Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. By J. G. Lockhart. Part Second. pp. 198. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard.

In a notice of the first part of these Memoirs, we expressed an intention of renewing our broken intercourse with them, as they should appear, at intervals. The publication of two additional parts gives us ample scope for selection; and indeed this is all that a reviewer, not inclined to iterate, or 'bestow his tediousness' upon the reader, will be disposed to do. The pages before us are crowded with incidents, and with characteristic sketches of the personal and literary every-day life of their subject; and these, in themselves abundantly attractive, are rendered still more so, as we have already elsewhere remarked, by the pleasant style of the biographer, who will win enduring fame by this contribution to a literature which he had before not a little enriched.

Before entering upon our extracts, we cannot avoid remarking, that throughout the minuter history of the illustrious poet and novelist here presented, we are enabled to see the great secret of a literary career, unparalleled since the era of Shakspeare, if he who wrote for all mankind may be said to have had, or to have, an era. He stands forth, in these volumes, a shining example to all authors who would win a permanent hold upon the public regard. He studied humanity, and the works of nature. He did not content himself with portraying the invisible and non-existent, and with conceiving scenes and personages which have no counterparts in nature or in common life. He held rapt intercourse with the mountains, rivers, and vales of Scotland; and he sought the teachings of those natural instructors, the green fields. His ear was ever open to the 'silent voice of Nature, speaking in forms and colors.' The humblest peasant was a picture, and his qualities a study; and the lightest shade of character, in high or low, was not beneath his scrutiny. To this careful perception of nature, in all its forms and phases, he added a course of reading more various and extended, we cannot doubt, than any contemporary on the globe. But, unlike the many who lard their lean books with the fat of other authors, he read only to digest, and to fuse his mind; hence, his resources were never exhausted, even when he was a gray soldier in the literary field, wherein he had borne arms so nobly and so long. How numerous the chaotic fictions, how many the trumpery novels, how large the amount of still-born poetry, now sunk into waste paper and oblivion, which might have been saved to the world, had their producers but followed the example of the author of Waverley! How much worse than useless labor might have been saved to the thousands who, unable to inform have striven to please, and have borne their ponderous loads into the literary mart, and expanded them on the stalls of their hapless publishers! We cannot but hope that, primarily, the publication of these Memoirs will be widely beneficial to novelists and poets, and secondarily, to the reading public; that they will improve the taste of those authors who are content to indulge in superficialities merely; to amuse the imagination, and convey infection to love-sick damsels, without satisfying the judgment, or touching the heart. So mote it be!

We commence our extracts with a brief history of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, a poem 'which has now kept its place for nearly a third of a century:'

"It is curious to trace the small beginnings and gradual development of his design. The lovely Countess of Dalkeith bears a wild rude legend of Border diablerie, and sportively asks him to make it the subject of a ballad. He had been already laboring in the elucidation of the 'quaint Inglis' ascribed to an ancient seer and bard of the same district, and perhaps completed his own sequel, intending the whole to be included in the third volume of the Minstrelsy. He assents to Lady Dalkeith's request, and casts about for some new variety of diction and rhyme, which might be adopted without impropriety in a closing strain for the same collection. Sir John Stoddart's casual recitation, a year or two before, of Coleridge's unpublished Christabel, had fixed the music of that noble fragment in his memory; and it occurs to him, that by throwing the story of Gilpin Horner into somewhat of a similar cadence, he might produce such an echo of the later metrical romance, as would serve to connect his Conclusion of the primitive Sir Tristrem with his imitations of the common popular ballad in the Grey Brother and Eve of St. John. A single scene of feudal festivity in the hall of Branksome, disturbed by some pranks of a nondescript goblin, was probably all that he contemplated; but his accidental confinement in the midst of a volunteer camp gave him leisure to meditate his theme to the sound of the bugle; and suddenly there flashes on him the idea of extending his simple outline, so as to embrace a vivid panorama of that old Border life of war and tumult, and all earnest passions, with which his researches on the 'Minstrelsy' had by degrees fed his imagination, until every the minutest feature had been taken home and realized with unconscious intenseness of sympathy; so that he had won for himself in the past another world, hardly less complete or familiar than the present. Erskine or Cranstoun suggests that he would do well to divide the poem into cantos, and prefix to each of them a motto explanatory of the action, after the fashion of Spenser in the FaËry Queen. He pauses for a moment—and the happiest conception of the frame-work of a picturesque narrative that ever occurred to any poet—one that Homer might have envied—the creation of the ancient harper, starts to life. By such steps did the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' grow out of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.'

