The Journal of Sir Walter Scott

Appendix

Scott’s Letters to Erskine — P. 61

Sir Walter was in the habit of consulting him in those matters more than any of his other friends, having great reliance upon his critical skill. The manuscripts of all his poems, and also of the earlier of his prose works, were submitted to Kinnedder’s judgment, and a considerable correspondence on these subjects had taken place betwixt them, which would, no doubt, have constituted one of the most interesting series of letters Sir Walter had left.

Lord Kinnedder was a man of retired habits, but little known except to those with whom he lived on terms of intimacy, and by whom he was much esteemed, and being naturally of a remarkably sensitive mind, he was altogether overthrown by the circumstance of a report having got abroad of some alleged indiscretions on his part in which a lady was also implicated. Whether the report had any foundation in truth or not, I am altogether ignorant, but such an allegation affecting a person in his situation in life as a judge, and doing such violence to the susceptibility of his feelings, had the effect of bringing a severe illness which in a few days terminated his life. I never saw Sir Walter so much affected by any event, and at the funeral, which he attended, he was quite unable to suppress his feelings, but wept like a child. The family, suddenly bereft of their protector, were young, orphans, their mother, daughter of Professor John Robertson, having previously died, found also that they had to struggle against embarrassed circumstances; neither had they any near relative in Scotland to take charge of their affairs. But a lady, a friend of the family, Miss M——, was active in their service, and it so happened, in the course of arranging their affairs, the packet of letters from Sir Walter Scott, containing the whole of his correspondence with Lord Kinnedder, came into her hands. She very soon discovered that the correspondence laid open the secret of the authorship of the Waverley Novels, at that period the subject of general and intense interest, and as yet unacknowledged by Sir Walter.

Considering what under these circumstances it was her duty to do, whether to replace the letters and suffer any accident to bring to light what the author seemed anxious might remain unknown, or to seal them up, and keep them in her own custody undivulged—or finally to destroy them in order to preserve the secret,—with, no doubt, the best and most upright motives, so far as her own judgment enabled her to decide in the matter, in which she was unable to take advice, without betraying what it was her object to respect, she came to the resolution, most unfortunately for the world, of destroying the letters. And, accordingly, the whole of them were committed to the flames; depriving the descendants of Lord Kinnedder of a possession which could not fail to be much valued by them, and which, in connection with Lord Kinnedder’s letters to Sir Walter, which are doubtless preserved, would have been equally valuable to the public, as containing the contemporary opinions, prospects, views, and sentiments under which these works were sent forth into the world. It would also have been curious to learn the unbiased impression which the different works created on the mind of such a man as Lord Kinnedder, before the collision of public opinion had suffused its influence over the opinions of people in general in this matter.—Skene’s Reminiscences.

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Footnotes

1 An Essay on Naval Tactics, Systematical and Historical, with explanatory plates. In four parts. By John Clerk. 4to. Lond. 1790.

2 William Clerk of Eldin, the prototype of Darsie Latimer in Redgauntlet, “admired through life for talents and learning of which he has left no monument,” died at Edinburgh in January 1847.

3 Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the year 1678. 4to. Edin. 1817.

4 Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches, and Memoirs, collected by Lætitia Matilda Hawkins. 8vo. Lond. 1822.

5 Miss Macdonald Buchanan of Drummakill.—J.G.L.

6 Mr. Sharpe, whose Letters and Memoir were published in two volumes 8vo, Edin. 1888, survived Sir Walter till the year 1851. In the Sir Mungo Malagrowther of The Fortunes of Nigel some of Sharpe’s peculiarities are not unfaithfully mirrored.

7 One of the numerous joint-stock adventures which were so common in Edinburgh at this time. There had already been formed a Gas-light Company in 1818, for the manufacture of gas from coal, but the projectors of this new venture believed they could produce a purer and more powerful light by the use of oil. It was not successful commercially, and, as is told in the Journal, the rival company acquired the stock and plant a few years after the formation of this “Oil Gas Co.,” of which Sir Walter had been Chairman from 1823.
See Life, vol. vii. pp. 141, 144, 197, 251, 374; and viii. p. 113; Cockburn’s Memorials (for 1825).

8 Sir Robert Dundas of Beechwood, one of Scott’s colleagues at the “Clerks’ Table,”—son of the parish minister of Humbie, and kinsman of Lord and Lady Melville; he died in 1835. Some of the other gentlemen with whom the duties of his office brought Scott into close daily connection were David Hume, Hector Macdonald Buchanan, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore. With these families, says Mr. Lockhart, “he and his lived in such constant familiarity of kindness, that the children all called their father’s colleagues uncles, and the mothers of their little friends aunts; and in truth the establishment was a brotherhood.”

9 Mrs. Thomas Scott’s brother.

10 George L. Sanders, born at Kinghorn, 1774; died in London, 1846.

11 Sir Walter told Moore that Lewis was the person who first set him upon trying his talent at poetry, adding that “he had passed the early part of his life with a set of clever, rattling, drinking fellows, whose thoughts and talents lay wholly out of the region of poetry.” Thirty years after having met Lewis in Edinburgh for the first time in 1798, he said to Allan Cunningham, “that he thought he had never felt such elation as when ‘the monk’ invited him to dine with him at his hotel.” Lewis died in 1818, and Scott says of him, “He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature—fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man of talent or as a man of fashion. He had always ladies and duchesses in his mouth, and was pathetically fond of any one that had a title. Mat had queerish eyes—they projected like those of some insects, and were flattish on the orbit.”

12 Moore’s friends seem to have recognised his thorough manliness and independence of character. Lord John Russell testifies: “Never did he make wife or family a pretext for political shabbiness—never did he imagine that to leave a disgraced name as an inheritance to his children was a duty as a father” (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. xiii and xiv), and when Rogers urged this plea of family as a reason why he should accept the money, Moore said, “More mean things have been done in this world under the shelter of ’wife and children’ than under any pretext worldly-mindedness can resort to.” To which S.R. only said, “Well, your life may be a good poem, but it is a —— bad matter of fact.”—Clayden, Rogers and his Contemporaries, vol. i. p. 378.

13 Moore’s Life of Byron was published in two vols. 4to in 1830, and dedicated to Sir Walter Scott by “his affectionate friend, T.M.” See this Journal under March 4 1828.

14 “I parted from Scott,” says Moore, “with the feeling that all the world might admire him in his works, but that those only could learn to love him as he deserved who had seen him at Abbotsford.” Moore died February 26, 1852; see Moore’s Life, vol. iv. pp. 329-42, and vol. v. pp. 13-14.

15 Hurst and Robinson, Booksellers, London.

16 Woodstock was at this time nearly completed.

17 Probably Sir Walter’s dog-Italian for “great donkey.”

18 Cymbeline, Act II. Sc. 5.

19 “My Jo Janet,” Tea-Table Miscellany.

20 The Right Hon. David Boyle, who was at the time residing at 28 Charlotte Square.

21 A quarterly journal edited by Leigh Hunt, “The Liberal—Verse and Prose from the South,” of which four numbers only were published. 1822-1823.

22 See Dowden’s Life of Shelley, vol. ii. pp. 448-9, 507-8; also Moore’s Byron, vol. v. pp. 313-321, and Russell’s Moore, vol. iii. p. 353.

23 William Bankes, of whom Rogers said, “Witty as Sydney Smith was, I have seen him at my own house absolutely overpowered by the superior facetiousness of W.B.” Mr. Bankes died in Venice in 1855.

24 Lord Leveson Gower, afterwards first Earl of Ellesmere, had already published his translation of Faust in 1823, and a volume of “original poems,” and “translations,” in the following year.

25 Henry J.G. Herbert, Lord Porchester, afterwards third Earl of Carnarvon, had published The Moor in 1825, and Don Pedro in 1826.

26 St. Catherine’s, the seat of Sir William Rae, Bart., then Lord Advocate, is about three miles from Edinburgh.—J.G.L. Sir William Rae’s refusal of a legal appointment to Mr. Lockhart (on the ground that as a just patron he could not give it to the son-in-law of his old friend!!) was understood to be the cause of Mr. Lockhart’s quitting the Bar and devoting himself entirely to literature. Sir William Rae died at St. Catherine’s on the 19th October 1842.

27 David Boyle of Shewalton, L.J.C. from 1811, and Lord President from 1841 till 1852. He died in 1853.

28 See Autobiography, 1787, in Life, vol. i. pp. 39, 40.

29 Virg. Æn. i. 122.

30 M. Davidoff has, in his mature life, amply justified Sir Walter’s prognostications. He has, I understand, published in the Russian language a tribute to the memory of Scott. But his travels in Greece and Asia Minor are well known, and considered as in a high degree honourable to his taste and learning.—[1839.]—J.G.L.

31 King Richard III., Act III. Sc. 1. Count Orloff Davidoff lived to falsify this “saying.” He revisited England in 1872, and had the pleasure of meeting with Scott’s great-granddaughter, and talking to her of these old happy Abbotsford days.

32 Combinations of Workmen. Substance of a speech by Francis Jeffrey. 8vo. Edin. 1825.

33 Mr. Robert Cockburn, Lord Cockburn’s brother, was then living at No. 7 Atholl Crescent.

34 This alludes to a strange old woman, keeper of a public-house among the Wicklow mountains, who, among a world of oddities, cut short every word ending in tion, by the omission of the termination. Consola for consolation—bothera for botheration, etc. etc. Lord Plunkett had taken care to parade Judy and all her peculiarities.—J.C.L.

35 See the Duchess’s Letter, p. 414.

36 The Rev. John Logan, minister of South Leith, 1748-1788. The “Sermons” were not published until 1790-91.

37 For an account of her visit to Abbotsford, see Life, vol. viii. pp. 72-76. The marriage took place on June 16, 1827, the lady having previously asked the consent of George IV.!! A droll account of the reception of her Mercure galant at Windsor is given in the North British Review, vol. xxxix. p. 349.

38 Sir John Barrow, the well-known Secretary to the Admiralty, who died in 1848 in his eighty-fifth year.

39 Benjamin Disraeli, afterwards Lord Beaconsfield.

40 In after years Sir John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876), one of the Judges of the Court of Queen’s Bench.

41 Storrs, Windermere.

42 John Cay, member of the Scotch Bar, Sheriff of Linlithgow. He was one of Mr. Lockhart’s oldest friends; he died in 1865.

43 Moore records that Scott told him “Lockhart was about to undertake the Quarterly, has agreed for five years; salary £1200 a year; and if he writes a certain number of articles it will be £1500 a year to him,” Moore’s Diary, under Oct. 29, vol. iv. p. 334. Jeffrey had £700 a year as Editor of the Edinburgh, and £2800 for contributors: June 1823, see Moore’s Diary, vol. iv. p. 89.

44 Sheridan’s Critic, Act I. Sc. 2.

45 George Abercromby, eldest son of Sir Ralph, the hero of the battle of Alexandria.

46 The following extract from a letter to Professor Wilson, urgently claiming his aid, shows that the new editor had lost no time in looking after his “first Number”:—
“Mr. Coleridge has yesterday transferred to me the treasures of the Quarterly Review; and I must say, my dear Wilson, that his whole stock is not worth five shillings. Thank God, other and better hands are at work for my first Number or I should be in a pretty hobble. My belief is that he has been living on the stock bequeathed by Gifford, and the contributions of a set of H——es and other d——d idiots of Oriel. But mind now, Wilson, I am sure to have a most hard struggle to get up a very good first Number, and if I do not, it will be the Devil.” This letter was quoted in an abridged form in the Life of Professor Wilson by Mrs. Gordon.

47 This probably refers to Archibald, Lord Douglas, who had married the Lady Frances Scott, sister of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch. Lord Douglas died on the 26th December 1827. For notices of these valued friends see Life, vol. ii. pp. 27-8; iv. pp. 22, 70; and v. p. 230.

48 Robert Macqueen—Lord Braxfield—Justice Clerk from 1788; he died in 1799.

49 Mrs. Grant of Laggan, author of Letters from the Mountains, Superstitions of the Highlanders, etc. Died at Edin. in 1838, aged 83.

50 Scott had not the smallest hesitation in applying this unsavoury proverb to himself a few months later, when he unwillingly “impeticosed the gratillity” for the critique on Galt’s Omen. See this Journal, June 24, 1826.

51 Afterwards Major-General Sir James Russell, G.C.B. He died at Ashestiel in 1859 in his 78th year.

52 See ante, p. 12. Mr. James Ballantyne and Mr. Cadell concurred with Mr. Constable and Sir Walter in the propriety of assisting Robinson.

53 Robert Pierce Gillies, once proprietor of a good estate in Kincardineshire, and member of the Scotch Bar. It is pleasant to find Mr. Gillies expressing his gratitude for what Sir Walter had done for him more than twenty-five years after this paragraph was written. “He was,” says R.P.G., “not only among the earliest but most persevering of my friends—persevering in spite of my waywardness.”—Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, including Sketches and Anecdotes of the most distinguished Literary Characters from 1794 to 1849 (3 vols., London, 1851), vol. i. p. 321. Mr. Gillies died in 1861.

54 Mr. Gillies was, however, warmly welcomed by another publisher in Edinburgh, who paid him £100 for his bulky MSS., and issued the book in 1825 under the title of The Magic Ring, 3 vols. Its failure with the public prevented a repetition of the experiment!

55 King Richard III., Act III. Sc. 7.—J.G.L.

56 Of the many Edinburgh suppers of this period, commemorated by Lord Cockburn, not the least pleasant were the friendly gatherings in 30 Abercromby Place, the town house of Dr. James Russell, Professor of Clinical Surgery. They were given fortnightly after the meetings of the Royal Society during the Session, and are occasionally mentioned in the Journal. Dr. Russell died in 1836.

57 Mr. Mackenzie had been consulting Sir Walter about collecting his own juvenile poetry.—J.G.L. Though the venerable author of The Man of Feeling did not die till 1831, he does not appear to have carried out his intention.

58 Every alternate Wednesday during the Winter and Summer sessions, the Lords Commissioners of Teinds (Tithes), consisting of a certain number of the judges, held a “Teind Court”—for hearing cases relating to the secular affairs of the Church of Scotland. As the Teind Court has a separate establishment of clerks and officers, Sir Walter was freed from duty at the Parliament House on these days. The Court now sits on alternate Mondays only.

59 Mr. Lockhart suggests Lords Hermand and Succoth, the former living at 124 George Street, and the latter at 1 Park Place.

60 William Knox died 12th November. He had published Songs of Israel, 1824, A Visit to Dublin, 1824, The Harp of Zion, 1825, etc., besides The Lonely Hearth. His publisher (Mr. Anderson, junior, of Edinburgh) remembers that Sir Walter occasionally wrote to Knox and sent him money—£10 at a time.—J.G.L.

61 In Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour.

62 Providence was kinder to the venerable lady than the Government, as at this juncture a handsome legacy came to her from an unexpected quarter. Memoir and Correspondence, Lond. 1845, vol. iii. p. 71.

63 Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 3.—J.G.L.

64 Burns’s Dedication to Gavin Hamilton.—J.G.L.

65 Don Quixote, Pt. II. ch. 23.

66 Spectator, No. 159.—J.G.L.

67 Sir William Allan, President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1838: he died at Edinburgh in 1850.

68 Beaumont and Fletcher, 8vo, Lond. 1788, vol. v. pp. 410-413,419-426.

69 For notices of David Thomson, see Life, October 1822, and T. Craig Brown’s History of Selkirkshire, 2 vols. 4to, Edin. 1886, vol. i. pp. 505, 507, and 519.

70 Burns’s Address to the Unco Guid.—J.G.L.

71 Banamhorar-Chat, i.e. the Great Lady of the Cat, is the Gaelic title of the Countess-Duchess of Sutherland. The county of Sutherland itself is in that dialect Cattey, and in the English name of the neighbouring one, Caithness, we have another trace of the early settlement of the Clan Chattan, whose chiefs bear the cognisance of a Wild Cat. The Duchess-Countess died in 1838.—J.G.L.

72 See 1 King Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 1.

73 John Hope, Esq., was at this time Solicitor-General for Scotland, afterwards Lord Justice-Clerk from 1841 until his death in 1858.

74 Henry Dundas, the first Viscount Melville, first appeared in Parliament as Lord Advocate of Scotland.—J.G.L.

75 Robert Sym Wilson, Esq., W.S., Secretary to the Royal Bank of Scotland.—J.G.L.

76 The Right Hon. Sir Samuel Shepherd, who had been at the head of the Court of Exchequer since 1819, was then living at 16 Coates Crescent; he retired in 1830, and resided afterwards in England, where he died, aged 80, on the 30th November 1840. Before coming to Scotland, Sir Samuel had been Solicitor-General in 1814, and Attorney-General in 1817.

