Collection of British Novelists) appeared before 1789; and Dr. John Moore, of Glasgow (the father of Sir John Moore, the friend and biographer of Smollett), whose novel of Zeluco was published in 1786. But though all these were writers of talent, and though some of their novels might deserve separate recognition on account of peculiarities that might be detected in them, they may all be considered so far, at least, as I am acquainted with them as having adopted the manner of some one or other of their recent predecessors. Johnstone is represented as a kind of composition of Smollett and Le Sage, with a more coarse and bitter spirit of satire than is found in either; Mackenzie has a general resemblance to Sterne; Miss Reeve's Old English Baron was a professed imitation of Walpole's Castle of Otranto; and so with the rest. It is not till about or a little after the year 1789, that we see a new order of novelists arising; of whom we are to take account in our next lecture. Meanwhile, let us bear in mind the fact, that the British novel-writing of the eighteenth century had done much not only to enrich our prose literature and to exercise our prose faculty at home, but also to increase our reputation and our intellectual influence abroad. Till the times of Defoe and Richardson, we had been, in the article of Novels and Romances, if not in prose literature generally, an importing rather than an exporting nation; but our novelists of the eighteenth century turned the current the other way, and since then we have exported rather than imported. During Goethe's youth, all educated persons on the Continent were reading our Richardson, our Fielding, our Smollett, our Sterne, our Goldsmith. LECTURE III. SCOTT AND HIS INFLUENCE. EDINBURGH SEVENTY YEARS AGO-EDINBURGH SINCE ITS IMPORTANT INHABITANTS IN RECENT TIMES-SCOTT PREEMINENTLY THE "GENIUS LOCI"- TWO MOST PROMINENT FEATURES OF SCOTT'S MIND-HIS LOVE OF THE PAST, OR PASSION FOR HISTORY - HIS AFFECTION FOR THE PAST, NOT FOR THE WHOLE PAST, BUT ONLY FOR THE GOTHIC PORTION OF IT - PATRIOTISM, OR SCOTTICISM OF SCOTT HIS SPECIAL AFFECTION FOR EDINBURGH-TIME AND MANNER OF HIS DETERMINATION TO THE NOVEL REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF BRITISH PROSE FICTION IN THE TWENTY-FIVE YEARS PRECEDING "WAVERLEY," OR FROM 1789 TO 1814-TWENTY NOVELISTS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING SCOTT - LADY NOVELISTS NATIONALITY IN NOVELS - REVOLUTIONARY NOVELS: GODWIN-THE GOTHIC ROMANCE SCHOOL: MRS. RADCLIFFE-NOVEL OF ENGLISH MANNERS: MISS AUSTENRELATIONS OF SCOTT TO HIS PREDECESSORS-THE WAVERLEY NOVELS CLASSIFIED-SCOTT THE FOUNDER OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL-LIMITS OF HIS HISTORICAL RESEARCH-IS HIS MEDIEVALISM SOUND? - DEFECT OF SCOTT'S GENIUS-EXCELLENCE OF HIS SCOTTISH CHARACTERS SCOTLAND'S OBLIGATION TO HIM -YOUNG EDINBURGH. -- "EDINA! Scotia's darling seat! All hail thy palaces and towers! From marking wildly-scattered flowers, I shelter in thy honored shade!" So sang Burns, with genuine enthusiasm, though not in his best literary strain, when first, a visitor from his native Ayrshire, he saluted the Scottish capital. At that time Edinburgh merited the salutation, even had it been expressed better. The Old Town was there as we still see it, or more perfect and untouched-the most romantic aggregate of natural height and hollow, and of quaint and massive building raised thereon by the hand of man, that existed within the circuit of Britain; the ridge of the High Street alone, from its crown in the old craggy Castle down to its foot in Holyrood Palace and Abbey, forming a range of the antique and the picturesque in street architecture such as no other British city could exhibit. And then, the scenery surrounding! Calton Hill near and ready for its monuments; the Lion of Arthur's Seat grimly keeping guard; the wooded Corstorphines lying soft on one side; the larger Pentlands looming behind at a greater distance; down from the main ridge, and across the separating chasm, with its green and rocky slopes, the beginnings of a new city spilt out of the old; and, over these begin nings, the flats of the Forth, the Forth's own flashing waters, and, still beyond them, sea and land in fading variety to the far horizon-the shores of Fife distinctly visible, and, under a passing burst of sunlight, the purple peaks of the Highland hills! Sunlight or mist, summer or winter, night or day, where was there such another British city? Then, fill this city with its historical associations. Let the memories of old Scottish centuries be lodged within it, as they were when Burns first saw it, and the actual relics of these centuries in their yet undiminished abundance; let its streets, its alleys, nay its individual "lands" and houses be thought of as still retaining the legends and traditions, some grotesque and others ghastly, of the defunct Scottish life that had passed through them, and left its scars on their very wood-work, and its blood-stains and wine-stains on their very stones! All this Burns was a man to remember, and to this he makes due allusion also in his ode: "With awe-struck thought and pitying tears I view that noble, stately dome, Where Scotia's kings of other years Famed heroes! - had their royal home. Alas! how changed the years to come! Their royal name low in the dust! |