Ivanhoe A Romance

- By Walter Scott
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Scottish novelist (1771–1832) For other people named Walter Scott, see Walter Scott (disambiguation). SirWalter ScottBtPortrait by Thomas Lawrence, c. 1820sBorn15 August 1771Edinburgh, ScotlandDied21 September 1832(1832-09-21) (aged 61)Abbotsford, Roxburghshire, ScotlandOccupationHistorical novelistPoetAdvocateSheriff-DeputeClerk of SessionAlma materUniversity of Edinburgh Military ServiceAllegianceGreat BritainService/branchBritish MilitiaYears of service1797–1802RankQuartermasterUnitRoyal Edinburgh Volunteer Light DragoonsBattles/warsFrench Revolutionary Wars Period19th centuryLiterary movementRomanticismSpouseCharlotte Carpenter (Charpentier)Children5Signature Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE FSAScot (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels Ivanhoe (1819), Rob Roy (1817), Waverley (1814), Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818), and The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), along with the narrative poems Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate, judge, and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with his daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory establishment, active in the Highland Society, long time a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829).[1] His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to establish the historical novel genre as an exemplar of European Romanticism. He became a baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland, on 22 April 1820; the title became extinct upon his son's death in 1847. Early life[edit] Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771, in a third-floor apartment on College Wynd in the Old Town, Edinburgh, a narrow alleyway leading from the Cowgate to the gates of the old University of Edinburgh.[2] He was the ninth child (six having died in infancy) of Walter Scott (1729–1799), a member of a cadet branch of the Clan Scott and a Writer to the Signet, and his wife Anne Rutherford, a sister of Daniel Rutherford and a descendant both of the Clan Swinton and of the Haliburton family (descent from which granted Walter's family the hereditary right of burial in Dryburgh Abbey).[3] Walter was, through the Haliburtons, a cousin of the London property developer James Burton (d. 1837), who was born with the surname 'Haliburton', and of the same's son the architect Decimus Burton.[4] Walter became a member of the Clarence Club, of which the Burtons were members.[5][6] Scott's childhood at Sandyknowes, in the shadow of Smailholm Tower, introduced him to the tales and folklore of the Scottish Borders The Scott family's home in George Square, Edinburgh, from about 1778 A childhood bout of polio in 1773 left Scott lame,[7] a condition that would greatly affect his life and writing.[8] To improve his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders, at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, by the ruin of Smailholm Tower, the earlier family home.[9] Here, he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny Scott and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that later marked much of his work. In January 1775, he returned to Edinburgh, and that summer with his aunt Jenny took spa treatment at Bath in Somerset, southern England, where they lived at 6 South Parade.[10] In the winter of 1776, he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a water cure at Prestonpans the following summer.[9] In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school and joined his family in their new house, one of the first to be built in George Square.[2] In October 1779, he began at the Royal High School in Edinburgh (in High School Yards). He was by then well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books. He was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters. In 1783, his parents, believing he had outgrown his strength, sent him to stay for six months with his aunt Jenny at Kelso in the Scottish Borders: there he attended Kelso Grammar School, where he met James Ballantyne and his brother John, who later became his business partners and printers.[11] Appearance[edit] As a result of his early polio infection, Scott had a pronounced limp. He was described in 1820 as "tall, well formed (except for one ankle and foot which made him walk lamely), neither fat nor thin, with forehead very high, nose short, upper lip long and face rather fleshy, complexion fresh and clear, eyes very blue, shrewd and penetrating, with hair now silvery white".[12] Although a determined walker, he experienced greater freedom of movement on horseback.[citation needed] Student[edit] Sketch of Scott c.1800 by an unknown artist Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, a year or so younger than most fellow students. In March 1786, aged 14, he began an apprenticeship in his father's office to become a Writer to the Signet. At school and university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, whose father Professor Adam Ferguson hosted literary salons.[13] Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to the Ossian cycle of poems by James Macpherson. During the winter of 1786–1787, a 15-year-old Scott met the Scots poet Robert Burns at one of these salons, their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem "The Justice of the Peace" and asked who had written it, Scott alone named the author as John Langhorne and was thanked by Burns. Scott describes the event in his memoirs, where he whispers the answer to his friend Adam, who tells Burns;[14] another version of the event appears in Literary Beginnings.[15] When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in moral philosophy (under Dugald Stewart) and universal history (under Alexander Fraser Tytler) in 1789–1790.[11] During this second university spell Scott became prominent in student intellectual activities: he co-founded the Literary Society in 1789 and was elected to the Speculative Society the following year, becoming librarian and secretary-treasurer a year after.[16] After completing his law studies, Scott took up law in Edinburgh. He made his first visit as a lawyer's clerk to the Scottish Highlands, directing an eviction. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, who married Scott's friend Sir William Forbes, 7th Baronet. In February 1797, the threat of a French invasion persuaded Scott and many of his friends to join the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer Light Dragoons, where he served into the early 1800s,[17] and was appointed quartermaster and secretary. The daily drill practices that year, starting at 5 a.m., indicate the determination with which the role was undertaken.[18] Literary career, marriage and family[edit] A copy of Scott's Minstrelsy, in the National Museum of Scotland Scott was prompted to take up a literary career by enthusiasm in Edinburgh in the 1790s for modern German literature. Recalling the period in 1827, Scott said that he "was German-mad."[19] In 1796, he produced English versions of two poems by Gottfried August Bürger, Der wilde Jäger and Lenore, published as The Chase, and William and Helen. Scott responded to the German interest at the time in national identity, folk culture and medieval literature,[16] which linked with his own developing passion for traditional balladry. A favourite book since childhood had been Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. During the 1790s he would search in manuscript collections and on Border "raids" for ballads from oral performance. With help from John Leyden, he produced a two-volume Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802, containing 48 traditional ballads and two imitations apiece by Leyden and himself. Of the 48 traditionals, 26 were published for the first time. An enlarged edition appeared in three volumes the following year. With many of the ballads, Scott fused different versions into more coherent texts, a practice he later repudiated.[16] The Minstrelsy was the first and most important of a series of editorial projects over the next two decades, including the medieval romance Sir Tristrem (which Scott attributed to Thomas the Rhymer) in 1804, the works of John Dryden (18 vols, 1808), and the works of Jonathan Swift (19 vols, 1814). On a trip to the English Lake District with old college friends, he met Charlotte Charpentier (Anglicised to "Carpenter"), a daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France and a ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland, an Anglican. After three weeks' courtship, Scott proposed and they were married on Christmas Eve 1797 in St Mary's Church, Carlisle (now the nave of Carlisle Cathedral).[20] After renting a house in Edinburgh's George Street, they moved to nearby South Castle Street. Their eldest child, Sophia, was born in 1799, and later married John Gibson Lockhart.[21] Four of their five children survived Scott himself. His eldest son Sir Walter Scott, 2nd Baronet (1801–1847), inherited his father's estates and possessions: on 3 February 1825[22] he married Jane Jobson, only daughter of William Jobson of Lochore (died 1822) by his wife Rachel Stuart (died 1863), heiress of Lochore and a niece of Lady Margaret Ferguson.[23] In 1799 Scott was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk, based at the courthouse in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk. In his early married days Scott earned a decent living from his work as a lawyer, his salary as Sheriff-Depute, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his father's modest estate. Right to left: numbers 39, 41 and 43 North Castle Street, Edinburgh. No 39 was the home of Sir Walter Scott from 1801 After the younger Walter was born in 1801, the Scotts moved to a spacious three-storey house at 39 North Castle Street, which remained his Edinburgh base until 1826, when it was sold by the trustees appointed after his financial ruin. From 1798, Scott had spent summers in a cottage at Lasswade, where he entertained guests, including literary figures. It was there his career as an author began. There were nominal residency requirements for his position of Sheriff-Depute, and at first he stayed at a local inn during the circuit. In 1804, he ended his use of the Lasswade cottage and leased the substantial house of Ashestiel, 6 miles (9.7 km) from Selkirk, sited on the south bank of the River Tweed and incorporating an ancient tower house.[2] At Scott's insistence the first edition of Minstrelsy was printed by his friend James Ballantyne at Kelso. In 1798 James had published Scott's version of Goethe's Erlkönig in his newspaper The Kelso Mail, and in 1799 included it and the two Bürger translations in a privately printed anthology, Apology for Tales of Terror. In 1800 Scott suggested that Ballantyne set up business in Edinburgh and provided a loan for him to make the transition in 1802. In 1805, they became partners in the printing business, and from then until the financial crash of 1826 Scott's works were routinely printed by the firm.[24][16][25] Scott was known for his fondness of dogs, and owned several throughout his life. Upon his death, one newspaper noted "of all the great men who have loved dogs no one ever loved them better or understood them more thoroughly".[26] The best known of Scott's dogs were Maida, a large stag hound, and Spice, a Dandie Dinmont terrier described as having asthma, to which Scott gave particular care. In a diary entry written at the height of his financial woes, Scott described dismay at the prospect of having to sell them: "The thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the reflections I have put down".[26] The poet[edit] Sir Walter Scott, novelist and poet – painted by Sir William Allan Between 1805 and 1817 Scott produced five long, six-canto narrative poems, four shorter independently published poems, and many small metrical pieces. Scott was by far the most popular poet of the time until Lord Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812 and followed them up with his exotic oriental verse narratives. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), in medieval romance form, grew out of Scott's plan to include a long original poem of his own in the second edition of the Minstrelsy: it was to be "a sort of Romance of Border Chivalry & inchantment".[27] He owed the distinctive irregular accent in four-beat metre to Coleridge's Christabel, which he had heard recited by John Stoddart. (It was not to be published until 1816.)[28] Scott was able to draw on his unrivalled familiarity with Border history and legend acquired from oral and written sources beginning in his childhood to present an energetic and highly coloured picture of 16th-century Scotland, which both captivated the general public and with its voluminous notes also addressed itself to the antiquarian student. The poem has a strong moral theme, as human pride is placed in the context of the last judgment with the introduction of a version of the "Dies irae" at the end. The work was an immediate success with almost all the reviewers and with readers in general, going through five editions in one year.[16] The most celebrated lines are the ones that open the final stanza: Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,   This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned,   From wandering on a foreign strand!