Nobody who read this could doubt that Scott was, at least, art and part in the review. His efforts to disguise himself as an Englishman, aided by a Scotch antiquary, are divertingly futile. He seized the chance of defending his earlier works from some criticisms on Scotch manners suggested by the ignorance of Gifford. Nor was it difficult to see that the author of the review was also the author of the novel. In later years Lady Louisa Stuart reminded Scott that Old Mortality, like the Iliad, had been ascribed by clever critics to several hands working together. On December 5, 1816, she wrote to him, I found something you wot of upon my table; and as I dare not take it with me to a friends house, for fear of arousing curiosityshe read it at once. She could not sleep afterwards, so much had she been excited. Manse and Cuddie forced me to laugh out aloud, which one seldom does when alone. Many of the Scotch words were absolutely Hebrew to her. She not unjustly objected to Claverhouses use of the word sentimental as an anachronism. Sentiment, like nerves, had not been invented in Claverhouses day.
The pecuniary success of Old Mortality was less, perhaps, than might have been expected. The first edition was only of two thousand copies. Two editions of this number were sold in six weeks, and a third was printed. Constables gallant enterprise of ten thousand, in Rob Roy, throws these figures into the shade.
Old Mortality is the first of Scotts works in which he invades history beyond the range of what may be called living oral tradition. In Waverley, and even in Rob Roy, he had the memories of Invernahyle, of Miss Nairne, of many persons of the last generation for his guides. In Old Mortality his fancy had to wander among the relics of another age, among the inscribed tombs of the Covenanters, which are common in the West Country, as in the churchyards of Balmaclellan and Dalry. There the dust of these enduring and courageous men, like that of Bessie Bell and Marion Gray in the ballad, beiks forenenst the sun, which shines on them from beyond the hills of their wanderings, while the brown waters of the Ken murmur at their feet.
Here now in peace sweet rest we take,
Once murdered for religions sake,
says the epitaph on the flat table-stone, beneath the wind tormented trees of Iron Gray. Concerning these Manes Presbyteriani, Guthries and Giffans Passions and the rest, Scott had a library of rare volumes full of prophecies, remarkable Providences, angelic ministrations, diabolical persecutions by The Accuser of the Brethren,in fact, all that Covenanteers had written or that had been written about Covenanteers. Ill tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in his true colours, he says to Terry (November 12, 1816). He certainly was not an unprejudiced witness, some ten years earlier, when he wrote to Southey, You can hardly conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of these people, according to the accounts they have themselves preserved. But I admit I had many prejudices instilled into me, as my ancestor was a Killiecrankie man. He used to tease Grahame of The Sabbath, but never out of his good humour, by praising Dundee, and laughing at the Covenanters. Even as a boy he had been familiar with that godly company in the original edition of the lives of Cameron and others, by Patrick Walker. The more curious parts of those biographies were excised by the care of later editors, but they may all be found now in the Biographia Presbyteriana (1827), published by True Jock, chief clerk to Leein Johnnie, Mr. John Ballantyne. To this work the inquirer may turn, if he is anxious to see whether Scotts colouring is correct. The true blue of the Covenant is not dulled in the Biographia Presbyteriana.
With all these materials at his command, Scott was able almost to dwell in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to modern readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, black cattle whom he neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent exceptions, as in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose Cleishbotham. Once launched in his legend, with the shooting of the Popinjay, he never falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell, the dour Burley, the handful of Preachers, representing every current of opinion in the Covenant, the awful figure of Habakkuk Mucklewrath, the charm of goodness in Bessie McLure, are all immortal, deathless as Shakspeares men and women. Indeed here, even more than elsewhere, we admire the life which Scott breathes into his minor characters, Halliday and Inglis, the troopers, the child who leads Morton to Burleys retreat in the cave, that auld Laird Nippy, old Milnwood (a real Laird Nippy was a neighbour of Scotts at Ashiestiel), Ailie Wilson, the kind, crabbed old housekeeper, generous in great things, though habitually niggardly in things small. Most of these are persons whom we might still meet in Scotland, as we might meet Cuddie Headriggthe shrewd, the blithe, the faithful and humorous Cuddie. As to Miss Jenny Dennison, we can hardly forgive Scott for making that gayest of soubrettes hard and selfish in married life. He is too severe on the harmless and even beneficent race of coquettes, who brighten life so much, who so rapidly draw up with the new pleugh lad, and who do so very little harm when all is said. Jenny plays the part of a leal and brave lass in the siege of Tillietudlem, hunger and terror do not subdue her spirit; she is true, in spite of many temptations, to her Cuddie, and we decline to believe that she was untrue to his master and friend. Ikuse, no doubt, is a caricature, though Wodrow makes us acquainted with at least one Mause, Jean Biggart, who all the winter over was exceedingly straitened in wrestling and prayer as to the Parliament, and said that still that place was brought before her, Our hedges are broken down! (Analecta, ii. 173.) Surely even Dr. McCrie must have laughed out loud, like Lady Louisa Stuart, when Mause exclaims: Neither will I peace for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it be painted as red as a brick from the tower o Babel, and ca itsel a corporal. Manse, as we have said, is not more comic than heroic, a mother in that Sparta of the Covenant. The figure of Morton, as usual, is not very attractive. In his review, Scott explains the weakness of his heroes as usually strangers in the land (Waverley, Lovel, Mannering, Osbaldistone), who need to have everything explained to them, and who are less required to move than to be the pivots of the general movement. But Morton is no stranger in the land. His political position in the juste milieu is unexciting. A schoolboy wrote to Scott at this time, Oh, Sir Walter, how could you take the lady from the gallant Cavalier, and give her to the crop-eared Covenanter? Probably Scott sympathised with his young critic, who longed to be a feudal chief, and to see his retainers happy around him. But Edith Bellenden loved Morton, with that love which, as she said, and thought, disturbs the repose of the dead. Scott had no choice. Besides, Dr. McCrie might have disapproved of so fortunate an arrangement. The heroine herself does not live in the memory like Di Vernon; she does not even live like Jenny Dennison. We remember Corporal Raddlebanes better, the stoutest fighting man of Major Bellendens acquaintance; and the lady of Tillietudlem has admirers more numerous and more constant. The lovers of the tale chiefly engage our interest by the rare constancy of their affections.