Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/576

 Scott's Legal Lore.

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SCOTT'S LEGAL LORE. By Nathan Newmark. THAT the law should loom through the pages of Scott is not to be wondered at. Was he not the son of a Writer to the Signet? Was he not himself an advocate and a sheriff? Did not his fondness for feudal antiquities attract him to musty parchment as well as rusty mail, and lead him to decipher ancient contracts and wills as well as provincial charters and parish registers? These points we may glean even from the cursory sketch of his life given by his French depreciator, the graphic Taine, who holds that Scott gave us the days of chivalry, not as they really were, but with all the modern improvements and appurte nances, and that he found the structure of barbarous souls too difficult to discover, and too little pleasing to show, for him to dare to make the exhibition without these nineteenthcentury accessories. But then we are bound to discount Taine's verdict when we note how he denies greatness to Dickens, and is full of protest against Shakspeare's riotous imagination. As for Carlyle's objection that Scott did not go out into rocky solitudes to wrestle with the mystery of existence, it is characteristic of the great English appreciator of German literature, who diminished our debt of gratitude by adopting the twisted style of some of his Teutonic models, and who doubtless expected a philosopher when he found a novelist. Nor is even Howell's claim that Scott is too simple and too romantic for these times, likely to outweigh the views of the host of critics who find no end of charms in most of the Waverley Novels. But what shall be said of Scott's legal career and leanings? These are quite generally lost sight of in the much larger measure of atten tion awakened by his varied works, and by the picturesque features of his manly life. Yet even a little investigation shows that they possess many elements of interest, not only

to the members of his original profession, but also to the world at large. It is true that all the biographical accounts agree that when placed in his father's office to learn legal routine, so that in the end he might become a barrister, he by no means gave his undivided attention to " Erskine's Institutes," which he mentions in one of his earlier novels as a fountain-head of Scotch law. It is also true that he himself com pared his feelings toward the law to those avowed by Slender to Miss Anne Page, as consisting of no great love at the beginning, which it had pleased Heaven to decrease on further acquaintance. So in his recently published Journals we find a passage in which he deprecates the way in which young men are spoiled for the army and for other pur suits, by being thrust into the paths that lead to the bar. Still, he also declared that he had " a thread of the attorney " in him; and it cannot be said that there is any trace of want of cordiality toward the law as a study, or toward its exponents, shown in such of his novels as touch on legal topics. In " Guy Mannering" he makes one of his characters say, "Law 's like laudanum; it's much more easy to use it as a quack does, than to learn to apply it like a physician." Then almost nothing but law occupies our attention in "Redgauntlet," perhaps one of the least read of his novels, yet by no means the least interesting to a thoughtful reader. There much is told of salmon-fishing, and of Jaco bite plots, and of quaint Quakers, and of a plan of whistling familiar melodies to signal to those in prison. But most of the story deals with Scotch lawyers and law courts, and we are supposed to obtain a portrait of Scott's father and of Scott himself. Cer tainly we hear enough of Scotch law, with its strange terms and its peculiar features, indi cating French influence and largely borrowed