77 See Nice Valour, by John Fletcher; Beaumont and Fletcher’s Works.

78 From Charles Dibdin’s song, The Racehorse.

79 Sir Samuel Shepherd.

80 The Right Hon. Charles Hope, who held the office of Lord President of the Court of Session for thirty years; he died in 1851 aged eighty-nine.

81 Afterwards Sir James Yorke Scarlett, G.C.B.

82 Sir James Scarlett, first Lord Abinger.

83 The Dedication of Constable’s Miscellany was penned by Sir Walter—“To His Majesty King George IV., the most generous Patron even of the most humble attempts towards the advantage of his subjects, this Miscellany, designed to extend useful knowledge and elegant literature, by placing works of standard merit within the attainment of every class of readers, is most humbly inscribed by His Majesty’s dutiful and devoted subject—Archibald Constable.”—J.G.L.

84 Probably a slip of the pen for “weeks,” as Mathews was in London in March (1822), and we know that he dined with Scott in Castle Street on the 10th of February. Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 262. Mr. Lockhart says, “within a week,” and at p. 33 vol. vii. gives an account of a dinner party. Writing so many years after the event he may have mistaken the date. James Boswell died in London 24th February 1822; his brother, Sir Alexander, was at the funeral, and did not return to Edinburgh till Saturday 23d March. James Stuart of Dunearn challenged him on Monday; they fought on Tuesday, and Boswell died on the following day, March 27. Mr. Lockhart says that “several circumstances of Sir Alexander’s death are exactly reproduced in the duel scene in St. Ronan’s Well.”

85 In a letter to Skene written late in 1821, Scott, in expressing his regret at not being able to meet Boswell, adds, “I hope J. Boz comes to make some stay, but I shall scarce forgive him for not coming at the fine season.” The brothers Boswell had been Mr. Skene’s schoolfellows and intimate friends; and he had lived much with them both in England and Scotland.
Mr. Skene says, in a note to Letter 28, that “they were men of remarkable talents, and James of great learning, both evincing a dash of their father’s eccentricity, but joined to greater talent. Sir Walter took great pleasure in their society, but James being resident in London, the opportunity of enjoying his company had of late been rare. Upon the present occasion he had dined with me in the greatest health and spirits the evening before his departure for London, and in a week we had accounts of his having been seized by a sudden illness which carried him off. In a few weeks more his brother, Sir Alexander, was killed in a duel occasioned by a foolish political lampoon which he had written, and in a thoughtless manner suffered to find its way to a newspaper.”—Reminiscences.

86 See Life, vol. v. p. 87.

87 Henry Savary, son of a banker in Bristol, had been tried for forgery a few months before.

88 From What d’ye call it? by John Gay.

89 Life of Napoleon.—J.G.L.

90 See Scott’s Poetical Works, vol. xii. pp. 194-97.—J.G.L.

91 William Erskine of Kinnedder was Scott’s senior by two years at the bar, having passed Advocate in 1790. He became Sheriff of Orkney in 1809, and took his seat on the Bench as Lord Kinnedder, 29 January 1822; he died on the 14th of August following. Scott and he met first in 1792, and, as is well known, he afterwards “became the nearest and most confidential of all his Edinburgh associates.” In 1796 he arranged with the publishers for Scott’s earliest literary venture, a thin 4to of some 48 pages entitled The Chase, etc. See Life throughout, more particularly vol. i. pp. 279-80, 333-4, 338-9; ii. pp. 103-4; iv. pp. 12, 166, 369; v. p. 174; vi. p. 393; vii. pp. 1, 5, 6, 70-74. See Appendix for Mr. Skene’s account of the destruction of the letters from Scott to Erskine.

92 Patrick Brydone, author of A Tour through Sicily and Malta, 2 vols. 8vo, 1773.

93 Gilbert, Earl of Minto, died in June 1814.—J.G.L.

94 See Canning’s German Play, in the Anti-Jacobin.—J.G.L.

95 See Johnson’s Musical Museum, No. 490, slightly altered.

96 See Candide.—J.G.L.

97 James Clarkson, Esq., surgeon, Melrose, son to Scott’s old friend, Dr. Clarkson of Selkirk.—J.G.L.

98 See Constable’s Miscellany, vol. v.—J.G.L.

99 See the Quarterly Review for January 1820—or Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose Works.—J.G.L.

100 As You Like it, Act IV. Sc. 3.—J.G.L.

101 Formerly tutor at Abbotsford. Mr. Lockhart says: “I observe, as the sheet is passing through the press, the death of the Rev. George Thomson—the happy ‘Dominie Thomson’ of the happy days of Abbotsford: he died at Edinburgh on the 8th of January 1838.”

102 Burns’s “O poortith cauld and restless love.”

103 John Rutty, M.D., a physician of some eminence in Dublin, died in 1775, and his executors published his very curious and absurd “Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies.” Boswell describes Johnson as being much amused with the Quaker doctor’s minute confessions. See the Life of Johnson sub anno 1777.—J.G.L.

104 Woodstock—contracted for in 1823.

105 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Sc. 1.

106 George Huntly Gordon, amanuensis to Scott.

107 The parsimonious yet liberal London merchant, whose miserly habits gave Arbuthnot the materials of the story. See Professor Brown’s Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol i. p. 244, and Martin Scriblerns, cap. xii., Pope, vol. iv. p. 54, Edin. 1776.

108 This plantation now covers the remains of an old Roman road from the Great Camp on the Eildon Hills to the ford below Scott’s house.—J.G.L.

109 The residence for several years of Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart.

110 When settling his estate on his eldest son, Sir Walter had retained the power of burdening it with £10,000 for behoof of his younger children; he now raised the sum for the assistance of the struggling firms.—J.G.L. See Dec. 14, 1825.

111 William Scrope, author of Days of Deer Stalking, roy. 8vo, 1839; and Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing, roy. 8vo, 1843; died in his 81st year in 1852. Mr. Lockhart says of this enthusiastic sportsman that at this time “he had a lease of Lord Somerville’s pavilion opposite Melrose, and lived on terms of affectionate intimacy with Sir Walter Scott.”

112 Mr. George Ticknor of Boston. He saw much of Scott and his family in the spring of 1819 in Edinburgh and at Abbotsford; and was again in Scotland in 1838. Both visits are well described in his journals, published in Boston in 1876.
Mrs. Lockhart was of opinion that Leslie’s portrait of her father was the best extant, “and nothing equals it except Chantrey’s bust.”—Ticknor’s Life, vol. i. p. 107.
Leslie himself thought Chantrey’s was the best of all the portraits. “The gentle turn of the head, inclined a little forward and down, and the lurking humour in the eye and about the mouth, are Scott’s own.”—Autobiographical Recollections of Leslie, edited by Taylor, vol. i. p. 118.

113... sedet, eternumque sedebit Infelix Theseus... VIRGIL.—J.G.L.

114 In a letter of this date to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Scott, Sir Walter says:—“Poor aunt Curle died like a Roman, or rather like one of the Sandy-Knowe bairns, the most stoical race I ever knew. She turned every one out of the room, and drew her last breath alone. So did my uncle, Captain Robert Scott, and several others of that family.”—J.G.L.

115 See letter addressed by C.J. Mathews to his mother, in which he says, “I took particular notice of everything in the room (Sir Walter’s sanctum), and if he had left me there, should certainly have read all his notes.” Memoirs, edited by Dickens, 2 vols., London, 1879, vol. i. p. 284.

116 Merchant’s Tale, lines 9706-8, slightly altered.

117 2 King Henry IV., Act iv. Sc. 2.—J.G.L.

118 “I had long been in the habit of passing the Christmas with Sir Walter in the country, when he had great pleasure in assembling what he called ‘a fireside party,’ where he was always disposed to indulge in the free and unrestrained outpouring of his cheerful and convivial disposition. Upon one of these occasions the Comedian Mathews and his son were at Abbotsford, and most entertaining they were, giving us a full display of all their varied powers in scenic representations, narrations, songs, ventriloquism, and frolic of every description, as well as a string of most amusing anecdote, connected with the professional adventures of the elder, and the travels of the son, who seemed as much a genius as his father. He has never appeared on the stage, although abundantly fit to distinguish himself in that department, but has taken to the profession of architecture. Notwithstanding that the snow lay pretty deep on the ground, Sir Walter, old Mathews, and myself set out with the deerhounds and terriers to have a large range through the woods and high grounds; and a most amusing excursion it was, from the difficulties which Mathews, unused to that sort of scrambling, had to encounter, being also somewhat lame from an accident he had met with in being thrown out of a gig,—the good-humoured manner with which each of my two lame companions strove to get over the bad passes, their jokes upon it, alternately shouting for my assistance to help them through, and with all the liveliness of their conversation, as every anecdote which one told was in emulation tried to be outdone by the other by some incident equally if not more entertaining,—and it may be well supposed that the healthful exercise of a walk of this description disposed every one to enjoy the festivity which was to close the day.”—Mr. Skene’s Reminiscences.

119 See Moore’s Life of Sheridan, vol. i. p. 191. This work was published late in 1825.—J.G.L.

120 Burns’s Vision.—J.G.L.

121 Lindsay’s Chronicles of Scotland 2 vols. Edin. 1814, pp. 246-7.

122 Mr. Skene in his Reminiscences says:—“The family had been at Abbotsford, and it had long been their practice the day they came to town to take a family dinner at my house, which had accordingly been complied with upon the present occasion, and I never had seen Sir Walter in better spirits or more agreeable. The fatal intimation of his bankruptcy, however, awaited him at home, and next morning early I was surprised by a verbal message to come to him as soon as I had got up. Fearful that he had got a fresh attack of the complaint from which he had now for some years been free, or that he had been involved in some quarrel, I went to see him by seven o’clock, and found him already by candle-light seated at his writing-table, surrounded by papers which he was examining, holding out his hand to me as I entered, he said, “Skene, this is the hand of a beggar. Constable has failed, and I am ruined de fond en comble. It’s a hard blow, but I must just bear up; the only thing which wrings me is poor Charlotte and the bairns.””

123 Crook. The chain and hook hanging from the crook-tree over the fire in Scottish cottages.

124 [Sir Walter’s private law-agent.] Mr. John Gibson, Junr., W.S., Mr. James Jollie, W.S., and Mr. Alexander Monypenny, W.S., were the three gentlemen who ultimately agreed to take charge, as trustees, of Sir Walter Scott’s affairs; and certainly no gentlemen ever acquitted themselves of such an office in a manner more honourable to themselves, or more satisfactory to a client and his creditors.—J.G.L. Mr. Gibson wrote a little volume of Reminiscences of Scott, which was published in 1871. This old friend died in 1879. “In the month of January 1826,” says Mr. Gibson, “Sir Walter called upon me, and explained how matters stood with the two houses referred to, adding that he himself was a partner in one of them—that bills were falling due and dishonoured—and that some immediate arrangement was indispensably necessary. In such circumstances, only two modes of proceeding could be thought of—either that he should avail himself of the Bankrupt Act, and allow his estate to be sequestrated, or that he should execute a trust conveyance for behoof of his creditors. The latter course was preferred for various reasons, but chiefly out of regard for his own feeling.” Reminiscences, p. 12. See entry in Journal under Jan. 24.

125 Sir John Hope of Pinkie and Craighall, 11th Baronet; Sir Henry Jardine, King’s Remembrancer from 1820 to 1837; and Sir William Rae, Lord Advocate, son of Lord Eskgrove, were all Directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

126 John Prescott Knight, the young artist referred to, afterwards R.A., and Secretary to the Academy, wrote (in 1871) to Sir William Stirling Maxwell, an interesting account of the picture and its accidental destruction on the very day of Sir Walter’s death. Scott Exhibition Catalogue, 4to, Edin. p. 199. Mr. Knight died in 1881.

127 To hain anything is, Anglicè, to deal very carefully, penuriously about it—tyne, to lose. Scott often used to say “hain a pen and tyne a pen,” which is nearer the proverb alluded to.—J.G.L.

128 The late Sir William Forbes, Baronet, succeeded his father (the biographer of Beattie) as chief of the head private banking-house in Edinburgh. Scott’s amiable friend died 24th Oct. 1828.—J.G.L.

129 John Adam, Esq., died on shipboard on his passage homewards from Calcutta, 4th June 1825.—J.G.L.

130 The Right Hon. W. Adam of Blairadam, born in 1751. When trial by Jury in civil cases was introduced into Scotland in 1815, he was made Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court, which office he held till 1830.
Mr. Lockhart adds (Life, vol. v. p. 46): “This most amiable and venerable gentleman, my dear and kind friend, died at Edinburgh, on the 17th February 1839, in the 89th year of his age. He retained his strong mental faculties in their perfect vigour to the last days of this long life, and with them all the warmth of social feelings which had endeared him to all who were so happy as to have any opportunity of knowing him.”

131 Mr. Pole had long attended Sir Walter Scott’s daughters as teacher of the harp. In the end Scott always spoke of his conduct as the most affecting circumstance that accompanied his disasters.—J.G.L. For Mr. Pole’s letter see Life, vol. viii. p. 205. Mr. Pole went to live in England and died at Kensington.

132 Scott’s mother’s sister. See Life, vols. i., iii., v., and vi.

133 Chevalier Yelin, the friend and travelling companion of Baron D’Eichthal, was a native of Bavaria. His wife had told him playfully that he must not leave Scotland without having seen the great bard; and he prolonged his stay in Edinburgh until Scott’s return, hoping to meet him at the Royal Society on this evening.

134 On the morning of this day Sir Walter wrote the following note to his friend:—
“DEAR SKENE,—If you are disposed for a walk in your gardens any time this morning, I would gladly accompany you for an hour, since keeping the house so long begins rather to hurt me, and you, who supported the other day the weight of my body, are perhaps best disposed to endure the gloom of my mind.—Yours ever, W.S.

“CASTLE STREET, 23 January.

“I will call when you please: all hours after twelve are the same to me.”

On his return from this walk, Mr. Skene wrote out his recollections of the conversation that had taken place. Of his power to rebuild his shattered fortunes, Scott said, “‘But woe’s me, I much mistrust my vigour, for the best of my energies are already expended. You have seen, my dear Skene, the Roman coursers urged to their speed by a loaded spur attached to their backs to whet the rusty metal of their ager—ay! it is a leaden spur indeed, and it goads hard.’

“I added, ‘But what do you think, Scott, of the bits of flaming paper that are pasted on the flanks of the poor jades? If we could but stick certain small documents on your back, and set fire to them, I think you might submit for a time to the pricking of the spur.’ He laughed, and said, ‘Ay! Ay!—these weary bills, if they were but as the thing that is not—come, cheer me up with an account of the Roman Carnival.’ And, accordingly, with my endeavour to do so, he seemed as much interested as if nothing had happened to discompose the usual tenor of his mind, but still our conversation ever and anon dropt back into the same subject, in the course of which he said to me, ‘Do you know I experience a sort of determined pleasure in confronting the very worst aspect of this sudden reverse,—in standing, as it were, in the breach that has overthrown my fortunes, and saying, Here I stand, at least an honest man. And God knows, if I have enemies, this I may at least with truth say, that I have never wittingly given cause of enmity in the whole course of my life, for even the burnings of political hate seemed to find nothing in my nature to feed the flame. I am not conscious of having borne a grudge towards any man, and at this moment of my overthrow, so help me God, I wish well and feel kindly to every one. And if I thought that any of my works contained a sentence hurtful to any one’s feelings, I would burn it. I think even my novels (for he did not disown any of them) are free from that blame.’

“He had been led to make this protestation from my having remarked to him the singularly general feeling of goodwill and sympathy towards him which every one was anxious to testify upon the present occasion. The sentiments of resignation and of cheerful acquiescence in the dispensation of the Almighty which he expressed were those of a Christian thankful for the blessings left, and willing, without ostentation, to do his best. It was really beautiful to see the workings of a strong and upright mind under the first lash of adversity calmly reposing upon the consolation afforded by his own integrity and manful purposes. ‘Lately,’ he said, ‘you saw me under the apprehension of the decay of my mental faculties, and I confess that I was under mortal fear when I found myself writing one word for another, and misspelling every word, but that wore off, and was perhaps occasioned by the effects of the medicine I had been taking, but have I not reason to be thankful that that misfortune did not assail me?—Ay! few have more reason to feel grateful to the Disposer of all events than I have.’”—Mr. Skene’s Reminiscences.

