Romantic Poets

"I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real character—and I can assure you that his character is worthy of admiration—that of all men he is the most open, the most honourable, the most amiable ... I say that Walter Scott is as nearly a thorough good man as man can be, because I know it by experience to be the case."

"And think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance,"

"Shakespeare and Scott are certainly alike in this, that they could both, if literature had failed, have earned a living as professional demagogues."

"Trusting to your indulgence I venture to take exception to your treating Sir Walter Scott's most noble verses in the 'Lay' as a translation of the Dies Irae ... My contention is that the Dies Irae supplied Scott with a suggestion, not an original; and that, setting out from that suggestion, he composed what is not only an original but very decidedly the grandest piece of sacred poetry in the English language; such a piece as would have compelled Johnson, could he have read it, to alter his doctrine respecting that kind of composition."

"The delight of my youth was Scott, especially his poetry. I began with the poems, and read them so often that I almost knew them by heart before I had read a single page of the prose tales. The Lady of the Lake was my especial favourite, and I have no doubt that my early enthusiasm for that delightful poem implanted in me a love for beautiful lakes with romantic islands in them which had practical consequences afterwards. Even to this day these feelings are as lively in me as ever, so that nothing in the world seems to me so completely delightful as a lake if one has a sailing-boat to wander over it. Scott, too, had the same love for hills and streams that I had imbibed from nature in my youth, and in his narratives of adventure he suited my temper so exactly, that to read him was a complete satisfaction, without any drawback whatever. To a youth who becomes thoughtful Scott is insufficient, but a man who has got through most of his serious thinking may return to him again and receive from him much of the old refreshment and delight. I am still a reader of Scott, and never appreciated the qualities of Ivanhoe so completely as on reading that masterpiece last year. Of all authors, it is Scott who has given me the greatest sum of pleasure, and that of a very healthy kind."

"At one blow, as it were, he made Scotland realise herself. North and South, East and West, and he threw a glamour of romance over her, not only in England, but in every civilised country of the world. Who but Scott could have put George IV into a kilt?"

"The industrial revolution was far from him; he was the soul of feudalism in its highest sense. His scheme of society was feudal alike in its simplicity and its nobility. In the first year after the peace we find him making work for a score or more of additional labourers on his estate to incur, as he said "the expense of several years at once to serve mine honest neighbours who were likely to want work but for such exertion." He realised his duty to his own community, and fulfilled it."

"When I look back upon his career, upon his teaching, upon the inspiration which he has breathed for so many years into the youth of the Empire, I think of him rather as a great Briton. I recall that over a period of years charged with crisis, not only to the fortunes of Scotland, but to the fortunes of that Empire in which Scotland is a shining unit, there was none more eloquent, none more untiring, in his presentation of the national case against the tyranny of the Napoleonic system than Walter Scott."

"I think you have the poetry of Scott best described in the title of his first sustained effort in verse, the Lay of the Last Minstrel. He was the last great Minstrel and probably the last epic poet to write in our language."

"Scott was the first to discover, or at least the first to exploit on a large scale, the mediaeval sentiment. It is consequently all the more significant that we can see in Scott, the high priest of mediaevalism himself, that the taste for the Middle Ages was more than a taste merely for a picturesque period of history. It was for certain things which could be found more particularly in the Middle Ages, it is true, but which could be found also in other fields. Was not feudal society supremely distinguished from modern by its recognition both in theory and practice of the value and significance of communal life, of the natural interdependence of individuals and of classes, and of the beauty of self-devotion to a corporate ideal? Not only in mediaeval Europe, but wherever he finds qualities such as these Sir Walter is at home. Does not his voice take on a new ring of spiritual exaltation when he comes to his Highland clans? The love of comradeship which had to be satisfied with drilling in the Volunteers, and the loyalty which could be bestowed on no worthier object than the Prince Regent, found in the devotion of clansmen to their clan and its chief a more stirring social relationship, even as he had found the same in mediaeval ties of allegiance and the code of chivalry."

