No. VI Descendants of Sir Walter Scott
SIR WALTER SCOTT, == CHARLOTTE CARPENTER, d. Sept. 21, 1832. d. May 14, 1826. | ____________________________________|______________________________________________ | | | | SOPHIA, == JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, WALTER, = JANE JOBSON. ANNE, CHARLES, d. May 1837. | d. Nov. 25, 1854. d. Feb. 8, d. 1877. d. June 1833. d. Oct. 28, 1841, | 1847, s.p. | s.p. |____________________________________________ | | | JOHN HUGH, WALTER SCOTT, CHARLOTTE, == JAMES HOPE. d. Dec. 15, 1831. d. Jan. 1853, d. Oct. 26, | d. April 29, s.p. 1858. | 1873. ________________________________________________|________ | | | MARY MONICA,==HON. JOSEPH MAXWELL, WALTER MICHAEL, MARGARET ANNE, | d. 1858. d. 1858. | ____________________________|__________________________________________________________________________ | | | | | | | WALTER MARY WINIFRED MARY JOSEPH MICHAEL, ALICE MARY MALCOLM JOSEPH MARGARET MARY JOSEPH, JOSEPHINE, JOSEPHINE, b. May 25, JOSEPHINE, RAPHAEL, LUCY, b. April 10, b. June 5, b. March 7, 1878, 1880. b. Oct. 9, b. Oct. 22, b. Dec. 13, 1875. 1876. d. March 12, 1880. 1881. 1883. 1886.
Footnotes
1 Written by R. Plumer Ward, author of Tremaine and other works. Mr. Ward’s Political Life, including a Diary to 1820, was published in 1850. in two vols. 8vo, edited by Hon. E. Phipps.
2 See post, p. 60, note.
3 See ante, vol. i. pp. 101-2.
4 Napoleon.
5 Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
6 David Hume, the historian, died August 25, 1776.
7 To please the king, Canning appointed the Duke of Clarence as first Lord of the Admiralty, but Greville says it was a most judicious stroke of policy, and nothing served so much to disconcert his opponents. Lord Melville had held the office from March 25, 1812, to April 13, 1827. The Duke resigned in the following year.—See Croker’s Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 264 (letter to Blomfield), 427, 429; also ante, vol. i. p. 262. Lord Melville was President of the India Board in the Duke of Wellington’s administration in 1828, and again First Lord from Sept. 17 of the same year until Nov. 22, 1830.
8 The Rev. William Stephen Gilly, D.D., Vicar of Norham, author of Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piemont, 1823; Researches among the Vaudois or Waldenses, 1827-31.
9 See Raine’s St. Cuthbert, 4to, Durham, 1828.
10 See Danvers in First Series of Sayings and Doings.
11 The Merry Devil of Edmonton, a play by “T.B.,” which has also been attributed to Anthony Brewer.
12 Right Hon. Thomas Francis Kennedy, M.P. for Ayr Burghs, 1818-34. Died at the age of ninety at Dalquharran in 1879.
13 This powerful drama, entitled Witchcraft: a Tragedy in Prose, was suggested, as the author says in her preface, by reading a scene in The Bride of Lammermoor.
14 Did Constable ruin Scott, as has been generally supposed? It is right to say that such a charge was not made during the lifetime of either. Immediately after Scott’s death Miss Edgeworth wrote to Sir James Gibson-Craig and asked him for authentic information as to Sir Walter’s connection with Constable. Sir James in reply stated that to his personal knowledge Mr. Constable had, in his anxiety to save Scott, about 1814 [1813], commenced a system of accommodation bills which could not fail to produce, and actually did produce, the ruin of both parties. To another correspondent, some years later, he wrote still more strongly (Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 457).
Scott appears to have been aware of the facts so far, as he says to Laidlaw, in a letter of December 16, 1825, “The confusion of 1814 is a joke to this... but it arises out of the nature of the same connection which gives, and has given, me a fortune;” and Mr. Lockhart says that the firm of J.B. & Co. “had more than once owed its escape from utter ruin and dishonour” through Constable’s exertions.—Life, vol. v. p. 150.
On reading the third volume of Constable’s Memoirs (3 vols. 8vo, 1873), one cannot fail to see that all the three parties—printer, publisher, and author—were equal sharers in the imprudences that led to the disaster in 1826. Whether Mr. Constable was right in recommending further advances to the London house is doubtful; but if it was an error of judgment, it was one which appears to have been shared by Mr. Cadell and Mr. James Ballantyne. It must be admitted that the three firms were equally culpable in maintaining for so many years a system of fictitious credit. Constable, at least, from a letter to Scott, printed in vol. iii. p. 274, had become seriously alarmed as early as August 8, 1823.
That Constable was correct in his estimate of the value of the literary property has been shown by the large sums realised from the sale of Scott’s works since 1829; and that his was the brain (“the pendulum of the clock” as Scott termed it) to plan is also shown by the fact that the so-called “favourite” edition, the magnum opus, appears to have been Constable’s idea (Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 255), although, according to the Annual Register of 1849, Mr. Cadell claimed the merit of a scheme which he had “quietly and privately matured.”
15 Thomas Thomson, Depute-Clerk Register for Scotland under Lord Frederick Campbell.
16 Johnson’s Epitaph on Claude Phillips.
17 Right Hon. Joseph Planta (son of Joseph Planta, Principal Librarian of the British Museum from 1799) was at this time one of the Secretaries to the Treasury. He died in 1847.
18 Personal Memoirs by P.L. Gordon, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1830.
19 General David Stewart of Garth, author of Sketches of the Highlanders. 2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1822. General Stewart died in St. Lucia in 1829. Sir Walter said of him that no man was “more regretted, or perhaps by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance.”
20 Resulting in the duel of 21st September 1809.—See Croker’s Correspondence, vol. i. p. 20; and Life, vol. iii. ch. xix.
21 Afterwards Lord Polwarth.
22 Persian chitty = a short note.
23 Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., containing Critical Remarks on the Series of Novels beginning with “Waverley,” and an Attempt to ascertain their Author. 8vo, London, 1821.
24 They were published under the title Ancient Ballads and Songs, 2 vols. 8vo, 1828.
25 The Forester’s Guide and Profitable Planter, reviewed in the Quarterly, Oct. 1827. See also “On Planting Waste Lands,” in Misc. Prose Works, vol. xxi. pp. 1-76.
26 Daughter of Mrs. Maclean Clephane, and afterwards Marchioness of Northampton.
27 Scott’s indorsation of this letter is characteristic—“Prodigious, bold request, Tom Thumb.”
28 Among the documents laid before Scott in the Colonial Office, when he was in London at the close of 1826, “were some which represented one of Bonaparte’s attendants at St. Helena, General Gourgaud, as having been guilty of gross unfairness, giving the English Government private information that the Emperor’s complaints of ill-usage were utterly unfounded, and yet then and afterwards aiding and assisting the delusion in France as to the harshness of Sir Hudson Lowe’s conduct towards his captive. Sir Walter, when using these remarkable documents, guessed that Gourgaud might be inclined to fix a personal quarrel on himself; and there now appeared in the newspapers a succession of hints that the General was seriously bent on this purpose. He applied as Colonel Grogg would have done forty years before to The Baronet” [W. Clerk].—Life, vol. ix. pp. 142-3.
A short time previously Gourgaud had had a quarrel with Count Ségur regarding the latter’s History of the Russian Campaign, to which he wrote a reply in 1825, and then fought a duel with the author in support of his allegations. In Scott’s case, however, it came to nothing beyond a paper war, which Sir Walter declined to prolong, leaving the question to be decided by the general public. It is due to Gourgaud to state that on two occasions he saved Napoleon’s life, though his subsequent information to the British Government did not tend to increase his popularity with the Bonapartists. He died at Paris in his sixty-ninth year on July 25th, 1852.
29 Life, vol. i. pp. 47, 155-156.
30 The Planters’ Guide, by Sir Henry Seton Steuart.
31 In the North British Review, No. 82, there is an extremely interesting sketch of this learned Peerage lawyer. He died in his 85th year, in 1864, at his country seat, Kirklands in Roxburghshire, which he had purchased by Sir Walter’s advice.
The following amusing narrative of what took place on Tweedside when these two old friends were in their prime is given in Mr. Richardson’s own words:—
“On a beautiful morning in September 1810 I started with Sir Walter from Ashiestiel. We began nearly under the ruins of Elibank, and in sight of the ‘Hanging Tree.’ I only had a rod, but Sir Walter walked by my side, now quoting Izaak Walton, as, ‘Fish me this stream by inches,’ and now delighting me with a profusion of Border stories. After the capture of numerous fine trout, I hooked something greater and unseen, which powerfully ran out my line. Sir Walter got into a state of great excitement, exclaiming, ‘It’s a fish! It’s a fish! Hold up your rod! Give him line!’ and so on. The rod, which belonged to one of his boys, broke, and put us both into great alarm; but I contrived, by ascending the steep bank and holding down the rod, still to give play to the reel, till, after a good quarter of an hour’s struggle, a trout, for so it turned out to be, was conducted round a little peninsula. Sir Walter jumped into the water, seized him, and threw him out on the grass. Tom Purdie came up a little time after, and was certainly rather discomposed at my success. ‘It will be some sea brute,’ he observed; but he became satisfied that it was a fine river-trout, and such as, he afterwards admitted, had not been killed in Tweed for twenty years; and when I moved down the water, he went, as Sir Walter afterwards observed, and gave it a kick on the head, exclaiming, ‘To be ta’en by the like o’ him frae Lunnon!’”
32 James Byers, 1733-1817.
33 Anne Scott of Harden, afterwards wife of Lord Jerviswoode, and Elizabeth of Colonel Charles Wyndham.
34 James Hope, W.S., Scott’s school-fellow, died in Edinburgh 14th November 1842.
35 Greville, vol. i. pp. 110-113.
36 Sir W. Rae, who was Lord Advocate from 1819 to 1830.
37 See letter to Duke of Buccleuch on James Hogg at p. 40.
38 No. 10 Walker Street.
39 Scott’s unwearied interest in James Hogg, despite the waywardness of this imaginative genius, is one of the most beautiful traits in his character. Readers of Mr. Lockhart’s Life, do not require to be reminded of the active part he took in promoting the welfare of the “Ettrick Shepherd” on many occasions, from the outset of their acquaintance in 1801 until the end of his life.
Hogg was a strange compound of boisterous roughness and refinement in expression, and these odd contrasts surprised strangers such as Moore and Ticknor. The former was shocked, and the latter said his conversation was a perpetual contradiction to the exquisite delicacy of Kilmeny.
The critics of the day, headed by Professor Wilson, declared he was Burns’s rival as a song-writer, and his superior in anything relating to external nature! indeed they wrote of him as unsurpassed by poet or painter in his fairy tales of ancient time, dubbing him Poet Laureate to the Queen of Elfland; and yet his unrefined manner tempted these friends to speak of him familiarly as the greatest hog in all Apollo’s herd, or the Boar of the Forest, etc. etc.
Wordsworth, however, on November 21, 1835, when his brother bard had just left the sunshine for the sunless land, wrote from his heart the noble lines ending—
“Death upon the Braes of Yarrow
Closed the Poet Shepherd’s eyes.”
40 Another, sister Georgiana, married General the Honourable Sir Alexander Hope, G.C.B., grandfather of Mrs. Maxwell Scott.
41 Chronicles of the Canongate. First Series, ending with the story of The Surgeon’s Daughter.
42 Mr. Lockhart justly remarks that this entry “paints the man in his tenderness, his fortitude, and happy wisdom.”
43 Charles Rose Ellis had been created Baron Seaford in 1826.
44 See Cromek’s Reliques of Burns, p. 210.
45 “The Duke was then making a progress in the North of England, to which additional importance was given by the uncertain state of political arrangements; the chance of Lord Goderich’s being able to maintain himself as Canning’s successor seeming very precarious, and the opinion that his Grace must soon be called to a higher station than that of Commander of the Forces, which he had accepted under the new Premier, gaining ground every day. Sir Walter, who felt for the great Captain the pure and exalted devotion that might have been expected from some honoured soldier of his banners, accepted this invitation, and witnessed a scene of enthusiasm with which its principal object could hardly have been more gratified than he was.”—Life, vol. ix. pp. 156-7.
46 See Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey for Lord Grey’s opinion, vol. i. p. 60.
47 Dr. William Van Mildert had been appointed to the See of Durham in 1826 on the death of Dr. Shute Barrington. He died in 1836.
48 Admiral Sir John Beresford had some few years before this commanded on the Leith Station—when Sir Walter and he saw a great deal of each other—“and merry men were they.”—J.G.L.
49 An eye-witness writes:—“The manner in which Bishop Van Mildert proceeded on this occasion will never be forgotten by those who know how to appreciate scholarship without pedantry, and dignity without ostentation. Sir Walter had been observed throughout the day with extraordinary interest—I should say enthusiasm. The Bishop gave his health with peculiar felicity, remarking that he could reflect upon the labours of a long literary life, with the consciousness that everything he had written tended to the practice of virtue, and to the improvement of the human race.”—Hon. Henry Liddell. Life, vol. ix. p. 160.
50 Histoire de la guerre de la Péninsule sous Napoléon, etc. Publiée par Madame la Comtesse Foy. Paris, 4 vols. 8vo, 1827. See Croker, vol. i. p. 352.
51 This story is told also in Lord Stanhope’s Conversations with the Duke of Wellington. 8vo, London, 1888, p. 54.
52 The present generation are apt to forget the enormous sums spent in Parliamentary elections; e.g., Mme. de Lieven tells Earl Grey (Cor. ii. p. 215) that Lord Ravensworth’s neighbour, the Duke of Northumberland, will subscribe £100,000 towards the election of 1831.
53 Hugh, third Duke of Northumberland.
54 Dr. Bethell, who had been tutor to the Duke of Northumberland, held at this time the See of Gloucester.—J.G.L.
55 Launcelot Brown, 1715-1782.
56 A quarto volume, containing 39 etchings (privately printed in 1823), still preserved at Abbotsford.
57 Mr. Archdeacon Singleton.—J.G.L.
58 Stanhope’s Notes, p. 24; and Croker, vol. ii. p. 233.
59 From Stratford-on-Avon.
60 For the utilisation of this story, see Fair Maid of Perth, published in the following year.
61 See M.G. Lewis’s Journal of a West Indian Proprietor. 8vo, Lond., 1834, p. 47; and Introduction to Fair Maid of Perth, p. 16.
62 On the 13th of October Sir Walter had received a letter from “one who had in former happy days been no stranger,” and on turning to the signature he found to his astonishment that it was from Lady Jane Stuart, with whom he had had no communication since the memorable visit he had made to Invermay in the autumn of 1796. The letter was simply a formal request on behalf of a friend for permission to print some ballads in Scott’s handwriting which were in an album that had apparently belonged to her daughter, yet it stirred his nature to its depths. The substance of his reply may be gathered from the second letter, which he had just read before making this sad entry in his Journal.—Lady Jane tells him that she would convey to him the Manuscript Book
—,”as a secret and sacred Treasure, could I but know that you would take it as I give it without a drawback or misconstruction of my intentions;”
and she adds—
“Were I to lay open my heart (of which you know little indeed) you would find how it has and ever shall be warm towards you. My age [she was then seventy-four] encourages me, and I have longed to tell you. Not the mother who bore you followed you more anxiously (though secretly) with her blessing than I! Age has tales to tell and sorrows to unfold.”
As is seen by his Journal Sir Walter resumed his personal intercourse with his venerable friend on November 6th and continued it until her death, which took place in the winter of 1829.—Ante, vol. i. p. 404, and Life, vol. i. pp. 329-336.
63 Kirn, the feast at the end of the harvest in Scotland.
64 The correspondence of Robert, second Marquis of Londonderry, was edited by his brother in 1850, but there was no memoir published until Alison wrote the Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart, Second and Third Marquesses of Londonderry. 3 vols. 8vo, Edinburgh, 1861.
65 Holyrood remained an asylum for civil debtors until 1880, when by the Act 43 & 44 Victoria, cap. 34 imprisonment for debt was abolished. For description of bounds see Chronicles of the Canongate, p. 7. (vol. xli.).
66 The book was published during November, under the following title, Chronicles of the Canongate (First Series). By the author of Waverley, etc.—SIC ITUR AD ASTRA, motto of Canongate arms. In two vols. The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, The Surgeon’s Daughter. Edinburgh, printed for Cadell and Co., and Simpkin Marshall. London 1827.
The introduction to this work contains sketches of Scott’s own life, with portraits of his friends, unsurpassed in any of his earlier writings; for example, what could be better than the description of his ancestors the Scotts of Raeburn, vol. xli. p. 61:—
“They werena ill to them, sir, and that is aye something; they were just decent bien bodies. Ony poor creature that had face to beg got an awmous and welcome; they that were shamefaced gaed by, and twice as welcome. But they keepit an honest walk before God and man, the Croftangrys, and as I said before, if they did little good, they did as little ill. They lifted their rents and spent them; called in their kain and eat them; gaed to the kirk of a Sunday, bowed civilly if folk took aff their bannets as they gaed by, and lookit as black as sin at them that keepit them on.”
67 Mrs. Wilson, landlady of the inn at Fushie, one stage from Edinburgh,—an old dame of some humour, with whom Sir Walter always had a friendly colloquy in passing. I believe the charm was, that she had passed her childhood among the Gipsies of the Border. But her fiery Radicalism latterly was another source of high merriment.—J.G.L.