"A word more of its felicitous machinery. It was at Bowhill that the Countess of Dalkeith requested a ballad on Gilpin Horner. The ruined castle of Newark closely adjoins that seat, and is now indeed included within its pleasance. Newark had been the chosen residence of the first Duchess of Buccleuch, and he accordingly shadows out his own beautiful friend in the person of her lord's ancestress, the last of the original stock of that great house; himself the favored inmate of Bowhill, introduced certainly to the familiarity of its circle in consequence of his devotion to the poetry of a by-past age, in that of an aged minstrel, 'the last of all the race,' seeking shelter at the gate of Newark, in days when many an adherent of the fallen cause of Stewart—his own bearded ancestor, who had fought at Killiekrankie, among the rest—owed their safety to her who

'In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb.'"

The profits, to Scott, from the several editions of this poem were £769. The sales are given as follows:

"The first edition of the Lay was a magnificent quarto, 750 copies; but this was soon exhausted, and there followed an octavo impression of 1500; in 1806, two more, one of 2000 copies, another of 2550; in 1807, a fifth edition of 2000, and a sixth of 3000; in 1803, 3550; in 1809, 3000—a small edition in quarto (the ballads and lyrical pieces being then annexed to it,) and another octavo edition of 3250; in 1811, 3000; in 1812, 3000; in 1816, 3000; in 1823, 1000. A fourteenth impression of 2000 foolscap appeared in 1825; and besides all this, before the end of 1836, 11,000 copies had gone forth in the collected editions of his poetical works. Thus, nearly forty-four thousand copies had been disposed of in this country, and by the legitimate trade alone, before he superintended the edition of 1830, to which his biographical introductions were prefixed. In the history of British Poetry, nothing had ever equalled the demand for the Lay of the Last Minstrel."

Subsequently to a very interesting account of Scott's partnership with Ballantine, and of his entering actively upon numerous literary projects—including his editions of the British poets, Ancient English Chronicles, Dryden, commencement of Waverley, etc.,—we find the following account of his personal habits of industry:

"He rose by five o'clock, lit his own fire, when the season required one, and shaved and dressed with great deliberation—for he was a very martinet as to all but the mere coxcomberies of the toilet, not abhorring effeminate dandyism itself so cordially as the slightest approach to personal slovenliness, or even those 'bed-gown and slipper tricks,' as he called them, in which literary men are so apt to indulge. Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to use till dinner time, he was seated at his desk by six o'clock, all his papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his books of reference marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one favorite dog lay watching his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation. Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast between nine and ten, he had done enough (in his own language) 'to break the neck of the day's work.' After breakfast, a couple of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as he used to say, 'his own man.' When the weather was bad, he would labor incessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and on horseback by one o'clock at the latest; while, if any more distant excursion had been proposed over night, he was ready to start on it by ten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study forming, as he said, a fund in his favor, out of which he was entitled to draw for accommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness.

"It was another rule, that every letter he received should be answered that same day. Nothing else could have enabled him to keep abreast with the flood of communications that in the sequel put his good nature to the severest test; but already the demands on him in this way also were numerous; and he included attention to them among the necessary business which must be despatched before he had a right to close his writing-box, or, as he phrased it, 'to say out damned spot, and be a gentleman.' In turning over his enormous mass of correspondence, I have almost invariably found some indication that, when a letter had remained more than a day or two unanswered, it had been so because he found occasion for inquiry or deliberate consideration."

In illustration of the correctness of the remarks which introduce these extracts, we give the following passage from a letter of an early friend of Scott to his biographer. It is unnecessary to say, that it is kindred with numerous others which might be selected:

