ROKEBY.

It was two years and a half after the publication of the "Lady of the Lake" before Scott gave his next poem to the world. During that interval he had moved from Ashestiel to Abbotsford, and the beginning of a great change was perceptible in the aspirations of his life. He had passed his fortieth year, his family was growing up around him; already the two boys had reached an age when, both being destined to active life, they would soon have to quit the paternal roof, and Scott had begun to speculate on their future. In the Introduction which he wrote for the 1830 edition of his poetical works, he speaks as though he had in a large degree given up field-sports, and taken to the quieter and more sedate occupation of planting, on account of advancing years and the absence of his sons, who used to be his companions in coursing and hunting. But it is evident that his choice of a new amusement had a deeper meaning than he then avowed or probably was conscious of.

For planting he had always, no doubt, entertained a strong partiality. Even in childhood, he says, his sympathies were stirred by reading the account of Shenstone's "Leasowes," and in after life there was nothing which seemed to afford him so much pride and pleasure as in watching the naked hill-sides gradually sprouting with the saplings he had planted. "You can have no idea," said Scott to Captain Basil Hall, "of the exquisite delight of a planter; he is like a painter laying on his colours: at every moment he sees his effects coming out. There is no art or occupation comparable to this. It is full of past, present, and future enjoyment. I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare heath; I look round, and see thousands of trees growing up, all of which, I may say almost each of which, have received my personal attention. I remember five years ago looking forward, with the most delighted expectation, to this very hour, and, as each year has passed, the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now: I anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted, but goes on from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetually augmenting interest." But he could hew as well as plant. He was expert with the axe, and one of the pleasantest sights of Abbotsford was to see the Sheriff and Tam Purdie, in their shirt-sleeves, thinning the woods, while Maida, the hound, looked gravely on.

It is not difficult to discover in this love of planting the germ of the ambition to which he now began to yield himself-to be a laird, and found a family. It was still under the modest title of cottage, or farm, that he spoke of Abbotsford; but already his plans were expanding, and the farm-house was gradually acquiring the aspect and proportions of a mansion. Everything which flattered his sense of being a landed proprietor was dear to him. It was not enough that he had bought an estate; he sought to make it his own in a more peculiar manner by converting the little farm into a gentleman's seat, and by calling into existence the woods which

were to cover the nakedness of the land. Both in the Introduction of 1830 and in his private letters he speaks contemptuously of farming, and places planting far above it as a nobler and more elevating pursuit. But one cannot but suspect that this feeling was not unconnected with the fact that farming was the occupation of the mere tenant, while planting was the business of the landlord.

Of course, as Scott's schemes assumed a grander form, so his expenditure increased. That it was a feeling of necessity and not inclination that led him to the composition of " Rokeby," is almost avowed in the Introduction of 1830. He there speaks as though he would have been content to have devoted himself entirely to his estate, and to have allowed the poetical field to lie fallow, had it not been for certain peremptory circumstances which again compelled him to take up the pen. "As I am turned improver on the earth of this every-day world, it was under condition that the small tenement of Parnassus, which might be accessible to my labours, should not remain uncultivated.' In plain words, he sat down to write a poem in order to get the money for his house and plantations. To his friend Morritt, in confiding the first idea of "Rokeby," Scott was frank enough on this point. "I want, he says, "to build my cottage a little better than my limited finances will permit out of my ordinary income; and although it is very true that an author should not hazard his reputation, yet, as Bob Acres says, I really think reputation should take some care of the gentleman in return.

In undertaking the work for the reasons thus explicitly avowed, Scott was quite conscious of his lack of poetic glow and impulse. The poem, apart from its merits, has a peculiar interest for the reader who studies it as a piece of careful literary manufacture, and takes notice of the deliberate business-like way in which it was produced. Three such successes as those of the "Minstrel," "Marmion," and the "Lady of the Lake," might have made a vain man reckless and a timid man cowardly the one would have been terrified by the sound himself had made, the other would have presumed upon his acknowledged powers. But Scott was neither vain nor timid.' He looked at the matter with a calm practical eye. He thought he understood the popular taste, but he was quite aware that there had been an unprecedented run of fortune in favour of his cards, and that he could not calculate on its continuance. His safety, he saw, lay in playing the game with a novel combination.

Determined not to throw away a chance, Scott was very cautious in the choice of a subject, and very elaborate in working out the story which he at length decided on adopting. His first conception of a poem of which Bruce should be the hero was discarded for the time (it afterwards appeared as the "Lord of the Isles"), even after he had written some of it, for fear the subject was not novel enough to catch the public taste. Hitherto he had taken his stand on Scottish ground; he now resolved to venture southwards in search of the incidents and scenery of his new poem. He was no stranger, however, to the country which he set himself to depict. Rokeby was the seat of his intimate friend Mr. Morritt; he had visited it more than once; he returned expressly to freshen his recollection of the district, and to note its aspect more carefully and narrowly; and his host supplied him with an ample store of legendary and topographical information. Impressed with the conviction that the greater the degree of novelty he could infuse into the poem the greater would be its chances of success, he resolved upon another experiment in his treatment of the story, besides transferring the theatre from Scotland to England. The force in the "Lay," he tells us, is thrown upon style; in "Marmion," on description; in the " Lady of the Lake," on incident. He i now determined to make the portraiture of character, without excluding either incident or description, the chief feature of "Rokeby."