68 The “new hare” was this: “It transpired in the very nick of time, that a suspicion of usury attached to these Israelites without guile, in a transaction with Hurst and Robinson, as to one or more of the bills for which the house of Ballantyne had become responsible. This suspicion, upon investigation, assumed a shape sufficiently tangible to justify Ballantyne’s trustees in carrying the point before the Court of Session; but they failed to establish their allegation.”—Life, vol. ix. pp. 178-9.
69 A favourite domestic at Abbotsford, whose name was never to be mentioned by any of Scott’s family without respect and gratitude.—Life, vol. x. p. 3.
70 Lady Jane Stuart’s house was No. 12 Maitland Street, opposite Shandwick Place. Mrs. Skene told Mr. Lockhart that at Sir Walter’s first meeting with his old friend a very painful scene occurred, and she added—“I think it highly probable that it was on returning from this call that he committed to writing the verses, To Time, by his early favourite.”—Life, vol. ix, p. 183.
The lines referred to are given below—
Friend of the wretch oppress’d with grief.
Whose lenient hand, though slow, supplies
The balm that lends to care relief,
That wipes her tears—that checks her sighs!
’Tis thine the wounded soul to heal
That hopeless bleeds for sorrow’s smart,
From stern misfortune’s shaft to steal
The barb that rankles in the heart.
What though with thee the roses fly,
And jocund youth’s gay reign is o’er;
Though dimm’d the lustre of the eye,
And hope’s vain dreams enchant no more.
Yet in thy train come dove-eyed peace,
Indifference with her heart of snow;
At her cold couch, lo! sorrows cease,
No thorns beneath her roses grow.
O haste to grant thy suppliant’s prayer,
To me thy torpid calm impart:
Rend from my brow youth’s garland fair,
But take the thorn that’s in my heart.
Ah! why do fabling poets tell
That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind?
Why feign thy course of joy the knell,
And call thy slowest pace unkind?
To me thy tedious feeble pace
Comes laden with the weight of years;
With sighs I view morn’s blushing face,
And hail mild evening with my tears.
mdash;Life, vol. i. pp. 334-336.
71 Sir William Forbes crowned his generous efforts for Scott’s relief by privately paying the whole of Abud’s demand (nearly £2000) out of his own pocket—ranking as an ordinary creditor for the amount; and taking care at the same time that his old friend should be allowed to believe that the affair had merged quietly in the general measures of the trustees. In fact it was not until some time after Sir William’s death (in the following year) that Sir Walter learned what he had done.—Life, vol. ix. p. 179.
72 St. Valentine’s Day or Fair Maid of Perth.
73 A Royal Commission, of which Sir Walter was a member, had been appointed in 1826 to visit the Universities of Scotland. At the suggestion of Lord Aberdeen, a hundred guinea prize had been offered for the best essay on the national character of the Athenians. This prize, which excited great interest among the Edinburgh students, was won by John Brown Patterson, and ordered to be read before the Commissioners, and the other public bodies, with the result described by Sir Walter. It was read on the 17th November before a distinguished audience.
74 Sir William Rae’s house, in Liberton parish, near Edinburgh.
75 From the old song Andrew and his Cutty Gun.
76 Sir James Gibson-Craig, one of the Whig leaders, and a prominent advocate of reform at the end of last century.
77 Gillespie was tried at Aberdeen before Lord Alloway on September 26, and sentenced to be executed on Friday, 16th November 1827.
78 Slightly altered from Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 2.
79 Lady Elizabeth Montagu, daughter of George Duke of Montagu.
80 Saladin’s shroud, which was said to have been displayed as a standard “to admonish the East of the instability of human greatness.”—GIBBON.
81 The belief in the existence of the ‘Water Cow’ is not even yet extinct in the Highlands. In Mr. J.H. Dixon’s book on Gairloch, 8vo, 1886, it is said the monster lives or did live in Loch na Beiste! Some years ago the proprietor, moved by the entreaties of the people, and on the positive testimony of two elders of the Free Church, that the creature was hiding in his loch, attempted its destruction by pumping and running off the water; this plan having failed owing to the smallness of the pumps, though it was persevered in for two years, he next tried poisoning the water by emptying into the loch a quantity of quick lime!!—Whatever harm was thus done to the trout none was experienced by the Beast, which it is rumoured has been seen in the neighbourhood as late as 1884 (p. 162). This transaction formed an element in a case before the Crofters’ Commission at Aultbea in May 1888.
82 Daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon.
83 Lord Dudley, then Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, was an early friend of Scott’s. He had been partly educated in Edinburgh, under Dugald Stewart’s care.
84 The Duchess of Bedford’s eldest son.
85 My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.
86 Sir Walter need have expressed no surprise at this architect’s desire to pull down the old house of Lauriston! The present generation can judge of Mr. Burn’s appreciation of ancient Architecture by looking at the outside of St. Giles, Edinburgh.—It was given over to his tender mercies in 1829, a picturesque old building, and it left his hands in 1834 a bit of solid well-jointed mason-work with all Andrew Fairservice’s “whigmaleeries, curliewurlies, and open steek hems” most thoroughly removed!—Rob Roy, vol. viii. pp. 29-30. Fortunately the tower and crown were untouched, and the interior, which was injured in a less degree, has, through the liberality and good taste of the late William Chambers, been restored to its original stateliness.
87 See Ethwald, Plays on the Passions, vol. ii., Lond. 1802.
88 Alluding to an entry in the Journal, that he had expended 30s. in the purchase of the Theatre of God’s Judgment, 1612, a book which is still in the Abbotsford Library.
89 See note to May 30, 1827, vol. i. p. 398.
90 Burns’s lines To a Mouse.
91 Ante, p. 60. The book had only been published two months. “The Second Series,” when published in the following year, contained St. Valentine’s Eve, or the Fair Maid of Perth; the two stories objected to, viz.: My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror and the Laird’s Jock appeared in the Keepsake of 1828, and were afterwards included in vol. xli. of the Magnum Opus.
92 The Garrick papers were published under the title Private Correspondence, of David Garrick, illustrated with notes and Memoir. 2 vols. 4to, London, 1831-32. [Edited by James Boaden.]
93 Afterwards Judge in the Court of Session under the title of Lord Jerviswoode.
94 A few days later, however, the following reply was sent:—“Dear Gordon,—As I have no money to spare at present, I find it necessary to make a sacrifice of my own scruples to relieve you from serious difficulties. The enclosed will entitle you to deal with any respectable bookseller. You must tell the history in your own way as shortly as possible. All that is necessary to say is that the discourses were written to oblige a young friend. It is understood my name is not to be put in the title-page, or blazed at full length in the preface. You may trust that to the newspapers.
“Pray do not think of returning any thanks about this; it is enough that I know it is likely to serve your purpose. But use the funds arising from this unexpected source with prudence, for such fountains do not spring up at every place of the desert. I am, in haste, ever yours most truly, Walter Scott”—Life, vol. ix. p. 205.
95 Issued in 1829 as No. 33 of the Bannatyne Club Books. Memorials of George Bannatyne, 1545-1608, with Memoir by Sir Walter Scott.
96 It was thus that the scenery of Loch Katrine came to be so associated with the recollection of many a dear friend and merry expedition of former days, that to compose the Lady of the Lake was a labour of love, and no less so to recall the manners and incidents introduced.—Life, vol. i. p. 296.
97 See note, Jan. 8, 1828, pp. 107-8.
98 On his own life.
99 See Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 3.
100 The Edinburgh play-bills of the day intimate the “Second appearance of Miss Fanny Ayton, Prima Donna of the King’s Theatre.”
101 By Congreve—Act II. Sc. 7.
102 The dissolution of the Goderich Cabinet confirmed very soon these shrewd guesses; and Sir Walter anticipated nothing but good from the Premiership of the Duke of Wellington.—Life, vol. ix. p. 188.
103 The Rev. Thomas Wright was minister of Borthwick from 1817 to 1841, when he was deposed on the ground of alleged heresy. His works, The True Plan of a Living Temple, Morning and Evening Sacrifice, Farewell to Time, My Old House, etc., were published anonymously. Mr. Wright lived in Edinburgh for fourteen years after his deposition, much beloved and respected; he died on 13th March 1855 in his seventy-first year.
104 Rev. John Clunie, Mr. Wright’s predecessor in the parish, of whom, many absurd stories were told, appears to have been an enthusiastic lover of Scottish songs, as Burns in 1794 says it was owing to his singing Ca’ the yowes to the knowes so charmingly that he took it down from his voice, and sent it to Mr. Thomson.—Currie’s Burns, vol. iv. p. 100, and Chambers’s Scottish Songs, 2 vols. Edin. 1829, p. 269.
105 See Burns’s “Auld Farmer’s New-year Salutation.”
106 “Mount Benger,” of which Hogg had taken a lease on his marriage, in 1820, and found that he could not make it pay.
107 The first series had just been published under the following title: Tales of a Grandfather, being stories taken from Scottish History. Humbly inscribed to Hugh Littlejohn, Esq., in three volumes. Printed for Cadell and Co., Edinburgh, Simpkin and Marshall, London, and John Cumming, Dublin, 1828.
108 During Sir Walter’s illness in 1818-19 Mr. Skene was with him at Abbotsford, and he records a curious incident regarding Dryburgh which may be given here:—“For nearly two years he had to struggle for his life with that severe illness, which the natural strength of his constitution at length proved sufficient to throw off. With its disappearance, although restored to health, disappeared also much of his former vigour of body, activity, and power of undergoing fatigue, while in personal appearance he had advanced twenty years in the downward course of life; his hair had become bleached to pure white and scanty locks; the fire of his eye quenched; and his step, more uncertain, had lost the vigorous swinging gait with which he was used to proceed; in fact, old age had by many years anticipated its usual progress and marked how severely he had suffered. The complaint, that of gall-stones, was one of extreme bodily suffering. During his severest attack he had been alone at Abbotsford with his daughter Sophia, before her marriage to Mr. Lockhart, and had sent to say that he was desirous I should come to him, which I did, and remained for ten days till the attack had subsided. During its course the extreme violence of the pain end spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the stomach were such that I scarcely expected the powers of endurance could sustain him through the trial, and so much at times was he exhausted by it as to leave us in alarm as to what the result had actually been. One night I shall not soon forget: he had been frequently and severely ill during the day, and having been summoned to his room in the middle of the night, where his daughter was already standing, the picture of deep despair, at his bed-side, the attack seemed intense, and we followed the directions left by the physician to assuage it. At length it seemed to subside, and he fell back exhausted on the pillow, his eyes were closed, and his countenance wan and livid. Apparently with corresponding misgivings, his daughter at one side of the bed and I at the other gazed for some time intently and in silence on his countenance, and then glanced with anxious inquiring looks to each other, till, at length, having placed my finger on his pulse, to ascertain whether it had actually ceased to throb, I shall never forget the sudden beam which again brightened his daughter’s countenance, and for a moment dispelled the intense expression of anxiety which had for some time overspread it, when Sir Walter, aware of my feeling his pulse, and the probable purpose, whispered, with a faint voice, but without opening his eyes, ‘I am not yet gone.’ After some time he revived, and gave us a proof of the mastery of his mind over the sufferings of the body. ‘Do you recollect,’ he said to me, ‘a small round turret near the gate of the Monastery of Aberbrothwick, and placed so as to overhang the street?’ Upon answering that I did perfectly, and that a picturesque little morsel it was, he said, ‘Well, I was over there when a mob had assembled, excited by some purpose, which I do not recollect, but failing of their original intention, they took umbrage at the little venerable emblem of aristocracy, which still bore its weather-stained head so conspicuously aloft, and, resolving to humble it with the dust, they got a stout hawser from a vessel in the adjoining harbour, which a sailor lad, climbing up, coiled round the body of the little turret, and the rabble seizing the rope by both ends tugged and pulled, and laboured long to strangle and overthrow the poor old turret, but in vain, for it withstood all their endeavours. Now that is exactly the condition of my poor stomach: there is a rope twisted round it, and the malicious devils are straining and tugging at it, and, faith, I could almost think that I sometimes hear them shouting and cheering each other to their task, and when they are at it I always have the little turret and its tormentors before my eyes.’ He complained that particular ideas fixed themselves down upon his mind, which he had not the power of shaking off; but this was, in fact, the obvious consequence of the quantity of laudanum which it was necessary for him to swallow to allay the spasms.
“After he had got some repose, and had become rather better in the morning, he said, with a smile on his countenance, ‘If you will promise not to laugh at me I have a favour to ask. Do you know I have taken a childish desire to see the place where I am to be laid when I go home, which there is some probability may not now be long delayed. Now, as I cannot go to Dryburgh Abbey—that is out of the question at present—it would give me much pleasure if you would take a ride down and bring me a drawing of that spot, which he minutely described the position of, and mentioned the exact point where he wished it drawn, that the site of his future grave might appear. His wish was accordingly complied with.”—Reminiscences.
109 To whom Scott addressed the fifth canto of Marmion.
110 See letter to R. Cadell, Life, vol. ix. p. 209.
111 “The first Tales of a Grandfather [as has already been said] appeared early in December, and their reception was more rapturous than that of any one of his works since Ivanhoe. He had solved for the first time the problem of narrating history, so as at once to excite and gratify the curiosity of youth, and please and instruct the wisest of mature minds. The popularity of the book has grown with every year that has since elapsed; it is equally prized in the library, the boudoir, the schoolroom, and the nursery; it is adopted as the happiest of manuals, not only in Scotland, but wherever the English tongue is spoken; nay, it is to be seen in the hands of old and young all over the civilised world, and has, I have little doubt, extended the knowledge of Scottish history in quarters where little or no interest had ever before been awakened as to any other parts of that subject except those immediately connected with Mary Stuart and the Chevalier.”—Life, vol. ix. pp. 186-7.
112 It may be remarked at this point how the value of these works has been sustained by the public demand during the term of legal copyright and since that date. That of Waverley expired in 1856, and the others at forty-two years from the date of publication.
On December 19, 1827, the copyright of the Novels from Waverley to Quentin Durward was acquired, as mentioned in the text, for £8400 as a joint purchase. Five years later, viz., in 1832, Mr. Cadell purchased from Sir Walter’s representatives, for about £40,000, the author’s share in stock and entire copyrights!
Nineteen years afterwards, viz., on the 26th March 1851 (after Mr. Cadell’s death), the stock and copyrights were exposed for sale by auction in London, regarding which a Trade Journal of the date says—
“Mr. Hodgson offered for sale the whole of the copyrights of Sir Walter Scott’s works, including stereotypes, steels, woodcuts, etc., to a very large meeting of the publishers of this country. After one or two of our leading firms had retired from the contest, the lot was bought in for, we believe, £15,500. This sum did not include the stock on hand, valued at £10,000. However, the fact is that the Trustees have virtually refused £25,000 for the stock, copyrights, etc., of Scott’s works.”
Messrs. A. & C. Black in 1851 purchased the property at nearly the same price, viz.:—Copyright, £17,000; stock, £10,000—in all, £27,000. Mr. Francis Black, who has kindly given me information regarding the sale of these works, tells me that of the volumes of one of the cheaper issues about three millions have been sold since 1851. This, of course, is independent of other publishers’ editions in Great Britain, the Continent, and America.
113 In Henry IV., Act v. Sc. 3.
114 In an interesting letter to Scott from Fenimore Cooper, dated Sept. 12th, 1827, he tells him “that the French abuse you a little, but as they began to do this, to my certain knowledge, five months before the book was published, you have no great reason to regard their criticism.
It would be impossible to write the truth on such a subject and please this nation. One frothy gentleman denounced you in my presence as having a low, vulgar style, very much such an one as characterised the pen of Shakespeare!”
115 A proverb having its rise from an exclamation made by Mr. David Dick, a Covenanter, on witnessing the execution of some of Montrose’s followers.—Wishart’s Montrose, quoting from Guthrie’s Memoirs, p. 182.
116 Scott’s biographer records his admiration for the manner in which all his dependants met the reverse of their master’s fortunes. The butler, instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of the house at probably half his former wages. Old Peter, who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman in ordinary; only putting his horses to the carriage on high and rare occasions; and so on with all that remained of the ancient train, and all seemed happier.
117 Ante, vol. i. p. 120.
118 Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.
119 Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth. He lived at 1 Park Place.
120 The circumstances under which these sermons were written are fully detailed in the Life, vol. ix. pp. 193, 206. They were issued in a thin octavo vol. under the title Religious Discourses, by a Layman, with a short Preface signed W.S. There were more editions than one published during 1828.
121 Ante, p. 65.
122 Sir Samuel Shepherd.
123 Mr. Cooper did not relax his efforts to secure Scott an interest in his works reprinted in America, but he was not successful, and he writes to Scott in the autumn of 1827: “This, sir, is a pitiful account of a project from which I expected something more just to you and creditable to my country.”
124 Mr. Colvin Smith painted in all about twenty portraits of Sir Walter, for seven of which he obtained occasional sittings. A list of the persons who commissioned them is given at p. 73 of the Centenary Catalogue.
125 The Right Hon. Charles Hope.
126 Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 2.
127 Mount Benger, which he had taken in 1820.—See ante, page 96.
128 It now hangs in the Drawing-room at Abbotsford.—See Sharpe’s Letters, vol. ii. p. 408.
129 Charles Mayne Young, Tragedian, had been a visitor at Abbotsford in the autumn of 1821. Of this visit his son Julian gives a pleasant account in a Memoir of his father, pp. 88-96. London, 1871. Mr. Young died in June 1856.