— If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell. Three years after The Lay Scott published Marmion (1808) telling a story of corrupt passions leading up as a disastrous climax to the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The main innovation involves prefacing each of the six cantos with an epistle from the author to a friend: William Stewart Rose, The Rev. John Marriot, William Erskine, James Skene, George Ellis, and Richard Heber: the epistles develop themes of moral positives and special delights imparted by art. In an unprecedented move, the publisher Archibald Constable purchased the copyright of the poem for a thousand guineas at the beginning of 1807, when only the first had been completed.[29] Constable's faith was justified by the sales: the three editions published in 1808 sold 8,000 copies. The verse of Marmion is less striking than that of The Lay, with the epistles in iambic tetrameters and the narrative in tetrameters with frequent trimeters. The reception by the reviewers was less favourable than that accorded The Lay: style and plot were both found faulty, the epistles did not link up with the narrative, there was too much antiquarian pedantry, and Marmion's character was immoral.[30] The most familiar lines in the poem sum up one of its main themes: "O what a tangled web we weave,/ When first we practice to deceive"[31] Scott's meteoric poetic career peaked with his third long narrative, The Lady of the Lake (1810), which sold 20,000 copies in the first year.[16] The reviewers were fairly favourable, finding the defects noted in Marmion largely absent.[32] In some ways it is more conventional than its predecessors: the narrative is entirely in iambic tetrameters and the story of the transparently disguised James V (King of Scots 1513‒42) predictable: Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth: 'The movement of the Poem... is between a sleeping Canter and a Marketwoman's trot – but it is endless – I seem never to have made any way – I never remember a narrative poem in which I felt the sense of Progress so languid."[33] But the metrical uniformity is relieved by frequent songs and the Perthshire Highland setting is presented as an enchanted landscape, which caused a phenomenal increase in the local tourist trade.[34] Moreover, the poem touches on a theme that was to be central to the Waverley Novels: the clash between neighbouring societies in different stages of development.[16] The remaining two long narrative poems, Rokeby (1813), set in the Yorkshire estate of that name belonging to Scott's friend J. B. S. Morritt during the Civil War period, and The Lord of the Isles (1815), set in early 14th-century Scotland and culminating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Both works had generally favourable receptions and sold well, but without rivalling the huge success of The Lady of the Lake. Scott also produced four minor narrative or semi-narrative poems between 1811 and 1817: The Vision of Don Roderick (1811, celebrating Wellington's successes in the Peninsular Campaign, with profits donated to Portuguese war sufferers);[35] The Bridal of Triermain (published anonymously in 1813); The Field of Waterloo (1815); and Harold the Dauntless (published anonymously in 1817). Throughout his creative life Scott was an active reviewer. Although himself a Tory he reviewed for The Edinburgh Review between 1803 and 1806, but that journal's advocacy of peace with Napoleon led him to cancel his subscription in 1808. The following year, at the height of his poetic career, he was instrumental in establishing a Tory rival, The Quarterly Review to which he contributed reviews for the rest of his life.[36][37] In 1813 Scott was offered the position of Poet Laureate. He declined, feeling that "such an appointment would be a poisoned chalice," as the Laureateship had fallen into disrepute due to the decline in quality of work suffered by previous title holders, "as a succession of poetasters had churned out conventional and obsequious odes on royal occasions."[38] He sought advice from the 4th Duke of Buccleuch, who counselled him to retain his literary independence. The position went to Scott's friend, Robert Southey.[39] The novelist[edit] A Legend of Montrose, illustration from the 1872 edition Further information: Historical romance and Romance (literary fiction) Gothic novel[edit] Scott was influenced by Gothic romance, and had collaborated in 1801 with 'Monk' Lewis on Tales of Wonder.[40][41] Historic romances[edit] Scott's career as a novelist was attended with uncertainty. The first few chapters of Waverley were complete by roughly 1805, but the project was abandoned as a result of unfavourable criticism from a friend. Soon after, Scott was asked by the publisher John Murray to posthumously edit and complete the last chapter of an unfinished romance by Joseph Strutt. Published in 1808 and set in 15th-century England, Queenhoo Hall was not a success due to its archaic language and excessive display of antiquarian information.[42] The success of Scott's Highland narrative poem The Lady of the Lake in 1810 seems to have put it into his head to resume the narrative and have his hero Edward Waverley journey to Scotland. Although Waverley was announced for publication at that stage, it was again laid by and not resumed until late 1813, then published in 1814.[43] Only a thousand copies were printed, but the work was an immediate success and 3,000 more were added in two further editions the same year. Waverley turned out to be the first of 27 novels (eight published in pairs), and by the time the sixth of them, Rob Roy, was published, the print run for the first edition had been increased to 10,000 copies, which became the norm. Given Scott's established status as a poet and the tentative nature of Waverley's emergence, it is not surprising that he followed a common practice in the period and published it anonymously. He continued this until his financial ruin in 1826, the novels mostly appearing as "By the Author of Waverley" (or variants thereof) or as Tales of My Landlord. It is not clear why he chose to do this (no fewer than eleven reasons have been suggested),[44] especially as it was a fairly open secret, but as he himself said, with Shylock, "such was my humour."[45] Sir Walter Scott by Robert Scott Moncrieff Depicts Edie Ochiletree guiding Sir Arthur and Isabella Wardour through the storm from Chapter 7 of The Antiquary Scott was an almost exclusively historical novelist. Only one of his 27 novels – Saint Ronan's Well – has a wholly modern setting. The settings of the others range from 1794 in The Antiquary back to 1096 or 1097, the time of the First Crusade, in Count Robert of Paris. Sixteen take place in Scotland. The first nine, from Waverley (1814) to A Legend of Montrose (1819), all have Scottish locations and 17th- or 18th-century settings. Scott was better versed in his material than anyone: he could draw on oral tradition and a wide range of written sources in his ever-expanding library (many of the books rare and some unique copies).[46][47] In general it is these pre-1820 novels that have drawn the attention of modern critics – especially: Waverley, with its presentation of the 1745 Jacobites drawn from the Highland clans as obsolete and fanatical idealists; Old Mortality (1816) with its treatment of the 1679 Covenanters as fanatical and often ridiculous (prompting John Galt to produce a contrasting picture in his novel Ringan Gilhaize in 1823); The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818) with its low-born heroine Jeanie Deans making a perilous journey to Richmond in 1737 to secure a promised royal pardon for her sister, falsely accused of infanticide; and the tragic The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), with its stern account of a declined aristocratic family, with Edgar Ravenswood and his fiancée as victims of the wife of an upstart lawyer in a time of political power-struggle before the Act of Union in 1707. "Edgar and Lucie at Mermaiden's well" by Charles Robert Leslie (1886), after Sir Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor. Lucie is wearing a full plaid. In 1820, in a bold move, Scott shifted period and location for Ivanhoe (1820) to 12th-century England. This meant he was dependent on a limited range of sources, all of them printed: he had to bring together material from different centuries and invent an artificial form of speech based on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The result is as much myth as history, but the novel remains his best-known work, the most likely to be found by the general reader. Eight of the subsequent 17 novels also have medieval settings, though most are set towards the end of the era, for which Scott had a better supply of contemporaneous sources. His familiarity with Elizabethan and 17th-century English literature, partly resulting from editorial work on pamphlets and other minor publications, meant that four of his works set in the England of that period – Kenilworth (1821), The Fortunes of Nigel and Peveril of the Peak (1821), and Woodstock (1826) – present rich pictures of their societies. The most generally esteemed of Scott's later fictions, though, are three short stories: a supernatural narrative in Scots, "Wandering Willie's Tale" in Redgauntlet (1824), and "The Highland Widow" and "The Two Drovers" in Chronicles of the Canongate (1827). Crucial to Scott's historical thinking is the concept that very different societies can move through the same stages as they develop, and that humanity is basically unchanging, or as he puts it in the first chapter of Waverley that there are "passions common to men in all stages of society, and which have alike agitated the human heart, whether it throbbed under the steel corslet of the fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the eighteenth, or the blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present day." It was one of Scott's main achievements to give lively, detailed pictures of different stages of Scottish, British, and European society while making it clear that for all the differences in form, they took the same human passions as those of his own age.[48] His readers could therefore appreciate the depiction of an unfamiliar society, while having no difficulty in relating to the characters. Scott is fascinated by striking moments of transition between stages in societies. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in a discussion of Scott's early novels, found that they derive their "long-sustained interest" from "the contest between the two great moving Principles of social Humanity – religious adherence to the Past and the Ancient, the Desire & the admiration of Permanence, on the one hand; and the Passion for increase of Knowledge, for Truth as the offspring of Reason, in short, the mighty Instincts of Progression and Free-agency, on the other."[49] This is clear, for example, in Waverley, as the hero is captivated by the romantic allure of the Jacobite cause embodied in Bonnie Prince Charlie and his followers before accepting that the time for such enthusiasms has passed and accepting the more rational, humdrum reality of Hanoverian Britain. Another example appears in 15th-century Europe in the yielding of the old chivalric world view of Charles, Duke of Burgundy to the Machiavellian pragmatism of Louis XI. Scott is intrigued by the way different stages of societal development can exist side by side in one country. When Waverley has his first experience of Highland ways after a raid on his Lowland host's cattle, it "seemed like a dream ... that these deeds of violence should be familiar to men's minds, and currently talked of, as falling with the common order of things, and happening daily in the immediate neighbourhood, without his having crossed the seas, and while he was yet in the otherwise well-ordered island of Great Britain."[50] A more complex version of this comes in Scott's second novel, Guy Mannering (1815), which "set in 1781‒2, offers no simple opposition: the Scotland represented in the novel is at once backward and advanced, traditional and modern – it is a country in varied stages of progression in which there are many social subsets, each with its own laws and customs."[16] Scott's process of composition can be traced through the manuscripts (mostly preserved), the more fragmentary sets of proofs, his correspondence, and publisher's records.