The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Walter Scott, by William Paton Ker

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Sir Walter Scott
A Lecture at the Sorbonne

Author: William Paton Ker

Release Date: April 29, 2007 [EBook #21250]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR WALTER SCOTT ***

Produced by Constanze Hofmann, Jeanette Jordan, Lori
Scoggins, Norilan, McMartha, sassi, Siobhan Hillman, Tamise
Totterdell, Zara Baxter, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

SIR WALTER SCOTT

A Lecture at the Sorbonne,
May 22, 1919, in the series of
_Conferences 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 Odeon, 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,