A wandering Harper, scorn'd and poor...

I recently bought a collection of Sir Walter Scott's poetry, and am in awe of the very first poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. One of Scott's remarkable qualities is his sympathetic descriptions of characters. Even his great fictional antagonists are hard to entirely hate. His most successful characters are often those unlike himself, usually low down in the social hierarchy: the wise mendicant Edie Olchitree, the servant Caleb Balderstone -- one of the great comic inventions, the swineherd Gurth and the jester Wamba. Of course, Scott was a Tory and in no way trying to undermine the social order; on the contrary, with his characters he was defending the idea of a social order and the virtues and even freedoms it allows for. He may have been sympathetic to its flaws, but it's clear he saw a social order as essential. I've heard it said that the Reform Bill is what finally caused him to give up the ghost. Rather an exaggeration, of course, but it contains an element of truth.

The description of the minstrel's performance before the Duchess is without a doubt one of the greatest descriptions of what it is like to be a solo performer: the nervousness, the thrill, the momentum, how the music comes through one almost mysteriously, so essential to us has this music become. The description is all the more astonishing for the fact that Scott confessed to having not much of an ear for music. From his memoir of his early life (found in Vol. I of Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1839):

With music it was even worse than with painting. My mother was anxious we should at least learn Psalmody; but the incurable defects of my voice and ear soon drove my teacher to despair. It is only by long practice that I have acquired the power of selecting or distinguishing melodies; and although now few things delight or affect me more than a simple tune sung with feeling, yet I am sensible that even this pitch of musical taste has only been gained by attention and habit, and, as it were, by my feeling of the words being associated with the tune.

Anyway here is the description from the introduction of The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

And, would the noble Duchess deign
To listen to an old man's strain,
Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak,
He thought even yet, the sooth to speak,
That, if she loved the harp to hear,
He could make music to her ear.  

The humble boon was soon obtain'd;
The Aged Minstrel audience gain'd.
But, when he reach'd the room of state,
Where she, with all her ladies, sate,
Perchance he wished his boon denied:
For, when to tune his harp he tried,
His trembling hand had lost the ease,
Which marks security to please;
And scenes, long past, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain--
He tried to tune his harp in vain!
The pitying Duchess praised its chime,
And gave him heart, and gave him time,
Till every string's according glee
Was blended into harmony.
And then, he said, he would full fain
He could recall an ancient strain,
He never thought to sing again.
It was not framed for village churls,
But for high dames and mighty carls;
He had play'd it to King Charles the Good,
When he kept court in Holyrood,
And much he wish'd yet fear'd to try
The long-forgotten melody.
Amid the strings his fingers stray'd,
And an uncertain warbling made,
And oft he shook his hoary head.
But when he caught the measure wild,
The old man raised his face, and smiled;
And lighten'd up his faded eye,
With all a poet's ecstasy!
In varying cadence, soft or strong,
He swept the sounding chords along:
The present scene, the future lot,
His toils, his wants, were all forgot:
Cold diffidence, and age's frost,
In the full tide of song were lost;
Each blank in faithless memory void,
The poet's glowing thought supplied;
And while his harp responsive rung,
'Twas thus the Latest Minstrel sung.