[51] He did not create detailed plans for his stories, and the remarks by the figure of "the Author" in the Introductory Epistle to The Fortunes of Nigel probably reflect his own experience: "I think there is a dæmon who seats himself on the feather of my pen when I begin to write, and leads it astray from the purpose. Characters expand under my hand; incidents are multiplied; the story lingers, while the materials increase – my regular mansion turns out a Gothic anomaly, and the work is complete long before I have attained the point I proposed." Yet the manuscripts rarely show major deletions or changes of direction, and Scott could clearly keep control of his narrative. That was important, for as soon as he had made fair progress with a novel he would start sending batches of manuscript to be copied (to preserve his anonymity), and the copies were sent to be set up in type. (As usual at the time, the compositors would supply the punctuation.) He received proofs, also in batches, and made many changes at that stage, but these were almost always local corrections and enhancements. Steel engraving by C. Heath after a drawing by P. De Wint of a scene relating to Scott's novel Waverley, 1832. The University of Edinburgh Collections. As the number of novels grew, they were republished in small collections: Novels and Tales (1819: Waverley to A Tale of Montrose); Historical Romances (1822: Ivanhoe to Kenilworth); Novels and Romances (1824 [1823]: The Pirate to Quentin Durward); and two series of Tales and Romances (1827: St Ronan's Well to Woodstock; 1833: Chronicles of the Canongate to Castle Dangerous). In his last years Scott marked up interleaved copies of these collected editions to produce a final version of what were now officially the Waverley Novels, often called his 'Magnum Opus' or 'Magnum Edition'. Scott provided each novel with an introduction and notes and made mostly piecemeal adjustments to the text. Issued in 48 smart monthly volumes between June 1829 and May 1833 at a modest price of five shillings (25p) these were an innovative and profitable venture aimed at a wide readership: the print run was an astonishing 30,000.[52] In a "General Preface" to the "Magnum Edition", Scott wrote that one factor prompting him to resume work on the Waverley manuscript in 1813 had been a desire to do for Scotland what had been done in the fiction of Maria Edgeworth, "whose Irish characters have gone so far to make the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more towards completing the Union, than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up [the Act of Union of 1801]."[53] Most of Scott's readers were English: with Quentin Durward (1823) and Woodstock (1826), for example, some 8000 of the 10,000 copies of the first edition went to London.[54] In the Scottish novels the lower-class characters normally speak Scots, but Scott is careful not to make the Scots too dense, so that those unfamiliar with it can follow the gist without understanding every word. Some have also argued that although Scott was formally a supporter of the Union with England (and Ireland) his novels have a strong nationalist subtext for readers attuned to that wavelength.[55] Scott's new career as a novelist in 1814 did not mean he abandoned poetry. The Waverley Novels contain much original verse, including familiar songs such as "Proud Maisie" from The Heart of Mid-Lothian (Ch. 41) and "Look not thou on Beauty's charming" from The Bride of Lammermoor (Ch. 3). In most of the novels Scott preceded each chapter with an epigram or "motto"; most of these are in verse, and many are of his own composition, often imitating other writers such as Beaumont and Fletcher. Recovery of the Crown Jewels, baronetcy, and ceremonial pageantry[edit] George IV landing at Leith in 1822 Prompted by Scott, the Prince Regent (the future George IV) gave Scott and other officials permission in a Royal Warrant dated 28 October 1817[56] to conduct a search for the Crown Jewels ("Honours of Scotland"). During the Protectorate under Cromwell these had been hidden away, but had subsequently been used to crown Charles II. They were not used to crown subsequent monarchs, but were regularly taken to sittings of Parliament, to represent the absent monarch, until the Act of Union 1707. So the honours were stored in Edinburgh Castle, but their large locked box was not opened for more than 100 years, and stories circulated that they had been "lost" or removed. On 4 February 1818,[57] Scott and a small military team opened the box and "unearthed" the honours from the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle. On 19 August 1818 through Scott's effort, his friend Adam Ferguson was appointed Deputy Keeper of the "Scottish Regalia".[58] The Scottish patronage system swung into action and after elaborate negotiations the Prince Regent granted Scott the title of baronet: in April 1820 he received the baronetcy in London, becoming Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet.[59] After George's accession, the city council of Edinburgh invited Scott, at the sovereign's behest, to stage-manage the 1822 visit of King George IV to Scotland.[60] In spite of having only three weeks to work with, Scott created a spectacular, comprehensive pageant, designed not only to impress the King, but in some way to heal the rifts that had destabilised Scots society. Probably fortified by his vivid depiction of the pageant staged for the reception of Queen Elizabeth in Kenilworth he and his "production team" mounted what in modern days would be a PR event, with the King dressed in tartan and greeted by his people, many of them also in similar tartan ceremonial dress. This form of dress, proscribed after the Jacobite rising of 1745, became one of the seminal, potent and ubiquitous symbols of Scottish identity.[61] Financial problems and death[edit] In 1825, a UK-wide banking crisis resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business, of which Scott was the only partner with a financial interest. Its debts of £130,000 (equivalent to £11,400,000 in 2021) caused his very public ruin.[62] Rather than declare himself bankrupt or accept any financial support from his many supporters and admirers (including the King himself), he placed his house and income in a trust belonging to his creditors and set out to write his way out of debt. To add to his burdens, his wife Charlotte died in 1826. Walter Scott's Tomb at Dryburgh Abbey Despite these events or because of them, Scott kept up his prodigious output. Between 1826 and 1832 he produced six novels, two short stories and two plays, eleven works or volumes of non-fiction, and a journal, along with several unfinished works. The non-fiction included the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte in 1827, two volumes of the History of Scotland in 1829 and 1830, and four instalments of the series entitled Tales of a Grandfather – Being Stories Taken From Scottish History, written one per year over the period 1828–1831, among several others. Finally, Scott had recently been inspired by the diaries of Samuel Pepys and Lord Byron, and he began keeping a journal over the period, which, however, would not be published until 1890, as The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter Scott's grave at Dryburgh Abbey – the largest tomb is that of Sir Walter and Lady Scott. The engraved slab covers the grave of their son, Lt Col Sir Walter Scott. On the right is their son-in-law and biographer, John Gibson Lockhart. By then Scott's health was failing, and on 29 October 1831, in a vain search for improvement, he set off on a voyage to Malta and Naples on board HMS Barham, a frigate put at his disposal by the Admiralty. He was welcomed and celebrated wherever he went. On his journey home he boarded the steamboat Prins Frederik going from Cologne to Rotterdam. While on board he had a final stroke near Emmerich. After local treatment, a steamboat took him to the steamship Batavier, which left for England on 12 June. By pure coincidence, Mary Martha Sherwood was also on board. She would later write about this encounter.[63] After he was landed in England, Scott was transported back to die at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832.[64] He was 61. Scott was buried in Dryburgh Abbey, where his wife had earlier been interred. Lady Scott had been buried as an Episcopalian; at Scott's own funeral, three ministers of the Church of Scotland officiated at Abbotsford and the service at Dryburgh was conducted by an Episcopal clergyman.[65] Although Scott died owing money, his novels continued to sell, and the debts encumbering his estate were discharged shortly after his death.[62] Religion[edit] Scott was raised as a Presbyterian in the Church of Scotland. He was ordained as an elder in Duddingston Kirk in 1806,[66] and sat in the General Assembly for a time as representative elder of the burgh of Selkirk. In adult life he also adhered to the Scottish Episcopal Church: he seldom attended church but read the Book of Common Prayer services in family worship.[67] Freemasonry[edit] Scott's father was a Freemason, being a member of Lodge St David, No. 36 (Edinburgh), and Scott also became a Freemason in his father's Lodge in 1801,[68] albeit only after the death of his father. Abbotsford House[edit] Abbotsford House Tomb of Walter Scott, in Dryburgh Abbey, photo by Henry Fox Talbot, 1844 The Abbotsford Family by Sir David Wilkie, 1817, depicting Scott and his family dressed as country folk, with his wife and two daughters dressed as milkmaids When Scott was a boy, he sometimes travelled with his father from Selkirk to Melrose, where some of his novels are set. At a certain spot, the old gentleman would stop the carriage and take his son to a stone on the site of the Battle of Melrose (1526).[69] During the summers from 1804, Scott made his home at the large house of Ashestiel, on the south bank of the River Tweed, 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Selkirk. When his lease on this property expired in 1811, he bought Cartley Hole Farm, downstream on the Tweed nearer Melrose. The farm had the nickname of "Clarty Hole", and Scott renamed it "Abbotsford" after a neighbouring ford used by the monks of Melrose Abbey.[70] Following a modest enlargement of the original farmhouse in 1811–12, massive expansions took place in 1816–19 and 1822–24. Scott described the resulting building as 'a sort of romance in Architecture'[71] and 'a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure'.[72] With his architects William Atkinson and Edward Blore Scott was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style of architecture, and Abbotsford is festooned with turrets and stepped gabling. Through windows enriched with the insignia of heraldry the sun shone on suits of armour, trophies of the chase, a library of more than 9,000 volumes, fine furniture, and still finer pictures. Panelling of oak and cedar and carved ceilings relieved by coats of arms in their correct colours added to the beauty of the house.[70][verification needed] It is estimated that the building cost Scott more than £25,000 (equivalent to £2,200,000 in 2021). More land was purchased until Scott owned nearly 1,000 acres (4.0 km2). In 1817 as part of the land purchases Scott bought the nearby mansion-house of Toftfield for his friend Adam Ferguson to live in along with his brothers and sisters and on which, at the ladies' request, he bestowed the name of Huntlyburn.[73] Ferguson commissioned Sir David Wilkie to paint the Scott family[74] resulting in the painting The Abbotsford Family[75] in which Scott is seated with his family represented as a group of country folk. Ferguson is standing to the right with the feather in his cap and Thomas Scott, Scott's Uncle,[76] is behind.[77] The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818.[78] Abbotsford later gave its name to the Abbotsford Club, founded in 1834 in memory of Sir Walter Scott.[79] Reputation[edit] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Walter Scott" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Later assessment[edit] Although he continued to be extremely popular and widely read, both at home and abroad,[80] Scott's critical reputation declined in the last half of the 19th century as serious writers turned from romanticism to realism, and Scott began to be regarded as an author suitable for children. This trend accelerated in the 20th century. For example, in his classic study Aspects of the Novel (1927), E. M. Forster harshly criticized Scott's clumsy and slapdash writing style, "flat" characters, and thin plots. In contrast, the novels of Scott's contemporary Jane Austen, once appreciated only by a discerning few (including, as it happened, Scott himself) rose steadily in critical esteem, though Austen, as a female writer, was still faulted for her narrow ("feminine") choice of subject matter, which, unlike Scott, avoided the grand historical themes traditionally viewed as masculine. Nevertheless, Scott's importance as an innovator continued to be recognised. He was acclaimed as the inventor of the genre of the modern historical novel (which others trace to Jane Porter, whose work in the genre predates Scott's) and the inspiration for enormous numbers of imitators and genre writers both in Britain and on the European continent. In the cultural sphere, Scott's Waverley novels played a significant part in the movement (begun with James Macpherson's Ossian cycle) in rehabilitating the public perception of the Scottish Highlands and its culture, which had been formerly been viewed by the southern mind as a barbaric breeding ground of hill bandits, religious fanaticism, and Jacobite risings. Scott served as chairman of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was also a member of the Royal Celtic Society. His own contribution to the reinvention of Scottish culture was enormous, even though his re-creations of the customs of the Highlands were fanciful at times. Through the medium of Scott's novels, the violent religious and political conflicts of the country's recent past could be seen as belonging to history—which Scott defined, as the subtitle of Waverley ("'Tis Sixty Years Since") indicates, as something that happened at least 60 years earlier. His advocacy of objectivity and moderation and his strong repudiation of political violence on either side also had a strong, though unspoken, contemporary resonance in an era when many conservative English speakers lived in mortal fear of a revolution in the French style on British soil. Scott's orchestration of King George IV's visit to Scotland, in 1822, was a pivotal event intended to inspire a view of his home country that accentuated the positive aspects of the past while allowing the age of quasi-medieval blood-letting to be put to rest, while envisioning a more useful, peaceful future. After Scott's work had been essentially unstudied for many decades, a revival of critical interest began in the middle of the 20th century. While F. R. Leavis had disdained Scott, seeing him as a thoroughly bad novelist and a thoroughly bad influence (The Great Tradition [1948]), György Lukács (The Historical Novel [1937, trans. 