THE BLACK DWARF.
No. 8— ISABEL VERE.
After all, though beauty be deceitful, and favour be vain, yet beauty is the most exquisite gift ever lavished by fairies around an infant cradle. Its charm is nameless; it wins us, we know not why—and lingers on our memory, we know not wherefore. Whether in the animate or the inanimate world, it is the cause of our most delicious sensations; it belongs to the imagination, for it calls up within us whatever of poetry may be lurking in the "hidden mines of thought." It is the attribute of all that is most glorious in existence—it is on the azure sky—it clothes the earth as with a garment—it rides triumphant over the purple bosom of the sea. Look within our hearts, it has originated all that is ideal in our nature. Beauty is the shadow flung from heaven on earth—it is the type of a lovelier and more spiritual existence, and the broken and transitory lights that it flings on this our sad and heavy pilgrimage, do but indicate another and a better sphere, where the beautiful will also be the everlasting. The homage involuntarily paid to its mysterious influence is but an unconscious acknowledgment of its divine origin, and its eternal future. Here we see it, but through a glass darkly. The presence of beauty has been perpetual in our fictions, but Scott was the first novelist who made its absence the ground- work for the character of a hero. His example has been followed in more than one illustrious instance, though whether it gave the hint for Byron's "Deformed Transformed," admits of a question. Full of animation, breaking new ground, and dramatic in action, if not in construction, it is to be regretted that it should only be a fragment: I doubt whether it could ever have been finished, it came too home. A sensitive person feels, and an imaginative one exaggerates any defect—and Lord Byron was both. His lameness originating, as it did, in an unsightly malconformation, was a perpetual source of bitterness to him. What was its effect on Scott it would be more difficult to discover; naturally reserved and cautious, his own feelings are rarely allowed to peep out in the course of his narratives; but it is remarkable that in two instances he has made the personal deficiences of his heroes lead to the formation of their characters, each character exercising a paramount influence on the conduct of the story.
In Rashleigh Osbaldistone the effect has been evil; in the ill-fated Black Dwarf, the kind warm heart remains the same—under the pang of disappointment, and the disguise of misanthropy. The woman that he loved is gone down to her early grave, and her death breaks the only tie that binds him to his kind; but "we have all of us one human heart," and the lonely and forgotten misanthrope still feels that he is accessible to emotion. Isabel Vere is the daughter of the beloved one—her whose happiness he bought at the price of his own; her sorrow has yet power on a heart that strives to harden itself in vain. The Black Dwarf is not among my favourites; the pity felt for the poor recluse is too painful—too painful, because hopeless. There is a mark upon him which parts him from his kind; and we never feel that more than when he is in the very act of serving them. Take the interview between him and Isabel Vere, which is among Scott's most dramatic situations. In spite of his assumed harshness, his heart is beating with warm and human emotions; the remembrance of his ill-fated, but long-enduring attachment, pity, and the resolve to assist, are all struggling together; yet what is the involuntary effect on his visitor? fear, distrust, and aversion. Every kindness conferred by the Dwarf must have brought with it the "late remorse of love."
Owing independence, security, and domestic happiness to her strange protector, it must have been a perpetual regret to Isabel Vere that her gratitude could not cheer his gloom, nor her care soothe his declining years. Sheridan Knowles has here the truer and nobler insight into human nature. It makes his "Hunchback" sensitive and suspicious; but even in his case the mental predominates over the physical; the generous loving heart, the high acquirement, the kind and gentle manner, have their rightful ascendancy; he has been happy in the love of his wife, and he is happy in the love of his child, won for him by years of care and affection, ere she knew aught of his parental claim. We follow the recluse to the gloomy cell of La Trappe with not only pity, but resentment against a fate so unjust; but it is a satisfaction to bring before the mind's eye the happy and honoured old age of Master Walter.