CHAPTER XVII.

SCOTT IN IRELAND.

N the close of 1822 Scott commenced
Quentin Durward, but was considerably

retarded by his environment with the various clubs,-Bannatyne, Roxburgh, Blair Adam, etc., of which he was a member, as well as by his connection with some of those joint-stock companies, such as the Edinburgh Oil Company, which were beginning to spring up like mushrooms around him. The subject was probably suggested to him by the return of his friend Mr. Skene from France, bringing along with him drawings and landscapes of that beautiful land, besides an accurately kept and well-written journal. It was, however, a drawback to the novelist that he had never visited the country himself, and he got at times perplexed and bewildered amidst the localities he was compelled to describe.

In June 1823 the novel appeared, fitly coming out amidst the blaze and splendour of summer, for it is one of the gayest and most buoyant of all his tales. At home it was, strange to tell, not well received at first, but was welcomed on the Continent with a burst of applause so loud and unanimous, that its spent echo returned on this country was fame. The power was seen to lie, first of all, in the youthful freshness breathing out of Quentin himself, one of the most life-like of all Scott's heroes; again, in the unmitigated interest of the story, and the elastic, easy force of the style; but especially in the contrast, drawn out with a line so long and bold, between the bull-headed Burgundy and the crafty, cunning, unscrupulous, cruel, and superstitious Louis XI. Shakspeare in many of his plays adds a fool to his dramatis personæ as a foil, a wild ornament, and a running commentary. Scott often uses, for a similar purpose, a villain with a dash of romance in him, and never with more effect than in Hayraddin Maugrabin the Bohemian, who is no commonplace town blackguard, but a poetical ragamuffin, his eye flashing with a mystic fire, with strange Oriental blasphemies mingling with unmeasured leasings as they flow out of his supple yet burning lips, and his swarthy countenance, seeming to shine, not in the light of

sun or moon, but in the weird lustre of the star Aldeboran, the Cynosure for ages of his wandering race. Scott puts into his mouth a 'dying speech,' but there is no 'confession,' unless it be of his hardened, hopeless, and glorying atheism. How he dashes his daring hand into the waters of annihilation before plunging amidst them! Danton alone has equalled the following burst: 'Soul! Name not that word to me again. There is, there can be, there shall be no such thing: it is a dream of priestcraft. My hope, trust, and expectation is that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt into the general mass of nature, to be recompounded in the other forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear, and return under different forms, -the watery particles to streams and showers, the earthy parts to enrich their mother earth, the airy portions to wanton in the breeze, and those of fire to supply the blaze of Aldeboran and his brethren. In this faith have I lived, and in this faith shall I die!'

In August 1823 Abbotsford was brightened still more by the presence of Miss Edgeworth; and a most delightful reunion took place between two spirits who, notwithstanding great disparity of genius, resembled each other in nature, simplicity, healthiness, humour, good sense, and the power of

painting the manners of primitive races.

The

harvest moon of that beautiful season saw no happier hearts,

'In all that slept beneath her soft voluptuous ray,'

than hers who produced Castle Rackrent and Ennui, and his who had equalled if not surpassed them both in Waverley and Guy Mannering. It was a fortnight of unmingled felicity to them, and the whole party circling round them.

About the middle of December Scott published St. Ronan's Well, where, again, the old layer of weak and commonplace matter made its appearance, and that so prominently, that not the most forcible writing in parts was able to counteract its influence. As in the story, the hostelry of Meg Dodds was injured by the tawdry modern hotel with its gimcrack inhabitants. The villain of the tale was too bad, and as mean as he was detestable; and the termination was painfully tragic. There was no tedium, however, in the slip-slop matter, and the power of the master came out ever and anon in all its plenitude. Indeed, the characters of this novel are wonderfully fresh and numerous. There is Meg Dodds herself, the queen of alehousekeepers, the lady of Luckies, the modern and more than Mrs. Quickly; Clara Mowbray, the very

crack, in whose mirror-like mind follows always the waving line of beauty, and whose death is so overpoweringly pathetic; Touchwood, that noble old Nabob; Captain MacTurk, with his short red nose, snuffing Glenlivet or gunpowder in every wind, and fearing the broom of Meg Dodds more than a whole battery of cannon; the melancholy Tyrrell; Joseph Cargill, the sad, gifted, amiable, dreaming recluse; Solmes, the double-faced sombre scoundrel; Mucklewham, the well-named doer, or man of Scottish business in the past age; the odd urchin who crosses Tekyll on his way to the well; Bindloose, the wary banker; the old humpbacked postilion, who (a thing Thomas Aird specially notices), when Tyrrell, who had been thought dead, reappears, flees into the stable, and -a touch of quite Shakspearean verisimilitudebegins in the extremity of his terror to saddle a horse; and last, not least, the inimitable Widow Blower, changing Dr. Quackleben's name at every second sentence, and at last changing her own, and becoming Mrs. Quackleben, and who is led to the nuptial altar like a fat hog to sacrifice, rejoicing in her fillet braws.' Such variety and richness of character found in one of Scott's second-class novels is something quite wonderful. The village of Inverleithen, although not at all like St. Ronan's