The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Part 60

_February_ 23.--Morning proof-sheets galore. Then to Parliament House.

After that, at one, down to Sir William MacLeod Bannatyne, who has made some discoveries concerning Bannatyne the collector of poetry, and furnished me with some notes to that purpose. He informs me that the MacLeod, alias MacCruiskin, who met Dr. Johnson on the Isle of Skye, was Mr. Alexander MacLeod, Advocate, a son of MacLeod of Muiravonside. He was subject to fits of insanity at times, very clever at others.[137]

Sir William mentioned the old Laird of Bernera, who, summoned by his Chief to join him with all the men he could make, when the Chief was raising his men for Government, sent him a letter to this purpose:--"Dear Laird,--No man would like better to be at your back than I would; but on this occasion it cannot be. I send my men, who are at your service; for myself, higher duties carry me elsewhere." He went off accordingly alone, and joined Raasay as a volunteer. I returned by the printing office and found J.B. in great feather. He tells me Cadell, on squaring his books and making allowance for bad debts, has made between 3000 and 4000, lodged in bank. He does nothing but with me.

Thus we stand on velvet as to finance. Met Staffa,[138] who walked with me and gave me some Gaelic words which I wanted.

I may mention that I saw at the printing-office a part of a review on Leigh Hunt's Anecdotes of Byron. It is written with power, apparently by Professor Wilson, but with a degree of pa.s.sion which rather diminishes the effect; for nothing can more lessen the dignity of the satirist than being or seeming to be in a pa.s.sion. I think it may come to a b.l.o.o.d.y arbitrament,[139] for if L.H. should take it up as a gentleman, Wilson is the last man to flinch. I hope Lockhart will not be dragged in as second or otherwise. Went to Jeffrey's to dinner--there were Mrs. and Miss Sydney Smith, Lords Gillies and Corehouse, etc. etc.

_February_ 24.--I fancy I had drunk a gla.s.s or two over much last night, for I have the heartburn this morning. But a little magnesia salves that sore. Meantime I have had an _inspiration_ which shows me my good angel has not left me. For these two or three days I have been at what the "Critic" calls a dead-lock[140]--all my incidents and personages ran into a gordian knot of confusion, to which I could devise no possible extrication. I had thought on the subject several days with something like the despair which seized the fair princess, commanded by her ugly step-mother to a.s.sort a whole garret full of tangled silk threads of every kind and colour, when in comes Prince Percinet with a wand, whisks it over the miscellaneous ma.s.s, and lo! all the threads are as nicely arranged as in a seamstress' housewife. It has often happened to me that when I went to bed with my head as ignorant as my shoulders what I was to do next, I have waked in the morning with a distinct and accurate conception of the mode, good or bad, in which the plot might be extricated. It seems to me that the action of the intellect, on such occasions, is rather accelerated by the little fever which an extra gla.s.s of wine produces on the system. Of course excess is out of the question. Now this may seem strange, but it is quite true; and it is no less so that I have generally written to the middle of one of these novels, without having the least idea how it was to end, in short in the _hab nab at a venture_ style of composition. So now, this. .h.i.tch being over, I fold my paper, lock up my journal, and proceed to labour with good hope.

_February_ 25.--This being Monday, I carried on my work according to the new model. Dined at home and in quiet. But I may notice that yesterday Mr. Williams, the learned Rector of our new Academy, who now leaves us, took his dinner here. We had a long philological tete-a-tete. He is opinionative, as he has some t.i.tle to be, but very learned, and with a juster view of his subject than is commonly entertained, for he traces words to the same source--not from sound but sense. He casts backwards thus to the root, while many compare the ends of the twigs without going further.

This night I went to the funeral of Mr. Henderson, late of Eildon Hall, a kind-hearted man, who rose to great wealth by honest means, and will be missed and regretted.

In the evening I went to the promenade in the Exhibition of Pictures, which was splendidly lighted up and filled with fashionable company. I think there was a want of beauty,--or perhaps the gas-lights were unfavourable to the ladies' looks.

_February_ 26.--Business filled up the day till one, when I sat to Mr.

Smith. Tedious work, even though Will Clerk chaperoned me. We dined at Archie Swinton's. Met Lord Lothian, Lord Cringletie, etc. This day I have wrought almost nothing, but I am nearly half a volume before the press. Lord Morton,[141] married to a daughter of my friend Sir George Rose, is come to Edinburgh. He seems a very gentlemanlike man, and she pleasing and willing to be pleased. I had the pleasure to be of some little use to him in his election as one of the Scottish Peers. I owe Sir George Rose much for his attention to Walter at Berlin.

