Marmion

IV. CRITICISMS OF THE POEM

When ‘Marmion’ was little more than begun Scott’s publishers offered him a thousand pounds for the copyright, and as this soon became known it naturally gave rise to varied comment. Lord Byron thought it sufficient to warrant a gratuitous attack on the author in his ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’ This is a portion of the passage: -

 
     ‘And think’st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance,
      On public taste to foist thy stale romance.
      Though Murray with his Miller may combine
      To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
      No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
      Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.’
 

As a matter of fact, there was on Scott’s part no trade whatever in the case. If a publisher chose to secure in advance what he anticipated would be a profitable commodity, that was mainly the publisher’s affair, and the poet would have been a simpleton not to close with the offer if he liked it. Scott admirably disposes of Byron as follows in the 1830 Introduction: -

‘The publishers of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” emboldened by the success of that poem, willingly offered a thousand pounds for “Marmion.” The transaction being no secret, afforded Lord Byron, who was then at general war with all who blacked paper, an apology for including me in his satire, entitled “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” I never could conceive how an arrangement between an author and his publishers, if satisfactory to the persons concerned, could afford matter of censure to any third party. I had taken no unusual or ungenerous means of enhancing the value of my merchandise-I had never higgled a moment about the bargain, but accepted at once what I considered the handsome offer of my publishers. These gentlemen, at least, were not of opinion that they had been taken advantage of in the transaction, which indeed was one of their own framing; on the contrary, the sale of the Poem was so far beyond their expectation, as to induce them to supply the author’s cellars with what is always an acceptable present to a young Scottish housekeeper, namely, a hogshead of excellent claret.’

A second point on which Scott was attacked was the character of Marmion. It was held that such a knight as he undoubtedly was should have been incapable of forgery. Scott himself; of course, knew better than his critics whether or not this was the case, but, with his usual good nature and generous regard for the opinion of others, he admitted that perhaps he had committed an artistic blunder. Dr. Leyden, in particular, for whose judgment he had special respect, wrote him from India ‘a furious remonstrance on the subject.’ Fortunately, he made no attempt to change what he had written, his main reason being that ‘corrections, however in themselves judicious, have a bad effect after publication.’ He might have added that any modification of the hero’s guilt would have entirely altered the character of the poem, and might have ruined it altogether. He had never, apparently, gone into the question thoroughly after his first impressions of the type of knights existing in feudal times, for though he states that ‘similar instances were found, and might be quoted,’ he is inclined to admit that the attribution of forgery was a ‘gross defect.’ Readers interested in the subject will find by reference to Pike’s ‘History of Crime,’ i. 276, that Scott was perfectly justified in his assumption that a feudal knight was capable of forgery. Those who understand how intimate his knowledge was of the period with which he was dealing will, of course, be the readiest to believe him rather than his critics; but when he seems doubtful of himself, and ready to yield the point, it is well that the strength of his original position can thus be supported by the results of recent investigation.

Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, not being able to understand and appreciate this new devotion to romance, and probably stimulated by his misreading of the reference to Fox in the Introduction to Canto I, did his utmost to cast discredit on ‘Marmion.’ Scott was too large a man to confound the separate spheres of Politics and Literature; whereas it was frequently the case with Jeffrey-as, indeed, it was to some extent with literary critics on the other side as well-to estimate an author’s work in reference to the party in the State to which he was known to belong. It was impossible to deny merits to Scott’s descriptions, and the extraordinary energy of the most striking portions of the Poem, but Jeffrey groaned over the inequalities he professed to discover, and lamented that the poet should waste his strength on the unprofitable effort to resuscitate an old-fashioned enthusiasm. They had been the best of friends previously-and Scott, as we have seen, worked for the Edinburgh Review-but it was now patent that the old literary intimacy could not pleasantly continue. Nor is it surprising that Scott should have felt that the Edinburgh Review had become too autocratic, and that he should have given a helping hand towards the establishing of the Quarterly Review, as a political and literary organ necessary to the balance of parties.

