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greatly affected Scott’s spirits, – probably, he very seldom read it. He knew that the public, like Constable’s friend Mrs. Stewart, were “reading ‘Guy Mannering’ all day, and dreaming of it all night.”
Indeed, it is much better to read “Guy Mannering” than to criticise it. A book written in six weeks, a book whose whole plot and conception was changed “in the printing,” must have its faults of construction. Thus, we meet Mannering first as “a youthful lover,” a wanderer at adventure, an amateur astrologer, and suddenly we lose sight of him, and only recover him as a disappointed, “disilluded,” and weary, though still vigorous, veteran. This is the inevitable result of a novel based on a prediction. Either you have to leap some twenty years just when you are becoming familiar with the persons, or you have to begin in the midst of the events foreseen, and then make a tedious return to explain the prophecy. Again, it was necessary for Scott to sacrifice Frank Kennedy, who is rather a taking adventurer, like Bothwell in “Old Mortality.” Readers regret the necessity which kills Kennedy. The whole fortunes of Vanbeest Brown, his duel with the colonel, and his fortunate appearance in the nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown’s flageolet. It is a modest instrument; but what was he to play upon, – a lute, a concertina, a barrel-organ?
The characters of the young ladies have not always been applauded. Taste, in the matter of heroines, varies greatly; Sir Walter had no high opinion of his own skill in delineating them. But Julia Mannering is probably a masterly picture of a girl of that age, – a girl with some silliness and more gaiety, with wit, love of banter, and, in the last resort, sense and good feeling. She is particularly good when, in fear and trembling, she teases her imposing father.
“I expect,” says Colonel Mannering, “that you will pay to this young lady that attention which is due to misfortune and virtue.” “Certainly, sir. Is my future friend red-haired?” Miss Mannering is very capable of listening to Brown’s flageolet from the balcony, but not of accompanying Brown, should he desire it, in the boat. As for Brown himself, he is one of Sir Walter’s usual young men, – “brave, handsome, not too clever," – the despair of their humorous creator. “Once you come to forty year,” as Thackeray sings, “then you’ll know that a lad is an ass;” and Scott had come to that age, and perhaps entertained that theory of a jeune premier when he wrote “Guy Mannering.” In that novel, as always, he was most himself when dealing either with homely Scottish characters of everyday life, with exaggerated types of humorous absurdity, and with wildly adventurous banditti, who appealed to the old strain of the Border reiver in his blood. The wandering plot of “Guy Mannering” enabled him to introduce examples of all these sorts. The good-humoured, dull, dawdling Ellangowan, a laird half dwindled to a yeoman, is a sketch absolutely accurate, and wonderfully touched with pathos. The landladies, Mrs. MacCandlish and Tib Mumps, are little masterpieces; so is Mac-Morlan, the foil to Glossin; and so is Pleydell, allowing for the manner of the age. Glossin himself is best when least villanous. Sir Robert Hazlewood is hardly a success. But as to Jock Jabos, a Southern Scot may say that he knows Jock Jabos in the flesh, so persistent is the type of that charioteer. It is partly Scott’s good fortune, partly it is his evil luck, to be so inimitably and intimately true in his pictures of Scottish character. This wins the heart of his countrymen, indeed; but the stranger can never know how good Scott really is, any more than a Frenchman can appreciate Falstaff. Thus the alien may be vexed by what he thinks the mere clannish enthusiasm of praise, in Scott’s countrymen. Every little sketch of a passing face is exquisite in Scott’s work, when he is at his best. For example, Dandie Dinmont’s children are only indicated “with a dusty roll of the brush;” but we recognize at once the large, shy, kindly families of the Border. Dandie himself, as the “Edinburgh Review” said (1817), “is beyond all question the best rustic portrait that has ever yet been exhibited to the public, – the most honourable to rustics, and the most creditable to the heart as well as to the genius of the Author, the truest to nature, the most complete in all its lineaments.” Dandie is always delightful, – whether at Mumps’s Hall, or on the lonely moor, or at home in Charlieshope, or hunting, or leistering fish, or entering terriers at vermin, or fighting, or going to law, or listening to the reading of a disappointing will, or entertaining the orphan whom others neglect; always delightful he is, always generous, always true, always the Border farmer. There is no better stock of men, none less devastated by “the modern spirit.” His wife is worthy of him, and has that singular gentleness, kindliness, and dignity which prevail on the Border, even in households far less prosperous than that of Dandie Dinmont. – [Dr. John Brown’s Ailie, in “Rab and his Friends,” will naturally occur to the mind of every reader.]