The next point to be settled was the period in which the action should be laid. Scott was unfortunate in choosing the period of the Parliamentary Civil War. His friend, Mr. Morritt, at once detected the error, and urged him strongly to throw back the date of the story to the Wars of the Roses. That would give the bard, he suggested, more freedom in the introduction of ghosts and similar superstitious effects; it would enable him to represent the district at a time when its leading men, the lords of Barnard Castle and Rokeby, were playing a nobler and more distinguished part tan in the Commonwealth; and, "civil war for civil war, the first had two poetical sides, and the last only one; for the Roundheads, though I always thought them politically right, were sad materials for poetry; even Milton cannot make much of them." One may not be disposed to endorse the view that there was no poetry in the Puritans, but there can be little doubt that Scott's sympathies were warped in this respect, and that he did not catch the true spirit of the time. It might almost be assumed that he himself was conscious of this, for, except for a chance phrase here and there, we might read the poem from beginning to end without discovering in what period of English history the incidents were supposed to happen. There is nothing peculiarly characteristic of either Puritans or Cavaliers in the personages introduced upon the stage; and Scott might just as well have taken his friend's advice, and gone back to the feud of the Roses at once. Those who seek for a picture of England in the heat of the great strife between Court and Parliament, will be disappointed. If, however, the reader is willing to take the narrative on its own merits, without reference to its historical value, he will find it by no means destitute of interest and beauty. An author has a right to claim that he shall be tested by the standard of what he sought to accomplish; and in this instance it should be remembered that it was character and not history which Scott applied himself to depict. Mortham and Rokeby, Bertram and O'Neale, must be taken (to compare small things with great) on the same terms as we take Lear and Hamlet, without reference to the exact time in which they lived -as studies of that human nature, which is the same in every age.

The dedication of the work to Mr. Morritt, and the elaborate descriptions which it contained of the estate and castle of Rokeby, gave rise to some sarcasm on the part of London wits, who did not know the affectionate friendship which lent the place an especial charm to Scott's partial eye. Moore, for instance, in his "Twopenny Post-bag," has a hit at Scott as a bard who

"Having quitted the Borders to seek new renown,

Is coming by long quarto stages to town,

And begining with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay),
Means to do all the gentlemen's seats by the way."

The only way to rival the enterprising northern Ministrel is, Moore suggests :-"To start a new poet through Highgate to meet him;

Who by means of quick proofs-no revises, long coaches-
May do a few villas before Scott approaches."

There were, however, as we have seen, many agreeable associations which gave Scott a special interest in Rokeby. Nor were natural attractions wanting. Even now, when swarthy industry and exacting agriculture have done so much to efface the picturesque features of the country, there is much to charm the lover of natural scenery, and the spirited fidelity of the poet's descriptions can still be recognised. Having outlined his characters, as it were, in the front of his poetical picture, Scott went to Rokeby to fill in the background. He had already visited the spot, and its beauties had made a deep impression on his mind; brightened, doubtless, by the grateful recollections of his host's kindness and geniality. In a letter to Ellis

(July 8, 1809), he describes it as "one of the most enviable places I have ever seen, as it unites the richness and luxuriance of English vegetation, with the romantic variety of glen, torrent, and copse, which dignifies our Northern scenery." Rokeby is a modern mansion, on the site of an ancient castle, in the midst of a pleasant park, in which two rapid and beautiful streams, the Greta and the Tees, unite their waters. The scattered ruins of John Balliol's stately home, Barnard Castle, are to be found on a high bank overlooking the Tees. The castle has a chequered history. Edward I. took it from Balliol. It passed in succession to the Beauchamps of Warwick, and the Staffords of Buckingham. Richard III. is said to have enlarged and strengthened its fortifications, and to have made it for some time his principal residence, for the purpose of holding in check the Lancastrian faction of the Northern counties. Subsequently we find it in the possession of the Nevilles, Earls of Westmoreland, and it was forfeited to the crown after the insurrection against Queen Elizabeth in the eleventh year of her reign, and afterwards passed to Carr, the Earl of Somerset, James's the First's favourite, and Sir Harry Vane the elder. So that it was, doubtless, occupied in the Parliamentary interest during the civil war. Mortham Castle is now a farmhouse. It stands on the bank of the Greta, near the point where that stream issues from a narrow dell into more open country. Traces of a still older time are also to be found in this neighbourhood. Not far from Greta Bridge, there is a well-preserved Roman encampment, surrounded with a triple ditch, lying between the River Greta and the brook called the Tutta. Roman altars and monuments have also been turned up in the vicinity.

Mr. Morritt has left an interesting account of Scott's second visit to Rokeby, when he was collecting materials for his poem. The morning after he arrived, he said, "You have often given me materials for romance; now I want a good robber's cave and an old church of the right sort." So the two friends started on the quest, and Scott found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignal, and the ruined abbey of Egglestone. Nor did Scott neglect even the minutest features of the scene. He took note of the little plants and ferns that grew about, saying that in nature no two scenes were ever exactly alike; and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes, would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded.

Here we see Scott studying from nature-it is interesting to turn to the companion picture of the artificer at work. While composing "Rokeby" Scott gave an occasional hour to the "Bridal of Triermain" and the "Lord of the Isles," and found time for his planting as well. And all the while the clank of the trowel and the hammer were ringing in his ears, and he was fretted with the schemes for his new house, and the means of raising money for them. "As for the house and the poem," he said himself, "there are twelve masons hammering at the one, and a poor noodle at the other." The building being unfinished, he had no room for himself, and sat at his desk near a window looking out at the river, undisturbed by the noise and bustle on the other side of the old bed-curtain, which separated his sanctum from the rest of the only habitable portion of the house.

ROKE BY.