130 This enthusiastic Gaelic scholar, then parish minister of Laggan, joined the Free Church of Scotland in 1843, and was elected Moderator of its General Assembly in 1849. As a clergyman, he had afterwards a varied experience in this country and in Australia, before he finally settled in the island of Harris; he died at Portobello in 1873.
The Gaelic dictionary of the Highland Society was completed and published in 2 vols. 4to, 1828. The editor was Dr. Macleod of Dundonald, assisted by other Gaelic scholars. Dr. Mackay edited the poems of Rob Donn in 1829.—See Quarterly Review, July 1831.
131 See next page, under Feb. 19.
132 The Right Hon. David Boyle.
133 My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror, etc.
134 See Jan. 25, 1828 (p. 114).
135 To kilt, i.e. to elevate or lift up anything quickly; this applied, ludicrously, to tucking by a halter.—Jamieson’s Dictionary.
“Their bare preaching now
Makes the thrush bush keep the cow
Better than Scots or English kings
Could do by kilting them with strings.”
CLELAND.
136 See Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, Act I. Sc. 3.
137 See Boswell’s Johnson, Croker’s ed. imp. 8vo, p. 318.
138 Sir Reginald Steuart Seton of Staffa, for many years Secretary to the Highland and Agricultural Society; died at Edinburgh in 1838.
139 On reading the savage article on Hunt’s Byron published in Blackwood, for March 1828, Sir Walter’s thoughts must have gone back not only to Gourgaud’s affair of the previous year, and to the more serious matter of the Beacon newspaper in 1821,—when, to use Lord Cockburn’s words, “it was dreadful to think that a life like Scott’s was for a moment in peril in such a cause”—but he must also have had very sad recollections of the bloody results of the two melancholy duels arising from the same party rancour in February 1821 (Scott and Christie) and in March 1822 (Stuart and Boswell), with all the untold domestic miseries accompanying them. It is satisfactory to think that this was about the last of these uncalled for literary onslaughts, as one finds, in turning over the pages of Blackwood, that in 1834 Professor Wilson in the Noctes rebukes some one for reviving “forgotten falsehoods,” praises Leigh Hunt’s London Journal, and adds the ecstatic words, which he also addressed later on to Lord Jeffrey, “The animosities are mortal, but the humanities live for ever.”
140 Act III. Sc. 1.
141 Sholto Douglas, eighteenth Earl of Morton.
142 Oldham—“Lines addressed to a friend about to leave the University.”—Poems and Translations, 8vo. Lond. 1694.
143 On the 20th April Moore writes to Scott: “I am delighted you do not reject my proffered dedication, though between two such names as yours and Byron’s I shall but realise the description in the old couplet of Wisdom and Wit,
‘With folly at full length between.’
However, never mind; in cordial feeling and good fellowship I flatter myself I am a match for either of you.”
144 By Mrs. Centlivre.
145 See Life, vol. viii. p. 257 n.
146 Miss Graham tells us in her Mystifications (Edin. 1864) that Sir Walter, on leaving the room, whispered in her ear, “Awa, awa, the Deil’s ower grit wi’ you.” “To meet her in company,” wrote Dr. John Brown half a century later, when she was still the charm and the delight as well as the centre of a large circle of friends, “one saw a quiet, unpretending, sensible, shrewd, kindly little lady; perhaps you would not remark anything extraordinary in her, but let her put on the old lady; it was as if a warlock spell had passed over her; not merely her look but her nature was changed: her spirit had passed into the character she represented; and jest, quick retort, whimsical fancy, the wildest nonsense flowed from her lips, with a freedom and truth to nature which appeared to be impossible in her own personality.”
With this faculty for satire and imitation, Miss Graham never used it to give pain. She was as much at home, too, with old Scotch sayings as Sir Walter himself. For example, speaking of a field of cold, wet land she said, “It grat a’ winter and girned a’ simmer,” and of herself one morning at breakfast when she thought she was getting too much attention from her guests (she was at this time over ninety) she exclaimed, “I’m like the bride in the old song:—
‘Twa were blawing at her nose
And three were buckling at her shoon.’”
Miss Graham’s friends will never forget the evenings they have spent at 29 Forth Street, Edinburgh, or their visits at Duntrune, where the venerable lady died in her ninety-sixth year in September 1877.
147 Miss Elizabeth Bell, daughter of the Rev. James Bell, minister of the parish of Coldstream from 1778 to 1794. This lady lived all her life in her native county, and died at a great age at a house on the Tweed, named Springhill, in 1876.
148 Ante, vol. i. p. 253.
149 The Murder Hole, a story founded on the tradition and under this name, was printed in Blackwood’s Mag., vol. xxv. p. 189: 1829.
150 Written by Gerald Griffin
151 St. Valentine’s Eve, or The Fair Maid of Perth.
152 Coriolanus, Act VI. Sc. 6.
153 Ante, p. 40.
154 It may have been with this packet that the following admonitory note was sent to Ballantyne:—“DEAR JAMES,—I return the sheets of Tales with some waste of Napoleon for ballast. Pray read like a lynx, for with all your devoted attention things will escape. Imagine your printing that the Douglases after James II. had dirked the Earl, trailed the royal safe-conduct at the TAIL of a serving man, instead of the tail of a starved Mare.—Yours truly, however, W.S.” So printed in first edition, vol. ii. p. 129, but corrected in the subsequent editions to “a miserable cart jade.”
155 Gray’s Ode on Eton.
156 By Richard Thomson, author of Chronicles of London Bridge, etc. He died in 1865.
157 Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson, a Surgeon of distinguished merit at Selkirk and through life a trusty friend and crony of the Sheriffs.—J.G.L.
“In Mr. Gideon Gray, in The Surgeon’s Daughter, Sir Walter’s neighbours on Tweedside saw a true picture—a portrait from life of Scott’s hard-riding and sagacious old friend to all the country dear.”—Life, vol. ix. p. 181.
158 For an account of this monument see Nicolson and Burns’s History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 410, and “Notabilia of Penrith,” by George Watson, C. and W. Transactions, No. xiv.
159 Lady Eleanor Butler and the Hon. Miss Ponsonby. An amusing account of Sir Walter’s visit to them in 1825 is given by Mr. Lockhart in the Life, vol. viii. pp. 47-50.
160 The visit to Kenilworth in 1815 is not noticed in the Life, but as Scott was in London for some weeks in the spring of that year he may have gone there on his return journey. Mr. Charles Knight, writing in 1842, says that Mr. Bonnington, the venerable occupant of the Gate House, told him that he remembered the visit and the visitor! It was “about twenty-five years ago”—and after examining some carving in the interior of the Gate House and putting many suggestive questions, the middle-aged active stranger slightly lame, and with keen grey eye, passed through the court and remained among the ruins silent and alone for about two hours. (Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 89.) The famous romance did not appear until six years later, viz. in January 1821, and in the autumn of that year it is somewhat singular to find that Scott and his friend Mr. Stewart Rose are at Stratford-on-Avon writing their names on the wall of Shakespeare’s birthplace—and yet leaving Kenilworth unvisited.—Perhaps the reason was that Mr. Stewart Rose was not in the secret of the authorship of the Novels.
161 In the Annual Register for July 1834 is the following notice: “Lately at Warwick Castle, aged ninety-three, Mrs. Home, for upwards of seventy years a servant of the Warwick family. She had the privilege of showing the Castle, by which she realised upwards of £30,000.”
162 Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 1.
163 As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.
164 Sir Walter remained at this time six weeks in London. His eldest son’s regiment was stationed at Hampton Court; his second son had recently taken his desk at the Foreign Office, and was living at his sister’s in Regent’s Park. He had thus looked forward to a happy meeting with all his family—but he encountered scenes of sickness and distress.—Life, vol. ix. pp. 226-7.
165 The book was published early in April under the following title: Chronicles of the Canongate, Second Series, by the Author of Waverley, etc., “SIC ITUR AD ASTRA” Motto of Canongate Arms, in three volumes. (St. Valentine’s Day; or The Fair Maid of Perth.) Edinburgh: Printed for Cadell and Co., Edinburgh, and Simpkin and Marshall, London, 1828; (at the end) Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Co.
166 Among the “objects that came and departed like shadows” in this phantasmagoria of London life was a deeply interesting letter from Thomas Carlyle, and but for the fact that it bears Sir Walter’s London address, and the post-mark of this day, one could not imagine he had ever seen it, as it remained unacknowledged and unnoticed in either Journal or Correspondence.
It is dated 13th April 1828; and one of the latest letters he indited from “21 Comely Bank, Edinburgh.” After advising Scott that “Goethe has sent two medals which he is to deliver into his own hand,” he gives an extract from Goethe’s letter containing a criticism on Napoleon, with the apology that “it is seldom such a writer obtains such a critic,” and in conclusion he adds, “Being in this curious fashion appointed, as it were, ambassador between two kings of poetry, I would willingly discharge my mission with the solemnity that beseems such a business; and naturally it must flatter my vanity and love of the marvellous to think that by means of a foreigner whom I have never seen, I might soon have access to my native sovereign, whom I have so often seen in public, and so often wished that I had claim to see and know in private and near at hand.... Meanwhile, I abide your further orders in this matter, and so with all the regard which belongs to one to whom I in common with other millions owe so much, I have the honour to be, sir, most respectfully, your servant.—T.C.”
167 William Jacob, author of Travels in Spain in 1810-11, and several works on Political Economy. Among others “some tracts concerning the Poor Colonies instituted by the King of the Netherlands, which had marked influence in promoting the scheme of granting small allotments of land on easy terms to our cottagers; a scheme which, under the superintendence of Lord Braybrooke and other noblemen and gentlemen in various districts of England, appears to have been attended with most beneficent results.”—Life, vol. ix. p. 229. Mr. Jacob died in 1852 aged eighty-eight.
168 The widow of his old school-fellow, the Hon. Thomas Douglas, afterwards Earl of Selkirk.—See Life, vol. i. p. 77, and 208 n.
169 Ante, p. 10. Afterwards included in her Poetical and Dramatic Works, Lond. 1851.
170 Dr. Henry Phillpotts, consecrated Bishop of Exeter in 1830.
171 Crabbe’s Tale of the Dumb Orators.—J.G.L.
172 Dr. Howley, raised in 1828 to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.—J.G.L.
173 Translated to the see of London in 1828, where he remained until his death in 1859.
174 Mr. Lockhart gives an account of another dinner party at which Coleridge distinguished himself:—“The first time I ever witnessed it [Hook’s improvisation] was at a gay young bachelor’s villa near Highgate, when the other lion was one of a very different breed, Mr. Coleridge. Much claret had been shed before the Ancient Mariner proclaimed that he could swallow no more of anything, unless it were punch. The materials were forthwith produced; the bowl was planted before the poet, and as he proceeded in his concoction, Hook, unbidden, took his place at the piano. He burst into a bacchanal of egregious luxury, every line of which had reference to the author of the Lay Sermons and the Aids to Reflection. The room was becoming excessively hot: the first specimen of the new compound was handed to Hook, who paused to quaff it, and then, exclaiming that he was stifled, flung his glass through the window. Coleridge rose with the aspect of a benignant patriarch and demolished another pane—the example was followed generally—the window was a sieve in an instant—the kind host was furthest from the mark, and his goblet made havoc of the chandelier. The roar of laughter was drowned in Theodore’s resumption of the song—and window and chandelier and the peculiar shot of each individual destroyer had apt, in many cases exquisitely witty, commemoration. In walking home with Mr. Coleridge, he entertained ——— and me with a most excellent lecture on the distinction between talent and genius, and declared that Hook was as true a genius as Dante—that was his example.”—Theodore Hook, Lond. 1853, p. 23-4.
175 Johnson’s Rambler.
176 The County Land Tax.
177 The Right Hon. Sir W. Alexander of Airdrie, called to the English Bar 1782, Chief Baron 1824; died in London in his eighty-eighth year, 1842.
178 Sir Samuel Shepherd
179 Walter Boyd at this time was M.P. for Lymington; he had been a banker in Paris and in London; was the author of several well-known tracts on finance, and died in 1837.
180 Campbell died at Boulogne in 1844, aged sixty-seven; he was buried in Westminster, next Southey.
181 Hor. Epp. ii. 2, 76.
182 The elder Mr. Adolphus distinguished himself early in life by his History of the Reign of George III.—J.G.L.
183 See ante, vol. i. p. 14. Lady Francis Leveson Gower was the eldest daughter of Charles Greville.
184 Mr. Lockhart writes:—“Among other songs Mrs. Arkwright delighted Sir Walter with her own set of—
‘Farewell! farewell! the voice you hear
Has left its last soft tone with you;
Its next must join the seaward cheer,
And shout among the shouting crew,’ etc.
He was sitting by me, at some distance from the lady, and whispered, as she closed, ‘Capital words—whose are they? Byron’s, I suppose, but I don’t remember them.’ He was astonished when I told him they were his own in The Pirate. He seemed pleased at the moment, but said next minute, ‘You have distressed me—if memory goes, all is up with me, for that was always my strong point.’”—Life, vol. ix. p. 236.
185 Milton’s L’Allegro, ver. 137, 294.
186 Afterwards second Earl Powis.
187 Regarding the Chancery business, see infra, p. 191, n.
188 Sir Walter had shortly before been one of the contributors to a subscription for Mr. Haydon. The imprisonment from which the subscription released the artist produced, I need scarcely say, the picture mentioned in the Diary.—J.G.L. Haydon died in June 1846. See his Life, 3 vols., 1853, edited by Tom Taylor.
189 The Duke of Wellington, in after years, said to Lord Mahon, “He had observed on several occasions that Sir Walter was talked down by Croker and Bankes! who forgot that we might have them every day.”—Notes, p. 100.
190 Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 1.
191 Sir W. Knighton, as a Devonshire man, naturally wished to have the portrait painted by Northcote, who was a brother Devonian. Cunningham said of tins picture that the conception was good, and reality given by the introduction of the painter, palette in hand, putting the finishing touch to the head of the poet. “The likenesses were considered good.”—Cunningham’s Lives, vol. vi. p. 124. It was exhibited in 1871 in Edinburgh; its size is 4 ft. 2 in. x 3 ft. 2 in. Mr. David Laing, differing from Allan Cunningham, considered that the picture presented “anything but a fortunate likeness.” Northcote died July 13th, 1831, in his eighty-fifth year.
192 Act III. Sc. 2.
193 John Fuller, long M.P. for Surrey, an eccentric character, and looked upon as standing jester to the House of Commons. Scott first met him in Chantrey’s studio in 1820.—See Life, vol. vi. pp. 206, 207. He died in his 77th year, in 1831, without apparently having carried out his intention of editing Foote.
194 A process in English copyhold law.
195 Hazlitt said of Northcote, that talking with him was like conversing with the dead: “You see a little old man, pale and fragile, with eyes gleaming like the lights hung in tombs. He seems little better than a ghost, and hangs wavering and trembling on the very verge of life; you would think a breath would blow him away, and yet what fine things he says!”—Conversations.
196 Born 1752, died 1832; Master of the Rolls from 1801 to 1817.
197 The Magnum Opus was dedicated to George IV.—J.G.L.
198 Whose son afterwards married Dora, Wordsworth’s daughter.
199 At the last sitting Northcote remarked, “You have often sat for your portrait?”
“Yes,” said Sir Walter; “my dog Maida and I have sat frequently—so often that Maida, who had little philosophy, conceived such a dislike to painters, that whenever he saw a man take out a pencil and paper, and look at him, he set up a howl, and ran off to the Eildon Hill. His unfortunate master, however well he can howl, was never able to run much; he was therefore obliged to abide the event. Yes, I have frequently sat for my picture.”—Cunningham’s Painters, vol. vi. pp. 125-6.
200 See ante, May 1st, p. 170, note.
201 Mr. Ellis, afterwards created Baron Dover, was the author of Historical Inquiries into the Character of Lord Clarendon. 8vo, Lond., 1827.
202 Sir F. Chantrey was at this time executing his second bust of Sir Walter—that ordered by Sir Robert Peel, and which is now at Drayton.—J.G.L.
203 Lady Shelley of Maresfield Park. Mr. Lockhart says the young lady was Miss Shelley, who became in 1834 the Hon. Mrs. George Edgcumbe.
204 Scott had dined at Holland House in 1806, but in consequence of some remarks by Lord Holland in the House of Lords in 1810, on Thomas Scott’s affairs, there had apparently been no renewal of the acquaintanceship until now.
205 See Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iv. p. 20.
206 David Hinves, Mr. W. Stewart Rose’s faithful and affectionate attendant, furnished Scott with some hints for his picture of Davie Gellatly in Waverley.
Mr. Lockhart tells us that Hinves was more than forty years in Mr. Rose’s service; he had been a bookbinder by trade and a preacher among the Methodists.
“A sermon heard casually under a tree in the New Forest contained such touches of good feeling and broad humour that Rose promoted the preacher to be his valet on the spot. He was treated more like a friend than a servant by his master and by all his master’s intimate friends. Scott presented him with all his works; and Coleridge gave him a corrected (or rather an altered) copy of Christabel with this inscription on the fly-leaf: ‘Dear Hinves,—Till this book is concluded, and with it Gundimore, a poem by the same “author,” accept of this corrected copy of Christabel as a small token of regard; yet such a testimonial as I would not pay to any one I did not esteem, though he were an emperor.
