Walter Scott: the Critical Heritage the Critical Heritage Series
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WALTER SCOTT: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES General Editor: B.C.Southam The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death. WA LT E R S C OT T THE CRITICAL HERITAGE Edited by JOHN O.HAYDEN London and New York First Published in 1970 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1970 John O.Hayden All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ISBN 0-203-19771-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-19774-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13427-7 (Print Edition) General Editor’s Preface The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near- contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures. The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly for many of the highly-productive and lengthily-reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality—perhaps even registering incomprehension! For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear. In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access, and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged. B.C.S. This book is for Mary Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS page xiii NOTE ON THE TEXT xiv INTRODUCTION 1 The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) 1 Review in Literary Journal 1805 25 Marmion (1808) 2 FRANCIS JEFFREY in Edinburgh Review 1808 35 The Lady of the Lake (1810) 3 Review in British Critic 1810 52 4 COLERIDGE: a letter to Wordsworth 1810 56 Rokeby (1813) 5 Review in British Review 1813 62 Waverley (1814) 6 Review in British Critic 1814 67 7 JANE AUSTEN: a comment 1814 74 8 MARIA EDGEWORTH: a letter 1814 75 9 FRANCIS JEFFREY in Edinburgh Review 1814 79 The Field of Waterloo (1815) 10 Review in La Belle Assembleé 1815 85 Guy Mannering (1815) 11 WORDSWORTH on Scott’s first novels 1815 86 12 Review in Augustan Review 1815 87 The Lord of the Isles (1815) 13 GEORGE ELLIS in Quarterly Review 1815 90 ix CONTENTS The Antiquary (1816) 14 JOHN WILSON CROKER in Quarterly Review 1816 page 98 15 Review in British Lady’s Magazine 1816 104 The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816) 16 Review in Critical Review 1816 106 17 SCOTT in Quarterly Review 1817 113 18 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK in a serious mood 1818 144 Rob Roy (1818) 19 Review in European Magazine 1818 146 20 E.T.CHANNING in North American Review 1818 148 The Heart of Midlothian (1818) 21 Review in British Review 1818 165 22 SYDNEY SMITH on the novels 1819–23 172 Ivanhoe (1820) 23 Notice in Monthly Magazine 1820 177 24 COLERIDGE on the novels 1820s 178 The Monastery (1820) 25 Review in Ladies’ Monthly Museum 1820 185 Ivanhoe (1820) [cont] 26 Review in Eclectic Review 1820 188 27 A shepherd’s tribute 1820 195 28 J.L.ADOLPHUS on the works and their authorship 1821 197 29 NASSAU SENIOR surveys the novels in Quarterly Review 1821 215 The Pirate (1821) 30 Review in Examiner 1821 256 x CONTENTS The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) 31 Review in General Weekly Register 1822 page 261 32 SCOTT: plot construction and the historical novel 1822 263 Halidon Hill (1822) 33 Review in Eclectic Review 1822 269 Quentin Durward (1823) 34 Review in New Monthly Magazine 1823 272 35 HAZLITT: Scott and the spirit of the age in New Monthly Magazine 1825 279 Woodstock (1826) 36 Review in Westminster Review 1826 290 37 SCOTT on his imitators 1826 299 38 WILLIAM MAGINN: burlesque as criticism 1827 302 39 HEINRICH HEINE on Scott 1828, 1837 304 40 GOETHE on Scott 1828, 1831 306 41 MACAULAY: Scott as historical novelist 1828 309 42 An early voice of dissent 1828 310 43 STENDHAL on Scott in Le National 1830 318 44 PEACOCK: Mr. Chainmail and the enchanter 1831 321 45 SAINTE-BEUVE: a French obituary in Le Globe 1832 326 46 BULWER-LYT TO N on historical romance in Fraser’s Magazine 1832 328 47 Scott’s intellectual qualities in Monthly Repository 1832 332 48 W.B.O.PEABODY defends Scott’s poetry 1833 336 49 HARRIET MARTINEAU: Scott as moral hero in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 1833 340 50 J.G.LOCKHART on Scott 1837 342 51 CARLYLE: the amoral Scott in London and Westminster Review 1838 345 52 BALZAC on Scott 1838, 1840 373 53 CARDINAL NEWMAN: Scott prepared the way, British Critic 1839 378 54 BELINSKY, a Russian contemporary looks at Scott 1844 379 xi CONTENTS 55 WORDSWORTH’S later views 1844 page 381 56 A question of history in Fraser’s Magazine 1847 382 57 WA LTE R BAGEHOT on Scott in National Review 1858 394 58 H.A.TA I N E on Scott 1863 421 59 HENRY JAMES in North American Review 1864 427 60 MRS. OLIPHANT to the defence in Blackwood’s Magazine 1871 432 61 LESLIE STEPHEN: hours in a library with Scott in Cornhill Magazine 1871 439 62 A centenary view—Scott’s characters, in Athenaeum 1871 459 63 A late centenary view in London Quarterly 1872 469 64 GLADSTONE on The Bride of Lammermoor 1870s (?) 474 65 R.L.STEVENSON on Scott’s place in literary history, in Cornhill Magazine 1874 475 66 GEORGE BRANDES: morality as drawback 1875 478 67 R.H.HUTTON: Scott as man of letters 1878 481 68 JULIA WEDGWOOD: ‘the romantic reaction’, in Contemporary Review 1878 499 69 RUSKIN: ‘Fiction—Fair and Foul’ in Nineteenth Century 1880 522 70 TWAIN: Scott as warmonger 1883 537 APPENDIX: LIST OF REVIEWS OF SCOTT’S NOVELS 541 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 549 SELECT INDEX 550 xii Acknowledgments I would like to thank T.M.Raysor for permission to quote from his edition of Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Criticism (1936); Oliver and Boyd for permission to quote several passages from Tait and Parker’s edition of The Journal of Sir Walter Scott (1939–47); A.P.Watt & Son for permission to quote from W.G.Partington’s edition of The Private Letter Books of Sir Walter Scott (published in the United States by Frederick Stokes Co., copyright 1930 Wilfred George Partington, copyright renewed 1958 by Audrey Mary Ormrod); The Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, for permission to quote from V.G.Belinsky’s Selected Philosophical Works (1956); the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for permission to quote from E.L.Grigg’s edition of the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1956–59), from Ernest De Selincourt’s edition of The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years (1937), from R.W.Chapman’s edition of Jane Austen’s Letters, 2nd ed. (1952), and N.C.Smith’s edition of The Letters of Sydney Smith (1953); and Charles Scribner’s Sons for permission to quote from Sidney Colvin’s Memories and Notes of Persons and Places (1921); Calder & Boyers Ltd. for permission to reproduce the translation of Stendhal’s ‘Walter Scott and La Princesse de Clèves’ (1959). James T.Hillhouse’s account of the reception of Scott’s novels and James C.Corson’s annotated bibliography of Scott were of inestimable value, the former especially in composing the introduction, the latter especially in the selection and location of items. A debt of another nature I owe to the Interlibrary Loan Department of the University of California, Davis, Library: Vera Loomis, Susan Moger, Mary Ann Hoffman, Jeri Bone, and Loraine Freidenberger. Their professional competence and expedition were essential to my project; their friendliness obligates me still further. I would also like to express my appreciation to my colleague at Davis, Mr.