135 “The energy with which Sir Walter had set about turning his resources, both present and past, to immediate account, with a view to prove to his creditors, with as little delay as possible, that all that could depend upon himself should be put in operation to retrieve his affairs, made him often reluctant to quit his study however much he found himself exhausted. However, the employment served to occupy his mind, and prevent its brooding over the misfortune which had befallen him, and joined to the natural contentedness of his disposition prevented any approach of despondency. ‘Here is an old effort of mine to compose a melo-drama’ (showing me one day a bundle of papers which he had found in his repositories). ‘This trifle would have been long ago destroyed had it not been for our poor friend Kinnedder, who arrested my hand as he thought it not bad, and for his sake it was kept. I have just read it over, and, do you know, with some satisfaction. Faith, I have known many worse things make their way very well in the world, so, God willing, it shall e’en see the light, if it can do aught in the hour of need to help the hand that fashioned it.’ Upon asking the name of this production, he said, ‘I suspect I must change it, having already forestalled it by the Fortunes of Nigel. I had called it the Fortunes of Devorgoil, but we must not begin to double up in that way, for if you leave anything hanging loose, you may be sure that some malicious devil will tug at it. I think I shall call it The Doom of Devorgoil. It will make a volume of itself, and I do not see why it should not come out by particular desire as a fourth volume to Woodstock. They have some sort of connection, and it would not be a difficult matter to bind the connection a little closer. As the market goes, I have no doubt of the Bibliopolist pronouncing it worth £1000, or £1500.’ I asked him if he meant it for the stage. ‘No, no; the stage is a sorry job, that course will not do for these hard days; besides, there is too much machinery in the piece for the stage.’ I observed that I was not sure of that, for pageant and machinery was the order of the day, and had Shakespeare been of this date he might have been left to die a deer-stealer. ‘Well, then, with all my heart, if they can get the beast to lead or to drive, they may bring it on the stage if they like. It is a sort of goblin tale, and so was the Castle Spectre, which had its run.’ I asked him if the Castle Spectre had yielded Lewis much. ‘Little of that, in fact to its author absolutely nothing, and yet its merits ought to have brought something handsome to poor Mat. But Sheridan, then manager, you know, generally paid jokes instead of cash, and the joke that poor Mat got was, after all, not a bad one. Have you heard it? Don’t let me tell you a story you know.’ As I had not heard it, he proceeded. ‘Well, they were disputing about something, and Lewis had clenched his argument by proposing to lay a bet about it. I shall lay what you ought long ago to have paid me for my Castle, Spectre.’ “No, no, Mat,” said Sheridan, “I never lay large bets; but come, I will bet a trifle with you—I’ll bet what the Castle Spectre was worth.” Now Constable managed differently; he paid well and promptly, but devil take him, it was all spectral together. Moonshine and no merriment. He sowed my field with one hand, and as liberally scattered the tares with the other.’”—Mr. Skene’s Reminiscences.

136 These two gentlemen were at this time Directors of the Bank of Scotland.

137 Sir W. Forbes and Co.’s Banking House.

138 An extract from what is probably the letter to Laidlaw written on this day was printed in Chambers’s Journal for July 1845. The italics are the editor’s:—
“For you, my dear friend, we must part—that is, as laird and factor—and it rejoices me to think that your patience and endurance, which set me so good an example, are like to bring round better days. You never flattered my prosperity, and in my adversity it is not the least painful consideration that I cannot any longer be useful to you. But Kaeside, I hope, will still be your residence, and I will have the advantage of your company and advice, and probably your service as amanuensis. Observe, I am not in indigence, though no longer in affluence, and if I am to exert myself in the common behalf, I must have honorable and easy means of life, although it will be my inclination to observe the most strict privacy, the better to save expense, and also time. Lady Scott’s spirits were affected at first, but she is getting better. For myself, I feel like the Eildon Hills—quite firm, though a little cloudy.
“I do not dislike the path which lies before me. I have seen all that society can show, and enjoyed all that wealth can give me, and I am satisfied much is vanity, if not vexation of spirit. What can I say more, except that I will write to you the instant I know what is to be done.”

139 Life of Bonaparte. (?)

140 “In the management of his Trust,” Mr. Gibson remarks, “everything went on harmoniously—the chief labour devolving upon myself, but my co-Trustees giving their valuable aid and advice when required.”—Reminiscences, p. 16.

141 The total liabilities of the three firms amounted in round numbers to nearly half-a-million sterling. Sir Walter, as the partner of Ballantyne and Co., was held responsible for about £130,000;—this large sum was ultimately paid in full by Scott and his representatives. The other two firms paid their creditors about 10 per cent, of the amounts due. It must be kept in mind, however, as far as Constable’s house was concerned, that their property appears to have been foolishly sacrificed by forced sales of copyrights and stock.

142 Mr. Gordon was at this time Scott’s amanuensis; he copied, that is to say, the MS. for press.—J.G.L.

143 Cause of Truth defended, etc. Two Trials of the Rev. T. Hill, Methodist Preacher, for defamation of the character of Miss Bell, etc. etc. 8vo. Hull and London, 1827.

144 Coleridge’s Christabel, Part II.

145 James Ferrier, one of the Clerks of Session,—the father of the authoress of Marriage, The Inheritance, and Destiny. Mr. Ferrier was born in 1744, and died in 1829.

146 “Authentic Memoirs of the remarkable Life and surprising Exploits of Mandrin, Captain-General of the French Smugglers, who for the space of nine months resolutely stood in defiance of the whole army of France,” etc. 8vo, Lond. 1755. See Waverley Novels, vol. xxxvii. p. 434, Note.—J.G.L.

147 See Tranent Muir by Skirving.

148 Addison, Cato, i. 4.

149 See p. 83.

150 Variation from 2 Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 4.

151 See “Glee for King Charles,” Waverley Novels, vol. xl. p. 40.—J.G.L.

152 Lady Louisa Stuart, youngest daughter of John, third Earl of Bute, and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

153 The well-known Mathematician and Natural Philosopher. Professor Playfair died in 1819 in his seventy-second year.

Have you seen the famed Bas bleu, the gentle dame Apreece,
Who at a glance shot through and through the Scots Review,
      And changed its swans to geese?
Playfair forgot his mathematics, astronomy, and hydrostatics,
And in her presence often swore, he knew not two and two made four.
          [Squib of 1811.]

154 See Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II. Sc. 2.

155 This journey was made in 1810.—See Life, Chapter xxi. vol. iii. p. 271.

156 Lady Davy survived her distinguished husband for more than a quarter of a century; she died in London, May 1855.

157 Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.

158 Sir Patrick Murray of Ochtertyre, then a baron of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland; he died in June 1837.

159 This cherished and confidential friend had been living at Kaeside from 1817, and acting as steward on the estate. Mr. Laidlaw died in Ross-shire in 1845.
Mr. Lockhart says, “I have the best reason to believe that the kind and manly character of Dandie [Dinmont in Guy Mannering], the gentle and delicious one of his wife, and some at least of the most picturesque peculiarities of the ménage at Charlieshope were filled up from Scott’s observation, years after this period [1792], of a family, with one of whose members he had, through the best part of his life, a close and affectionate connection. To those who were familiar with him, I have perhaps already sufficiently indicated the early home of his dear friend, William Laidlaw.” Life, vol. i. p. 268. See also vol. ii. p. 59; v. pp. 210-15, 251; vii. p. 168; viii. p. 68, etc.

160 Flax on her distaff.

161 The English in Italy, 3 vols., Lond. 1825, ascribed to the Marquis of Normanby.

162 “S.W.S.” Scott, in writing of himself, often uses these three letters in playful allusion to a freak of his trusty henchman Tom Purdie, who, in his joy on hearing of the baronetcy, proceeded to mark every sheep on the estate with a large letter “S” in addition to the owner’s initials, W.S., which, according to custom, had already been stamped on their backs.

163 Moore also felt that the morning was his happiest time for work, but he preferred “composing” in bed! He says somewhere that he would have passed half his days in bed for the purpose of composition had he not found it too relaxing.
Macaulay, too, when engaged in his History, was in the habit of writing three hours before breakfast daily.

164 I am assured by Professor Butcher that there is no such passage in the Odyssey, but he suggests “that what Scott had in his mind was merely the Greek idea of a waking vision being a true one. They spoke of it as a ὕπαρ opposed to an ὄναρ, a mere dream. These waking visions are usually said to be seen towards morning.
“In the Odyssey there are two such visions which turn out to be realities:—that of Nausicaa, Bk. vi. 20, etc., and that of Penelope, Bk. xix. 535, etc. In the former case we are told that the vision occurred just before dawn; I. 48-49, αὐτίκα δ’ Ἠὼςἦλθεν, ‘straightway came the Dawn,’ etc. In the latter, there is no special mention of the hour. The vision, however, is said to be not a dream, but a true vision which shall be accomplished (547, οὐκ ὂναρ ἀλλ’ ὕπαρ ἐσθλὸν, ὅ τοι τετελεσμένον ἔσται).
“Such passages as these, which are frequent in Greek literature, might easily have given rise to the notion of a ‘matutinal inspiration,’ of which Scott speaks.”

165 General Sir James Steuart Denham of Coltness, Baronet, Colonel of the Scots Greys. His father, the celebrated political economist, took part in the Rebellion of 1745, and was long afterwards an exile. The reader is no doubt acquainted with “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters” addressed to him and his wife, Lady Frances.—J.G.L. See also Mrs. Calderwood’s Letters, 8vo. Edin. 1884. Sir James died in 1839.

166 “Had Prince Charles slept during the whole of the expedition,” says the Chevalier Johnstone, “and allowed Lord George Murray to act for him according to his own judgment, there is every reason for supposing he would have found the crown of Great Britain on his head when he awoke.”—Memoirs of the Rebellion of 1745, etc. 4to, p. 140. London, 1810.—J.G.L.

167 The lines are given in Woodstock, with the following apology: “We observe this couplet in Fielding’s farce of Tumbledown Dick, founded on the same classical story. As it was current in the time of the Commonwealth, it must have reached the author of Tom Jones by tradition, for no one will suspect the present author of making the anachronism.”

168 Colonel Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry. He died in January 1828.—J.G.L.

169 “We have had Maréchal Macdonald here. We had a capital account of Glengarry visiting the interior of a convent in the ancient Highland garb, and the effect of such an apparition on the nuns, who fled in all directions.”—Scott to Skene, Edinburgh, 24th June 1825.

170 No. 39 Castle Street, which had been occupied by him from 1802, when he removed from No. 10 in the same street. The situation suited him, as the houses of nearly all his friends were within a circle of a few hundred yards. For description see Life, vol. v. pp. 321, 333-4, etc.

171 See below, March 12.

172 Burns’s Dedication to Gavin Hamilton—
“May ne’er misfortune’s gowling bark
Howl through the dwelling o’ the Clerk.”

173 “O born to arms! O worth in youth approved,
O soft humanity in age beloved!”

—See Pope, Epitaphs, 9.

174 David Monypenny had been on the Bench from 1813; he retired in 1830, and died at the age of eighty-one in 1850.

175 Parody on Moore’s Minstrel Boy.—J.G.L.

176 “Le Pas de la Fontaine des Pleurs.”—Chroniques Nationales.

177 This hint was taken up in Count Robert of Paris.—J.G.L.

178 James Ballantyne gives an interesting account of an interview a dozen years before this time, when “Tom Telltruth” had a somewhat delicate task to perform:—

“The Lord of the Isles was by far the least popular of the series, and Mr. Scott was very prompt at making such discoveries. In about a week after its publication he took me into his library, and asked me what the people were saying about The Lord of the Isles. I hesitated, much in the same manner that Gil Blas might be supposed to do when a similar question was put by the Archbishop of Grenada, but he very speedily brought the matter to a point—‘Come, speak out, my good fellow, what has put it in your head to be on ceremony with me? But the result is in one word—disappointment!’ My silence admitted his inference to its fullest extent. His countenance certainly did look rather blank for a few seconds (for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, gave their decision he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die, which he threw out of a box, was to turn out a sise or an ace). However, he almost instantly resumed his spirits and expressed his wonder rather that his popularity had lasted so long, than that it should have given way at last. At length, with a perfectly cheerful manner, he said, ‘Well, well, James, but you know we must not droop—for you know we can’t and won’t give over—we must just try something else, and the question is, what it’s to be?’ Nor was it any wonder he spoke thus, for he could not fail to be unconsciously conscious, if I dare use such a term, of his own gigantic, and as yet undeveloped, powers, and was somewhat under forty years old. I am by no means sure whether he then alluded to Waverley, as if he had mentioned it to me for the first time, for my memory has greatly failed me touching this, or whether he alluded to it, as in fact appears to have been the case, as having been commenced and laid aside several years before, but I well recollect that he consulted me with his usual openness and candour respecting his probability of succeeding as a novelist, and I confess my expectations were not very sanguine. He saw this and said, ‘Well, I don’t see why I should not succeed as well as other people. Come, faint heart never won fair lady—let us try.’ I remember when the work was put into my hands, I could not get myself to think much, of the Waverley Honour scenes, but to my shame be it spoken, when he had reached the exquisite scenes of Scottish manners at Tully-Veolan, I thought them, and pronounced them, vulgar! When the success of the book so utterly knocked me down as a man of taste, all that the good-natured Author observed was, ‘Well, I really thought you might be wrong about the Scotch. Why, Burns had already attracted universal attention to all about Scotland, and I confess I could not see why I should not be able to keep the flame alive, merely because I wrote in prose in place of rhyme.’”

—Memorandum.

179 This was a club-house on the London plan, in Princes Street [No. 54], a little eastward from the Mound. On its dissolution soon afterwards, Sir W. was elected by acclamation into the elder Society, called the New Club, who had then their house in St. Andrew Square [No. 3], and since 1837 in Princes Street [No. 85].

180 Mr. Skene’s house was No. 126 Princes Street. Scott’s written answer has been preserved:—
“MY DEAR SKENE,—A thousand thanks for your kind proposal. But I am a solitary monster by temper, and must necessarily couch in a den of my own. I should not, I assure you, have made any ceremony in accepting your offer had it at all been like to suit me.

“But I must make an arrangement which is to last for years, and perhaps for my lifetime; therefore the sooner I place myself on my footing it will be so much the better.—Always, dear Skene, your obliged and faithful, W. SCOTT.”

181 Pope’s Imitation of Horace, Bk. ii Sat. 6.—J.G.L.

182 These Letters appeared in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal in February and March 1826. “They were then collected into a pamphlet, and ran through numerous editions; in the subsequent discussions in Parliament, they were frequently referred to; and although an elaborate answer by the then Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Croker, attracted much notice, and was, by the Government of the time, expected to neutralise the effect of the northern lucubrations—the proposed measure, as regarded Scotland, was ultimately abandoned, and that result was universally ascribed to Malachi Malagrowther.”—Scott’s Misc. Works, vol. xxi.

183 Winter’s Tale, Act iv. Sc. 2, slightly altered.

184 The late Mr. Williamson of Cardrona in Peeblesshire, was a strange humorist, of whom Sir Walter told many stories. The allusion here is to the anecdote of the Leetle Anderson in the first of Malachi’s Epistles.:—See Scott’s Prose Miscellanies, vol. xxi. p. 289.—J.G.L.

185 The Omen, by Galt, had just been published.—See Sir Walter’s review of this novel in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xviii. p. 333. John Gait died at Greenock in April 1839.—J.G.L.

186 “A Letter from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq., to the Editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, on the proposed Change of Currency, and other late alterations as they affect, or are intended to affect, the Kingdom of Scotland. 8 vo, Edin. 1826.”

The motto to the epistle was:—

“When the pipes begin to play
Tutti taittie to the drum,
Out claymore and down wi’ gun,
And to the rogues again.”

In the next edition it was suppressed, as some friends thought it might be misunderstood. Mr. Croker in his reply had urged that if the author appealed to the edge of the claymore at Prestonpans, he might refer him to the point of the bayonet at Culloden.—See Croker’s Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 317-320, and Scott’s Life, vol. viii. pp. 301-5.

187 Lord Reston, who died at Gladsmuir in 1819. He was one of Scott’s companions at the High School.—See Life., vol. i. p. 40.

188 See Gray’s Elegy.—J.G.L.

189 In Arthur Murphy’s farce of The Upholsterer, or What News?

190 Lady Anna Maria Elliot, daughter of the first Earl of Minto. She married Sir Rufane Donkin in 1832.

191 Afterwards Lord Advocate, 1834 and 1835, and Judge under the title of Lord Murray from 1839; he died in 1859.

192 The learned editor of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, in 10 vols. folio, Edin. 1814-24; he succeeded Sir Walter as President of the Bannatyne Club in 1832, and died in 1852.

193 Rose Court, where Mr. Clerk had a bachelor’s establishment, was situated immediately behind St. Andrew’s Church, George Street. The name disappeared from our Street Directories shortly after Mr. Clerk’s death in 1847.

194 Burns, in Johnson’s Musical Museum, No. 319.

195 One of the nineteen original members of The Club.—See Mr. Irving’s letter with names, Life, vol. i. pp. 207-8, and Scott’s joyous visit in 1793 to Meigle, pp. 292-4.

