FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   >>  
llence to which we refer. Scott has been the first great genius--Fielding alone excepted--who invited our thorough and uncondescending sympathy to the wide mass of the human family--who has _stricken_ (for in this artificial world it requires an effort) into our hearts a love and a respect for those chosen from the people. Shakspeare has not done this--Shakspeare paints the follies of the mob with a strong and unfriendly hand. Where, in Skakspeare, is there a Jeanie Deans? Take up which you will of those numerous works which have appeared, from _Waverley_ to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_,--open where you please, you will find portraits from the people--and your interest keeping watch beside the poor man's hearth. Not, in Scott, as they were in the dramatists of our language, are the peasant, the artificer, the farmer, dragged on the stage merely to be laughed at for their brogue, and made to seem ridiculous because they are useful. He paints them, it is true, in their natural language, but the language is subservient to the character; he does not bow the man to the phrase, but the phrase to the man. Neither does he flatter on the one hand, as he does not slight on the other. Unlike the maudlin pastoralists of France he contents himself with the simple truth--he contrasts the dark shadows of Meg Merrilies, or of Edie Ochiltree, with the holy and pure lights that redeem and sanctify them--he gives us the poor, even to the gipsey and the beggar, as they really are--contented, if our interest is excited, and knowing that nature is sufficient to excite it. From the palaces of kings--from the tents of warriors, he comes--equally at home with man in all aspects--to the cotter's hearth:--he bids us turn from the pomp of the Plantagenets to bow the knee to the poor Jew's daughter--he makes us sicken at the hollowness of the royal Rothsay, to sympathize with the honest love of Hugh the smith. No never was there one--not even Burns himself--who forced us more intimately to acknowledge, or more deeply to feel, that "The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd, for a' that." * * * * * Scott, is not, we apprehend, justly liable to the charge of wanting a sound moral--even a great _political_ moral--(and political morals are the greatest of all)--in the general tenor of works which have compelled the highest classes to examine and respect the lowest. In this, with far less lea
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   >>  



Top keywords:

language

 

phrase

 

hearth

 

paints

 
interest
 

respect

 

political

 

Shakspeare

 

people

 

excited


knowing

 

contented

 

beggar

 
compelled
 
nature
 
excite
 

warriors

 

greatest

 

general

 

highest


palaces

 

sufficient

 

examine

 
deeply
 

lights

 

Ochiltree

 
Merrilies
 
redeem
 

gipsey

 
lowest

sanctify
 

classes

 
equally
 

Rothsay

 
sympathize
 

honest

 

hollowness

 
daughter
 

sicken

 

guinea


intimately

 
cotter
 

aspects

 

forced

 
acknowledge
 

wanting

 

charge

 

Plantagenets

 
apprehend
 

liable