_February_ 27.--At Court till half-past two. Then to the Waterloo Tavern, where we had a final and totally unfructuous meeting with the Committee of the Coal Gas people. So now my journey to London is resolved on. I shall lose at least 500 by the job, and get little thanks from those I make the sacrifice for. But the sacrifice shall be made. Anything is better than to break one's word, or desert a sinking vessel. Heartily do I wish these "Colliers" had seen the matter in the best light for their own interest. But there is no help. One thing is certain, that I shall see my whole family once more around me, and that is worth the 500. Anne too starts at the idea of the sea. I am horribly vexed, however. Gibson always expected they would come in, but there seemed to me little chance of it; perhaps they thought we were not serious in our proposal to push through the Act. Wrought a little in the evening, not much.

_February_ 28.--At Court till four. When I came home I did work a little, but as we expected company it was not to much purpose. Lord Chief Commissioner dined with us with Miss Adam; Mr. Hutchinson, brother of Lord Donoughmore, and Miss Jones, Will Clerk and John Thomson made up the party, and we had a pleasant evening, as such a handful always secures. Stayed till wine-and-water time. Thus flew another day.

_February_ 29.--I had my proof-sheets as usual in the morning and the Court as usual till two. Then one or two visits and corrected the discourses for Gordon. This is really a foolish sc.r.a.pe, but what could I do? It involved the poor lad's relief from something very like ruin. I got a letter from the young man Reynolds accepting on Heath's part my terms for article to _The Keepsake_, namely 500,--I to be at liberty to reprint the article in my works after three years. Mr. Heath to print it in _The Keepsake_ as long and often as he pleases, but not in any other form. I shall close with them. If I make my proposed bargain with Murray, all pecuniary matters will be easy in an unusual degree. Dined at Robert Hamilton's with Lord and Lady Belhaven, Walter Campbell, and a number of Westlanders.

FOOTNOTES:

[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 a.s.sembly 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, a.s.sisted 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 c.o.c.kburn'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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.

MARCH.

_March_ 1.--Wrought a little this morning; always creeping on. We had a hard pull at the Court, and after it I walked a little for exercise, as I fear indigestion from dining out so often.

Dined to-day with the bankers who went as delegates to London in Malachi Malagrowther's days. Sir John Hay Kinnear and Tom Allan were my only acquaintances of the party; the rest seemed shrewd capable men. I particularly remarked a Mr. Sandeman with as intellectual a head as I ever witnessed.

_March_ 2.--A day of hard work with little interruption, and completed volume second. I am not much pleased with it. It wants what I desire it to have, and that is pa.s.sion.

The two Ballantynes and Mr. Cadell dined with me quietly. Heard from London; all well.

_March_ 3.--I set about clearing my desk of unanswered letters, which I had suffered to acc.u.mulate to an Augean heap. I daresay I wrote twenty cards that might have been written at the time without half-a-minute being lost. To do everything when it ought to be done is the soul of expedition. But then, if you are interrupted eternally with these petty avocations, the current of the mind is compelled to flow in shallows, and you lose the deep intensity of thought which alone can float plans of depth and magnitude. I sometimes wish I were one of those formalists who can a.s.sign each hour of the day its special occupations, not to be encroached upon; but it always returns upon my mind that I do better _a la debandade_, than I could with rules of regular study. A work begun is with me a stone turned over with the purpose of rolling it down hill.

The first revolutions are made with difficulty--but _vires acquirit eundo_. Now, were the said stone arrested in its progress, the whole labour would be to commence again. To take a less conceited simile: I am like a spavined horse, who sets out lame and stiff, but when he warms in his gear makes a pretty good trot of it, so that it is better to take a good stage of him while you can get it. Besides, after all, I have known most of those formalists, who were not men of business or of office to whom hours are prescribed as a part of duty, but who voluntarily make themselves

"Slaves to an hour, and va.s.sals to a bell,"[142]--

to be what I call very poor creatures.

General Ainslie looked in, and saddened me by talking of poor Don. The General is a medallist, and entertains an opinion that the bonnet-piece of James V. is the work of some Scottish artist who died young, and never did anything else. It is far superior to anything which the Mint produced since the Roman denarii. He also told me that the name of Andrea de Ferrara is famous in Italy as an armourer.

Dined at home, and went to the Royal Society in the evening after sending off my processes for the Sheriff Court. Also went after the Society to Mr. James Russell's symposium.

_March_ 4.--A letter from Italy signed J.S. with many acute remarks on inaccuracies in the life of Bonaparte.

His tone is hostile decidedly, but that shall not prevent my making use of all his corrections where just.

The wretched publication of Leigh Hunt on the subject of Byron is to bring forward Tom Moore's life of that distinguished poet, and I am honoured and flattered by the information that he means to dedicate it to me.[143]