196 Dalgleish was Sir Walter’s butler. He said he cared not how much his wages were reduced—but go he would not.—J.G.L.

197 Whin-cow—Anglicè, a bush of furze.—J.G.L.

198 The full-length picture of Sir Walter (with, the two dogs, Camp and the deerhound) by Raeburn, painted in 1809, was at this time given to Mr. Skene, and remained in his possession till 1831, when it was sent to Abbotsford, where it now hangs.—See Letter, Scott to Skene, under January 16th, 1831.

199 Spean a wean, i.e. wean a child.

200 Archibald Skirving (1749-1819), well known as a portrait-painter in chalk and crayons in Edinburgh in the early part of this century.

201 H.W. Williams, a native of Wales, who settled in Edinburgh at the beginning of this century. His Travels in Italy and Greece were published in 1820, and the Views in Greece in 1827. This work was completed in 1829, the year in which he died.

202 Vols. i. and ii. were published in 1802.

203 Kain in Scotch law means payment in kind. Carriages in the same phraseology stands for services in driving with horse and cart.

204 Ballad of Hardyknute, slightly altered.—J.G.L.

205 Sir W. Knighton was Physician and Private Secretary to George IV. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 289) says no one had more influence with the King. Sir William died in 1836; his Memoirs were published in 1838, edited by his widow.

206 Ossian.—J.G.L.

207 Pastoret: Le Duc de Guise à Naples, etc., en 1647 et 1648. 8vo, 1825; also Memoires relating his passage to Naples and heading the Second Revolt of that people. Englished, sm. 8vo, 1669.
“The Reviewal then meditated was afterwards published in Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. iv. p 355, but not included in the Misc. Prose Works.”—Abbotsford Library Catalogue, p. 36.

208 W. Shenstone’s Essays (1765), p. 115, or Works (1764-69), vol. iii. p. 49.
I am indebted to Dr. J.A.H. Murray for this reference, which he kindly supplied from the materials for his great English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

209 King Henry VIII., Act v. Sc. 2, slightly altered.—J.G.L.

210 “Watch the sign to hate.”—Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes.

211 See Arniston Memoirs, 8vo, Edin. 1888, for text of Lord Melville’s letter and Sir Walter’s reply, pp. 315-326.

212 “Seldom has any political measure called forth so strong and so universal an expression of public opinion. In every city and in every county public meetings were held to deprecate the destruction of the one pound and guinea notes.”—Annual Register (1826), p. 24.

213 Alex. Young of Harburn, a steady Whig of the old school, and a steady and esteemed friend of Sir Walter’s.—J.G.L.

214 See Life, vol. iv. pp. 146-148.

215 Henry Weber died in 1818.

216 See Life of Bonaparte. Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xi. pp. 346-351.—J.G.L.

217 Plays on the Passions, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1802, vol. ii. pp. 211-215.

218 He had, however, snatched a moment to write the following playful note to Mr. Sharpe, little dreaming that the sportive allusion to his return in May would be so sadly realised:—“MY DEAR CHARLES,—You promised when I displenished this house that you would accept of the prints of Roman antiquities, which I now send. I believe they were once in some esteem, though now so detestably smoked that they will only suit your suburban villa in the Cowgate when you remove to that classical residence. I also send a print which is an old favourite of mine, from the humorous correspondence between Mr. Mountebank’s face and the monkey’s. I leave town to-day or to-morrow at furthest. When I return in May I shall be

Bachelor Bluff, bachelor Bluff,
Hey for a heart that’s rugged and tough.

I shall have a beefsteak and a bottle of wine of a Sunday, which I hope you will often take share of,—Being with warm regard always yours, WALTER SCOTT.”—Sharpe’s Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 359-60.

219 Apropos of the old Scotch lady who had surreptitiously pocketed a silver spoon, one of a set of a dozen which were being passed round for examination in an auction room. Suspicion resting on her, she was asked to allow her person to be searched, but she indignantly produced the article, with “Touch my honour,” etc.

220 The Attorneys of Aberdeen are styled advocates. This valuable privilege is said to have been bestowed at an early period by some (sportive) monarch.—J.G.L.

221 This clever book was published in 1814: at the same time as Waverley. Had it contained nothing else than the sketch of Bran, the great Irish wolf-hound, it would have commended itself to Scott. The authoress died in 1859.

222 It is worth noting that a quarter of a century after Sir Walter had written these lines, we find Macaulay stating that, in his opinion, “there are in the world no compositions which approach nearer perfection.” Scott had already criticised Miss Austen in the 27th No. of the Quarterly. She died in 1817.

223 “I return no more,”—see Mackrimmon’s Lament by Scott.—Poetical Works, vol. xi. p. 332.

224 Published as far back as 1792. An appreciative criticism on Mrs. Smith’s works will be found in Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iv. pp. 58-70.

225 See this Journal, 2 December last.

226 The letters of Malachi were treated by some members of the House of Commons as incentives to rebellion, and senators gravely averred that not many years ago they would have subjected the author to condign punishment.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, declared that he did not dread “the flashing of that Highland claymore though evoked from its scabbard by the incantations of the mightiest magician of the age.”—Speech of Rt. Hon. F.J. Robinson.

227 Both letters are quoted in Lockhart’s Life, vol. viii. pp. 299-305. See also Croker’s Correspondence and Diaries, edited by Louis J. Jennings, 3 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1884, vol. i. pp. 315-319.

228 W. Scott, Esq., afterwards of Raeburn, Sir Walter’s Sheriff-substitute.

229 Hudibras.—J.G.L.

230 One of Sir Walter’s kindly “weird sisters” and neighbours, daughters of Professor Ferguson. They had occupied the house at Toftfield (on which Scott at the ladies’ request bestowed the name of Huntly Burn) from the spring of 1818. Miss Margaret has been described as extremely like her brother Sir Adam in the turn of thought and of humour.—See Life, vol. vi. p. 322.

231 Fortune in her Wits, and the Hour of all Men, Quevedo’s Works, Edin. 1798, vol. iii. p. 107.

232 Don Quixote, Pt. II. cap. 47.

233 Granby was written by a young man, Thos. H. Lister, some years afterwards known as the author of The Life and Administration of the First Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols. 8vo, 1837-38. Mr. Lister died in his 41st year in 1842.

234 Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, Act IV, Sc. 5.

235 The reader will understand that the Novel was sold for behoof of James Ballantyne & Co.’s creditors, and that this sum includes the cost of printing the first edition as well as paper.—J.G.L.

236 Eident, i.e. eagerly diligent.—J.G.L.

237 These lines slightly altered from Logan.—J.G.L.

238 Lippened, i.e. relied upon.—J.G.L.

239 2 King Henry VI., Act IV. Sc. 10, slightly varied.

240 In a letter of the same day he says—“My interest, as you might have known, lies Windsor way.”—J.G.L.

241 William Coulter, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, died in office, April 1810, and was said to have been greatly consoled on his deathbed by the prospect of so grand a funeral as must needs occur in his case.—Scott used to take him off as saying, at some public meeting, “Gentlemen, though doomed to the trade of a stocking-weaver, I was born with the soul of a Sheepio” (Scipio).

242 Quarterly Review, No. 66: Lockhart’s review of Sheridan’s Life.

243 It is interesting to read what James Ballantyne has recorded on this subject.—“Sir Walter at all times laboured under the strangest delusion, as to the merits of his own works. On this score he was not only inaccessible to compliments, but even insensible to the truth; in fact, at all times, he hated to talk of any of his productions; as, for instance, he greatly preferred Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein to any of his own romances. I remember one day, when Mr. Erskine and I were dining with him, either immediately before or immediately after the publication of one of the best of the latter, and were giving it the high praise we thought it deserved, he asked us abruptly whether we had read Frankenstein. We answered that we had not. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘have patience, read Frankenstein, and you will be better able to judge of——.’ You will easily judge of the disappointment thus prepared for us. When I ventured, as I sometimes did, to press him on the score of the reputation he had gained, he merely asked, as if he determined to be done with the discussion, ‘Why, what is the value of a reputation which probably will not last above one or two generations?’ One morning, I recollect, I went into his library, shortly after the publication of the Lady of the Lake, and finding Miss Scott there, who was then a very young girl, I asked her, ‘Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like the Lady of the Lake, with which everybody is so much enchanted?’ Her answer was, with affecting simplicity, ‘Oh, I have not read it. Papa says there’s nothing so bad for young girls as reading bad poetry.’ Yet he could not be said to be hostile to compliments in the abstract—nothing was so easy as to flatter him about a farm or a field, and his manner on such an occasion plainly showed that he was really open to such a compliment, and liked it. In fact, I can recall only one instance in which he was fairly cheated into pleasure by a tribute paid to his literary merit, and it was a striking one. Somewhere betwixt two and three years ago I was dining at the Rev. Dr. Brunton’s, with a large and accomplished party, of whom Dr. Chalmers was one. The conversation turned upon Sir Walter Scott’s romances generally, and the course of it led me very shortly afterwards to call on Sir Walter, and address him as follows—I knew the task was a bold one, but I thought I saw that I should get well through it—‘Well, Sir Walter,’ I said, ‘I was dining yesterday, where your works became the subject of very copious conversation.’ His countenance immediately became overcast—and his answer was, ‘Well, I think, I must say your party might have been better employed.’ ‘I knew it would be your answer,’—the conversation continued,—’nor would I have mentioned it, but that Dr. Chalmers was present, and was by far the most decided in his expressions of pleasure and admiration of any of the party.’ This instantly roused him to the most vivid animation. ‘Dr. Chalmers?’ he repeated; ’that throws new light on the subject—to have produced any effect upon the mind of such a man as Dr. Chalmers is indeed something to be proud of. Dr. Chalmers is a man of the truest genius. I will thank you to repeat all you can recollect that he said on the subject.’ I did so accordingly, and I can recall no other similar instance.”—James Ballantyne’s MS.

244 For the life led by many of the détenus in France before 1814, and for anecdotes regarding Sir Alexander Don, see Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglas’ Memoirs, 2 vols. 8vo, London 1832, vol. ii. chaps. 7 and 8.

245 Hugh Scott of Harden, afterwards (in 1835) Lord Polwarth—succeeded by his son Henry, in 1841.

246 Henry Jas. Scott, who succeeded to the Barony of Montagu on the demise of his grandfather, the Duke of Montagu, was the son of Henry, 3d Duke of Buccleuch. At Lord M.’s death in 1845 the Barony of Montagu expired.

247 Henry Scott, afterwards Lord Polwarth.

248 Slightly altered from Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard.

249 The Catalogue of Criminals brought before the Circuit Courts at one time was termed in Scotland the Portuous Roll. The name appears to have been derived from the practice in early times of delivering to the judges lists of Criminals for Trials in Portu, or in the gateway as they entered the various towns on their circuit ayres.—Chambers’s Book of Scotland, p. 310.
Jamieson suggests that the word may have come from “Porteous” as originally applied to a Breviary, or portable book of prayers, which might easily be transferred to a portable roll of indictments.

250 Quarterly Review, No. 66, Pepys’ Diary.

251 Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.

252 See Froissart’s account of the Battle of Crecy, Bk. i. cap. 129.

253 Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv. Sc. 1.

254 See Goldsmith’s Comedy, Act III.

255 King Lear, Act III. Sc. 2.

256 James Pringle, Convener of Selkirkshire for more than half a century. For an account of the Pringles of Torwoodlee, see Mr. Craig Brown’s History of Selkirkshire, vol. i. pp. 459-470.

257 “The Insurrection of the Papers—a Dream.” The Twopenny Post-Bag, 12mo, London, 1812.

258 The well-known ballads on these two North-country legends were published by M.G. Lewis and Mr. Lambe, of Norham. “Sir Guy,” in the Tales of Wonder, and “The Worm,” in Ritson’s Northumberland Garland.—See Child’s English and Scottish Ballads, 8 vols. 12mo, Boston, 1857, vol. i. p. 386.

259 Fyn Segellak wel brand en vast houd: old brand used by sealing-wax makers.

260 Balaam is the cant name in a Newspaper Office for asinine paragraphs, about monstrous productions of Nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward space that must be filled up somehow.—J.G.L.

261 Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2.

262 Ritson, Scottish Songs, xvi.

263 See Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xx. pp. 152-244, or Quarterly Review No. 67, Kelly’s Reminiscences.

264 2 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. I, slightly altered.

265 [Mrs. Brown’s Lodgings, No. 6 North St. David Street.]

266 This is the opening couplet of a German trooper’s song, alluded to in Life, vol. ii. p. 13. The literal translation is:—
“The day of departure is come;
Heavy lies it on the hearts—heavy.”

—J.G.L.

267 Scott had written:—“and yet to part with the companion of twenty years just six,” and had then deleted the three words, “years just six,” and written “nine” above them. It looks as if he had meant at first to refer to the change in his fortunes, “just six” MONTHS before, and had afterwards thought it better to refrain. This would account for a certain obscurity of meaning.

268 As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 4.

269 Cicero, de Orat. ii. p. 346.—J.G.L.

270 Walter Scott Lockhart, died at Versailles in 1853, and was buried in the Cemetery of Notre-Dame there.

271 The Rev. Edward Bannerman Ramsay, A.M., St. John’s College, Cambridge, incumbent St. John’s, Edinburgh, afterwards Dean of the Diocese in the Scots Episcopal Church, and still more widely known as the much-loved “Dean Ramsay,” author of Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character. This venerable Scottish gentleman was for many years the delight of all who had the privilege of knowing him. He died at the age of eighty-three in his house, 23 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, Dec. 27th, 1872.

272 See Life, vol. iv. p. 2.

273 Mr. Skene has preserved the following note written on this day:—“I take the advantage of Mr. Ramsay’s return to Edinburgh to answer your kind letter. It would have done no good to have brought you here when I could not have enjoyed your company, and there were enough friends here to ensure everything being properly adjusted. Anne, contrary to a natural weakness of temper, is quite quiet and resigned to her distress, but has been visited by many fainting fits, the effect, I am told, of weakness, over-exertion, and distress of mind. Her brothers are both here—Walter having arrived from Ireland yesterday in time to assist at the munus inane; their presence will do her much good, but I cannot think of leaving her till Monday next, nor could I do my brethren much good by coming to town, having still that stunned and giddy feeling which great calamities necessarily produce. It will soon give way to my usual state of mind, and my friends will not find me much different from what I have usually been.

“Mr. Ramsay, who I find is a friend of yours, appears an excellent young man.—My kind love to Mrs. Skene, and am always, yours truly,

“WALTER SCOTT.
ABBOTSFORD, 23d May.”

274 The Highland Widow, Waverley Novels, vol. xli.

275 See February 10, 1826.

276 This excellent philosophical song appears to have been famous in the sixteenth century.—Percy’s Reliques, vol. i. 307.—J.G.L.

277 See June 2.

278 Sheridan’s Critic, Act IV. Sc. 2.

279 Buckingham’s Rehearsal.—The expression “To Feague” does not occur in the first edition, where the passage stands thus:—
“Phys.—When a knotty point comes, I lay my head close to it, with a pipe of tobacco in my mouth and then whew it away. I’ faith.

“Bayes.—I do just so, i’ gad, always.” Act II. Sc. 4.

In some subsequent editions the words are:—“I lay my head close to it with a snuff-box in my hand, and I feague it away. I’ faith.”

I am indebted to Dr. Murray for this reference, which he kindly furnished me with from the materials collected for his great English Dictionary.

280 This alludes to the claim advanced by the creditors of Constable and Co. to the copyright of Woodstock and the Life of Napoleon. The Dean of the Faculty of Advocates was at that time George Cranstoun, afterwards a judge on the Scottish Bench under the title; of Lord Corehouse, from 1826 until 1839, when he retired; he died 1850.

281 i.e. spending.

282 The eldest son of “The Man of Feeling.” He had been a judge from 1822; he died at the age of seventy-four in 1851.

283 Baron Gifford died a few months later, viz., in Sept. 1826; he had been Attorney-General in 1819, and Chief-Justice in 1824. Lord and Lady Gifford had visited Abbotsford in the autumn of 1825.

284 Speech of Lord Chancellor Seafield on the ratification of the Scottish Union.—See Miscell. Prose Works, vol. xxv. p. 93.

