by John Buchan
... But still
When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill,
And July’s eve, with balmy breath,
Wav’d the bluebells on Newark heath;
When throstles sung in Hareheadshaw,
And corn was green on Carterhaugh,
And flourish’d broad Blackandro’s oak,
The aged Harper’s soul awoke.
Then would he sing achievements high,
And circumstance of chivalry,
Till the rapt traveller would stay,
Forgetful of the closing day;
And noble youths, the strain to hear,
Forsook the hunting of the deer;
And Yarrow, as he roll’d along,
Bore burden to the Minstrel’s song.
Again, faithful to the creed which he expressed in his review of Southey’s translation of “Amadis of Gaul,” he held that a metrical romance should be episodic, a rhapsody — linked together more tightly indeed than the old rhapsodies, since it was meant to be read and not heard, but loose enough to permit the inclusion of wide variations of matter and manner. He also claimed the minstrel’s historical licence. The events of the Lay must have taken place about 1560 — not seventy years, but several centuries, after Michael Scott’s death; not in the age of faith, when people made their prayer to St Mary of the Cross, but in the first stress of the Reformation, when the Church was toppling and three years earlier St Mary’s chapel had been burned.
[Character of the Lay]
The Lay, Scott told Wordsworth, “has the merit of being written with heart and good will, and for no other reason than to discharge my mind of the ideas which from infancy have rushed upon it.” That is its primary charm — it is the first and freshest of Scott’s poems, the one most directly sprung from the memories of his youth. That is why, too, it is so hard to criticize for one who has had a similar upbringing and has inherited the same loyalties. Consideration of Scott as a poet must be reserved for a later chapter. Here we are rather concerned with the Lay as an event in its author’s career. He was modestly convinced that it would have some success, since it was the ballad manner enlarged and adapted to a modern audience, and the ballad manner had already its vogue: he thought that its horseman’s verse and atmosphere of high romance might be new things to a public a little weary of the decorous strains of the Augustans. It appeared at a fortunate time, for Cowper was the only popular poet, and he was not romantic: Wordsworth and Coleridge were not even names to the ordinary reader: Burns was inaccessible to most, and the Popian style had suffered a sad decline. Upon a world weary of the old measures Scott burst with a new melody, and to those once captured by the false glamour of Mrs Radcliffe and Matt Lewis, and already sated, he brought authentic magic and enduring romance. The blemishes of the Lay are there for a child to note. The main plot is faulty and much of the workmanship is hasty and imperfect. There are relapses into sham Gothick, and Augustan banality, and insipid sweetness. But it is full of noble things, fuller perhaps than any other of Scott’s poems — the version of “Dies Iræ,” the ballad of “Rosabelle,” the ride of William of Deloraine, the muster of the moss-troopers; there are moments of grim ballad simplicity which he rarely achieved again: and out of resounding place names and family names he gets the true Homeric speed and mystery.
With the Lay Scott became famous, no longer a connoisseur esteemed by the elect, but the most popular poet of the day. Fox and Pitt alike praised it, the latter making the shrewd comment that some of the effects were what he expected in painting, but had not thought capable of being given by poetry. Edition followed edition at handsome prices to an extent unparalleled in the record of British poetry. The critics were kind, and Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review was notably civil, though he did not satisfy Scott’s friends like Ellis and John Hookham Frere. He complained, oddly enough, that the poem lacked incident, and he also considered the style parochial. “Mr Scott,” he wrote (and it is one of the inspired follies in the history of criticism), “must either sacrifice his Border prejudices, or offend his readers in other parts of the Empire.” Scott had £169, 6s. in royalties from the first edition, and, when a second was called for, sold the copyright to Longmans for £500, receiving also £100 to buy a horse.
III
About the beginning of the century there was a stirring among the dry bones of the book-trade throughout the land. It was part of a universal movement which had been going on for the last decade, owing to a wider diffusion of ideas and a consequent impulse toward self-education; Napoleon in his youth, observing it as he observed all things, had toyed with the notion of becoming a bookseller. In 1805 Edinburgh, already the centre of a vigorous idiomatic culture, was also becoming celebrated for its activity in printing and publishing. People were reading more, buying more books, cultivating a taste for magazines — a natural result of the tension of spirit produced by a great war.
