SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18324, 15 August 1921, Page 4

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

On August 15, 1771, just a hundred and fifty years ago, Walter Scott was born at Edinburgh. The term of a century and a-half may possess no signal virtue but it may well serve as occasion or excuse for a word of commemorative allusion to a great man of whom it is always pleasant to think. The author of a not very illuminative recent publication, "The Intimate Life of Sir Walter Scott," would have us believe that the once puissant Wizard of the North is a spent force in literature and literary history. His poetry is forgotten—so we are assured, though it may be that the publishers of new editions would tell a different tale; as a writer of fiction he is surpassed (who would have thought it?) by several living novelists; while as a man he stands forth just as "a jolly Scottish gentleman, prosperous and portly, with his horses and his dogs," scribbling a great deal, in more or loss mechanical fashion, for the sake of the money which his vogue brought him. No doubt, Scott's poetry is out of fashion—perhaps, in some of its characteristics, genuinely out of date—though not a few un« sophisticated people, with the boy's heart still in them, can find pleasure and solace in "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake" without losing their self-respect. Scott's verse is at least lucid and stimulating and harmonious, though his time-honoured laws of melody were unconcerned with prosodic refinements. His poetic fame was not won by the brave modern methods which provoke Mr Punch's caustic satire— There was a young poet of Kew, Who failed to emerge into view; \ So he said, "I'll dispense With rhyme, meter, and sense;" Ancf ho did, and he's now in Who's Who. As regards Scott the novelist, against Mr Archibald Stalker (author of the book we have mentioned) we may pit that shrewd and infinitely accomplished man of letters, the late Andrew Lang, who "counted that year lost" in which he had not re-read at least four of the "Waverleys." A righteous and moderate rule, surely; and we suggest "The Antiquary," "The Heart of Midlothian," "Old Mortality," and "The Bride of Lammermoor," by way of celebrating the centenary-and-a-half;—Scottish to the core, the whole quartet, but that is no ill recommendation in Dunedin. As for Mr Stalker's unromantic representation of Scott the man, we shall quote a passage from a Times review: Anyone who wants to come near the character of Scott, or to analyse the nature of his charm, must give full weight to the fact that he spent hours every day during the greater part of his life with the creatures of his imagination. . . . Long before it was & question of earning money Scott was living with the Kings and Barons and balladmakers of the past. When it c&me to writing he had merely to turn on the tap and the accumulated resources rushed out. That this is not the way in which the works of Flaubert wore produced is certain; but it is also probable that genius of a certain type must work unconsciously, like a natural force which issues unchecked, almost unnoticed by its possessor. To read Scott's life and not to see that he was perpetually under the sway of this power is to miss the flavour and proportion of the whole. He had no say in the matter. Whether he wrote well or ill, for money or for pleasure, Scott was as much the slave of his imagination as a drunkard is the slave of his dram. Perhaps the best Scott of all is not the poet or the novelist, or even the hero of , Lockhart's faithful and masterly narrative, but the self-revealed Scott of the "Journal." And the last wistful word on every commemorative occasion may well be Tennyson's: 0 great and gallant Scott, — True gentleman, heart, blood, and bone! 1 would it had been my lot To have seen thee and heard thee and known.