V. THE TEXT OF THE POEM

Scott himself revised ‘Marmion’ in 1831, and the interleaved copy which he used formed the basis of the text given by Lockhart in the uniform edition of the Poetical Works published in 1833. This will remain the standard text. It is that which is followed in the present volume, in which there will be found only three-in reality only two-important instances of divergence from Lockhart’s readings. The earlier editions have been collated with that of 1833, and Mr. W. J. Rolfe’s careful and scholarly Boston edition has likewise been consulted. It has not been considered necessary to follow Mr. Rolfe in several alterations he has made on Lockhart; but he introduces one emendation which readily commends itself to the reader’s intelligence, and it is adopted in the present volume. This is in the punctuation of the opening lines in the first stanza of Canto II. Lockhart completes a sentence at the end of the fifth line, whereas the sense manifestly carries the period on to the eleventh line. In the third Introd., line 228, the reading of the earlier editions is followed in giving ‘From me’ instead of ‘For me,’ as the meaning is thereby simplified and made more direct. In III. xiv. 234, the modern versions of Lockhart’s text give ‘proudest princes veil their eyes,’ where Lockhart himself agrees with the earlier editions in reading ‘vail’. The restoration of the latter form needs no defence. The Elizabethan words in the Poem are not infrequent, giving it, as they do, a certain air of archaic dignity, and there can be little doubt that ‘vail’ was Scott’s word here, used in its Shakespearian sense of ‘lower’ or ‘cast down,’ and recalling Venus as ‘she vailed her eyelids.’

MARMIONA TALE OF FLODDEN FIELDIN SIX CANTOS

 
Alas! that Scottish maid should sing
The combat where her lover fell!
That Scottish Bard should wake the string,
The triumph of our foes to tell!
 

LEYDEN.

ADVERTISEMENT

* * *

It is hardly to be expected, that an Author whom the Public have honoured with some degree of applause, should not be again a trespasser on their kindness. Yet the Author of MARMION must be supposed to feel some anxiety concerning its success, since he is sensible that he hazards, by this second intrusion, any reputation which his first Poem may have procured him. The present story turns upon the private adventures of a fictitious character; but is called a Tale of Flodden Field, because the hero’s fate is connected with that memorable defeat, and the causes which led to it. The design of the Author was, if possible, to apprize his readers, at the outset, of the date of his Story, and to prepare them for the manners of the Age in which it is laid. Any Historical Narrative, far more an attempt at Epic composition, exceeded his plan of a Romantic Tale; yet he may be permitted to hope, from the popularity of THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, that an attempt to paint the manners of the feudal times, upon a broader scale, and in the course of a more interesting story, will not be unacceptable to the Public.

The Poem opens about the commencement of August, and concludes with the defeat of Flodden, 9th September, 1513. Ashestiel, 1808,

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO FIRST

TO WILLIAM STEWART ROSE, ESQ

Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest

 
November’s sky is chill and drear,
November’s leaf is red and sear:
Late, gazing down the steepy linn,
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen,                            5
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trill’d the streamlet through:
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and brier, no longer green,                    10
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with double speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
 
 
No longer Autumn’s glowing red                              15
Upon our Forest hills is shed;
No more, beneath the evening beam,
Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam;
Away hath pass’d the heather-bell
That bloom’d so rich on Needpath-fell;                      20
Sallow his brow, and russet bare
Are now the sister-heights of Yair.
The sheep, before the pinching heaven,
To sheltered dale and down are driven,
Where yet some faded herbage pines,                        25
And yet a watery sunbeam shines:
In meek despondency they eye
The withered sward and wintry sky,
And far beneath their summer hill,
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon’s rill:                          30
The shepherd shifts his mantle’s fold,
And wraps him closer from the cold;
His dogs no merry circles wheel,
But, shivering, follow at his heel;
A cowering glance they often cast,                          35
As deeper moans the gathering blast.
 
 
My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild,
As best befits the mountain child,
Feel the sad influence of the hour,
And wail the daisy’s vanish’d flower;                      40
Their summer gambols tell, and mourn,
And anxious ask, – Will spring return,
And birds and lambs again be gay,
And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?
 
 
  Yes, prattlers, yes.  The daisy’s flower                  45
Again shall paint your summer bower;
Again the hawthorn shall supply
The garlands you delight to tie;
The lambs upon the lea shall bound,
The wild birds carol to the round,                          50
And while you frolic light as they,
Too short shall seem the summer day.
 
 
  To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,                          55
And in her glory reappears.
But oh! my Country’s wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise;                            60
The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,
The hand that grasp’d the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine,                            65
Where Glory weeps o’er NELSON’S shrine:
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,
That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallow’d tomb!
 
 
  Deep graved in every British heart,
O never let those names depart!                            70
Say to your sons, – Lo, here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave;
To him, as to the burning levin,
Short, bright, resistless course was given.
Where’er his country’s foes were found,                    75
Was heard the fated thunder’s sound,
Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,
Roll’d, blazed, destroyed, – and was no more.
 
