4 - Scott and Dickens: the work of the author
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
Summary
[The] book ends after Mr Pickwick has taken a house in the neighbourhood of Dulwich. But we know he did not stop there. We know he broke out, that he took again the road of the high adventures; we know that if we take it ourselves in any acre of England, we may come suddenly upon him in a lane.
(G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, 1906)It is the man rather than the writer that still haunts his own Border, like an emanation from its changeless hills and waters, so that on some forgotten drove-road in Ettrick one almost looks to see in an autumn gloaming his ruddy face and silvery hair, and to hear the kindly burr of his speech. It has been given to him to conquer the world, and yet remain the tutelary genius of his native glens.
(John Buchan, Sir Walter Scott, 1932)‘I fought for my own hand’ said the Smith indifferently, and the expression is still proverbial in Scotland. [Meaning, I did such a thing for my own pleasure, not for your profit: Scott's Note.]
(Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth)In 1847 Charles Dickens, who had served on the London committee to raise funds for a monument to Sir Walter Scott in his native city, came to have a look at the result. Dickens did not like the new monument; it resembled ‘the spire of a Gothic church taken off and stuck in the ground’.
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- Modern Romance and Transformations of the NovelThe Gothic, Scott, Dickens, pp. 177 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992