Walter Scott - The Complete Poems of Sir Walter Scott

Walter Scott

The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, The Lady of the Lake, Marmion, Rokeby, The Field of Waterloo…

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ISBN 978-80-272-3610-7

INTRODUCTION: INTRODUCTION: Table of Contents Famous Authors on Scott Famous Authors on Scott Table of Contents

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND LADY MORGAN by Victor Hugo

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS by Robert Louis Stevenson

SCOTT AND HIS PUBLISHERS by Charles Dickens

POETRY:

Notable Poems

MARMION

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL

ROKEBY

THE VISION OF DON RODERICK

THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN

THE FIELD OF WATERLOO

THE LORD OF THE ISLES

HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS

Translations and Imitations from German Ballads

THE WILD HUNTSMAN

WILLIAM AND HELEN

FREDERICK AND ALICE

THE FIRE-KING

THE NOBLE MORINGER

THE BATTLE OF SEMPACH

THE ERL-KING

Contributions to “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border”

THE EVE OF ST. JOHN

CADYOW CASTLE

THOMAS THE RHYMER

THE GRAY BROTHER

GLENFINLAS; OR, LORD RONALD’S CORONACH

Poems from Novels and Other Poems

The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border

ANDREW LANG’S VIEW OF SCOTT:

LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS by Andrew Lang

THE POEMS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT by Andrew Lang

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND LADY MORGAN by Victor Hugo

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Sir Walter Scott is a Scotchman; his novels are enough to to convince us of this fact. His exclusive love of Scottish subjects proves his love for Scotland; revering the old customs of his country, he makes amends to himself, by faithfully portraying them, for not being able to observe them more religiously; and his pious admiration for the national character shines forth in the willingness with which he details its faults. An Irish lady ã Lady Morgan ã presents herself, as the natural rival of Sir Walter Scott, in persisting, like him, in writing only on national topics ; hut there is in her works much more love of celebrity than attachment to country, and much less national pride than personal vanity.

Lady Morgan seems to paint Irishmen with pleasure ; but it is an Irish woman whom she, above everything and everywhere, paints with enthusiasm ; and that Irish woman is herself. Miss O’Hallogan in O’Donnell, and Lady Clancare in Florence Maccarthy, are neither more nor less than Lady Morgan, flattered by herself.

We must say that, after Scott’s pictures, so full of life and warmth, the sketches of Lady Morgan seem but pale and cold. The historical romances of that lady are to be read; the romantic histories of the Scotchinan to be admired. The reason is simple enough : Lady Morgan has sufficient tact to observe what she sees, sufficient memory to retain what she observes, and sufficient art aptly to relate what she has retained; her science goes no farther. This is the reason her characters, though sometimes well drawn, are not sustained ; apart from a trait, the truth of which pleases you, because it is copied from nature, you will find another which offends you by its falsity, because she invented it.

Walter Scott, on the contrary, conceives a character after having often observed only one trait; he sees it at a glance, and directly paints it. His excellent judgment prevents him from being misled ; and what he creates is nearly always as true as that which he observes. When talent is carried to this point, it is more than talent: we can draw the parallel in two words ã Lady Morgan is a woman of talent ã Walter Scott is a man of genius.

License covers its hundred eyes with its hundred hands.

Some rocks cannot arrest the course of a river; over human obstacles, events roll onward without being turned aside.

There are some unfortunate men in the world. Christopher Columbus cannot attach his name to his discovery; Guillotin cannot detach his from his invention.

Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns: the playthings of great children. Empires have their crises, as mountains have their winter. A word spoken too loud brings down an avalanche.

The conflagration of Moscow: an aurora borealis lit up by Napoleon.

I have heard men of the present day, distinguished in politics, in literature, in science, complain of envy, of hatred, of calumny. They are wrong. It’ is law, it is glory. The high-renowned afford examples. Hatred follows them everywhere. Nothing escapes it. The theatre openly yielded to it Shakspeare and Moliere; the prison could not take away from it Christopher Columbus; the cloister did not preserve St. Bernard; the throne did not save Napoleon. There is only one asylum for genius in this world : it is the tomb .

An Extract from ‘Memories and Portraits’

Table of Contents

Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. “The Lady of the Lake” has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, “The Lady of the Lake,” or that direct, romantic opening — one of the most spirited and poetical in literature — ”The stag at eve had drunk his fill.” The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, “The Pirate,” the figure of Cleveland — cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness — moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders — singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress — is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, “Through groves of palm,” sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clinch, as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In “Guy Mannering,” again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model instance of romantic method.

“’I remember the tune well,’ he says,’though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.’ He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune awoke 146 the corresponding associations of a damsel…. She immediately took up the song —

“’Are these the links of Forth, she said;

Or are they the crooks of Dee,

Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head

That I so fain would see?’

“‘By heaven!’ said Bertram, ‘it is the very ballad.’”

On this quotation two remarks fall to be made.