Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk: The Text and Introduction, Notes, and Editorial Material 9781399500715

Table of contents :
Contents
Aims of the Edition
Volume Editors’ Acknowledgements
Note on the Present Edition
Volume One
Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. Part 1
Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. Part 2
Front Matter 2
VOLUME TWO
Introduction
Emendation List
Hyphenation List
Explanatory Notes
The Engravings
Index to the Text of Peter’s Letters

Citation preview

Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk

The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of John Gibson Lockhart The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of Gibson Lockhart The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of SeriesJohn Editor: Thomas C. Richardson John Gibson Lockhart Series Editor: Thomas C. Richardson Series Editor: Thomas C. Richardson Advisory Board Dr Ian Campbell (University Advisory Boardof Edinburgh) Dr Peter Garside (University of Edinburgh) Advisory Boardof Edinburgh) Dr Campbell (University DrIan Gillian Hughes (Independent Scholar) Dr Peter Garside (University of Edinburgh) Dr Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming) Dr Ian Campbell (University of Edinburgh) Dr Gillian Hughes (Independent Scholar) Dr McCue (University Glasgow) DrKirsteen Peter Garside (University of of Edinburgh) Dr Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming) Dr Robert Morrison (Bath Spa University) Dr Gillian Hughes (Independent Scholar) Dr Kirsteen McCue (University of Glasgow) Dr Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming) Dr Robert Morrison (Bath Spa University) Dr Kirsteen McCue (University of Glasgow)

Published: Dr Robert Morrison (Bath Spa University)

Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair, edited by Published: Thomas C. Richardson Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair, edited by Published: Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, edited by Peter Garside and Gillian Thomas C. Richardson Hughes Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair, edited by Peter’s Letters his Kinsfolk, edited by Peter Garside and Gillian Thomas C. toRichardson Hughes In preparation: Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, edited by Peter Garside and Gillian The Hughes History of Matthew Wald, edited by Thomas C. Richardson In preparation: Valerius, A Roman Story, edited by Kristian Kerr Thepreparation: History of Matthew Wald, edited by Thomas C. Richardson In Selected Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, edited by Thomas C. Valerius, A Roman Story,Wald, editededited by Kristian Kerr C. Richardson The History of Matthew by Thomas Richardson and Gillian Hughes Selected of John edited Valerius,Letters A Roman Story,Gibson edited Lockhart, by Kristian Kerr by Thomas C. Reginald Dalton, edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher Richardson and Gillian Hughes Selected Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, edited by Thomas C. The Life of Robert Burns, edited by Kirsteen McCue Reginald Dalton,and edited by Caroline Richardson Gillian Hughes McCracken-Flesher Robertedited Burns,byedited by Kirsteen McCue Reginald Caroline McCracken-Flesher The Life ofDalton, The Life of Robert Burns, edited by Kirsteen McCue

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Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

Volume One: The Text Edited by Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes

EDINBURGH University Press

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website:

edinburghuniversitypress.com © The Text, Edinburgh University Press 2022 The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12 Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ © Editorial matter and organisation, Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes 2022 Typeset at Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi, and printed and bound in Great Britain on acid-free paper at TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

ISBN 978 1 3995 0070 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 3995 0071 5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 3995 0072 2 (epub) The right of Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes to be identified as the Editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents VOLUME ONE Aims of the Edition Volume Editors’ Acknowledgements Note on the Present Edition Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk

vii ix x 1

VOLUME TWO Introduction 1. Genesis 2. Composition and Publication 3. Early Responses 4. The ‘Third’ and Subsequent Editions 5. The Present Text Emendation List Hyphenation List Explanatory Notes The Engravings Index to the Text of Peter’[s Letters

1 1 16 30 35 49 69 80 83 349 367

Aims of the Edition John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) has been understudied and undervalued by critics and literary historians in large measure because his obsessive insistence on anonymity means that the full extent of his literary work and influence is not generally known. Lockhart’s works have never been collected, and there have been no critical editions of individual works. The extent and significance of his literary accomplishments have been eclipsed by his role in the attacks on Leigh Hunt, John Keats, and William Hazlitt in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and by his authorship of the biography of his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart had a career in literature that spanned nearly four decades, serving for much of that time (1826-1853) as editor of what was perhaps the premier journal of his age, The Quarterly Review, published in London by John Murray. Lockhart began his literary career in 1817 with the Edinburgh publisher, William Blackwood, who sent Lockhart to Germany on a literary tour where he met Goethe and other German literati. Lockhart’s first book-length publication was a two-volume translation of Frederick Schlegel’s Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern (1818). Lockhart was also a major contributor to Blackwood’s new publishing venture, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and over his lifetime wrote or had a hand in more than two hundred works in Blackwood’s. There was biting satire, certainly, but those works are small in number. The vast majority of his Blackwood’s works are significant, incisive works of literary criticism covering a broad range of topics from Greek tragedy and poetry to early Spanish literature to works of contemporary American, British, and German authors. His Blackwood’s works also include serious and satirical verse, as well as essays on important political and social topics of his day. He published four novels during his time with Blackwood, as well as a fictitious account of the Edinburgh and Glasgow literary, cultural, legal, political, and religious scenes, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. Other works during this period include a collection of Spanish translations, Ancient Spanish Ballads; an edition of Don Quixote, with his annotations and a biographical essay on Cervantes; and a lengthy biographical essay on Daniel Defoe to preface an edition of Robinson Crusoe. In December 1825 Lockhart left Scotland for London to become editor of the Quarterly Review. Lockhart wrote nearly 120 articles for

viii

the Quarterly in addition to directing the literary, political, and social focus of the review as an active editor. Over the next few years Lockhart also wrote biographies of Robert Burns, Napoleon, and Sir Walter Scott. He served as editor of John Murray’s Family Library, edited Scott’s poetry and prose works, and contributed significantly to the notes for editions of Byron’s works and to the revisions of John Wilson Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. He also contributed original poetry, translations, and essays to various other periodicals and annuals. Lockhart, as an author and an editor, influenced a wide range of nineteenth-century life. The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of John Gibson Lockhart aims to identify and collect the full range of Lockhart’s works and to provide the appropriate critical apparatus to enable readers for the first time to assess fully Lockhart’s achievement and his significance for nineteenth-century studies.

Volume Editors’ Acknowledgements The completion of the present edition would not have been possible without the support of various people and institutions, for which the present editors are most grateful. In the first place we wish to record our major debt to our Series Editor, Thomas C. Richardson, for his unfailingly shrewd and good-humoured advice on all matters editorial and also for undertaking the laborious tasks of the typesetting and picture editing of this edition. As with every other title in The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of John Gibson Lockhart the financial and technical support of the Mississippi University for Women has also been essential. Both editors have benefited through their affiliation to the University of Edinburgh during the preparation of this volume, as Honorary Professorial Fellow and Honorary Research Fellow respectively. Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk is a widely-allusive literary work with a frame of reference much broader than any two individuals can hope to deal with adequately on their own, and we wish to thank a number of individual scholars for their contribution to elucidating it, in particular Ian Alexander, Devin Ames, Iain Gordon Brown, Gerry Carruthers, Claire Connolly, Ian Duncan, David Frederickson, Stephen Hall, Cameron Howard, Bob Irvine, Vic Jones, Roland Paxton, Thomas B. Richardson, Rachel Sweet, Iain Torrance, Derek Webb, and Michael Wood. We are grateful to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for permission to quote from manuscripts held by that Library, and similarly to the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, and to the University of Edinburgh Library. We also wish to thank the staff of these institutions for their helpful and friendly assistance with our work there. In addition the following individuals and the institutions they work for should not be forgotten: Kate Anderson of the National Galleries of Scotland; Paul Cox of the National Portrait Gallery; Iain Duffus of Edinburgh Central Library; Isobel Maclellan of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; and Ruth Pollitt of the Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh. Last but by no means least, we are deeply grateful to our families for their constant support, in particular to Gillian Garside and David Sweet.

Note on the Present Edition For ease in consultation the text of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk appears in the first volume of this edition, while explanatory notes and other supporting editorial material appear in the second volume. The text provided in this volume is based on the ‘third’ (actually second) edition of Peter’s Letters of 1819, with emendations from the limited manuscript materials extant, from separately-printed originals for some sections of the work, and from the ‘second’ (actually first) edition. In addition to this a number of editorial interventions have been made where Lockhart’s intentions appear to have been misunderstood or errors made during textual transmission and in the processes of printing. For further commentary see the ‘Introduction’ in the second volume of this edition, especially the section on ‘The Present Text’, as well as the ‘Emendation List’, which provides a more specific record.

_____________________________________________

PETER’S LETTERS TO

HIS KINSFOLK _____________________________________________

PETER’S LETTERS TO

HIS KINSFOLK

VOLUME THE FIRST

DEDICATION __________ TO THE RIGHT REVEREND

THE LORD BISHOP OF ST DAVIDS MY LORD, I TRUST you will excuse the liberty I take in inscribing to you a new edition of my Letters from Scotland. That none of these letters were addressed to your Lordship, is a circumstance for which I take great shame to myself, after the very kind manner in which you spoke to me on that head, the day I left you—may I be permitted to add, after the long experience I have had of your Lordship’s concern and attachment, in several years of professional attendance, and, since that was laid aside, of private intercourse and friendship. I must not attempt to deny, that there are some things in these Letters which are not exactly what I should have judged proper for your Lordship’s eye;—but your Lordship is aware that they were written without the smallest notion of being printed. I hope the effect of the whole correspondence may be agreeable to you, and I well know the gentle and forgiving nature of your disposition. Above all, I should be highly flattered to learn that the account I have given of the State of Religion in Scotland, had interested and pleased you. The truly liberal and apostolic zeal with which your Lordship has so long been labouring to serve my countrymen in their most important concerns, is appreciated and honoured by none more highly than, MY LORD, Your Lordship’s very humble, and very affectionate Servant, PETER MORRIS. PENSHARPE-HALL, ABERYSTWITH

THE

EPISTLE LIMINARY TO

THE SECOND EDITION

___________ TO

MR DAVIES, BOOKSELLER, IN THE STRAND, LONDON

DEAR SIR, THE high terms in which you are pleased to express yourself concerning the specimens of my Letters from Scotland which have fallen into your hands, are, I assure you, among the most valued testimonies of approbation which have ever come in my way. To receive applause from one’s acquaintances, is more delightful than to receive it from strangers; but the most precious of all tokens is that which proceeds from an old and dear friend. It is true, that in such case there may be, in general, no small suspicion of partiality, but this cannot be the case with you, as you say you liked the work before you were aware of the name of its author. Since that name has now been divulged through the rashness of a certain publication, I do not see that any very good purpose could be answered by attempting to keep up the mystery in the work itself. I therefore accept of your offers with regard to the Second Edition, and permit you to send it forth into the world with the name of Peter Morris as conspicuously affixed to it as you may deem expedient. About the same time that your letter reached me, I had another letter on the same subject from my friend Mr William Blackwood, of Edinburgh. As you and he are already connected in so many ways, it strikes me that no inconvenience could attend your being connected together in this little matter also. I shall be happy if you find it consistent with your

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PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK, VOL. I

views to communicate the purport of what I have said to him, with all haste; and hope to see the Second Edition graced with both your names on the title-page. When in Edinburgh I became acquainted with Mr James Ballantyne, and have a strong inclination that any little thing of mine should be printed at his press, both from my regard for the man himself, and on account of the high report I heard of his qualifications in that way, from some of the best judges I know of. The First Edition being but a coarse job, and so small withal, I did not think of him, but trust there will be nothing to prevent him undertaking this, about which Mr Blackwood will be able to arrange with him very easily, being on the spot. I should think the best way would be to leave the style of printing, &c. entirely to Mr Ballantyne’s own discretion—I am sure he will do all he can to make my book a pretty one. As for correcting of proofs, &c., I dare say I might very safely leave that also to Mr Ballantyne; but I have a friend in Edinburgh, (a Mr Wastle,) who will find it quite an amusement to superintend all that affair; and, by the way, I am a very bad hand at correcting proofs myself, for I read them so quickly, that my eye passes over a thousand errata, for one that escapes the observation of a person more accustomed to such things. What you say about the portraits, puzzles me more than anything else; I mean as to the propriety of introducing such things at all. It is very true, however, as you have heard, that my pencil was in request while I was in Scotland, almost as much as my pen, and that I have now a very rich portfolio of the chief worthies I met with in that northern region. In this matter, too, I am inclined to trust more to my friends’ judgment than to my own, so I have sent you this day (per waggon) the whole lot of the sketches, leaving you to select for the engraver such as seem most likely to improve the appearance and popularity of the work. I think, however, you should on no account omit the sketches of the Man of Feeling, Mr Scott, Mr Jeffrey, Mr Alison, and Dr Chalmers. The others you may do with as you please. I would have sent you my drawings of scenery also, but really in the present day when so much is a-doing in that line by much abler hands, I feel shy about pushing my rude efforts upon the public. I have, therefore, packed up only a very few specimens—not at all for the engraver—but merely as a present to Mrs Davies, which I beg she will accept, as also the cheese which accompanies them, along with the best wishes and compliments of a very old acquaintance and admirer. You cannot do better than have the etchings executed in Edinburgh also.