“‘Be assured I will send you for your private library every work I have published (if there be any to be had) and whatever I shall publish. Keep steady to the FAITH. If the fountainhead be always full, the stream cannot be long empty.—Yours sincerely, S.T. COLERIDGE.
“’11 November 1816, Mudford.’”—Life, vol. iv. pp. 397-8.
Hinves died in Mr. Rose’s service circa 1838, and his master followed him on the 30th April 1843, a few weeks after his friend Morritt.
207 An analysis of these letters was published by Mr. Lockhart in the Life, vol. vi. pp. 346-386.
208 Created Earl of Leicester in 1837.
209 It is worth noting that Sir Walter first wrote “grasp”—and then deleted the word in favour of the technical term—“fathom.”
210 W. Withers had just published a Letter to Sir Walter Scott exposing certain fundamental errors in his late Essay on Planting,—Holt: Norfolk, 1828.
211 A deep pool in the Tweed, in which Scott had had a singular nocturnal adventure while “burning the water” in company with Hogg and Laidlaw. Hogg records that the crazy coble went to the bottom while Scott was shouting—
“An’ gin the boat were bottomless,
An’ seven miles to row.”
The scene was not forgotten when he came to write the twenty-sixth chapter of Guy Mannering.
212 This refers to the splendid edition of Walton and Cotton, edited by Nicolas, and illustrated by Stothard and Inskipp, published in 1836 after nearly ten years’ preparation, in two vols. large 8vo.
213 Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell, died 28th January 1836, aged ninety.
214 Moore writes: “On our arrival at Hampton (where we found the Wordsworths), walked about,—the whole party in the gay walk where the band plays, to the infinite delight of the Hampton blues, who were all eyes after Scott. The other scribblers not coming in for a glance. The dinner odd; but being near Scott I found it agreeable, and was delighted to see him so happy, with his tall son, the Major,” etc. etc,—Diary, vol. v. p. 287.
215 The author of Evelina died at Bath in 1840, at the age of eighty-eight. Subsequent to this meeting with Scott she published memoirs of her father, Dr. Burney (in 1832). It is stated that for her novel Camilla, published in 1796, she received a subscription of 3000 guineas, and for the Wanderer, in 1814, £1500 for the copyright. This was the year in which Waverley appeared, for the copyright of which Constable did not see his way to offer more than £700.
216 This item refers to money which had belonged to Lady Scott’s parents.
217 It contains half of Chancellor Clarendon’s famous collection—the other half is at Bothwell Castle.
218 William Elliot Lockhart of Cleghorn and Borthwick-brae, long M.P. for Selkirkshire.
219 Weare, Thurtell, and the rest were professed gamblers. See ante, July 10, 1826, and Life, vol. viii. p. 381.
220 The first volume had just been published in 1828. The book was completed in 6 vols. in 1840.
221 About this time Miss Anne Scott wrote to Mrs. Lockhart: “Early in the morning, before we started, papa took me with him to the Cathedral. This he had done often before; but he said he must stand once more on the spot where he married poor mamma. After that we went to the Castle, where a new showman went through the old trick of pointing out Fergus MacIvor’s very dungeon. Peveril said, ‘Indeed, are you quite sure, sir?’ And on being told there could be no doubt, was troubled with a fit of coughing, which ended in a laugh. The man seemed exceeding indignant; so, when papa moved on, I whispered who it was. I wish you had seen the man’s start, and how he stared and bowed as he parted from us; and then rammed his keys into his pocket and went off at a hand-gallop to warn the rest of the garrison. But the carriage was ready, and we escaped a row.”—Life, vol. ix. pp. 256-7.
222 See The Doom of Devorgoil: A Melo-Drama. Auchendrane: or the Ayrshire Tragedy. Published by Cadell in 8vo. 1830.
223 Referring to the uniform edition of the Waverley Novels in 48 vols., which began to be issued in June 1829. The great cost of the publication naturally caused the Trustees much anxiety at this period.
224 Ante, p. 120, February 2d.
225 Natali Corri, born in Italy, but settled in Edinburgh, where, among other schemes, he tried to set up an Italian opera. In conjunction with a brother he published several musical works. He died at Trieste in 1823.
226 See Act II. Sc. 2. The Italian family’s morning call.
227 “And thou, gentle Dame, who must bear to thy grief
For thy clan and thy country the cares of a Chief,
Whom brief rolling moons, in six changes have left
Of thy husband, and father, and brethren bereft;
To thine ear of affection how sad is the hail
That salutes thee, the heir of the line of Kintail.”
Poetical Works, vol. viii. p. 394.
Mary, daughter of Francis, Lord Seaforth, was born in Ross-shire in 1784, married, at Barbadoes in 1804, Sir Samuel Hood, and left a widow in 1814. She married again, in 1817, Mr. J.A. Stewart, who assumed the name of Mackenzie. Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie died at Brahan Castle in 1862; her funeral was one of the largest ever witnessed in the North.
228 Patrick James Stevenson was licensed in 1825, and ordained in 1828.—Scott’s Fasti, vol. vi. p. 746.
229 Ramsay’s Tea-table Miscellany (1795), vol. i. p. 125.
230 Burns’s song.
231 Now called Wellhouse Tower.
232 Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bk. i.
233 See Cases in Court of Session, vol. vii. S. p. 527.
234 John Graham, who afterwards assumed the name of Gilbert; born 1794, died 1866.
He was at this time painting Sir Walter for the Royal Society of Edinburgh. When the portrait was finished it was placed in the rooms of the Society, where it still hangs. The artist retained in his own collection a duplicate, with some slight variations, which his widow presented to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1867.
235 Sir Walter, in common with the majority of his contemporaries, evidently believed that Dr. Robert Knox was partly responsible for the West Port atrocities, but it is only just to the memory of the talented anatomist to say that an independent and influential committee, after a careful examination, reported on March 13th, 1829, that there was no evidence showing that he or his assistants knew that murder had been committed, but the committee thought that more care should have been exercised in the reception of the bodies at the Anatomical Class-room.
Lord Cockburn, who was one of the counsel at the trial of Burke, in writing of these events, remarks: “All our anatomists incurred a most unjust and very alarming, though not an unnatural, odium; Dr. Knox in particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the condemnation of more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But, tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the profession, our anatomists were spotlessly correct, and Knox the most correct of them all.”
At this date Dr. Knox was the most popular teacher in the Medical School at Edinburgh, and as his class-room could not contain more than a third of his students, he had to deliver his lectures twice or thrice daily. The odium attached to his name might have been removed in time had his personal character stood as high as his professional ability, but though he remained in Edinburgh until 1841 he never recovered his position there, and for the last twenty years of his life this once brilliant teacher subsisted as best he could in London by his pen, and as an itinerant lecturer. He died in 1862.
236 King John, Act iv. So. 2.
237 Archibald, second Lord Douglas, who died in 1844.
238 John Greenshields, self-taught sculptor. See Life, vol. ix. p. 281-288. He died at the age of forty in 1835.
239 As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 3.
240 Sir Henry Seton Steuart’s work on Planting was reviewed by Scott in the Quarterly.—See Misc. Prose Works, vol. xxi. Sir H. Steuart died in March 1836.
241 See letter in Life, vol. ix. pp. 281-287.
242 Originally published in London in 8vo, 1764. This contemplated edition does not appear to have been printed.
243 Ante, p. 118 n.
244 As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 3.
245 See Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle, Act I. Sc. 3.
246
Coelo supinas si tuleris manus
Nascente luna, rustica Phidyle, etc.
Hor. Lib. iii Od. 23.—J.G.L.
247 This letter, brimful of anecdote, is printed in Croker’s Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 28-34.
248 As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.
249 Sir Walter had written to Mr. Lockhart on October 26th, 1828, on hearing of an impending article in the Quarterly, the following letter:—
“I cannot repress the strong desire I have to express my regret at some parts of your kind letter just received. I shall lament most truly a purple article at this moment, when a strong, plain, moderate statement, not railing at Catholics and their religion, but reprobating the conduct of the Irish Catholics, and pointing out the necessary effects which that conduct must have on the Catholic Question, would have a powerful effect, and might really serve king and country. Nothing the agitators desire so much as to render the broil general, as a quarrel between Catholic and Protestant; nothing so essential to the Protestant cause as to confine it to its real causes. Southey, as much a fanatic as e’er a Catholic of them all, will, I fear, pass this most necessary landmark of debate. I like his person, admire his genius, and respect his immense erudition, but—non omnia. In point of reasoning and political judgment he is a perfect Harpado—nothing better than a wild bull. The circumstances require the interference of vir gravis pietate et moribus, and you bring it a Highland piper to blow a Highland charge, the more mischievous that it possesses much wild power of inflaming the passions.
“Your idea that you must give Southey his swing in this matter or he will quit the Review,—this is just a pilot saying, If I do not give the helm to such a passenger he will quit the ship. Let him quit and be d—d.
“My own confidence is, you know, entirely in the D. As Bruce said to the Lord of the Isles at Bannockburn, ‘My faith is constant in thee.’ Now a hurly-burly charge may derange his line of battle, and therein be of the most fatal consequence. For God’s sake avail yourself of the communication I opened while in town, and do not act without it. Send this to the D. of W. If you will, he will appreciate the motives that dictate it. If he approves of a calm, moderate, but firm statement, stating the unreasonable course pursued by the Catholics as the great impediment to their own wishes, write such an article yourself; no one can make a more impressive appeal to common sense than you can.
“The circumstances of the times are—must be—an apology for disappointing Southey. But nothing can be an apology for indulging him at the expense of aggravating public disturbance, which, for one, I see with great apprehension.
“It has not yet come our length; those [to] whom you allude ought certainly to be served, but the D. is best judge how they may be best served. If the D. says nothing on the subject you can slip your Derwentwater greyhound if you like. I write hastily, but most anxiously.... I repeat that I think it possible to put the Catholic Question as it now stands in a light which the most zealous of their supporters in this country cannot but consider as fair, while the result would be that the Question should not be granted at all under such guarantees; but I think this is scarce to be done by inflaming the topic with all mutual virulence of polemical discussion.”
250 Henry VI. Act I. Sc. 4.
251 John Gilpin.
252 The Picture of Scotland by Robert Chambers, author of Traditions of Edinburgh, etc., 8vo, 1829.
253 Mr. Skene remarks that at this time “Sir Walter was engaged in the composition of the Novel of Anne of Geierstein, for which purpose he wished to see a paper which I had some time before contributed to the Memoirs of the Society of Antiquaries on the subject of the Secret Tribunals of Germany, and upon which, accordingly, he grounded the scene in the novel. Upon his describing to me the scheme which he had formed for that work, I suggested to him that he might with advantage connect the history of René, king of Provence, which would lead to many interesting topographical details which my residence in that country would enable me to supply, besides the opportunity of illustrating so eccentric a character as ‘le bon roi René,’ full of traits which were admirably suited to Sir Walter’s graphic style of illustration, and that he could besides introduce the ceremonies of the Fête Dieu with great advantage, as I had fortunately seen its revival the first time it was celebrated after the interruption of the revolution. He liked the idea much, and, accordingly, a Journal which I had written during my residence in Provence, with a volume of accompanying drawings and Papon’s History of Provence was forthwith sent for, and the whole dénouement of the story of Anne o/Geierstein was changed, and the Provence part woven into it, in the form in which it ultimately came forth.”—Reminiscences.
254 This learned gentleman died in his house, 34 Moray Place, Edinburgh, on the 30th August 1838, aged eighty-two. He had filled various important situations with great ability during his long life:—Sheriff of Berwick and West Lothian, Professor of Scots Law in the University, and afterwards a Baron of Exchequer, which latter office he held till the abolition of the court in 1830. He is best remembered by his work on the Criminal Law of Scotland, published in 1797. He bequeathed his uncle the historian’s correspondence with Rousseau and other distinguished foreigners to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
255 Published in four volumes, 8vo, 1829. Fauche-Borel, an agent of the Bourbons, had just died. The book is still in the Abbotsford library.
256 Ancient Metrical Tales, edited by Rev. C.H. Hartshorne. 8vo London, 1829.
257 The Right Hon. William Dundas, born 1762, died 1845; appointed Lord Clerk Register in 1821.
258 Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, Act I. Sc. 4.
259 For notices of this gigantic cannon see ante, vol. i. p. 43, and post, pp. 247-8; also Life, vol. vii. pp. 86-87.
260 Some of these fine drawings have been engraved for Colonel Tod’s Travels in Western India. Lond., 4to, 1839.—J.G.L.
261 Molière, L’Amour Médecin, Act I. Sc. 1 (joaillier for orfévre).
262 The following extract from a letter by Wilkie shows how willingly he had responded to Scott’s request:—
7 TERRACE, KENSINGTON,
LONDON, Jan. 1829.
“DEAR SIR WALTER,—I pass over all those disastrous events that have arrived to us both since our last, as you justly call it, melancholy parting, to assure you how delighted I shall be if I can in the most inconsiderable degree assist in the illustrations of the great work, which we all hope may lighten or remove that load of troubles by which your noble spirit is at this time beset; considering it as only repaying a debt of obligation which you yourself have laid upon me when, with an unseen hand in the Antiquary, you took me up and claimed me, the humble painter of domestic sorrow, as your countryman.”
263 See Lear, Act IV. Sc. 1.
264 Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 2.
265 See letter to George Forbes from Sir Walter, dated Dec. 18th, 1830.—Life, vol. X. pp. 19-20.
266 Widow of Francis, Lord Seaforth, last Baron of Kintail, and mother of the Hon. Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie.
267 A sportive association of young athletes. Hogg, I think, was their Poet Laureate.—J.G.L.
268 Mair spier na, no fear na,
Auld age ne’er mind a feg;
The last o’t, the warst o’t.
Is only for to beg.—BURNS’S Ep. to Davie.
269 Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1. (Stephano).
270 This gentleman was a favourite with Sir Walter—a special point of communion being the antiquities of the British drama. He was Provost of Edinburgh in 1816-17, and again in 1822, and the king gracefully surprised him by proposing his health at the civic banquet in the Parliament House, as “Sir William Arbuthnot, Baronet.”—J.G.L.
271 John Hope, afterwards Lord Justice-Clerk.
272 Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, 2 vols. 4to, 1828.
273 Old Ballad (known as “Marie Hamilton”) quoted by Burns in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop regarding Falconer, author of The Shipwreck.—Currie’s Burns, vol. ii. p. 290.
274 See Quart. Rev., Nov. 1829, or Misc. Prose Works, xxi. 152-198.
275 George Dempster of Skibo, one of the few men connecting Scott with this generation, died in Edinburgh on the 6th of February 1889. This accomplished Scottish gentleman had for many years made his home at Ormiston, where, in the old mansion-house, rich in associations of Knox, Wishart, and Buchanan, he was the gracious host to a large circle of friends.
276 Pope’s Moral Essays, iii.
277 Ante, vol. i. p. 312, n.
278 Mr. Lockhart says, writing in 1839:—“This head may still be seen over a laboratory at No. 100 South Bridge, Edinburgh. [It has since been removed.] N.B. There is a tradition that the venerable bust in question was once dislodged by ‘Colonel Grogg’ and some of his companions, and waggishly placed in a very inappropriate position.”
279 Fenimore Cooper told Scott that the Princess had had Sir Walter’s portrait engraved in 1827 from the picture taken in Paris. [Mme. Mirbel’s miniature?]
280 See Sheridan’s Critic.
281 Lord Corehouse’s brother.
282 Room may be made for part of one of the letters received by this morning’s mail, in which, after much interesting family detail, his son-in-law describes the duel which took place between the Duke of Wellington and Lord Winchelsea:—“There is no reason to expect a duel every day, and all has been very quiet since Saturday.—The letter was utterly forgotten till this recalled it to remembrance. Ergo, there was no sort of call on the Duke after beating Buonaparte to go to war with a booby. But he could not stand the fling at the fair. His correspondence seems admirable every way, and the whole affair was gone through in excellent taste,—the Duke and Hardinge trotting out, the two peaceful lords rumbling down in a coach and four. The Duke had no half-pence and was followed and bothered for some time by the tollman on Battersea Bridge, when Hardinge fished out some silver or a groom came up. There were various market gardeners on the road, who, when Lord Winchelsea’s equipage stopped, stopped also and looked on. One of them advised a turn up with nature’s weapons. The moment all was done the Duke clapped spars to his horse and was back in Downing Street within the two hours, breakfasted, and off to Windsor, where he transacted business for an hour or so, and then said, ‘By-the-by, I was forgetting I have had a field-day with Lord W. this morning.’ They say the King rowed Arthur much for exposing himself at such a crisis.”
283 Art of Preserving Health, book ii.
284 George Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie, had just been appointed Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies; which office he held till 1832. He died in 1838.
285 Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 1.
286 Son of Lord Medwyn. Mr. Forbes had lately returned from Italy, where he had had as travelling companion Mr. Cleasby, and it was owing to Mr. Forbes’s recommendation that Mr. Cleasby came to Edinburgh to pursue his studies. Mr. Forbes possessed a fine tenor voice, and his favourite songs at that time were the Neapolitan and Calabrian canzonetti, to which Sir Walter alludes under April 4.
