Edinburgh Under Sir Walter Scott — Reading Notes

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Authors: Fyfe, W. T., Rait, Robert S. (Robert Sangster), 1874-1936 [Author of introduction, etc.] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2014 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Edinburgh (Scotland) -- History; Scott, Walter, 1771-1832 -- Homes and haunts -- Scotland -- Edinburgh; Edinburgh (Scotland) -- Intellectual life -- 19th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 90,249

Reading time 393 min

Text sections 13

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #47617

Examines Edinburgh's intellectual and social life during Walter Scott's era, focusing on the city's literary circles, publishers, and legal figures, with detailed portraits of figures like John Leyden and the book trade.

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Produced by Al Haines.

UNDER SIR WALTER SCOTT

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD. 1906

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

In the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth—from, approximately, the death of Samuel Johnson in 1784 to that of Walter Scott in 1832—Edinburgh, rather than London, was the intellectual centre of the kingdom. It would, of course, be easy to show that London has never lacked illustrious men of letters among her citizens, and, in this very period, the names of Sheridan, Bentham, Blake, Lamb, and Keats at once occur to memory as evidence against our thesis. It must also be admitted that Edinburgh shares some of her great names with London, and that many of the writers of the time are associated with neither capital. The name of William Cowper recalls the village of Olney; the English Lakes claim their great poets; and Byron and Shelley call to mind Greece and Italy, as, in the earlier part of our period, Gibbon is identified with Lausanne. But the Edinburgh society which Scott remembered in his youth or met in his prime included a long series of remarkable men. Some of them, like Robertson the historian; Hugh Blair; John Home, the author of _Douglas_; Henry Mackenzie, ’The Man of Feeling’; John Leyden; Dugald Stewart; and John Wilson, ’Christopher North,’ were more or less permanent residents. Others, like Adam Smith, Thomas Campbell, Lady Nairne, Thomas De Quincey, Sir James Mackintosh, and Sydney Smith, spent a smaller portion of their lives in Edinburgh. Not only was the city full of great writers; it produced also a series of great publishers—the Constables and the Blackwoods. The influence of the _Edinburgh Review_ can scarcely be realised in these days of numberless periodicals, and it was from Edinburgh that its great rival, the _Quarterly_, drew much of its early support, and one of its great editors, John Gibson Lockhart. Edinburgh, moreover, was still a national metropolis, for the railway systems had not yet brought about the real union of England and Scotland, and it possessed a society not less distinctively Scots than the Established Church or the code of law. The judges who administered that law add still further to the interest of the scene. Some were men of great intellectual force, whose names still live in the history of English thought. Lord Hailes, the antagonist of Gibbon, and Lord Monboddo, who, in some sense, anticipated a discovery of Mr. Darwin, lived on to the close of the eighteenth century, and, in the early nineteenth, their reputation was sustained by Lord Woodhouselee, Lord Jeffrey, and Lord Cockburn. Others of the judges were notable for force of character, like Lord Braxfield, now familiar as ’Weir of Hermiston,’ or for mere eccentricity, like Lord Eskgrove, one of the strangest beings who ever added to the gaiety of mankind.

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In the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, Edinburgh rather than London was the intellectual centre of the kingdom, according to the introduction by R. S. Rait. The city's society included a long series of remarkable men—Robertson, Blair, Home, Mackenzie, Leyden, Stewart, Wilson—and a series of great publishers, the Constables and the Blackwoods. The natural centre of this society is the great figure of Sir Walter Scott, who dominated Edinburgh during a large portion of the period.

A National Metropolis Before the Railways

Rait's introduction stresses that Edinburgh was still a national metropolis, for the railway systems had not yet brought about the real union of England and Scotland. It possessed a society not less distinctively Scots than the Established Church or the code of law. The judges who administered that law add further interest: Lord Hailes, antagonist of Gibbon; Lord Monboddo, who in some sense anticipated a discovery of Mr. Darwin; and others notable for force of character, like Lord Braxfield, or for mere eccentricity, like Lord Eskgrove, one of the strangest beings who ever added to the gaiety of mankind. This legal world, with its intellectual force and eccentric personalities, forms a key backdrop to Scott's Edinburgh.

The Book Trade and Bibliomaniacs

The excerpts detail the friendship between Scott and the bibliomaniac Richard Heber, who in the winter of 1799-1800 was warmly welcomed by Edinburgh's cultured society. Heber found Scott absorbed in research for his edition of the Border ballads, and assisted him with advice and free access to rare books. Their friendship is celebrated in the Christmas piece introducing the sixth canto of Marmion. Heber used to prowl about old book-shops, and one day encountered a young bookseller named Archibald Constable, whose shop attracted another daily visitant—John Leyden, who would often balance for hours on a ladder with a folio in his hand like Dominie Sampson. This chance meeting led to Scott and Leyden's friendship.

John Leyden: A Portrait of Eccentric Genius

John Leyden, then twenty-five, is described as rivalling the Admirable Crichton and Pico di Mirandola in his extraordinary powers of acquiring knowledge. The son of a shepherd, he educated himself, making a special study of old Scottish works. When he came to Edinburgh University in 1790, he astonished all by his odd manners and speech, confounding his teachers by the portentous mass of his acquisitions. Cockburn's description paints him as a wild-looking, thin Roxburghshire man with sandy hair, a screech voice, and staring eyes—exactly as he came from his native village. His delight lay in arguments, conducted in a high shrill voice with great intensity, utterly unconscious of the amazement of strangers. Despite his ridiculous habits, he had considerable talent and great excellences; there is no walk in life depending on ability where Leyden could not have shone.

This work offers a focused view of Edinburgh's literary and social networks during Scott's prime, grounded in specific anecdotes and character sketches. Readers interested in the interplay between law, publishing, and literary friendship in early nineteenth-century Scotland will find a wealth of concrete detail, though the excerpts do not reveal the full scope of the book's coverage beyond these circles.

Leafing through Edinburgh Under Sir Walter Scott, I kept thinking of the literary men who traded verse for voyages. Something about John Leyden’s restless energy, his ballad-hunting and relentless scholarship, reminded me of another breed of wanderer—those who sought not manuscripts but the open sea. I found myself pulled toward The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3) — A Reader’s Guide, a different sort of daring, yet somehow the same hunger for distant worlds.