"The most striking feature of Scott's romances is that, for the most part, they are pivoted on public rather than mere private interests and passions. With but few exceptions—(The Antiquary, St Ronan's Well, and Guy Mannering are the most important)—Scott's novels give us an imaginative view, not of mere individuals, but of individuals as they are affected by the public strifes and social divisions of the age. And this it is which gives his books so large an interest for old and young, soldiers and statesmen, the world of society and the recluse, alike. You can hardly read any novel of Scott's and not become better aware what public life and political issues mean... The boldness and freshness of the present are carried back into the past, and you see Papists and Puritans, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Jews, Jacobites, and freebooters, preachers, schoolmasters, mercenary soldiers, gipsies, and beggars, all living the sort of life which the reader feels that in their circumstances and under the same conditions of time and place and parentage, he might have lived too. Indeed, no man can read Scott without being more of a public man, whereas the ordinary novel tends to make its readers lather less of one than before."

"The Abbotsford estate is an architectural version of the political fantasy that animates the Waverley novels, the dream of landed establishment. Abbotsford expresses two conflicting motives: the desire for upward mobility, the parvenu's dream of making it rich and buying a country estate; and a longing for the restoration of the ancient landed establishment, and with it, the social relations of an older and better world."

"Sir Walter Scott was the Luther of literature. He reformed and he regenerated. To say that he founded a new school is not saying the whole truth; for there is something narrow in the idea of a school, and his influence has been universal. Indeed, there is no such thing as a school in literature; each great writer is his own original, and "none but himself can be his parallel." We hear of the school of Dryden and of Pope, but where and what are their imitators? Parnassus is the very reverse of Mont Blanc. There the summit is gained by treading closely in the steps of the guides; but in the first, the height is only to be reached by a pathway of our own. The influence of a genius like Scott's is shown by the fresh and new spirit he pours into literature."

"Scott’s novels are the great source of the paralysing ideology of defeatism in Scotland, the spread of which is responsible at once for the acceptance of the Union and the low standard of nineteenth-century Scots literature."

"Then we turned to Scott, whom he [William Ewart Gladstone] held to be by far the greatest of his countrymen. I suggested John Knox. "No, the line must be drawn firm between the writer and the man of action; no comparisons there." J. M.—Well, then, though I love Scott so much that if any man chooses to put him first, I won't put him second, yet is there not a vein of pure gold in Burns that gives you pause? Mr. G.—Burns very fine and true, no doubt; but to imagine a whole group of characters, to marshal them, to set them to work, to sustain the action—I must count that the test of highest and most diversified quality."

"During the first quarter of this century a great poet was raised up in the North, who, whatever were his defects, has contributed by his works, in prose and verse, to prepare men for some closer and more practical approximation to Catholic truth. The general need of something deeper and more attractive than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be considered to have led to his popularity; and by means of his popularity he re-acted on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions, which, when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be appealed to as first principles. Doubtless there are things in the poems and romances in question, of which a correct judgment is forced to disapprove; and which must be ever a matter of regret; but contrasted with the popular writers of the last century, with its novelists, and some of its most admired poets, as Pope, they stand almost as oracles of Truth confronting the ministers of error and sin."

"What I suppose to be best in my own manner of writing has been learned chiefly from Byron and Scott... It is one of the griefs of my old age that I know Scott by heart; but still, if I take up a volume of him, it is not laid down again for the next hour."

"The feelings to which Scott's poetry appeals, the ideals which it sets before the imagination, if not themselves the highest types of character, are those out of which the highest characters are formed. Cardinal Newman has said, "What is Christian high-mindedness, generous self-denial, contempt of wealth, endurance of suffering, and earnest striving after perfection, but an improvement and transformation, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, of that natural character of mind which we call romantic?" To have awakened and kept alive in an artificial, and too money-loving age, "that character of mind which we call romantic," which, by transformation, can become something so much beyond itself, is, even from the severest moral point of view, no mean merit. To higher than this few poets can lay claim. But let the critics praise him, or let them blame. It matters not. His reputation will not wane, but will grow with time. Therefore we do well to make much of Walter Scott. He is the only Homer who has been vouchsafed to Scotland—I might almost say to modern Europe. He came at the latest hour, when it was possible for a great epic minstrel to be born. And the altered conditions of the world will not admit of another."

