348 THE SCOTT CENTENARY. 



works, in which he sometimes yields to prejudice, while in his novels he is lifted 

 above it by his loyalty to his art. 



The Lamp of Ideality. — The materials of the novelist must be real; 

 they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual obser- 

 vation. But they must pass through the crucible of the imagination ; 

 they must be idealized. The artist is not a photographer, but a painter 

 He must depict not persons but humanity, otherwise he forfeits the artist's 

 name, and the power of doing the artist's work in our hearts. When we see a 

 novelist bring out a novel with one or two good characters, and then, at the 

 fatal bidding of the booksellers, go on manufacturing his yearly volume, and 

 giving us the same character or the same few characters over and over again, 

 we may be sure that he is without the power of idealization. He has merely 

 photographed what he has seen, and his stock is exhausted. It is wonderful 

 what a quantity of the mere lees of such writers, more and more watered down, 

 the circulating libraries go on complacently circulating, and the reviews com- 

 placently reviewing. Of course, this power of idealization is the great gift of 

 genius. It is that which distinguishes Homer, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott 

 from ordinary men. But there is also a moral effort in rising above the easy 

 work of mere description to the height of heart. Need it be said that Scott is 

 thoroughly ideal as well as thoroughly real ? There are vague traditions that 

 this man and the other was the original of some character in Scott. But who 

 can point out the man of whom a character in Scott is a mere portrait? No 

 more than you can point out a case of servile delineation in Shakespeare. Scott's 

 characters are never monsters or caricatures. They are full of nature ; but it is 

 universal nature. Therefore they have their place in the universal heart, and 

 will keep that place for ever. And mark that even in his historical novels he is 

 still ideal. Historical romance is a perilous thing. The fiction is apt to spoil 

 the fact, and the fact the fiction ; the history to be perverted and the romance 

 to be shackled ; daylight to kill dreamlight, and dreamlight to kill daylight. 

 But Scott takes few liberties with historical facts and characters ; he treats 

 them with the costume and the manners of the period, as the background of the 

 picture. The personages with whom he deals freely are the Peverils and the 

 Nigels ; and these are his own lawful property, the offspring of his own imagin- 

 ation, and belong to the ideal. 



The Lamp of Impartiality, — The novelist must look on humanity with- 

 out partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the [^historian, 

 must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. He must see every- 

 where the good that is mixed with evil, the evil that is mixed with good. 

 And this he will not do unless his own heart is rjght. It is in Scott's historical 

 novels that his impartiality is most severely tried and is most apparent ; though 

 it is apparent in all his works. Shakespeare was a pure dramatist ; nothing but 

 art found a home in that lofty, smooth idealistic brow. He stands apart not 

 only from the political and religious passions but from the interests of his time, 

 hardly seeming to have any historical surroundings, but to shine like a planet 

 suspended by itself in the sky. So it is with that female Shakespeare in minia- 

 ture, Miss Austen. But Scott took the most intense interest in the political 



