Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott's Influence:

Is it true that everyone read Scott, but no one was influenced by him? It seems to me that he was tremendously influential, and remains so.

There are essentially two sorts of novel, the open and the closed, even if many straddle the frontier that divides them. The closed novel is self-sufficient, free of the influence of public events. In the open novel, such events become characters in the action. The open novel is exposed to the winds of the world, its characters actors in history or victims of history. Given the difficulty of understanding the confusion and turbulence of the ever-changing present, it is natural that authors drawn to the open novel should turn to the past. Hence, in our present uncertainties, the attraction of the historical novel and the vogue it once again enjoys. Meanwhile, the Waverley novels that delighted several generations wait on the shelves to be discovered by those who have never known them, to be read again by those who, like Virginia Woolf, already love them.

My favorite line from the Waverly novels comes when they are contemplating an attack on British forces from a position of superior height. The phrase "even a haggis can charge downhill" is apparently a Scottish Gaelic proverb; though whether it was one before Scott wrote Waverly, I could not say.