NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I have been making not a few mistakes in Fors lately; and, indeed, am careless enough in it, not solicitous at all to avoid mistakes; for being entirely sure of my main ground, and entirely honest in purpose, I know that I cannot make any mistake which will invalidate my work, and that any chance error which the third Fors may appoint for me, is often likely to bring out, in its correction, more good than if I had taken the pains to avoid it. Here, for instance, is Dr. Brown’s letter, which I should not have had, but for my having confused George’s Street with George’s Square, and having too shortly generalized my experience of modern novel readers; and it tells me, and you, something about Scott and Dickens which is of the greatest use.
“My dear Friend,—I am rejoiced to see you upon Scott. It will be a permanent good, your having broken this ground. But you are wrong in two things—George’s Square is not in the detestable New Town, it is to the south of the very Old Town, and near the Meadows.
“Then you say ‘nobody now will read them’ (Miss Edgeworth and Sir Walter). She is less read than I think she should be, but he is enormously read—here and in America.
“In the twelve months ending June, 1873, Adam Black and his sons have sold over 250,000 Waverleys, and I know that when Dickens—that great master of fun and falsetto—went last to America, and there was a fury for him and his books, the sale of them only touched for a short time the ordinary sale of the Scott Novels, and subsided immensely, soon, the Scotts going steadily on increasing. Our young ‘genteel’ girls and boys, I fear, don’t read them as the same class did thirty years ago, but the readers of them, in the body of the people, are immense, and you have only to look at the four or five copies of the whole set in our public libraries to see how they are being read. That is a beautiful drawing of Chantrey’s, and new to me,—very like, having the simple, childlike look which he had. The skull is hardly high enough.”
A subsequent letter tells me than Dinlay is a big hill in Liddesdale; and enclosed (search for it being made) the tune of Sour Plums in Galashiels, of which I will only at present bid you farther observe that it is the first “touch of the auld bread-winner” that Wandering Willie plays to Darsie.
Another valued correspondent reminds me that people might get hold of my having spoken, a good many numbers back, of low sunshine “at six o’clock on an October morning;” and truly enough it must have been well on towards seven.
A more serious, but again more profitable, mistake, was made in the June Fors, by the correspondent (a working man) who sent me the examination paper, arranged from a Kensington one, from which I quoted the four questions,—who either did not know, or did not notice, the difference between St. Matthew and St. Matthias. The paper had been set in the schools of St. Matthew, and the chairman of the committee of the schools of St. Matthias wrote to me in violent indignation—little thinking how greatly pleased I should be to hear of any school in which Kensington questions were not asked,—or if asked, were not likely to be answered.
I find even that the St. Matthias children could in all probability answer the questions I proposed as alternative,—for they have flower shows, and prizes presented by Bishops, and appear to be quite in an exemplary phase of education: all of which it is very pleasant to me to learn. (Apropos of the equivoque between St. Matthew and St. Matthias, another correspondent puts me in mind of the promise I made to find out for you who St. Pancras was. I did; but did not much care to tell you—for I had put him with St. Paul only because both their names began with P; and found that he was an impertinent youth of sixteen, who ought to have been learning to ride and swim, and took to theology instead, and was made a martyr of, and had that mock-Greek church built to his Christian honour in Mary-le-bone. I have no respect whatever for boy or girl martyrs;—we old men know the value of the dregs of life: but young people will throw the whole of it away for a freak, or in a pet at losing a toy.)
I suppose I shall next have a fiery letter abjuring Kensington from the committee of the schools of St. Matthew:—nothing could possibly give me greater pleasure. I did not, indeed, intend for some time to give you any serious talk about Kensington, and then I meant to give it you in large print—and at length; but as this matter has been ‘forced’ upon me (note the power of the word Fors in the first syllable of that word) I will say a word or two now.
I have lying beside me on my table, in a bright orange cover, the seventh edition of the ‘Young Mechanic’s Instructor; or, Workman’s Guide to the various Arts connected with the Building Trades; showing how to strike out all kinds of Arches and Gothic Points, to set out and construct Skew Bridges; with numerous Illustrations of Foundations, Sections, Elevations, etc. Receipts, Rules, and Instructions in the art of Casting, Modelling, Carving, Gilding, Dyeing, Staining, Polishing, Bronzing, Lacquering, Japanning, Enamelling, Gasfitting, Plumbing, Glazing, Painting, etc. Jewellers’ Secrets, Miscellaneous Receipts, Useful Tables, etc., and a variety of useful information designed specially for the Working Mechanic.—London: Brodie and Middleton, 79, Long Acre; and all Booksellers in Town and Country. Price, 2s. 6d.’
From pages 11, 20, and 21 of the introduction to this work, I quote the following observations on St. Paul’s, the Nineveh sculptures, and the Houses of Parliament.
