110. But the second reason for the dullness of Scott to the uneducated or miseducated reader lies far deeper; and its analysis is related to the most subtle questions in the Arts of Design.
The mixed gayety and gloom in the plan of any modern novel fairly clever in the make of it, may be likened, almost with precision, to the patchwork of a Harlequin's dress, well spangled; a pretty thing enough, if the human form beneath it be graceful and active. Few personages on the stage are more delightful to me than a good Harlequin; also, if I chance to have nothing better to do, I can still read my Georges Sand or Alfred de Musset with much contentment, if only the story end well.
But we must not dress Cordelia or Rosalind in robes of triangular patches, covered with spangles, by way of making the _coup d'oeil_ of them less dull; and so the story-telling of Scott is like the robe of the Sistine Zipporah--embroidered only on the edges with gold and blue, and the embroidery involving a legend written in mystic letters.
And the interest and joy which he intends his reader to find in his tale, are in taking up the golden thread here and there in its intended recurrence--and following, as it rises again and again, his melody through the disciplined and unaccented march of the fugue.
111. Thus the entire charm and meaning of the story of the Monastery depend on the degree of sympathy with which we compare the first and last incidents of the appearance of a character, whom perhaps not one in twenty readers would remember as belonging to the dramatis personæ--Stawarth Bolton.
Childless, he assures safety in the first scene of the opening tale to the widow of Glendinning and her two children--the elder boy challenging him at the moment, "I will war on thee to the death, when I can draw my father's sword." In virtually the last scene, the grown youth, now in command of a small company of spearmen in the Regent Murray's service, is on foot, in the first pause after the battle at Kennaquhair, beside the dead bodies of Julian Avenel and Christie, and the dying Catherine.[101]
Glendinning forgot for a moment his own situation and duties, and was first recalled to them by a trampling of horse, and the cry of St. George for England, which the English soldiers still continued to use. His handful of men, for most of the stragglers had waited for Murray's coming up, remained on horseback, holding their lances upright, having no command either to submit or resist.