SCOTT'S "ORIGINALS."

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1419, 20 April 1912, Page 9

SCOTT'S "ORIGINALS."

The interest on the part of readers of Scott in the originals of the characters in tho Wayerley Novels is evidenced not only by tho numerous applications lor information on the subject made at the public'libraries, but also by the recrudescence from time to timo ot discussions in tho columns of certain of the Scottish newspapers. There will accordingly bo a largo audience ready to welcomo Mr. W. S. Crockett's "The Scott Originals," and if the author completes with equal knowledge and thoroughness the revised cdi-. Hon, so much needed, ~.of Lockharfs "Life," lie vii,li: : forthe memory oi Sir Walter * as-a'ny" man of his generation. Tho female character in Scott which appeals most forcibly to'malo readers-is Diana Vernon.'.Even,;,the;-beautiful Rebecca is not so firmly seated in ■ their affections as she. .' She owes her charm to a vivacity akin to that of Rosalind in the Forest ol Ardeni-a certain, unconventionality which, although ascribed in the novel to the'ill-training of Rashleigh Osbaldistone, is yet curiously attractive, and to a masculine strain that runs through her character. Those things, however, would not make' her the favourite she is were it not for the supreme sceno at the Fords of Frew... in telling which Scott reaches-..-a'-height which ho never touched 'again, wliereJDiona jshows herself capable ofthe sovereign-surrender, and of preferring devotion to a cause to love of a person. Scott can make us laugh when the Black Knight sups with the Holy Clerk of Copmonhurst, and he can move us to pathos with the story of the heroism of Jeannio Deans, and he can give us the right tragic thrill when narrating Lucy Aslilou's end; but when, above the clnchau of Aberfoyle, the unknown rider whistles the completion of the tune which Francis Osbaldistone has begun, and when, later, the girl rides off with her everlasting farewell, he has us by the throat in good earnest, and tho character of Diana Vernon is indelibly fixed in tho reader's affections-.

The only objection to the identification of tho heroino of "Hob Roy" with that Miss Cranstoun who afterwards becamo Countess of Purgstall is that when Scott became acquainted with her she was 32, and therefore must have lost that bloom of first youth which is essential to Diana. It is not insuperable; to hold that Scott could not transfer with the necessary modifications the character of a woman into the body of a girl is to impose arbitrary limitations on genius. Moverover, the positive evidence is strong. Miss Cranstoun's early habits were like those of Diana, and she retained until the end a vivacity like hers. Scott, who sent her all his other novels, did not send "Rob Roy." When it was procured and read to her, she identified descriptions which she herself had communicated, and, finally, while discussing minutely every other character in the Waverky Novels, she. absolutely refrained from discussing Diana Vernon. Those aro the chief proofs, and if they do not convince there is no rival competitor whom we can support.

One would have wished for the original of Diana a. better old age than she seems to have had. Captain Basil Hall found her at Hainfield a bedridden old woman, looking "like a mummy," or. alternatively, "liko tho picturd' of Mademoiselle Endor in an old family Bible," as slip herself said, and pretty nearly broken with her misfortunes.' She'had seen her country devastated by tho Napoleonic invasion; her husband had died of the hardships of warfare, and imprisonment; she saw her son, of whom Dugald Stewart, with, no doubt, a kinsman's exaggeration, said that ho was "tho most extraordinary prodigy of intellectual endowments" that had ever fallen under his knowledge, lapse into an early grave. Her chief wish was to die in tho bod in which her son had died, and be buried in the family vault with her husband. Moreover, she <kont her coffin in tho castle. It was of iron, and "so tastefully enntrived that it looked moro liko ono of those ornamental pieces of sculpture which surmounts some of (he old monuments in Wost.minster Abtyy than a coffin intended for real use," and it had three "hu?e, fantastically shaped padlocks." Turn from the thought of all this to the scene by the Fords of Frew, think of tho two nnrsons as one and the same. Mid von have a tlieme to moralise on.—"Manchester Guardian."