EPISTLE LIMINARY

9

Nobody can be better for the purpose than Mr Lizars—and, if he be too much engaged to do the whole, he can get a very excellent young artist, some of whose works I saw when there, to give him assistance—I mean Mr Stewart, who is engraving Allan’s Picture of The Robbers dividing their Spoil. By the bye, I had a note from Sir Joseph Banks a day or two ago, in which he says a great deal about a new invention of Mr Lizars, which he thinks is the greatest thing that has occurred in engraving since the time of Albert Durer. I have not seen any specimen of it, but do ask him to try some of the portraits in the new way—say my own—for that is of least consequence.* As I am just going over to Dublin to spend a few weeks with my brother Sam, I shall not be able to hear from you again about this matter—so I leave it with perfect confidence in your hands, and those of Mr Blackwood. I hear the cry for the book is great, particularly in the North; therefore do bestir yourselves, and have PETER out before the rising of Parliament. I hope you won’t allow next Autumn to go over, without coming down and paying a visit to some of your old friends in your native country—and I am vain enough to hope you won’t omit us if you do come. I am an idler man, now-a-days, than I could wish to be; so do come, my dear sir; and if my good friend, Mr Cadell, could come with you, tanto melius;—I shall do all I can to amuse you in the mornings; and, in the evenings, you shall both have as much as you please of what, I flatter myself, is not the worst claret in the principality. Between ourselves, I have a great desire to see you, as I have some thoughts of looking over my papers, and giving you Peter’s Letters from Italy and Germany, in the course of the winter. Meantime, I remain, with great sincerity, Your friend, PETER MORRIS PENSHARPE-HALL, ABERYSTWITH Wednesday Evening

_____________________________________________

*The portrait of Dr Morris is done in this new style; and had the time permitted, the others would all have been done so likewise. It is thrown off by the common printingpress, as the reader will observe—but this is only one of the distinguishing excellencies of this new and splendid invention of Mr Lizars. I am happy that my friend’s book has the honour of being the first graced with a specimen of it; and not the less so that the specimen presents a capital likeness of my friend himself. W. W.

LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS __________ VOLUME THE FIRST Portrait of the Author ............................................................... to face the Title The Author in his Shandrydan driving to Edinburgh .............. Vignette on Title Portrait of Mr Leslie...................................................................................... 49 ———— Mr Mackenzie .............................................................................. 67 ———— Mr Playfair .................................................................................. 108 ———— Mr Jameson ................................................................................ 145 VOLUME THE SECOND The Author and Mr Scott riding towards Melrose Abbey ....... Vignette on Title Portrait of Mr Clerk..................................................................................... 212 ———— Mr Jeffrey ................................................................................... 220 ———— alter et idem ................................................................................ 222 ———— Lord Justice-Clerk, Macqueen of Braxfield ............................... 248 ———— Mr Allan ..................................................................................... 307 ———— Mr Scott...................................................................................... 363 VOLUME THE THIRD The Lord High Commissioner walking in Procession to open the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland ...... Vignette on Title Portrait of Mr Alison ................................................................................... 420 ———— The Ettrick Shepherd.................................................................. 444 ———— Mr Wilson .................................................................................. 500 ———— Dr Chalmers ............................................................................... 507 The Author on Board of the Rob Roy Steam-Boat, bidding Farewell to his Glasgow Friends................................ Vignette, on page 546

CONTENTS OF

VOLUME FIRST __________ LETTER I Arrival ........................................................................................................... 17 Edinburgh ...................................................................................................... 18 Calton-Hill .................................................................................................... 20 Edinburgh...................................................................................................... 20 LETTER II Mr Wastle of Wastle ..................................................................................... Lawn-Market................................................................................................. Mr Wastle of that Ilk ..................................................................................... Sheep’s-Head ................................................................................................ Mr Wastle’s Portrait ...................................................................................... Old Oxonians ................................................................................................

22 25 25 25 26 27

LETTER III Edinburgh...................................................................................................... Edinburgh—Holyrood-House ....................................................................... Edinburgh—Canongate ................................................................................. Edinburgh—Holyrood-House ....................................................................... Edinburgh—Queen Mary .............................................................................. Holyrood-House—Charles I ......................................................................... Holyrood-House—Sanctuary ........................................................................

28 28 28 29 30 31 31

LETTER IV Antiquarianism .............................................................................................. 33 Toryism of Wastle......................................................................................... 33 Wastle ........................................................................................................... 34 LETTER V Scottish Physiognomies ................................................................................ Scottish Peasantry ......................................................................................... Scottish Gentry.............................................................................................. National Features .......................................................................................... Scottish Women ............................................................................................ Changes of Complexion ................................................................................ Scottish Beauty ............................................................................................. Ladies’ Dress—Saddles ................................................................................

35 35 36 37 37 37 38 40

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PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK, VOL. I

LETTER VI Mr Jeffrey...................................................................................................... Physiognomy—Goethe—Canova ................................................................. Short Men—Campbell—Moore.................................................................... Hales—Chillingworth ................................................................................... Napoleon—Mr Jeffrey .................................................................................. Mr Jeffrey......................................................................................................

41 42 43 43 43 44

LETTER VII Streets of Edinburgh...................................................................................... Craig-Crook .................................................................................................. Professors Playfair and Leslie ....................................................................... Craig-Crook—Leaping ................................................................................. Mr Playfair .................................................................................................... Mr Leslie ....................................................................................................... Dinner ........................................................................................................... Dinner-Party.................................................................................................. Mr Jeffrey’s Conversation............................................................................. Mr Playfair ....................................................................................................

46 46 47 47 48 48 50 50 51 53

LETTER VIII Scottish Literati ............................................................................................. Mr Wastle...................................................................................................... Tories ............................................................................................................ Whigs ............................................................................................................ Clergy............................................................................................................ David Hume ..................................................................................................

54 54 56 57 57 57

LETTER IX David Hume’s Portrait .................................................................................. Cranioscopy .................................................................................................. Portrait of Rousseau ...................................................................................... Hume and Rousseau ......................................................................................

61 61 62 63

LETTER X The Man of Feeling ....................................................................................... Warren Hasting’s Face .................................................................................. Mr Mackenzie ............................................................................................... Mr Adam Roland .......................................................................................... Mr Mackenzie and Mr Roland ...................................................................... Sportsmanship ............................................................................................... Old Stories ....................................................................................................

65 66 66 68 68 69 69

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I

13

LETTER XI Burns’s Dinner .............................................................................................. Edinburgh Review on Burns ......................................................................... Burns’s Dinner .............................................................................................. Mrs Burns—Mr Maule.................................................................................. Mr Cockburn ................................................................................................. Whig-Bigotry ................................................................................................ Mr Wordsworth .............................................................................................

71 74 75 75 76 76 78

LETTER XII Mr John Wilson............................................................................................. The Ettrick Shepherd .................................................................................... The Jolly Beggars.......................................................................................... Crabbe and Burns .......................................................................................... Burns’s Dinner .............................................................................................. The Ettrick Shepherd’s Face ......................................................................... The Ettrick Shepherd .................................................................................... Mr Patrick Robertson ....................................................................................

80 81 83 85 86 87 87 89

LETTER XIII University of Edinburgh................................................................................ 90 System of Education ..................................................................................... 92 Neglect of Classical Learning ....................................................................... 93 Classical Learning ......................................................................................... 95 Study of History ............................................................................................ 96 Classical Learning—Language ..................................................................... 99 University of Edinburgh................................................................................ 99 Mr Christison .............................................................................................. 100 Mr Dunbar................................................................................................... 101 LETTER XIV The Ethical Class-room ............................................................................... 102 Dr Thomas Brown....................................................................................... 104 LETTER XV Professor Playfair ........................................................................................ 109 New Observatory ........................................................................................ 109 David Hume’s Monument ........................................................................... 110 LETTER XVI Scottish Students ......................................................................................... 112 Cheapness of Education in Scotland ........................................................... 113 Scottish Students ......................................................................................... 114

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PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK, VOL. I

LETTER XVII English Universities .................................................................................... 117 English and Scotch Universities.................................................................. 119 LETTER XVIII Society of Edinburgh .................................................................................. 121 Lawyers ........................................................................................................ 122 Advocates.................................................................................................... 122 Writers to the Signet ................................................................................... 123 Men of Business .......................................................................................... 123 Society of Edinburgh .................................................................................. 124 LETTER XIX Balls and Routs ........................................................................................... Present Style of Dress ................................................................................. Legs and Ancles .......................................................................................... Scotch Dancing ........................................................................................... Scotch Quadrilles ........................................................................................ Hornem’s Waltz ..........................................................................................

126 127 127 129 130 131

LETTER XX Edinburgh—Houses .................................................................................... Edinburgh—Cadies ..................................................................................... Gaelic Language ......................................................................................... Edinburgh Cadies ........................................................................................

134 135 137 138

LETTER XXI Dr Brewster ................................................................................................. Professor Jameson ....................................................................................... Natural History............................................................................................ Mr James Wilson ........................................................................................ Ornithology—Swallows.............................................................................. Professor Jameson .......................................................................................

140 141 144 147 148 148

LETTER XXII Debating Societies....................................................................................... Speculative Society ..................................................................................... Lord Nelson Tavern .................................................................................... Mr Barclay .................................................................................................. Speculative Society .....................................................................................

149 149 150 151 152

LETTER XXIII Cranioscopy and Craniology ....................................................................... 159 Madonnas .................................................................................................... 162 Hercules Farnese ......................................................................................... 163

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I

LETTER XXIV Edinburgh Blue-Stockings .......................................................................... A Rout ......................................................................................................... A Rout—Mr Jeffrey .................................................................................... A Rout—Mr Leslie ..................................................................................... A Rout—Lord Buchan ................................................................................ A Rout ......................................................................................................... A Rout—Music ........................................................................................... A Rout .........................................................................................................

15

165 166 167 167 168 168 169 169

LETTER XXV Edinburgh Blue-Stockings .......................................................................... 171 Mrs Grant of Laggan ................................................................................... 171 LETTER XXVI Theatre ........................................................................................................ Theatre—Gas-Light .................................................................................... Theatre ........................................................................................................ Theatre—Rob Roy ...................................................................................... Mr Mackay in Baillie Jarvie........................................................................ Theatre—Mr Murray................................................................................... Mrs Henry Siddons ..................................................................................... Theatre ........................................................................................................