1962]) and David Daiches (Scott's Achievement as a Novelist [1951]) offered a Marxian political reading of Scott's fiction that generated a great deal of interest in his work. These were followed in 1966 by a major thematic analysis covering most of the novels by Francis R. Hart (Scott's Novels: The Plotting of Historic Survival). Scott has proved particularly responsive to Postmodern approaches, most notably to the concept of the interplay of multiple voices highlighted by Mikhail Bakhtin, as suggested by the title of the volume with selected papers from the Fourth International Scott Conference held in Edinburgh in 1991, Scott in Carnival. Scott is now increasingly recognised not only as the principal inventor of the historical novel and a key figure in the development of Scottish and world literature, but also as a writer of a depth and subtlety who challenges his readers as well as entertaining them. Memorials and commemoration[edit] The Scott Monument on Edinburgh's Princes Street Statue by Sir John Steell on the Scott Monument in Edinburgh Scott Monument in Glasgow's George Square Statue on the Glasgow monument During his lifetime, Scott's portrait was painted by Sir Edwin Landseer and fellow Scots Sir Henry Raeburn and James Eckford Lauder. In Edinburgh, the 61.1-metre-tall Victorian Gothic spire of the Scott Monument was designed by George Meikle Kemp. It was completed in 1844, 12 years after Scott's death, and dominates the south side of Princes Street. Scott is also commemorated on a stone slab in Makars' Court, outside The Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, along with other prominent Scottish writers; quotes from his work are also visible on the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament building in Holyrood. There is a tower dedicated to his memory on Corstorphine Hill in the west of the city and Edinburgh's Waverley railway station, opened in 1854, takes its name from his first novel. In Glasgow, Walter Scott's Monument dominates the centre of George Square, the main public square in the city. Designed by David Rhind in 1838, the monument features a large column topped by a statue of Scott.[81] There is a statue of Scott in New York City's Central Park.[82] Numerous Masonic Lodges have been named after Scott and his novels. For example: Lodge Sir Walter Scott, No. 859 (Perth, Australia) and Lodge Waverley, No. 597, (Edinburgh, Scotland).[83] The annual Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was created in 2010 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Sir Walter Scott. At £25,000, it is one of the largest prizes in British literature. The award has been presented at Scott's historic home, Abbotsford House. Scott has been credited with rescuing the Scottish banknote. In 1826, there was outrage in Scotland at the attempt of Parliament to prevent the production of banknotes of less than five pounds. Scott wrote a series of letters to the Edinburgh Weekly Journal under the pseudonym "Malachi Malagrowther" for retaining the right of Scottish banks to issue their own banknotes. This provoked such a response that the Government was forced to relent and allow the Scottish banks to continue printing pound notes. This campaign is commemorated by his continued appearance on the front of all notes issued by the Bank of Scotland. The image on the 2007 series of banknotes is based on the portrait by Henry Raeburn.[84] During and immediately after World War I there was a movement spearheaded by President Wilson and other eminent people to inculcate patriotism in American school children, especially immigrants, and to stress the American connection with the literature and institutions of the "mother country" of Great Britain, using selected readings in middle school textbooks.[85] Scott's Ivanhoe continued to be required reading for many American high school students until the end of the 1950s. A bust of Scott is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling. Twelve streets in Vancouver, British Columbia are named after Scott's books or characters.[86] In The Inch district of Edinburgh, some 30 streets developed in the early 1950s are named for Scott (Sir Walter Scott Avenue) and for characters and places from his poems and novels. Examples include Saddletree Loan (after Bartoline Saddletree, a character in The Heart of Midlothian), Hazelwood Grove (after Charles Hazelwood, a character in Guy Mannering) and Redgauntlet Terrace (after the 1824 novel of that name).[87] Influence[edit] On novelists[edit] Walter Scott had an immense impact throughout Europe. "His historical fiction ... created for the first time a sense of the past as a place where people thought, felt and dressed differently".[88] His historical romances "influenced Balzac, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dumas, Pushkin, and many others; and his interpretation of history was seized on by Romantic nationalists, particularly in Eastern Europe".[89] Also highly influential were the early translations into French by Defauconpret.[89] Wikisource has original text related to this article: 'On Walter Scott', a poem by L. E. L. Wikisource has original text related to this article: 'Sir Walter Scott',a poetical illustration by L. E. L. Letitia Elizabeth Landon was a great admirer of Scott and, on his death, she wrote two tributes to him: On Walter Scott in the Literary Gazette,[90] and Sir Walter Scott in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833.[91] Towards the end of her life she began a series called The Female Picture Gallery with a series of character analyses based on the women in Scott's works.[92] Victor Hugo, in his 1823 essay, Sir Walter Scott: Apropos of Quentin Durward, writes: Surely there is something strange and marvelous in the talent of this man who disposes of his reader as the wind disposes of a leaf; who leads him at his will into all places and into all times; unveils for him with ease the most secret recesses of the heart, as well as the most mysterious phenomena of nature, as well as the obscurest pages of history; whose imagination caresses and dominates all other imaginations, clothes with the same astonishing truth the beggar with his rags and the king with his robes, assumes all manners, adopts all garbs, speaks all languages; leaves to the physiognomy of the ages all that is immutable and eternal in their lineaments, traced there by the wisdom of God, and all that is variable and fleeting, planted there by the follies of men; does not force, like certain ignorant romancers, the personages of the past to colour themselves with our brushes and smear themselves with our varnish; but compels, by his magic power, the contemporary reader to imbue himself, at least for some hours, with the spirit of the old times, today so much scorned, like a wise and adroit adviser inviting ungrateful children to return to their father.[93] Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (1827) has similarities with Walter Scott's historic novel Ivanhoe, although evidently distinct.[94] In Charles Baudelaire's La Fanfarlo (1847), poet Samuel Cramer says of Scott: Oh that tedious author, a dusty exhumer of chronicles! A fastidious mass of descriptions of bric-a-brac ... and castoff things of every sort, armor, tableware, furniture, gothic inns, and melodramatic castles where lifeless mannequins stalk about, dressed in leotards. In the novella, however, Cramer proves as deluded a romantic as any hero in one of Scott's novels.[95] Jane Austen, in a letter to her nephew James Edward Austen on 16 December 1816, writes: Uncle Henry writes very superior Sermons.– You & I must try to get hold of one or two, & put them into our Novels;– it would be a fine help to a volume; & we could make our Heroine read it aloud of a Sunday Evening, just as well as Isabella Wardour in the Antiquary, is made to read the History of the Hartz Demon in the ruins of St Ruth– tho' I beleive, upon recollection, Lovell is the Reader.[96] In Jane Austen's Persuasion (1817) Anne Elliot and Captain James Benwick discuss the "richness of the present age" of poetry, and whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake is the more preferred work. Mary Shelley, while researching for her historical novel The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), wrote a letter to Walter Scott on 25 May 1829, asking him for information on any works or manuscripts he knew about Perkin Warbeck, she concludes the letter: I hope you will forgive my troubling you. It is almost impertinent to say how foolish it appears to me that I should intrude on your ground, or to compliment one all the world so highly appreciates. But as every traveller when they visit the Alps endeavours, however imperfectly, to express their admiration in the Inn's album, so it is impossible to address the Author of Waverley without thanking him for the delight and instruction derived from the inexhaustible source of his genius, and trying to express a part of the enthusiastic admiration his works inspire.[97] In Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) St. John Rivers gives a copy of Marmion to Jane to provide her "evening solace" during her stay in her small lodging. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was influenced by the novels of Walter Scott.[98] In particular, according to Juliet Barker, Rob Roy (1817) had a significant influence on Brontë's novel, which, though "regarded as the archetypal Yorkshire novel ... owed as much, if not more, to Walter Scott's Border country". Rob Roy is set "in the wilds of Northumberland, among the uncouth and quarrelsome squirearchical Osbaldistones", while Cathy Earnshaw "has strong similarities with Diana Vernon, who is equally out of place among her boorish relations" (Barker p. 501).[99] In Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) the narrator, Gilbert Markham, brings an elegantly bound copy of Marmion as a present to the independent "tenant of Wildfell Hall" (Helen Graham) whom he is courting, and is mortified when she insists on paying for it. In George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871), Mr. Trumbull remarks to Mary Garth: "You have an interesting work there, I see, Miss Garth," he observed, when Mary re-entered. "It is by the author of Waverley: that is Sir Walter Scott. I have bought one of his works myself—a very nice thing, a very superior publication, entitled Ivanhoe. You will not get any writer to beat him in a hurry, I think—he will not, in my opinion, be speedily surpassed. I have just been reading a portion at the commencement of Anne of Jeersteen [sic]. It commences well." Thomas Hardy, in his 1888 essay, The Profitable Reading of Fiction, writes: Tested by such considerations as these there are obviously many volumes of fiction remarkable, and even great, in their character-drawing, their feeling, their philosophy, which are quite second-rate in their structural quality as narratives. Their fewness is remarkable, and bears out the opinion expressed earlier in this essay, that the art of novel-writing is as yet in its tentative stage only.... The Bride of Lammermoor is an almost perfect specimen of form, which is the more remarkable in that Scott, as a rule, depends more upon episode, dialogue, and description, for exciting interest, than upon the well-knit interdependence of parts.[100] The many other British novelists whom Scott influenced included Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Kingsley, and Robert Louis Stevenson. He also shaped children's writers like Charlotte Yonge and G. A. Henty.[101] Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a letter to his sister Elizabeth on 31 October 1820, writes: I have bought the Lord of the Isles and intend either to send or bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other poems... I shall read The Abbot, by the author of Waverley, as soon as I can hire it. I have read all of Scott's novels except that, I wish I had not, that I might have the pleasure of reading them again.[102] Edgar Allan Poe, an admirer of Scott, was particularly captivated with The Bride of Lammermoor, calling it "that purest, and most enthralling of fictions", and "the master novel of Scott."[103] In a speech delivered at Salem, Massachusetts, on 6 January 1860, to raise money for the families of the executed abolitionist John Brown and his followers, Ralph Waldo Emerson calls Brown an example of true chivalry, which consists not in noble birth but in helping the weak and defenseless and declares that "Walter Scott would have delighted to draw his picture and trace his adventurous career."