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THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL
By Sir Walter Scott
A Tale Which Holdeth Children From Play & Old Men From The ChimneyCorner --Sir Philip Sidney
INTRODUCTION
But why should lordlings all our praise engross? Rise, honest man, and sing the Man of Ross.
Pope
Having, in the tale of the Heart of Mid-Lothian, succeeded in somedegree in awakening an interest in behalf of one devoid of thoseaccomplishments which belong to a heroine almost by right, I was nexttempted to choose a hero upon the same unpromising plan; and as worth ofcharacter, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, were necessaryto one who laid no claim to high birth, romantic sensibility, or any ofthe usual accomplishments of those who strut through the pages of thissort of composition, I made free with the name of a person who has leftthe most magnificent proofs of his benevolence and charity that thecapital of Scotland has to display.
To the Scottish reader little more need be said than that the manalluded to is George Heriot. But for those south of the Tweed, it maybe necessary to add, that the person so named was a wealthy citizen ofEdinburgh, and the King's goldsmith, who followed James to the Englishcapital, and was so successful in his profession, as to die, in 1624,extremely wealthy for that period. He had no children; and after makinga full provision for such relations as might have claims upon him, heleft the residue of his fortune to establish an hospital, in which thesons of Edinburgh freemen are gratuitously brought up and educated forthe station to which their talents may recommend them, and are finallyenabled to enter life under respectable auspices. The hospital in whichthis charity is maintained is a noble quadrangle of the Gothic order,and as ornamental to the city as a building, as the manner in which theyouths are provided for and educated, renders it useful to the communityas an institution. To the honour of those who have the management, (theMagistrates and Clergy of Edinburgh), the funds of the Hospital haveincreased so much under their care, that it now supports and educatesone hundred and thirty youths annually, many of whom have done honour totheir country in different situations.
The founder of such a charity as this may be reasonably supposed to havewalked through life with a steady pace, and an observant eye, neglectingno opportunity of assisting those who were not possessed of theexperience necessary for their own guidance. In supposing hisefforts directed to the benefit of a young nobleman, misguided by thearistocratic haughtiness of his own time, and the prevailing toneof selfish luxury which seems more peculiar to ours, as well as theseductions of pleasure which are predominant in all, some amusement,or even some advantage, might, I thought, be derived from the manner inwhich I might bring the exertions of this civic Mentor to bear in hispupil's behalf. I am, I own, no great believer in the moral utilityto be derived from fictitious compositions; yet, if in any case a wordspoken in season may be of advantage to a young person, it must surelybe when it calls upon him to attend to the voice of principle andself-denial, instead of that of precipitate passion. I could not,indeed, hope or expect to represent my prudent and benevolent citizenin a point of view so interesting as that of the peasant girl, whonobly sacrificed her family affections to the integrity of her moralcharacter. Still however, something I hoped might be done not altogetherunworthy the fame which George Heriot has secured by the lastingbenefits he has bestowed on his country.
It appeared likely, that out of this simple plot I might weave somethingattractive; because the reign of James I., in which George Heriotflourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at thesame time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of characterthan could, with historical consistency, have been introduced, if thescene had been laid a century earlier. Lady Mary Wortley Montague hassaid, with equal truth and taste, that the most romantic region of everycountry is that where the mountains unite themselves with the plains orlowlands. For similiar reasons, it may be in like manner said, that themost picturesque period of history is that when the ancient rough andwild manners of a barbarous age are just becoming innovated upon, andcontrasted, by the illumination of increased or revived learning, andthe instructions of renewed or reformed religion. The strong contrastproduced by the opposition of ancient manners to those which aregradually subduing them, affords the lights and shadows necessary togive effect to a fictitious narrative; and while such a period entitlesthe author to introduce incidents of a marvellous and improbablecharacter, as arising out of the turbulent independence and ferocity,belonging to old habits of violence, still influencing the manners ofa people who had been so lately in a barbarous state; yet, on the otherhand, the characters and sentiments of many of the actors may, withthe utmost probability, be described with great variety of shading anddelineation, which belongs to the newer and more improved period, ofwhich the world has but lately received the light.
The reign of James I. of England possessed this advantage in a peculiardegree. Some beams of chivalry, although its planet had been for sometime set, continued to animate and gild the horizon, and althoughprobably no one acted precisely on its Quixotic dictates, men and womenstill talked the chivalrous language of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia; andthe ceremonial of the tilt-yard was yet exhibited, though it now onlyflourished as a Place de Carrousel. Here and there a high-spiritedKnight of the Bath, witness the too scrupulous Lord Herbert of Cherbury,was found devoted enough to the vows he had taken, to imagine himselfobliged to compel, by the sword's-point, a fellow-knight or squireto restore the top-knot of ribbon which he had stolen from a fairdamsel;[Footnote: See Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Memoirs.] but yet,while men were taking each other's lives on such punctilios of honour,the hour was already arrived when Bacon was about to teach the worldthat they were no longer to reason from authority to fact, but toestablish truth by advancing from fact to fact, till they fixed anindisputable authority, not from hypothesis, but from experiment.
The state of society in the reign of James I. was also strangelydisturbed, and the license of a part of the community was perpetuallygiving rise to acts of blood and violence. The bravo of the Queen's day,of whom Shakspeare has given us so many varieties, as Bardolph, Nym,Pistol, Peto, and the other companions of Falstaff, men who had theirhumours, or their particular turn of extravaganza, had, since thecommencement of the Low Country wars, given way to a race of sworders,who used the rapier and dagger, instead of the far less dangerous swordand buckler; so that a historian says on this subject, "that privatequarrels were nourished, but especially between the Scots and English;and duels in every street maintained; divers sects and peculiar titlespassed unpunished and unregarded, as the sect of the Roaring Boys,Bonaventors, Bravadors, Quarterors, and such like, being personsprodigal, and of great expense, who, having run themselves into debt,were constrained to run next into factions, to defend themselvesfrom danger of the law. These received countenance from divers of thenobility; and the citizens, through lasciviousness consuming theirestates, it was like that the number [of these desperadoes] would ratherincrease than diminish; and under these pretences they entered into manydesperate enterprizes, and scarce any durst walk in the street afternine at night."[Footnote: history of the First Fourteen Years of KingJames's Reign. See Somers's Tracts, edited by Scott, vol. ii. p.266.]
The same authority assures us farther, that "ancient gentlemen, who hadleft their inheritance whole and well furnished with goods and chattels(having thereupon kept good houses) unto their sons, lived to see partconsumed in riot and excess, and the rest in possibility to be utterlylost; the holy state of matrimony made but a May-game, by which diversfamilies had been subverted; brothel houses much frequented, and evengrea
t persons, prostituting their bodies to the intent to satisfy theirlusts, consumed their substance in lascivious appetites. And ofall sorts, such knights and gentlemen, as either through pride orprodigality--had consumed their substance, repairing to the city, and tothe intent to consume their virtue also, lived dissolute lives; manyof their ladies and daughters, to the intent to maintain themselvesaccording to their dignity, prostituting their bodies in shamefulmanner. Ale-houses, dicing-houses, taverns, and places of iniquity,beyond manner abounding in most places."
Nor is it only in the pages of a puritanical, perhaps a satiricalwriter, that we find so shocking and disgusting a picture of thecoarseness of the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the contrary,in all the comedies of the age, the principal character for gaiety andwit is a young heir, who has totally altered the establishment ofthe father to whom he has succeeded, and, to use the old simile, whoresembles a fountain, which plays off in idleness and extravagancethe wealth which its careful parents painfully had assembled in hiddenreservoirs.
And yet, while that spirit of general extravagance seemed at work overa whole kingdom, another and very different sort of men were graduallyforming the staid and resolved characters, which afterwards displayedthemselves during the civil wars, and powerfully regulated and affectedthe character of the whole English nation, until, rushing from oneextreme to another, they sunk in a gloomy fanaticism the splendid tracesof the reviving fine arts.
From the quotations which I have produced, the selfish and disgustingconduct of Lord Dalgarno will not perhaps appear overstrained; nor willthe scenes in Whitefriars and places of similar resort seem too highlycoloured. This indeed is far from being the case. It was in James I.'sreign that vice first appeared affecting the better classes in itsgross and undisguised depravity. The entertainments and amusements ofElizabeth's time had an air of that decent restraint which became thecourt of a maiden sovereign; and, in that earlier period, to use thewords of Burke, vice lost half its evil by being deprived of all itsgrossness. In James's reign, on the contrary, the coarsest pleasureswere publicly and unlimitedly indulged, since, according to Sir JohnHarrington, the men wallowed in beastly delights; and even ladiesabandoned their delicacy and rolled about in intoxication. After aludicrous account of a mask, in which the actors had got drunk, andbehaved themselves accordingly, he adds, "I have much marvelled at thesestrange pageantries, and they do bring to my recollection what passed ofthis sort in our Queen's days, in which I was sometimes an assistant andpartaker: but never did I see such lack of good order and sobriety as Ihave now done. The gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads, and weare going on hereabout as if the devil was contriving every man shouldblow up himself by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time andtemperance. The great ladies do go well masqued; and indeed, it be theonly show of their modesty to conceal their countenance, but alack, theymeet with such countenance to uphold their strange doings, that I marvelnot at aught that happens."[Footnote: Harrington's Nugae Antique, vol.ii. p. 352. For the gross debauchery of the period, too much encouragedby the example of the monarch, who was, in other respects, neitherwithout talent nor a good-natured disposition, see Winwood's Memorials,Howell's Letters, and other Memorials of the time; but particularly,consult the Private Letters and Correspondence of Steenie, _alias_Buckingham, with his reverend Dad and Gossip, King James, which aboundwith the grossest as well as the most childish language. The learned Mr.D'Israeli, in an attempt to vindicate the character of James, hasonly succeeded in obtaining for himself the character of a skilful andingenious advocate, without much advantage to his royal client]
Such being the state of the court, coarse sensuality brought along withit its ordinary companion, a brutal degree of undisguised selfishness,destructive alike of philanthropy and good breeding; both of which, intheir several spheres, depend upon the regard paid by each individualto the interest as well as the feelings of others. It is in such a timethat the heartless and shameless man of wealth and power may, like thesupposed Lord Dalgarno, brazen out the shame of his villainies, andaffect to triumph in their consequences, so long as they were personallyadvantageous to his own pleasures or profit.
