Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer — Complete by Walter Scott (reading an ebook .txt) 📕

is told by Scott in the Introduction to “The Antiquary” (1830). As for the good Dominie, Scott remarks that, for “certain particular reasons,” he must say what he has to say about his prototype “very generally.” Mr. Chambers’ finds the prototype in a Mr. James Sanson, tutor in the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, Sir Walter’s uncle. It seems very unlike Sir Walter to mention this excellent man almost by his name, and the tale about his devotion to his patron’s daughter cannot, apparently, be true of Mr. James Sanson. The prototype of Pleydell, according to Sir Walter himself (Journal, June 19, 1830), was “my old friend Adam Rolland, Esq., in external circumstances, but not in frolic or fancy.” Mr. Chambers, however, finds the original in Mr. Andrew Crosbie, an advocate of great talents, who frolicked to ruin, and died in 1785. Scott may have heard tales of this patron of “High Jinks,” but cannot have known him much personally. Dandie Dinmont is simply the typical Border farmer. Mr. Shortreed, Scott’s companion in his Liddesdale raids, thought that Willie Elliot, in Millburnholm, was the great original. Scott did not meet Mr. James Davidson in Hindlee, owner of all the Mustards and Peppers, till some years after the novel was written. “Guy Mannering,” when read to him, sent Mr. Davidson to sleep. “The kind and manly character of Dandie, the gentle and delicious one of his wife,” and the circumstances of their home, were suggested, Lockhart thinks, by Scott’s friend, steward, and amanuensis, Mr. William Laidlaw, by Mrs. Laidlaw, and by their farm among the braes of Yarrow. In truth, the Border was peopled then by Dandies and Ailies: nor is the race even now extinct in Liddesdale and Teviotdale, in Ettrick and Yarrow. As for Mustard and Pepper, their offspring too is powerful in the land, and is the deadly foe of vermin. The curious may consult Mr. Cook’s work on “The Dandie Dinmont Terrier.” The Duke of Buccleugh’s breed still resembles the fine example painted by Gainsborough in his portrait of the duke (of Scott’s time). “Tod Gabbie,” again, as Lockhart says, was studied from Tod Willie, the huntsman of the hills above Loch Skene. As for the Galloway scenery, Scott did not know it well, having only visited “the Kingdom” in 1793, when he was defending the too frolicsome Mr. McNaught, Minister of Girthon. The beautiful and lonely wilds of the Glenkens, in central Galloway, where traditions yet linger, were, unluckily, terra incognita to Scott. A Galloway story of a murder and its detection by the prints of the assassin’s boots inspired the scene where Dirk Hatteraick is traced by similar means. In Colonel Mannering, by the way, the Ettrick Shepherd recognized “Walter Scott, painted by himself.”

The reception of “Guy Mannering” was all that could be wished. William Erskine and Ballantyne were “of opinion that it is much more interesting than ‘Waverley.’” Mr. Morritt (March, 1815) pronounced himself to be “quite charmed with Dandie, Meg Merrilies, and Dirk Hatteraick,--characters as original as true to nature, and as forcibly conceived as, I had almost said, could have been drawn by Shakspeare himself.” The public were not less appreciative. Two thousand copies, at a guinea, were sold the day after publication, and three thousand more were disposed of in three months. The professional critics acted just as Scott, speaking in general terms, had prophesied that they would. Let us quote the “British Critic” (1815).

“There are few spectacles in the literary world more lamentable than to view a successful author, in his second appearance before the public, limping lamely after himself, and treading tediously and awkwardly in the very same round, which, in his first effort, he had traced with vivacity and applause. We would not be harsh enough to say that the Author of ‘Waverley’ is in this predicament, but we are most unwillingly compelled to assert that the second effort falls far below the standard of the first. In ‘Waverley’ there was brilliancy of genius.... In ‘Guy Mannering’ there is little else beyond the wild sallies of an original genius, the bold and irregular efforts of a powerful but an exhausted mind. Time enough has not been allowed him to recruit his resources, both of anecdote and wit; but, encouraged by the credit so justly, bestowed upon one of then most finished portraits ever presented to the world, he has followed up the exhibition with a careless and hurried sketch, which betrays at once the weakness and the strength of its author.

“The character of Dirk Hatteraick is a faithful copy from nature,--it is one of those moral monsters which make us almost ashamed of our kind. Still, amidst the ruffian and murderous brutality of the smuggler, some few feelings of our common nature are thrown in with no less ingenuity than truth. . . . The remainder of the personages are very little above the cast of a common lively novel. . . . The Edinburgh lawyer is perhaps the most original portrait; nor are the saturnalia of the Saturday evenings described without humour. The Dominie is overdrawn and inconsistent; while the young ladies present nothing above par. . . .

“There are parts of this novel which none but one endowed with the sublimity of genius could have dictated; there are others which any ordinary character cobbler might as easily have stitched together. There are sparks both of pathos and of humour, even in the dullest parts, which could be elicited from none but the Author of ‘Waverley.’ . . . If, indeed, we have spoken in a manner derogatory to this, his later effort, our censure arises only from its comparison with the former. . .

“We cannot, however, conclude this article without remarking the absurd influence which our Author unquestionably attributes to the calculations of judicial astrology. No power of chance alone could have fulfilled the joint predictions both of Guy Mannering and Meg Merrilies; we cannot suppose that the Author can be endowed with sufficient folly to believe in the influence of planetary conjunctions himself, nor to have so miserable an idea of the understanding of his readers as to suppose them capable of a similar belief. We must also remember that the time of this novel is not in the dark ages, but scarcely forty years since; no aid, therefore, can be derived from the general tendency of popular superstition. What the clew may be to this apparent absurdity, we cannot imagine; whether the Author be in jest or earnest we do not know, and we are willing to suppose in this dilemma that he does not know himself.”

The “Monthly Review” sorrowed, like the “British,” over the encouragement given to the follies of astrology. The “Critical Review” “must lament that ‘Guy Mannering’ is too often written in language unintelligible to all except the Scotch.” The “Critical Monthly” also had scruples about morality. The novel “advocates duelling, encourages a taste for peeping into the future,--a taste by far too prevalent,--and it is not over nice on religious subjects!”