tiquary, 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. And yet there is no artificiality, no elaborate attitudinizing before the antique mirrors of the past, like Bulwer's, no dressing-out of clothes-horses, like G. P. R. James. 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, school-masters, mercenary soldiers, gypsies, 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 rather less of one than before. 2. Next, though most of these stories are rightly called romances, no one can avoid observing that they give that side of life which is unromantic quite as vigorously as the romantic side. This was not true of Scott's poems, which only expressed one half of his nature, and were almost pure romances. But in the novels the business of life is even better portrayed than its sentiments. Indeed, it was because Scott so much enjoyed the contrasts between the high sentiments of life and its dry and often absurd detail, that his imagination found so much freer a vent in the historical romance than it ever found in the romantic poem. Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of picturesque scenes and historical interests, too. I do not think he would ever have gained any brilliant success in the narrower region of the domestic novel. He said himself, in expressing his admiration of Miss Austen: "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiments, is denied to me." Indeed, he tried it to some extent in St. Ronan's Well, and, so far as he tried it, I think he failed. Scott needed a certain largeness of type, a strong-marked class-life, and, where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his delineations. No one could paint beggars and gypsies, and wandering fiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, peasants and farmers and lawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen, and, best of all, perhaps, queens and kings, with anything like his ability. 3. I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as it seems to say so, should be greatly attributed to his natural chivalry. His conception of women of his own or a higher class was always too romantic. He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them, to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies of character. With women of an inferior class, he had not this feeling. Nothing can be more perfect than the manner in which he blends the dairy-women and women of business in Jeanie Deans with the lover and the sister. But once make a woman beautiful, or in any way an object of homage to him, and Scott bowed so low before the image of her that he could not go deep into her heart. He could no more have analyzed such a woman, as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castlewood, or Amelia, or Becky, or as George Eliot analyzed Rosamond Vincy, than he could have vivisected Camp or Maida.' To some extent, therefore, Scott's pictures of women remain something in the style of the miniatures of the last age-bright and beautiful beings without any special character in them. He was dazzled by a fair heroine. He could not take them up into his imagination as real beings as he did men. But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble ! 4. Some of the finest touches of Scott's humor are no doubt much heightened by his perfect command of the genius as well as the dialect of a peasantry in whom a true culture of mind and sometimes also of heart is found in the closest possible contact with the humblest pursuits and the quaintest enthusiasm for them. But Scott, with all his turn for irony-and Mr. Lockhart says that even on his death-bed he used towards his children the same sort of good-humored irony to which he had always accustomed them in his life-certainly never gives us any example of 1 Scott's dogs. that highest irony which is found so frequently in Shakespeare, which touches the paradoxes of the spiritual life of the children of earth, and which reached its highest point in Isaiah. The irony of Hamlet is far from Scott. His imagination was essentially one of distinct embodiment. He never even seemed so much as to contemplate that sundering of substance and form, that rending away of outward garments, that unclothing of the soul, in order that it might be more effectually clothed upon, which is at the heart of anything that may be called spiritual irony. The constant abiding of his mind within the well-defined forms of some one or other of the conditions of outward life and manners, among the scores of different spheres of human habit, was, no doubt, one of the secrets of his genius; but it was also its greatest limitation. THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT AND THE SARACEN CAVALIER. [INTRODUCTION.—The passage at arms here given forms the introductory chapter of Scott's novel of the Talisman, the finest of his Oriental romances. The "Christian Knight" is the hero of the tale, and the "Saracen Cavalier" is Saladin. The portraits are drawn with great power.] 1. The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant northern home, and joined the host of the crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, where the waves of the 5 Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no discharge of waters. LITERARY ANALYSIS.