This revival, so far as Scotland was concerned, was largely due to a good-looking, full-faced lad, Archibald Constable by name, who seventeen years before, at the age of fourteen, had come from the East Neuk of Fife to be an apprentice in Peter Hill’s bookshop in the High Street. He saw the decrepit state of Edinburgh bookselling, and set himself to reform it. At twenty he married the daughter of a prosperous printer and used her dowry to start business next year on his own account. He was inspired by a passionate love of books and all things connected with them, and he had that rare combination, the connoisseurship of the bibliophile and a sound literary judgment. Above all he was an excellent man of business, with an acute perception of the popular taste and its likely developments, and with the courage to back his fancy. Presently the youth grew into a handsome, portly being with an impressive manner, popular for his generosity and good-fellowship, and generally respected for his business talents and patent success. His foible was less pride, for he had that diplomatic skill which demands at least a pretence of modesty, than overweening ambition. He was resolved to create a famous business and to be the Mæcenas of his age; to build up a landed family, too, for he had the traditional Scots passion for acres, and the estate of Balniel in his native shire was to be its foundation.
He had the wit to see that the new readers he wished to cultivate were mostly liberal in politics, so his firm acquired a Whig atmosphere. There was a young English clergyman in Edinburgh, Mr Sydney Smith, who had a plan for an enlightened journal of opinion. In 1802 Constable took up the scheme, greatly enlarged it, and started the Edinburgh Review with the parson as editor. Sydney Smith was soon succeeded by Francis Jeffrey, the most brilliant of the young illuminates of the Scots Bar, and the review sprang at once into a wide popularity, with the editor and Brougham and Homer as its chief contributors. Scott was also included, for the Edinburgh’s politics at the start were not extreme. The review, in the publisher’s eyes, was less an enterprise embarked upon for its own sake than an advertisement on a grand scale for the house of Constable. He was now, in the year 1805, by far the most commanding figure in the Scottish book world, and already a name of repute among London publishers. He had been associated with Longmans in the publication of the Lay, and had his eye on the Border Sheriff, three years his senior, who, like himself, seemed both to know what the public wanted and to be a pioneer in new paths.
[James Ballantyne]
Scott was not as yet bound to any publisher, but he had his favourite printer, James Ballantyne, the friend of his Kelso schooldays. Ballantyne had none of Constable’s magnificence. He was short, stout, bearded and pompous, a great bon vivant, a merry companion, a preposterous, endearing creature, with one eyebrow drooping and the other cocked to heaven. He was faithful, affectionate, and scrupulously honest, and so far he had been as unsuccessful as other good-natured men. In Kelso he was doing nothing in his attorney’s practice, and not very much as the editor of the local paper. But as a printer he had genuine gifts, and, as we have seen, the Minstrelsy had been entrusted to him. Scott did more for his friend. He had always a peculiar tenderne
ss for an old crony; it seemed to him that Ballantyne’s talents as a printer demanded a wider sphere, so he encouraged him to migrate to Edinburgh. In the capital he might get a good deal of miscellaneous work — perhaps the printing of some new journal, or a Scottish Annual Register, and he might also have a share in the production of law process-papers. Ballantyne jumped at the idea, borrowed some hundreds from Scott for the move, and by the end of 1802 was established with his two presses in a dingy little shop at Abbeyhill in the precincts of Holyroodhouse, where the third volume of the Minstrelsy was printed.