Among Scott’s “character parts,” or types broadly humorous, few have been more popular than Dominie Sampson. His ungainly goodness, unwieldy strength, and inaccessible learning have made great sport, especially when “Guy Mannering” was “Terryfied” for the stage.
As Miss Bertram remarks in that singular piece, – where even Jock Jabos “wins till his English,” like Elspeth in the Antiquary, – the Dominie “rather forces a tear from the eye of sentiment than a laugh from the lungs of ribaldry.” In the play, however, he sits down to read a folio on some bandboxes, which, very naturally, “give way under him.” As he has just asked Mrs. Mac-Candlish after the health of both her husbands, who are both dead, the lungs of ribaldry are more exercised than the fine eye of sentiment. We scarcely care to see our Dominie treated thus. His creator had the very lowest opinion of the modern playwright’s craft, and probably held that stage humour could not be too palpable and practical. Lockhart writes (v. 130): “What share the novelist himself had in this first specimen of what he used to call ‘the art of Terryfying’ I cannot exactly say; but his correspondence shows that the pretty song of the ‘Lullaby’ was not his only contribution to it; and I infer that he had taken the trouble to modify the plot and rearrange for stage purposes a considerable part of the original dialogue.” Friends of the Dominie may be glad to know, perhaps on Scott’s own testimony, that he was an alumnus of St. Andrews. “I was boarded for twenty pence a week at Luckie Sour-kail’s, in the High Street of St. Andrews.” He was also fortunate enough to hold a bursary in St. Leonard’s College, which, however, is a blunder. St. Leonard’s and St. Salvator’s had already been merged in the United College (1747). All this is in direct contradiction to the evidence in the novel, which makes the Dominie a Glasgow man. Yet the change seems to be due to Scott rather than to Terry. It is certain that Colonel Mannering would not have approved of the treatment which the Dominie undergoes, in a play whereof the plot and conduct fall little short of the unintelligible.
Against the character of Pleydell “a few murmurs of pedantic criticism,” as Lockhart says, were uttered, and it was natural that Pleydell should seem an incredible character to English readers. But there is plenty of evidence that his “High Jinks” were not exaggerated.
There remains the heroine of the novel, as Mr. Ruskin not incorrectly calls her, Meg Merrilies, the sybil who so captivated the imagination of Keats. Among Scott’s many weird women, she is the most romantic, with her loyal heart and that fiery natural eloquence which, as Scott truly observed, does exist ready for moments of passion, even among the reticent Lowlanders. The child of a mysterious wandering race, Meg has a double claim to utter such speeches as she addresses to Ellangowan after the eviction of her tribe. Her death, as Mr. Ruskin says, is “self-devoted, heroic in the highest, and happy.” The devotion of Meg Merrilies, the grandeur of her figure, the music of her songs, more than redeem the character of Dirk Hatteraick, even if we hold, with the “Edinburgh” reviewer, that he is “a vulgar bandit of the German school,” just as the insipidity and flageolet of the hero are redeemed by the ballad sung in the moment of recognition.
“Are these the Links of Forth, she said,
Or are they the crooks of Dee,
Or the bonnie woods of Warroch Head,
That I so fain would see?"
“Guy Mannering,” according to Lockhart, was “pronounced by acclamation fully worthy to share the honours of ‘Waverley.’”