-To what class of literary composition does the Talisman belong? Ans. To the historical novel. 1-7. The burning... waters. Observe the masterly manner in which, in a single sentence, the scene and the principal actor in the romance are brought before the reader's imagination.—By what form of words does Scott make the statement that it was not yet noon? 5, 6. where... sea. What word in this clause is an infelicitous repetition of a word in the preceding member? Can you remodel and improve the last part of the sentence? 2. Upon this scene of desolation the sun shone with almost intolerable splendor, and all living nature seemed to have hidden itself from the rays, excepting the solitary figure which 10 moved through the flitting sand at a foot's pace, and appeared the sole breathing thing on the wide surface of the plain. 3. The dress of the rider and the accoutrements of his horse were peculiarly unfit for the traveller in such a country. A coat of linked mail, with long sleeves, plated gauntlets, and a steel 15 breastplate had not been esteemed a sufficient weight of armor; there was, also, his triangular shield suspended round his neck, and his barred helmet of steel, over which he had a hood and collar of mail, which was drawn around the warrior's shoulders and throat, and filled up the vacancy between the hauberk and 20 the head-piece. His lower limbs were sheathed, like his body, in flexible mail, securing the legs and thighs, while the feet rested in plated shoes, which corresponded with the gauntlets. 4. A long, broad, straight-shaped, double-edged falchion, with a handle formed like a cross, corresponded with a stout poniard on 25 the other side. The knight also bore, secured to his saddle, with one end resting on his stirrup, the long steel-headed lance, his own proper weapon, which, as he rode, projected backwards, and displayed its little pennoncel, to dally with the faint breeze, or drop in the dead calm. To this cumbrous equipment must be 30 added a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and worn, which was thus far useful, that it excluded the burning rays of the sun from the armor, which they would otherwise have rendered intolerable to the wearer. LITERARY ANALYSIS.-8-12. Upon ... plain. What kind of sentence grammatically? What two synonymous verbs are used in this sentence?-By what touch does the author convey a vivid impression of the lifeless desolation of the desert? Of what statement in the sentence is the last member a repetition? 13-34. The dress...wearer. In the description of costume Scott is always peculiarly at home. Observe the skilful manner in which the details are presented. Give the meaning of the following terms (see Dictionary): "mail" (15); "helmet" (18); "hauberk" (20); "falchion" (24); "poniard" (25); "pennoncel" (29). 17. there was. What is the logical subject of "was ?" Query as to the grammar. 5. The surcoat bore, in several places, the arms of the owner, 35 although much defaced. These seemed to be a couchant leopard, with the motto, "I sleep-wake me not." An outline of the same device might be traced on his shield, though many a blow had almost effaced the painting. The flat top of his cumbrous cylindrical helmet was unadorned with any crest. In retaining 40 their own unwieldy defensive armor, the northern crusaders seemed to set at defiance the nature of the climate and country to which they were come to war. 6. The accoutrements of the horse were scarcely less massive and unwieldy than those of the rider. The animal had a heavy 45 saddle plated with steel, uniting in front with a species of breastplate, and behind with defensive armor made to cover the loins. Then there was a steel axe, or hammer, called a mace-of-arms, and which hung to the saddle-bow; the reins were secured by chain work, and the front stall of the bridle was a steel plate, 50 with apertures for the eyes and nostrils, having in the midst a short, sharp pike, projecting from the forehead of the horse like the horn of the fabulous unicorn. 7. But habit had made the endurance of this load of panoply* a second nature, both to the knight and his gallant charger. 55 Numbers, indeed, of the western warriors who hurried to Palestine died ere they became inured to the burning climate; but there were others to whom that climate became innocent, and even friendly, and among this fortunate number was the solitary horseman who now traversed the border of the Dead Sea. 8. Nature, which cast his limbs in a mould of uncommon strength, fitted to wear his linked hauberk with as much ease as if the meshes had been formed of cobwebs, had endowed him with a constitution as strong as his limbs, and which bade defi LITERARY ANALYSIS. tence. 37. with the motto. 43. were come to war. speech is "war" here? 35, 36. The surcoat... defaced. Analyze this sen To what word is this phrase an adjunct? Remark on the form "were come."-What part of 54-60. In paragraph 7, seventeen words are of classical origin: what are these words? 61-66. Nature... kind. Point out a simile and a personification in this sentence. 60 |