 
  Nor mourn ye less his perished worth,
Who bade the conqueror go forth,                            80
And launch’d that thunderbolt of war
On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;
Who, born to guide such high emprize,
For Britain’s weal was early wise;
Alas! to whom the Almighty gave,                            85
For Britain’s sins, an early grave!
His worth, who, in his mightiest hour,
A bauble held the pride of power,
Spum’d at the sordid lust of pelf,
And served his Albion for herself;                          90
Who, when the frantic crowd amain
Strain’d at subjection’s bursting rein,
O’er their wild mood full conquest gain’d,
The pride, he would not crush, restrain’d,
Show’d their fierce zeal a worthier cause,                  95
And brought the freeman’s arm, to aid the freeman’s laws.
 
 
  Had’st thou but lived, though stripp’d of power,
A watchman on the lonely tower,
Thy thrilling trump had roused the land,
When fraud or danger were at hand;                        100
By thee, as by the beacon-light,
Our pilots had kept course aright;
As some proud column, though alone,
Thy strength had propp’d the tottering throne:
Now is the stately column broke,                          105
The beacon-light is quench’d in smoke,
The trumpet’s silver sound is still,
The warder silent on the hill!
 
 
Oh, think, how to his latest day,
When Death, just hovering, claim’d his prey,              110
With Palinure’s unalter’d mood,
Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repell’d,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,                      115
The steerage of the realm gave way!
Then, while on Britain’s thousand plains,
One unpolluted church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne’er sent around
The bloody tocsin’s maddening sound,                      120
But still, upon the hallow’d day,
Convoke the swains to praise and pray;
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear,
He, who preserved them, PITT, lies here!                  125
 
 
  Nor yet suppress the generous sigh,
Because his rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy requiescat dumb,
Lest it be said o’er Fox’s tomb.
For talents mourn, untimely lost,                          130
When best employ’d, and wanted most;
Mourn genius high, and lore profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine,
To penetrate, resolve, combine;                            135
And feelings keen, and fancy’s glow, -
They sleep with him who sleeps below:
And, if thou mourn’st they could not save
From error him who owns this grave,
Be every harsher thought suppress’d,                      140
And sacred be the last long rest.
Here, where the end of earthly things
Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;
Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,
Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;                  145
Here, where the fretted aisles prolong
The distant notes of holy song,
As if some angel spoke agen,
‘All peace on earth, good-will to men;’
If ever from an English heart,                            150
O, here let prejudice depart,
And, partial feeling cast aside,
Record, that Fox a Briton died!
When Europe crouch’d to France’s yoke,
And Austria bent, and Prussia broke,                      155
And the firm Russian’s purpose brave,
Was barter’d by a timorous slave,
Even then dishonour’s peace he spurn’d,
The sullied olive-branch return’d,
Stood for his country’s glory fast,                        160
And nail’d her colours to the mast!
Heaven, to reward his firmness, gave
A portion in this honour’d grave,
And ne’er held marble in its trust
Of two such wondrous men the dust.                        165
 
 
  With more than mortal powers endow’d,
How high they soar’d above the crowd!
Theirs was no common party race,
Jostling by dark intrigue for place;
Like fabled Gods, their mighty war                        170
Shook realms and nations in its jar;
Beneath each banner proud to stand,
Look’d up the noblest of the land,
Till through the British world were known
The names of PITT and Fox alone.                          175
Spells of such force no wizard grave
E’er framed in dark Thessalian cave,
Though his could drain the ocean dry,
And force the planets from the sky.
These spells are spent, and, spent with these,            180
The wine of life is on the lees.
Genius, and taste, and talent gone,
For ever tomb’d beneath the stone,
Where-taming thought to human pride! -
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.                      185
Drop upon Fox’s grave the tear,
‘Twill trickle to his rival’s bier;
O’er PITT’S the mournful requiem sound,
And Fox’s shall the notes rebound.
The solemn echo seems to cry, –                             190
‘Here let their discord with them die.
Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom Fate made Brothers in the tomb;
But search the land of living men,
Where wilt thou find their like agen?’                    195
 
 
  Rest, ardent Spirits! till the cries
Of dying Nature bid you rise;
Not even your Britain’s groans can pierce
The leaden silence of your hearse;
Then, O, how impotent and vain                            200
This grateful tributary strain!
Though not unmark’d from northern clime,
Ye heard the Border Minstrel’s rhyme:
His Gothic harp has o’er you rung;
The Bard you deign’d to praise, your deathless names has sung.
 
