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Marmion
“Well, my friend,” said he, “what more would you have? You need but strike out one letter in the first of these lines, and make your painter-man, the next time he comes this way, print between the jolly tankard and your own name: -
‘Drink, weary pilgrim, drink, and PAY.’“Scott was delighted to find, on his return, that this suggestion had been adopted, and for aught I know the romantic legend may still be visible.’
The characters in the poem are hardly less vigorous in conception and presentation than the descriptions. It may be true, as Carlyle asserts in his ungenerous essay on Scott, that he was inferior to Shakespeare in delineation of character, but, even admitting that, we shall still have ample room for approval and admiration of his work. So far as the purposes of the poem are concerned the various personages are admirably utilized. We come to know Marmion himself very intimately, the interest gradually deepening as the real character of the Palmer and his relations to the hero are steadily developed. These two take prominent rank with the imaginary characters of literature. James IV, that ‘champion of the dames,’ and likewise undoubted military leader, is faithfully delineated in accordance with historical records and contemporary estimates. Those desirous of seeing him as he struck the imagination of a poet in his own day should read the eulogy passed upon him by Barclay in his ‘Ship of Fools.’ The passage in which this occurs is an interpolation in the division of the poem entitled ‘Of the Ruine and Decay of the Holy Faith Catholique.’ The other characters are all distinctly suited to the parts they have to perform. Acting on the licence sanctioned by Horatian authority: -
‘Atque ita mentitur, sic veris falsa remiscet, Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum’-Scott appropriates Sir David Lyndsay to his purpose, presenting him, even as he presents the stately and venerable Angus, with faithful and striking picturesqueness. Bishop Douglas is exactly suited to his share in the development of events; and had room likewise been found for the Court poet Dunbar-author of James’s Epithalamium, the ‘Thrissill and the Rois’-it would have been both a fit and a seemly arrangement. Had Scott remembered that Dunbar was a favourite of Queen Margaret’s he might have introduced him into an interesting episode. The passage devoted to the Queen herself is exquisite and graceful, its restrained and effective pathos making a singularly direct and significant appeal. The other female characters are well conceived and sustained, while Constance in the Trial scene reaches an imposing height of dramatic intensity.
After the descriptions and the characterisation, the remaining important features of the poem are its marked practical irony and its episodes. Marmion, despite his many excellences, is throughout-and for obvious reasons-the victim of a persistent Nemesis. Scott is much interested in his hero; one fancies that if it were only possible he would in the end extend his favour to him, and grant him absolution; but his sense of artistic fitness prevails, and he will abate no jot of the painful ordeal to which he feels bound to submit him. Marmion is a knight with a claim to nothing more than the half of the proverbial qualifications. He is sans peur, but not sans reproche; and it is one expression of the practical irony that constantly lurks to assail him that even his fearlessness quails for a time before the Phantom Knight on Gifford Moor. The whole attitude of the Palmer is ironical; and, after the bitter parting with Angus at Tantallon, Marmion is weighted with the depressing reflection that numerous forces are conspiring against him, and with the knowledge that it is his old rival De Wilton that has thrown off the Palmer’s disguise and preceded him to the scene of war. In his last hour the practical irony of his position bears upon him with a concentration of keen and bitter thrusts. Clare, whom he intended to defraud, ministers to his last needs; he learns that Constance died a bitter death at Lindisfarne; and just when he recognises his greatest need of strength his life speedily ebbs away. There is a certain grandeur of impressive tragical effort in his last struggles, as he feels that whatever he may himself have been he suffers in the end from the merciless machinery of a false ecclesiastical system. The practical irony follows him even after his death, for it is a skilful stroke that leaves his neglected remains on the field of battle and places a nameless stranger in his stately tomb.
As regards the episodes, it may just be said in a word that they are appropriate, and instead of retarding the movement of the piece, as has sometimes been alleged, they serve to give it breadth and massiveness of effect. Of course, there will always be found those who think them too long, just as there are those whose narrowness of view constrains them to wish the Introductions away. If the poet’s conception of Marmion be fully considered, it will be seen that the Host’s Tale is an integral part of his purpose; and there is surely no need to defend either Sir David Lyndsay’s Tale or the weird display at the cross of Edinburgh. The episode of Lady Heron’s singing carries its own defence in itself, seeing that the song of ‘Lochinvar’ holds a place of distinction among lyrics expressive of poetical motion. After all, we must bear in mind that though it pleases Scott to speak of his tale as flowing on ‘wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,’ he was still conscious that he was engaged upon a poem, and that a poem is regulated by certain artistic laws. If we strive to grasp his meaning we shall not be specially inclined to carp at his method. It may at the same time be not unprofitable to look for a moment at some of the notable criticisms of the poem.
