatever—and

with perfect frankness and elegance of manners, though bred among boors and

bigots—is rather a more violent fiction, we think, than a king with marble legs, or

₁₄ a youth with an ivory shoulder.

  And yet Jeffrey found Die Vernon impressive and with enough of a mixture of truth that she soon seemed feasible and interesting. Some of the improbabilities of plot were also probed by Nassau Senior in the Quarterly (No. 29).

The Heart of Midlothian (1818), often cited today as the best of the

  Waverley novels, was not enthusiastically reviewed by Scott’s contemporaries. At the time of publication, in fact, it received pre- dominantly unfavourable reviews; only when the more influential quarterlies that reviewed it within the next few years are also considered can its overall reception be pronounced favourable. One of the major objections made, even by the favourable reviewers, was that the novel was protracted too far, that the fourth volume, coming as it did after the catastrophe, was not of much interest (Nos. 21 and 29). This objection was often accompanied by a charge of ‘bookmaking’. Effie’s transformation and George’s death at the hand of his son were seen as gross improbabilities that did not make the last volume any more palatable.

  The by now habitual praise, begun in reviews of Waverley, continued. The characterization of Jeanie Deans was highly esteemed, especially in view of the difficulties overcome in portraying a common, virtuous, plain heroine. And in spite of the relative unimportance of history in The Heart of Midlothian, the issue of historical fidelity, begun in reviews of Old Mortality, was revived. The Monthly Review discussed the difficulties of recreating the past, especially the need to reason constantly about the past from analogy with the present, and ₁₅ concluded that ‘the author of Waverley’ had succeeded. Josiah Conder in the Eclectic Review, on the other hand, argued that since analogy was the only source for the historical novelist, the resultant picture is ‘only a modification of the present, which comes to us under the guise and semblance of the past’. And that a genius can make us believe he has done the impossible only makes his historical novel more dangerous. It is the author’s characters, Conder adds, that are the charm and merit of the Waverley novels, and yet even with characterization this author is limited to his powers of observation: he has not ‘a philosophical comprehension or abstract knowledge of the internal workings of the ₁₆ human mind’. The reception of The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose

  (Tales of My Landlord, 3rd series, 1819) showed an upsurge in the critical reputation of ‘the author of Waverley’. The unpleasantness of the tragic ending of The Bride was one of the worst faults many reviewers could find, whereas the tragic ending was seen by Nassau Senior in the

  

Quarterly (No. 29) as one of the novel’s highest recommendations. In

  that same review can be found an example of the comparison, usually favourable, of Scott with Shakespeare, a practice which began in reviews of this volume and which was often repeated during the remainder of the nineteenth century.

Ivanhoe (1820), the next of the Waverley novels, was a success with

  the critics as well as with the reading public. Only the Eclectic (No. 26), the Edinburgh, and the Quarterly (No. 29) showed much disapproval. Many reviewers, however, objected to what they considered too much detail in the descriptions; the Eclectic (No. 26) even thought the excess detail destroyed the verisimilitude, leaving only a ‘pageant’. The reviewer in Blackwood’s attempted to explain the wealth of detail by pointing out that the contemporary ignorance of the manners of an age ₁₇ so distant required the novelist to provide minute descriptions. The descriptions themselves are parodied in a burlesque novel by William Maginn (No. 38).

  The New Edinburgh Review, in its critique of the previous Tales, had suggested that Scott need not feel himself bound to Scottish subjects, and ₁₈ Scott did in Ivanhoe turn to England for his subject. The Literary Gazette in its review of the novel pointed out one result of the change: by choosing a period so far in the past, with a society relatively uncivilized and with so many associations with past verse romances, the novel itself turned into a ₁₉ romance. As such, the reviewer added, it was excellent. The term ‘romance’ raised new problems, for historical novels are one thing, historical romances quite another. The New Edinburgh Review pointed out that, in spite of the romance furniture scattered throughout the book, there was too much nature, accurate history, and realism for it to ₂₀ qualify strictly as a romance in the usual sense of the term. And romance elements in the novel protected it from charges of historical inaccuracy in the view of the Monthly Magazine (No. 23). The Monthly Review thought an ‘historical romance’ a contradiction in terms, the two elements an impossible combination. ‘Authenticated history, of which the leading traits are present to our remembrance, perpetually appeals against the fictions with which she is compelled to associate….’ ‘Romance’, on the other hand, ‘is discouraged in her career by those whispers of incredulity, and those intimations of incongruity, which are inseparable from such an admixture: some suspicion perpetually haunts us, that the real course of events is broken up to suit the purposes of the story….’ ‘In this conflict’, the reviewer concluded,

  

the mind, on the one hand, refuses to acquiesce in certain and indisputable fact;

while, on the other, the fiction, however ingenious may be its structure, works on

us with its charm half broken and its potency nearly dissolved. In vain we would

gladly give the reins of our fancy into the hands of the author, when, at every step

that it takes, it stumbles on a reality that checks and intercepts it: not unlike the

effect of that imperfect slumber which is interrupted by the sounds of the active