287 Mr. Lockhart’s own account of the overture is sufficiently amusing and characteristic of the men and the times:—
“I had not time to write more than a line the other day under Croker’s cover, having received it just at post time. He sent for me; I found him in his nightcap at the Admiralty, colded badly, but in audacious spirits. His business was this. The Duke of W[ellingto]n finds himself without one newspaper he can depend on. He wishes to buy up some evening print, such as the dull Star; and could I do anything for it? I said I was as well inclined to serve the Duke as he could be, but it must be in other fashion. He then said he agreed with me—but there was a second question: Could I find them an editor, and undertake to communicate between them and him—in short, save the Treasury the inconvenience of maintaining an avowed intercourse with the Newspaper press? He said he himself had for some years done this—then others. I said I would endeavour to think of a man for their turn and would call on him soon again.
“I have considered the matter at leisure, and resolve to have nothing to do with it. They CAN only want me as a writer. Any understrapper M.P. would do well enough for carrying hints to a newspaper office, and I will not, even to secure the Duke, mix myself up with the newspapers. That work it is which has damned Croker, and I can’t afford to sacrifice the advantage which I feel I have gained in these later years by abstaining altogether from partisan scribbling, or to subject the Quarterly to risk of damage. The truth is, I don’t admire, after all that has come and gone, being applied to through the medium of friend Crokey. I hope you will approve of my resolution.”
288 Peel, in writing to Scott, says, “The mention of your name [in Parliament] as attached to the Edinburgh petition was received with loud cheers.”
289 Richard Cleasby, afterwards the well-known scholar who spent many years in gathering materials for an Icelandic Dictionary. Mr. Cleasby died in 1847, but the work he had planned was not published until 1874, when it appeared under the editorship of Mr. Vigfusson,A assisted by Sir George Dasent.
290 Bickerstaff’s Padlock, Act I. Sc. 6.
A An Icelandic-English Dictionary based on the MS. collections of the late Richard Cleasby, enlarged and completed by G. Vigfusson. 4to, Oxford, 1874.
291 Don Quixote, Pt. I. Bk. II. Cap. 2.
292 Friends of Joanna Baillie’s and John Richardson’s.
293 This must have been an unusual experience for the head of a family that considered itself to be the oldest in Christendom. Their château contained, it was said, two pictures: one of the Deluge, in which Noah is represented going into the Ark, carrying under his arm a small trunk, on which was written “Papiers de la maison de Lévis;” the other a portrait of the founder of the house bowing reverently to the Virgin, who is made to say, “Couvrez-vous, mon cousin.”—See Walpole’s Letters. The book referred to by Sir Walter is The Carbonaro: a Piedmontese Tale, by the Duke de Lévis. 2 vols. London, 1829.
294 No. 152—May, 1829.
295 Burns’s Lines to a Mouse: “a daimen-icker in a thrave,” that is, an ear of corn out of two dozen sheaves.
296 John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich.
297 These biographies, intended for The Family Library, were never written.
298 Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 1.
299 “When I think on the world’s pelf
May the shame fa’ and the blethrie o ’t.”
Burden of old Scottish Song.
300 That these afternoon rambles with the dogs were not always so tranquil may be gathered from an incident described by Mr. Adolphus, in which an unsuspecting cat at a cottage door was demolished by Nimrod in one of his gambols.—Life, vol. ix. p. 362. This deer-hound was an old offender. Sir Walter tells his friend Richardson, à propos of a story he had just heard of Joanna Baillie’s cat having worried a dog: “It is just like her mistress, who beats the male race of authors out of the pit in describing the higher passions that are more proper to their sex than hers. Alack-a-day! my poor cat Hinse, my acquaintance, and in some sort my friend of fifteen years, was snapped at even by the paynim Nimrod. What could I say to him but what Brantôme said to some ferrailleur who had been too successful in a duel, ‘Ah! mon grand ami, vous avez tué mon autre grand ami.’”
301 Manager of the Foreign Review.
302 Robert Pitcairn, author of Criminal Trials in Scotland, 3 vols. 4to.
303 William Scott, Esq., afterwards Laird of Raeburn, was commonly thus designated from a minor possession, during his father’s lifetime. Whatever, in things of this sort, used to be practised among the French noblesse, might be traced, till very lately, in the customs of the Scottish provincial gentry.—- J.G.L.
304 Life, vol. vi. p. 90.
305 “They have ty’d me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But bear-like I must fight the course.”—Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 7.
306 The work was published in May under the following title:—“Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist. By the Author of Waverley, etc.
What! will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
Sink in the ground? SHAKESPEARE.
In three volumes. Edinburgh: Printed for Cadell & Co., Edinburgh; and Simpkin & Marshall, London, 1829. (At the end) Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne & Company, Paul’s Work, Canongate.”
307 See Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. iv. p. 355.
308 This short History of Scotland, it was found, could not be comprised in a single volume, and the publishers handsomely agreed to give the author £1500 for two volumes, forming the first and fourth issues of their own Cabinet Cyclopædia, the publication of which was commenced before the end of the year.
309 Right Hon. Charles Hope.
310 Adam Rolland, Principal Clerk of Session, a nephew of Adam Rolland of Gask, who was in some respects the prototype of Pleydell, and whose face and figure have been made familiar to the present generation by Raeburn’s masterpiece of portraiture, now in the possession of Miss Abercrombie, Edinburgh.
311 Sir Walter had written to Mr. Lockhart on 8th May:—“Anne of Geierstein is concluded; but as I do not like her myself, I do not expect she will be popular.”
As a contrast to the criticisms of the printer and publisher, and a comment upon the author’s own apprehensions, the subjoined extract from a letter written by Mr. G.P.R. James may be given:—“When I first read Anne of Geierstein I will own that the multitude of surpassing beauties which it contained frightened me, but I find that after having read it the public mind required to be let gently down from the tone of excitement to which it had been raised, and was contented to pause at my book (Richelieu), as a man who has been enjoying a fine prospect from a high hill stops before he reaches the valley to take another look, though half the beauty be already lost.... You cannot think how I long to acquit myself of the obligations which I lie under towards you, but I am afraid that fortune, who has given you both the will and the power to confer such great favours upon me, has not in any degree enabled me to aid or assist you in return.”
312 The Bee Preserver, or Practical Directions for the Management and Preservation of Hives. Translated from the French of J. De Gelieu. 1829.
313 “An oak tree which grows by the side of a fine spring near the Castle of Dalhousie; very much observed by the country people, who give out that before any of the family died a branch fell from the Edgewell Tree. The old tree some few years ago fell altogether, but another sprang from the same root, which is now [1720] tall and flourishing; and lang be it sae.”—Allan Ramsay’s Works, vol. i. p. 329: “Stocks in 1720.” 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1800.
The tree is still flourishing [1889], and the belief in its sympathy with the family is not yet extinct, as an old forester, on seeing a large branch fall from it on a quiet still day in July 1874, exclaimed, “The laird’s deed noo!” and accordingly news came soon after that Fox Maule, 11th Earl of Dalhousie, had died.
314 The Coalstoun Pear was removed from Dalhousie to Coalstoun House in 1861.
315 Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.
316 Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.
317 Lord Forbes was at this time His Majesty’s High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: he had been appointed in 1826.
318 Rev. Edward Irving, minister of the Scottish Church in London, was deposed March 1833, and died Dec. 1834, aged forty-two.
319 That is as a lay-member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
320 Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.
321 2d Henry IV., Act V. Sc. 3.
322 No. 25.
323 The manuscript referred to is now at Abbotsford. It is a small quarto of 8-3/4 x 6-1/2 inches, bound in old mottled leather, and consisting of 251 leaves of paper, written on both sides in the Irish character, apparently in the reign of James VI. It bears the following inscription in Sir Walter’s hand:—“The kind donor of this book is the Right Rev. Bishop of Cloyne, famed for his skill in science, and especially as an astronomer.” For contents of vol. see Appendix. Dr. John Brinkley, Bishop of Cloyne, was Astronomer Royal for Ireland.
324 See letter to Principal Baird, ante, vol, i, p. 412 n.
325 The first line of the Scottish metrical version of the hundredth Psalm. Mr. Lockhart tells us, in his affecting account of Sir Walter’s illness, that his love for the old metrical version of the Psalms continued unabated to the end. A story has been told, on the authority of the nurse in attendance, that on the morning of the day on which he died, viz., on the 21st Sept. 1832, he opened his eyes once more, quite conscious, and calmly asked her to read to him a psalm. She proceeded to do so, when he gently interposed, saying, “No! no! the Scotch Psalms.” After reading to him a little while, he expressed a wish to be moved nearer the window, through which he looked long and earnestly up and down the valley and towards the sky, and then on the woman’s face, saying: “I’ll know it all before night.” This story will find some confirmation from the entry in the Journal under September 24, 1830: “I think I will be in the secret next week; unless I recruit greatly.”
326 In a letter to his son at this time he says the “sale of the Novels is pro-di-gi-ous. If it last but a few years it will clear my feet of old encumbrances.”—Life, vol. ix. p. 32.
327 Jeffrey, who had just retired from the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, was succeeded by Macvey Napier, whose first No. was published in October 1829.
328 The first volume had just been issued with a dedication to the King. The series was completed in 48 vols., published at the beginning of each month, between 1829-33, and the circulation went on increasing until it reached 35,000 monthly.
329 Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, which stood at that time in Shakespeare Square, the site of the present General Post-Office.
330 Mr. Lockhart remarks that, besides the usual allowance of rheumatism, and other lesser ailments, Sir Walter had an attack that season of a nature which gave his family great alarm, and which for some days he himself regarded with the darkest prognostications. After some weeks, during which he complained of headache and nervous irritation, certain hæmorrhages indicated the sort of relief required, and he obtained it from copious cupping.—Life, vol. ix. p. 327-8.
331 See infra, p. 299.
332 The Beaux’s Stratagem, Farquhar.
333 Through the courtesy of Miss Dick Lauder I am enabled to give the letter referred to:—
“My DEAR SIR THOMAS,—I received your kind letter and interesting communication yesterday, and hasten to reply. I am ashamed of the limited hospitality I was able to offer Mr. Lauder, but circumstances permitted me no more. I was much pleased with his lively and intelligent manners, and hope he will live to be a comfort and a credit to Lady Lauder and you.
“I need not say I have the greatest interest in the MS. which you mention. In case it shall really prove an authentic document, there would not be the least difficulty in getting the Bannatyne Club to take, perhaps, 100 copies, or obtaining support enough so as, at the least, to preclude the possibility of loss to the ingenious Messrs. Hay Allan. But I think it indispensable that the original MS. should be sent for a month or so to the Register House under the charge of the Deputy Register, Mr. Thomson, that its antiquity be closely scrutinised by competent persons. The art of imitating ancient writing has got to a considerable perfection, and it has been the bane of Scottish literature, and disgrace of her antiquities, that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without inquiry and propagate the errors which we adopt too hastily ourselves. The general proposition that the Lowlanders ever wore plaids is difficult to swallow. They were of twenty different races, and almost all distinctly different from the Scots Irish, who are the proper Scots, from which the Royal Family are descended. For instance, there is scarce a great family in the Lowlands of Scotland that is not to be traced to the Normans, the proudest as well as most civilised race in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Is it natural to think that holding the Scots in the contempt in which they did, they would have adopted their dress? If you will look at Bruce’s speech to David I., as the historian Ælred tells the story, you will see he talks of the Scots as a British officer would do of Cherokees. Or take our country, the central and western part of the border: it was British, Welsh if you please, with the language and manners of that people who certainly wore no tartan. It is needless to prosecute this, though I could show, I think, that there is no period in Scottish History when the manners, language, or dress of the Highlanders were adopted in the Low Country. They brought them with them from Ireland, as you will see from the very curious prints in Derrick’s picture of Ireland, where you see the chiefs and followers of the wild Irish in the ordinary Highland dress, tempore Queen Elizabeth. Besides this, where has slept this universal custom that nowhere, unless in this MS., is it even heard of? Lesley knew it not, though the work had been in his possession, and his attention must have been called to it when writing concerning the three races of Scots—Highlanders, Lowlanders, and Bordermen, and treating of their dress in particular. Andrew Borde knows nothing of it, nor the Frenchman who published the geographical work from which Pinkerton copied the prints of the Highlander and Lowlander, the former in a frieze plaid or mantle, while the Lowlander struts away in a cloak and trunk hose, liker his neighbour the Fleming. I will not state other objections, though so many occur, that the authenticity of the MS. being proved, I would rather suppose the author had been some tartan-weaver zealous for his craft, who wished to extend the use of tartan over the whole kingdom. I have been told, and believe till now, that the use of tartan was never general in Scotland (Lowlands) until the Union, when the detestation of that measure led it to be adopted as the national colour, and the ladies all affected tartan screens or mantles.
“Now, a word to your own private ear, my dear Sir Thomas. I have understood that the Messrs. Hay Allan are young men of talent, great accomplishments, enthusiasm for Scottish manners, and an exaggerating imagination, which possibly deceives even themselves. I myself saw one of these gentlemen wear the Badge of High Constable of Scotland, which he could have no more right to wear than the Crown. Davidoff used also to amuse us with stories of knighthoods and orders which he saw them wear at Sir William Cumming Gordon’s. Now this is all very well, and I conceive people may fall into such dreaming habits easily enough, and be very agreeable and talented men in other respects, and may be very amusing companions in the country, but their authority as antiquaries must necessarily be a little apocryphal when the faith of MSS. rests upon their testimony. An old acquaintance of mine, Captain Watson of the navy, told me he knew these gentlemen’s father, and had served with him; he was lieutenant, and of or about Captain Watson’s age, between sixty I suppose, and seventy at present. Now what chance was there that either from age or situation he should be receiving gifts from the young Chevalier of Highland Manuscripts.
“All this, my dear Sir Thomas, you will make your own, but I cannot conceal from you my reasons, because I would wish you to know my real opinion. If it is an imitation, it is a very good one, but the title ‘Liber Vestiarium’ is false Latin I should think not likely to occur to a Scotsman of Buchanan’s age. Did you look at the watermark of the MS.? If the Manuscript be of undeniable antiquity, I consider it as a great curiosity, and most worthy to be published. But I believe nothing else than ocular inspection will satisfy most cautious antiquaries....—Yours, my dear Sir Thomas, always,
WALTER SCOTT.”
“EDINBURGH, 5 June 1829.”
The Messrs. Hay Allan subsequently took the names of John Sobieski Stuart (who assumed the title of Comte d’Albanie) and Charles Edward Stuart. John Sobieski died in 1872, and Charles Edward in 1880. The “original” of Sir Richard Forrester’s manuscript was never submitted to the inspection of the Deputy Register, as suggested by Scott; but it was published in a very handsome shape a dozen years later, and furnished a text for an article in the Quarterly, in which the authenticity of the book, and the claims of the author and his brother, were unsparingly criticised by the late Professor Skene of Glasgow.—See “The Heirs of the Stuarts” in Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxii.
334 Ante, vol. i. p. 91, 92.
335 There are so few of “Darsie Latimer’s” letters preserved that the following may be given relating to the Bride of Lammermoor:—
“EDIN. Sept. 1, 1829.
“MY DEAR SIR WALTER,—I greet you well (which, by the way, is the proper mode of salutation in this cursed weather, that is enough to make us all greet). But to come to my proposal, which is to forward to you a communication I had within these few days from Sir Robert Horne Dalrymple Elphinstone.
“After expressing the great pleasure the perusal of your notes to the new edition of the Novels had given him, he adds: ‘I wish you would give him a hint of what I formerly mentioned to you regarding my great-grandaunt and your own relative, the unfortunate Bride of Lammermoor. It was first mentioned to me by Miss Maitland, the daughter of Lady Rothes (they were the nearest neighbours of the Stair family in Wigtownshire), and I afterwards heard the tradition from others in that country. It was to the following effect, that when, after the noise and violent screaming in the bridal chamber, comparative stillness succeeded, and the door was forced, the window was found open, and it was supposed by many that the lover (Lord Rutherford) had, by the connivance of some of the servants, found means, during the bustle of the marriage feast, to secrete himself within the apartment, and that soon after the entry of the married pair, or at least as soon as the parents and others retreated and the door was made fast, he had come out from his concealment, attacked and desperately wounded the bridegroom, and then made his escape by the window through the garden. As the unfortunate bride never spoke after having uttered the words mentioned by Sir Walter, no light could be thrown on the matter by them. But it was thought that Bucklaw’s obstinate silence on the subject favoured the supposition of the chastisement having been inflicted by his rival. It is but fair to give the unhappy victim (who was by all accounts a most gentle and feminine creature) the benefit of an explanation on a doubtful point.’
“So far my worthy friend, who seems a little jealous of the poor bride’s reputation. I send you his note, and you can make what you like of it. I am intending a little jaunt to his country, and we mean to visit sundry old castles in Aberdeenshire, and wish you were of the party. I have heard nothing of Linton [cognomen for Sir Adam Ferguson] this summer. I hope you have been passing your time agreeably.—With best compliments to all friends, I remain, my dear Sir Walter, ever yours,
“WM. CLERK.”
336 Written by William Mudford, born 1782, died 1848.
337 Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 4
338 See Life, vol ix. pp. 325-6.
339 The last reference in the Journal to his old friend Lady Jane Stuart, who died on the following October.
340 Now in the rooms of the Royal Society, Edinburgh.
341 Annals of the Peninsular War. 3 vols. 8vo, 1829.
342 Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru. 2 vols. 8vo, 1829.
343 Mr. Lockhart had written on June 6:—“Moore is at my elbow and says he has not the face to bother you, but he has come exactly to the part where your reminiscences of Lord Byron would come in; so he is waiting for a week or so in case they should be forthcoming.” And Moore himself had previously reminded Sir Walter of his promise.