173 174 174 176 177 178 178 179

LETTER XXVII Edinburgh—The Castle............................................................................... 180 Faustus ........................................................................................................ 182

PETER’S LETTERS TO

HIS KINSFOLK ___________

LETTER I TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

OMAN’S HOTEL, EDINBURGH, MARCH 5 I ARRIVED here last night, only two hours later than my calculation at Liverpool, which was entirely owing to a small accident that befel Scrub, as I was coming down the hill to Musselburgh. I was so much engaged with the view, that I did not remark him stumble once or twice, and at last down he came, having got a pretty long nail run into his foot. I turned round to curse John, but perceived that he had been fast asleep during the whole affair. However, it happened luckily that there was a farrier’s shop only a few yards on, and by his assistance we were soon in a condition to move again. My chief regret was being obliged to make my entry into the city after night-fall, in consequence of the delay; and yet that is no great matter neither. As for the shandrydan, I have never had the least reason to repent my bringing it with me. It is positively the very best vehicle in existence. The lightness of the gig—the capacity of the chariot—and the stylishness of the car—it is a wonderful combination of excellencies. But I forget your old quizzing about my Hobby. My evil genius, in the shape of an old drivelling turnpike-man, directed me to put up at the Black Bull, a crowded, noisy, shabby, uncomfortable inn, frequented by all manner of stage-coaches and their contents, as my ears were well taught before morning. Having devoured a tolerable breakfast, however, I began to feel myself in a more genial condition than I had expected, after so long a journey, and sallied out to

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PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK, VOL. I

deliver one or two letters of introduction, and take a general view of the town, in a temper which even you might have envied. To say the truth, I know not a feeling of more delightful excitation, than that which attends a traveller, when he sallies out of a fine clear morning, to make his first survey of a splendid city, to which he is a stranger. I have often before experienced this charming spirit-stirring sensation. Even now, I remember, with a kind of solemn enthusiasm, the day when (in your company too, my dear David,) I opened my window at the White Horse, Fetter-lane, and beheld, for the first time, the chimneys and smoke (for there what else could I behold?) of London. I remember the brief devoirs paid by us both to our coffee and muffins, and the spring of juvenile elasticity with which we bounded, rather than walked, into the midst of the hum, hurry, and dusky magnificence of Fleet-Street. How we stared at Temple-Bar! How our young blood boiled within us, as we passed over the very stones that had drank the drops as they oozed from the fresh-dissevered head of brave old Balmerino! With what consciousness of reverence did we pace along the Strand—retiring now and then into a corner to consult our pocket-map—and returning with a high satisfaction, to feel ourselves under the shadow of edifices, whose very names were enough for us! How we stood agaze at Charing Cross! The statue of the Martyr at our right—Whitehall on our left—Westminster Abbey, lifting itself like a cloud before us—pillars and palaces all around, and the sun lighting up the whole scene with rays enriched by the deep tinges of the atmosphere through which they passed. I do not pretend to compare my own feelings now-a-days with those of that happy time—neither have I any intention of representing Edinburgh as a place calculated to produce the same sublime impressions, which every Englishman must experience when he first finds himself in London. The imagination of a Southern does not connect with this northern city so many glorious recollections of antiquity, nor is there any thing to be compared with the feeling of moral reverence, accorded by even the dullest of mankind, to the actual seat and centre of the wisest and greatest government in the world. Without at all referring to these things, the gigantic bulk and population of London, are, of themselves, more than sufficient to make it the most impressive of all earthly cities. In no place is one so sensible, at once, to the littleness and the greatness of his nature—how insignificant the being that forms a scarcely distinguishable speck in that huge sweep of congregated existence—yet how noble the spirit which has called together that mass—which rules and guides and animates them all—which so adorns their combination, and

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teaches the structures of art almost to rival the vastness of Nature. How awful is the idea which the poet has expressed, when he speaks of “all that mighty heart!” And yet there is no lack of food for enthusiasm even here. Here is the capital of an ancient, independent, and heroic nation, abounding in buildings ennobled by the memory of illustrious inhabitants in the old times, and illustrious deeds of good and of evil; and in others, which hereafter will be reverenced by posterity, for the sake of those that inhabit them now. Above all, here is all the sublimity of situation and scenery—mountains near and afar off—rocks and glens—and the sea itself, almost within hearing of its waves. I was prepared to feel much; and yet you will not wonder when I tell you, that I felt more than I was prepared for. You know my mother was a Scotchwoman, and therefore, you will comprehend that I viewed the whole with some little of the pride of her nation. I arrived, at least, without prejudices against that which I should see, and was ready to open myself to such impressions as might come. I know no city, where the lofty feelings, generated by the ideas of antiquity, and the multitude of human beings, are so much swelled and improved by the admixture of those other lofty, perhaps yet loftier feelings, which arise from the contemplation of free and spacious nature herself. Edinburgh, even were its population as great as that of London, could never be merely a city. Here there must always be present the idea of the comparative littleness of all human works. Here the proudest of palaces must be content to catch the shadows of mountains; and the grandest of fortresses to appear like the dwellings of pigmies, perched on the very bulwarks of creation. Everywhere—all around—you have rocks frowning over rocks in imperial elevation, and descending, among the smoke and dust of a city, into dark depths such as nature alone can excavate. The builders of the old city, too, appear as if they had made nature the model of their architecture. Seen through the lowering mist which almost perpetually envelopes them, the huge masses of these erections, so high, so rugged in their outlines, so heaped together, and conglomerated and wedged into each other, are not easily to be distinguished from the yet larger and bolder forms of cliff and ravine, among which their foundations have been pitched. There is a certain gloomy indistinctness in the formation of these fantastic piles, which leaves the eye, that would scrutinize and penetrate them, unsatisfied and dim with gazing. In company with the first friend I saw, (of whom more anon,) I

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proceeded at once to take a look of this superb city from a height, placed just over the point where the old and new parts of the town meet. These two quarters of the city, or rather these two neighbouring but distinct cities, are separated by a deep green valley, which once contained a lake, and which is now crossed at one place by a huge earthen mound, and at another by a magnificent bridge of three arches. This valley runs off towards the æstuary of the Forth, which lies about a mile and a half from the city, and between the city and the sea there rises on each side of it a hill—to the south that called Arthur’s Seat—to the north the lower and yet sufficiently commanding eminence on which I now stood—the Calton Hill. This hill, which rises about 350 feet above the level of the sea, is, in fact, nothing more than a huge pile of rocks covered with a thin coating of soil, and, for the most part, with a beautiful verdure. It has lately been circled all round with spacious gravelled walks, so that one reaches the summit without the least fatigue. It seems as if you had not quitted the streets, so easy is the ascent; and yet where did streets or city ever afford such a prospect! The view changes every moment as you proceed; yet what grandeur of unity in the general and ultimate impression! At first, you see only the skirts of the New Town, with apparently few public edifices, to diversify the grand uniformity of their outlines; then you have a rich plain, with green fields, groves, and villas, gradually losing itself in the sea-port town of Edinburgh,—Leith. Leith covers, for a brief space, the margin of that magnificent Frith, which recedes upwards among an amphitheatre of mountains, and opens downward into the ocean, broken everywhere by isles green and smiling, excepting where the bare brown rock of the Bass lifts itself above the waters midway to the sea. As you move round, the Frith disappears, and you have Arthur’s Seat in your front. In the valley between lies Holyrood, ruined—desolate—but majestic in its desolation. From thence the Old Town stretches its dark shadow—up, in a line to the summit of the Castle rock—a royal residence at either extremity—and all between an indistinguishable mass of black tower-like structures—the concentrated “walled city,” which has stood more sieges than I can tell of. Here we paused for a time, enjoying the majestic gloom of this most picturesque of cities. A thick blue smoke hung low upon the houses, and their outlines reposed behind on ridges of purple clouds;—the smoke, and the clouds, and the murky air, giving yet more extravagant bulk and altitude to those huge strange dwellings, and increasing the power of contrast which met our view, when a few paces more brought us once

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again upon the New Town—the airy bridge—the bright green vale below and beyond it—and skirting the line of the vale on either side, the rough crags of the Castle rock, and the broad glare of Prince’s Street, that most superb of terraces—all beaming in the open yellow light of the sun—steeples and towers, and cupolas scattered bright beneath our feet—and, far as the eye could reach, the whole pomp and richness of distant commotion—the heart of the city. Such was my first view of Edinburgh. I descended again into her streets in a sort of stupor of admiration. ___________ Excuse my troubling you with all this, now that I have written it; but do not be alarmed with any fear, lest I should propose to treat you with much more of the same kind of diet. I have no intention to send you a description of the cities and scenery of Scotland. I refer you semel et simul to Sir John Carr and our dear countryman Mr Pennant. I have always been “a fisher of men;” and here also, I promise you, I mean to stick to my vocation. But enough for the present. Your’s sincerely P. M. P. S.—You will observe by the date of my letter, I have already left the Black Bull. I write from one of the most comfortable hotels I ever was in, and have already ascertained the excellence of the port.

LETTER II TO THE SAME

OMAN’S, MARCH 6 DEAR DAVID, DO you recollect Wastle of Trinity? I suspect not; but you have heard of him a thousand times. And yet you may have met him at my rooms, or North’s; for I think he determined, after you began to reside. At all events, you remember to have heard me describe his strange eccentric character—his dissolute behaviour during the first years of his residence—his extravagant zeal of study afterwards—last of all, the absurdity of his sudden elopement, without a degree, after having astonished the examining masters by the splendid commencement of his examination. The man is half-mad in some things; and that is the key of the whole mystery. Wastle and I were great friends during the first terms I spent at Jesus. He had gone to school at Harrow with my brother Samuel, and called on me the very day I entered. What a life was ours in that thoughtless prime of our days! We spent all the mornings after lecture in utter lounging—eating ice at Jubb’s—flirting with Miss Butler—bathing in the Charwell, and so forth. And then, after dinner, we used to have our fruit and wine carried into the garden, (I mean at Trinity,) and there we sat, three or four of us, sipping away for a couple of hours, under the dark refreshing shade of those old beechen bowers. Evensong was no sooner over, than we would down to the Isis, and man one, or sometimes two of Mother Hall’s boats, and so run races against each other, or some of our friends, to Iffley or Sandford. What lots of bread and butter we used to devour at tea, and what delight we felt in rowing back in the cool misty evening—sometimes the moon up long ere we reached Christ Church meadows again. A light supper—cheese-and-bread and lettuces—and a joyous bowl of Bishop—these were the regular conclusion. I would give half I am worth to live one week of it over again. At that time, Wastle and I, Tom Vere (of Corpus,) and one or two more, were never separate above three or four hours in the day. I was on my way to deliver a letter of introduction to a young barrister

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of this place, when, in turning the corner of a street, my old friend, Will Wastle, passed close at my elbow. I knew him in a moment, although he is greatly changed, and called after him. He turned round with a fierce air, as if loth to be disturbed, (for he was evidently up to the chin in meditation;) but, on recognising his ancient acquaintance, nothing could be more hearty than the kindness of his countenance. After a few hurried interrogations on both sides, diversified by scarcely any responses on either, I took his arm and began to explain to him the purposes of my visit to a city in which he had so little expectation of seeing me. He accompanied me immediately to the Calton Hill, of which I spoke in my last, and where, as he assured me, he spends at least one hour every day when in Edinburgh. On coming down he carried me to the Hotel where I now am; and, having seen my baggage and horse fairly established, and walked a good deal about the town, we proceeded to his house, where I remained for the rest of the day. I assure you this rencounter has afforded me the highest pleasure, and I doubt not it will be of infinite use to me, moreover—for Wastle is perhaps, of all men, the very person I should have selected to act as my Cicerone in Scotland. Indeed, I wonder at myself for not having made more accurate enquiries about him before I set out; but I had somehow got a confused idea in my head that he was resident in France or Germany, and really had never thought of him in relation to my own schemes of visiting his country. He has already introduced me to several very pleasant fellows here. But before I describe his companions, I must endeavour to give you some little notion of himself. After leaving Oxford under the strange circumstances you have often heard me speak of, he proceeded to the North, where he spent several years in severe study, not a whit discouraged in his views, or shaken from his attachments, by the singular catastrophe to which the constitutional and irresistible panic of a moment had exposed him. He changed, however, but indeed it was scarcely possible for him to do otherwise, the course and tenor of his usual pursuits; passing for a time from the classics, with the greater part of whom he had formed a pretty accurate acquaintance, and flinging himself over head and ears into the very heart of Gothic antiquities, and the history, poetry, and romance of the middle ages. These he has quitted by fits and starts, and spent the intervals of their neglect in making himself far better skilled than is common in the modern literature of foreign countries, as well as of England; but ever since, and up to this moment, they form the staple of his occupation—the daily bread of his mind. He lives almost continually

