SCOTT’S GENIUS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19863, 4 February 1920, Page 4

SCOTT’S GENIUS.

WHAT HE DID FOR HIS COUNTRY. A PIONEER OF THE PEN. Tne Right Hon Viscount Bryce, President of the Edinburgh Sir Valter Scott Club, presided over a company at the twenty-first annual dinner of the club in Edinburgh. Viscoun. Bryce, in proposing “the Mem?v? of Sir Valter’Scott,” said that one thing he learned to realise in after years was how jpuch Walter Scott nccompbshed _foi* ocotrland. It had often heen sajcl that he was the first to bring the Highlands and Lowlands together, enabling each of the two sections of one country (not always previously too mendly) to be each proud of ihe other, tlo wts also the first Scottish writer to break down those prejudices 'with which so many Englishmen—and notably Dr Johnson—had regarded the Scotsmen who camo south, misconceiving tho disinterested spirit which had brought them to help what was (in their view) the more inert country to prosperity in peace and victory in war. (Laughter and applause.) .. Certainly after Sir Walter Scott’s time there were no more Dr Johnsons to carp or gird at Scotland- But Scott did even more. Ho made our country known to the outer world as it had never been known before. And. lastly, he added a new charm to tho scenery of our country by the sentit"e”t o' poetry with which he had clothed tho scenery of ouv hills, lakes and rivers. He had made Perthshire Argyllshire and Galloway and Shetland, and even the stern, grey coast of East Lothian, enchanted lands, which seem still haunted by the beings to which his imagination has given 4 local dwelling and a name. NEW FASHION IN POETRY. To most of them the poetry of Scott was known before his prose. Some of the younger generation had a very different taste from their great-grand-fathers. They like complexity, and subtlety, and at all hazard novelty, even when fantastic. Even obscurity seemed to have an attraction. It ha*' become fashionable to use metres which some of the old-fashioned could hardly scan. Simplicity was. accounted banality. Even Tennyson, elaborately finished as Jus work was, has been dethroned as infected with conventional morality. Nevertheless, poetry, like wisdom, was through the ages justified of all hor children, and simplicity like Scott’s would some day be valued aa it deserved. Ho wrote quickly—perhaps sometimes too quickly—just because his mind was He was content with the old familiar human, themes, treatC( I l n the old direct and simple way. It was perhaps because historical pictures and bits of dissertation occasionally delayed tho movement of the narrative that the last and tho present generations had coniplained that there was not enough either of analysis on tho one hand or of incident on tho °ther in the Waverley Novels. ■ Thev would have preferred brief and sensationally telling pieces, or character problems, such as the modern short story- now in vogue here, and still more in America, presented, and the art of composing which was now taught as professionals taught golf. THE SHORT STORY ART. While' venturing to think the view mistaken, one might reply that if Scott had cared to give more of what they desired he could have done so, at least as effectively as any of our contemporary authors. He instanced such sketches as "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror and " The Highland Widow ” "r a single instance or episode of life was set before them with, the solemnity and pathos that only a o- re at genius could command. ' . In Conclusion he said that nearly a century had passed since Scott’s pen droppsd from his weakening hand; a century which had seen many changes in thought, and taste,, as well as in politics. _ But the great works of miagination survived all these changes. , The fame of Walter Scott would stand finn-rooted as Tantallon and the Bass, to be a glory not to Him on y, bufc also to his dearly-loved Scottish Border and his own romantic town.' (Applause.)