April 25th, 1829.
“My DEAR SCOTT,—It goes to my heart to bother you, knowing how bravely and gloriously you are employed for that task-mistress—Posterity. But you may thank your stars that I have let you off so long. All that you promised me about Mrs. Gordon and Gicht, and a variety of other things, is remitted to you; but I positively must have something from you of your recollections personally of Byron—and that as soon as possible, for I am just coming to the period of your acquaintance with him, which was, I think, in the year 1814. Tell me all the particulars of the presents you exchanged, and if his letters to you are really all lost (which I will still hope is not the case); try, as much as possible, with your memory
‘To lure the tassel gentles back again.’
“You will have seen by the newspapers the sad loss my little circle of home has experienced, a loss never to be made up to us in this world, whatever it may be the will of God in another. Mrs. Moore’s own health is much broken, and she is about to try what Cheltenham can do for her, while I proceed to finish my printing in town. It would be far better for me to remain in my present quiet retreat, where I am working quite alone, but the devils beckon me nearer them, and I must begin in a few days. Direct to me, under cover to Croker—you see I take for granted you will have a packet to send—and he will always know where to find me.
“My kindest remembrances to Miss Scott, and believe me ever, my very dear friend, your truly and affectionate,
“THOS. MOORE.”
The “memoranda” were not acknowledged by Moore till Oct. 31, when he wrote Scott as follows:—
“MY DEAR SCOTT,—I ought to blush ‘terrestrial rosy-red, shame’s proper hue’ for not sooner acknowledging your precious notes about Byron. One conclusion, however, you might have drawn from my silence, namely, that I was satisfied, and had all that I asked for. Your few pages indeed will be the best ornament of my book. Murray wished me to write to you (immediately on receipt of the last MS. you sent me) to press your asking Hobhouse for the letter of your own (in 1812) that produced Byron’s reply. But I was doubtful whether you would like to authorise the publication of this letter, and besides it would be now too late, as the devils are in full hue and cry after my heels.
“Health and prosperity to you, my dear friend, and believe me, ever yours most truly,
“THOMAS MOORE.”
344 Burns.
345 Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 3.
346 Mr. Skene at this time was engaged upon a series of etchings, regarding which he had several letters from Sir Walter, one of which may be given here:—
“MY DEAR SKENE,—I enclose you Basil Hall’s letter, which is very interesting to me; but I would rather decline fixing the attention of the public further on my old friend George Constable. You know the modern rage for publication, and it might serve some newsmen’s purpose by publishing something about my old friend, who was an humourist, which may be unpleasing to his friends and surviving relations.
“I did not think on Craignethan in writing about Tillietudlem, and I believe it differs in several respects from my Chateau en Espagne. It is not on the Clyde in particular, and, if I recollect, the view is limited and wooded. But that can be no objection to adopting it as that which public taste has adopted as coming nearest to the ideal of the place. Of the places in the Black Dwarf, Meiklestane Moor, Ellislie, Earnscliffe, are all and each vox et, praeterea nihil. Westburnflat once was a real spot, now there is no subject for the pencil. The vestiges of a tower at the junction of two wild brooks with a rude hillside, are all that are subjects for the pencil, and they are very poor ones. Earnscliffe and Ganderscleuch are also visions.
“I hope your work is afloatB and sailing bobbishly. I have not heard of or seen it.
“Rob Roy has some good and real subjects, as the pass at Loch Ard, the beautiful fall at Ledeard, near the head of the lake. Let me know all you desire to be informed without fear of bothering. Kindest compliments to Mrs. Skene and the young folks.—Always yours entirely, WALTER SCOTT.”
B Twenty numbers of this work were published in 1828 and 1829 under the title of “A Series of Sketches of the existing Localities alluded to in the Waverley Novels,” etched from original drawings by James Skene, Esq.
347 A copy of this rather rare book is still in the Abbotsford Library. Its title is “Colonel Wm. Francklin’s Military Memoirs of George Thomas, who by extraordinary talents and enterprise rose from an obscure situation to the rank of General in the service of the Native Powers in the N.W. of India,” 4to, Calcutta, 1803.
348 The poem of this name is attributed to King James I. of Scotland, but Dr. Irving in his History of Scottish Poetry says the earliest edition known to him dates only from 1663.
349 Professor of Logic in the University of Edinburgh from 1775 till 1792, when he resigned his chair and became Keeper of the State Paper Office, and Historiographer to the East India Company in London. He wrote several elaborate and valuable reports for the Government, which, though printed, were never published; among others, one in 1799, in 2 vols. 8vo, “On the Union between England and Scotland: its causes, effects, and influence of Great Britain in Europe.” In the previous year he also prepared another on the arrangements made for repelling the Armada, and their application to the crisis of 1798. This able man returned to Scotland, and died in Falkland about two years before Scott visited the place.
350 An account of the finding of this seal (which was thought to be that of Joan of Beaufort, wife of James I.) at Kinross, in April 1829, is given in the Archæologia Scotica, vol. iv. p. 420.
351 Right Hon. David Boyle.
352 5 The familiar name applied to Sir William Knighton, sometimes also the Great Unseen.
353 For list of the members of The Club, which was formed in 1788, see Life, vol. i. p. 208.
354 Some little time before his death, the worthy Sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire received a set of his friend’s works, with this inscription:—“To Robert Shortreed, Esq., the friend of the author from youth to age, and his guide and companion upon many an expedition among the Border hills, in quest of the materials of legendary lore which have at length filled so many volumes, this collection of the results of their former rambles is presented by his sincere friend, Walter Scott.”—J.G.L.
355 Who had died on the 22d June 1829.
356 See p. 329 n.
357 Mr. Skene in his Reminiscences records that—“Tom Purdie identified himself with all his master’s pursuits and concerns; he had in early life been a shepherd, and came into Sir Walter’s service upon his first taking up his abode at Ashiestiel, of which he became at last the farm manager; and upon the family removing to Abbotsford continued that function, to which was added gamekeeper, forester, librarian, and henchman to his master in all his rambles about the property. He used to talk of Sir Walter’s publications as our books, and said that the reading of them was the greatest comfort to him, for whenever he was off his sleep, which sometimes happened to him, he had only to take one of the novels, and before he read two pages it was sure to set him asleep. Tom, with the usual shrewdness common to his countrymen in that class of life, joined a quaintness and drollery in his notions and mode of expressing himself that was very amusing; he was familiar, but at the same time perfectly respectful, although he was sometimes tempted to deal sharp cuts, particularly at Sir Adam Ferguson, whom he seemed to take a pleasure in assailing. When Sir Walter obtained the honour of knighthood for Sir Adam, upon the plea of his being Custodier of the Regalia of Scotland, Tom was very indignant, because he said, ‘It would take some of the shine out of us,’ meaning Sir Walter. Tom was very fond of salmon fishing, which from an accordance of taste contributed much to elevate my merits in his eyes, and I believe I was his greatest favourite of all Sir Walter’s friends, which he used occasionally to testify by imparting to me in confidence some secret about fishing, which he concluded that no one knew but himself. He was remarkably fastidious in his care of the Library, and it was exceedingly amusing to see a clodhopper (for he was always in the garb of a ploughman) moving about in the splendid apartment which had been fitted up for the Library, scrutinising the state of the books, putting derangement to rights, remonstrating when he observed anything that indicated carelessness.”
358 Blank in original
359 Abbotsford Notanda, p. 175.
360 Eldest daughter of David, sixth Earl of Leven and fifth of Melville, and widow of Sir John Wishart Belsches Stuart, Bart., of Fettercairn. See ante, vol. i. p. 404; vol. ii. pp. 55, 62.
361 James Abercromby, who succeeded Sir Samuel Shepherd as Chief Baron, was the third son of Sir Ralph Abercromby. He was afterwards elected member for Edinburgh in 1832, and Speaker of the House of Commons in 1835. On Mr. Abercromby’s retirement in 1839, he was raised to the Peerage as Lord Dunfermline. He died at Colinton House on April 17th, 1858, aged 81.
362 Of this illness, Sir Walter had written the following account to Mr. Lockhart, a week after its occurrence:—
“Anne would tell you of an awkward sort of fit I had on Monday last; it lasted about five minutes, during which I lost the power of articulation, or rather of speaking what I wished to say. I revived instantly, but submitted to be bled, and to keep the house for a week, except exercising walks. They seem to say it is from the stomach. It may or may not be a paralytic affection. We must do the best we can in either event. I think by hard work I will have all my affairs regulated within five or six years, and leave the means of clearing them in case of my death. I hope there will be enough for all, and provision besides for my own family. The present return of the novels to me is about £8000 a year, which moves fast on to clear off old scores.
“This awkward turn of health makes my motions very uncertain. On the one hand I want to save money and push forward work, both which motives urge me to stay at home this spring. On the other, besides my great wish to see you all, and besides my desire to look at the ‘forty-five’ affairs, I am also desirous to put in for my interest upon the changes at the Court.... It must be very much as health and weather shall determine, for if I see the least chance of a return of this irritation, my own house will be the only fit place for me. Do not suppose I am either low-spirited or frightened at the possibilities I calculate upon, but there is no harm in looking at what may be as what needs must be. I really believe the ugly symptoms proceed from the stomach particularly. I feel, thank God, no mental injury, which is most of all to be deprecated. Still, I am a good deal failed in body within these two or three last years, and the singula praedantur come by degrees to make up a sum. They say, ‘Do not work,’ but my habits are such that it is not easily managed, for I would be driven mad with idleness.... Adieu. Love to all. The odds are greatly against my seeing you till you come down here, but I will have the cottage in such order for you; and as Will Laidlaw comes back at Whitsunday, I will have him to lend me an arm to Chiefswood, and I have no doubt to do gallantly.
“EDINBURGH, 22d February [1830].”
363 His grand-daughter, Charlotte, whom he playfully named after the fairy in the old Scottish Nursery story.
364 Mr. Lockhart had some thoughts of entering Parliament, at this time, and Sir Walter had expressed his opinion a few days before their meeting:—
“Your letter, this day received, namely Wednesday, gave me the greatest pleasure on account of the prosperous intelligence which it gives me of your own advancing prospects.... I take it for granted that you have looked to the income of future years before thinking of disposing of the profits of a successful one in a manner which cannot be supposed to produce positive Or direct advantage, but may rather argue some additional degree of expense.
“But this being premeesed, I cannot help highly approving of your going into Parliament, especially as a member entirely unfettered and left to act according to the weal of the public, or what you conceive such. It is the broad turnpike to importance and consequence which you, as a man of talents in the full vigour of your youth, ought naturally to be ambitious of. The present times threaten to bring in many occasions when there will and must be opportunities of a man distinguishing himself and serving his country.
“To go into the House without speaking would be useless. I will frankly tell you that when I heard you speak you seemed always sufficiently up to the occasion both in words and matter, but too indifferent in the manner in which you pressed your argument, and therefore far less likely to attract attention than if you had seemed more earnestly persuaded of the truth and importance of what you have been saying. I think you may gain advantage from taking this hint. No one is disposed to weigh any man’s arguments more favourably than he himself does, and if you are not considered as gravely interested in what you say, and conscious of its importance, your audience will not be so....
“EDINBURGH, 20th May 1830.”
365 Mr. John Dickinson of Nash Mill, Herts, the eminent papermaker.—J.G.L. Ante, p. 31.
366 Burns’s Tam o’ Shanter.
367 See Johnson’s Musical Museum Illustrations, Pt. v. No. 454.
368 Henry V. Act II. Sc. 1.
369 Daughter of his old friend, Mrs. Maclean Clephane of Torloisk.
370 “Little Walter,” Thomas Scott’s son, who went to India in 1826, ante, vol. i. p. 103. He became a General in the Indian Army, and died in 1873.
371 Æneid VI. 617.
372 Emanuel de Fellenburg, who died in 1844.
373 “The History of Scotland from the Earliest Period to the Middle of the Ninth Century,” by the Rev. Alex. Low. 8vo, Edinburgh, 1826.—See Misc. Prose Works, vol. xx. pp. 374-6.
374 Southerne’s Fatal Marriage.
375 In the Gamester by Moore.
376 Sir Samuel Shepherd.—See ante, vol. i. p. 51 n.
377 Sir Robert Preston, Bart., died in May 1834, aged ninety-five.—- J.G.L.
378 Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh.
379 See ante, p. 279 note, and for sketch of Adam Rolland of Gask, Cockburn’s Memorials, pp. 360-3.
380 The “frolic and fancy” of Councillor Pleydell were commonly supposed to have been found in Andrew Crosbie, Advocate, but as Crosbie died when Scott was only fourteen, and had retired from the bar for some years, the latter could scarcely have known him personally. See p. 281 n.
381 A second dividend of 3s. was declared on December 17, 1830.
382 An old Galloway proverb. Branks, “a sort of bridle used by country people in riding.”—Jamieson. Burns in a Scotch letter to Nicol of June 1, 1787, says, “I’ll be in Dumfries the morn gif the beast be to the fore and the branks bide hale.”—Cromek’s Reliques, p. 29.
383 Relating to the changes in the Court of Session.
384 David Dalrymple of Westhall was a judge of the Court of Session from 1777 till his death in 1784.
385 King John, Act I. Sc. 1.
386 A whiting dried in the sun; but “tiled haddocks” and “tiled whitings” are now unknown to the fisher-folk of Cockenzie.
387 John Philip Wood, editor of Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland, etc., was deaf and dumb; he died in 1838 in his seventy-fourth year.
388 Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 9.
389 Charles S. Daveis of Portland, a friend of Mr. George Ticknor, in whose Life (2 vols. 8vo, Boston, 1876) he is often mentioned.
390 An amusing illustration of the difficulty of seeing ourselves as others see us may be found written twenty-five years later by Nathaniel Hawthorne, where the author of the Scarlet Letter expresses in like manner his surprise at the want of refinement in Englishmen:—“I had been struck by the very rough aspect of these John Bulls in their morning garb, their coarse frock-coats, grey hats, check trousers, and stout shoes; at dinner-table it was not at first easy to recognise the same individuals.... But after a while, ‘you see the same rough figure through all the finery, and become sensible that John Bull cannot make himself fine, whatever he may put on. He is a rough animal, and his female is well adapted to him.’”—Hawthorne and His Wife, vol. ii. p. 70. 2 vols. 8vo. Cambridge, U.S.A., 1884.
391 Architects style it Elizabethan, but Sir Walter’s term is not inappropriate.
392 An amanuensis who was employed by Scott at this time.
393 British Hotel, 70 Queen St.
394 See Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 2.
395 See ante, January 15, 1828, p. 111. Mr. Mackenzie of Portmore died in September 1830, when Sir Walter wrote Mr. Skene the following letter:—
“DEAR SKENE,—I observe from the papers that our invaluable friend is no more. I have reason to think, that as I surmised when I saw him last, the interval has been a melancholy one, at least to those who had to watch the progress. I never expected to see his kind face more, after I took leave of him in Charlotte Square; yet the certainty that such must be the case is still a painful shock, as I can never hope again to meet, during the remaining span of my own life, a friend in whom high talents for the business of life were more happily mingled with all those affections which form the dearest part of human intercourse. In that respect I believe his like hardly is to be found. I hope Mrs. Skene and you will make my assurance of deep sympathy, of which they know it is expressed by a friend of poor Colin of fifty years’ standing.
“I hope my young friend, his son, will keep his father’s example before his eyes. His best friend cannot wish him a better model.
“I am just setting off to the West for a long-promised tour of a week. I shall be at Abbotsford after Monday, 27th current, and I hope Mrs. Skene and you, with some of our young friends, will do us the pleasure to come here for a few days. We see how separations may happen among friends, and should not neglect the opportunity of being together while we can. Besides, entre nous, it is time to think what is to be done about the Society, as the time of my retirement draws nigh, and I am determined, at whatever loss, not to drag out the last sands of my life in that sand-cart of a place, the Parliament House. I think it hurt poor Colin. This is, however, subject for future consideration, as I have not breathed a syllable about resigning the Chair to any one, but it must soon follow as a matter of course.C
“Should you think of writing to let me know how the distressed family are, you may direct, during the beginning of next week, to Drumlanrig, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire.
“My kind love attends my dear Mrs. Skene, girls, boys, and all the family, and I am, always yours,
“WALTER SCOTT.
“ABBOTSFORD, 18th September [1830].”
C Sir Walter had been President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for some years; his resignation was not accepted, and he retained the office until he died.
396 Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Sc. 5.
397 1 King Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1.
398 The biography here spoken of was not published.
399 Sir Walter had seats placed at suitable distances between the house and Chiefswood.
400 Titus Andronicus, Act IV. Sc. 2.
401 For an account of these “miracles” see Peace in Believing—a memoir of Isabella Campbell of Fernicarry. Roseneath, 8vo, 1829.
402 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J.G. Lockhart, Esq., was published before the end of the year in Murray’s Family Library.
403 School for Scandal.
404 Sir Walter had written to Morritt on his retirement from the Court of Session, and his old friend responded in the following cordial letter:—
“November, 1830.
