A History of English Literature

and so nearly attained his object that the debt was actually extinguished
some years after his death. But in the effort he completed the exhaustion
of his long-overtaxed strength, and, a trip to Italy proving unavailing,
returned to Abbotsford, and died, a few weeks after Goethe, in 1832.
As a man Scott was first of all a true and thorough gentleman, manly, open
hearted, friendly and lovable in the highest degree. Truthfulness and
courage were to him the essential virtues, and his religious faith was deep
though simple and unobtrusive. Like other forceful men, he understood his
own capacity, but his modesty was extreme; he always insisted with all
sincerity that the ability to compose fiction was not for a moment to be
compared with the ability to act effectively in practical activities; and
he was really displeased at the suggestion that he belonged among the
greatest men of the age. In spite of his Romantic tendencies and his
absolute simplicity of character, he clung strongly to the conservatism of
the feudal aristocracy with which he had labored so hard to connect
himself; he was vigorously hostile to the democratic spirit, and, in his
later years, to the Reform Bill; and he felt and expressed almost childish
delight in the friendship of the contemptible George IV, because George IV
was his king. The conservatism was closely connected, in fact, with his
Romantic interest in the past, and in politics it took the form,
theoretically, of Jacobitism, loyalty to the worthless Stuart race whose
memory his novels have done so much to keep alive. All these traits are
made abundantly clear in the extended life of Scott written by his
son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, which is one of the two or three greatest
English biographies.
Scott's long poems, the best of them, are the chief examples in English of
dashing verse romances of adventure and love. They are hastily done, as we
have said, and there is no attempt at subtilty of characterization or at
any moral or philosophical meaning; nevertheless the reader's interest in
the vigorous and picturesque action is maintained throughout at the highest
pitch. Furthermore, they contain much finely sympathetic description of
Scottish scenery, impressionistic, but poured out with enthusiasm. Scott's
numerous lyrics are similarly stirring or moving expressions of the primal
emotions, and some of them are charmingly musical.
The qualities of the novels, which represent the culmination of Romantic
historical fiction, are much the same. Through his bold and active
historical imagination Scott vivifies the past magnificently; without
doubt, the great majority of English readers know English history chiefly
through his works. His dramatic power, also, at its best, is superb; in his
great scenes and crises he is masterly as narrator and describer. In the
presentation of the characters there is often much of the same
superficiality as in the poems, but there is much also of the highest
skill. The novels may be roughly divided into three classes: first those,
like 'Ivanhoe,' whose scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century;
second those, like 'Kenilworth,' which are located in the fifteenth or
sixteenth; and third, those belonging to England and Scotland of the
seventeenth and eighteenth. In the earlier ones sheer romance predominates
and the hero and heroine are likely to be more or less conventional
paragons, respectively, of courage and tender charm; but in the later ones
Scott largely portrays the life and people which he himself knew; and he
knew them through and through. His Scottish characters in particular, often
especially the secondary ones, are delightfully realistic portraits of a
great variety of types. Mary Queen of Scots in 'The Abbot' and Caleb
Balderstone in 'The Bride of Lammermoor' are equally convincing in their
essential but very personal humanity. Descriptions of scenery are
correspondingly fuller in the novels than in the poems and are equally