[104] Henry James, in his 1864 essay, Fiction and Sir Walter Scott, writes: Scott was a born story-teller: we can give him no higher praise. Surveying his works, his character, his method, as a whole, we can liken him to nothing better than to a strong and kindly elder brother, who gathers his juvenile public about him at eventide, and pours out a stream of wondrous improvisation. Who cannot remember an experience like this? On no occasion are the delights of fiction so intense. Fiction? These are the triumphs of fact. In the richness of his invention and memory, in the infinitude of his knowledge, in his improvidence for the future, in the skill with which he answers, or rather parries, sudden questions, in his low-voiced pathos and his resounding merriment, he is identical with the ideal fireside chronicler. And thoroughly to enjoy him, we must again become as credulous as children at twilight.[105] In his 1870 memoir, Army Life in a Black Regiment, New England abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson (later editor of Emily Dickinson), described how he wrote down and preserved Negro spirituals or "shouts" while serving as a colonel in the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first authorized Union Army regiment recruited from freedmen during the Civil War. He wrote that he was "a faithful student of the Scottish ballads, and had always envied Sir Walter the delight of tracing them out amid their own heather, and of writing them down piecemeal from the lips of aged crones." According to Marx's daughter Eleanor, Scott was "an author to whom Karl Marx again and again returned, whom he admired and knew as well as he did Balzac and Fielding."[106] Mark Twain, in his 1883 Life on the Mississippi, satirized the impact of Scott's writings, declaring with humorous hyperbole that Scott "had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the [American Civil] war" that he is "in great measure responsible for the war."[107] He goes on to coin the term "Sir Walter Scott disease", describing a respect for aristocracy, a social acceptance of duels and vendettas, and a taste for fantasy and romanticism, which he blames for the South's lack of advancement. Twain also targeted Scott in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where he names a sinking boat the "Walter Scott" (1884); and, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), the main character repeatedly utters "Great Scott!" as an oath; by the end of the book, however, he has become absorbed in the world of knights in armour, reflecting Twain's ambivalence on the topic. In Anne of Green Gables (1908) by Lucy Maude Montgomery, as Anne is bringing in the cows from pasture: The cows swung placidly down the lane, and Anne followed them dreamily, repeating aloud the battle canto from Marmion—which had also been part of their English course the preceding winter and which Miss Stacy had made them learn off by heart—and exulting in its rushing lines and the clash of spears in its imagery. When she came to the lines The stubborn spearsmen still made good Their dark impenetrable wood, she stopped in ecstasy to shut her eyes that she might the better fancy herself one of that heroic ring. The idyllic Cape Cod retreat of suffragists Verena Tarrant and Olive Chancellor in Henry James's The Bostonians (1886) is called Marmion, evoking what James considered the Quixotic idealism of such social reformers. In To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Ramsey glances at her husband: He was reading something that moved him very much ... He was tossing the pages over. He was acting it – perhaps he was thinking himself the person in the book. She wondered what book it was. Oh, it was one of old Sir Walter's she saw, adjusting the shade of her lamp so that the light fell on her knitting. For Charles Tansley had been saying (she looked up as if she expected to hear the crash of books on the floor above) – had been saying that people don't read Scott any more. Then her husband thought, "That's what they'll say of me;" so he went and got one of those books? ... It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening... and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all ...[Scott's] feeling for straight forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit's cottage [in The Antiquary] made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face he let them fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and English novels and Scott's hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigor that it gave him. Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished the chapter ... The whole of life did not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought, returning to Scott and Balzac, to the English novel and the French novel. Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Hugh Walpole on 12 September 1932, writes: I don't know him [Scott] accurately and minutely as you do, but only in a warm, scattered, amourous way. Now you have put an edge on my love, and if it weren't that I must read MSS—how they flock! I should plunge—you urge me almost beyond endurance to plunge once more—yes, I say to myself, I shall read the Monastery again and then I shall go back to [The Heart of] Midlothian. I cant read the Bride [of Lammermoor], because I know it almost by heart: also the Antiquary (I think those two, as a whole, are my favourites). Well—to inspire a harassed hack to this wish to kick up her heels—what greater proof could there be of your powers of persuasion and illumination? My only complaint is that you pay too much attention to the arid gulls who can't open their beaks wide enough to swallow Sir Walter. One of the things I want to write about one day is the Shakespearean talk in Scott: the dialogues: surely that is the last appearance in England of the blank verse of Falstaff and so on! We have lost the art of the poetic speech.[108] John Cowper Powys described Walter Scott's romances as "by far the most powerful literary influence of my life".[109] This can be seen particularly in his two historical novels, Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages, set during the end of Roman rule in Britain, and Owen Glendower.[110] In 1951, science-fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote Breeds There a Man...?, a short story with a title alluding vividly to Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), the protagonist's brother is made to read Walter Scott's book Ivanhoe to the ailing Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. In Mother Night (1961) by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., memoirist and playwright Howard W. Campbell Jr. prefaces his text with the six lines beginning "Breathes there the man..." In Knights of the Sea (2010) by Canadian author Paul Marlowe, there are several references to Marmion, as well as an inn named after Ivanhoe, and a fictitious Scott novel entitled The Beastmen of Glen Glammoch. The other arts[edit] Further information: Opera in Scotland § Operas inspired by Walter Scott Although Scott's own appreciation of music was basic, to say the least, he had a considerable influence on composers. Some 90 operas based to some extent on his poems and novels have been traced, the most celebrated being Rossini's La donna del lago (1819, based on The Lady of the Lake) and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (1835, based on The Bride of Lammermoor).[111][112] Others include Donizetti's 1829 opera Il castello di Kenilworth based on Kenilworth, Georges Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth (1867, based on The Fair Maid of Perth), and Arthur Sullivan's Ivanhoe (1891). Many of Scott's songs were set to music by composers throughout the 19th century.[113] Seven from The Lady of the Lake were set in German translations by Schubert, one of them being 'Ellens dritter Gesang' popularly known as 'Schubert's Ave Maria'. Three lyrics, also in translation, appear from Beethoven in his Twenty-Five Scottish Songs, Op. 108. Other notable musical responses include three overtures: Waverley (1828) and Rob Roy (1831) by Berlioz, and The Land of the Mountain and the Flood (1887, alluding to The Lay of the Last Minstrel) by Hamish MacCunn. "Hail to the Chief" from "The Lady of the Lake" was set to music around 1812 by the songwriter James Sanderson (c. 1769 – c. 1841). See the Wikipedia article "Hail to the Chief." The Waverley Novels are full of eminently paintable scenes and many 19th-century artists responded to them. Among the outstanding paintings of Scott subjects are: Richard Parkes Bonington's Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester (c. 1827) from Kenilworth in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford;[114] Delacroix's L'Enlèvement de Rebecca (1846) from Ivanhoe in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;[115] and Millais's The Bride of Lammermoor (1878) in Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.[116] Walter Scott features as a character in Sara Sheridan's novel The Fair Botanists (2021).[117] Works[edit] Portrait by James Howe Novels[edit] The Waverley novels is the title given to the long series of Scott novels released from 1814 to 1832 which takes its name from the first novel, Waverley. The following is a chronological list of the entire series: 1814: Waverley 1815: Guy Mannering 1816: The Antiquary 1816: The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality or The Tale of Old Mortality – the 1st instalment from the subset series, Tales of My Landlord 1817: Rob Roy 1818: The Heart of Mid-Lothian – the 2nd instalment from the subset series, Tales of My Landlord 1819: The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose or A Legend of the Wars of Montrose – the 3rd instalment from the subset series, Tales of My Landlord 1819 (dated 1820): Ivanhoe 1820: The Monastery 1820: The Abbot 1821: Kenilworth 1822: The Pirate 1822: The Fortunes of Nigel 1822: Peveril of the Peak 1823: Quentin Durward 1824: St. Ronan's Well or Saint Ronan's Well 1824: Redgauntlet 1825: The Betrothed and The Talisman – a subset series, Tales of the Crusaders 1826: Woodstock 1827: Chronicles of the Canongate — containing two short stories ("The Highland Widow" and "The Two Drovers") and a novel (The Surgeon's Daughter) 1828: The Fair Maid of Perth – the 2nd instalment from the subset series, Chronicles of the Canongate 1829: Anne of Geierstein 1832: Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous – the 4th instalment from the subset series, Tales of My Landlord Other novels: 1831–1832: The Siege of Malta – a finished novel published posthumously in 2008 1832: Bizarro – an unfinished novel (or novella) published posthumously in 2008 Short stories[edit] 1811: "The Inferno of Altisidora" 1817: "Christopher Corduroy" 1818: "Alarming Increase of Depravity Among Animals" 1818: "Phantasmagoria" 1827: "The Highland Widow" and "The Two Drovers" (see Chronicles of the Canongate above) 1828: "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror", "The Tapestried Chamber", and "Death of the Laird's Jock" – from the series The Keepsake Stories 1832: "A Highland Anecdote" Poetry[edit] Many of the short poems or songs released by Scott (or later anthologized) were originally not separate pieces but parts of longer poems interspersed throughout his novels, tales, and dramas. 1796: The Chase, and William and Helen: Two Ballads, translated from the German of Gottfried Augustus Bürger 1800: Glenfinlas 1802–1803: Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 1805: The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1806: Ballads and Lyrical Pieces 1808: Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field 1810: The Lady of the Lake 1811: The Vision of Don Roderick 1813: The Bridal of Triermain 1813: Rokeby 1815: The Field of Waterloo 1815: The Lord of the Isles 1817: Harold the Dauntless 1825: Bonnie Dundee Plays[edit] 1799: Goetz of Berlichingen, with the Iron Hand: A Tragedy – an English-language translation of the 1773 German-language play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe entitled Götz von Berlichingen 1822: Halidon Hill 1823: MacDuff's Cross 1830: The Doom of Devorgoil 1830: Auchindrane Non-fiction[edit] 1814–1817: The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland – a work co-authored by Luke Clennell and John Greig with Scott's contribution consisting of the substantial introductory essay, originally published in 2 volumes from 1814 to 1817 1815–1824: Essays on Chivalry, Romance, and Drama – a supplement to the 1815–1824 editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica 1816: Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk 1819–1826: Provincial Antiquities of Scotland 1821–1824: Lives of the Novelists 1825–1832: The Journal of Sir Walter Scott — first published in 1890 1826: The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther 1827: The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French. With a Preliminary View of the French Revolution. Published in 9 volumes. 