At first things went well. Scott procured orders for the new venture, including the printing of the Lay, and Ballantyne transferred himself to more commodious premises in the Canongate. But with the enlargement of his business came the need for further capital, for neither of the pair seems to have understood that more money must be risked before bigger profits could be won. The success of the Lay embarrassed the printer and he applied to Scott for another loan. The request came at a moment when Scott had suddenly marched into literary fame, and saw before him a career very different from that of an advocate in small practice. He had come to sit very loose to that calling, and was beginning to envisage the future in a new light. Ashestiel was increasing his love for the life of a country gentleman, he had an assured income of something over £1000 a year, and the prospect of soon obtaining a well-paid post as one of the Clerks of the Supreme Court. This would give him the necessary crutch, and literature would add a welcome staff. But why should he confine literature to the work of his own pen? He had in his mind poems which he meant to write, histories too, and a vast amount of editing. But might he not also have a share in the commercial side, for he had always an eager interest in affairs, and loved the atmosphere of them as much as Dr Johnson when he became Mr Thrale’s executor. He had enough of his father in him to respect those engaged in the practical work of the world. James Ballantyne’s business seemed to offer the chance of a lifetime. Here was one who understood printing and had already made a name for his work; he himself would feed the press with his own productions and those of his friends: the liabilities seemed trifling, the profits a certainty. So he gave up all thought of the purchase of Broadmeadows, and in the early months of 1805 used his uncle Robert’s legacy to buy a third share in Ballantyne’s firm. The arrangement was kept profoundly confidential, only Erskine being in the secret.
On this matter much arrant nonsense has been written. It has been condemned as somehow discreditable and dishonest, incompatible with Scott’s position as a judge and a prospective Court official. A barrister, it has been urged, should not be a partner in a secret commercial enterprise. I can see no warrant for the view. Before the modern development of joint-stock companies one of the commonest ways of investing spare capital was by lending money to some enterprise and receiving in lieu of interest a certain share in the profits. It was no more the custom to blazon such investments abroad than it is the custom to-day for a man to broadcast his share holdings. There was nothing to be ashamed of in investing money in the printing trade. Books were the fashion, fine printing was becoming the hobby of all cultivated men, and what hobby more suitable for a man of Scott’s tastes and position than this association with an old friend in a craft to which his interest was deeply pledged? Had Scott remained a lawyer and nothing else, I cannot see how his association with the Ballantyne business could be criticized.
[The Ballantyne Partnership]
Criticism arises because he was a writer, and because he and his partner were the men they were. The step he took in 1805 was not dishonourable, but it was rash and ill-advised. Scott himself had a sound instinct for business, when he had the time to give his mind to it; but he could not, owing to the conditions of his life, pay much attention to the printing house of the Canongate. The mere fact that the matter was kept secret excluded it from the atmosphere of common sense. It became a part of that inner world of his to which he was prone to retire, a magical device for earning easy money, and his usual robust intelligence was never brought into play. Nor was Ballantyne the man to supplement his partner’s defects. He was enthusiastic, excitable, a muddler in finance, incapable of presenting at any time an accurate statement of his assets and liabilities. Neither he nor Scott, as I have said, realized that the more a business extends the more capital it needs, since incomings have a way of lagging behind outgoings. He had no capital, except two printing presses cumbered with debts, and as his orders increased he must have recourse to his partner, and to the banks. Uncle Robert’s legacy was bound to be only the first of the contributions from Ashestiel.
The venture was peculiarly dangerous for a man of letters. Scott wanted grist for the Ballantyne mill, and therefore he was fertile in proposals to publishers for tasks to be undertaken by him and executed in the Canongate. This was to involve him in much laborious hack-work, which was scarcely worthy of his genius. Moreover — and this is the one point on which a moral criticism is perhaps justified — it obscured his judgment of commercial values, and, though he did not realize it, put more than one publisher in a false position. If Scott recommended a book, and Ballantyne printed it, Scott had no liability and he had a share of the printing profits, but the publishers were unable, through their ignorance of the partnership, to discount the bias in his judgment. Lockhart has written on this point with fairness and reason: —
It is an old saying, that wherever there is a secret there must be something wrong; and dearly did he pay the penalty for the mystery in which he had chosen to involve this transaction. It was his rule, from the beginning, that whatever he wrote or edited must be printed at that press; and had he catered for it only as author and sole editor, all had been well; but had the booksellers known his direct pecuniary interest in keeping up and extending the operation of these types, they would have taken into account his lively imagination and sanguine temperament, as well as his taste and judgment, and considered, far more deliberately than they often did, his multifarious recommendations of new literary schemes, coupled though these were with some dim undertaking that, if the Ballantyne press were employed, his own literary skill would be at his friend’s disposal for the general superintendence of the undertaking. On the other hand, Scott’s suggestions were, in many cases, perhaps in the majority of them, conveyed through Ballantyne, whose habitual deference to his opinion induced him to advocate them with enthusiastic zeal; and the printer, who had thus pledged his personal authority for the merits of the proposed scheme, must have felt himself committed to the booksellers, and could hardly refuse with decency to take a certain share of the pecuniary risk, by allowing the time and method of his own payment to be regulated according to the employer’s convenience. Hence, by degrees, was woven a web of entanglement from which neither Ballantyne nor his adviser had any means of escape....