285 See Moréri’s Dictionnaire, Art. “Tanneguy du Châtel.”

286 An example of Scott’s wonderful patience, and his power of utilising hints gathered from the most unpromising materials. Apropos of this Mr. Skene relates:—“In one of our frequent walks to the pier of Leith, to which the freshness of the sea breeze offered a strong inducement to those accustomed to pass a few of the morning hours within the close and impure atmosphere of the Court of Session, I happened to meet with, and to recognise, the Master of a vessel in which I had sailed in the Mediterranean. Our recognition of each other seemed to give mutual satisfaction, as the cordial grasp of the seaman’s hard fist effectually indicated. It was some years since we had been shipmates, he had since visited almost every quarter of the globe, but he shook his head, and looked serious when he came to mention his last trip. He had commanded a whaler, and having been for weeks exposed to great stress of weather in the polar regions, finally terminated in the total loss of his vessel, with most of her equipage, in the course of a dark tempestuous night. When thrown on her beam-ends, my friend had been washed overboard, and in his struggles to keep himself above water had got hold of a piece of ice, on the top of which he at length succeeded in raising himself—’and there I was, sir, on a cursed dark dirty night, squatted on a round lump of floating ice, for all the world like a tea-table adrift in the middle of a stormy sea, without being able to see whether there was any hope within sight, and having enough ado to hold on, cold as my seat was, with sometimes one end of me in the water, and sometimes the other, as the ill-fashioned crank thing kept whirling, and whomeling about all night. However, praised be God, daylight had not been long in, when a boat’s crew on the outlook hove in sight, and taking me for a basking seal, and maybe I was not unlike that same, up they came of themselves, for neither voice nor hand had I to signal them, and if they lost their blubber, faith, sir, they did get a willing prize on board; so, after just a little bit gliff of a prayer for the mercy that sent them to my help, I soon came to myself again, and now that I am landed safe and sound, I am walking about, ye see, like a gentleman, till I get some new craft to try the trade again.’—Sir Walter, who was leaning on my arm during this narrative, had not taken any share in the dialogue, and kept gazing to seaward, with his usual heavy, absorbed expression, and only joined in wishing the seaman better success in his next trip as we parted. However, the detail had by no means escaped his notice, but dropping into the fertile soil of his mind, speedily yielded fruit, quite characteristic of his habits. We happened that evening to dine in company together; I was not near Sir Walter at table, but in the course of the evening my attention was called to listen to a narrative with which he was entertaining those around him, and he seemed as usual to have excited the eager interest of his hearers. The commencement of the story I had not heard, but soon perceived that a shipwreck was the theme, which he described with all the vivid touches of his fancy, marshalling the incidents and striking features of the situation with a degree of dexterity that seemed to bring all the horrors of a polar storm home to every one’s mind, and although it occurred to me that our rencontre in the morning with the shipwrecked Whaler might have recalled a similar story to his recollection, it was not until he came to mention the tea-table of ice that I recognised the identity of my friend’s tale, which had luxuriated to such an extent in the fertile soil of the poet’s imagination, as to have left the original germ in comparative insignificance. He cast a glance towards me at the close, and observed, with a significant nod, ‘You see, you did not hear one-half of that honest seaman’s story this morning.’ It was such slender hints, which in the common intercourse of life must have hourly dropped on the soil of his retentive memory, that fed the exuberance of Sir Walter’s invention, and supplied the seemingly inexhaustible stream of fancy, from which he drew forth at pleasure the ground-work of romance.”—Reminiscences.

287 Painted for Lord Montagu in 1822.—See Life, vol. vii. p. 13.
Raeburn apparently executed two “half lengths” of Scott almost identical at this time, giving Lord Montagu his choice. The picture chosen remained at Ditton, near Windsor, until 1845, when at Lord Montagu’s death it became the property of his son-in-law, the Earl of Home, and it is now (1889) at the Hirsel, Coldstream. The engraving referred to was made from the replica, which remained in the artist’s possession, by Mr. Walker, and published in 1826. Sir Henry Raeburn died in July 1823, and I do not know what became of the original, which may be identified by an official chain round the neck, not introduced in the Montagu picture.

288 Song of The Hunting of the Hare.—J.G.L.

289 This entry reminds one of Hannah More’s account of Mrs. Garrick’s conduct after her husband’s funeral. “She told me,” says Mrs. More, “that she prayed with great composure, then went and kissed the dear bed, and got into it with a sad pleasure.”—See Memoirs of Mrs. More, vol. i. p. 135.—J.G.L.

290 Campbell’s Turkish Lady, slightly altered. The poet was then editor of the New Monthly Magazine, but he soon gave it up.—J.G.L.

291 Viz.: the first series of Chronicles of the Canongate, which was published in 1827. The title originally proposed was The Canongate Miscellany or Traditions of the Sanctuary.
Woodstock had just been launched under the following title:—Woodstock, or the Cavalier; a Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred and Fifty-one, by the author of Waverley, Tales of the Crusaders, etc. “He was a very perfect gentle knight” (Chaucer). Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co., Edinburgh; and Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London, 1826. (At the end) Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. 3 vols. post 8vo.

292 Thomas Hamilton, Esq. (brother of Sir William Hamilton, the Metaphysician), author of Cyril Thornton, Men and Manners in America, Annals of the Peninsular Campaign, etc. Died in 1842.

293 Bryan Waller Procter, author of Dramatic Scenes, and other Poems, 1819. He died in London in 1874.

294 A favourite expression of Scott’s, from Robinson Crusoe.

295 John Hay Forbes (Lord Medwyn from 1825 to 1852), second son of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo. Lord Medwyn died at the age of seventy-eight in 1854.

296 The Highland Widow.

297 A favourite exclamation of Sir Walter’s, which he had picked up on his Irish tour, signifying “don’t mind it”—Na-bac-leis. Compare Sir Boyle Roche’s dream that his head was cut off and placed upon a table: “‘Quis separabit?’ says the head; ‘Naboclish,’ says I, in the same language.”

298 That Mr. Kinloch was not singular in his opinion has been shown by the remarks made in the House of Commons (see ante, March 17). Lord Cockburn in his Trials for Sedition says, “With Botany Bay before him, and money to make himself comfortable in Paris, George Kinloch would have been an idiot if he had stayed.” Mr. Kinloch had just returned to Scotland.

299 His neighbour, John Archibald Murray, then living at 122 George Street.—See p. 133.

300 See Molière’s l’École des Femmes.

301 In 1827 Scott was one day heard saying, as he saw Peter guiding the plough on the haugh:—“Egad, auld Pepe’s whistling at his darg: if things get round with me, easy will be his cushion!” Old Peter lived until he was eighty-four. He died at Abbotsford in 1854, where he had been well cared for, respected, and beloved by all the members of the family since Sir Walter’s death.

302 Sheridan’s Rivals, Act II. Sc. 1.

303 The murder of Weare by Thurtell and Co., at Gill’s-Hill in Hertfordshire (1824). Sir Walter collected printed trials with great assiduity, and took care always to have the contemporary ballads and prints bound up with them. He admired particularly this verse of Mr. Hook’s broadside—
“They cut his throat from ear to ear,
  His brains they battered in;
His name was Mr. William Weare,
  He dwelt in Lyon’s Inn.”

—J.G.L.

304 Dr. John Jamieson, formerly minister to a Secession congregation in Forfar, removed to a like charge in Edinburgh in 1795, where he officiated for forty-three years; he died in his house in 4 George Square in 1838, aged seventy-nine.

305 This novel was passing through the press in 8vo, 12mo, and 18mo, to complete collective editions in these sizes.—J.G.I.

306 Afterwards Sir David Brewster. He died at Allerley House on the Tweed, aged eighty-seven, on February 10, 1868.

307 By Middleton, 1697.

308 The Hector of Germanie, or the Palsgrave Prime Elector. An Honourable History by William Smith. 4to, 1615.

309 Two London playhouses.—See Knight’s Biography of Shakespeare.

310 Molière’s La Princesse d’Élide (Prologue).

311 See Crabbe’s Tale of The Struggles of Conscience.—J.G.L.

312 Tales of a Grandfather, Miscell. Prose Works, vol. xxiii. p. 72.

313 See Tales of the Genii. The Talisman of Oromanes.

314 Eldest daughter of William Fraser of Balnain.—See Burgon’s Life of P.F. Tytler, 8vo, Lond. 1859. Mrs. Tytler died in London, aged eighty-four, in 1837.

315 Alexr. Fraser Tytler, 1747-1813. Besides his acknowledged works, Lord Woodhouselee published anonymously a translation of Schiller’s Robbers as early as 1792.

316 Henry Cranstoun, elder brother of Lord Corehouse and Countess Purgstall. He resided for some years near Abbotsford, at the Pavilion on the Tweed, where he died in 1843, aged eighty-six. An interesting account of Countess Purgstall is given by Basil Hall, who was with her in Styria at her death in 1835. This very early friend of Scott’s was thought by Captain Hall to have been the prototype of Diana Vernon—“that safest of secret keepers.”—See Schloss Hainfeld, 8vo, Lond. 1836.

317 The property of Gattonside had been purchased in 1824 by George Bainbridge of Liverpool, a keen angler, author of The Fly Fisher’s Guide, 8vo, Liverpool, 1816.

318 Lady Anna Maria Elliot, see ante, p. 133.

319 W. Scott of Maxpopple.

320 In the fairy tale of Countess D’Aulnoy—Fortunio.

321 See Johnson’s Rambler, Nos. 204 and 205.

322 Afterwards Sir Philip Crampton. “The Surgeon-General struck Sir Walter as being more like Sir Humphry Davy than any man he had met, not in person only, but in the liveliness and range of his talk.”—Life, vol. viii. p. 23.

323 Gaelic for “old women.”

324 William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, succeeded, on the death of his kinsman, Duke Charles, in 1778. He died in 1810 at the age of eighty-six, when his titles and estates were divided between the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Douglas, the Marquis of Queensberry, and the Earl of Wemyss.

See Wordsworth’s indignant lines beginning:

“Degenerate Douglas, oh the unworthy Lord”;

also George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, 4 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1843-4.

325 Alexander, tenth Earl of Home, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch.

326 Charles, second son of Archibald Lord Douglas.

327 James Thomas, Viscount Stopford, afterwards fourth Earl of Courtown, and his wife, Lady Charlotte, sister of the then Duke of Buccleuch, at that time still in his minority. Lady Charlotte died within eighteen months of this date.

328 “Thus Kitty, beautiful and young,
And wild as colt untamed.”

Prior’s Female Phaeton.

Catherine Hyde, daughter of Henry Earl of Clarendon, and wife of Charles Duke of Queensberry. She was the friend of Gay, and her beauty, wit, and oddities have been celebrated in prose and rhyme by the wits and poets of two generations. Fifty-six years after Prior had sung her “mad Grace’s” praises, Walpole added those two lines to the Female Phaeton—

“To many a Kitty Love his car, will for a day engage,
But Prior’s Kitty, ever fair, obtained it for an age.”

She died at a great age in 1777. For her letter to George II. when forbid the Court, see Agar Ellis, Historical Inquiries, Lond. 1827, p. 40.

329 Ballad on young Rob Roy’s abduction of Jean Key, Cromek’s Collections.—J.G.L.

330 See Letter to C.K. Sharpe, from Drumlanrig, vol. ii. pp. 369-71.

331 Sir Frederick Adam, son of the Chief Commissioner—a distinguished soldier, afterwards High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, and subsequently Governor of Madras; he died in 1853.

332 Mr. Richard Sharp published in 1834 a very elegant and interesting little volume of Letters and Essays, in Prose and Verse.—See Quarterly Review, 102.—J.G.L. He had been Member of Parliament from 1806 to 1820, and died on the 30th of March 1835 at the age of seventy-six.

333 Sir Thomas Brisbane, who had formerly commanded a brigade in the Peninsula. In 1832 he succeeded Sir Walter Scott as President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Sir Thomas had married in 1819 a daughter of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall of Makerstoun, Bart. Sir Thomas died at Brisbane House, Ayrshire, in January 1860, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

334 For an account of this family see The Swintons of that Ilk and their Cadets, 4to, 1883, a privately printed volume by A.C. Swinton of Kimmerghame. In a letter to his friend Swinton in 1814, Scott says that he had been reading the family pedigree “to my exceeding refreshment.”

335 One of the Abbotsford labourers.

336 2 Henry IV. Act IV. Sc. 2.

337 Mr. E.W. Auriol Drummond Hay, heir-presumptive at one time of Lord Kinnoul, was then residing in Edinburgh, owing to his official duties in the Lyon Office; he took a great interest in archaeological matters, and was for two years Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries before his departure as Consul General to the Barbary States. He died at Tangier on the 1st March 1845.

338 Milton’s Comus, v. 208.—J.G.L.

339 Lady Scott had not been quite four months dead, and the entry of the preceding day shows how extremely ill-timed was this communication from a gentleman with whom Sir Walter had never had any intimacy. This was not the only proposition of the kind that reached him during his widowhood.—J.G.L.

340 A coil of rope.

341 See Life, vol. x. 95, and The Haigs of Bemersyde, 8vo, Edin. 1881, edited by J. Russell.

342 Mr. Thomas Shortreed, a young gentleman of elegant taste and attainments, devotedly attached to Sir Walter, and much beloved in return, had recently died.—J.G.L.

343 See Act III. Sc. 1.

344 The Rev. Dr. Thomas Somerville, minister of Jedburgh, author of the History of Great Britain during the reign of Queen Anne, and other works, died 14th May 1830, in the ninetieth year of his age, and sixty-fourth of his ministry.—J.G.L. Autobiographical Memorials of his Life and Times, 1741-1814, 8vo, Edinburgh, were published in 1861.

345 Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Sc. 5.

346 Afterwards Judge in the Court of Session from 1843, author of Gleams of Thought reflected from Milton, etc. It was of this witty and humorous judge Mr. Lockhart wrote the sportive lines:—
“Here lies that peerless paper peer Lord Peter,
Who broke the laws of God and man and metre.”

Lord Robertson died in 1855.

347 Act III. Sc. 3.

348 One of Scott’s old High School mates.—Life, vol. i. p. 163.

349 Burns’s Epistle to J. Smith.

350 Eldest daughter of the illustrious Admiral Lord Duncan, wife of Sir Hew Hamilton Dalrymple. She died in 1852.

351 This implacable enemy of Napoleon,—a Corsican, died in his seventy-fourth year in 1842.

352 E.H. Locker, Esq., then Secretary, afterwards one of the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital—an old and dear friend of Scott’s.—See Oct. 25.

353 As an illustration of Constable’s accuracy in gauging the value of literary property, it may be stated that in his formal declaration, after sequestration, he said:—“I was so sanguine as to the success of the Memoirs of Napoleon that I did not hesitate to express it as my opinion that I had much confidence in it producing him at least £10,000, and this I observed, as my expectation, to Sir W. Scott.” This opinion was expressed not only before the sale of the work, but before it was all written.—A. Constable and his Correspondents, vol. iii. p. 313.

354 Another of the Abbotsford labourers.

355 See Ballad of Edom of Gordon.

356 “On the 12th of October, Sir Walter left Abbotsford for London, where he had been promised access to the papers in the Government offices; and thence he proceeded to Paris, in the hope of gathering from various eminent persons authentic anecdotes concerning Napoleon. His Diary shows that he was successful in obtaining many valuable materials for the completion of his historical work; and reflects, with sufficient distinctness, the very brilliant reception he on this occasion experienced both in London and Paris. The range of his society is strikingly (and unconsciously) exemplified in the record of one day, when we find him breakfasting at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Park, and supping on oysters and porter in “honest Dan Terry’s house, like a squirrel’s cage,” above the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand. There can be no doubt that this expedition was in many ways serviceable in his Life of Napoleon; and I think as little that it was chiefly so by renewing his spirits. The deep and respectful sympathy with which his misfortunes, and gallant behaviour under them, had been regarded by all classes of men at home and abroad, was brought home to his perception in a way not to be mistaken. He was cheered and gratified, and returned to Scotland with renewed hope and courage for the prosecution of his marvellous course of industry.”—Life, vol. ix. pp. 2, 3.

357 John B. Saurey Morritt of Rokeby, a friend of twenty years’ standing, and “one of the most accomplished men that ever shared Scott’s confidence.”
He had published, before making Scott’s acquaintance, a Vindication of Homer, in 1798, a treatise on The Topography of Troy, 1800, and translations and imitations of the minor Greek Poets in 1802.
Mr. Morritt survived his friend till February 12th, 1843, when he died at Rokeby Park, Yorkshire, in his seventy-second year.—See Life throughout.

358 MS. note on margin of Journal by Mr. Morritt: “No—it was left by Reynolds to Mason, by Mason to Burgh, and given to me by Mr. Burgh’s widow.”

359 Chiverton was the first publication (anonymous) of Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth, the author of Rookwood and other popular romances.—J.G.L.

