Historical fiction; Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Fiction; Scotland -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
anger, ambition, and final courageous resignation; Flora, in her grief.
As for Waverley, his creator was no doubt too hard on him. Among the
brave we hear that he was one of the bravest, though Scott always wrote
his battlepieces in a manner to suggest no discomfort, and does not
give us particular details of Waverley’s prowess. He has spirit enough,
this “sneaking piece of imbecility,” as he shows in his quarrel with
Fergus, on the march to Derby. Waverley, that creature of romance,
considered as a lover, is really not romantic enough. He loved Rose
because she loved him,—which is confessed to be unheroic behaviour.
Scott, in “Waverley,” certainly does not linger over love-scenes. With
Mr. Ruskin, we may say: “Let it not be thought for an instant that the
slight and sometimes scornful glance with which Scott passes over
scenes, which a novelist of our own day would have analyzed with the
airs of a philosopher, and painted with the curiosity of a gossip,
indicates any absence in his heart of sympathy with the great and
sacred elements of personal happiness.” But his mind entertained other
themes of interest, “loyalty, patriotism, piety.” On the other hand, it
is necessary to differ from Mr. Ruskin when he says that Scott “never
knew ‘l’amor che move ’l sol e l’altre stelle.’” He whose heart was
“broken for two years,” and retained the crack till his dying day, he
who, when old and tired, and near his death, was yet moved by the
memory of the name which thirty years before he had cut in Runic
characters on the turf at the Castle-gate of St. Andrew, knew love too
well to write of it much, or to speak of it at all. He had won his
ideal as alone the ideal can be won; he never lost her: she was with
him always, because she had been unattainable. “There are few,” he
says, “who have not, at one period of life, broken ties of love and
friendship, secret disappointments of the heart, to mourn over,—and we
know no book which recalls the memory of them more severely than ‘Julia
de Roubigné.’” He could not be very eager to recall them, he who had so
bitterly endured them, and because he had known and always knew “l’amor
che move ’l sol e l’altre stelle,” a seal was on his lips, a silence
broken only by a caress of Di Vernon’s.[*]
[* In a letter to Lady Abercorn, written when he was busy with the
“Lady of the Lake,” Scott complained that he could not draw a lover, in
spite of his own experience.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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