The Parent's
Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley, And Guy Mannering, The Voyages Of
Captain Woods Rogers, Fuller's And Bunyan's Holy Wars,
The
Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, The Female Bluebeard, G. Sand's
Mare au Diable - (how came it in that grave assembly!
), Ainsworth's
Tower of London, and four old volumes of Punch - these were the
chief exceptions. In these latter, which made for years the chief
of my diet, I very early fell in love (almost as soon as I could
spell) with the Snob Papers. I knew them almost by heart,
particularly the visit to the Pontos; and I remember my surprise
when I found, long afterwards, that they were famous, and signed
with a famous name; to me, as I read and admired them, they were
the works of Mr. Punch. Time and again I tried to read Rob Roy,
with whom of course I was acquainted from the Tales of a
Grandfather; time and again the early part, with Rashleigh and
(think of it!) the adorable Diana, choked me off; and I shall never
forget the pleasure and surprise with which, lying on the floor one
summer evening, I struck of a sudden into the first scene with
Andrew Fairservice. 'The worthy Dr. Lightfoot' - 'mistrysted with a
bogle' - 'a wheen green trash' - 'Jenny, lass, I think I ha'e her':
from that day to this the phrases have been unforgotten. I read
on, I need scarce say; I came to Glasgow, I bided tryst on Glasgow
Bridge, I met Rob Roy and the Bailie in the Tolbooth, all with
transporting pleasure; and then the clouds gathered once more about
my path; and I dozed and skipped until I stumbled half-asleep into
the clachan of Aberfoyle, and the voices of Iverach and Galbraith
recalled me to myself. With that scene and the defeat of Captain
Thornton the book concluded; Helen and her sons shocked even the
little schoolboy of nine or ten with their unreality; I read no
more, or I did not grasp what I was reading; and years elapsed
before I consciously met Diana and her father among the hills, or
saw Rashleigh dying in the chair. When I think of that novel and
that evening, I am impatient with all others; they seem but shadows
and impostors; they cannot satisfy the appetite which this
awakened; and I dare be known to think it the best of Sir Walter's
by nearly as much as Sir Walter is the best of novelists. Perhaps
Mr. Lang is right, and our first friends in the land of fiction are
always the most real. And yet I had read before this Guy
Mannering, and some of Waverley, with no such delighted sense of
truth and humour, and I read immediately after the greater part of
the Waverley Novels, and was never moved again in the same way or
to the same degree. One circumstance is suspicious: my critical
estimate of the Waverley Novels has scarce changed at all since I
was ten.
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