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in the days gone by, and feels himself, as he says, almost a stranger among matters which might be supposed to be nearer to him. And yet he is any thing but a stranger to the world he actually lives in; although indeed he does perhaps regard not a few both of its men and its things, with somewhat of the coldness of an unconcerned visitor. In short, for there is no need to disguise the fact to you, he has nursed himself into such a fervent veneration for the thoughts and feelings of the more ancient times of his country and of ours, (for as to that matter he is no bigot,) that he cannot witness, without a deep mixture of bile, the adoration paid by those around him to thoughts, feelings, and persons, for whom he entertains, if not absolute, at the least no inconsiderable comparative contempt. I have said that he is not a bigot, in regard to any old ideas of difference between his own country and ours. This I attribute in a great measure, certainly, to the course of study he has so devoutly pursued, and which could not have failed, in making him acquainted with the ancient condition of both countries, to reveal to him far more points of agreement than disagreement between them. But a part of his liberality must also, I should think, be ascribed to the influence of his education in England, more particularly in Oxford; his long residence in that noble city having filled the finest part of his mind with reverent ideas, concerning both the old and the present grandeur of England, such as can never be eradicated, nor even weakened, by any after experience of his life. Such, I suspect, from his conversation, to be the truth of the case; and yet it is only from odd hints and suggestions, that I have made shift to gather so much, for, of all men living, he is the least chargeable with the sin of dissertation, and I never heard him in my life give more than one sentence to the expression of any opinion he entertains. Having now succeeded to the family estate, which is a very ancient, and a tolerably productive one, he feels himself perfectly at liberty to pursue whatever mode of life is most agreeable to his fancy. He has travelled a good deal on the continent of Europe, and even penetrated into Asia Minor and Egypt, as far up as the Pyramids. These journies, however, could only have been undertaken for the purpose of gratifying some very ardent curiosity, in regard to a few particular points connected with his former devotedness to classical learning; and he now declares, that, unless he should be tempted to visit Spain for the sake of her cathedrals, he will never again leave the white cliffs behind him. He makes an annual or biennial trip to London; but, with this exception, he is always to be found either at his old castle in Berwickshire, or here in

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Edinburgh, where he has a very snug house, although by no means in a fashionable part of the town. From a feeling of respect for his ancestors, he refuses to quit the old family-residence, which is no other than a lodging up five pair of stairs, in one of those huge aerial edifices of the Old Town—edifices which sometimes contain beneath a single roof a population, layer above layer, household above household, more numerous than that of many a street in many a city south of the “ideal line.” Here Wastle still sits in the same enormously stuffed and prodigiously backed elbow-chair, and still reposes beneath the same antediluvian testers which served his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and all his generations back, for aught I know, to the days of Queen Mary; it being on many occasions his most chosen boast, that the degradation which affects, in other houses, the blood of the race, has touched in his house nothing but their furniture, and has not totally destroyed even that. My friend ushered me into this remarkable habitation of his, not only without the least symptom of shame for its apparent obscurity, and the equally apparent filth of its approach, but with a certain air of proud and haughty satisfaction, as if he would have been ashamed to have conducted me to one of the newer, more commodious, and more elegant houses we had seen in the New Town. “The times are changed,” says he, “since my grandfather, the Lord of Session, used to see all the ladies of quality in Edinburgh in this old-fashioned habitaculum. I desire to see none of them here now. I have a tailor for my neighbour immediately below me—a cobbler—a tallow-chandler—a dancing-master—a grocer—and a cow-feeder, are all between me and the street; and above, God knows what store of washerwomen—French teachers—auctioneers—midwives—seamstresses—and students of divinity, are between me and the chimney-top. But no matter. I have some claret, which is not too old to be tasteable; and I shall make an endeavour to give you, at least, as good commons as you were used to at the Bachelor’s table of Trinity.” I had no reason to complain of his fare, although I confess, when the covers were first removed, I was not without some apprehensions, that it might prove as Methuselamitish as his dwelling. Whether that might, or might not be, the provender was excellent. It consisted, primo, of broth made from a sheep’s head, with a copious infusion of parsley, and other condiments, which I found more than palatable, especially after, at my host’s request, I added a spoonful or two of Burgess to it. Secundo, came the aforementioned sheep’s head in propria persona—the hair having been taken off, not by the knife, but by the hot-

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iron, and the skin retaining from this operation, not only an inky hue, which would astound an Exmoorian, but a delicious, oily, fragrant gusto, worthy of being transferred, me judice, to the memorandum-book of Beauvilliers himself. These being removed, then came a leg of roasted mutton, five years old at the least, from the Castlemains of Wastle. A dish of pancakes, very finely powdered with sugar, brought up the rear of the dinner, every five minutes of which we washed down with a glass of rare sherry, as ancient as Falstaff, or Johannisberg, which my friend had imported himself from the very cellars of Metternich. A ewe-milk cheese, which I found as good as any thing that ever came from the Pays de Vaud, and a glass of ale, such as I could not beat even in Cardigan, formed a sort of appendage to the feast; and just before the cloth was drawn, I tasted, for the first time, a liqueur, which I prefer vastly to all the Marasquin—ay, to all the Curaçoa in existence—the genuine Usquebaugh of Lochaber. Our Chateau-la-fitte and olives went down after this repast like very nectar and ambrosia. But you will say, I am a gourmand even upon paper. To conclude with a portrait of my entertainer.—William Wastle is a pale-faced, grave-looking, thin gentleman, of forty years old, or thereby. He has a stoop in his gait, and walks with his toes in; but his limbs seem full of sinew, and he is of a seemly breadth across the back. He uses to wear a hat of singular broad brim, like a Quaker, for the convenience of shadow to his eyes, which are weak, though piercing. These he farther comforts and assists by means of a pair of spectacles, of the pure crystalline in winter, “but throughout the sunny portion of the year,” green. His nose is turned up somewhat at the point, as it were disdainfully. His lips would be altogether indiscernible, but for the line of their division; and can call up in no mind (unless, perchance, on the principle of contrast) any phantasy either of cherry or rose-bud, to say nothing about bees. This yellow visage of his, with his close firm lips, and his grey eyes shining through his spectacles, as through a burning-glass, more brightly—the black beard not over diligently shorn—all lurking under the projecting shadow of that strange brim, compose such a physiognomy, as one would less wonder to meet with in Valladolid, than in Edinburgh. It is plain, yet not ugly. It is monastic, yet it is not anchoretic. It is bitter, and yet it wants not gleams of sheer good humour. In short, it belongs, and only could belong, to the nervous, irritable, enthusiastic, sarcastic William Wastle. The years which had passed since our parting, had exaggerated the lines of this countenance, and entirely removed every vestige of its bloom. But the features were too marked to have

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undergone any essential alteration; and after dinner, when some half a dozen bumpers of claret had somewhat smoothed its asperities, I could almost have fancied myself to be once more transported back to the common-room of Trinity or Jesus. To you, who know us of old, I need scarcely add, that two Oxonians meeting after such a separation, over such wine, were in no hurry to shorten their sederunt. I think it is very creditable to me, however, that I retained enough of my senses to be able to find my way to Oman’s, without accepting, far less asking, either direction or assistance. Of course, I am too well-seasoned a cask to feel the smallest bad effects this morning. Quite the contrary: I have already swallowed three cups of coffee, as many rolls and eggs, and about a pound of excellent mutton-ham, and expect my old friend every moment to resume his functions as my Lionizer. Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER III TO THE SAME

MARCH 14 DEAR DAVID, IF you knew what a life I have led since I wrote to you, you would certainly feel no difficulty in comprehending the reason of my silence. I thought my days of utter dissipation had been long since over, but I fear your clerical frown would have told me quite the reverse, had you been present almost any evening that has passed since my arrival in Edinburgh. I shall not shock you with any of the particulars; remember that you were once a layman yourself, and try to excuse about the worst you can imagine. What a glorious night we spent at your rooms the Saturday before you took orders! I continue, notwithstanding all this, to pick up a vast deal of information concerning the present literary, political, and religious condition of this country; and I have already jotted down the heads of several highly valuable letters, in which I design, ere long, to embody the elite of all my acquisitions for your benefit and that of Jack. Perhaps, however, the facts I have gathered may be nothing the worse for undergoing a more leisurely digestion in my own mind, before I think of conveying them to your’s. Depend upon it, that I shall very soon put you in possession of more knowledge, touching Scotland, than was ever revealed to any wondering common-room, by any travelled or travelling tutor, since the days of Dr Johnson. So have patience. Wastle was never more completely in his element, than when he took me to see Holyrood. You, who delight in honest enthusiasm, whatever be its object, would have been gratified beyond measure, with the high zealous air of dignfied earnestness he assumed, long before we arrived even within sight of the old palace. From his own house, the way thither lies straight down the only great street of the Old Town—a street, by far the most impressive in its character, of any I have ever seen in Britain. The sombre shadows, cast by those huge houses of which it is composed, and the streams of faint light cutting the darkness here and there, where the entrance to some fantastic alley pierces the sable mass of

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building—the strange projectings, recedings, and windings—the roofs—the stairs—the windows, all so luxuriating in the endless variety of carved work; the fading and mouldering coats of arms, helmets, crests, coronets, supporters, mantles, and pavilions; all these testimonials of forgotten pride, mingled so profusely with the placards of old clothes-men, and every ensign of plebeian wretchedness; it is not possible to imagine more speaking emblems of the decay of a once royal city, or a more appropriate avenue to a deserted palace. My friend was at home in every nook of this labyrinth. I believe he could more easily tell in what particular house of the Canongate any given lord or baron dwelt two hundred years ago, than he could in what street of the new city his descendant of the present day is to be found. It was quite marvellous with what facility he expounded the minutest hieroglyphics which had, no doubt, once been visible on shields of which my eye could now see nothing but rough outlines and smooth surfaces. “Ha!” said he, “the crescents and the sheaves!” pointing to a tall thin building, from the windows of which sundry patches of wet linen hung dangling over our heads—“the crescents within the tressure—the sheaves—and the sword in pale on the escutcheon of pretence—this was once the palace of the Seatons—Oh! domus antiqua, heu! quam dispari dominare domino!” A little on, the Heart and Stars of Douglas—the Lymphads of Argyle—the Lion of Dundas, and I know not how many monsters of how many chieftains, were all saluted in their turn with like exclamations of reverence. He directed my attention to a building of prodigious elevation on the right, altogether having very much the appearance of the more ancient hotels in Paris, and informed me that here was the residence of the Hamiltons, after they had left their house without the walls, in the time of James VI; “and here,” said he, pointing right forwards, “is Holyrood. You are already within the liberty, for we have crossed the strand.” At first sight, this ancient habitation has truly a great deal of royalty in its aspect. Two huge square towers; one many centuries older than the other, but still sufficiently like to balance each other nobly; a low curtain between these, and, in the centre, a spacious gateway under a lofty canopy, somewhat after the fashion of a crown imperial, the whole of fine old grey stone; in front, an open esplanade, paved with massy pieces of granite, and a few kilted grenadiers loitering about the gate— all had an appearance of neglected majesty, which I could not help feeling to be abundantly impressive. The Laird uncovered himself as we stept into the porch, and I saw, by his manner, that I should sorely offend