1828: Religious Discourses. By a Layman 1828: Tales of a Grandfather; Being Stories Taken from Scottish History – the 1st instalment from the series, Tales of a Grandfather 1829: The History of Scotland: Volume I 1829: Tales of a Grandfather; Being Stories Taken from Scottish History – the 2nd instalment from the series, Tales of a Grandfather 1830: The History of Scotland: Volume II 1830: Tales of a Grandfather; Being Stories Taken from Scottish History – the 3rd instalment from the series, Tales of a Grandfather 1830: Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft 1831: Tales of a Grandfather; Being Stories Taken from the History of France – the 4th instalment from the series, Tales of a Grandfather 1831: Tales of a Grandfather: The History of France (Second Series) — unfinished; published 1996 Collections[edit] In 1925 Scott's manuscripts, letters and papers were donated to the National Library of Scotland by the Advocates Library of the Faculty of Advocates.[118] University College London holds c.300 books relating to Scott. The collection originated with a donation from Arthur MacNalty.[119] Part of the Politics series onToryism Characteristics Agrarianism Classicism Counterrevolution High Church (Anglicanism) High culture Interventionism Loyalism Monarchism Noblesse oblige Traditionalism Traditional Catholicism Royalism Unionism General topics Cavaliers Cavalier Parliament Château Clique Conservative corporatism Divine right of kings Family Compact Jacobitism Oxford Movement Powellism People Robert Filmer 1st Earl of Clarendon Roger L'Estrange 1st Earl of Rochester 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Samuel Johnson 3rd Earl of Bute 1st Duke of Wellington Walter Scott Stanley Baldwin G. K. Chesterton Winston Churchill Enoch Powell George Grant Related topics Carlism Chouans Cristeros Conservatism Distributism High Tory Legitimism Loyalism Miguelism Pink Tory Reactionary Red Tory Spanish American royalism Sanfedismo Tory socialism Traditionalist conservatism Ultra-Tories Vendéens Viva Maria Veronese Easter vte This article is part of a series onConservatismin the United Kingdom Ideologies British nationalism Cameronism Muscular liberalism Civic Compassionate Green Liberal Thatcherism Neo One-nation Powellism Progressive Toryism High Red Social Ultra Principles British unionism Classical liberalism Elitism Aristocracy Meritocracy Noblesse oblige Family values Imperialism Loyalism Moral absolutism Protectionism Royalism Social hierarchy Social market economy Sovereignty State church Tradition Intellectuals Belloc Burke Carlyle Chesterton Coleridge Dalrymple Dawson Cowling Eliot Ferguson Hayek Hitchens Hume Johnson (Paul) Johnson (Samuel) Joseph Kipling Lewis More Murray Newman Oakeshott Roberts Ruskin Scott Scruton Southey Sullivan Tolkien Waugh Wordsworth Worsthorne Works A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) "Tamworth Manifesto" (1834) Coningsby (1844) Sybil (1845) Orthodoxy (1908) The Servile State (1912) "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) The Abolition of Man (1943) The Left Was Never Right (1945) Our Culture, What's Left of It (2005) The Rage Against God (2010) The Great Degeneration (2013) How to Be a Conservative (2014) Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (2017) The Madness of Crowds (2019) Politicians Baldwin Balfour Braverman Burke Cameron Canning Churchill Disraeli Gove Hannan Hayes Hogg Johnson Joseph Leigh Macmillan May Peel Pitt Powell Rees-Mogg Salisbury Thatcher Willetts Parties Alliance EPP: European People's Party UK Christian Party Christian Peoples Alliance Conservative and Unionist Party Democratic Unionist Party For Britain Movement Heritage Party Traditional Unionist Voice Tories UK Independence Party Ulster Unionist Party Veterans and People's Party Organisations Bright Blue Blue Collar Conservativism Centre for Policy Studies Cornerstone Group One Nation Conservatives Orange Order Tory Reform Group Traditional Britain Group Media Daily Express Sunday Express Daily Mail The Daily Telegraph Evening Standard GB News The Mail on Sunday The Salisbury Review The Spectator The Sun The Sun on Sunday The Sunday Telegraph The Sunday Times TalkTV The Times Related topics Anglo-Catholicism Blue Labour Brexit Politics of the United Kingdom Liberalism Socialism Young England  Conservatism portal  United Kingdom portalvte See also[edit] Wikiquote has quotations related to Walter Scott. Wikisource has original works by or about:Walter Scott Poetry portal Jedediah Cleishbotham (fictional editor of Tales of My Landlord, and Scott's alter ego) G. A. Henty Karl May Baroness Orczy Rafael Sabatini Emilio Salgari People on Scottish banknotes Samuel Shellabarger Lawrence Schoonover Jules Verne Frank Yerby GWR Waverley Class steam locomotives "Famous Scots Series" Principal Clerk of Session and Justiciary Scott Monument Writers' Museum References[edit] ^ "Famous Fellows". Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Retrieved 18 January 2019. ^ a b c Edinburgh University Library (22 October 2004). "Homes of Sir Walter Scott". Edinburgh University Library. Retrieved 9 July 2013. ^ "Family Background". Walter Scott. Edinburgh University Library. 24 October 2003. ^ "Who were the Burtons". The Burtons' St Leonards Society. Archived from the original on 8 September 2019. Retrieved 18 September 2017. ^ Beattie, William (1849). Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, In Three Volumes, Volume II. Edward Moxon, Dover Street, London. p. 55. ^ The Athenaeum, Volume 3, Issues 115–165. J. Lection, London. 1830. p. 170. ^ Cone, T E (1973). "Was Sir Walter Scott's Lameness Caused by Poliomyelitis?". Pediatrics. 51 (1): 33. ^ Robertson, Fiona. "Disfigurement and Disability: Walter Scott's Bodies". Otranto.co.uk. Archived from the original on 12 May 2014. Retrieved 9 May 2014. ^ a b "Sandyknowe and Early Childhood". Walter Scott. Edinburgh University Library. 24 October 2003. ^ "No 1 Nos 2 and 3 (Farrell's Hotel) Nos 4 to 8 (consec) (Pratt's Hotel)". Images of England. English Heritage. Archived from the original on 31 May 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2009. ^ a b "School and University". Walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk. 24 October 2003. Retrieved 29 November 2009. ^ C. R. Leslie, 1855. "Letter to Miss C Leslie dated 26 June 1820" in Autobiographical recollections. ed. Tom Taylor, Ticknor & Fields, Boston. ^ Lockhart, pp. 378–379. ^ Lockhart, p. 38. ^ "Literary Beginnings". Walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk. 11 December 2007. Retrieved 29 November 2009. ^ a b c d e f g h Hewitt, David (2004) "Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24928 ^ J. G. Lockhart, 1872. The Life Of Scott. Ch. 2. ^ J. G. Lockhart, 1872. The Life Of Scott. Ch. 2 p.49 ^ The Letters of Sir Walter Scott': 1826‒1828, ed. H. J. C. Grierson (London, 1936), p. 331: Scott to Mrs Hughes. ^ "Williamina, Charlotte and Marriage". University of Edinburgh. 24 October 2003. Retrieved 31 October 2017. ^ "Abbotsford – The Home of Sir Walter Scott". www.scottsabbotsford.com. Retrieved 19 November 2021. ^ Monuments and monumental inscriptions in Scotland: The Grampian Society, 1871. ^ C. S. M. Lockhart, 1871 The Centenary Memorial of Sir Walter Scott. Virtue & Co. p. 62. ^ Johnson, p. 171. ^ Sharon Ragaz, 2004. "James Ballantyne", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1228 ^ a b Humanities, National Endowment for the (14 November 1894). "The North Platte tribune. (North Platte, Neb.) 1890–1894, November 14, 1894, Image 7". ISSN 2165-8838. Retrieved 6 November 2022. ^ The Letters of Sir Walter Scott: 1787‒1807, ed. H. J. C. Grierson (London, 1932), 166 (Scott to Anna Seward, 30 November 1802). ^ Johnson, p. 197. ^ Walter Scott, 2018. Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, ed. Ainsley McIntosh. Edinburgh. pp. 292‒93. ISBN 978-1717020321 ^ J. H. Alexander, 1976. Two Studies in Romantic Reviewing, Vol. 2. Salzburg. pp. 358‒369. ISBN 0773401296 ^ Canto 6, stanza 17 (6.766‒67). ^ J. H. Alexander, 1976. Two Studies in Romantic Reviewing, Vol. 2. Salzburg. pp. 369‒380. ISBN 0773401296 ^ Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Volume 3 1807‒1814, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. Oxford. 1959. p. 808 (early October 1810). ^ The Letters of Sir Walter Scott: 1808‒1811, ed. H. J. C. Grierson. London. 1932. 419n. ^ The Romantics Part III, S–Z, No. 25, London: Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, 2021. ^ Johnson, pp. 299‒300. ^ William B. Todd and Ann Bowen, 1998. Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History 1796‒1832. New Castle, Delaware, Items 10A, 26A, 36A, 245A. ISBN 9781884718649 ^ "Scott the Poet". www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk. ^ "Scott the Poet". Walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk. 11 December 2007. Retrieved 29 November 2009. ^ The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne Davis. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990, p. 885. ^ See also, Robert Letellier, Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic Novel. Lewiston, New York:Mellen Press, 1995. ^ Walter Scott, 1889. Waverley Novels Centenary Edition Vol. I, "General Preface, 1829." Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. ^ Walter Scott, 2007. Waverley, ed. P. D. Garside. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 367‒383. ISBN 0748605673 ^ Cooney, Seamus (1973). "Scott's Anonymity—Its Motive and Consequences". Studies in Scottish Literature. 10: 207‒19. ^ Walter Scott, 2012. "General Preface" in Introductions and Notes from The Magnum Opus: Waverley to A Legend of the Wars of Montrose, ed. J. H. Alexander, P. D. Garside and Claire Lamont. Edinburgh University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0748605908 ^ Levy, Lindsay (2010). ""Long life to thy fame and peace to thy soul": Walter Scott's Collection of Robert Burns's Books and Manuscripts". Scottish Archives. 16: 32‒40 (34). ^ Lindsay Levy, 2012. "Was Sir Walter Scott a Bibliomaniac?", in From Compositors to Collectors: Essays on Book-Trade History, ed. John Hinks and Matthew Day. New Castle, Delaware. pp. 309‒321. ISBN 9780712358729 ^ Graham McMaster, 1981. Scott and Society. Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2 "Scott and the Enlightenment". ISBN 9780521237697 ^ Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford, 1956‒71), 5.34‒35: Coleridge to Thomas Allsop, 8 April 1820. ^ Walter Scott, 2007. Waverley, ed. P. D. Garside. Edinburgh University Press. Ch. 16, p. 78. ISBN 0748605673 ^ For an overview of the process see the revised "General Introduction" to the Edinburgh edition of the Waverley novels by David Hewitt, first published in 1997 in the Guy Mannering volume. ^ Jane Millgate, 1987. Scott's Last Edition: A Study in Publishing History. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 21 and 125 note 51. ISBN 0852245416 ^ Walter Scott, 2012. "General Preface" in Introductions and Notes from The Magnum Opus: Waverley to A Legend of the Wars of Montrose, ed. J. H. Alexander, P. D. Garside and Claire Lamont. Edinburgh University Press. p. 12. ISBN 0748605908 ^ Walter Scott, Quentin Durward, ed. J. H. Alexander and G. A. M. Wood (Edinburgh, 2001), 408; Walter Scott, Woodstock, ed. Tony Inglis (Edinburgh, 2009) 445. ^ Paul Scott, Walter Scott and Scotland (Edinburgh, 1981); Julian Meldon D'Arcy, Subversive Scott (Reykjavik, 2005). ^ William Bell, 1829. Papers Relative to the Regalia of Scotland. Edinburgh. p. 6. ^ William Bell, 1829. Papers Relative to the Regalia of Scotland. Edinburgh. p. 9. ^ The Edinburgh Annual Register for 1818, Vol. 11 Appx. IV p. 227. ^ Garside, Peter (1982). "Patriotism and Patronage: New Light on Scott's Baronetcy". The Modern Language Review. 77 (1): 16–28. doi:10.2307/3727490. JSTOR 3727490. ^ "Chronology of Walter Scott's life". Walter Scott Digital Archive. Retrieved 2 May 2015. ^ "Walter Scott Digital Archive – Chronology". Walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk. 13 October 2008. Retrieved 29 November 2009. ^ a b McKinstry, Sam; Fletcher, Marie (2002). "The Personal Account Books of Sir Walter Scott". The Accounting Historians Journal. 29 (2): 59–89. doi:10.2308/0148-4184.29.2.59. JSTOR 40698269. ^ Sherwood 1857, p. 531. ^ London Medical and Surgical Journal, January 1833 ^ Sefton, Henry R. (1983) "Scott as Churchman", Scott and his Influence. Aberdeen. pp. 234–42 (241). ISBN 9780950262932 ^ "Duddingston Kirk – History and Buildings". Duddingston Kirk – Home. Retrieved 27 May 2019. ^ Lockhart, Vol. 2, pp. 186, 190. ^ Mackey, Albert G. Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry And Its Kindred Sciences. Vol. 4 (S-Z). Jazzybee Verlag. p. 36. ISBN 978-3-8496-8802-8. ^ Lockhart, p. 397 ^ a b "Abbotsford – The Home of Sir Walter Scott". www.scottsabbotsford.com. Retrieved 26 August 2019. ^ Grierson, op. cit., 8.129: Scott to John Richardson, [November–December 1823]. ^ The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed. W. E. K. Anderson (Oxford, 1972), 11: 7 January 1828. ^ "Huntlyburn; statement of interest". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 7 August 2018. ^ McCunn, Florence (1910) Sir Walter Scott's friends. New York : John Lane Co. p. 329 ^ "The Abbotsford Family". National Gallery. Retrieved 4 August 2018. ^ "Thomas Scott (1731–1823), Uncle of Sir Walter Scott". Art UK. Retrieved 26 August 2019. ^ "The Abbotsford Family – Walter Scott Image Collection". images.is.ed.ac.uk. ^ "Douglas David 1895 Records of The Clan Ferguson". p. x. Retrieved 4 August 2018. ^ Drabble, Margaret (2000). The Oxford companion to English literature (6th ed.). New York : Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-19-866244-0. ^ "...it would be difficult to name, from among both modern and ancient works, many read more widely and with greater pleasure than the historical novels of ... Walter Scott." – Alessandro Manzoni, On the Historical Novel. ^ "Glasgow, George Square, Walter Scott's Monument". Retrieved 9 April 2011. ^ "Central Park Monuments – Sir Walter Scott : NYC Parks". www.nycgovparks.org. ^ Grand Lodge of Scotland Year Book. 2014. pp 25 & 34. ISBN 0902324-86-1 ^ "Bank of Scotland". www.scotbanks.org.uk. ^ Serl, Emma and Joseph Pelo, William (1919). American Ideals: Selected Patriotic Readings for Seventh and Eighth Grades. New York Public Library. The Gregg publishing company.