"One of our earliest expeditions was to visit the wild scenery of the mountainous tract above Moffat, including the cascade of the 'Gray Mare's Tail,' and the dark tarn called 'Loch Skene.' In our ascent to the lake, we got completely bewildered in the thick fog which generally envelopes the rugged features of that lonely region; and, as we were groping through the maze of bogs, the ground gave way, and down went horse and horsemen pell-mell into a slough of peaty mud and black water, out of which, entangled as we were with our plaids and floundering nags, it was no easy matter to get extricated. Indeed, unless we had prudently left our gallant steeds at a farm-house below, and borrowed hill ponies for the occasion, the result might have been worse than laughable. As it was, we rose like the spirits of the bog, covered cap-À-pie with slime, to free themselves from which, our wily ponies took to rolling about on the heather, and we had nothing for it but following their example. At length, as we approached the gloomy loch, a huge eagle heaved himself from the margin and rose right over us, screaming his scorn of the intruders; and altogether it would be impossible to picture any thing more desolately savage than the scene which opened, as if raised by enchantment on purpose to gratify the poet's eye; thick folds of fog rolling incessantly over the face of the inky waters, but rent asunder now in one direction, and then in another—so as to afford us a glimpse of some projecting rock or naked point of land, or island, bearing a few scraggy stumps of pine—and then closing again in universal darkness upon the cheerless waste. Much of the scenery of Old Mortality was drawn from that day's ride.

"It was also in the course of this excursion that we encountered that amusing personage introduced into Guy Mannering as 'Tod Gabbie,' though the appellation by which he was known in the neighborhood was 'Tod Willie.' He was one of these itinerants who gain a subsistence among the moorland farmers by relieving them of foxes, pole-cats, and the like depredators—a half-witted, stuttering, and most original creature."

The subjoined extract will serve to show the great humility with which Scott bore his literary honors, at a time when he was beleaguered by the importunities of fashionable admirers. His bearing, says Mr. Lockhart, when first exposed to such influences, was exactly what it was to the end. The Border Minstrel is writing from London, whither he had proceeded upon business connected with an important prospective situation as Clerk of the Edinburgh Sessions, a lucrative and desirable station:

"It will give you pleasure to learn that, notwithstanding some little rubs, I have been able to carry through the transaction which your lordship sanctioned by your influence and approbation, and that in a way very pleasing to my own feelings. Lord Spencer, upon the nature of the transaction being explained in an audience with which he favored me, was pleased to direct the commission to be issued, as an act of justice, regretting, he said, it had not been from the beginning his own deed. This was doing the thing handsomely, and like an English nobleman. I have been very much fÊted and caressed here, almost indeed to suffocation, but have been made amends by meeting some old friends. One of the kindest was Lord Somerville, who volunteered introducing me to Lord Spencer, as much, I am convinced, from respect to your lordship's protection and wishes, as from a desire to serve me personally. He seemed very anxious to do any thing in his power which might evince a wish to be of use to your protegÉ. Lord Minto was also infinitely kind and active, and his influence with Lord Spencer would, I am convinced, have been stretched to the utmost in my favor, had not Lord Spencer's own view of the subject been perfectly sufficient.

"After all, a little literary reputation is of some use here. I suppose Solomon, when he compared a good name to a pot of ointment, meant that it oiled the hinges of the hall-doors into which the possessors of that inestimable treasure wished to penetrate. What a good name was in Jerusalem, a known name seems to be in London. If you are celebrated for writing verses or for slicing cucumbers, for being two feet taller or two feet less than any other biped, for acting plays when you should be whipped at school, or for attending schools and institutions when you should be preparing for your grave, your notoriety becomes a talisman—'an Open Sesame' before which every thing gives way—till you are voted a bore, and discarded for a new plaything. As this is a consummation of notoriety which I am by no means ambitious of experiencing, I hope I shall be very soon able to shape my course northward, to enjoy my good fortune at my leisure."

Elsewhere, a friend thus describes his bearing, in the presence of his London entertainers:

"'Scott,' his friend says, 'more correctly than any other man I ever knew, appreciated the value of that apparently enthusiastic engouement which the world of London shows to the fashionable wonder of the year. During the sojourn of 1809, the homage paid him would have turned the head of any less gifted man of eminence. It neither altered his opinions, nor produced the affectation of despising it; on the contrary, he received it, cultivated it, and repaid it in his own coin. 'All this is very flattering,' he would say, 'and very civil; and if people are amused with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are easily pleased, and a man would be very ill-natured who would not give pleasure so cheaply conferred.' If he dined with us, and found any new faces, 'Well, do you want me to play lion to-day?' was his usual question; 'I will roar, if you like it, to your heart's content.' He would, indeed, in such cases, put forth all his inimitable powers of entertainment; and day after day surprised me by their unexpected extent and variety. Then, as the party dwindled, and we were left alone, he laughed at himself, quoted, 'Yet know that I one Snug the joiner am—no lion fierce,' etc.,—and was at once himself again.

