A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century. Henry A. Beers

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ "Ballads," in the publications of the E. E. Text So.; and by Alois Brandl, Berlin: 1880.

      [10] See vol. i., p. 390.

      [11] See the General Preface to the Waverley Novels for some remarks on "Queenhoo Hall" which Strutt began and Scott completed.

      [12] Cf. vol. i., p. 344.

      [13] "I am therefore descended from that ancient chieftain whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow—no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel."

      [14] "He neither cared for painting nor sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming a judgment about them. He had some confused love of Gothic architecture because it was dark, picturesque, old and like nature; but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself probably the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism ever devised."—Ruskin. "Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 271.

      [15] See vol. i., p. 200.

      [16] The Abbey of Tintern was irrelevant to Wordsworth.—Herford. "The Age of Wordsworth," Int., p. xx.

      [17] "Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious, opposites in this:—that every old ruin, hill, river or tree called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations; … whereas, for myself … I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."—Coleridge, "Table Talk," August 4, 1833.

      [18] See the delightful anecdote preserved by Carlyle about the little Blenheim cocker who hated the "genus acrid-quack" and formed an immediate attachment to Sir Walter. Wordsworth was far from being an acrid quack, or even a solemn prig—another genus hated of dogs—but there was something a little unsympathetic in his personality. The dalesmen liked poor Hartley Coleridge better.

      [19] Scott could scarcely have forborne to introduce the figure of the Queen of Scots, to insure whose marriage with Norfolk was one of the objects of the rising.

      [20] For a full review of "The White Doe" the reader should consult Principal Shairp's "Aspects of Poetry," 1881.

      [21] Scott averred that Wordsworth offended public taste on system.

      [22] This is incomparable, not only as a masterpiece of romantic narrative, but for the spirited and natural device by which the hero is conducted to his adventure. R. L. Stevenson and other critics have been rather hard upon Scott's defects as an artist. He was indeed no stylist: least of all a precieux. There are no close-set mosaics in his somewhat slip-shod prose, and he did not seek for the right word "with moroseness," like Landor. But, in his large fashion, he was skilful in inventing impressive effects. Another instance is the solitary trumpet that breathed its "note of defiance" in the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which has the genuine melodramatic thrill—like the horn of Hernani or the bell that tolls in "Venice Preserved."

      [23] See the "Hunting Song" in his continuation of "Queenhoo Hall"—

      "Waken, lords and ladies gay,

       On the mountain dawns the day."

      [24] See vol. i., pp. 277 and 390.

      [25] The Glen of the Green Women.

      [26] "And still I thought that shattered tower

       The mightiest work of human power;

       And marvelled as the aged hind

       With some strange tale bewitched my mind,

       Of foragers who, with headlong force,

       Down from that strength had spurred their horse,

       Their Southern rapine to renew,

       Far in the distant Cheviots blue;

       And, home returning, filled the hall

       With revel, wassail-rout and brawl."—"Marmion." Introduction

       to Canto Third. See Lockhart for a description of the view from

       Smailholme, à propos of the stanza in "The Eve of St. John":

      "That lady sat in mournful mood;

       Looked over hill and vale:

       O'ver Tweed's fair flood, and Mertoun's wood,

       And all down Teviot dale."

      [27] See vol. i., pp. 394–395.

      [28] Scott's verse "is touched both with the facile redundance of the mediaeval romances in which he was steeped, and with the meretricious phraseology of the later eighteenth century, which he was too genuine a literary Tory wholly to put aside."—"The Age of Wordsworth," C. H. Herford, London. 1897.

      [29] "The Gray Brother" in vol. iii. of the "Minstrelsy."

      [30] "And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,

       Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,

       And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,

       And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why."

      [31] "Now leave we Margaret and her knight

       To tell you of the approaching fight."—Canto Fifth, xiii.

      [32] Landor says oddly of Warton that he "had lost his ear by laying it down on low swampy places, on ballads and sonnets."

      [33] Does not the quarrel of Richard and Philip in "The Talisman" remind one irresistibly of Achilles and Agamemnon in the "Iliad"?

      [34] For a review of English historical fiction before Scott, consult Professor Cross' "Development of the English Novel," pp. 110–114.

      [35] "Familiar Studies of Men and Books," by R. L. Stevenson. Article, "Victor Hugo's Romances."

      [36] "Le Roman Historique à l'Epoque Romantique." Essai sur l'influence de Walter Scott. Par Louis Maigron. Paris (Hachette). 1898, p. 331, note. And ibid., p. 330: "Au lieu que les classiques s'efforçaient toujours, à travers les modifications que les pays, les temps et les circonstances peuvent apporter aux sentiments et aux passions des hommes, d'atteindre à ce que ces passions et ces sentiments conservent de permanent, d'immuable et d'éternel, c'est au contraire à l'expression de l'accidentel et du relatif que les novateurs devaient les efforts de leur art. Plus simplement, à la place de la vérité humaine, ils devaient mettre la vérité locale." Professor Herford says that what Scott "has in common with the Romantic temper is simply the feeling for the picturesque, for colour, for contrast." "Age of Wordsworth," p. 121.

      [37] De Quincey defines picturesque as "the characteristic pushed into a sensible excess." The word began to excite discussion in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. See vol. i., p. 185, for Gilpin's "Observations on Picturesque Beauty." See also Uvedale Price, "Essays on the Picturesque as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful," three vols., 1794–96. Price finds the character of the picturesque to consist in roughness, irregularity, intricacy, and sudden variation. Gothic buildings are more picturesque than Grecian, and a ruin than an entire building. Hovels, cottages, mills, interiors of old barns are picturesque. "In mills particularly, СКАЧАТЬ