devotion to its shared historical heritage might help reunify a fragmented nation. Scott did not invent the historical novel, and indeed was readier than most twentieth- century critics to acknowledge that he had been influenced by the women novelists who dominated the literary scene prior to his debut, but his example established the significance the form would henceforth claim.
Scott published all his novels anonymously, an index of how a gentleman-poet, even at the start of the nineteenth century, might find fiction a disreputable occupation. However, his authorship of 'the Waverley Series' was an open secret, and Scott became the most internationally famous novelist as well as the most prolific writer of the day. In 1811 he started building his palatial country house at Abbotsford, a place that, characteristically, he both equipped with up-to-date indoor plumbing and gas lighting and stocked with antiquarian relics. There he enacted his vision of himself as a country gentleman of the old school. Though in 1820 he acquired the title of baronet and thus added a 'Sir' to his name, this glamorous persona of the Scottish laird depended on his hardheaded, unromantic readiness to conceive of literature as a business. To support his expenditures at Abbotsford, Scott wrote (as Thomas Carlyle put it disapprovingly in 1838) 'with the ardour of a steam-engine' and participated in a number of commercial ventures in printing and publishing. In the crash of 1826, as a result of the failure of the publishing firm of Constable, Scott was financially ruined. He insisted on working off his huge debts by his pen and exhausted himself in the effort to do so. Not until after his death were his creditors finally paid off in full with the proceeds of the continuing sale of his novels.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel1
Introduction
The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His withered cheek, and tresses gray,
Seemed to have known a better day;
5 The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the Bards was he,
Who sung of Border chivalry;
I. Scott's first metrical romance interweaves two minstrel, who has 'survived the Revolution' of stories and boasts more than a hundred pages of 1688, as a figure of historical transition. He has
historical notes. One story is set in the 16th cen-caught 'somewhat of the refinement of modern
tury and combines the Border legend of the goblin poetry without losing the simplicity of his original
Gilpin Horner with a story of the magic spells cast model'?a hint that the relationship between this
by the dowager lady of Branksome, who hopes to figure and his 17th-century listeners mirrors
use a long-hidden book of black arts to avenge the Scott's relationship with his 19th-century audi
death of her husband at the hands of a neighboring ence. But in addition to allying his authorship with
clan. In the second story, which unfolds across the his minstrel's improvised vocal performance, Scott
introductions and endings of the poem's six cantos, associates himself with the power of the written
the 17th-century minstrel who tells or sings the word: the 'wondrous book' that the Lady of Brank
story of this witch's plot (a lay is a song) emerges some seeks is buried inside the grave of a wizard
as hero. In his prose preface Scott described this suggestively named 'Michael Scott.'
.
40 8 / SIR WALTER SCOTT
For, well-a-day! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest. No more, on prancing palfrey0 borne, saddle horse He carolled, light as lark at morn;
15 No longer, courted and caressed,
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He poured, to lord and lady gay,
The unpremeditated lay;
Old times were changed, old manners gone,
A stranger2 filled the Stuarts' throne;
The bigots of the iron time
Had called his harmless art a crime.
A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door;
25 And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