“MY DEAR SCOTT,—... I am sorry to read what you tell me of your lameness, but legs are not so obedient to many of us at our age as they were twenty years ago, non immunes ab illis malis sumus, as the learned Partridge and Lilly’s Grammar tells us. I find mine swell, and am forced to bandage, and should not exert them with impunity in walking as I used to do, either in long walks or in rough ground. I am glad, however, you have escaped from the Court of Session, even at the risk of sometimes feeling the want you allude to of winter society. You think you shall tire of solitude in these months: and in spite of books and the love of them, I have discovered by experience the possibility of such a feeling; but can we not in some degree remedy this? Why should we both be within two days’ march of each other and not sometimes together, as of old? How I have enjoyed in your house the summum bonum of Sir Wm. Temple’s philosophy, ‘something which is not Home and yet with the liberty of Home, which is not Solitude, and yet hath the ease of Solitude, and which is only found in the house of an old friend.’ Our summer months are well provided with summer friends. You have plenty and to spare of sightseers, Lions, and their hunters, and I have travellers, moor-shooters, etc., in equal abundance, but now when the country is abandoned, and Walter is leaving you, how I wish you would bring dear Anne and partake for a while our little circle here—we stir not till Christmas—if before that time such a pleasure could be attainable. Well, then, for auld lang syne, will you not, now that the Session has no claim on you, combine our forces against the possibility of ennui. If you will do this, I will positively, and in good faith, hold myself in readiness to do as much by you in the next November, and in every alternate November, nor shall the month ever pass without bringing us together. Do not tell me, as Wm. Rose would not fail to do if I gave him so good an opportunity, that my proposal would be a greater bore than the solitude it destroyed. It shall be no such thing, but only the trouble of a journey. I feel too, as I grow older, the vis inertiæ, and fancy that locomotion is more difficult, but let us abjure the doctrine, for it baulks much pleasure. Pray—pray as the children say—come to us, think of it first as not impossible, then weigh fairly the objections, and if they resolve themselves into mere aversion to change, overcome them by an assurance that the very change will give value to the resumption of your home avocations. If I plead thus strongly, perhaps it is because I feel the advantage to myself. Time has made gaps in the list of old friends as in yours; young ones, though very cheering and useful, are not, and cannot be, the same. I enjoy them too when present, but in absence I regret the others. What remains but to make the most of those we have still left when both body and mind permit us [to enjoy] them. I have books; also a room that shall [be your own], and a [pony] off which I can shoot, which I will engage shall neither tumble himself or allow you to tumble in any excursion on which you may venture. Dear Anne will find and make my womenkind as happy as you will make me, and we have only to beg you to stay long and be most cordially welcome.... Adieu, dear Scott. I fear you will not come for all I can say. I could almost lose a tooth or a finger (if it were necessary) to find myself mistaken. Come, and come soon; stay long; be assured of welcome.
“All unite in this and in love to you and Anne, with your assured friend,
J.B. MORRITT.”
405 See Life, vol. x. pp. 10-25.
406 “From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show.”
—Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes.
407 Mr. Cadell and Mr. Ballantyne had arrived at Abbotsford on the 18th, bringing with them the good news from Edinburgh of the payment of the second dividend, and of the handsome conduct of the creditors. There had been a painful discussion between them and Sir Walter during the early part of the winter on Count Robert of Paris, particulars of which are given in the Life (vol. x. pp. 6, 10-17, 21-23), but they found their host much better than they had ventured to anticipate, and he made the gift of his library the chief subject of conversation during the evening. Next morning Mr. Ballantyne was asked to read aloud a political essay on Reform—intended to be a Fourth Epistle of Malachi. After careful consideration, the critical arbiters concurred in condemning the production, but suggested a compromise. His friends left him on the 21st, and the essay, though put in type, was never published. Proof and MS. were finally consigned to the flames!—Life, vol. x. pp. 21-25.
408 An account of this incident is given by an eye-witness, Mr. Peter Rodger, Procurator-Fiscal, who says: “The prisoner, thinking it a good chance of escaping, made a movement in direction of the door. This Sir Walter detected in time to descend from the Bench and place himself in the desperate man’s path. ‘Never!’ said he; ‘if you do, it will be over the body of an old man.’ Whereupon the other officials of the Court came to the Sheriff’s assistance and the prisoner was secured.”—Craig-Brown’s Selkirkshire, vol. ii. p. 141.
409 Count Robert of Paris.
410 Hudibras.
411 John Swanston, a forester at Abbotsford, who did all he could to replace Tom Purdie.—Life, vol. x. p. 66.
412 Dr. Ferguson, Sir Adam’s father, died in 1816.—See Misc. Prose Works, vol. xix. pp. 331-33.
413 See Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 1.
414 Æneid v. 194-7: thus rendered in English by Professor Conington:—
’Tis not the palm that Mnestheus seeks:
No hope of Victory fires his cheeks:
Yet, O that thought!—but conquer they
To whom great Neptune wills the day:
Not to be last make that your aim,
And triumph by averting shame.
415 King Richard the Third, Act IV. Sc. 2.
416 Mr. G.P.R. James, author of Richelieu, etc. He afterwards took Maxpopple for the season.
417 Mr. Skene tells us that when No. 39 Castle Street was “displenished” in 1826, Scott sent him the full-length portrait of himself by Raeburn, now at Abbotsford, saying that he did not hesitate to claim his protection for the picture, which was threatened to be paraded under the hammer of the auctioneer, and he felt that his interposition to turn aside that buffet might admit of being justified. “As a piece of successful art, many might fancy the acquisition, but for the sake of the original he knew no refuge where it was likely to find a truer welcome. The picture accordingly remained many years in my possession, but when his health had begun to break, and the plan of his going abroad was proposed, I thought it would be proper to return the picture, for which purpose I had a most successful copy made of it, an absolute facsimile, for when the two were placed beside each, other it was almost impossible to determine which was the original and which the copy.”—Reminiscences. Thus forestalling the wish expressed in the affecting letter now given, which belongs to this day. See ante, vol. i. p. 136 n.
“MY DEAR SKENE,—I have had no very pleasant news to send you, as I know it will give Mrs. Skene and you pain to know that I am suffering under a hundred little ailments which have greatly encroached upon the custom of the season which I used to take. On this I could say much, but it is better to leave alone what must be said with painful feeling, and you would be vexed with reading.
“One thing I will put to rights with all others respecting my little personal affairs. I am putting [in order] this house with what it contains, and as Walter will probably be anxious to have a memorial of my better days, I intend to beg you and my dear Mrs. Skene... to have it [the picture] copied by such an artist as you should approve of, to supply the blank which must then be made on your hospitable walls with the shadow of a shade. If the opportunity should occur of copying the picture to your mind, I will be happy to have the copy as soon as possible. You must not think that I am nervous or foolishly apprehensive that I take these precautions. They are necessary and right, and if one puts off too long, we sometimes are unfit for the task when we desire to take it up....
“When the weather becomes milder, I hope Mrs. Skene and you, and some of the children, will come out to brighten the chain of friendship with your truly faithful,
WALTER SCOTT.
“ABBOTSFORD, 16 January 1831.”
418 Sir W. alludes to Mrs. Piozzi’s Tale of The Three Warnings.—J.G.L.
419 Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.
420 Eccles. xii. 3.
421 Crabbe’s Borough, Letter xiii.—J.G.L.
422 See Pirate.
423 The deer-hound Bran which was presented by Macpherson of Cluny; Nimrod was Glengarry’s gift.—See letter to Miss Edgeworth, printed in Life, vol. ix. p. 345.
424 I Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 3.
425 No. 1 Castle Street.
426 “His host perceived that he was unfit for any company but the quietest, and had sometimes one old friend, Mr. Thomson, Mr. Clerk, or Mr. Skene to dinner, but no more. He seemed glad to see them, but they all observed him with pain. He never took the lead in conversation, and often remained altogether silent. In the mornings he wrote usually for several hours at Count Robert; and Mr. Cadell remembers in particular, that on Ballantyne’s reminding him that a motto was wanted for one of the chapters already finished, he looked out for a moment at the gloomy weather, and penned these lines—
‘The storm increases—’tis no sunny shower,
Foster’d in the moist breast of March or April,
Or such as parched summer cools his lips with.
Heaven’s windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps
Call in hoarse greeting one upon another;
On comes the flood in all its foaming horrors,
And where’s the dyke shall stop it?’”—The Deluge—a Poem.
—Life, vol. x. p. 37.
427 A skilful mechanist, who, by a clever piece of handiwork, gave Sir Walter great relief, but only for a brief period.—Life, vol. x, p. 38.
428 Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.
429 Lear, Act III. Sc. 4.
430 Colman the elder.
431 The British Herald, by Thomas Robson, 3 vols. 4to, 1830. Mr. Lockhart says this review never was published.
432 Mr. Andrew Lang, Sheriff and Commissary Clerk, and Clerk of Peace, for Selkirkshire, grandfather of Mr. Andrew Lang, the accomplished poet and man of letters of the present time. The tact and ability of the grandfather are noticed by Sir Walter in his letter to Lord Montagu of Oct. 3, 1819, describing Prince Leopold at Selkirk.—Life, vol. vi. p. 131.
433 This proposal, resisted successfully in 1832, has since been put in force so far as Parliament is concerned.
434 I Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 3.
435 Taming of the Shrew, Introd.
436 As this is the last reference to the Ettrick Shepherd in the Journal, it may be noted that Sir Walter, as late as March 23d, 1832, was still desirous to promote Hogg’s welfare. In writing from Naples he says, in reference to the Shepherd’s social success in London, “I am glad Hogg has succeeded so well. I hope he will make hay while the sun shines; but he must be aware that the Lion of this season always becomes the Boar of the next.... I will subscribe the proper sum, i.e. what you think right, for Hogg, by all means; and I pray God, keep farms and other absurd temptations likely to beset him out of his way. He has another chance for comfort if he will use common sense with his very considerable genius.”
437 This expression of irritation can easily be understood after reading the passages referred to in the twenty-ninth volume of Blackwood’s Magazine, pp. 30-35, and 535-544. Readers of this Journal have seen what uphill work these “Letters on Demonology” were to the author, but the unsparing criticism of Christopher North must have appeared to the author as a very unfriendly act, more especially, he thought, if the critic really knew the conditions under which the book had been written.
438 Mr. Lockhart says:—“He proposed one of the Tory resolutions in a speech of some length, but delivered in a tone so low, and with such hesitation in utterance, that only a few detached passages were intelligible to the bulk of the audience.”—See Life, vol. x. pp. 46-8.
439 The passing of the great Reform Bill in the House of Commons on the 22d March.
440 His friend Richardson, who was a Whig, writes him from London on February 14:—“What a singular feeling it was to me to find Brougham Lord Chancellor, and Jeffrey and Cockburn in their present stations! I am afraid that the spirit of reform goes at present beyond the limits to which even the Government will go—and but for the large stock of good sense and feeling which I think yet pervades the country, I should tremble for the future.”
441 Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 1.
442 Stulko or Stulk (? Stocaire, in Irish), a word formerly in common use among the Irish, signifying an idle, lazy, good-for-nothing fellow.
443 Mary Campbell, Lady Ruthven, for whom the picture was painted, was not only the friend of Scott, but she held relations more or less close with nearly every one famous in Art and Literature during the greater part of the nineteenth century. No mean artist herself, and though, perhaps, not a clever letter-writer, she had among her correspondents some of the most brilliant men of her day. She survived all her early friends, but had the gift of being attractive to the young, and for three generations was the delight of their children and grandchildren. Those who were privileged to share in the refined hospitality of Winton, never forgot either the picturesque old house (the supposed Ravenswood Castle of the Bride of Lammermoor), or its venerable mistress as she sat of an evening in her unique drawing-room, the walls of which were adorned with pictures of Grecian temple and landscape, her own handiwork in days long gone by when she was styled by her friends Queen of Athens. Her conversation, after she was ninety, was fresh and vigorous; and, despite blindness and imperfect hearing, she kept herself well acquainted with the affairs of the day. The last great speech in Parliament, or the newest bon mot, were equally acceptable and equally relished. Her sense of humour and fun made her, at times, forget her own sufferings, and her splendid memory enabled her to while away many a sleepless hour by repeating long passages from the Bible or Milton. The former she had so much in her heart that it was scarcely possible to believe she was not reading from the Book. Above all was her truly divine gift of charity, the practical application of which, in her every-day life, was only bounded by her means.
It was said of her by one who knew her well—
“She lived to a great age, dispensing kindness and benevolence to the last, and cheered in the sore infirmities of her later years by the love of friends of all ranks, and all parties of all ages.
“The Living Lamp of Lothian, which from Winton, has so long shed its beneficent lustre, has been extinguished, but not so will be lost the memory of the gifted lady, for by not a few will still be cherished the recollection of her noble nature, and of her Christian life.”
Lady Ruthven prized the picture referred to. She would not, as Sir Francis Grant relates,D permit him to touch the canvas after it left the Abbotsford studio; and it remained a cherished possession which she took pride in showing to appreciative guests, pointing out the details of face and form which she still saw with that inner eye, which time had not darkened.
It is now in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland—bequeathed to the nation with other pictures, as well as the magnificent collection of Greek archaeological objects gathered by herself and Lord Ruthven in their early married life. She was born in 1789, and died in 1885.
444 Robert Dundas of Arniston, Esq., the worthy representative of an illustrious lineage, died at his paternal seat in June 1838.—J.G.L. See Arniston Memoirs—Three Centuries of a Scottish House, 1571-1838. Edin. 8vo, 1887.
D See long and interesting letter of June 5, 1872, from Sir Francis to Sir W.S. Maxwell.—Laing’s Catalogue, pp. 72-81.
445 Henry Liddell, second Baron Ravensworth, author of a translation of the Odes of Horace, a volume of Latin Poems, etc.
446 In a letter from Sir Walter to his son-in-law, of April 11th, he says:—
“When you can take an hour to think of this, I will be glad to hear from you.... I am in possession of five or six manuscripts, copies, or large extracts, taken under my own eyes. Croker thinks, and I am of his opinion, that if there was room for a personal narrative of the character, it would answer admirably.”
447 This gentleman, a brother to the Laird of Raeburn, had made some fortune in the East Indies, and bestowed the name of Ravenswood on a villa which he built near Melrose. He died in 1831.—J.G.L.
448 The Manuscripts were sold by auction in London on August 19th, 1831, and the prices realised fell far short of what might have been expected, e.g. (1) Monastery, £18; (2) Guy Mannering, £27, 10s.; (3) Old Mortality, £33; (4) Antiquary, £42; (5) Rob Roy, £50; (6) Peveril of the Peak, £42; (7) Waverley, £18; (8) Abbot, £14; (9) Ivanhoe, £12; (10) Pirate, £12; (11) Nigel, £16, 16s.; (12) Kenilworth, £17; (13) Bride of Lammermoor, £14, 14s.—Total £317.—See David Laing’s Catalogue, pp. 99-108, for an account of the dispersion and sales of the original MSS., prose and poetry.
449 Miss J. Erskine, a daughter of Lord Kinnedder’s. She died in 1838.—J.G.L.
450 The Rev. N. Paterson, author of The Manse Garden; afterwards minister of St. Andrew’s, Glasgow. He died in 1871. Mr. Paterson was a grandson of Robert Paterson, “Old Mortality,” and brother of the Rev. Walter Paterson, minister of Kirkurd, author of the Legend of Iona—a poem written in imitation of the style of Scott, and in which he recognises his obligations to Sir Walter in the following terms:—“From him I derived courage to persevere in an undertaking on which I had often reflected with terror and distrust.”—Legend, notes, p. 305.
451 Mr. John Smith of Darnick, the builder of Abbotsford, and architect of these bridges.—J.G.L.
452 This gentleman died in Edinburgh on the 4th February 1838.—J.G.L.
453 The late Captain Watson, R.N., was distantly related to Sir Walter’s mother. His son, Sir John Watson Gordon, rose to great eminence as a painter; and his portraits of Scott and Hogg rank among his best pieces. He became President of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1850, died in 1864, leaving funds to endow a Chair of Fine Arts in the Edinburgh University.
454 Mr. W.F. Skene, Historiographer Royal for Scotland, and son of Scott’s dear friend, has been good enough to give me his recollections of these days:—
“On referring to my Diary for the year 1831 I find the following entry: ‘This Spring, on 31st April, I went with my father to Abbotsford and left on Sir Walter Scott being taken ill.’ The date here given for my visit does not correspond with that in Sir Walter’s Diary, but, as there are only thirty days in April it has evidently been written by mistake for the 13th. I had just attained my twenty-first year, and as such a visit at that early age was a great event in my life, I retain a very distinct recollection of the main features of it. I recollect that Lord Meadowbank and his eldest son Alan came at the same time, and the dinner party, at which Mr. Pringle of the Haining and his brother were present. The day after our arrival Sir Walter asked me to drive with him. We went in his open carriage to the Yarrow, where we got out, and Sir Walter, leaning on my arm, walked up the side of the river, pouring forth a continuous stream of anecdotes, traditions, and scraps of ballads. I was in the seventh heaven of delight, and thought I had never spent such a day. On Sunday Sir Walter did not come down to breakfast, but sent a message to say that he had caught cold and had taken some medicine for it the night before, which had made him ill, and would remain in bed. When we sat at either lunch or dinner, I do not recollect which, Sir Walter walked into the room and sat down near the table, but ate nothing. He seemed in a dazed state, and took no notice of any one, but after a few minutes’ silence, during which his daughter Anne, who was at table, and was watching him with some anxiety, motioned to us to take no notice, he began in a quiet voice to tell us a story of a pauper lunatic, who, fancying he was a rich man, and was entertaining all sorts of high persons to the most splendid banquets, communicated to his doctor in confidence that there was one thing that troubled him much, and which he could not account for, and that was that all these exquisite dishes seemed to him to taste of oatmeal porridge. Sir Walter told this with much humour, and after a few minutes’ silence began again, and told the same story over a second time, and then again a third time.E His daughter, who was watching him with increasing anxiety, then motioned to us to rise from table, and persuaded her father to return to his bedroom. Next day the doctor, who had been sent for, told us that he was seriously ill, and advised that his guests should leave at once, so that the house might be kept quiet and his daughter devote herself entirely to the care of her father. We accordingly left at once, and I never saw Sir Walter again. I still, however, retain a memorial of my visit. I had fallen into indifferent health in the previous year, and been recommended Highland air. By Sir Walter’s advice I was sent to live with a friend of his, the Reverend Doctor Macintosh Mackay, then minister of Laggan, in the Inverness-shire Highlands, and had passed my time learning from him the Gaelic language. This excited in me a taste for Celtic Antiquities, and finding in Sir Walter’s Library a copy of O’Connor’s Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores veteres, I sat up one night transcribing from it the Annals of Tighernac. This transcript is still in my library.—WILLIAM F. SKENE.
