Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, by William
Paton Ker

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Title: Sir Walter Scott A Lecture at the Sorbonne
Author: William Paton Ker
Release Date: April 29, 2007 [EBook #21250]
Language: English
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SIR WALTER SCOTT

A Lecture at the Sorbonne, May 22, 1919, in the series of Conférences
Louis Liard
BY
WILLIAM PATON KER, LL.D.
GLASGOW
MACLEHOSE, JACKSON AND CO.
PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY
1919

NOTE
This Essay appeared in the Anglo-French Review, August, 1919, and I
am obliged to the Editor and Publisher for leave to reprint it.
W. P. K.

Sir Walter Scott
When I was asked to choose a subject for a lecture at the Sorbonne,
there came into my mind somehow or other the incident of Scott's visit
to Paris when he went to see Ivanhoe at the Odéon, and was amused to
think how the story had travelled and made its fortune:--
'It was an opera, and, of course, the story sadly mangled and the
dialogue in great part nonsense. Yet it was strange to hear anything like
the words which (then in an agony of pain with spasms in my stomach)
I dictated to William Laidlaw at Abbotsford, now recited in a foreign
tongue, and for the amusement of a strange people. I little thought to
have survived the completing of this novel.'

It seemed to me that here I had a text for my sermon. The cruel
circumstances of the composition of Ivanhoe might be neglected. The
interesting point was in the contrast between the original home of
Scott's imagination and the widespread triumph of his works
abroad--on the one hand, Edinburgh and Ashestiel, the traditions of the
Scottish border and the Highlands, the humours of Edinburgh lawyers
and Glasgow citizens, country lairds, farmers and ploughmen, the
Presbyterian eloquence of the Covenanters and their descendants, the
dialect hardly intelligible out of its own region, and not always clear
even to natives of Scotland; on the other hand, the competition for
Scott's novels in all the markets of Europe, as to which I take leave to
quote the evidence of Stendhal:--
'Lord Byron, auteur de quelques héroïdes sublimes, mais toujours les
mêmes, et de beaucoup de tragédies mortellement ennuyeuses, n'est
point du tout le chef des romantiques.
'S'il se trouvait un homme que les traducteurs à la toise se disputassent
également à Madrid, à Stuttgard, à Paris et à Vienne, l'on pourrait
avancer que cet homme a deviné les tendances morales de son époque.'
If Stendhal proceeds to remark in a footnote that 'l'homme lui-même est
peu digne d'enthousiasme,' it is pleasant to remember that Lord Byron
wrote to M. Henri Beyle to correct his low opinion of the character of
Scott. This is by the way, though not, I hope, an irrelevant remark. For
Scott is best revealed in his friendships; and the mutual regard of Scott
and Byron is as pleasant to think of as the friendship between Scott and
Wordsworth.
As to the truth of Stendhal's opinion about the vogue of Scott's novels
and his place as chief of the romantics, there is no end to the list of
witnesses who might be summoned. Perhaps it may be enough to
remember how the young Balzac was carried away by the novels as
they came fresh from the translator, almost immediately after their first
appearance at home.
One distinguishes easily enough, at home in Scotland, between the
novels, or the passages in the novels, that are idiomatic, native,

homegrown, intended for his own people, and the novels not so limited,
the romances of English or foreign history--Ivanhoe, Kenilworth,
Quentin Durward. But as a matter of fact these latter, though possibly
easier to understand and better suited to the general public, were not
invariably preferred. The novels were 'the Scotch novels.' Although
Thackeray, when he praises Scott, takes most of his examples from the
less characteristic, what we may call the English group, on the other
hand, Hazlitt dwells most willingly on the Scotch novels, though he did
not like Scotsmen, and shared some of the prejudice of Stendhal--'my
friend Mr. Beyle,' as he calls him in one place--with regard to Scott
himself. And Balzac has no invidious preferences: he recommends an
English romance, Kenilworth, to