"He often lamented the injurious effects for literature and genius resulting from the influence of London celebrity on weaker minds, especially in the excitement of ambition for this subordinate and ephemeral reputation du salon. 'It may be a pleasant gale to sail with,' he said, 'but it never yet led to a port that I should like to anchor in.'"

In relation to the delightful introductory epistles to Marmion, we find the following:

"He frequently wandered far from home, attended only by his dog, and would return late in the evening, having let hours after hours slip away among the soft and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow creeps from her fountains. The lines,

'Oft in my mind such thoughts awake,
By lone Saint Mary's silent lake,' &c.

paint a scene not less impressive than what Byron found amidst the gigantic pines of the forest of Ravenna; and how completely does he set himself before us in the moment of his gentler and more solemn inspiration, by the closing couplet,

'Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.'

But when the theme was of a more stirring order, he enjoyed pursuing it over brake and fell, at the full speed of his Lieutenant. I well remember his saying, as I rode with him across the hills from Ashestiel to Newark one day in his declining years: 'Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these braes when I was thinking of Marmion, but a trotting canny pony must serve me now.' His friend, Mr. Skene, however, informs me, that many of the more energetic descriptions, and particularly that of the battle of Flodden, were struck out while he was in quarters again with his cavalry, in the autumn of 1807. 'In the intervals of drilling,' he says, 'Scott used to delight in walking his powerful black steed up and down by himself upon the Portobello sands, within the beating of the surge; and now and then you would see him plunge in his spurs and go off as if at the charge, with the spray dashing about him.' As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often came and placed himself beside me to repeat the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise."

We should be glad to follow the biographer through his account of the production of 'Marmion,' and to present some of the numerous criticisms which were received from the various personal friends of the author. Our space, however, will not permit. The popularity of the poem may be estimated from the fact, that more than fifty thousand copies of the work were subsequently sold in Great Britain alone.

Scott's personal appearance, at this period, is thus described by Miss Seward:

"'On Friday last,' she says, 'the poetically great Walter Scott came 'like a sun-beam to my dwelling.' This proudest boast of the Caledonian muse is tall, and rather robust than slender, but lame in the same manner as Mr. Hayley, and in a greater measure. Neither the contour of his face, nor yet his features, are elegant; his complexion healthy, and somewhat fair, without bloom. We find the singularity of brown hair and eye-lashes, with flaxen eyebrows, and a countenance open, ingenuous, and benevolent. When seriously conversing, or earnestly attentive, though his eyes are rather of a lightish gray, deep thought is on their lids; he contracts his brow, and the rays of genius gleam aslant from the orbs beneath them. An upper lip too long prevents his mouth from being decidedly handsome; but the sweetest emanations of temper and heart play about it, when he talks cheerfully, or smiles; and in company, he is much oftener gay than contemplative. His conversation—an overflowing fountain of brilliant wit, apposite allusion, and playful archness—while on serious themes it is nervous and eloquent; the accent decidedly Scotch, yet by no means broad. On the whole, no expectation is disappointed which his poetry must excite in all who feel the power and graces of human inspiration."

We pass the details of his extraordinary literary labors and successes, to present two or three extracts, which serve to show us the man. A friend of the biographer's thus compares Scott and Jeffrey, whom he met at a dinner-party in Edinburgh:

"'There were,' he says, 'only a few people besides the two lions—and assuredly I have seldom passed a more agreeable day. A thousand subjects of literature, antiquities, and manners were started; and much was I struck, as you may well suppose, by the extent, correctness, discrimination, and accuracy of Jeffrey's information; equally so with his taste, acuteness, and wit in dissecting every book, author, and story that came in our way. Nothing could surpass the variety of his knowledge, but the easy rapidity of his manner of producing it. He was then in his meridian. Scott delighted to draw him out, delighted also to talk himself, and displayed, I think, even a larger range of anecdote and illustration; remembering every thing, whether true or false, that was characteristic or impressive; every thing that was good, or lovely, or lively. It struck me that there was this great difference: Jeffrey, for the most part, entertained us, when books were under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, absurdities, or plagiarisms. Scott took up the matter where he left it, recalled some compensating beauty or excellence for which no credit had been allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again."

