CHAPTER VII--Same Subject continued.

Now what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people

Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think

that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he

had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking

about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit

to govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious,

worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they

swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed

in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an

abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in

general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate,

careless king, nominally absolute--the heads of great houses paying court

to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the

plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the

literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to

be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so

that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no

wonder he admired such a church as that of Rome, and that which Laud set

up; and by nature formed to be the holder of the candle to ancient worm-

eaten and profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies were

with the Stuarts and their dissipated insolent party, and all his hatred

directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their

proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a

state of vassalage, that is, wretchedness. Those who were born great,

were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however

worthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always to

remain so, however great their talents; though, if that rule were carried

out, where would he have been himself?

In the book which he called the "History of Napoleon Bonaparte," in which

he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe,

whatever their crimes, vices, or miserable imbecilities, he, in his

abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself

illustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of a

Marseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselves

hoity-toity airs--and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to

giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than

themselves with their birth {6} and their country--it is a great pity

that such people do not look at home-son of a pastry-cook, of a

Marseilleise pastry-cook! Well, and what was Scott himself? Why, son of

a pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger. "Oh, but Scott was descended

from the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, and therefore--" descended from

old cow-stealers, was he? Well, had he nothing to boast of beyond such a

pedigree, he would have lived and died the son of a pettifogger, and been

forgotten, and deservedly so; but he possessed talents, and by his

talents rose like Murat, and like him will be remembered for his talents

alone, and deservedly so. "Yes, but Murat was still the son of a pastry-

cook, and though he was certainly good at the sabre, and cut his way to a

throne, still--" Lord! what fools there are in the world; but as no one

can be thought anything of in this world without a pedigree, the writer

will now give a pedigree for Murat, of a very different character from

the cow-stealing one of Scott, but such a one as the proudest he might

not disdain to claim. Scott was descended from the old cow-stealers of

Buccleuch--was he? Good! and Murat was descended from the old Moors of

Spain, from the Abencerages (sons of the saddle) of Granada. The name

Murat is Arabic, and is the same as Murad (Le Desire, or the wished-for

one). Scott in his genteel Life of Bonaparte, says that "when Murat was

in Egypt, the similarity between the name of the celebrated Mameluke

Mourad and that of Bonaparte's Meilleur Sabreur was remarked, and became

the subject of jest amongst the comrades of the gallant Frenchman." But

the writer of the novel of Bonaparte did not know that the names were one

and the same. Now which was the best pedigree, that of the son of the

pastry-cook, or that of the son of the pettifogger? Which was the best

blood? Let us observe the workings of the two bloods. He who had the

blood of the "sons of the saddle" in him, became the wonderful cavalier

of the most wonderful host that ever went forth to conquest, won for

himself a crown, and died the death of a soldier, leaving behind him a

son, only inferior to himself in strength, in prowess, and in

horsemanship. The descendant of the cow-stealer became a poet, a novel

writer, the panegyrist of great folk and genteel people; became insolvent

because, though an author, he deemed it ungenteel to be mixed up with the

business part of the authorship; died paralytic and broken-hearted

because he could no longer give entertainments to great folks, leaving

behind him, amongst other children, who were never heard of, a son, who,

through his father's interest, had become lieutenant-colonel in a genteel

cavalry regiment. A son who was ashamed of his father because his father

was an author; a son who--paugh--why ask which was the best blood?

So, owing to his rage for gentility, Scott must needs become the

apologist of the Stuarts and their party; but God made this man pay

dearly for taking the part of the wicked against the good; for lauding up

to the skies the miscreants and robbers, and calumniating the noble

spirits of Britain, the salt of England, and his own country. As God had

driven the Stuarts from their throne, and their followers from their

estates, making them vagabonds and beggars on the face of the earth,

taking from them all that they cared for, so did that same God, who knows

perfectly well how and where to strike, deprive the apologist of that

wretched crew of all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of

which paralysed him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others,

loathsome to himself,--so much so, that he once said, "Where is the

beggar who would change places with me, notwithstanding all my fame?" Ah!

God knows perfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all

his literary fame to the very last--his literary fame for which he cared

nothing; but what became of the sweetness of life, his fine house, his

grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his;

he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur

it might still retain, it soon became as desolate a looking house as any

misanthrope could wish to see--where were the grand entertainments and

the grand company? there are no grand entertainments where there is no

money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments--and there

lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer

his, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable.

Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the

"Minstrel" and "Rob Roy,"--telling him to think of his literary fame?

Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility:--

"Retain my altar,

I care nothing for it--but, oh! touch not my _beard_."

PORNY'S _War of the Gods_.

He dies, his children die too, and then comes the crowning judgment of

God on what remains of his race and the house which he had built. He was

not a Papist himself, nor did he wish any one belonging to him to be

Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be

saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would

at times in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing and

discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and

vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished--but he certainly did not

wish any of his people to become Papists, nor the house which he had

built to become a Popish house, though the very name he gave it savoured

of Popery; but Popery becomes fashionable through his novels and

poems--the only one that remains of his race, a female grandchild,

marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makes

her a Papist too. Money abounds with the husband, who buys the house,

and then the house becomes the rankest Popish house in Britain. A

superstitious person might almost imagine that one of the old Scottish

Covenanters, whilst the grand house was being built from the profits

resulting from the sale of writings favouring Popery and persecution, and

calumniatory of Scotland's saints and martyrs, had risen from the grave,

and banned Scott, his race, and his house, by reading a certain psalm.

In saying what he has said about Scott, the author has not been

influenced by any feeling of malice or ill-will, but simply by a regard

for truth, and a desire to point out to his countrymen the harm which has

resulted from the perusal of his works;--he is not one of those who would

depreciate the talents of Scott--he admires his talents, both as a prose

writer and a poet; as a poet especially he admires him, and believes him

to have been by far the greatest, with perhaps the exception of

Mickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate Poland, that Europe has given

birth to during the last hundred years. As a prose writer he admires

him, less, it is true, but his admiration for him in that capacity is

very high, and he only laments that he prostituted his talents to the

cause of the Stuarts and gentility. What book of fiction of the present

century can you read twice, with the exception of "Waverley" and "Rob

Roy?" There is "Pelham," it is true, which the writer of these lines has

seen a Jewess reading in the steppe of Debreczin, and which a young

Prussian Baron, a great traveller, whom he met at Constantinople in '44

told him he always carried in his valise. And, in conclusion, he will

say, in order to show the opinion which he entertains of the power of

Scott as a writer, that he did for the sceptre of the wretched Pretender

what all the kings of Europe could not do for his body--placed it on the

throne of these realms; and for Popery, what Popes and Cardinals strove

in vain to do for three centuries--brought back its mummeries and

nonsense into the temples of the British Isles.

Scott during his lifetime had a crowd of imitators, who, whether they

wrote history so called--poetry so called--or novels--nobody would call a

book a novel if he could call it anything else--wrote Charlie o'er the

water nonsense; and now that he has been dead nearly a quarter of a

century, there are others daily springing up who are striving to imitate

Scott in his Charlie o'er the water nonsense--for nonsense it is, even

when flowing from his pen. They, too, must write Jacobite histories,

Jacobite songs, and Jacobite novels, and much the same figure as the

scoundrel menials in the comedy cut when personating their masters, and

retailing their masters' conversation, do they cut as Walter Scotts. In

their histories, they too talk about the Prince and Glenfinnan, and the

pibroch; and in their songs about "Claverse" and "Bonny Dundee." But

though they may be Scots, they are not Walter Scotts. But it is perhaps

chiefly in the novel that you see the veritable hog in armour; the time

of the novel is of course the '15 or '45; the hero a Jacobite, and

connected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and the

author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what _original_ views he

takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has

occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings

his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a

barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it

by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get

into the Tolbooth, _burning down_ the door.

To express the more than utter foolishness of this latter Charlie o'er

the water nonsense, whether in rhyme or prose, there is but one word, and

that word a Scotch word. Scotch, the sorriest of jargons, compared with

which even Roth Welsch is dignified and expressive, has yet one word to

express what would be inexpressible by any word or combination of words

in any language, or in any other jargon in the world; and very properly;

for as the nonsense is properly Scotch, so should the word be Scotch

which expresses it--that word is "fushionless," pronounced

_fooshionless_; and when the writer has called the nonsense

fooshionless--and he does call it fooshionless--he has nothing more to

say, but leaves the nonsense to its fate.