360 It is interesting to know that Scott would not read this book until Woodstock was fairly off his hands.
See ante, p. 167, and the introduction to the original edition written in March 1826, in which the author says:—“Some accidental collision there must be, when works of a similar character are finished on the same general system of historical manners, and the same historical personages are introduced. Of course, if such have occurred, I shall be probably the sufferer. But my intentions have been at least innocent, since I look on it as one of the advantages attending the conclusion of Woodstock, that the finishing of my own task will permit me to have the pleasure of reading BRAMBLETYE-HOUSE, from which I have hitherto conscientiously abstained.”—Novels, vol. xxxix. pp. lxxv-vi.

361 Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour.

362 Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.

363 Rehearsal, Act III. Sc. 1.

364 Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 3.

365 Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

366 Sir Walter had made his acquaintance in August 1822, and ever afterwards they corresponded with each other—sometimes very confidentially.—J.G.L.

367 The Dumergues, at 15 Piccadilly West—early friends of Lady Scott’s.—See Life., vol. ii. p. 120.

368 It is amusing to compare this criticism with Sir Walter’s own anxiety to identify his daughter-in-law’s place, Lochore, with the Urbs Orrea of the Roman writers. See Life, vol. vii. p. 352.—J.G.L.

369 This brilliant conversationalist was the author of several airy and graceful productions in verse, which were published anonymously, such as Lines written at Ampthill Park, in 1818; Advice to Julia, a letter in Rhyme, in which he sketched high life in London, in 1820. He also published Crockford House: a rhapsody, in 1827. Moore in his Diary has embalmed numerous examples of his satiric wit. Henry Luttrell died in 1851.

370 The Orlando Furioso, by Mr. Stewart Rose, was published in 8 vols. 8vo, London 1823-1831.

371 King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.—J.G.L.

372 Afterwards the Right Hon. Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, Governor of Ceylon.

373 Moore, on hearing of Scott’s arrival, hastened to London from Sloperton, and had several pleasant meetings, particulars of which are given in his Diary (vol. v. pp. 121 to 126). He would, as Scott says on the 23d, have gone to Paris with them—“seemed disposed to go”; but between that date and 25th fancied that he saw something in Scott’s manner that made him hesitate, and then finally give up the idea. He adds that Scott’s friends had thrown out hints as to the impropriety of such a political reprobate forming one of the party. This suspicion on Moore’s part shows how he had misunderstood Scott’s real character. If Scott thought it right to ask the Bard of Ireland to be his companion, no hints from Mr. Wilmot Horton, or any members of the Court party, would have influenced him, even though they had urged that “this political reprobate” was author of The Fudge Family in Paris and the Twopenny Post-Bag.

374 Sir George died in 1853. His journal does not appear to have been published.

375 Dr. Hughes, who died Jan. 6, 1833, aged seventy-seven, was one of the Canons-residentiary of St. Paul’s, London. He and Mrs. Hughes were old friends of Sir Walter, who had been godfather to one of their grandchildren.—See Life, vol. vii. pp. 259-260. Their son was John Hughes, Esq., of Oriel College, whose “Itinerary of the Rhone” is mentioned with praise in the introduction to Quentin Durward.—See letter to Charles Scott, in Life, vol. vii. p. 275.

376 Mr. Pringle was a Roxburghshire farmer’s son who in youth attracted Sir Walter’s notice by his poem called The Autumnal Excursion; or, Sketches in Teviotdale. He was for a short time Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, but the publisher and he had different politics, quarrelled, and parted. Sir Walter then gave Pringle strong recommendations to the late Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in which colony he settled, and for some years throve under the Governor’s protection; but the newspaper alluded to in the text ruined his prospects at the Cape; he returned to England, became Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society, published a charming little volume entitled African Sketches, and died in December 1834. He was a man of amiable feelings and elegant genius.

377 An esteemed friend of Sir Walter’s, who attended on him during his illness in October 1831, and in June 1832.

378 Afterwards Sir Francis Palgrave, Deputy-Keeper of the public records, and author of the History of Normandy and England, 4 vols. 8vo, 1851-1864, and other works.

379 William Wilson of Wandsworth Common, formerly of Wilsontown, in Lanarkshire.—J.G.L.

380 E.H. Locker, then Secretary of Greenwich Hospital.—See ante, Oct. 7.

381 King John, Act I. Sc. 1.

382 There were two well-known Frenchmen of this name at the time of Scott’s visit to Paris: (1) Jean-Antoine-Gauvain Gallois, who was born about 1755 and died in 1828; (2) Charles-André-Gustave-Léonard Gallois, born 1789, died 1851. It was the latter of these who translated from the Italian of Colletta Cinq jours de l’histoire de Naples, 8vo, Paris, 1820. But at this date he was only thirty-seven, and it can scarcely be of him that Scott writes (p. 288) as an “elderly” man. The probability is that it was the elder Gallois whom Scott saw, and that he ascribed to him, though the title is misquoted, a work written by the younger.

383 “When he was in Paris,” Hazlitt writes, “and went to Galignani’s, he sat down in an outer room to look at some book he wanted to see; none of the clerks had the least suspicion who he was. When it was found out, the place was in a commotion.”—From Mr. Alexander Ireland’s excellent Selections from Hazlitt’s writings, 8vo, Lond. 1889, p. 482.

384 Ivanhoe might have borne a motto somewhat analogous to the inscription which Frederick the Great’s predecessor used to affix to his attempts at portrait-painting when he had the gout: “Fredericus I. in tormentis pinxit.”—Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, p. 240. Lond. 1837.

385 For an account of M. Chevalier, and an interview in 1815 with David “of the blood-stained brush,” see Life, vol. v. p. 87.

386 Madame de Souza-Botelho, author of Adèle de Senanges, and other works, which formed the subject of an article in the Edinburgh, No. 68, written by Moore. At the time Scott met her she had just lost her second husband, who is remembered by his magnificent editions of Camoens’ Lusiad, on which it is said he spent about £4000. Mme. de Souza died in 1836.

387 Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

388 The following mixed metaphor is said to have been taken from one of his speeches:—“Ministers were not to look on like Crocodiles, with their hands in their breeches’ pockets, doing nothing.”

389 The story regarding Castlereagh’s Radiant Boy, is that one night, when he was in barracks and alone, he saw a figure glide from the fireplace, the face becoming brighter as it approached him. On Lord Castlereagh stepping forward to meet it, the figure retired again, and as he advanced it gradually faded from his view. Sir Walter does not tell us of his friend Stanhope’s ghostly experience.

390 Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel—Character of Shaftesbury.—J.G.L.

391 The name has since been bestowed on the high ground on the bank of the Seine, on which was built the Palace in connection with the International Exhibition of 1878.

392 It should be noted that Scott wrote “manner” not “manners,” as in all previous editions the word is printed. Of Cooper, his latest American biographer, Mr. Lounsbury, says there was in his manner at times “a self-assertion that often bordered, or seemed to border, on arrogance” (p. 79).
Of this interview, Cooper is said to have recorded in after years that Scott was so obliging as to make him a number of flattering speeches, which, however, he did not repay in kind, giving, as a reason for has silence, the words of Dr. Johnson regarding his meeting with George III.: “It was not for me to bandy compliments with my sovereign.” These two “lions” met on four occasions, viz., on the 3d, 4th, and 6th November, Scott leaving Paris next day.
It cannot be too widely known that if Scott never derived any profits from the enormous sale of his works in America, it was not the fault of his brother author, who urged him repeatedly to try the plan here proposed. Whether the attempt was made is unknown, but it is amusing to see one cause of Scott’s hesitation was the fear that the American public would not get his works at the low prices to which they had been accustomed.

393 General Monthion.

394 Fitz-James was great-grandson of James II., and Duras was related to Feversham, James’s general at Sedgemoor. Both died in the same year, 1835.

395 Madame Mirbel, who painted Scott at this time, continued to be a favourite artist with the French (Bonapartist, Bourbon, and Orleanist) for the next twenty years. Among her latest sitters (1841) was Scott’s angry correspondent of four months later—General Gourgaud. Madame Mirbel died in 1849. The portrait alluded to was probably a miniature which has been engraved at least once—by J.T.Wedgwood.

396 Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 3.—J.G.L.

397 The Marshal had visited Scotland in 1825—and Scott saw a good deal of him under the roof of his kinsman, Mr. Macdonald Buchanan.—J.G.L.

398 Lauriston, the ancient seat of the Laws, so famous in French history, is very near Edinburgh, and the estate was in their possession at the time of the Revolution. Two or three cadets of the family were of the first emigration, and one of them (M. Louis Law) was a frequent guest of the Poet’s father, and afterwards corresponded during many years with himself. I am not sure whether it was M. Louis Law whose French designation so much amused the people of Edinburgh. One brother of the Marquis de Lauriston, however, was styled Le Chevalier de Mutton-hole, this being the name of a village on the Scotch property.—J.G.L.

399 The Madame de Boufflers best known to the world [Hippolyte de Saujon Comtesse de Boufflers], the correspondent not only of Walpole, but of David Hume, must have been nearer a hundred than eighty years of age at this date, if we are to believe the Biographie Universelle, which gives 1724 as the date of her birth. It does not record her death. It is known that she took refuge in England during the Revolution; but Count Paul de Rémusat, who has been consulted on the subject, has kindly pointed out that the lady of whom Scott speaks must have been the widow of the Chevalier de Boufflers-Remencourt, known by his poems and stories. Her maiden name was de Jean de Manville, and her first husband was a Comte de Sabran. She died in 1827.—See Correspondance inédite de la Comtesse de Sabran, Paris, 8vo, 1875.

400 Readers who may wish to compare with the visit of 1826 Scott’s impressions of Paris in 1815 will find a brilliant record of the latter in Paul’s Letters, xii.-xvi.

401 A Sunday newspaper started in 1820, to advocate the cause of George IV., and to vilify the Queen and her friends, male and female. The first number was published on December 17th, and “told at once from the convulsed centre to the extremity of the Kingdom. There was talent of every sort in the paper that could have been desired or devised for such a purpose. It seemed as if a legion of sarcastic devils had brooded in Synod over the elements of withering derision.” Hook, however, was the master spirit, the majority of the lampoons in prose, and all the original poetry in the early volumes from the “Hunting the Hare,” were from his own pen, except, perhaps, “Michael’s Dinner,” which has been laid at Canning’s door.
Oddly enough Scott appears to have been the indirect means of placing Hook in the editorial chair. When he was in London, in April 1820, a nobleman called upon him, and asked if he could find him in Edinburgh some clever fellow to undertake the editorship of a paper about to be established. Sir Walter suggested that his Lordship need not go so far a-field, described Hook’s situation, and the impression he had received of him from his table talk, and his Magazine, the Arcadian. This was all that occurred, but when, towards the end of the year, John Bull electrified London, Sir Walter confessed that he could not help fancying that his mentioning this man’s name had had its consequences.
Hook, in spite of his £2000 per annum for several years from John Bull, and large prices received for his novels, died in poverty in 1841, a prematurely aged man. His sad story may be read in a most powerful sketch in the Quarterly Review, attributed to Mr. Lockhart.

402 See Beckford’s Vathek, Hall of Eblis.

403 Lady Stafford says: “We were so lucky as to have Sir W. Scott here for a day, and were glad to see him look well, and though perfectly unaltered by his successes, yet enjoying the satisfaction they must have given him.”—Sharpe’s Letters, vol. ii. p. 379.

404 The Right Hon. Thomas Grenville died in 1846 at the age of ninety-one. He left his noble collection of books to the nation.

405 The Right Hon. Charles Manners Sutton, afterwards Viscount Canterbury. He died in 1845.

406 Mrs. Arbuthnot was Harriet, third daughter of the Hon. H. Fane, and wife of Charles Arbuthnot, a great friend of the Duke of Wellington. She died in 1838, Mr. Arbuthnot in 1850.

407 Sir Walter had recommended George Cranstoun, his early friend, one of the brethren of the mountain, who succeeded Lord Hermand, and took his seat on the Scotch bench before the end of the month. The appointment satisfied both political parties, though Cockburn said that “his removal was a great loss to the bar which he had long adorned, and where he had the entire confidence of the public.” An admirable sketch of Cranstoun is given in No. 32 of Peter’s Letters. He retired in 1839, and died at Corehouse, his picturesque seat on the Clyde, in 1850.

408 This striking paper was afterwards printed in full under the title, “Memorandum on the War in Russia in 1812,” in the Despatches edited by his Son (Dec. 1823 to May 1827), Murray, 1868, vol. i. 8vo, pp. 1-53. Sir Walter Scott’s letter to the Duke on the subject is given at p. 590 of the same volume, and see this Journal under Feb. 15, 1827.

409 In returning from this dinner Sir Walter said, “I have seen some of these great men at the same table for the last time.”—J.G.L.

410 Mr. William Wright, Barrister, Lincoln’s Inn.—See Life, vol. viii. p. 84.

411 Milton’s L’Allegro.—J.G.L.

412 A murder committed in 1817. The accused claimed the privilege of Wager of Battle, which was allowed by the Court for the last time, as the law was abolished in 1819.—See Notes and Queries, 2d series, vol. xi. pp. 88, 259, 317, and p. 431 for a curious account of the bibliography of this very singular case.

413 Othello,—J.G.L.

414 Sir Walter no doubt means that he regretted not having seen the Duke at an earlier period of his historical labours.—J.G.L.

415 See Weber’s Tales of the East, 3 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1812. History of Avicene, vol. ii. pp. 452-457.

416 Dr. Richard Jenkyns, Master of Balliol College.—J.G.L.

417 Charles Douglas succeeded his brother, Baron Douglas of Douglas, in 1844.

418 “But of all friends in field or town,
 Ever gramercy,” etc.
    Dame Juliana Berners.

419 A furnished house in Walker Street which he had taken for the winter (No. 3).

420 During the winter of 1826-7 Sir Walter suffered great pain (enough to have disturbed effectually any other man’s labours, whether official or literary) from successive attacks of rheumatism, which seems to have been fixed on him by the wet sheets of one of his French inns; and his Diary contains, besides, various indications that his constitution was already shaking under the fatigue to which he had subjected it. Formerly, however great the quantity of work he put through his hands, his evenings were almost all reserved for the light reading of an elbow-chair, or the enjoyment of his family and friends. Now he seemed to grudge every minute that was not spent at his desk. The little that he read of new books, or for mere amusement, was done by snatches in the course of his meals; and to walk, when he could walk at all, to the Parliament House, and back again through the Princes Street Gardens, was his only exercise and his only relaxation. Every ailment, of whatever sort, ended in aggravating his lameness; and, perhaps, the severest test his philosophy encountered was the feeling of bodily helplessness that from week to week crept upon him. The winter, to make bad worse, was a very cold and stormy one. The growing sluggishness of his blood showed itself in chilblains, not only on the feet but the fingers, and his handwriting becomes more and more cramped and confused.—Life, vol. ix. pp. 58-9.

421 See Bickerstaff’s Comic Opera, The Padlock.

422 This gentleman published his own Memoirs (2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1832). They read like chapters from the Arabian Nights. He gives a somewhat different account of his occupation of Zante, which he says was effected at Nelson’s suggestion, and by Lord Keith’s authority. Sir James died in 1832 at a very great age.

423 Henry V. Act v. Sc. 1.

424 For By and attour, i.e. over and above.

425 Burns’s lines to J. Smith.

426 Delta’s lines on Leslie’s portrait of Scott may be recorded here:—
Brother of Homer and of him
On Avon’s shore, mid twilight dim,
Who dreamed immortal dreams, and took
From Nature’s hand her picture book;
Time hath not seen, Time may not see,
Till ends his reign, a third like thee.

427 Now at Bowhill.

428 James Wolfe Murray succeeded Lord Meadowbank on the Bench as Lord Cringletie, in November 1816, and died in 1836.

429 A Party Newspaper started by the Tories in Edinburgh at the beginning of 1821. It was suppressed in the month of August, but during the interval contrived to give great offence to the Whig leaders by its personality. Lockhart says of it that “a more pitiable mass of blunders and imbecility was never heaped together than the whole of this affair exhibited;” and Scott, who was one of its founders, along with the Lord Advocate and other official persons, wrote to Erskine, “I am terribly malcontent about the Beacon. I was dragged into the bond against all reasons I could make, and now they have allowed me no vote regarding standing or flying. Entre nous, our friends went into the thing like fools, and came out very like cowards.” The wretched libels it contained cost Sir A. Boswell his life, and for a moment endangered that of Scott.—See Life, vol. vi. pp. 426-429, and Cockburn’s Memorials, p. 312.

430 2 Henry IV. Act III. Sc. 2.

431 Douglas Cheape, whose Introductory Lecture was published in 1827. Mr. Cheape died in 1861.

432 James Moncreiff, son of the Rev. Sir Henry Wellwood. The new Dean succeeded Lord Alloway on the Scotch Bench in 1829, and died in 1851. Cockburn writes of him thus:—“During the twenty-one years he was on the civil and criminal benches, he performed all his duties admirably. Law-learning and law-reasoning, industry, honesty, and high-minded purity could do no more for any judge. After forty years of unbroken friendship, it is a pleasure to record my love of the man, and my admiration of his character.”—Journals, vol. ii, p. 264.

