Читать книгу The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 23

CHAPTER XIX.

In the spring of 1797 there were few men whose literary reputation stood higher than that of Matthew Gregory Lewis. Time has shortened that stature, as it has laughed at his own diminutive proportions. To do him justice, we must look at what he did in relation to his own time. He had written a romance, The Monk, which was of a universal popularity. It had given him the nickname of Monk Lewis, by which he became more generally known. He was a lover of poetry, and, if not a great poet, he had a sound technique, and he did not attempt more than he was capable of doing, which is not a universal wisdom among men of literature. He was an enthusiastic collector of ballads. He had a design of bringing out a volume of such pieces which was to be entitled Tales of Terror, for which he was collecting materials. William Erskine went up to London, and met him there. He talked about his friend, Walter Scott, and showed the two translated ballads which had been so abortively printed. He said there were others to be obtained from the same source.

Correspondence followed. From the cottage of Lasswade, there came a packet of manuscript ballads, complete or in draft, such as Scott had written at the time, and considered suitable to offer for such a collection. Lockhart, as is usual, is unfair to both men in the relations that followed. He first sneers at Lewis’s literary status, depreciating it below its actual level, and then makes the absurd suggestion that Scott owed him a heavy debt because the reading of Lewis’s “Ballads of Alonso the Brave etc., had rekindled effectually in his breast the spark of poetical ambition.” If Scott had needed a ‘spark’ to be ‘rekindled’ by such means he would not have been a poet at all. But, as in other instances where Lockhart represents Scott as a weak vessel whose course is steered by stronger wills, or who is inspired by stronger creative impulses than his own, examination shows it to be no more than random assertion, as entirely without external evidence as it is without inherent probability.

Scott was the younger, though the abler man. When Lewis came to Edinburgh in the autumn, and asked him to dinner at his hotel, he was naturally pleased, or even excited at the opportunity. To have responded differently would have shown an absurd conceit, which Scott never had. That he was generous in his estimate of the abilities of others, sometimes to excess, was true throughout his life. But in this case he was in the position of a young officer, inexperienced and unproved, who is noticed by a famous and victorious general, and invited to join his staff.

Lewis stayed for some time in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and Scott and he saw much of each other. Lewis visited him at Musselburgh, lodging with him in narrow quarters, while he was in training with his regiment there. They were together (probably on an invitation of Scott’s procuring) at Dalkeith House. The Scotts had improved acquaintance, during the summer at Lasswade, with the young Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Dalkeith House being only two or three miles down the Esk valley, as they had with the Clerks at Pennycuick, about twice as far in the opposite direction, and with other of Scott’s numberless friends whose country houses were within riding distance. It was on this occasion that Saunder’s caricature of Monk Lewis, representing him as a dark-lanterned, cloak-muffled cut-throat was passed round, with exclamations of appreciation at the likeness achieved. The Duke of Bucclench objected “Like Mat Lewis! Why that picture’s like a man,” and was disconcerted on turning round to find that Lewis was standing beside him. The remark was, of course, in derision of one who Scott describes as “the least man I ever saw, to be strictly well and neatly made.”

Lewis went back to London before the end of the year, taking with him a translation of Goethe’s tragedy, ‘Goetz,’ which Scott had now completed. His friendly interest was successful in placing it almost immediately with a London publisher, and actually inducing him to give £25 for the first edition. This was in January. The play appeared in the following month, Lewis making a better bargain for the unknown author than he would have been likely to be able to do for himself, had stipulated for a further £25 if a second edition should be required. “I have made him” (the publisher, Bell) “distinctly understand that, if you accept so small a sum, it will be only because this is your first publication,” Lewis wrote, when sending on the offer of the first payment. So it was, on the London market.

There was no call for a second edition. Lockhart suggests the explanation to lie in the change of literary fashion which was tiring of some of the absurdities of contemporary German literature, and rejected all indiscriminately in its revulsion of feeling. So it may have been, but no explanation is really needed. Scott’s pre-eminence was not in the translation of German drama, and the demand for such a work from a new author was not likely to be large.

Still, its acceptance and publication was a success, through whatever influence it had been negotiated. The friendship of Mat Lewis had borne an early fruit, and it may have been the deciding argument in the resolution to visit London which was almost immediately taken. Goetz was published in February. In the following month, Mr. & Mrs. Walter Scott were in London together, sharing M. Dumergue’s hospitality. It was the first time he had been there since Janet had stopped with him on the road to Bath. He had a short period of exploration among its historical and architectural treasures; some pleasant meetings, on Lewis’s introduction, with London literary circles; others, doubtless, among Charlotte’s earlier friends. But the visit was quickly and abruptly terminated by a letter which brought the news of his father’s death.

He had sent to Lewis, or left with him a play, The House of Aspen, which had also been written during the first year of his married life. It is said to have been brought to Kemble’s notice, and actually reached the point of rehearsal, though it was never acted in public. It is unlikely that it would have had any popular success. Its chief interest is in its lyrics; and their importance is of a negative kind. They show that the almost flawless perfection of form which Scott ultimately attained in this class of composition, a perfection which is so complete as to appear effortless, was not reached without practice, by the path of comparative failure, which is the common experience.