“27 INVERLEITH ROW,
Sept. 1890.”
E An echo of one of his own singular illustrations (see Letters on Demonology) of the occasional collision between a disturbed imagination and the organs of sense.
455 Æneid II. 62.
456 Falconer’s Shipwreck, p. 162—“The Storm.” 12mo ed. London, Albion Press, 1810.
457 Scotch Metrical Version of the 90th Psalm.
458 On the 18th October Sir Walter sent Mr. Burn the following inscription for the monument he had commissioned, and which now stands in the churchyard of Irongray:—
“This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory of Helen Walker, who died in the year of God 1791. This humble individual practised in real life the virtues with which fiction has invested the imaginary character of Jeanie Deans; refusing the slightest departure from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless showed her kindness and fortitude, in rescuing her from the severity of the law, at the expense of personal exertions, which the time rendered as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of Poverty when combined with the love of Truth and dear affection.”
It is well known that on the publication of Old Mortality many people were offended by what was considered a caricature of the Covenanters, and that Dr. M’Crie, the biographer of Knox, wrote a series of papers in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, which Scott affected to despise, and said he would not read. He not only was obliged to read the articles, but found it necessary to inspire or write an elaborate defence of the truth of his own picture of the Covenanters in the Number for January 1817 of the Quarterly Review.
In June 1818, however, he made ample amends, and won the hearts of all classes of his countrymen by his beautiful pictures of national character in the Heart of Midlothian.
It is worth noticing also that ten years later, viz., in December 1828, his friend Richardson having written that in the Tales of a Grandfather “You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in Old Mortality. His character is inconceivable to me: the atrocity of his murder of those peasants, as undauntedly devoted to their own good cause as himself to his, his personal (almost hangman-like) superintendence of their executions, are wholly irreconcilable with a chivalrous spirit, which, however scornful of the lowly, could never, in my mind, be cruel,” Scott, in reply, gave his matured opinion in the following words:—
“As to Covenanters and Malignants, they were both a set of cruel and bloody bigots, and had, notwithstanding, those virtues with which bigotry is sometimes allied. Their characters were of a kind much more picturesque than beautiful; neither had the least idea either of toleration or humanity, so that it happens that, so far as they can be distinguished from each other, one is tempted to hate most the party which chances to be uppermost for the time.”
459 See Miss Ferrier’s account of this visit prefixed to Mr. Bentley’s choice edition of her works, 6 vols. cr. 8vo, London, 1881.
460 Mr. Carruthers remarks in his Abbotsford Notanda:—“Joanna Baillie published a thin volume of selections from the New Testament ‘regarding the nature and dignity of Jesus Christ.’ The tendency of the work was Socinian, or at least Arian, and Scott was indignant that his friend should have meddled with such a subject. ‘What had she to do with questions of that sort?’ He refused to add the book to his library and gave it to Laidlaw.”—p. 179.
461 A long staff.
462 See Crabbe’s Sir Eustace Grey.
463 Life, vol. x. pp. 100-1.
464 See Life, vol. x. pp. 76-106.
465 See “Ellandonan Castle,” in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Scott’s Poetical Works, vol. iv. p. 361.
466 Now the Bishop of St. Andrews. As has been already said, Wordsworth arrived on the 19th and left on the 22d September, i.e. the visit lasted from Monday till Thursday. There are no dates in the Journal between May 25 and October 8, but Wordsworth says, “At noon on Thursday we left Abbotsford, and on the morning of that day Sir Walter and I had a serious conversation tête-à-tête, when he spoke with gratitude of the happy life which upon the whole he had led.”—Knight’s Wordsworth, vol. iii. p. 201.
467 Wordsworth notes that on placing the volume in his daughter’s hand, Sir Walter said, “I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father’s sake; they are probably the last verses I shall ever write.”—Knight’s Wordsworth, vol. iii. p. 201.
468 Lord Brougham.
469 The introductory address to Count Robert of Paris bears the date October 15th, 1831.
470 Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.
471 See Moore’s edition of Byron’s Works, vol. vii. pp. 43-44, note.
472 Scott’s views received strong confirmation a few days later at Bristol, where the authorities, through mistaken humanity, hesitated to order the military to act.
473 At Malta, accordingly, we find Sir Walter making inquiry regarding this Arabian conjurer, and writing to Mr. Lockhart, on Nov. 1831, in the following terms:—
“I have got a key to the conjuring story of Alexandria and Grand Cairo. I have seen very distinct letters of Sir John Stoddart’s son, who attended three of the formal exhibitions which broke down, though they were repeated afterwards with success. Young Stoddart is an excellent Arabian scholar—an advantage which I understand is more imperfectly enjoyed by Lord Prudhoe and Colonel Felix. Much remains to be explained, but the boldness of the attempt exceeds anything since the days of the Automaton chess-player, or the Bottle conjurer. The first time Shakespeare was evoked he appeared in the complexion of an Arab. This seems to have been owing to the first syllable of his name, which resembled the Arabian word Sheik, and suggested the idea of an Arabian chief to the conjurer. A gentleman named Galloway has bought the secret, and talks of being frightened. There can be little doubt that, having so far interested himself, it would become his interest to put the conjurer more up to the questions likely to be asked. So he was more perfect when consulted by Lord Prudhoe than at first, when he made various blunders, and when we must needs say falsum in uno falsum in omnibus. As all this will come out one day, I have no wish to mingle in the controversy.... There are still many things to explain, but I think the mystery is unearthed completely.”
See also Lane’s Egyptians for an account of what appears to be the same man in 1837. Also Quarterly Review, No. 117, pp. 196-208, for an examination of this “Magic Mirror” exhibition.
474 A hoard of seventy-eight chessmen found in the island of Lewis in 1831. The greater number of the figures were purchased for the British Museum, and formed the subject of a learned dissertation by Sir Frederick Madden; see Archæologia, xxiv. Eleven of these very interesting pieces fell into the hands of Scott’s friend, C.K. Sharpe, and afterwards of Lord Londesborough. More recently these identical pieces were purchased for the Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, where they now are. See Proc. Soc. Antiq., vol. xxiii.
475 Sir John Malcolm, who was at this time M.P. for Launceston. His last public appearance was in London, at a meeting convened for the purpose of raising a monument of his friend Sir Walter, and his concluding words were, that when he himself “was gone, his son might be proud to say that his father had been among the contributors to that shrine of genius.” Sir John was struck down by paralysis on the following day, and died in May 1833.
476 The celebrated Brahmin philosopher and theist; born in Bengal about 1774, died at Stapleton Grove, near Bristol, September 27, 1833.
477 Sir Walter’s fears for the country were also shared by some of the wisest men in it. The Duke of Wellington, it is well known, was most desponding, and he anticipated greater horror from a convulsion here than in any other European nation.
Talleyrand said to the Duke during the Reform Bill troubles, “Duke of Wellington, you have seen a great deal of the world. Can you point out to me any one place in Europe where an old man could go to and be quite sure of being safe and dying in peace?”—Stanhope Notes, p. 224.
478 See Mr. Charles Cowan’s privately printed Reminiscences for Scott’s recollections of his visit to Portsmouth in 1816, and his stories, of the wonders he had seen, to the little boy at his side.
479 Compare Froude’s History, vol. iv. p. 424.
480 Mr. Horace Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses.
481 An anonymous novel, published some years earlier in 4 vols. 12mo.
482 Cowper’s Monody.
483 See Sailor’s Song, Cease, rude Boreas, etc., ante, p. 402: “The Storm.”
484 See ante, vol. i. p. 253, note.
485 Lasting from 21st June 1779 to 6th February 1783.
486 Compare the reflection of the Chevalier d’Arcon, the contriver of the floating batteries. He remained on board the Talla Piedra till past midnight, and wrote to the French Ambassador in the first hours of his anguish: “I have burnt the Temple of Ephesus; everything is gone, and through my fault! What comforts me under my calamity is that the honour of the two kings remains untarnished.”—Mahon’s History of England, vol. vii. p. 290.
487 Nothing like these Bristol riots had occurred since those in Birmingham in 1791.—Martineau’s History of the Peace, p. 353. The Tranent (East Lothian) and Bonnymoor (Stirlingshire) conflicts took place in 1797 and 1820; the Manchester riot in 1826.
488 Afterwards Admiral Sir Baldwin Walker, so long in command of the Turkish Navy.
489 See long letter to Mr. Skene in Life, vol. x. pp. 126-130.
490 In the memorable siege of 1565.
491 Manuel de Vilhena, Grand-Master 1722-1736.
492 An example of the rigour with which the Quarantine laws were enforced is given by Sir Walter on the 24th:—“We had an instance of the strictness of these regulations from an accident which befell us as we entered the harbour. One of our seamen was brushed from the main yard, fell into the sea and began to swim for his life. The Maltese boats bore off to avoid giving him assistance, but an English boat, less knowing, picked up the poor fellow, and were immediately assigned to the comforts of the Quarantine, that being the Maltese custom of rewarding humanity.”—Letter to J.G.L.
493 High Admiral of the Turkish fleet before Malta, and slain there in 1565. See Dragut the Corsair, in Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads.
494 The dates are not to be absolutely depended upon during the Malta visit, as they appear to have been added subsequently by Sir Walter.
495 Wife of the Lieut.-Governor, Colonel Seymour Bathurst.
496 In 1790 the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem consisted of eight “Lodges” or “Languages,” viz.: France, Auvergne, Provence, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Anglo-Bavaria.—Hoare’s Tour, vol. i. p. 28.
497 John Hookham Frere, the disciple of Pitt, and bosom friend of Canning, made Malta his home from 1820 till 1846; he died there on January 7th. He was in deep affliction at the time of Scott’s arrival, having lost his wife a few months before, but he welcomed his old friend with a melancholy pleasure.
For Scott’s high opinion of Frere, as far back as 1804, see Life, vol. ii. p. 207 and note.
498 Grandmaster of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and defender of Malta against Solyman in 1565.
499 By “Board of Literature” Scott doubtless means the Royal Society of Literature, instituted in 1824 under the patronage of George iv.; see ante, vol. i. pp. 390-91. Besides the members who paid a subscription there were ten associates, of whom Coleridge was one, who each received an annuity of a hundred guineas from the King’s bounty. When William IV. succeeded his brother in 1830, he declined to continue these annuities. Representations were made to the Government, and the then Prime Minister, Earl Grey, offered Coleridge a private grant of £200 from the Treasury, which he declined.
The pension from the Society or the Privy Purse of George iv., which Mr. Hookham Frere told Sir Walter he had made up to Coleridge, was one hundred guineas.
500 Afterwards Lord Berwick.
501 The travellers established themselves in the Palazzo Caramanico as soon as they were released from quarantine.
502 A brother of Malcolm Laing, the historian.
503 An account is given by Sir William Gell of an excursion by sea to the ruins of such a Roman villa on the promontory of Posilipo, to which he had taken Sir Walter in a boat on the 26th of January.—Life, vol. x. pp. 157-8.
504 For a picturesque sketch of Naples during the insurrection of 1647 see Sir Walter’s article on Masaniello and the Duke of Guise.—Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. iv. pp. 355-403.
505 See Appendix iv.: “A former Empress.” Sir Walter no doubt means the mother of Conradin of Suabia, or, as the Italians call him, Corradino,—erroneously called “Empress,” though her husband had pretensions to the Imperial dignity, disputed and abortive. For the whole affecting story see Histoire de la Conquête de Naples, St. Priest, vol. iii. pp. 130-185, especially pp. 162-3.
506 A variation of the lines on Alphonso’s capture of the city in 1442:—
“And then he looked on Naples, that great city of the sea,
‘O city,’ saith the King, ‘how great hath been thy cost,
For thee I twenty years—my fairest years—have lost.’”
—Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads, “The King of Arragon.”
507 Sir William Gell styles him “Archbishop,” and adds that at this time he was in his ninetieth year. Can this prelate be Rogers’s “Good Old Cardinal,” who told the pleasant tale of the Bag of Gold, and is immortalised by the pencil of Landseer seated at table en famille with three of his velvet favourites? See Italy, fcp. 8vo, 1838, p. 302.
508 This is the last notice in the Journal by Sir Walter of his dear friend. James Skene of Rubislaw died at Frewen Hall, Oxford, in 1864, in his ninetieth year. His faculties remained unimpaired throughout his serene and beautiful old age, until the end was very near—then, one evening his daughter found him with a look of inexpressible delight on his face, when he said to her “I have had such a great pleasure! Scott has been here—he came from a long distance to see me, he has been sitting with me at the fireside talking over our happy recollections of the past....” Two or three days later he followed his well loved friend into the unseen world—gently and calmly like a child falling asleep he passed away in perfect peace.
509 John Hugh Lockhart died December 15, 1831.
510 Sir W. Gell relates that an old English manuscript of the Romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton, existing in Naples, had attracted Scott’s attention, and he resolved to make a copy of it.
The transcript is now in the Library at Abbotsford, under the title, Old English Romances, transcribed from MSS. in the Royal Library at Naples, by Sticchini, 2 vols. sm. 8vo.
511 See Appendix v. for Mr. Andrew Lang’s letter on this subject.
512 The forty-shilling gold piece coined by James V. of Scotland.
513 Sword-blades of peculiar excellence bearing the name of this maker have been known in Scotland since the reign of James IV.
514 Altered from Wordsworth.
515 The editor of Reliquiæ Antiquæ (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1843), writing ten years after this visit, says, that “The Chevalier de Licteriis [Chief Librarian in the Royal Library] showed him the manuscript, and well remembered his drawing Sir Walter’s attention to it in 1832.”
516 Sir W. Gell records that on the morning he received the good news he called upon him and said he felt quite relieved by his letters, and added, “I could never have slept straight in my coffin till I had satisfied every claim against me; and now,” turning to a favourite dog that was with them in the carriage he said, “My poor boy, I shall have my house and my estate round it free, and I may keep my dogs as big and as many as I choose without fear of reproach.”—Life, vol. X. p. 160.
517 Viz, Faldonside, an estate adjacent to Abbotsford which Scott had long wished to possess. As far back as November 1817 he wrote a friend: “My neighbour, Nicol Milne, is mighty desirous I should buy, at a mighty high rate, some land between me and the lake which lies mighty convenient, but I am mighty determined to give nothing more than the value, so that it is likely to end like the old proverb, Ex Nichilo Nichil fit.”
518 Probably Pauline; married to Hon. Augustus Craven, and author of Récit d’une Sœur.
519 Daughter of Colonel Hugh Duncan Baillie, of Tarradale and Redcastle.
520 Of this visit to Pompeii Sir W. Gell says—“Sir Walter viewed the whole with a poet’s eye, not that of an antiquarian, exclaiming frequently, ‘The city of the Dead!’”
He examined, however, with more interest the “splendid mosaic representing a combat of the Greeks and the Persians.”—Life, vol. x. p. 159.
521 The places are now known as Nocera Superiore and Nocera Inferiore.
522 Paese dei Marsi or Marsica.
523 Jerome Bonaparte, ex-King of Westphalia.
524 The sea marsh “Cameria” is not indicated in the latest maps of Italy, but it would appear that some such name in the Pontine Bogs had recalled to Sir Walter the ancient proverb relating to Camarina, that Sicilian city on the marsh “which Fate forbad to drain.”—Conington’s Virgil (Æn. iii. 700-1).
525 Porta St. Giovanni, rebuilt by Gregory XIII. in 1574.
526 It is much to be regretted that Scott and Carlyle never met. The probable explanation is that the admirable letter now printed in extenso, coming into a house where there was sickness, and amid the turmoil of London life, was carefully laid aside for reply at a more convenient season. This season, unfortunately, never came. Scott did not return to Scotland until June 3d, and by that time Carlyle had left Edinburgh and settled at Craigenputtock. He must, however, have seen Scott subsequently, as he depicts him in the memorable words, “Alas! his fine Scottish face, with its shaggy honesty and goodness, when we saw it latterly in the Edinburgh streets, was all worn with care—the joy all fled from it, and ploughed deep with labour and sorrow.”
Mr. Lockhart once said to a friend that he regretted that they had never met, and gave as a reason the state of Scott’s health.
527 This purpose Goethe seems to have carried out, for in the “Chronologie” which is printed in the two-volume edition of his works, published at Stuttgart 1837 (vol. ii. page 663), the following entry is found:—“1827. Ueber neuere französische Literatur.—Ueber chinesische Gedichte.—Ueber das Leben Napoleon’s von Walter Scott.”