Scott's Achievement
Sir Walter Scott
as a writer is famous for both his poetry and his prose. Very few writers
in world literature enjoy such a distinction. He possessed a poetic faculty
always real, often great and sometimes quite consummate.
In his prose
works Sir Walter has the high honour of creating the historical novel.
He added to the list of imaginary personages more and greater figures than
had been added by anyone else except possibly Shakespeare. He infused into
the novel a tradition of moral and intellectual well-being, of manliness
and truth, of honour, freedom and courtesy.
And such is
the man, a man of moral and intellectual integrity, of truth, honour and
courtesy. Very rarely in his life did he fail by being unkind. He never
failed in this way towards anyone humbler than himself. In spite of his
outstanding achievements and honours accorded him by high and low, Scot
and others, he remained humble. He did not rank his own achievements as
a writer very high. And this was a writer whose appeal to his age was immediate
and universal, and to all succeeding ages a writer who has been translated
into many tongues and been so continuously reprinted in so many lands.
He had his
weak points too. He did not understand the Catholic religion; when he was
so well received in Italy he was all the more grateful for it, as he confessed
he had not always treated the Catholic religion with respect. Then in the
affair of the bankruptcy of Ballantyne in which he was so involved, his
aversion to setting his affairs in order seems to have contributed to the
catastrophe. As Lockhart writes: 'He must pay the penalty as well as reap
the glory of this lifelong abstraction of reverie' which was the inevitable
corollary of his genius. But what outstanding honour and rectitude he showed
in resolutely determining with his own hand to pay off every penny of debt;
as he said in his famous words for all time: 'My own right hand shall pay
my debt.'
Perhaps the
best tribute was that paid to him by an uncle, when Scott was at the height
of his popularity and fame: 'God bless you, Walter, my man! You have risen
to be great. But you were always good.'
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