"It may be a more sonorous eulogy to aver that such a one is a master of poignant tragedy; of another that his art has conquered the very spirit of exquisite lyric; but to claim for a poet, who comes himself of a martial race, that he has reproduced in stirring poesy the soul of a fighting people; has re-created the traditions and personalities of an age, vanished indeed, but to be born and reborn in the passage of the centuries—this is a tribute to Scott which, had he never set pen to prose, would still leave him high among the Immortals of song."

"I do not know of the career of any great man of letters more consistent, simpler, nobler, braver, than the career of Walter Scott. It made, inevitably made, when once the brilliancy of his literary equipment was realized, a strong and lasting appeal to the loyalty and admiration of the Scottish people. In every bone, in every fibre of his inmost being, he was Scottish. He was sprung from the loins of men who had ridden hotly in many a mad foray, in many a bloody raid."

"Blessed be His name, who hath appointed the quiet night to follow the busy day, and the calm sleep to refresh the wearied limbs and to compose the troubled spirit!"

"Rouse the lion from his lair."

"Fortune may raise up or abase the ordinary mortal, but the sage and the soldier should have minds beyond her control."

"The playbill, which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out."

"You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has, indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air."

"Tell that to the marines—the sailors won't believe it."

"Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit."

"Those who follow the banners of Reason are like the well-disciplined battalion, which, wearing a more sober uniform, and making a less dazzling show, than the light troops commanded by Imagination, enjoy more safety, and even more honour, in the conflicts of human life."

"It is a strong castle, and strongly guarded; but there is no impossibility to brave men."

"Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea."

"Ridicule, the weapon of all others most feared by enthusiasts of every description, and which, from its predominance over such minds, often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble."

"The pith of conversation does not consist in exhibiting your own superior knowledge on matters of small consequence, but in enlarging, improving, and correcting the information you possess, by the authority of others."

"Under the influence of this feeling of distrust in his poetical powers, the all but forgotten manuscript of Waverley was drawn forth from its obscurity, the novel was finished, and given to the world in July 1814. From that moment the historical romance was born for mankind. One of the most delightful and instructive species of composition was created; which unites the learning of the historian with the fancy of the poet; which discards from human annals their years of tedium, and brings prominently forward their eras of interest; which teaches morality by example, and conveys information while giving pleasure; and which, combining the charms of imagination with the treasures of research, founds the ideal upon its only solid and durable basis—the real."

"Look to a gown of gold, and you will at least get a sleeve of it."

"What Deus ex machina could have come to my aid more effective than the sunny cheerfulness, strong, healthy vitality, catholic human sympathy, deep-rooted patriotism, fine pictorial eye, and rare historic furniture of Walter Scott? To the poetry of this greatest literary Scot, whom I soon learned to associate in æsthetical bonds with the sunny sobriety of Homer and the great Greeks, I owe, in no small measure, that close connection with the topography and the local history of my country which appears in my poetical productions, and which, if these are destined in any smallest degree to live in the memory of my countrymen, will be the element that has most largely contributed to their vitality."

"And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn."

"Spur not an unbroken horse; put not your ploughshare too deep into new land."

"Meat eaten without either mirth or music is ill of digestion."

"Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!"

"The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances."

"But with the morning cool reflection came."

"I am she, O most bucolical juvenal, under whose charge are placed the milky mothers of the herd."

"As old as the hills."

"When Israel, of the Lord belov'd, Out of the land of bondage came, Her fathers' God before her mov'd, An awful guide in smoke and flame."

"Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish."

"There is yet spirit in him, were it well directed- but, like the Greek fire, it burns whatever approaches it."

"Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours-ambition is the serious business of life."

"Saint George and the Dragon!-Bonny Saint George for Merry England!-The castle is won!"

"You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish."

"For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears."