Lavengro, George Borrow [i love reading books txt] 📗

cow-stealers of Buccleuch⁠—was he? Good! and Murat was descended from the old Moors of Spain, from the Abencerages379 (sons of the saddle) of Granada. The name Murat is Arabic, and is the same as Murad (Le Désiré, or the wished-for one). Scott in his genteel Life of Bonaparte, says that “when Murat was in Egypt, the similarity between the name of the celebrated Mameluke Mourad and that of Bonaparte’s Meilleur Sabreur was remarked, and became the subject of jest amongst the comrades of the gallant Frenchman.” But the writer of the novel of Bonaparte did not know that the names were one and the same. Now which was the best pedigree, that of the son of the pastry-cook, or that of the son of the pettifogger? Which was the best blood? Let us observe the workings of the two bloods. He who had the blood of the “sons of the saddle” in him, became the wonderful cavalier of the most wonderful host that ever went forth to conquest, won for himself a crown and died the death of a soldier, leaving behind him a son, only inferior to himself in strength, in prowess, and in horsemanship. The descendant of the cow-stealer became a poet, a novel writer, the panegyrist of great folk and genteel people; became insolvent because, though an author, he deemed it ungenteel to be mixed up with the business part of authorship; died paralytic and brokenhearted because he could no longer give entertainments to great folks; leaving behind him, amongst other children, who were never heard of, a son, who, through his father’s interest, had become lieutenant-colonel in a genteel cavalry regiment. A son who was ashamed of his father because his father was an author; a son who⁠—paugh⁠—why ask which was the best blood?

So, owing to his rage for gentility, Scott must needs become the apologist of the Stuarts and their party; but God made this man pay dearly for taking the part of the wicked against the good; for lauding up to the skies the miscreants and robbers, and calumniating the noble spirits of Britain, the salt of England, and his own country. As God had driven the Stuarts from their throne, and their followers from their estates, making them vagabonds and beggars on the face of the earth, taking from them all they cared for, so did that same God, who knows perfectly well how and where to strike, deprive the apologist of that wretched crew of all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of which paralysed him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others, loathsome to himself⁠—so much so, that he once said, “Where is the beggar who would change places with me, notwithstanding all my fame?” Ah! God knows perfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all his literary fame to the very last⁠—his literary fame for which he cared nothing; but what became of the sweetness of life, his fine house, his grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his; he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur it might still retain, it soon became as desolate a looking house as any misanthrope could wish to see⁠—where were the grand entertainments and the grand company? there are no grand entertainments where there is no money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments⁠—and there lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer his, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable. Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the Minstrel and Rob Roy⁠—telling him to think of his literary fame? Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility.⁠—

Retain my altar,
I care nothing for it⁠—but, oh! touch not my beard.

—⁠Parny’s War of the Gods.

He dies, his children die too, and then comes the crowning judgment of God on what remains of his race and the house which he had built. He was not a Papist himself, nor did he wish anyone belonging to him to be Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would at times in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing and discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished⁠—but he certainly did not wish any of his people to become Papists, nor the house which he had built to become a Popish house, though the very name he gave it savoured of Popery; but Popery becomes fashionable through his novels and poems⁠—the only one that remains of his race, a female grandchild, marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makes her a Papist too. Money abounds with the husband, who buys the house, and then the house becomes the rankest Popish house in Britain. A superstitious person might almost imagine that one of the old Scottish Covenanters, whilst the grand house was being built from the profits resulting from the sale of writings favouring Popery and persecution, and calumniatory of Scotland’s saints and martyrs, had risen from the grave, and banned Scott, his race, and his house, by reading a certain Psalm.

In saying what he has said about Scott, the author has not been influenced by any feeling of malice or ill-will, but simply by a regard for truth, and a desire to point out to his countrymen the harm which has resulted from the perusal of his works; he is not one of those who would depreciate the talents of Scott⁠—he admires his talents, both as a prose writer and a poet; as a poet especially he admires him, and believes him to have been by