433 Troilus and Cressida, Act v. Sc. 2.

434 Dr. Stokoe, who had settled at Durham, died suddenly at York in 1852. He had been surgeon in the fleet at Trafalgar, and was afterwards appointed to St. Helena.

435 The University Commission.—See ante, pp. 256, 257.

436 The long life of Walter, fifth Duke of Buccleuch, more than fulfilled the hopes and prognostics of his friend. A “true Scots lord,” he carried with him to the grave in 1884 the love and respect of his countrymen.

437 Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.—J.G.L.

438 “A half-crazy sentimental person.”—Edin. Rev. No. xxiii. p. 135.—J.G.L.

439 Mme. de Boufflers’s saying to the author of Julie.

440 Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 1.—J.G.L.

441 Mr. Sharpe was doing what he could by voice and pen to prevent the destruction of many historic buildings in Edinburgh, which the craze for “improvements” caused at this time. St. Giles’ Church was unfortunately left to its fate. Witness its external condition at the present day!
The immediate cause of Mr. Sharpe’s letter was a hint to him from the Court, “that one person is all-powerful in everything regarding Scotland, I mean Sir W.S.” This was not the only appeal made to Scott to interpose, and that he had done so at least in one case effectually may be seen by referring to Sharpe’s Letters, vol. ii. pp. 380, 388, 389.

442 Scott sent a biographical notice of the Duke of York to the Weekly Journal on this day. It is now included in the Misc. Prose Works, vol. iv. pp. 400-416.

443 Gifford’s Mæviad, 12mo, Lond. 1797; Ode to Rev. John Ireland, slightly altered.

444 William Gifford, editor of the Anti-Jacobin in 1797, and the Quarterly from 1809 to 1824. His political opponent, Leigh Hunt, wrote of him in 1812:—
‘William Gifford’s a name, I think, pretty well known.
Oh! now I remember,’ said Phoebus;—‘ah true—
My thanks to that name are undoubtedly due.
The rod that got rid of the Cruscas and Lauras,
That plague of the butterflies saved me the horrors,
The Juvenal too stops a gap in my shelf,
At least in what Dryden has not done himself,
And there’s something which even, distaste must respect
In the self-taught example that conquered neglect.’

—Feast of the Poets.

445 See Miscell. Prose Works, vol. iv. pp. 120-70.

446 James Ferrier, Esq.—See p. 103, February 3. 1826.

447 See Midsummer Night’s Dream; a parody on Helena’s

“O weary night
O long and tedious night.”

448 John James Audubon was born in Louisiana in the United States in 1780, but educated in France.—Buchanan’s Life of Audubon, p. 4.

449 Written by Mrs. J. Johnstone, in after years editor of Tait’s Magazine, well known also as the author of Meg Dods’ Cookery Book, which Sir Walter refers to in St. Ronan’s Well. Her sense of humour and power of delineating character are shown in her stories and sketches in Tait, and a good example of her ready wit has been told by Mr. Alexander Russel, editor of the Scotsman. On a visit to Altrive Mrs. Johnstone and her party were kindly received by the Ettrick Shepherd, who did the honours of the district, and among other places took them to a Fairy Well, from which he drew a glass of sparkling water. Handing it to the lady the bard of Kilmeny said, “Hae, Mrs. Johnstone, ony merrit wumman wha drinks a tumbler of this will hae twuns in a twalmont’!” “In that case, Mr. Hogg,” replied the lady, “I shall only take half a tumbler.”
Mrs. Johnstone died in Edinburgh in 1857.

450 Slightly varied from the lines in Ruth,—Poems, vol. ii. p. 112, Edinburgh, 1836.

451 John Russell (a grandson of Principal Robertson), long Chief Clerk in the Jury Court, and Treasurer to the Royal Society and the Edinburgh Academy. He took a keen interest in education, and published in October 1855 some curious Statistics of a Class [Christison’s] in the High School [of Edinburgh] from 1787 to 1791, of which he had been a member. Mr. Russell died on January 30, 1862.

452 Leonard Horner, editor in after years of the Memoirs of his brother Francis (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1843). He died in 1864.

453 See Report by the Directors to the Proprietors of the Edinburgh Academy on the Pronunciation of Latin, Edin. 1827. Sir Walter always took a warm interest in the school. His speech as Chairman at the opening ceremony, on the 1st October 1824, is quoted in the Life, vol. vii. p. 268.

454 Burnt at Edinburgh in 1670.—See Arnot’s Crim. Trials. 4to, Edin. 1785.

455 Afterwards Sir John Rennie, knighted on the completion of the Bridge.

456 See ante, p. 307, and post, p. 359.

457 Dr. Marshman died in 1837. See Marshman’s Lives of Carey, Marshman, and Ward. London, 2 vols. 8vo, 1859.

458 John Menzies of Pitfoddels, the last of an old Aberdeenshire family, of whom it was said that for thirty-seven years he never became aware of distress or difficulty without exerting himself to relieve it. In 1828 he gave the estate of Blairs, near Aberdeen, for the foundation of the Roman Catholic College established there, and was also a munificent benefactor to the Convent of St. Margaret, Edinburgh, opened in 1835. Mr. Menzies died in 1843.

459 Foote’s Comedy, Act I. Sc. 1.

460 Scott, who had accompanied this lady to the Highlands in the summer of 1808, wrote from Edinburgh on 19th January:—“We have here a very diverting lion and sundry wild beasts; but the most meritorious is Miss Lydia White, who is what Oxonians call a lioness of the first order, with stockings nineteen times dyed blue; very lively, very good-humoured, and extremely absurd. It is very diverting to see the sober Scotch ladies staring at this phenomenon.”—Life, vol. iii. pp. 38, 95, 96.

461 Burns’s “Twa Dogs.”—J.G.L.

462 Mount Benger.

463 John Archibald Murray, whose capital bachelors’ dinner on Dec. 8 Scott so pleasantly describes (on page 320), had married in the interval Miss Rigby, a Lancashire lady, who was long known in Edinburgh for her hospitality and fine social qualities as Lady Murray. (See page 378, April 2, 1827.) Miss Martineau celebrated her parliamentary Tea-Table in London, when her husband was Lord Advocate, and Lord Cockburn, the delights of Strachur on Loch Fyne.

464 Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis) Grant became a member of the Scottish Academy in 1830, an associate of Royal Academy in 1842, and Academician in 1851. His successful career as a painter secured his elevation to the Presidentship of the Academy in 1866. Sir Francis died at Melton-Mowbray in October 1878, aged 75.

465 Patrick Fraser Tytler, the Scottish historian. He died on Christmas-day 1849, aged fifty-eight.—See Burgon’s Memoirs, 8vo, Lond. 1859.

466 Audubon says in his Journal of the same date:—“Captain Hall led me to a seat immediately opposite to Sir Walter Scott, the President, where I had a perfect view of the great man, and studied Nature from Nature’s noblest work.”
The publication of Audubon’s great work, The Birds of America, commenced in 1827, and was completed in 1839, forming 4 vols. in the largest folio size, and containing 435 plates. It shows the indomitable courage of the author, that even when the work was completed, he had only 161 subscribers, 82 of whom were in America. The price of the book was two guineas for each part with 5 coloured plates. During the last dozen years its price at auctions runs about £250 to £300. Audubon died in New York in 1851.—See Life, by Buchanan, 8vo, London, 1866.

467 Biographical Notices had been sent to the Weekly Journal in 1826, and are now included in the Miscell. Prose Works, vol. iv. pp. 322-342.

468 Afterwards included in The Pilgrimage and other Poems, Lond. 1856.

469 See Craig Brown’s Selkirkshire, vol. i. pp. 285-86.

470 Milton’s Lycidas, varied.

471 “Death’s gi’en the Lodge an unco devel,
Tam Samson’s dead.”

Burns.—J.G.L.

472 For letter and reply see Life, vol. ix. pp. 92, 98.

473 Sir Walter at this date returned the valuable MSS. lent him by the Duke of Wellington in Nov. 1826 (see ante, p. 306) with the following letter:—
“EDINBURGH, 15th February 1827.
“My dear Lord Duke,—The two manuscripts safely packed leave this by post to-day, as I am informed your Grace’s franks carry any weight. * * * “I have been reading with equal instruction and pleasure the memoir on the Russian campaign, which demonstrates as plainly as possible that the French writers have taken advantage of the snow to cover under it all their General’s blunders, and impute to it all their losses. This I observe is Bonaparte’s general practice, and that of his admirers. Whenever they can charge anything upon the elements or upon accident, he and they combine in denying all bravery and all wisdom to their enemies. The conduct of Kutusow on more than one occasion in the retreat seems to have been singularly cautious, or rather timorous. For it is impossible to give credit to the immense superiority claimed by Ségur, Beauchamp, etc., for the French troops over the Russians. Surely they were the same Russians who had fought so bravely against superior force, and how should the twentieth part of the French army have been able to clear their way without cavalry or artillery in a great measure? and it seems natural to suppose that we must impute to tardy and inactive conduct on the part of their General what we cannot account for on the idea of the extremely superior valour or discipline claimed for the French soldiers by their country. The snow seems to have become serious on the 6th November, when Napoleon was within two marches of Smolensk, which he soon after reached, and by that time it appears to me that his army was already mouldered away from 100,000 men who left Moscow, to about 35,000 only, so that his great loss was incurred before the snow began.
“I am afraid your Grace has done me an unparalleled injury in one respect, that the clearness, justice, and precision of your Grace’s reasoning puts me out of all patience with my own attempts. I dare hardly hope in this increase of business for a note or two on Waterloo; but if your Grace had any, however hasty, which could be copied by a secretary, the debt would be never to be forgotten.
“I am going to mention a circumstance, which I do with great apprehension, lest I should be thought to intrude upon your Grace’s goodness. It respects a youth, the son of one of my most intimate friends, a gentleman of good family and fortune, who is extremely desirous of being admitted a cadet of artillery. His father is the best draughtsman in Scotland, and the lad himself shows a great deal of talent both in science and the ordinary branches of learning. I enclose a note of the youth’s age, studies, and progress, in case your Grace might think it possible to place on your list for the Engineer service the name of a poor Scots Hidalgo; your Grace knows Scotland is a breeding not a feeding country, and we must send our sons abroad, as we send our black cattle to England; and, as old Lady Campbell of Ardkinglas proposed to dispose of her nine sons, we have a strong tendency to put our young folks ‘a’ to the sword.’
“I have too long detained you, my Lord Duke, from the many high occupations which have been redoubled upon your Grace’s head, and beg your Grace to believe me, with an unusually deep sense of respect and obligation, my dear Lord Duke, your Grace’s much honoured and grateful, humble servant, WALTER SCOTT.”—Wellington’s Despatches, etc. (Continuation), vol. iii. pp. 590-1. London, 8vo, 1868.

474 Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, VOL. i. cap. 13.

475 One page of his MS. answers to four or five of the close printed pages of the original edition of his Bonaparte.—J.G.L.

476 Lord Cockburn says:—“Scott’s description of the woman is very correct; she was like a vindictive masculine witch. I remember him sitting within the bar looking at her. As we were moving out, Sir Walter’s remark upon the acquittal was, ‘Well, sirs, all I can say is that if that woman was my wife I should take good care to be my own cook.’”—Circuit Journeys, 8vo, Edinburgh, 1888, p. 12.

477 This can scarcely be taken to refer to Brougham, though at the time

“Canning calls Brougham his Learned Friend.
‘My honours come and share ’em.
Reformers their assistance give
To countenance old Sarum.”

Annus Mirabilis.

It may, however, stand for Lord Bathurst, who became President of the Council shortly afterwards in Wellington’s Administration.

478 Mr. W.H. Murray, Manager of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh. This excellent actor retired from the stage with a competency, and spent the last years of his life in St. Andrews, where he died in March 1852, aged 61.

479 This was the dinner at which the veil was publicly withdrawn from the authorship of Waverley; it took place on Friday, 23d February 1827, and a full account of the proceedings is given in the Life, vol. ix. pp. 79-84.

480 Sir Walter parodies the conclusion of King Robert the Bruce’s “Maxims or Political Testament.”—See Hailes’ Annals, A.D. 1311.—J.G.L.

481 See Townley’s Farce.

482 Hamesucken.—The crime of beating or assaulting a person in his own house. A Scotch law term.

483 King had retired from the stage in 1801. He died four years later.

484 Cramond Brig is said to have been written by Mr. W.H. Murray, the manager of the Theatre, and is still occasionally acted in Edinburgh.

485 Marginal Note in Original MSS. “I never saw it—not mine.—J.G.L.”

486 By Dodsley.

487 That singular personage, the late M’Nab of that ilk, spent his life almost entirely in a district where a boat was the usual conveyance.—J.G.L.

488 Ancient Scottish Ballads, recovered from tradition, with notes, etc., by George R. Kinloch, 8vo, London, 1827.

489 Issued by the Club, June 4, 1827.

490 Zanga in The Revenge, Act I. Sc. 1.—J.G.L.

491 Nimrod, a staghound.—J.G.L.

492 Anecdotes of Cranbourne Chase, etc., by Chafin. 8vo, London, 1818. Mr. Lockhart says, “I am sorry Sir Walter never redeemed his promise to make it the subject of an article in the Quarterly Review.”—See Life, vol. vii. pp. 43-44.

493 The article appeared in the Number for June 1827, and is now included in the Prose Misc. Works, vol. xix. pp. 283-367.

494 See Captain John Pringle’s remarks on the campaign of 1815 in App. to Scott’s Napoleon, vol. ix. pp. 115-160.

495 Lear, Act III. Sc. 4.

496 “Pearling Jean,” the name of the ghost of the Spanish Nun at Allanbank, Berwickshire. See Sharpe’s Letters, vol. i. pp. 303-5, and Ingram’s Haunted Homes, Lond. 1884, vol. i. pp. 1-4.

497 This quaint saying, arising out of some forgotten joke, has been thought to be Scott’s own, as it was a favourite with him and his intimates, and he introduces it in more than one of his works.A But though its origin cannot be traced, Swift uses it in that very curious collection of proverbs and saws, which he strung together under the title of Polite Conversation, and published about 1738.B Fielding also introduces it in Amelia,C 1752. See Notes and Queries, first series, vol. i. p. 385; ii. p. 45; iv. p. 450; x. p. 173; sixth series, vol. iii. p. 213; iv. p. 157.

A e.g. Redgauntlet, ch. xii. Pate-in-Peril at Dumfries.

B Lord Smart—“Well, Tom, can you tell me what’s Latin for a candle?”
Neverout—“O, my Lord, I know that [answer]: Brandy is Latin for a goose! and Tace is Latin for a candle.”—SCOTT’S Swift, vol. ix. p. 457.

C “Tace, Madam,” added Murphy, “is Latin for a candle.”—Amelia, Bk. 1. cap. xi.

498 Sheridan’s Play, Act II. Sc. 1.

499 William Simson, R.S.A., landscape painter. He died in London, 1847.

500 See Shenstone’s Pastoral Ballad, Part ii., Hope.

501 The coach to Edinburgh.

502 See “The Braes of Ballochmyle;” Currie’s Burns, vol. iv. p. 294.

503 The conduct of the Quarterly at this time was in after years thus commented upon by John Wilson.
“North.—While we were defending the principles of the British constitution, bearding its enemies, and administering to them the knout, the Quarterly Review was meek and mum as a mouse.
“Tickler.—Afraid to lose the countenance and occasional assistance of Mr. Canning.
“North.—There indeed, James, was a beautiful exhibition of party politics, a dignified exhibition of personal independence.”—Noctes Ambrosianae.
It is understood that Canning, who had received the King’s commands in April 10, felt keenly the loneliness of his position—estranged from his old comrades, and deterred by the remembrance of many bitter satires against them from having close intimacy with his new co-adjutors.

504 See Spectator.

505 “... Your letter has given me the vertigo—my head turns round like a chariot wheel, and I am on the point of asking—
‘Why, how now? Am I Giles, or am I not?’

“The Duke of Wellington out?—bad news at home, and worse abroad. Lord Anglesea in his situation?—does not much mend the matter. Duke of Clarence in the Navy?—wild work. Lord Melville, I suppose, falls of course—perhaps cum totâ sequelâ, about which sequela, unless Sir W. Rae and the Solicitor, I care little. The whole is glamour to one who reads no papers, and has none to read. I must get one, though, if this work is to go on, for it is quite bursting in ignorance. Canning is haughty and prejudiced—but, I think, honourable as well as able: nous verrons. I fear Croker will shake, and heartily sorry I should feel for that....”—Scott to Lockhart: Life, vol. ix. p. 99.

