John o hayden walter scott the critical heritage the collected critical heritage early english novelists 1996

WALTER SCOTT: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE


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

JOHN O.HAYDEN

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 nearcontemporaries 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
page xiii
xiv
1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTE ON THE TEXT
INTRODUCTION

1

The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)

Review in Literary Journal 1805

2

FRANCIS JEFFREY

3
4

The Lady of the Lake (1810)
Review in British Critic 1810
COLERIDGE: a letter to Wordsworth 1810

52
56

5

Rokeby (1813)
Review in British Review 1813

62

6
7
8
9

Waverley (1814)
Review in British Critic 1814

JANE AUSTEN: a comment 1814
MARIA EDGEWORTH: a letter 1814
FRANCIS JEFFREY in Edinburgh Review 1814

67
74
75
79

The Field of Waterloo (1815)
10 Review in La Belle Assembleé 1815

85

Guy Mannering (1815)
11 WORDSWORTH on Scott’s first novels 1815
12 Review in Augustan Review 1815

86
87

13

GEORGE ELLIS

Marmion (1808)
in Edinburgh Review 1808

The Lord of the Isles (1815)
in Quarterly Review 1815

ix

25

35

90


CONTENTS

The Antiquary (1816)
14 JOHN WILSON CROKER in Quarterly Review 1816
15 Review in British Lady’s Magazine 1816

page 98
104

The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816)
16 Review in Critical Review 1816
17 SCOTT in Quarterly Review 1817

106
113

18

144

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

in a serious mood 1818

Rob Roy (1818)
19 Review in European Magazine 1818
20 E.T.CHANNING in North American Review 1818

146
148

The Heart of Midlothian (1818)
21 Review in British Review 1818

165

22

172

SYDNEY SMITH

on the novels 1819–23

Ivanhoe (1820)
23 Notice in Monthly Magazine 1820

177

24

178

COLERIDGE

on the novels 1820s

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
28 J.L.ADOLPHUS on the works and their authorship
1821
29 NASSAU SENIOR surveys the novels in Quarterly Review
1821
The Pirate (1821)
30 Review in Examiner 1821

x

195
197
215

256


CONTENTS

The Fortunes of Nigel (1822)
31 Review in General Weekly Register 1822
32

plot construction and the historical novel
1822

page 261

SCOTT:

263

Halidon Hill (1822)
33 Review in Eclectic Review 1822

269

Quentin Durward (1823)
34 Review in New Monthly Magazine 1823

272

35

HAZLITT:

Scott and the spirit of the age in New
Monthly Magazine 1825

Woodstock (1826)
36 Review in Westminster Review 1826
37 SCOTT on his imitators 1826
38 WILLIAM MAGINN: burlesque as criticism 1827
39 HEINRICH HEINE on Scott 1828, 1837
40 GOETHE on Scott 1828, 1831
41 MACAULAY: Scott as historical novelist 1828
42 An early voice of dissent 1828
43 STENDHAL on Scott in Le National 1830
44 PEACOCK: Mr. Chainmail and the enchanter 1831
45 SAINTE-BEUVE: a French obituary in Le Globe 1832
46 BULWER-LYTTON on historical romance in Fraser’s
Magazine 1832
47 Scott’s intellectual qualities in Monthly Repository
1832
48 W.B.O.PEABODY defends Scott’s poetry 1833
49 HARRIET MARTINEAU: Scott as moral hero in Tait’s
Edinburgh Magazine 1833
50 J.G.LOCKHART on Scott 1837
51 CARLYLE: the amoral Scott in London and Westminster
Review 1838
52 BALZAC on Scott 1838, 1840
53 CARDINAL NEWMAN: Scott prepared the way,
British Critic 1839

54 BELINSKY, a Russian contemporary looks at Scott
1844
xi

279
290
299
302
304
306
309
310
318
321
326
328
332
336
340
342
345
373
378
379


CONTENTS

55 WORDSWORTH’S later views 1844
56 A question of history in Fraser’s Magazine 1847

57 WALTER BAGEHOT on Scott in National Review 1858
58 H.A.TAINE on Scott 1863
59 HENRY JAMES in North American Review 1864
60 MRS. OLIPHANT to the defence in
Blackwood’s Magazine 1871
61 LESLIE STEPHEN: hours in a library with Scott in
Cornhill Magazine 1871
62 A centenary view—Scott’s characters, in Athenaeum 1871
63 A late centenary view in London Quarterly 1872
64 GLADSTONE on The Bride of Lammermoor 1870s (?)
65 R.L.STEVENSON on Scott’s place in literary history, in
Cornhill Magazine 1874
66 GEORGE BRANDES: morality as drawback 1875
67 R.H.HUTTON: Scott as man of letters 1878
68 JULIA WEDGWOOD: ‘the romantic reaction’, in
Contemporary Review 1878
69 RUSKIN: ‘Fiction—Fair and Foul’ in Nineteenth Century
1880
70 TWAIN: Scott as warmonger 1883

page 381
382
394
421
427
432
439
459
469
474

475
478
481
499
522
537

APPENDIX: LIST OF REVIEWS OF SCOTT’S NOVELS

541

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

549

SELECT INDEX

550

xii


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, workstudy assistants who have been a great help in preparing the text, and to
Mrs. Susan Freitas, my indefatigable typist.
xiii


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.

xiv


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
every bookseller in the metropolis’.1 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

1


INTRODUCTION

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
2


INTRODUCTION

(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
by 1836.2
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)
of Waverley, but by the end of the first year six editions had appeared.3
Old Mortality (1816) sold 4,000 copies in the first six weeks, Rob Roy
(1818) 10,000 copies in the first fortnight.4 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
dispersed from 90 Cheapside [his London agent’s address].5

And as for Scott’s income from his publications, Lockhart claims that in
1822 the novels were bringing in between £10,000 and £15,000 per year.6
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”’.
3


INTRODUCTION

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 ‘bookmaking’—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

4


INTRODUCTION

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

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
not have rendered Scott a bit less delightful’.8 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
5


INTRODUCTION

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,
sometimes placid, sometimes stormy.9 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
6


INTRODUCTION

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.

7


INTRODUCTION

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
contemporary novels in the shade.10 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
discordant images on a single canvas.11

John Wilson Croker, reviewing The Antiquary in the Quarterly (No. 14),
noted that the absence of predictions in that novel gave it an advantage
8


INTRODUCTION

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
of the Covenanters in the Quarterly (No. 17).12 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
9


INTRODUCTION

people’s lives are not much affected by great events and ‘all public events
are important only as they ultimately concern individuals….’13 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
a youth with an ivory shoulder.14

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 predominantly 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,
10