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) ^ The origins of all 651 street names in Vancouver. CBC Canada ^ Harris, Stuart (2002). The Place Names of Edinburgh: Their Origins and History. Steve Savage Publishers. pp. 323–324. ^ ""Abstract": M. Pittock, ed., The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe. Series: The reception of British and Irish authors in Europe. Bloomsbury: London, 2014. ISBN 9781472535474". March 2014. ^ a b "Abstract": M. Pittock, ed., The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe. ^ Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1832). "Walter Scott". Literary Gazette, 1832. The Proprietors, Wellington Street, Strand. pp. 619–620. ^ Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1832). "poetical illustration". Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833. Fisher, Son & Co.Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1832). "picture". Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833. Fisher, Son & Co. ^ Blanchard, Laman (1841). "Volume 2". Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L. Henry Colburn. ^ "Things Seen, Essays by Victor Hugo". Victor Hugo. 1823. p. 309. Retrieved 1 April 2022. ^ From Georg Lukàcs, "The Historical Novel" (1969): "In Italy Scott found a successor who, though in a single, isolated work, nevertheless broadened his tendencies with superb originality, in some respect surpassing him. We refer, of course, to Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). Scott himself recognized Manzoni's greatness. When in Milan Manzoni told him that he was his pupil, Scott replied that in that case Manzoni's was his best work. It is, however, very characteristic that while Scott was able to write a profusion of novels about English and Scottish society, Manzoni confined himself to this single masterpiece." ^ Heck, Francis S. (1976). "Baudelaire's La Fanfarlo: An Example of Romantic Irony". The French Review. 49 (3): 328–36. JSTOR 390170. ^ "16 December 1816 – Monday – from Chawton – to James Edward". 1816. Retrieved 25 July 2022. ^ "Sir Walter's Post-Bag". John Murray. 1932. p. 271. Retrieved 21 March 2022. ^ Elizabeth Gaskell The Life of Charlotte Brontë, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857, p.104. ^ Ian Brinton. Bronte's Wuthering Heights Reader's Guides. London : Continuum. 2010, p. 14. Quoting Barker, The Brontes. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholas, 1994. ^ "The Profitable Reading of Fiction". Thomas Hardy. 1888. pp. 57–70. Retrieved 30 May 2022. ^ "Abstract": James Watt, '"Sir Walter Scott and the Medievalist Novel". The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, ed. Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner. Oxford University Press, 2020. ^ The Development of the American Short Story: An Historical Survey. Biblo and Tannen. 1923. p. 93. ISBN 9780819601759. Retrieved 27 March 2022. ^ "Edgar Allan Poe (ed. J. A. Harrison), "Review of Conti the Discarded," The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe". Edgar Allan Poe. 1836. p. 233. Retrieved 30 May 2022. ^ Sacks, Kenneth S. (2008). Emerson: Political Writings. Cambridge University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-139-47269-2. ^ "Notes And Reviews by Henry James". Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press. 1921. p. 14. Retrieved 2 August 2022. ^ S. S. Prawer, 1976. Karl Marx and World Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 386. ISBN 9780192812483 ^ Twain, Mark. "Life on the Mississippi", Chapter 46. ^ "The letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5, 1932–1935". New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1975. p. 104. Retrieved 1 August 2022. ^ Autobiography (1934). London: Macdonald, 1967, p. 66. ^ W. J. Keith, Aspects of John Cowper Powys's Owen Glendower, pp. 20–21 ^ Mitchell, Jerome (1977) Walter Scott Operas. University, Alabama. ^ Mitchell, Jerome (1996) More Scott Operas. Lanham, Maryland. ^ Bibliography in Yonge, C. D. (1888) Life of Sir Walter Scott. London. pp. xxxiv‒xxxviii. ^ "Ashmolean Museum". Retrieved 8 June 2020. ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". Retrieved 8 June 2020. ^ "Bristol Museum and Art Gallery". Retrieved 8 June 2020. ^ Sheridan, Sara (2021), The Fair Botanists, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781529336207 ^ Brown, Iain Gordon (2000). "Collecting Scott for Scotland: 1850–2000." The Book Collector 49 no.4 (winter): 502–534. Article by the curator of the Scott Collection at the National Library of Scotland expanded from his presentation at the 35th Congress of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, Edinburgh, 18 September 2000. ^ UCL Special Collections (23 August 2018). "Sir Walter Scott Collection". UCL Special Collections. Retrieved 15 December 2023. Cited sources[edit] Johnson, Edgar (1870). Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown. Vol. 1. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Lockhart, John Gibson (1852). Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. A. and C. Black. Sherwood, Mary Martha (1857), The life of Mrs Sherwood, Darton & Co., London Further reading[edit] Approaches to Teaching Scott's Waverley Novels, ed. Evan Gottlieb and Ian Duncan (New York, 2009). Bautz, Annika. Reception of Jane Austen and Walter Scott: A Comparative Longitudinal Study. Continuum, 2007. ISBN 0-8264-9546-X, ISBN 978-0-8264-9546-4. Bates, William (1883). "Sir Walter Scott" . The Maclise Portrait-Gallery of "Illustrious Literary Characters" . Illustrated by Daniel Maclise (1 ed.). London: Chatto and Windus. pp. 31–37 – via Wikisource. Brown, David. Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination. Routledge, 1979, ISBN 0-7100-0301-3; Kindle ed. 2013. Buchan, John. Sir Walter Scott, Coward-McCann Inc., New York, 1932. Calder, Angus (1983), Scott & Goethe: Romanticism and Classicism, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 25–28, ISSN 0264-0856 Carlyle, Thomas (1838). Eliot, Charles W. (ed.). Sir Walter Scott. The Harvard Classics. Vol. XXV, Part 5. New York: P.F. Collier & Son (published 1909–14). Cornish, Sidney W. The "Waverley" Manual; or, Handbook of the Chief Characters, Incidents, and Descriptions in the "Waverley" Novels, with Critical Breviates from Various Sources. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1871. Crawford, Thomas, Scott, Kennedy & Boyd, 2013 ISBN 9781849211406 Duncan, Ian. Scott's Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh. Princeton UP, 2007. ISBN 978-0-691-04383-8. Ferris, Ina. The Achievement of Literary Authority: Gender, History, and the Waverley Novels (Ithaca, New York, 1991). Hart, Francis R.. Scott's Novels: The Plotting of Historic Survival (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1966). Kelly, Stuart. Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation. Polygon, 2010. ISBN 978-1-84697-107-5. Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, The Female Portrait Gallery. A series of 22 analyses of Scott's female characters (curtailed by Letitia's death in 1838). Laman Blanchard: Life and Literary Remains of L.E.L., 1841. Vol. 2. pp. 81–194. Lincoln, Andrew. Walter Scott And Modernity. Edinburgh UP, 2007. Millgate, Jane. Walter Scott: The Making of the Novelist (Edinburgh, 1984). Oliver, Susan. Walter Scott and the Greening of Scotland: Emergent Ecologies of a Nation. Cambridge University Press, 2021. ISBN 9781108917674 Pope-Hennessy, Una, Sir Walter Scott, Home & Van Thal, 1948 (The English Novelists series). Rigney, Ann. The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move. Oxford UP, 2012. ISBN 9780199644018 Stephen, Leslie (1898). "The Story of Scott's Ruin". Studies of a Biographer. Vol. 2. London: Duckworth & Co. Scott in Carnival: Selected Papers from the Fourth International Scott Conference, Edinburgh, 1991, ed. J. H. Alexander and David Hewitt (Aberdeen, 1993). Scott, Paul Henderson. Walter Scott and Scotland, William Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1981. ISBN 0-85158-143-9 Shaw, Harry, Scott, Scotland and Repression, in Bold, Christine (ed.), Cencrastus No. 3, Summer 1980, pp. 26 – 28. Robertson, Fiona, The Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Sutherland, John, The Life of Walter Scott. A Critical Biography, Blackwell, 1995. ISBN 978-1-55786231-0 Tulloch, Graham. The Language of Walter Scott: A Study of his Scottish and Period Language (London, 1980). Walter Scott: New Interpretations, The Yearbook of English Studies. Vol. 47. 2017. Modern Humanities Research Association. DOI: 10.5699/yearenglstud.47.issue-2017 Welsh, Alexander. The Hero of the Waverley Novels (New Haven, 1963). External links[edit] Library resources about Walter Scott Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Walter Scott at Wikipedia's sister projects Media from CommonsQuotations from WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceData from Wikidata Works by Walter Scott in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Walter Scott at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Walter Scott at Internet Archive Works by Walter Scott at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Works by Walter Scott at The Online Books Page Sir Walter Scott and Hinx, his Cat The Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club Sir Walter Scott, biography by Richard H. Hutton, 1878 (from Project Gutenberg) Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Scott, Sir Walter" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Walter Scott's profile and catalogue of his library at Abbotsford on LibraryThing. Guardian Books – Sir Walter Scott Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery Bust of Walter Scott by Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey, 1828, white marble, Philadelphia Museum of Art, # 2002.222.1, Philadelphia (PA). Sir Walter Scotts friends by Florence MacCunn 1910. Scottish Freemasonry (The Grand Lodge of Scotland) Poems by Walter Scott at English Poetry Sir Walter Scott Collection at University College London Archive materials[edit] Walter Scott Digital Archive at the University of Edinburgh. Millgate Union Catalogue of Walter Scott Correspondence Archived 10 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine Correspondence of Sir Walter Scott, with related papers, ca. 1807–1929 Sir Walter Scott Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Sir Walter Scott Collection at the Harry Ransom Center Coat of arms of Sir Walter Scott Crest A nymph, in her dexter hand a sun in splendour, in her sinister a crescent (moon) Escutcheon Quarterly; 1st & 4th or two mullets in chief and a crescent in base azure within an orle azure (Scott); 2nd & 3rd or on a bend azure three mascles or, in sinister chief point a buckle azure (Haliburton); escutcheon of the Hand of Ulster Supporters Dexter a mermaid holding in the exterior hand a mirror proper; Sinister a "Moor proper banded and cinctured argent holding in his left hand, a flaming torch lowered proper"[1] Motto (above) Reparabit cornua phoebe – the moon shall fill her horns again(below) Watch weel Baronetage of the United Kingdom New creation Baronet(of Abbotsford) 1820–1832 Next:Walter Scott vteWalter ScottNovels Queenhoo Hall (1808) Waverley (1814) Guy Mannering (1815) The Antiquary (1816) The Black Dwarf (1816) Old Mortality (1816) Rob Roy (1817) The Heart of Midlothian (1818) The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) A Legend of Montrose (1819) Ivanhoe (1819) The Monastery (1820) The Abbot (1820) Kenilworth (1821) The Pirate (1821) The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) Peveril of the Peak (1823) Quentin Durward (1823) Saint Ronan's Well (1823) Redgauntlet (1824) The Betrothed (1825) The Talisman (1825) Woodstock (1826) The Fair Maid of Perth (1828) Anne of Geierstein (1829) Count Robert of Paris (1831) Castle Dangerous (1831) The Siege of Malta (1831–1832, pub. posthumously 2008) Bizarro (1832, pub. posthumously 2008) Poetry Translations and Imitations from German Ballads (1796–1819) "Glenfinlas" (1800) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–1803) The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) Ballads and Lyrical Pieces (1806) Marmion (1808) The Lady of the Lake (1810) The Vision of Don Roderick (1811) The Bridal of Triermain (1813) Rokeby (1813) The Field of Waterloo (1815) The Lord of the Isles (1815) Harold the Dauntless (1817) Short stories Chronicles of the Canongate, 1st series (1827) "The Keepsake Stories" (1828) Non-fiction The letters (1788–1832) "Abstract of the Eyrbiggia-Saga" (1814) "Memoirs" (1808–1826) The Journal (1825–1832) Tales of a Grandfather (1828–1831) Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830) Manners, customs and history of the Highlanders of Scotland; Historical account of the clan MacGregor. 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"Sir Walter Scott of Abbotsford and the Enigma of His 'Moor Proper' Heraldic Supporter". Scribd.
