It was characteristic of the man to combine, like Xenophon's ancient Persians, the love of truth and the love of horsemanship as the two greatest aims in education. Each of his children, both girls and boys, became, as soon as old and strong enough for the exercise, the companion of his own rides over moor and stream and hill. He taught them to laugh at tumbles and slight misadventures, and they soon caught his own spirit, and came to delight in adventurous feats like his own. 'Without courage,' he used to say, 'there cannot be truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue.' With such a teacher, we may be sure the two fundamental virtues were imbibed in full perfection.
_Marmion_--Published by Constable--Misfortunes of Thomas Scott--George Ellis on _Marmion_--Hostile Review by Jeffrey--Charge of Want of Patriotism--Mrs. Scott and Jeffrey--Extraordinary Success of the Poem.
_Marmion_ was begun in November 1806, and continued at intervals during the following year. He had made up his mind--so he tells us in the Introduction--not to be in a hurry with his new poem, but to bestow upon it more than his usual care. Particular passages accordingly were 'laboured with a good deal of care' and the progress of the work seems to have given him much pleasure. 'The period of its composition was a very happy one in my life.' _Marmion_ was the first of Scott's original works published by Archibald Constable. This enterprising gentleman offered a thousand guineas for the poem shortly after it was begun, a fact which speaks volumes at once for the sagacity of the publisher and the impression already made by the poet. The offer was accepted, and the price paid long before the book was published. Scott seems to have had occasion for the use of the money in connection with the final withdrawal of his brother Thomas at this time from practice as a Writer to the Signet. Thomas had been unfortunate in certain speculations outside his proper business. He afterwards became paymaster of the 70th Regiment and died in Canada.
The appearance of _Marmion_ was expected with intense interest in literary circles. It was published in the February of 1808. The general feeling was that expressed after an interval of two months by Scott's friend George Ellis, that 'dear old friend, who had more wit, learning, and knowledge of the world than would fit out twenty _literati_.' Ellis writes, 'All the world are agreed that you are like the elephant mentioned in the _Spectator_, who was the greatest elephant in the world except himself, and consequently, that the only question at issue is, whether the _Lay_ or _Marmion_ shall be reputed the most pleasing poem in our language.' He goes on to say that most people consider the Introductory Epistles--that to Canto V. is addressed to himself--as merely interruptions to the narrative. He expresses his own opinion that _Marmion_ is preferable to the _Lay_, because its species of excellence is of much more difficult attainment. He thinks that _Marmion_, from the nature of the plot, and from the quality and variety of the characters, might with advantage have been largely extended, and elevated to the rank and dignity of an Epic in twelve books. Such seems to have been, in brief, the spontaneous verdict on _Marmion_ of London literary circles when the poem was fresh from the press. The _Edinburgh Review_, all-powerful as the critical oracle of the time, had not yet recorded its verdict.