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him by omitting the same mark of veneration. Within, I found a melancholy quadrangle, for the most part of a noble architecture, but all over as black as if the sun had never shone upon it since the death of Queen Elizabeth. An ancient gentlewoman, with whom my friend seemed to be on terms of infinite familiarity, undertook forthwith to conduct us over the interior. Here, but for the power of memory, and it may be of imagination, I suspect there would not, after all, be much to merit particular attention. The gallery is long and stately, but the vile daubs of Fergus I and his progenitors, entirely disfigure it. The adjoining apartments of Queen Mary, now appropriated to the use of the family of Hamilton, are far from noble in their dimensions; but there is a genuine air of antique grandeur in the hangings and furniture of the inner apartments, none of which have been changed since the time of the most unfortunate of Queens and Beauties—and this is enough to atone for every thing. In the state-room also, the attendant pointed out a cypher, which she said was Mary’s, but Wastle told me, that, in fact, that room had been last fitted up for Charles I, and that the cypher was composed of his initials, and those of his Queen Henrietta Maria. Here, then, is the bed in which Mary slept with Darnley—the closet where Rizzio was murdered—the ante-chamber in which Knox insulted his sovereign, and made it his boast that he “cared little for the pleasant face of a gentlewoman.” There are some portraits, and one exquisite one of Mary herself—I mean an exquisitely beautiful portrait of some exquisite beauty—for as to the real features of the lovely Queen, he must be a more skilful antiquarian than I pretend to be, who could venture any guess with respect to them. Even her eyes are represented of many different colours; but this I only take as an evidence, that they were of that most delicious of all hues, if hue it may be called, that is as changeful as the cameleon—the hazel. I think it is Mackenzie that raves somewhere so delightfully about those softest, and yet most queen-like of eyes. They have not indeed the dazzling sparkle of the Jewish or Italian black, neither have they the vestal calmness of the blue—but they are the only eyes in the world that have the watery swimming lustre of conscious weakness—and when they can change this for the fire of command, and flash annihilation from their contracting lids, what eyes can be compared to them?—what eyes could be so fitting for Mary? The portrait is very beautiful indeed, but it is only a miniature, and by no means satisfies my imagination so much as that in the picture gallery of the Bodleian. There is nothing I should like better than to ascertain the real history of that painting. It is so softly executed, that, at first

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sight, one would suppose it to be done in water colours, and to be covered with a glass. But it is in oils, and on a very old piece of oak (for I once took it down to examine it.) It strikes me, that they used to tell some story about its having been painted by a nun before Mary left France; but I suspect the tradition of its history is very vague and uncertain. I think, however, the picture carries much more of the air of reality about it than any I have seen. What luxurious pensiveness in the lips! what irresistible melting radiance in the eyes—the eye-lids how beautifully oval; the eye-lashes how long, how tender! there was nobody ever invented the like except Correggio . . . . . But I forget that I am not talking to the Laird of Wastle, who would fain, if he could, make not only a beauty, but a saint of her. There is also a fine portrait of Charles I—one of the many, many masterly Vandykes. The king is in a riding habit; he has the same indescribable look of majesty and melancholy which makes it impossible for any man to look upon it without wondering by what process of brutalizing, even a Cromwell or a Bradshaw should ever have learned to regard the original without the reverence of humility. How could any common mortal feel otherwise than abashed in the presence of that “grey discrowned head?”—And Charles kept his court here too for a time, and Laud preached, and Rothes flattered, and the Presbyterians themselves looked smoothly on all the pageants of his state. What a different kind of journey he lived to make hither, and what a different kind of return to his Whitehall! Some spacious, but uncomfortable looking apartments in the newer part of the quadrangle, were occupied by the Bourbon princes during their stay here. I saw the Prie-dieu used by Monsieur, and many other little relics of their Catholic devotion; but in truth, I neither felt, nor pretended to feel, either curiosity or interest about tracing the footsteps of these gentlemen. I have seen these younger sprigs of the lily, and with all my respect for the good old king himself, I wish the lily were rid of a few of its incumbrances. I shall write very soon again, and I hope in a more amusing way. Your’s ever, P. M. P. S.—I forgot to mention the only inhabitants of this Palace, or rather of its precincts, are gentlemen, who find it convenient to take advantage of the sanctuary still afforded by the royalty of the soil. All around the Palace itself, and its most melancholy garden, there are a variety of little

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miserable patchwork dwellings, inhabited by a considerable population of gentry, who prefer a residence here to one in a jail. They have abundance of room here within their limits, for the whole of Arthur’s Seat is, I believe, considered as part of the royal domain. However, they emerge into the town of a Sunday; and I am told some of them contrive to cut a very fashionable figure in the streets, while the catch-poles, in obedience to the commandment, “rest from working.”

LETTER IV TO THE SAME

MARCH 20 I BELIEVE, that had I given myself up entirely to the direction of my friend the Laird, I should have known, up to this hour, very little about any part of Edinburgh more modern than the Canongate, and perhaps heard as little about any worthies she has produced since the murder of Archbishop Sharpe. He seemed to consider it a matter of course, that, morning after morning, the whole of my time ought to be spent in examining the structure of those gloomy tenements in wynds and closes, which had, in the old time, been honoured with the residence of the haughty Scottish barons, or the French ambassadors and generals, their constant visitors. In vain did I assure him, that houses of exactly the same sort were to be seen in abundance in the city of London, and that even I myself had been wearied of counting the fleurs-de-lis carved on every roof and chimney-piece of a green-grocer’s habitation in Mincing-lane. Of such food, in his estimation, there could be no satiety; every land had its coat-of-arms, and every quartering called up to his memory the whole history of some unfortunate amour, or still more unfortunate marriage—in so much that, had I taken accurate notes of all his conversation, I am persuaded I might, before this time, have been in a condition to fill more sheets than you might be likely to peruse, with all the mysteries of the causes celebres, or, to speak more plainly, of the Scandalous Chronicle of Scotland.—What horrors of barbarism—what scenes of murder, rape, incest—seem to have been the staple commodities of week-day life among these ferocious nobles! But, in good truth, I did not come to Scotland to learn such things as these; and although a little sprinkling of them might be very well in its way, I soon found it expedient to give my good friend a slight hint, that I wished he could contrive to afford me something else for the main woof of my meditations. . . . . . He begins to understand my drift, and will, I think, learn to accommodate himself to my humour, pas-a-pas. Notwithstanding all his devotion to the past, indeed, he is far from being an unconcerned or inept observer of more modern things—and I

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have already said as much. He is quite au fait, I have found, in regard to the history and performances of all the leading characters of the present day in Scotland; but, unless when questions are put to him, he seems, with a very few exceptions, to make a point of never alluding to their existence. It would appear as if he was not over anxious to remember that such people are; but when the conversation actually turns on them and their merits, he expresses himself apparently in no uncandid manner concerning the least—and in a tone of genuine admiration concerning the greatest of them. But I despair of making you comprehend the vagaries of such an original. I wish you had a few minutes’ use of the magical mirror, if it were only that you might enjoy one view of him, as he sits wrapped up in his huge blue velvet robe-de-chambre, with a night-cap of the same, dashing execrations by the dozen upon the whigs, the presbyterians, and the Edinburgh reviewers; for his splenetic imagination jumbles them all together—disjecta membra poetae—in one chaos of abomination. Could one enter into his premises of prejudice, one might perhaps find less difficulty in joining in his sweeping sentences of conclusion. He considers whiggery as having been the ruin of the independence of his country, and as forming, at this moment, the principal engine for degrading the character of his countrymen. I own I am rather at a loss to discover what he means by “whiggery,” (for he never deigns to give a definition;) and all I know of the matter is, that it is something for which he equally vituperates Mr Halkston of Rathillet, and Mr Francis Jeffrey,—two persons, between whom, I suspect, few other people would find many circumstances of resemblance,—and each of whom, I am quite sure, would disdain, with all his might, the idea of being coupled with the other. What you or I might be apt to designate by the same term, would, I am certain, coincide in very few points with any notion he may happen to affix to it. But, perchance, we may be able to get a little more light as we go on. In the mean time, Wastle has gone into the country for a few days, upon some of his county politics. I wished to have gone with him, but had caught a vile cold, and did not care for aggravating it. I shall have more leisure to write during his absence; so expect a long letter next time. P. M.

LETTER V TO LADY JOHNES

DEAR AUNT, YOU ask me to speak more particularly concerning the external aspect and manners of the people among whom I am sojourning. I wish it were as easy for me to satisfy your curiosity on some other points mentioned in your last letter, as on this. The Scots are certainly rather a hard-favoured race than otherwise; but I think their looks are very far from meriting the sort of commonplace sarcasms their southern neighbours are used to treat them with. Indeed, no one who has seen a Scots regiment, as I should suppose you must have done, can possibly be of opinion that they are at all an ugly nation; although it is very likely he may be inclined to prefer the general appearance of some other nation or nations to theirs. For my part, I am not without suspicion, that a little longer residence among them might teach me to become an absolute admirer of their physiognomies; at least, I am sensible, that the slight repugnance I felt for them at first, has already very considerably given way. What the Scottish physiognomists are used to talk of, with the highest satisfaction, is the air of superior intelligence stamped on the faces of their countrymen of the lower orders of society; and indeed there is no question, a Scottish peasant, with his long dry visage, his sharp prominent cheekbones, his grey twinkling eyes, and peaked chin, would seem a very Argus, if set up close beside the sleek and ponderous chubbiness of a Gloucestershire farmer—to say nothing of the smarter and ruddier oiliness of some of our own country folks. As to the matter of mere acuteness, however, I think I have seen faces in Yorkshire, at least a match for any thing to be found further to the north. But the mere shrewdness of the Scotch peasant’s face, is only one part of its expression; it has other things, I should imagine, even more peculiarly characteristic. The best place to study their faces in is the kirk; it is there that the sharpness of their discernment is most vehemently expressed in every line—for they are all critics of the sermon, and even of the prayers; but

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it is there also that this sharpness of feature is most frequently seen to melt away before emotions of a nobler order, which are no less peculiarly, though far less permanently theirs. It is to me a very interesting thing to witness the struggle that seems to be perpetually going on between the sarcastic and reverential elements of their disposition—how bitterly they seem to rejoice in their own strength, when they espy, or think they espy, some chink in the armour of their preacher’s reasoning; and then with what sudden humility they appear to bow themselves into the dust, before some single solitary gleam of warm affectionate eloquence—the only weapon they have no power to resist. If I mistake not, it is in this mixture of sheer speculative and active hard-headedness, with the capacity of so much lofty enthusiasm concerning things intangible, that we must seek for the true differential quality of the Scottish peasants. I shall have abundant occasion to return to this hereafter. The gentlemen of this part of the country have assuredly by no means the same advantages over those of the south, which the Scotch peasants have over the English. I know not altogether to what these advantages enjoyed by the lower orders may be owing;—their better education is of course the first and most obvious source—their more sterile soil— and, consequently, their less luxurious life, may be others almost as efficient. Above all, the picturesque aspect of their ever various landscapes, cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on the opening mind of their youth. But in some of these things, at least, the peasantry of particular districts in England share abundantly, and I think there are some pretty extensive tracts on the continent where the whole of these circumstances, or very nearly so, are found acting together, without producing any such similarity of effect as might have been expected. I suspect that we must go further back if we would arrive at any satisfactory solution—Of this too hereafter. The gentry, however, have no pretensions to a more intelligent exterior than their neighbours of the south. The truth is, that certain indications of worldly quicksightedness, which please on the face, and in the air of a peasant, produce quite a different effect when exhibited in the case of a person of superior rank. One rather wishes to see these things kept under in the appearance of a person of education, than suspects their non-existence in the totality of his character. Without wanting their due proportion of the national enthusiasm, the Scottish gentry seem to shew much fewer symptoms of it than those below them; and this is a sufficiently natural result of their sense of their own