In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.
Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of Stephen, and whom the prudence of Henry the Second had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending.
The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land.
A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat. The power had been completely placed in the hands of the Norman nobility, by the event of the battle of Hastings, and it had been used, as our histories assure us, with no moderate hand. The whole race of Saxon princes and nobles had been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor were the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their fathers, even as proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior classes. The royal policy had long been to weaken, by every means, legal or illegal, the strength of a part of the population which was justly considered as nourishing the most inveterate antipathy to their victor. All the monarchs of the Norman race had shown the most marked predilection for their Norman subjects; the laws of the chase, and many others equally unknown to the milder and more free spirit of the Saxon constitution, had been fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were loaded. At court, and in the castles of the great nobles, where the pomp and state of a court was emulated, Norman-French was the only language employed; in courts of law, the pleadings and judgments were delivered in the same tongue. In short, French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other. Still, however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together; and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.
This state of things I have thought it necessary to premise for the information of the general reader, who might be apt to forget, that, although no great historical events, such as war or insurrection, mark the existence of the Anglo-Saxons as a separate people subsequent to the reign of William the Second; yet the great national distinctions betwixt them and their conquerors, the recollection of what they had formerly been, and to what they were now reduced, continued down to the reign of Edward the Third, to keep open the wounds which the Conquest had inflicted, and to maintain a line of separation betwixt the descendants of the victor Normans and the vanquished Saxons.
The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of Druidical superstition; for, on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood upright; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet.
The human figures which completed this landscape, were in number two, partaking, in their dress and appearance, of that wild and rustic character, which belonged to the woodlands of the West-Riding of Yorkshire at that early period. The eldest of these men had a stern, savage, and wild aspect. His garment was of the simplest form imaginable, being a close jacket with sleeves, composed of the tanned skin of some animal, on which the hair had been originally left, but which had been worn off in so many places, that it would have been difficult to distinguish from the patches that remained, to what creature the fur had belonged. This primeval vestment reached from the throat to the knees, and served at once all the usual purposes of body-clothing; there was no wider opening at the collar, than was necessary to admit the passage of the head, from which it may be inferred, that it was put on by slipping it over the head and shoulders, in the manner of a modern shirt, or ancient hauberk. Sandals, bound with thongs made of boars' hide, protected the feet, and a roll of thin leather was twined artificially round the legs, and, ascending above the calf, left the knees bare, like those of a Scottish Highlander. To make the jacket sit yet more close to the body, it was gathered at the middle by a broad leathern belt, secured by a brass buckle; to one side of which was attached a sort of scrip, and to the other a ram's horn, accoutred with a mouthpiece, for the purpose of blowing. In the same belt was stuck one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged knives, with a buck's-horn handle, which were fabricated in the neighbourhood, and bore even at this early period the name of a Sheffield whittle. The man had no covering upon his head, which was only defended by his own thick hair, matted and twisted together, and scorched by the influence of the sun into a rusty dark-red colour, forming a contrast with the overgrown beard upon his cheeks, which was rather of a yellow or amber hue. One part of his dress only remains, but it is too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any opening, and soldered fast round his neck, so loose as to form no impediment to his breathing, yet so tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting by the use of the file. On this singular gorget was engraved, in Saxon characters, an inscription of the following purport:-"Gurth, the son of Beowulph, is the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood."
Beside the swine-herd, for such was Gurth's occupation, was seated, upon one of the fallen Druidical monuments, a person about ten years younger in appearance, and whose dress, though resembling his companion's in form, was of better materials, and of a more fantastic appearance. His jacket had been stained of a bright purple hue, upon which there had been some attempt to paint grotesque ornaments in different colours. To the jacket he added a short cloak, which scarcely reached half way down his thigh; it was of crimson cloth, though a good deal soiled, lined with bright yellow; and as he could transfer it from one shoulder to the other, or at his pleasure draw it all around him, its width, contrasted with its want of longitude, formed a fantastic piece of drapery. He had thin silver bracelets upon his arms, and on his neck a collar of the same metal bearing the inscription, "Wamba, the son of Witless, is the thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood." This personage had the same sort of sandals with his companion, but instead of the roll of leather thong, his legs were cased in a sort of gaiters, of which one was red and the other yellow. He was provided also with a cap, having around it more than one bell, about the size of those attached to hawks, which jingled as he turned his head to one side or other; and as he seldom remained a minute in the same posture, the sound might be considered as incessant. Around the edge of this cap was a stiff bandeau of leather, cut at the top into open work, resembling a coronet, while a prolonged bag arose from within it, and fell down on one shoulder like an old-fashioned nightcap, or a jelly-bag, or the head-gear of a modern hussar. It was to this part of the cap that the bells were attached; which circumstance, as well as the shape of his head-dress, and his own half-crazed, half-cunning expression of countenance, sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to the race of domestic clowns or jesters, maintained in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the tedium of those lingering hours which they were obliged to spend within doors. He bore, like his companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous to intrust with edge-tools. In place of these, he was equipped with a sword of lath, resembling that with which Harlequin operates his wonders upon the modern stage.
The outward appearance of these two men formed scarce a stronger contrast than their look and demeanour. That of the serf, or bondsman, was sad and sullen; his aspect was bent on the ground with an appearance of deep dejection, which might be almost construed into apathy, had not the fire which occasionally sparkled in his red eye manifested that there slumbered, under the appearance of sullen despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition to resistance. The looks of Wamba, on the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. The dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried on in Anglo-Saxon, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the Norman soldiers, and the immediate personal dependants of the great feudal nobles. But to give their conversation in the original would convey but little information to the modern reader, for whose benefit we beg to offer the following translation:
"The curse of St Withold upon these infernal porkers!" said the swine-herd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of their keeper. "The curse of St Withold upon them and upon me!" said Gurth; "if the two-legged wolf snap not up some of them ere nightfall, I am no true man. Here, Fangs! Fangs!" he ejaculated at the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking dog, a sort of lurcher, half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about as if with the purpose of seconding his master in collecting the refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension of the swine-herd's signals, ignorance of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove them hither and thither, and increased the evil which he seemed to design to remedy. "A devil draw the teeth of him," said Gurth, "and the mother of mischief confound the Ranger of the forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs, and makes them unfit for their trade! 8 Wamba, up and help me an thou be'st a man; take a turn round the back o' the hill to gain the wind on them; and when thous't got the weather-gage, thou mayst drive them before thee as gently as so many innocent lambs."
"Truly," said Wamba, without stirring from the spot, "I have consulted my legs upon this matter, and they are altogether of opinion, that to carry my gay garments through these sloughs, would be an act of unfriendship to my sovereign person and royal wardrobe; wherefore, Gurth, I advise thee to call off Fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny, which, whether they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into Normans before morning, to thy no small ease and comfort.""The swine turned Normans to my comfort!" quoth Gurth; "expound that to me, Wamba, for my brain is too dull, and my mind too vexed, to read riddles.""Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?" demanded Wamba."Swine, fool, swine," said the herd, "every fool knows that." "And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?""Pork," answered the swine-herd.
"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?""It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate.""Nay, I can tell you more," said Wamba, in the same tone; "there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment."
"By St Dunstan," answered Gurth, "thou speakest but sad truths; little is left to us but the air we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of enabling us to endure the tasks they lay upon our shoulders. The finest and the fattest is for their board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either will or the power to protect the unfortunate Saxon. God's blessing on our master Cedric, he hath done the work of a man in standing in the gap; but Reginald Front-de-Boeuf is coming down to this country in person, and we shall soon see how little Cedric's trouble will avail him.-Here, here," he exclaimed again, raising his voice, "So ho! so ho! well done, Fangs! thou hast them all before thee now, and bring'st them on bravely, lad."
"Gurth," said the Jester, "I know thou thinkest me a fool, or thou wouldst not be so rash in putting thy head into my mouth. One word to Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, or Philip de Malvoisin, that thou hast spoken treason against the Norman,-and thou art but a cast-away swineherd,-thou wouldst waver on one of these trees as a terror to all evil speakers against dignities.""Dog, thou wouldst not betray me," said Gurth, "after having led me on to speak so much at disadvantage?""Betray thee!" answered the Jester; "no, that were the trick of a wise man; a fool cannot half so well help himself-but soft, whom have we here?" he said, listening to the trampling of several horses which became then audible.
"Never mind whom," answered Gurth, who had now got his herd before him, and, with the aid of Fangs, was driving them down one of the long dim vistas which we have endeavoured to describe.
"Nay, but I must see the riders," answered Wamba; "perhaps they are come from Fairy-land with a message from King Oberon.""A murrain take thee," rejoined the swine-herd; "wilt thou talk of such things, while a terrible storm of thunder and lightning is raging within a few miles of us? Hark, how the thunder rumbles! and for summer rain, I never saw such broad downright flat drops fall out of the clouds; the oaks, too, notwithstanding the calm weather, sob and creak with their great boughs as if announcing a tempest. Thou canst play the rational if thou wilt; credit me for once, and let us home ere the storm begins to rage, for the night will be fearful."
Wamba seemed to feel the force of this appeal, and accompanied his companion, who began his journey after catching up a long quarter-staff which lay upon the grass beside him. This second Eumaeus strode hastily down the forest glade, driving before him, with the assistance of Fangs, the whole herd of his inharmonious charge

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Word Lists:

Text : a book or other written or printed work, regarded in terms of its content rather than its physical form

Hauberk : a piece of armor originally covering only the neck and shoulders but later consisting of a full-length coat of mail or military tunic.

Obstreperous : noisy and difficult to control

Swine : a pig

Feudal : according to, resembling, or denoting the system of feudalism

Thrall : the state of being in someone's power or having great power over someone

Misapprehension : a mistaken belief about or interpretation of something

Serf : an agricultural laborer bound under the feudal system to work on his lord's estate.

Disinherit : change one's will or take other steps to prevent (someone) from inheriting one's property

Solder : a low-melting alloy, especially one based on lead and tin or (for higher temperatures) on brass or silver, used for joining less fusible metals

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Rating: Words in the Passage: 3550 Unique Words: 1,282 Sentences: 91
Noun: 1003 Conjunction: 290 Adverb: 171 Interjection: 3
Adjective: 288 Pronoun: 247 Verb: 516 Preposition: 541
Letter Count: 15,994 Sentiment: Positive Tone: Formal Difficult Words: 842
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