IV. CRITICISMS OF THE POEMWhen ‘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 POEMScott 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 singThe combat where her lover fell!That Scottish Bard should wake the string,The triumph of our foes to tell!LEYDEN.ADVERTISEMENT
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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, ESQAshestiel, Ettrick ForestNovember’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, 5You scarce the rivulet might ken,So thick the tangled greenwood grew,So feeble trill’d the streamlet through:Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seenThrough bush and brier, no longer green, 10An 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 15Upon our Forest hills is shed;No more, beneath the evening beam,Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam;Away hath pass’d the heather-bellThat bloom’d so rich on Needpath-fell; 20Sallow his brow, and russet bareAre 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, 25And yet a watery sunbeam shines:In meek despondency they eyeThe withered sward and wintry sky,And far beneath their summer hill,Stray sadly by Glenkinnon’s rill: 30The 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, 35As 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; 40Their 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 45Again shall paint your summer bower;Again the hawthorn shall supplyThe garlands you delight to tie;The lambs upon the lea shall bound,The wild birds carol to the round, 50And while you frolic light as they,Too short shall seem the summer day. To mute and to material thingsNew life revolving summer brings;The genial call dead Nature hears, 55And in her glory reappears.But oh! my Country’s wintry stateWhat second spring shall renovate?What powerful call shall bid ariseThe buried warlike and the wise; 60The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,The hand that grasp’d the victor steel?The vernal sun new life bestowsEven on the meanest flower that blows;But vainly, vainly may he shine, 65Where 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! 70Say 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, 75Was 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, 80And launch’d that thunderbolt of warOn Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar;Who, born to guide such high emprize,For Britain’s weal was early wise;Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, 85For 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; 90Who, when the frantic crowd amainStrain’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, 95And 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; 100By 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, 105The 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, 110With 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, 115The steerage of the realm gave way!Then, while on Britain’s thousand plains,One unpolluted church remains,Whose peaceful bells ne’er sent aroundThe bloody tocsin’s maddening sound, 120But 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, 130When 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; 135And feelings keen, and fancy’s glow, -They sleep with him who sleeps below:And, if thou mourn’st they could not saveFrom error him who owns this grave,Be every harsher thought suppress’d, 140And sacred be the last long rest.Here, where the end of earthly thingsLays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue,Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung; 145Here, where the fretted aisles prolongThe 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, 150O, 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, 155And 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, 160And nail’d her colours to the mast!Heaven, to reward his firmness, gaveA portion in this honour’d grave,And ne’er held marble in its trustOf 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 170Shook 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 knownThe names of PITT and Fox alone. 175Spells of such force no wizard graveE’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, 180The 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. 185Drop 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 criesOf dying Nature bid you rise;Not even your Britain’s groans can pierceThe leaden silence of your hearse;Then, O, how impotent and vain 200This 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, 210And 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- 215Woe, 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, 220The 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. 225Now slow return the lonely down,The silent pastures bleak and brown,The farm begirt with copsewood wildThe gambols of each frolic child,Mixing their shrill cries with the tone 230Of 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, 235In 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, 240As 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, 245Lest his old legends tire the earOf 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,) 250How still the legendary layO’er poet’s bosom holds its sway;How on the ancient minstrel strainTime lays his palsied hand in vain;And how our hearts at doughty deeds, 255By warriors wrought in steely weeds,Still throb for fear and pity’s sake;As when the Champion of the LakeEnters Morgana’s fated house,Or in the Chapel Perilous, 260Despising 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, 265And 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 songScorn’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, 275Had raised the Table Round again,But that a ribald King and CourtBade him toil on, to make them sport;Demanded for their niggard pay,Fit for their souls, a looser lay, 280Licentious 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, 285Essay to break a feeble lanceIn 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, 290Thy 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, 295Shield, 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, 300Pure 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; 305And 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, 310A worthy meed may thus be won;Ytene’s oaks-beneath whose shadeTheir theme the merry minstrels made,Of Ascapart, and Bevis bold,And that Red King, who, while of old, 315Through Boldrewood the chase he led,By his loved huntsman’s arrow bled-Ytene’s oaks have heard againRenew’d such legendary strain;For thou hast sung, how He of Gaul, 320That Amadis so famed in hall,For Oriana, foil’d in fightThe Necromancer’s felon might;And well in modern verse hast wovePartenopex’s mystic love; 325Hear, then, attentive to my lay,A knightly tale of Albion’s elder day.