I. OF ST. PAUL’S.
“Since London was first built, which we are led to believe was about the year 50, by the Romans, there has not been a more magnificent building erected in it than St. Paul’s—this stupendous edifice which absorbs the attention, and strikes with wonder all who behold it, was founded by Ethelbert, the fifth King of Kent, in the year 604 A.D. And it is certain that since the completion of this building succeeding generations have made no progress in the construction of public buildings.”
II. OF THE NINEVEH SCULPTURES.
“There is one feature in the Nineveh sculptures which most beautifully illustrates and corroborates the truth of the Scriptures; any person who has carefully read the Scriptures, and has seen the Nineveh sculptures, cannot fail to see the beautiful illustration; it will be remembered that the king is spoken of in many places as riding in his chariot, and of the king’s armour-bearer following him to the battle. In the Nineveh sculptures you will see the fact exemplified—the king in his chariot, and his armour-bearer defending him with his shield.”
III. OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
“Of all the Gothic buildings that we have in our country, both of ancient and modern date, the Houses of Parliament are the best and most elaborate; the first step of its grandeur is, that it stands parallel to the majestic stream of the River Thames, and owing to its proximate distance to the river, there is no thoroughfare between it and the water; its open situation gives it a sublime view from the opposite side; but especially from Westminster Bridge its aspect is grand and magnificent in the extreme. Its superb tracery glitters in the distance, in the sight of the spectator, like the yellow autumnal foliage of some picturesque grove, which beautifies the verdant valleys and bedecks the silvery hills. The majestic figures in their stately order, encanopied in their Gothic palaces, bring to our remembrance the noble patriarchs of old, or the patriots of recent days. Its numerous pinnacles, turrets, and towers, rise up into the smoky and blue atmosphere like forest trees, which will stand as an everlasting memento of the great and noble-minded generation who raised this grand and magnificent structure, so that after-generations may say, ‘Surely our forefathers were great and illustrious men, that they had reached the climax of human skill, so that we cannot improve on their superb and princely buildings.’ ”
These three extracts, though in an extreme degree, are absolutely and accurately characteristic of the sort of mind, unexampled in any former ages for its conceit, its hypocrisy, and its sevenfold—or rather seventy times sevenfold—ignorance, the dregs of corrupted knowledge, which modern art-teaching, centralized by Kensington, produces in our workmen and their practical ‘guides.’ How it is produced, and how the torturing examinations as to the possible position of the letters in the word. Chillianwallah, and the collection of costly objects of art from all quarters of the world, end in these conditions of paralysed brain and corrupted heart, I will show you at length in a future letter.
2 Portion omitted short, and of no moment just now. I shall refer to it afterwards. ↑
3 The actual toil gone through by him is far greater during the last years than before—in fact it is unceasing and mortal; but I count only as the true labour-time that which is healthy and fruitful. ↑
4 If my own life is spared a little longer, I can at least rescue Pope from the hands of his present scavenger biographer; but alas, for Scott’s loving hand and noble thought, lost to him! ↑
5 To the speech of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode; vol. vii., p. 221. ↑
7 Not to break away from my text too long, I add one or two farther points worth notice, here:—
“Boerhaave lost none of his hours, but when he had attained one science attempted another. He added physick to divinity, chemistry to the mathematicks, and anatomy to botany.
“He knew the importance of his own writings to mankind, and lest he might, by a roughness and barbarity of style too frequent among men of great learning, disappoint his own intentions, and make his labours less useful, he did not neglect the politer arts of eloquence and poetry. Thus was his learning at once various and exact, profound and agreeable.
“But his knowledge, however uncommon, holds in his character but the second place; his virtue was yet much more uncommon than his learning.
“Being once asked by a friend, who had often admired his patience under great provocations, whether he knew what it was to be angry, and by what means he had so entirely suppressed that impetuous and ungovernable passion, he answered, with the utmost frankness and sincerity, that he was naturally quick of resentment, but that he had, by daily prayer and meditation, at length attained to this mastery over himself.” ↑
10 His own words to Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, vol. i., p. 83, spoken while Turner was sketching Smailholm Tower, vol. vii., p. 302. ↑
11 The Ballad of Hardiknute is only a fragment—but one consisting of forty-two stanzas of eight lines each. It is the only heroic poem in the Miscellany; of which—and of the poem itself—more hereafter. The first four lines are ominous of Scott’s own life:—
“Stately stept he East the wa’,
And stately stept he West;
Full seventy years he now had seen,
With scarce seven years of rest.”
12 Lockhart, in the extract just below, calls them “milk-white.” This is exactly right of the pale bluish translucent quartz, in which the agatescent veins are just traceable, and no more, out of the trap rocks; but the gneissitic hills give also exquisitely brilliant pure white and cream-coloured quartz, rolled out of their vein stones. ↑
13 With your pardon, Mr. Lockhart, neither ducks nor duckweed are in the least derogatory to the purity of a pool. ↑
14 Vol. ii., p. 358; compare ii., 70. “If it seemed possible to scramble through, he scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford,” etc. ↑
16 Vol. vii., pp. 164, 166, 196. ↑
FORS CLAVIGERA.
