WALTER SCOTT: HIS MOSCOW

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13193, 2 June 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

WALTER SCOTT: HIS MOSCOW

J vw) qualities seem to us to dominate the lest of any estimate of the magazine of Scott's mind; the marvellous creative energy of his imagination, working upon tne raw material of history, and the extraordinary knowledge and sagacity with which this imagination is ballasted." For Scott- brings to his work and puts at the disposal of his readers Hie attributes not only of a learned antiquary, folklorist, and balladnionger, poet amd historian, but also those of » sagacious statesman, ecclesiologist. soldier, sportsman, literary critic, topographer, bun vivant, genealogist, raconteur, and trained lawyer. He excels in the delineation of warlocks and sibyls, beggars and fishermen, orthographers and pedantic bores of every description, clowns and jesters, staghounds and Dandie Dinmonts. The excellence of the dramatic talk of hat Malvolio would call "the lesser people" in Scott's novels is generally accepted. 'I he broad and genial humour of his low comedy has, perhaps, only two rivals in the whole range of our literature. His other qualities as a historical painter, conleur, and improviser of genius have been, to a, certain extent, obscurcd by irrelevant criticisms-. It has been objected, for instance, against his improvisations that Scott s construction is inartistic, his style slovenly, his digressions tedious, his pleaj tries mechanical, and his deviations from historical accuracy unpardonable. All these criticisms are to a great extent delusive, not much less so. perhaps, than those of the eighteenth century critics who accused Shakespere ot difference to the unities and other credentials of the inartistic conscience. As,with Shakcspere, Scott's attempts to produce the effects he desired seem almost ,efioi less a.nd altogether unconscious of art ; yet the result in both cases is generally the same, and, if" docere cum delectationc" be the aim of. the artist, few can have come nearer to, its? accomplishment than >~colt. " We do'not believe in making a demigod of Scott; we have seen lather too much of tha.b in the case of Shakcspere, a loan in whom the most splendid ideality and the most prosaic ambition were in similar wise blended. As is the c.ice with most great men, we believe Scott to have been a jrun, of great faults and the most singular illusions. Not only in these did he re°sema m Napoleon (his Moscow of course beinoAbbolstord and a lairdly pedigree), but also 111 his almost superhuman energy in prosperity. his sangfroid in defeat, hi's resulting somnolence and eventual collapse.