Alsatia is elsewhere explained as a cant name for Whitefriars, which,possessing certain privileges of sanctuary, became for that reason anest of those mischievous characters who were generally obnoxious to thelaw. These privileges were derived from its having been an establishmentof the Carmelites, or White Friars, founded says Stow, in his Surveyof London, by Sir Patrick Grey, in 1241. Edward I. gave them a plot ofground in Fleet Street, to build their church upon. The edifice thenerected was rebuilt by Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, in the reign ofEdward. In the time of the Reformation the place retained its immunitiesas a sanctuary, and James I. confirmed and added to them by a charterin 1608. Shadwell was the first author who made some literary use ofWhitefriars, in his play of the Squire of Alsatia, which turns upon theplot of the Adelphi of Terence.
In this old play, two men of fortune, brothers, educate two young men,(sons to the one and nephews to the other,) each under his own separatesystem of rigour and indulgence. The elder of the subjects of thisexperiment, who has been very rigidly brought up, falls at once intoall the vices of the town, is debauched by the cheats and bullies ofWhitefriars, and, in a word, becomes the Squire of Alsatia. The poetgives, as the natural and congenial inhabitants of the place, suchcharacters as the reader will find in the note. [Footnote: "Cheatly, arascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir out of Whitefriars, butthere inveigles young heirs of entail, and helps them to goods and moneyupon great disadvantages, is bound for them, and shares with them tillhe undoes them. A lewd, impudent, debauched fellow, very expert in thecant about town.
"Shamwell, cousin to the Belfords, who, being ruined by Cheatly, is madea decoy-duck for others, not daring to stir out of Alsatia, where helives. Is bound with Cheatly for heirs, and lives upon them a dissolutedebauched life.
"Captain Hackum, a blockheaded bully of Alsatia, a cowardly, impudent,blustering fellow, formerly a sergeant in Flanders, who has run from hiscolours, and retreated into Whitefriars for a very small debt, where bythe Alsatians he is dubb'd a captain, marries one that lets lodgings,sells cherry-brandy, and is a bawd.
"Scrapeall a hypocritical, repeating, praying, psalm-singing, precisefellow, pretending to great piety; a godly knave, who joins withCheatly, and supplies young heirs with goods, and money."--DramatisPersonae to the Squire of Alsatia, SHADWELL'S Works, vol. iv.] The play,as we learn from the dedication to the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, wassuccessful above the author's expectations, "no comedy these many yearshaving filled the theatre so long together. And I had the great honour,"continues Shadwell, "to find so many friends, that the house was neverso full since it was built as upon the third day of this play, and vastnumbers went away that could not be admitted." [Footnote: Dedication tothe Squire of Alsatia, Shadwell's Works, vol. iv.] From the Squire ofAlsatia the author derived some few hints, and learned the footingon which the bullies and thieves of the Sanctuary stood with theirneighbours, the fiery young students of the Temple, of which someintimation is given in the dramatic piece.
Such are the materials to which the author stands indebted for thecomposition of the Fortunes of Nigel, a novel, which may be perhaps oneof those that are more amusing on a second perusal, than when read afirst time for the sake of the story, the incidents of which are few andmeagre.
The Introductory Epistle is written, in Lucio's phrase, "accordingto the trick," and would never have appeared had the writer meditatedmaking his avowal of the work. As it is the privilege of a masque orincognito to speak in a feigned voice and assumed character, the authorattempted, while in disguise, some liberties of the same sort; and whilehe continues to plead upon the various excuses which the introductioncontains, the present acknowledgment must serve as an apology for aspecies of "hoity toity, whisky frisky" pertness of manner, which, inhis avowed character, the author should have considered as a departurefrom the rules of civility an
d good taste.
ABBOTSFORD.
1st July, 1831.