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comparative importance. It is a result, notwithstanding, which tends to make any thing but a favourable impression on the mind of a stranger. High and low, they are, for the most part, a race of tall, well-formed people; active of limb, and powerful of muscle; leaner by far than the English;—(for here a very fat man is stared at, and one of such bulk as is met with at every corner in London, must, it would seem, lay his account with a little quizzing from all his friends on the subject of his obesity.) In their gait and gestures, they have neither the vivacity of the Frenchman, nor the noble gravity of the Spaniard, nor the stable heavy vigour of the Englishman; but a certain grotesque mixture of elasticity and sedateness, which is sufficient to prove their descent from a hardy and warlike set of marauders, the effects of whose subæthric existence have not yet been washed out by any great influx of idleness or luxury; and, at the same time, under favour, to remind one with what zeal these progenitors exerted all their energies, in behalf of the most taciturn species of fanaticism that was ever made subservient to the purposes of ghostly ambition. When a man visits France, whether he be a believer or a despiser of the doctrine of the Spurzheims, he must look long around him before he can find any face which he could imagine to be the property of one lineally sprung from the loins of the Bayards and the Duguesclins, or, if you will, of the Harlays, and the Du Thous. But here the deterioration of the species, if such there be, has scarcely begun to tell upon their physiognomies; and you meet, at every step, persons who have that about them which would prevent you from being at all astonished, if you should be told immediately afterwards, that they could trace themselves, without difficulty, to the Burleighs and the Claverhouses,—I had almost said, the Bell-the-Cats, and the Kirkpatricks. I have not, as yet, seen a great deal of the women. Those, even of the peasantry, seem, when young, to be comely and well complexioned; but it is a great mistake to suppose that they are fairer than with us. And yet the testimony of travellers cannot be entirely despised; and if their report is in any degree a correct one, light hair, and light eyes, were almost universal at no very remote period. This is a circumstance that has often appeared to me to be very inadequately accounted for,—I mean the great and remarkable change that has taken place in the complexions not only of the Scotch, but of the English, and indeed of all the Gothic nations of Europe. When the Romans first became acquainted with the Germans and the Britons, there can be no question that both the gentlemen and the ladies of those nations had yellow locks and blue

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eyes; and you have heard, no doubt, that the Roman belles, stimulated, it is to be suspected, by the stories of their campaigning husbands and lovers, endeavoured, by a thousand tricks of the toilette, to muster charms as nearly as they could in the same taste. You well know, that the Messalinas and Poppæas used to cut off the finest black curls in the world, to make room for false tetes manufactured from the hair of the poor girls of the Sicambri and the Batavi, while others strove to produce the same sort of effect by means of hair-powder made of gold-dust, and washes, of more cunning chemistry than I would undertake to describe. Even in far later times, so late as Henry VIII and Elizabeth, Erasmus and Paul Hentzner represent the ladies of England as being, with very few exceptions, blondes; and such, if voyagers of less illustrious reputation “may be in aught believed,” not much above a hundred years ago, were the far greater portion of the beaux and belles of Scotland. “Sandy-haired” is still one of the standing epithets applied to the ideal Scot, by all inexperienced persons, who introduce any description of him into novels or satires—witness Churchill, and a thousand of less note; and I confess, that I was myself prepared to find the case much more as they have represented it, than I really have done. By looking around me at home, and remembering what the old writers had said of ourselves, I might have learned to be more suspicious of their accuracy; but the truth is, I had never taken the pains to think much about the matter. In fact, they are now as far from being a light-haired people as we are. I amused myself (God forgive me) with counting the number of fair heads last Sunday in a very crowded church, and, I assure you, they did not amount to one in fifty. There are far more people here with locks of all but Israelitish blackness, than of any shade that could with propriety be called either white, yellow, or red; and the general hues are exactly the same variations of brown, between Bistre and Burnt Sienna, which we are accustomed to in the south. I was at a large party yesterday evening—the first sight I have had of the gay world here—and had an opportunity of viewing, at my leisure, all the fashionable belles of the town. You always accuse me of being too undistinguishing an admirer; but, I am sure, even you would have allowed that there was no want of beauty. It is many years since I have been familiar with the beau-monde of London, but I do not believe I ever, in any one evening there, saw a greater number of fine women, and of very different kinds too. I had heard before I went that I should see Miss *****, the same celebrated star of whom you have so often heard Sir Thomas speak, and who, indeed, cannot shew herself any-

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where, even in this unromantic age, without leaving an uneffaceable impression on all that behold her. I confess the description the knight used to give of her appeared to me to be a little high-flown; but “seeing is believing”—the world has assuredly only one *****. I looked round a room crowded with lovely women, but my eye was fixed in a moment; and I never thought of asking which was she. The first view I had was a profile. I had no suspicion that nature could still form countenances upon that heavenly model. The forehead, high and clear, descends almost without a curve into the nose, and that again drops into the mouth with such bold defined elegance of lineament, as I should scarcely have believed to be copied from living beauty, had I met with it in some masterpiece of sculpture. The lips have such a delicate precision of form, and such an expression of divine simplicity in their smile, that one could almost believe they had never admitted any grosser diet than ambrosia; but the full oval sweep of the cheek and chin, and the mode in which these are carried down into the neck, are, perhaps, the most truly antique parts of the whole. And then such hair—such long luxurious tresses of radiant brown, braided with such serene grace upon that meek forehead! If you have seen Canova’s testa d’Helena, you may form some notion of those most exquisite curls. The colour of her eyes I could not ascertain: I suspect they are dark grey, or hazel; but the redundant richness of her eye-lashes gives them all that glossy splendour which oriental beauties borrow from their Sirmē. But, indeed, colour is a small matter in eyes enchased so deeply beneath such majestic brows. I think Lucretius himself would have admitted, that the spirit must be immortal on which so glorious a tenement has been bestowed! With this divine exception, I must do the men the justice to say, that the most beautiful women in the room were all matrons. Had she been absent, there were two or three of these on whom all my enthusiasm might well have been expended; and one, Mrs ************, whose graceful majesty was such, that when I met her next evening in a smaller assembly, I almost began to suspect myself of having been too exclusive in my deification. But I have already said more than I should have ventured on to almost any other of your sex—a great deal more than I should have dared to write, far less speak to my cousin,—to whom I beg you will present the humble duty of Her slave, &c. &c. P. M.

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P. S. By way of pleasing Jane, you may tell her that I do not think the Scottish ladies are at all good dressers. They are very gorgeous—I never saw such a display of crimson velvet, and ostrich feathers, and diamond necklaces, except once at a birth-day. But the fashions have a long cold journey before they reach Edinburgh, and I think they do not regain the same easy air which they have before they begin their travels. They are apt to overdo every thing, particularly that vilest and most unnatural of all fashions, the saddle—or I know not what you call it— which is at present permitted to destroy so much of the back, and indeed, to give so much meanness to the whole air. They say the scrophula brought in the high shirt collars of the men—and the Spectator gives some equally intelligible account of the fardingale. Pray, what hunchbacked countess was she that had wit enough to bring the saddle into vogue? I think all the three fashions are equally abominable, and the two of them that still remain should be voted out by the clean-skinned and straight-backed, who, I hope, are still the major part of the community. But, ne sutor ultra crepidam *** P. M.

LETTER VI TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

DEAR DAVID, ALTHOUGH my sole purpose, or nearly so, in coming to Scotland, was to see and converse with the illustrious men who live here, I have been in Edinburgh for a fortnight, and can scarcely say that I have as yet seen even the faces of most of them. What with lounging about in the mornings with Wastle, and claret in the evening, and routs and balls at night, I fear I am fast getting into a very unprofitable life. The only very great man here, to whom I had letters of introduction, was Mr Scott, and he happened to go out of town for a few weeks, I believe the very day after my arrival. I forwarded my letter to him in the country, however, and he has invited me to pay him a visit there, at the castle he has just built upon the banks of the Tweed. My friends have been so attentive, however, as to send me letters for Mr Mackenzie the Man of Feeling, Mr Jeffrey, Mr Playfair, and several other men of note, on both sides of the question; so that I shall now see as much as I please of all the Dons. I shall take the opportunity of Wastle’s absence, to call upon all these gentlemen; for, excepting Mr Scott and Mr Mackenzie, he has no acquaintance with any of them. I believe, indeed, there is little love lost between him and them—and I wish to see things with my own eyes. Of all the celebrated characters of this place, I rather understand that Jeffrey is the one whom travellers are commonly most in a hurry to see—not surely, that the world, in general, has any such deep and abiding feeling of admiration for him, or any such longing to satisfy their eyes with gazing on his features, as they have with regard to such a man as Scott, or even Stewart; but I think the interest felt with respect to him is of a more vivacious and eager kind, and they rush with all speed to gratify it—exactly as men give immediate vent to their petty passions, who have no difficulty, or rather, indeed, who have a sort of pleasure, in nursing silently, and concealing long, those of a more serious and grave importance. A few years ago, I should perhaps have been more inclined to be a sharer in this violent sort of impatience; but even now I approached the residence of Mr Jeffrey with any feelings

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assuredly rather than those of indifference. He was within when I called, and in a second I found myself in the presence of this bugbear of authors. He received me so kindly, (although, from the appearance of his room, he seemed to be immersed in occupation,) and asked so many questions, and said and looked so much, in so short a time, that I had some difficulty in collecting my inquisitorial powers to examine the person of the man. I know not how, there is a kind of atmosphere of activity about him; and my eyes caught so much of the prevailing spirit, that they darted for some minutes from object to object, and refused, for the first time, to settle themselves even upon the features of a man of genius—to them, of all human things, the most potent attractions. I find that the common prints give a very inadequate notion of his appearance. The artists of this day are such a set of cowardly fellows, that they never dare to give the truth as it is in nature; and the consequence is, after all, that they rather take from, than add to, the impressiveness of the faces they would flatter. What a small matter is smoothness of skin, or even regularity of feature, in the countenance that Nature has formed to be the index of a powerful intellect? Perhaps I am too much of a connoisseur to be a fair judge of such matters; but I am very sure, that the mere handsomeness of a great man is one of the last things about him that fixes my attention. I do not wish, neither, to deny, that, when I first saw Goethe, the sublime simplicity of his Homeric beauty—the awful pile of forehead—the large deep eyes, with their melancholy lightnings—the whole countenance, so radiant with divinity, would have lost much of its power, had it not been, at the same time, the finest specimen of humanity I had ever beheld; neither would I conceal the immeasureable softness of delight which mingled with my reverence, when I detected, as if by intuition, in the midst of the whole artists of St Luke’s, the Hyperion curls, and calm majestic lineaments, which could be nobody’s but Canova’s. But although beauty never exists in vain, there is nothing more certain than that its absence is scarcely perceived by those who are capable of discovering and enjoying the marks of things more precious than beauty. Could all our countrymen of the present time, of very great reputation for talents or genius, be brought together into a single room, their physiognomies would, I doubt not, form as impressive a groupe as can well be imagined; but, among the whole, there would scarcely be more than one face which any sculptor might be ambitious of imitating on marble. Jeffrey’s countenance could not stand such a test. To catch the minutest

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elements of its eloquent power, would, I think, be a hard enough task for any painter, and indeed, as I have already told you, it has proved too hard a task for such as have yet attempted it. It is a face which any man would pass without observation in a crowd, because it is small and swarthy, and entirely devoid of lofty or commanding outlines—and besides, his stature is so low, that he might walk close under your chin or mine without ever catching the eye even for a moment. However, he is scarcely shorter than Campbell; and some inches taller than Tom Moore, or the late Monk Lewis. I remember Lord Clarendon somewhere takes notice, that in his age, (the prime manhood of English intellect, as Coleridge calls it,) a very large proportion of the remarkable men were very short in stature. Such, if my memory serves me, were Hales, and Chillingworth, and Sidney Godolphin, and Lord Falkland himself, who used, I think, to say, that it was a great ingredient into his friendship for Mr Godolphin, that he was pleased to be in his company, where he was the properer man. In our own time, we have more than one striking instance of the “Mens magna in corpore parvo;”—Buonaparte himself for one; and by the way, he is the only little man I ever saw, who seemed to be unconscious, or careless, or disdainful of the circumstance. Almost all other persons of that description appear to labour under a continual and distressing feeling that nature has done them injustice, and not a few of them strive to make up for her defects, by holding their heads as high as possible, and even giving an uncomfortable elevation or projection to the chin, all which has a very mean effect upon their air and attitude, and is particularly hurtful to the features of the face, moreover,—because it tends to reverse the arrangement of Nature, and to throw all those parts into light which she has meant to be in shade. It is exactly the same sort of thing that we all remark on the stage, where the absurd manner in which the lamps are placed, under the feet of the performers, has such a destructive effect, that few actors, except those of the Kemble blood, appear to have any better than snub noses. Now, Napoleon has not the least of this trick; but, on the contrary, carries his head almost constantly in a stooping posture, and so preserves and even increases the natural effect of his grand formation about the eye-brows, and the beautiful classical cut of his mouth and chin—though, to be sure, his features are so fine that nothing could take much from their power.—But, to come back to our own small men, Jeffrey has a good deal of this unhappy manner, and so loses much of what his features, such as they are, might be made to convey.

