SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 15

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

MR BALDWIN’S FIRST LOVE. A CHOICE OF THE NOVELS. (From Otje Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 21. Mr Stanley Baldwin was the chief guest at the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club last- week, and’ proposed the immortal memory of the poet and novelist. “ The . first hooks in the library at home which swam into my ken were the author’s edition of the novels with the uniform editions of the poems and prose works. Before I could read them I used to pore over the little steel engraved frontispieces. The picture of Di Vernon in her father’s arms stirred my romantic heart very much—l will confess to you that she was my first love. “ The vignette of Dirk Hatterick breaking Glossin’s neck strengthened my faith in the ultimate justice that rules the world. " When I was nine and ten I was reading several of the novels aloud in the long autumn and winter afternoons to an indulgent aunt, and for months at a time we lived in the world of which we read. Marmkm and the Lay were devoured about the same time, and I would declaim either by heart or sometimes with a book in my hand as * tramped the lanes or sat under a hedge to rest.”

MADE SCOTLAND REALISE HERSELF. “The world of the Lay, of Rob Roy, of Marmion, of Guy Mannering, and , The Pirate was that in which so much of my childhood lived and had its being. But I can remember now my consternation and amazement when I* found after my first forty-eight hours at a private school that none of my coevals in my new environment had heard of Scott. Being one who liked going his own way with as little friction as possible, I dreamed my own dreams and kept my own counsel.

"If I had to chose a handful of Scott’s novels to be my companions in prison or on a desert island,” said Mr Baldwin in another part of his speech, “ I should unhesitatingly select the Scottish volumes. Give me ‘ Guy Manuering,’ ‘The Antiquary,’ ‘Old Mortality.’ ‘The Heart of Midlothian,’ and ‘ Rob Roy.’ Ido not forget ‘ Sir Nigel’ or the ‘ Fair Maid of Perth,’ or ‘ Waverley,’ yet why not make my five into a round half-dozen and throw in ‘ Redgauntlet V”

Scott at one blow, as it were, made Scotland realise herself, and threw the glamour of romance over her, not only in Scotland, but in every civilised’ country of the world. “Who but Scott could have put George IV in a kilt! ” asked Mr Baldwin, aihid laughter.

SOUL OF FEUDALISM, “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, “To generation after generation of men,_ stumbling along in their quest of the ideal, distracted- by the noise and confusion of the world/ and the perpetual strife of tongues, Scott comes like the wind on the heath, blowing away the mists and the miasmas, illuminating the path of honour and courage and wisdom and sweet sanity. Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light for us"i’ the dark to rise by.”