 
  Stay yet, illusion, stay a while,
My wilder’d fancy still beguile!
From this high theme how can I part,
Ere half unloaded is my heart!
For all the tears e’er sorrow drew,                        210
And all the raptures fancy knew,
And all the keener rush of blood,
That throbs through bard in bard-like mood,
Were here a tribute mean and low,
Though all their mingled streams could flow-              215
Woe, wonder, and sensation high,
In one spring-tide of ecstasy! -
It will not be-it may not last-
The vision of enchantment’s past:
Like frostwork in the morning ray,                        220
The fancied fabric melts away;
Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,
And long, dim, lofty aisle, are gone;
And, lingering last, deception dear,
The choir’s high sounds die on my ear.                    225
Now slow return the lonely down,
The silent pastures bleak and brown,
The farm begirt with copsewood wild
The gambols of each frolic child,
Mixing their shrill cries with the tone                    230
Of Tweed’s dark waters rushing on.
 
 
  Prompt on unequal tasks to run,
Thus Nature disciplines her son:
Meeter, she says, for me to stray,
And waste the solitary day,                                235
In plucking from yon fen the reed,
And watch it floating down the Tweed;
Or idly list the shrilling lay,
With which the milkmaid cheers her way,
Marking its cadence rise and fail,                        240
As from the field, beneath her pail,
She trips it down the uneven dale:
Meeter for me, by yonder cairn,
The ancient shepherd’s tale to learn;
Though oft he stop in rustic fear,                        245
Lest his old legends tire the ear
Of one, who, in his simple mind,
May boast of book-learn’d taste refined.
 
 
  But thou, my friend, canst fitly tell,
(For few have read romance so well,)                      250
How still the legendary lay
O’er poet’s bosom holds its sway;
How on the ancient minstrel strain
Time lays his palsied hand in vain;
And how our hearts at doughty deeds,                      255
By warriors wrought in steely weeds,
Still throb for fear and pity’s sake;
As when the Champion of the Lake
Enters Morgana’s fated house,
Or in the Chapel Perilous,                                260
Despising spells and demons’ force,
Holds converse with the unburied corse;
Or when, Dame Ganore’s grace to move,
(Alas, that lawless was their love!)
He sought proud Tarquin in his den,                        265
And freed full sixty knights; or when,
A sinful man, and unconfess’d,
He took the Sangreal’s holy quest,
And, slumbering, saw the vision high,
He might not view with waking eye.                        270
 
 
  The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorn’d not such legends to prolong:
They gleam through Spenser’s elfin dream,
And mix in Milton’s heavenly theme;
And Dryden, in immortal strain,                            275
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald King and Court
Bade him toil on, to make them sport;
Demanded for their niggard pay,
Fit for their souls, a looser lay,                        280
Licentious satire, song, and play;
The world defrauded of the high design,
Profaned the God-given strength, and marr’d the lofty line.
 
 
Warm’d by such names, well may we then,
Though dwindled sons of little men,                        285
Essay to break a feeble lance
In the fair fields of old romance;
Or seek the moated castle’s cell,
Where long through talisman and spell,
While tyrants ruled, and damsels wept,                    290
Thy Genius, Chivalry, hath slept:
There sound the harpings of the North,
Till he awake and sally forth,
On venturous quest to prick again,
In all his arms, with all his train,                      295
Shield, lance, and brand, and plume, and scarf,
Fay, giant, dragon, squire, and dwarf,
And wizard with his wand of might,
And errant maid on palfrey white.
Around the Genius weave their spells,                      300
Pure Love, who scarce his passion tells;
Mystery, half veil’d and half reveal’d;
And Honour, with his spotless shield;
Attention, with fix’d eye; and Fear,
That loves the tale she shrinks to hear;                  305
And gentle Courtesy; and Faith,
Unchanged by sufferings, time, or death;
And Valour, lion-mettled lord,
Leaning upon his own good sword.
  Well has thy fair achievement shown,                    310
A worthy meed may thus be won;
Ytene’s oaks-beneath whose shade
Their theme the merry minstrels made,
Of Ascapart, and Bevis bold,
And that Red King, who, while of old,                      315
Through Boldrewood the chase he led,
By his loved huntsman’s arrow bled-
Ytene’s oaks have heard again
Renew’d such legendary strain;
For thou hast sung, how He of Gaul,                        320
That Amadis so famed in hall,
For Oriana, foil’d in fight
The Necromancer’s felon might;
And well in modern verse hast wove
Partenopex’s mystic love;                                  325
Hear, then, attentive to my lay,
A knightly tale of Albion’s elder day.