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I have heard many persons say, that the first sight of Mr Jeffrey disappointed them, and jarred with all the ideas they had previously formed of his genius and character. Perhaps the very first glance of this celebrated person produced something of the same effect upon my own mind; but a minute or two of contemplation sufficed to restore me to the whole of my faith in physiognomy. People may dispute as much as they please about particular features, and their effect, but I have been all my life a student of “the human face divine,” and I have never yet met with any countenance which did not perfectly harmonize, so far as I could have opportunity of ascertaining, with the intellectual conformation and habits of the man that bore it. But I must not allow myself to be seduced into a disquisition—I shall rather try my hand at a portrait. Mr Jeffrey, then, as I have said, is a very short, and very activelooking man, with an appearance of extraordinary vivacity in all his motions and gestures. His face is one which cannot be understood at a single look—perhaps it requires, as it certainly invites, a long and anxious scrutiny before it lays itself open to the gazer. The features are neither handsome, nor even very defined in their outlines; and yet the effect of the whole is as striking as any arrangement either of more noble or more marked features, which ever came under my view. The forehead is very singularly shaped, describing in its bend from side to side a larger segment of a circle than is at all common; compressed below the temples almost as much as Sterne’s; and throwing out sinuses above the eyes, of an extremely bold and compact structure. The hair is very black and wiry, standing in ragged bristly clumps out from the upper part of his head, but lying close and firm lower down, especially about the ears. Altogether it is picturesque, and adds to the effect of the visage. The mouth is the most expressive part of his face, as I believe it is of every face. The lips are very firm, but they tremble and vibrate, even when brought close together, in such a way as to give the idea of an intense, never-ceasing play of mind. There is a delicate kind of sneer almost always upon them, which has not the least appearance of ill-temper about it, but seems to belong entirely to the speculative understanding of the man. I have said, that the mouth is the most expressive part of his face—and, in one sense, this is the truth, for it is certainly the seat of all its rapid and transitory expression. But what speaking things are his eyes! They disdain to be agitated with those lesser emotions which pass over the lips; they reserve their fierce and dark energies for matters of more moment; once kindled with the heat of any passion, how they beam, flash upon flash! The scintillation of a star is not more fervid.

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Perhaps, notwithstanding of this, their repose is even more worthy of attention. With the capacity of emitting such a flood of radiance, they seem to take a pleasure in banishing every ray from their black, inscrutable glazed, tarn-like circles. I think their prevailing language is, after all, rather a melancholy than a merry one—it is, at least, very full of reflection. Such is a faint outline of this countenance, the features of which (to say nothing at all of their expression,) have, as yet, baffled every attempt of the portrait-painters; and which, indeed, bids very fair, in my opinion, to leave no image behind it either on canvass or on copper. A sharp, but, at the same time, very deep-toned and impressive voice—a very bad pronunciation, but accompanied with very little of the Scotch accent—a light and careless manner, exchanged now and then for an infinite variety of more earnest expression and address—this is as much as I could carry away from my first visit to “the wee reekit deil,” as the Inferno of Altisidora has happily called him. I have since seen a great deal more of him, and have a great deal more to tell you, but my paper is done. P. M. P. S. I am to dine with Jeffrey to-morrow at his country house, about three miles from Edinburgh, and shall give you a full account of the party in my next.

LETTER VII TO THE SAME

DEAR DAVID, SINCE I came to this town the weather has in general been of a very unpleasant kind. When you look out from the windows of your apartment, nothing can be finer than the appearance every thing presents. The air is as clear as amber overhead, and the sun shines with so much power, that in these splendid streets, the division of the bright from the shadowy part, reminds one of the richest effects of a Cuyp, or a Sachtleeven. But when you come out, in the full trust inspired by this brilliant serenity of aspect, you find yourself woefully disappointed. The action of the sun and air upon the nerves, is indeed delightfully stimulant; but the whole charm is destroyed before you have time to enjoy it, by some odious squall of wind which cuts you to the teeth—and what is worse, comes loaded with a whole cloud of flying dust and gravel, which is sure to leave its traces behind it, on still more delicate parts of your physiognomy. As for myself, I am often obliged to walk with a handkerchief held before my eyes—and in spite of all my precautions, I have been several times in such a state, that I have absolutely rubbed myself blind. The whole of this arises from the want of watering the streets—a thing which might surely be accomplished without the least difficulty, by a subscription among the inhabitants. If this evil be so severe at present, what must it be in the dog-days?—and yet the people submit to it all quietly in streets, below every one of which, they know water is flowing in pipes, ready to be scattered ad libitum, and at an expense not worthy of being mentioned.—“O! cæcas hominum mentes!” Yesterday, however, there was an unusual degree of quietness in the state of the atmosphere. A slight shower, which fell in the morning, had laid the most offensive part of the dust, without giving the least appearance of damp to the roads—and I drove to Craigcrook, Mr Jeffrey’s villa, molto gustosamente—the expectation of the manifold luxuries I hoped to enjoy there—the prospective delights both of palate and intellect—being heightened and improved by the preliminary gratification I tasted, while the shandrydan rolled along between the

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refreshed green of the meadows and corn-fields. His house is an old turreted mansion, much patched in the whole mass of its structure, and, I believe, much increased in its accommodations since he entered upon possession of it. The situation is extremely beautiful. There are very few trees immediately about the house; but the windows open upon the side of a charming hill, which, in all its extent, as far as the eye can reach, is wooded most luxuriantly to the very summit. There cannot be a more delicious rest for the eyes, than such an Arcadian height in this bright and budding time of the year; but, indeed, where, or at what time, can a fine wood be looked upon without delight? Between the wood and the house, there is a good garden, and some fields, in the cultivation of which Mr Jeffrey seems to take much pleasure; for I had no sooner arrived, than he insisted upon carrying me over his ditches and hedges to shew me his method of farming; and, indeed, talked of Swedish turnip, and Fiorin grass, and red-blossomed potatoes, in a style that would have done no dishonour to your friend Curwen himself. I had come, thanks to my rustic ignorance, exactly at the hour appointed for dinner, (five o’clock,) so that I had three parts of an hour of the great man entirely to myself—during the whole of which space he continued to talk about rural affairs, and to trot me up one field and down another, till I was weary, without (credite posteri!) making one single allusion to law, politics, or literature. We were joined towards six o’clock by Professors Playfair and Leslie, and one or two young advocates, who had walked out with them. Then came Robert Morehead, whom you remember at Balliol, a relation and intimate friend of Mr Jeffrey’s. He and the celebrated orator Alison officiate together in one of the Episcopalian chapels in Edinburgh. Although we never knew each other at Oxford, yet we immediately recognised each other’s old High-Street faces, and began to claim a sort of acquaintance on that score, as all Oxonian contemporaries, I believe, are accustomed to do, when they meet at a distance from their alma mater. There were several other gentlemen, mostly of grave years, so that I was not a little astonished, when somebody proposed a trial of strength in leaping. Nor was my astonishment at all diminished, when Mr Playfair began to throw off his coat and waistcoat, and to prepare himself for taking his part in the contest. When he did so much, I could have no apology, so I also stripped; and, indeed, the whole party did the same, except Jeffrey alone, who was dressed in a short green jacket, with scarcely any skirts, and, therefore, seemed to consider himself as already sufficiently “accinctus ludo.”

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I used to be a good leaper in my day—witness the thousands of times I have beat you in the Port-Meadow, and elsewhere—but I cut a very poor figure among these sinewy Caledonians. With the exception of Leslie, they all jumped wonderfully; and Jeffrey was quite miraculous, considering his brevity of stride. But the greatest wonder of the whole was Mr Playfair. He also is a short man, and he cannot be less than seventy, yet he took his stand with the assurance of an athletic, and positively beat every one of us—the very best of us, at least half a heel’s breadth. I was quite thunderstruck, never having heard the least hint of his being so great a geometrician—in this sense of the word. I was, however, I must own, agreeably surprised by such a specimen of buoyant spirit and muscular strength in so venerable an old gentleman, and could not forbear from complimenting him on his revival of the ancient peripatetic ideas, about the necessity of cultivating the external as well as the internal energies, and of mixing the activity of the practical with that of the contemplative life. He took what I said with great suavity; and, indeed, I have never seen a better specimen of that easy hilarity and good humour, which sits with so much gracefulness on an honoured old age. I wish I could give you a notion of his face. It is not marked by any very striking features; but the unison of mildness of disposition, and strength of intellect in the expression, is too remarkable to be unnoticed even by a casual observer. His habits of profound thought have drawn some deep lines about his mouth, and given him a custom of holding his lips very closely shut, otherwise I suspect the whole countenance would have been nothing more than an amiable one; although the light eyes have certainly at times something very piercing in their glance, even through his spectacles. The forehead is very finely developed—singularly broad across the temples, as, according to Spurzheim, all mathematical foreheads must be; but the beauty in that quarter is rather of an ad clerum character, or, as Pindar hath it, ——προς το ϖαν ‘Ερμηνεων χατιζει.

I, however, who really, in good earnest, begin to believe a little of the system, could not help remarking this circumstance; and more particularly so, because I found Mr Leslie’s skull to possess many of the same features—above all, that of the breadth between the temples. This other great mathematician is a much younger man than Playfair; but his hair is already beginning to be grey. He is a very fat heavy figure of a man,

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with much more appearance of strength than of activity; and yet, although a bad leaper, by no means a slothful looking person neither. He has very large eyes, in shape not unlike Coleridge’s, but without the least of the same mysterious depth of expression. Altogether, his face is one which, at first sight, you would pronounce to be merely a coarse one; but in which, once informed to whom it belongs, you are at no loss to discover a thousand marks of vigorous intellect and fancy too. Of this last quality, indeed, his eyes are at all times full to overflowing. In the midst of the sombre gravity of his usual look, there are always little flashes of enthusiasm breaking through the cloud, and, I think, adorning it; and, in this respect, he forms a striking contrast to the calm tranquil uniformity of Mr Playfair’s physiognomy and deportment. In thinking of this afterwards, I could not help recollecting a great many passages of richly-coloured writing in his scientific Essays in the Edinburgh Review, which I remember struck me at the time I first read them, as being rather misplaced. But this, perhaps, may be merely the effect of the sterile way of writing employed by almost all the philosophers of these late times, to which we have now become so much accustomed, that we with difficulty approve of any thing in a warmer taste, introduced into such kinds of disquisition. They managed these things better in Greece. By and bye, we were summoned to the drawing-room, where we found several ladies with Mrs Jeffrey. She, you know, is an American, and Jeffrey went across the Atlantic for her a few years ago, while we were at war with her country. She is a very pleasing person; and they have one extremely interesting little girl. Our host made no alteration in his dress, but joined the ladies exactly in his morning costume,—the little green jacket aforesaid, grey worsted pantaloons, and Hessian boots, and a black silk handkerchief. How had Grub-street stared to see the prince of reviewers in such a garb! The dinner was excellent—a glorious turbot and oyster-sauce for one thing; and (sitesco referens) there was no want of champaigne—the very wine, by the way, which I should have guessed to be Jeffrey’s favourite. It is impossible to conceive of him as being a lover of the genuine old black-strap, or even of the quiet balminess of Burgundy. The true reviewing diet is certainly Champaigne moussu, and devilled biscuit. Had there been any blue-stocking lady present, she would have been sadly shocked with the material cast of the conversation during dinner—not a single word about The sweet new poem!

