"Kosciusko did bless him, and embalmed the benediction with a shower of tears."The glorious Scott cycle of romances came to me some four or five years afterwards; and I think boys of our year were specially fortunate in coming upon those delightful books at that special time when we could best enjoy them.Oh, that sunshiny bench on half-holidays, with Claverhouse or Ivanhoe for a companion! I have remarked of very late days some little men in a great state of delectation over the romances of Captain Mayne Reid, and Gustave Aimard's Prairie and Indian Stories, and during occasional holiday visits, lurking off to bed with the volume under their arms.But are those Indians and warriors so terrible as our Indians and warriors were? (I say, are they? Young gentlemen, mind, I do not say they are not.) But as an oldster I can be heartily thankful for the novels of the 1-10 Geo.IV., let us say, and so downward to a period not unremote.Let us see there is, first, our dear Scott.
Whom do I love in the works of that dear old master? Amo--The Baron of Bradwardine and Fergus.(Captain Waverley is certainly very mild.)Amo Ivanhoe; LOCKSLEY; the Templar.
Amo Quentin Durward, and especially Quentin's uncle, who brought the boar to bay.I forget the gentleman's name.
I have never cared for the Master of Ravenswood, or fetched his hat out of the water since he dropped it there when I last met him (circa 1825).
Amo SALADIN and the Scotch knight in the "Talisman." The Sultan best.
Amo CLAVERHOUSE.
Amo MAJOR DALGETTY.Delightful Major.To think of him is to desire to jump up, run to the book, and get the volume down from the shelf.
About all those heroes of Scott, what a manly bloom there is, and honorable modesty! They are not at all heroic.They seem to blush somehow in their position of hero, and as it were to say, "Since it must be done, here goes!" They are handsome, modest, upright, ******, courageous, not too clever.If I were a mother (which is absurd), I should like to be mother-in-law to several young men of the Walter-Scott-hero sort.
Much as I like those most unassuming, manly, unpretending gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes of another writer, viz.--LEATHER-STOCKING,
UNCAS,
HARDHEART,
TOM COFFIN,
are quite the equals of Scott's men; perhaps Leather-stocking is better than any one in "Scott's lot." La Longue Carabine is one of the great prize-men of fiction.He ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de Coverley, Falstaff--heroic figures, all--American or British, and the artist has deserved well of his country who devised them.
At school, in my time, there was a public day, when the boys'
relatives, an examining bigwig or two from the universities, old schoolfellows, and so forth, came to the place.The boys were all paraded; prizes were administered; each lad being in a new suit of clothes--and magnificent dandies, I promise you, some of us were.
Oh, the chubby cheeks, clean collars, glossy new raiment, beaming faces, glorious in youth--fit tueri coelum--bright with truth, and mirth, and honor! To see a hundred boys marshalled in a chapel or old hall; to hear their sweet fresh voices when they chant, and look in their brave calm faces; I say, does not the sight and sound of them smite you, somehow, with a pang of exquisite kindness?...
Well.As about boys, so about Novelists.I fancy the boys of Parnassus School all paraded.I am a lower boy myself in that academy.I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentlemanlike.
There is Master Fielding--he with the black eye.What a magnificent build of a boy! There is Master Scott, one of the heads of the school.Did you ever see the fellow more hearty and manly? Yonder lean, shambling, cadaverous lad, who is always borrowing money, telling lies, leering after the house-maids, is Master Laurence Sterne--a bishop's grandson, and himself intended for the Church;for shame, you little reprobate! But what a genius the fellow has!
Let him have a sound flogging, and as soon as the young scamp is out of the whipping-room give him a gold medal.Such would be my practice if I were Doctor Birch, and master of the school.
Let us drop this school metaphor, this birch and all pertaining thereto.Our subject, I beg leave to remind the reader's humble servant, is novel heroes and heroines.How do you like your heroes, ladies? Gentlemen, what novel heroines do you prefer? When I set this essay going, I sent the above question to two of the most inveterate novel-readers of my acquaintance.The gentleman refers me to Miss Austen; the lady says Athos, Guy Livingston, and (pardon my rosy blushes) Colonel Esmond, and owns that in youth she was very much in love with Valancourt.