506 R. Plumer Ward.—See July 4.

507 A fuller statement of Scott’s views at this crisis will be found in his letters to Lockhart and Morritt in Life, vol. ix. (April, May, and June, 1827).

508 Count Itterburg, then in his 20th year, was the name under which Gustavus, the ex-Crown Prince of Sweden, visited Scotland in 1819. It was his intention to study at the University of Edinburgh during the winter session, but, his real name becoming known, this was rendered impracticable by the curiosity and attention of the public. He devoted himself mainly to the study of military matters, and out-door exercises, roughing it in all sorts of weather, sometimes,—to his mentor Baron Polier’s uneasiness,—setting out on dark and stormy nights, and making his way across country from point to point. This self-imposed training was no doubt with the secret hope that he might some day be called upon by the Swedes to oust Bernadotte, and mount the throne of the great Gustavus. Mr. Skene saw a good deal of him, and gives many interesting details of his life in Edinburgh, such as the following account of a meeting at his own house. “He was interested with a set of portraits of the two last generations of the Royal Family of Scotland, which hung in my dining-room, and which had been presented to my grandfather by Prince Charles Edward, in consideration of the sacrifices he had made for the Prince’s service during the unfortunate enterprise of the year 1745, having raised and commanded one of the battalions of Lord Lewis Gordon’s brigade. The portrait of Prince Charles Edward, taken about the same age as Comte Itterburg, and no doubt also the marked analogy existing in the circumstances to which they had been each reduced, seemed much to engage his notice; and when the ladies had retired he begged me to give him some account of the rebellion, and of the various endeavours of the Stewarts to regain the Scottish crown. The subject was rather a comprehensive one, but having done my best to put him in possession of the leading features, it seemed to have taken very strong hold of his mind, as he frequently, at our subsequent meetings, reverted to the subject. Upon another occasion by degrees the topic of conversation slipped into its wonted channel—the rebellion of 1745, its final disaster, and the singular escape of the Prince from the pursuit of his enemies. The Comte inquired what effect the failure of the enterprise had produced upon the Prince’s character, with whose gallant bearing and enthusiasm, in the conduct of his desperate enterprise, he evinced the strongest interest and sympathy. I stated briefly the mortifying disappointments to which Charles Edward was exposed in France, the hopelessness of his cause, and the indifference generally shown to him by the continental courts, which so much preyed on his mind as finally to stifle every spark of his former character, so that he gave himself up to a listless indifference, which terminated in his becoming a sot during the latter years of his life. On turning round to the Prince, who had been listening to these details, I perceived the big drops chasing each other down his cheeks and therefore changed the subject, and he never again recurred to it.”—Reminiscences.
Count Itterburg, or Prince Gustavus Vasa, to give him the title of an old family dignity which he assumed in 1829, entered the Austrian army, in which he attained the rank of Lieutenant Field-Marshal. His services, it is needless to say, were never required by the Swedes, though he never relinquished his pretensions, and claimed the throne at his father’s death in 1837. He died at Pillnitz on the 4th August 1877, leaving one daughter, the present Queen of Saxony.
Notices of his visits to 39 Castle Street and Abbotsford are given in the 6th vol. of Life.

509 This refers to the Miscellaneous Prose Works, forming 24 vols., the publication of which did not commence until May 1834, although, as is shown by the Journal, the author was busy in its preparation. The “criticism on Defoe” will be found in the fourth volume, pp. 247-296, forming a supplement to John Ballantyne’s Biographical Notice of Defoe in the same volume. The “Essay on Border Antiquities” appeared, notwithstanding Scott’s misgivings, in the seventh volume.

510 Lord Pitmilly.—See ante, p. 125.

511 The rude inscription on the stone placed over the grave of this Border amazon, slain at Ancrum Moor, A.D. 1545, ran thus—
“Fair maiden Lilliard lies under this stane,
Little was her stature but great was her fame,
Upon the English louns she laid many thumps,
And when her legs were cuttet off she fought upon her stumps.”

See New Stat. Account Scot., “Roxburgh,” p. 244.

512 Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

513 An article for the Foreign Quarterly Review, regarding which Mr. Lockhart says:—“It had then been newly started under the Editorship of Mr. R.P. Gillies. This article, it is proper to observe, was a benefaction to Mr. Gillies, whose pecuniary affairs rendered such assistance very desirable. Scott’s generosity in this matter—for it was exactly giving a poor brother author £100 at the expense of considerable time and drudgery to himself—I think it necessary to mention; the date of the exertion requires it of me.”—Life, vol. ix. pp. 72-3; see Misc. Prose Works, vol. xviii. p. 270.

514 See note 1, p. 387.

515 Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 1.

516 The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, by Captain Thomas Hamilton, had just been published anonymously.

517 Mr. Lockhart adds the following lines:—
“The shade of youthful hope is there,
  That lingered long, and latest died;
Ambitions all dissolved to air,
  With phantom honours by his side.
“What empty shadows glimmer nigh?
  They once were friendship, truth, and love!
Oh, die to thought, to memory die,
  Since lifeless to my heart ye prove.”

(Poems by the Hon. W.R. Spencer, London, 1811, p. 68.) “The best writer of vers de société in our time, and one of the most charming of companions, was exactly Sir Walter’s contemporary, and, like him, first attracted notice by a version of Bürger’s Lenore. Like him, too, this remarkable man fell into pecuniary distress in the disastrous year 1825, and he was now (1826) an involuntary resident in Paris, where he died in October 1834, anno ætat. 65.”—J.G.L.

518 The following note to Mr. and Mrs. Skene belongs to this day:—

My dear Friends,—I am just returned from Court dreeping like the Water Kelpy when he had finished the Laird of Morphey’s Bridge, and am, like that ill-used drudge, disposed to sing—

Sair back and sair banes.D

In fact I have the rheumatism in head and shoulders, and am obliged to deprive myself of the pleasure of waiting upon you to-day to dinner, to my great mortification.—Always yours, WALTER SCOTT.

WALKER STREET,

Friday, 18th May, 1827.

—Skene’s Reminiscences.

D Sair back and sair banes
Carrying the Lord of Morphey’s stanes.

Border Minstrelsy, vol. iii. pp. 360, 365.

519 Afterwards (in 1840) eighth Karl of Stair.

520 126 Princes Street.

521 George Dempster of Skibo had just married a daughter of the House of Arniston. This lady has had the singular gratification of listening to these pleasant impressions of a dinner party given in her honour sixty-two years ago, and which she never forgot, nor Sir Walter’s talk as he sat next her at table, and with unfeigned kindness devoted himself to her entertainment.

522 See Life, vol. ix. p. 114.

523 Coriolanus, Act III. Sc. 3.

524 Sir Walter varies a verse of The tight little Island.—J.G.L.

525 The engraving from Raeburn’s picture.—See ante, p. 212.

526 Mr. Robert Hogg relates that during these few days Sir W. and he laboured from six in the morning till the same hour in the evening, with the exception of the intervals allowed for breakfast and lunch, which were served in the room to save time. He noted a striking peculiarity in Scott’s dictation, that with the greatest ease he was able to carry on two trains of thought at one time, “one of which was already arranged, and in the act of being spoken, while at the same time he was in advance considering what was afterwards to be said.”—See his interesting letter to Mr. Lockhart, Life, vol. ix. pp. 115-117.

527 Sheridan’s Critic, Act I. Sc, 1.

528 “No sooner had the Sun uttered these words than Fortune, as if she had been playing on a cymbal, began to unwind her wheel, which, whirling about like a hurricane, huddled all the world into an unparalleled confusion. Fortune gave a mighty squeak, saying, ‘Fly, wheel, and the devil drive thee.’”—Fortune in her Wits, Quevedo. English trans. (1798), vol. iii. p. 107.

529 Burns: “On a Scotch Bard, gone to the West Indies.”

530 Vivian Grey, by Benjamin Disraeli, was published anonymously in 5 vols. 12mo, 1826-7.

531 If the reader turns to December 18, 1825, he will see that this is not the first allusion in the Journal to his “first love,”—an innocent attachment, to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet (1824), but of the Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and of Rokeby (1813). In all these works the heroine has certain distinctive features drawn from one and the same haunting dream. The lady was “Williamina Belches, sole child and heir of a gentleman who was a cadet of the ancient family of Invermay, and who afterwards became Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn.” She married Sir William Forbes in 1797 and died in 1810.—Life, vol. i. p. 333; Shairp’s Memoirs of Principal Forbes, pp. 4, 5, 8vo, London, 1873, where her portrait, engraved from a miniature, is given.

532 Hugh Cleghorn had been Professor of Civil History in St. Andrews for ten years, afterwards becoming tutor to the Earl of Home, and subsequently employed by our Government in various foreign missions. A glimpse of his work is obtainable in Southey’s Life, of Dr. Andrew Bell. Mr. Cleghorn died in 1833, aged 83.

533 Count Paul de Rémusat has been good enough to give me another view of this visit which will be read with interest:—“118 Faubourg St. Honoré, February 10, 1890.—.... My father has often spoken to me of this visit to Sir Walter Scott—for it was indeed my father, Charles de Rémusat, member of the French Academy, and successively Minister of the Interior and for Foreign Affairs, who went at the age of thirty to Abbotsford, and he retained to the last days of his life a most lively remembrance of the great novelist who did not acknowledge the authorship of his novels, and to whom it was thus impossible otherwise than indirectly to pay any compliment. It gives me great pleasure to learn that the visit of those young men impressed him favourably. My father’s companion was his contemporary and friend, M. Louis de Guizard, who, like my father, was a contributor at that time to the Liberal press of the Restoration, the Globe and La Revue Française, and who, after the Revolution of 1830, entered, as did my father likewise, upon political life. M. de Guizard was first préfet, then député, and after 1848 became Directeur-général des Beaux Arts. He died about 1877 or 1878, after his retirement from public life.”

534 “Woodstock placed upwards of £8000 in the hands of Sir Walter’s creditors. The Napoleon (first and second editions) produced for them a sum which it even now startles me to mention—£18,000. As by the time the historical work was published nearly half of the First Series of Chronicles of the Canongate had been written, it is obvious that the amount to which Scott’s literary industry, from the close of 1825 to the 10th of June 1827, had diminished his debt, cannot be stated at less than £28,000. Had health been spared him, how soon must he have freed himself from all his encumbrances!”—J.G.L.

535 See Life, vol. vi. p. 89. In Mr. Ballantyne’s Memorandum, there is a fuller account of the mode in which The Bride of Lammermoor, The Legend of Montrose, and almost the whole of Ivanhoe were produced, and the mental phenomenon which accompanied the preparation of the first-named work:—
“During the progress of composing The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, and Legend of Montrose—a period of many months—Mr. Scott’s health had become extremely indifferent, and was often supposed to place him in great danger. But it would hardly be credited, were it not for the notoriety of the fact, that although one of the symptoms of his illness was pain of the most acute description, yet he never allowed it to interrupt his labours. The only difference it produced, that I am aware of, was its causing him to employ the hand of an amanuensis in place of his own. Indeed, during the greater part of the day at this period he was confined to his bed. The person employed for this purpose was the respectable and intelligent Mr. Wm. Laidlaw, who acted for him in this capacity in the country, and I think also attended him to town. I have often been present with Mr. Laidlaw during the short intervals of his labour, and it was deeply affecting to hear the account he gave of his patron’s severe sufferings, and the indomitable spirit which enabled him to overmaster them. He told me that very often the dictation of Caleb Balderston’s and the old cooper’s best jokes was mingled with groans extorted from him by pains; but that when he, Mr. L., endeavoured to prevail upon him to take a little respite, the only answer he could obtain from Mr. Scott was a request that he would see that the doors were carefully shut, so that the expressions of his agony might not reach his family—‘As to stopping work, Laidlaw,’ he said, ‘you know that is wholly out of the question.’ What followed upon these exertions, made in circumstances so very singular, appears to me to exhibit one of the most singular chapters in the history of the human intellect. The book having been published before Mr. Scott was able to rise from his bed, he assured me that, when it was put into his hands, he did not recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it contained. He by no means desired me to understand, nor did I understand, that his illness had erased from his memory all or any of the original family facts with which he had been acquainted from the period probably of his boyhood. These of course remained rooted where they had ever been, or, to speak more explicitly, where explicitness is so entirely important, he remembered the existence of the father and mother, the son and daughter, the rival lovers, the compulsory marriage, and the attack made by his bride upon the unhappy bridegroom, with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things he recollected, just as he did before he took to his bed, but the marvel is that he recollected literally nothing else—not a single character woven by the Romancer—not one of the many scenes and points of exquisite humour, nor anything with which he was connected as writer of the work. ‘For a long time I felt myself very uneasy,’ he said, ‘in the course of my reading, always kept on the qui vive lest I should be startled by something altogether glaring and fantastic; however, I recollected that the printing had been performed by James Ballantyne, who I was sure would not have permitted anything of this sort to pass.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘upon the whole, how did you like it?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I felt it monstrous gross and grotesque, to be sure, but still the worst of it made me laugh, and I trusted therefore the good-natured public would not be less indulgent.’ I do not think that I ever ventured to lead to this singular subject again. But you may depend upon it, that what I have said is as distinctly reported as if it had been taken down at the moment in shorthand. I should not otherwise have imparted the phenomenon at all.”—Mr. Ballantyne’s MSS.

536 Mr. Lockhart says:—“My wife and I spent the summer of 1827 partly at a sea-bathing place near Edinburgh, and partly in Roxburghshire. The arrival of his daughter and her children at Portobello was a source of constant refreshment to him during June, for every other day he came down and dined there, and strolled about afterwards on the beach, thus interrupting, beneficially for his health, and I doubt not for the result of his labours also, the new custom of regular night-work, or, as he called it, serving double tides.”

537 See Swift, “Mary the cook to Dr. Sheridan.”

538 The answer is printed in the Scott Centenary Catalogue by David Laing, from which the following extracts are given:—
“The expression of the old metrical translation, though homely, is plain, forcible, and intelligible, and very often possesses a rude sort of majesty, which perhaps would be ill-exchanged for mere elegance.” “They are the very words and accents of our early Reformers—sung by them in woe and gratitude, in the fields, in the churches, and on the scaffold.” “The parting with this very association of ideas is a serious loss to the cause of devotion, and scarce to be incurred without the certainty of corresponding advantages. But if these recollections are valuable to persons of education, they are almost indispensable to the edification of the lower ranks whose prejudices do not permit them to consider as the words of the inspired poetry, the versions of living or modern poets, but persist, however absurdly, in identifying the original with the ancient translation.”—p. 158.

539 Sir James Stuart, the last baronet of Allanbank.

540 “The Life of Bonaparte, then, was at last published about the middle of June 1827.”—Life, ix. 117.

541 Archdeacon Williams, Rector of the New Edinburgh Academy from 1824 to 1847.

542 Among the letters which Sir Walter found time to write before leaving Edinburgh, was one to congratulate his old and true friend Mrs. Coutts on her marriage, which took place on the 16th of June. That letter has not been preserved, but it drew from her Grace the following reply:—

“My dear Sir Walter Scott,—Your most welcome letter has ‘wandered mony a weary mile after me.’ Thanks, many thanks for all your kind congratulations. I am a Duchess at last, that is certain, but whether I am the better for it remains to be proved. The Duke is very amiable, gentle, and well-disposed, and I am sure he has taken pains enough to accomplish what he says has been the first wish of his heart for the last three years. All this is very flattering to an old lady, and we lived so long in friendship with each other that I was afraid I should be unhappy if I did not say I will—yet (whisper it, dear Sir Walter) the name of Coutts—and a right good one it is—is, and ever will be, dear to my heart. What a strange, eventful life has mine been, from a poor little player child, with just food and clothes to cover me, dependent on a very precarious profession, without talent or a friend in the world! ‘to have seen what I have seen, seeing what I see.’ Is it not wonderful? is it true? can I believe it?—first the wife of the best, the most perfect, being that ever breathed, his love and unbounded confidence in me, his immense fortune so honourably acquired by his own industry, all at my command,... and now the wife of a Duke. You must write my life; the History of Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant Killer, and Goody Two Shoes, will sink compared with my true history written by the Author of Waverley; and that you may do it well I have sent you an inkstand. Pray give it a place on your table in kind remembrance of your affectionate friend,

“HARRIETT ST. ALBANS.

“STRATTON STREET, July 16th, 1827.”

543 Next morning the following pleasant little billet was despatched to Kaeside:—
“My dear Mr. Laidlaw, I would be happy if you would come at kail-time to-day. Napoleon (6000 copies) is sold for £11,000.—Yours truly,
“Sunday. W.S.”

—Abbotsford Notanda, by R. Carruthers, Edin. 1871.