Academics From Scotland

"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."

"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 books that influenced me most were Hugh Miller's, particularly his "Schools and Schoolmasters." Also the "Waverley Novels," in conjunction with Scottish History, opened out the great world of national life for and led me on to politics."

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

"Someone having observed that the next Waverley novel was to be 'Rob Roy', Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read to the company 'Rob Roy's Grave'; then, returning it to the shelf, observed, "I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the subject.""

"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."

"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."

"Scott perhaps illustrates more clearly than other writers the gap between the ideas of the general educated reader and those of the professional academic. The non-professional thinks of him as the mildly spurious Laird of Abbotsford, the sentimental reviver of a heroic Border and Highland past, who was still in the early 19th century more than half a Jacobite. The literary academic, especially since the appearance in English of Georg Lukacs’s Historical Novel in 1962, has seen him as an intellectual of quite a different cast: the first novelist to represent the historical process, the first portrayer of society in terms that Adam Smith might and Karl Marx did approve."

"I know nothing more sublime in the writings of Sir Walter Scott—certainly I know nothing so sublime in any portion of the sacred poetry of modern times, I mean of the present century—as the ‘Hymn for the Dead,’ extending only to twelve lines, which he embodied in The Lay of the Last Minstrel."

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

"I am of course aware that there were other influences on Scott besides medieval literature and that sometimes there are alternative sources for a particular motif or detail or point of style. I cannot always pin Scott down to a medieval source to the exclusion of other possible sources. In such cases it is altogether conceivable that three or four or more literary works from different periods of literary history were on his mind at the same time. If so, I am inclined to believe that medieval romance weighed most heavily because of his utter fascination with literature of this sort during his formative years. Although he also read widely in other literature at an early age, ballads and old romances were his passion... I point out what Scott has borrowed and show how he has used the borrowing. When he has covered his tracks, I cannot always say which romance is involved... but the accumulation of interesting parallels provides good circumstantial evidence in support of my belief that medieval romance is the most important source for the Waverly Novels."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The blow is struck—the lyre is shattered—the music is hushed at length. The greatest—the most various—the most commanding genius of modern times has left us to seek for that successor to his renown which, in all probability, a remote generation alone will furnish forth. It is true that we have been long prepared for the event—it does not fall upon us suddenly—leaf after leaf was stripped from that noble tree before it was felled to the earth at last;—our sympathy in his decay has softened us to the sorrow for his death."

"Her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her, and it deserted her when her eyes were opened to the extent of her own danger, as well as that of her lover and her guardian; and when she found her will, the slightest expression of which was wont to command respect and attention, now placed in opposition to that of a man of a strong, fierce, and determined mind, who possessed the advantage over her, and was resolved to use it, she quailed before him."

"He’s expected at noon, and no wight till he comes May profane the great chair, or the porridge of plums; For the best of the cheer, and the seat by the fire, Is the undenied right of the Barefooted Friar."

"Alas! fair Rowena," returned De Bracy, "you are in presence of your captive, not your jailor; and it is from your fair eyes that De Bracy must receive that doom which you fondly expect from him."

"The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace."

"The evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, for ever haunt the steps of the malefactor."

"Pride and jealousy there was in his eye, for his life had been spent in asserting rights which were constantly liable to invasion; and the prompt, fiery, and resolute disposition of the man, had been kept constantly upon the alert by the circumstances of his situation."

"Pax vobiscum will answer all queries. If you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, Pax vobiscum carries you through it all. It is as useful to a friar as a broom-stick to a witch, or a wand to a conjuror."

"Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be ay sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping."

"when we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament-men o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns - But naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon."

"Revenge—the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell!"

"My foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor."

"Scared out of his seven senses."

"Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendour, can never confer real happiness."

"Norman saw on English oak. On English neck a Norman yoke; Norman spoon to English dish, And England ruled as Normans wish; Blithe world in England never will be more, Till England's rid of all the four."

"...We beg leave to transport the reader to the back-parlour of the post-master's house at Fairport, where his wife, he himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters, in order, from the outside of the epistles, and, if they are not belied, occasionally from the inside also, to amuse themselves with gleaning information, or forming conjectures about the correspondence and affairs of their neighbours. Two females of this description were, at the time we mention, assisting, or impeding, Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty."

"It's no fish ye're buying, it's men's lives."

"I'm no gaun to let naebody see the letter," sobbed the boy, "till I gie't to Mr. Lovel, for I am a faithfu' servant o' the office—if it werena for the powny." "Very right, my little man," said Ochiltree, turning the reluctant pony's head towards Monkbarns; "but we'll guide him atween us." … [They met Lovel on the way,] and Davie, who insisted upon a literal execution of his commission by going on to Monkbarns, was with difficulty prevailed upon to surrender the packet to its proper owner, although he met him a mile nearer than the place he had been directed to. "But my minnie said, I maun be sure to get twenty shillings and five shillings for the postage, and ten shillings and sixpence for the express—there's the paper." "Let me see—let me see," said Oldbuck, putting on his spectacles, and examining the crumpled copy of regulations to which Davie appealed. "Express, per man and horse, one day, not to exceed ten shillings and sixpence. One day? why, it's not an hour—Man and horse? why, 'tis a monkey on a starved cat!"

"O! many a shaft at random sent Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!"

"The wind breath'd soft as lover's sigh, And, oft renew'd, seem'd oft to die, With breathless pause between, O who, with speech of war and woes, Would wish to break the soft repose Of such enchanting scene!"

"Randolph, thy wreath has lost a rose."

"Sea of upturned faces."

"Hunger and fear are excellent casuists."

"Bluid is thicker than water."

"In man's most dark extremity Oft succour dawns from Heaven."

"Spangling the wave with lights as vain As pleasures in the vale of pain, That dazzle as they fade."

"A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect."