Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. 1: 1771 - 1804

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-3-8496-4546-5
Verlag: Jazzybee Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 420 Seiten

Biography yields to no other species of composition, in interest and instruction. More especially is this true, when the subjects of which it treats are the struggles and vicissitudes of a life devoted to the pursuits of literature. There is a pleasure of the purest kind in observing the gradual development of thought and re?nement of expression in one, who, smitten with a love of the good and the beautiful, and desirous to leave something behind him less perishable than his tombstone, has 'scorned delights and loved laborious days.' No one can read these Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, so long and so anxiously expected, without feeling this pleasure, and without deriving from them that instruction which might not be received from the perusal of less interesting works. In our judgment, not the least important lesson which these memoirs teach, is the advantage, or rather the necessity, which there is of having some profession less precarious than that of literature, upon which the child of genius can fall back for comfort or support in the hour when adversity clouds the lights which hope hung up in the uncertain future. This is volume 1 out of 7 of one of the best and most extensive Scott biographies ever and it covers the years 1771 through 1804.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lockhart, John Gibson

Leseproben

Illustrations Of The Autobiographical Fragment—Edinburgh—Sandy-Knowe—Bath—Prestonpans—1771-1778.

Sir Walter Scott opens his brief account of his ancestry with a playful allusion to a trait of national character, which has, time out of mind, furnished merriment to the neighbours of the Scotch; but the zeal of pedigree was deeply rooted in himself, and he would have been the last to treat it with serious disparagement. It has often been exhibited under circumstances sufficiently grotesque; but it has lent strength to many a good impulse, sustained hope and self-respect under many a difficulty and distress, armed heart and nerve to many a bold and resolute struggle for independence; and prompted also many a generous act of assistance, which under its influence alone could have been accepted without any feeling of degradation.

He speaks modestly of his own descent; for, while none of his predecessors had ever sunk below the situation and character of a gentleman, he had but to go three or four generations back, and thence, as far as they could be followed, either on the paternal or maternal side, they were to be found moving in the highest ranks of our baronage. When he fitted up in his later years the beautiful hall of Abbotsford, he was careful to have the armorial bearings of his forefathers blazoned in due order on the compartments of its roof; and there are few in Scotland, under the titled nobility, who could trace their blood to so many stocks of historical distinction.

In the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the reader will find sundry notices of the “Bauld Rutherfords that were sae stout,” and the Swintons of Swinton in Berwickshire, the two nearest houses on the maternal side. An illustrious old warrior of the latter family, Sir John Swinton, extolled by Froissart, is the hero of the dramatic sketch, “Halidon Hill”; and it is not to be omitted, that through the Swintons Sir Walter Scott could trace himself to William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, the poet and dramatist.* His respect for the worthy barons of Newmains and Dryburgh, of whom, in right of his father’s mother, he was the representative, and in whose venerable sepulchre his remains now rest, was testified by his “Memorials of the Haliburtons,” a small volume printed (for private circulation only) in the year 1820. His own male ancestors of the family of Harden, whose lineage is traced by Douglas in his Baronage of Scotland back to the middle of the fourteenth century, when they branched off from the great blood of Buccleuch, have been so largely celebrated in his various writings, that I might perhaps content myself with a general reference to those pages, their only imperishable monument. The antique splendour of the ducal house itself has been dignified to all Europe by the pen of its remote descendant; but it may be doubted whether his genius could have been adequately developed, had he not attracted, at an early and critical period, the kindly recognition and support of the Buccleuchs.

* On Sir Walter’s copy of “Recreations with the Muses, by William Earl of Stirling, 1637,” there is the following MS. note: “Sir William Alexander, sixth Baron of Menstrie, and first Earl of Stirling, the friend of Drummond of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, died in 1640. His eldest son, William Viscount Canada, died before his father, leaving one son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Margaret, the second of these daughters, married Sir Robert Sinclair of Longformacus in the Merse, to whom she bore two daughters, Anne and Jean. Jean Sinclair, the younger daughter, married Sir John Swinton of Swinton; and Jean Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmother of the proprietor of this volume.”

The race had been celebrated, however, long before his day, by a minstrel of its own; nor did he conceal his belief that he owed much to the influence exerted over his juvenile mind by the rude but enthusiastic clan-poetry of old Satchells, who describes himself on his title-page as

“Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler,

And one that can write nane,

But just the Letters of his Name.”

His “True History of several honourable Families of the Right Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of Roxburgh and Selkirk, and others adjacent, gathered out of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and Traditions of our Fathers,” includes, among other things, a string of complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of Raeburn; and the copy which had belonged to that gentleman, was in all likelihood about the first book of verses that fell into the poet’s hand.* How continually its wild and uncouth doggrel was on his lips to his latest day, all his familiars can testify; and the passages which he quoted with the greatest zest were those commemorative of two ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend against physical misfortune similar to his own. The former of these, according to Satchells, was the immediate founder of the branch originally designed of Sinton, afterwards of Harden.

“It is four hundred winters past in order

Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border;

A son he had at that same tide,

Which was so lame could neither run nor ride.

John, this lame son, if my author speaks true,

He sent him to St Mungo’s in Glasgu,

Where he remained a scholar’s time,

Then married a wife according to his mind. . . .

And betwixt them twa was procreat

Headshaw, Askirk, Sinton, and Glack.”

* His family well remember the delight which he expressed on receiving, in 1818, a copy of this first edition, a small dark quarto of 1688, from his friend Constable. He was breakfasting when the present was delivered, and said, “This is indeed the resurrection of an old ally—I mind spelling these lines.” He read aloud the jingling epistle to his own great-great-grandfather, which, like the rest, concludes with abroad hint that, as the author had neither lands nor flocks “no estate left except his designation” the more fortunate kinsman who enjoyed, like Jason of old, a fair share of fleeces, might do worse than bestow on him some of King James’s broad pieces. On rising from table, Sir Walter immediately wrote as follows on the blank leaf opposite to poor Satchells’ honest title-page—

“I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier, but a soldier’s lover,

In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover,

That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million times over;

And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces,

As ever were hairs in Jason’s and Medea’s golden fleeces.”

The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that the copy now at Abbotsford was the only one Mr. Constable had ever seen and no wonder, for the author’s envoy is in these words:

“Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly

Amongst the nobles and gentility;

Thou’rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns,

But given to worthy persons of renown.

The number’s few I’ve printed, in regard

My charges have been great, and I hope reward;

I caus’d not print many above twelve score,

And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more.”

But, if the scholarship of John the Lamiter furnished his descendant with many a mirthful allusion, a far greater favourite was the memory of William the Boltfoot, who followed him in the sixth generation.

“The Laird and Lady of Harden

Betwixt them procreat was a son

Called William Boltfoot of Harden”

The emphasis with which this next line was quoted I can never forget

“He did survive to be a man.”

He was, in fact, one of the “prowest knights” of the whole genealogy—a fearless horseman and expert spearman, renowned and dreaded; and I suppose I have heard Sir Walter repeat a dozen times, as he was dashing into the Tweed or Ettrick, “rolling red from brae to brae,” a stanza from what he called an old ballad, though it was most likely one of his own early imitations.

“To tak the foord he aye was first,

Unless the English loons were near;

Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man,

Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear.”

“From childhood’s earliest hour,” says the...