Here is a picture of his fine feeling of domestic attachment:

"Mr. and Mrs. Morritt reached Edinburgh soon after this letter was written. Scott showed them the lions of the town and its vicinity, exactly as if he had nothing else to attend to but their gratification; and Mr. Morritt recollects with particular pleasure one long day spent in rambling along the Esk by Roslin and Hawthornden,

'Where Johnson sat in Drummond's social shade,'

down to the old haunts of Lasswade."

"'When we approached that village,' says the memorandum with which Mr. Morritt favors me, 'Scott, who had laid hold of my arm, turned along the road in a direction not leading to the place where the carriage was to meet us. After walking some minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we were losing the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith Palace yet to see. 'Yes,' said he, 'and I have been bringing you where there is little enough to be seen—only that Scotch cottage' (one by the road side, with a small garth); 'but, though not worth looking at, I could not pass it. It was our first country-house when newly married, and many a contrivance we had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with my own hands. Look at those two miserable willow-trees on either side the gate into the enclosure: they are tied together at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be sure it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I wanted to see it again myself, for I assure you that after I had constructed it, mamma (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it so fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards from it to the door, in admiration of our own magnificence and its picturesque effect. I did want to see if it was still there: so now we will look after the barouche, and make the best of our way to Dalkeith.' Such were the natural feelings that endeared the Author of Marmion and the Lay to those who 'saw him in his happier hours of social pleasure.'"

A brief paragraph or two, descriptive of Scott's feelings when he first called the now classic grounds of Abbotsford his own, must close our quotations for the present:

"As my lease of this place is out, I have bought, for about 4000 pounds, a property in the neighborhood, extending along the banks of the river Tweed for about half a mile. It is very bleak at present, having little to recommend it but the vicinity of the river; but as the ground is well adapted by nature to grow wood, and is considerably various in form and appearance, I have no doubt that by judicious plantations it may be rendered a very pleasant spot; and it is at present my great amusement to plan the various lines which may be necessary for that purpose. The farm comprehends about a hundred acres, of which I shall keep fifty in pasture and tillage, and plant all the rest, which will be a very valuable little possession in a few years, as wood bears a high price among us. I intend building a small cottage for my summer abode, being obliged by law, as well as induced by inclination, to make this country my residence for some months every year. This is the greatest incident which has lately taken place in our domestic concerns; and I assure you we are not a little proud of being greeted as laird and lady of Abbotsford. We will give a grand gala when we take possession of it, and as we are very clannish in this corner, all the Scots in the country, from the duke to the peasant, shall dance on the green to the bagpipes, and drink whiskey-punch." * * * "The same week he says to Joanna Baillie: 'My dreams about my cottage go on; of about a hundred acres I have manfully resolved to plant from sixty to seventy; as to my scale of dwelling, why, you shall see my plan when I have adjusted it. My present intention is to have only two spare bed-rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which will, on a pinch, have a couch-bed; but I cannot relinquish my Border principle of accommodating all the cousins and duniwastles, who will rather sleep on chairs, and on the floor, and in the hay-loft, than be absent when folks are gathered together; and truly I used to think Ashestiel was very much like the tent of Paribanou, in the Arabian Nights, that suited alike all numbers of company equally; ten people fill it at any time, and I remember its lodging thirty-two without any complaint."

Speaking of a species of his visitors at this time—'the go-about folks, who generally pay their score one way or other'—he says:

"I never heard of a stranger that utterly baffled all efforts to engage him in conversation, excepting one whom an acquaintance of mine met in a stage-coach. My friend, who piqued himself on his talents for conversation, assailed this tortoise on all hands, but in vain, and at length descended to expostulation. 'I have talked to you, my friend, on all the ordinary subjects—literature, farming, merchandise—gaming, game-laws, horse-races—suits at law—politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and philosophy; is there any one subject that you will favor me by opening upon?' The wight writhed his countenance into a grin: 'Sir,' said he, 'can you say any thing clever about bend-leather?' There, I own, I should have been as much nonplussed as my acquaintance; but upon any less abstruse subject, I think, in general, something may be made of a stranger, worthy of his clean sheets, and beef-steak, and glass of port."

We shall resume our notice of these admirable Memoirs, as they appear in the successive 'parts' of the American edition. 'Part Four' is in course of publication, and will soon be issued.