[1806-14]
For the next nine years Scott led the life of a miscellaneous writer at its busiest. He must feed the Canongate mill which was to bring him fortune, and he must find scope for his eager interest in books and the life of the past and a use for the store of varied knowledge which he had been accumulating since boyhood. Many of his tasks must be dreary collar-work, but that did not deter one who in his father’s office had learned to toil at uncongenial labours; most must be obscure and anonymous, but that rather pleased him. Some of the best had preferred anonymity — Swift, for example, whose works he thought of editing, and who had scarcely acknowledged one of his books, and his old friend Henry Mackenzie. He had no special desire for literary fame, and he had no delusions about his own talents. A Border laird was his ideal rather than a distinguished man of letters, but a Border laird must have an agreeable hobby to fill his time and money to support his dignity.
His mind turned first to those editions of the English classics which no gentleman’s library could be without. Literature was not yet an article of popular consumption — he himself was to assist in making it that — and the booksellers’ chief hope lay in the cabinets
of lettered squires and the stately libraries of the great, which must have a quota of books to furnish the spaces between the family portraits. These books must be edited, and the name of the author of the Lay would well become a title-page. Poetry, as he told Ellis a year or two later, was a scourging crop which should not be overdone, but editing was to be likened to a “good crop of turnips and peas, extremely useful for those whose circumstances do not admit of their giving their farm a summer fallow.”
[1808. Edition of Dryden]
His first scheme, suggested to Constable, which mercifully came to nothing, was for a complete edition of the British poets, ancient and modern, in at least a hundred tomes. There was also a proposal to Longmans for a corpus of the English chroniclers. Finally Mr Miller of Albemarle Street commissioned an edition of Dryden in eighteen volumes at fifty guineas a volume. Scott plunged with zest into the task, read widely, visited the English libraries, employed a staff of amanuenses and copyists. He would have nothing to do with an expurgated text, which was Ellis’s suggestion. “I will not castrate John Dryden. I would as soon castrate my own father, as I believe Jupiter did of yore.... It is not passages of ludicrous indelicacy that corrupt the manners of the people — it is the sonnets which a prurient genius ... sings virginibus puerisque — it is the sentimental slang, half lewd, half methodistic, that debauches the understanding.” The subject was after his own heart, for he had an instinctive comprehension of the seventeenth century, and Dryden with his robust intelligence and magnificent ardour was the kind of poet he was well able to understand. Dryden was not a poet’s poet, any more than his editor; as Wordsworth complained, “his is not a poetical genius.” The edition was published in April 1808, and was well received, Hallam reviewing it sympathetically in the Edinburgh. Indeed it is an excellent piece of work, which Mr Saintsbury has called one of the best edited books in the language. Scott proved himself an accurate, laborious and sagacious commentator, and his life of Dryden is at once good biography and good criticism. There is an excellent passage on the respective values of the rapier and the bludgeon in satire, some acute comments on Dryden’s religious beliefs, and on his character—”his indelicacy was like the forced impudence of a bashful man”; Dryden’s prose is judiciously praised and his intellectual limits (with which the editor sympathized) shrewdly defined: —