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Most of the company, though all men of literary habits, seemed to be as alive to the delights of the table, as if they had been “let in” (to use Dandie’s phrase,) by Monsieur Viard,—knowing in sauces, and delightfully reviewing every glass before they would suffer it to go down. It put me in mind of some lines of my friend Wastle. ’Tis a bookseller that speaks— The days of Tonson, Lintot, Curll, are over, ’Tis now your author’s time to live on clover. The time’s gone by when we our coaches kept, And authors were contented with umbrellas— When pairs of epic bards in hay-lofts slept, Too glad if cantos two could fill two bellies— When we could always dinner intercept, Unless the quire was covered—Happy fellows! When first a champaigne cork was taught to fly At a reviewer’s touch—our reign was by.*

The introduction of the claret and dessert made, for a long time, very little alteration in the subject matter of the discourse; but by degrees the natural feelings and interests of the company did begin to shine through the cloud of babillage, and various matters, in which I was much better pleased to hear their opinions, were successively tabled—none of them, however, with the least appearance of what the Scotch very expressively call fore-thought. Every thing went on with the utmost possible facility, and, in general, with a very graceful kind of lightness. The whole tone of Mr Jeffrey’s own conversation, indeed, was so pitched, that a proser, or a person at all ambitious, in the green-room phrase, to make an effect, would undoubtedly have found himself most grievously out of place. Amidst all this absence of “preparation,” however, (for it is impossible to talk of conversation without using French words),—I have never, I believe, heard so many ideas thrown out by any man in so short a space of time, and apparently with such entire negation of exertion. His conversation acted upon me like the first delightful hour after taking opium. The thoughts he scattered so readily about him (his words, rapid, and wonderfully rapid as they are, appearing to be continually panting after his conceptions)—his thoughts, I say, were at once so striking, and so just, that they took in succession entire possession of my imagination, and yet with so felicitous a tact did he forbear from expressing any one _____________________________________________ * Modern Dunciad, Canto II MS.

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of these too fully, that the reason was always kept in a pleasing kind of excitement, by the endeavour more thoroughly to examine their bearings. It is quite impossible to listen to him for a moment, without recalling all the best qualities of his composition—and yet I suspect his conversation is calculated to leave one with even a higher idea of his mind, at least of its fertility, than the best of his writings. I have heard some men display more profoundness of reflection, and others a much greater command of the conversational picturesque—but I never before witnessed any thing to be compared with the blending together of apparently little consistent powers in the whole strain of his discourse. Such a power, in the first place, of throwing away at once every useless part of the idea to be discussed, and then such a happy redundancy of imagination to present the essential and reserved part in its every possible relation, and point of view—and all this connected with so much of the plain sçavoir faire of actual existence, and such a thorough scorn of mystification, it is really a very wonderful intellectual coalition. The largeness of the views suggested by his speculative understanding, and the shrewdness with which his sound and close judgment seems to scrutinize them after they are suggested—these alone would be sufficient to make his conversation one of the most remarkable things in the world. But then he invests all this ground-work with such a play of fancy, wit, sarcasm, persiflage, every thing in that way except humour—which again, were they united in any person entirely devoid either of the depth or the justness of Jeffrey’s intellect, would unquestionably render that person one of the most fascinating of all possible companions. The Stagyrite, who places his summum bonum in having one’s faculties kept at work, would certainly have thought himself in Elysium, had he been so fortunate as to discuss a flask of Chian in company with Mr Jeffrey. The mere animal spirits of the man are absolutely miraculous. When one considers what a life of exertion he has led for these last twenty years; how his powers have been kept on the rack such a length of time with writing, and concocting, and editing reviews on the one hand, and briefs, and speeches, and journeys, and trials, and cross-questionings, and the whole labyrinth of barristership on the other—one cannot help being quite thunderstruck on finding that he has still reserved such a large fund of energy which he can afford and delight to lavish, when even the comparative repose of his mind would be more than enough to please and satisfy every one. His vigour seems to be a perfect widow’s cruise, bubbling for ever upwards, and refusing to be exhausted;

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swelling and spreading till all the vessels of the neighbourhood are saturated, and more than saturated, with the endless unwearied irrigation of its superfluous richness. Mr Playfair was the only other person whose conversation made any very striking impression on me—but indeed this might well be the case, without the least reflection on the talents of those present. This gentleman’s mode of talking is just as different as possible from his friend’s— it is quietly, simply, unaffectedly sensible, and that is all one thinks of it at first—but by degrees he says things, which although at the moment he utters them, they do not produce any very startling effect, have the power to keep one musing on them for a long time after he stops—so that, even if one were not told who he is, I believe one would have no difficulty in discovering him to be a great man. The gravity of his years—the sweet unassuming gentleness of his behaviour—and the calm way in which he gave utterance to thoughts, about which almost any other person would have made so much bustle—every thing about the appearance and manners of this serene and venerable old man, has left a feeling of quiet, respectful, and affectionate admiration upon my mind. I brought him into town in the shandrydan, and he has asked me to dine with him in the beginning of next week. I mean before the time, to go and hear him deliver one of his lectures, and shall tell you what I think of it—although, considering the subject of which he treats, you may perhaps feel no great anxiety to hear my opinion. I declare the wine here is superb. I think some of Jeffrey’s ChâteauMargout beats the lot you bought at Colonel Johnes’s all to nothing— don’t take this in dudgeon. Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER VIII TO THE REV. D. W.

OMAN’S, TUESDAY EVENING DEAR DAVID, I AM rather surprised that you should already begin to call upon me for disquisition, when you may well suppose I have still so many interesting descriptions to give you. I have now seen, not one or two, but a great number of those eminent persons who confer so much honour upon the present condition of Scotland, and of whom you yourself have so often talked to me in terms of ardent curiosity. I assure you, but indeed why should I waste words to do so, that the extraordinary talents of these men are as far as possible from losing by a close inspection of their manners. The tone of that society, which they have necessarily had so great a share in forming, is as free as possible from the influence of that spirit of jealousy and constraint which I have observed operating, in some other cities, in such a way, as to prevent men of genius from doing justice to themselves, elsewhere than in their writings. Hereafter, indeed, I shall have occasion to say something of the spirit of party in Scotland, and to show with what destructive violence it attacks the very essence of cordial communion among some of the less considerable classes of society. Nay, I fear from what I already see, that I shall find some little occasion to lament the insidious and half unsuspected influences of the same spirit among those who should be more above its working. But in the social intercourse of most of the men of literary eminence whom I have as yet seen, the absence of all feeling of party appears to be quite as entire as that of some other, and yet more offensive feelings which are elsewhere sufficiently manifest in their effects; and the principles, as well as the reputation of the one of such men, appear to act in no other way upon the other, than as gentle stimulants of his intellect, and of his courtesy. My friend Wastle, as I have already whispered, not only forms, but glories in forming, an exception to this sort of behaviour. He utterly hates a Whig and a Calvinist, and he has no scruple about saying as much upon every occasion. He abominates the style of complaisant

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smoothness, with which some, who entertain many of his own opinions, are accustomed to treat those whom he calls by no better name than the Adversaries; and complains indeed with an air of gravity, which I should not have expected in any man of his understanding, that by this species of conduct, the Great Cause itself, (by which he means the cause of true religion and true patriotism, as united and inseparable), has sustained, is sustaining, and is likely to sustain injuries of a more dangerous character than its unassisted enemies alone could have any power of inflicting. He has a two-fold argument on this head. “In the first place,” says he, “the utterly ignorant and uninformed, who must constitute the great majority of every nation, and the half ignorant and conceited, who constitute an infinitely larger proportion of the Scotch than of any other nation under heaven—and who, wherever they may be found, are a far more despicable, though no doubt, a more dangerous class than that upon which they think themselves entitled to look down—all these people, ‘thick as the leaves in Vallambrosa,’ are, in spite of themselves, mightily influenced in all things by the example of the few men of true genius and learning their country does contain. They see the external kindness with which these men treat the persons of their enemies, and it is no wonder that they care not to make nice distinctions between persons and principles for themselves. In the second place,” says he, “the good cavalier himself cannot keep company with roundheads—no, nor the good son of the true church cannot consort in familiarity with the relics of the cold-blooded covenanters on the one hand, or with those of the equally cold-blooded sceptic and infidel tribe on the other, without losing somewhat of the original purity of his affectionate faith. For my part,” he concludes, “I will do no harm to others or to myself, by such rash and unworthy obsequiences.” The plain English of all which is, perhaps, nothing more, than that my good friend is too great a bigot to be capable of feeling much happiness in the presence of men who differ from him on points which he considers as of so much importance, and that he is willing, in avoiding their company, to cover his true motives from his acquaintance, in part it may be from himself, by the assumption of others, to which, in truth, he has little legitimate pretension. Be all this as it may, Wastle is, without doubt, the keenest Tory in Scotland; indeed, I believe I should not go far from the truth, should I say, that his Toryism both far more smells of the old cavalier school, and is far more keen and intolerant than that of any man of superior attainments, I ever met with on either side of the Tweed. A Scotsman of genuine talents, who sincerely entertains such opinions, may perhaps

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claim no inconsiderable indulgence, although the present condition of his country should affect him with feelings of aversion, almost of loathing, towards politicians of another kind, such as would be altogether unpardonable in an English Tory. In our part of the island, thank God, the pedigree of right thoughts has at no period been interrupted; and never, I firmly believe, did the venerable tree present a more imposing spectacle of bloom and vigour than at the present. In literature, as in every other walk of exertion and department of life, the Tories have, at least, their equal share of power and of honour. In the church, their principles are maintained by a mighty majority of a clergy, whom even their enemies will acknowledge to be the most learned in the world, and who, whatever may be their comparative deficiencies in some other respects, are certainly far more intimately connected with the thoughts and feelings of the most important classes of society, than any clerical body in Europe ever was; and therefore, it may be presumed, more likely to exert a continued and effectual influence upon the public mind of their country. In the law, where the encouragement for talent alone is such, that no man of high talents can be suspected of easily sacrificing his judgment for the hopes of favour, the superiority is almost as apparent as in the church, and Shepherd stands as much alone among the younger, as our excellent Chancellor does among the elder part of the profession. In literature, they have no lack of splendid names. They have an equal proportion of those who carry on the immediate and more noisy conflict; and a far over-balancing array of such as are likely to be remembered hereafter for the stable and enduring triumphs of their genius. They have Canning and Frere among the wits—they have Wordsworth and Coleridge in poetry—and they have the unwearied inexhaustible Southey in every thing. They have no reason either to be ashamed of their front, or apprehensive of their success; and therefore they can have no excuse for carrying further than is absolutely necessary, the measure of their hostility towards those who do not muster beneath their banner. I before suspected in part, and I now have seen enough thoroughly to convince me, that in each and all of these points, this quarter of the island presents unhappily a contrast as striking as possible to the condition of our own. I shall not at present enter upon any thing like a review of the past history of political feeling in Scotland, because I expect ere long to find myself better enabled than I now am to attempt something of this kind; and, at the same time, by laying before you the results of my inquiries into the nature both of the religion and the education of Scotland, to

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afford you somewhat of a key to its interpretation. In the meantime, however, nothing can be more certain than the superiority of the Whigs in the Scottish literature of the present day; nor is their superiority a whit less decisive in the law, the only profession which, in Scotland, exerts any great or general authority over the opinions of the higher classes of society. As for the church, of which I propose to give you a full account hereafter, and of which, in regard to its influence among the mass of the people, I am inclined to entertain a very high respect,—the truth is, the clergy of Scotland are, at the present day, possessed of comparatively little power over the opinions of the best educated classes of their countrymen. One very efficient cause of this want of influence is, without doubt, the insignificant part they have of late taken in general literature; their neglect, in other words, their strange and unprecedented neglect of an engine, which, among a people whose habits at all resemble those of the present Scots, must ever be, of all others, the most extensive in its sway. Such as the influence of the churchmen is, they are all Presbyterians and Calvinists, and so, in spite of themselves, they are, and must be Whigs. A few, indeed, may endeavour to persuade themselves and others they are Tories; but they wear the cloak of Geneva, and they are the descendants of John Knox—and that is sufficient. They may, if they choose, attempt to depart from the views of their predecessors, but the whole history of their sect is against them; and the shrewd sagacity of those to whom they address themselves, will at all times find a pleasing exercise in drawing invidious comparisons at their expense. But my business now is with the literati, and I am wandering from my text. There never was any man more fitted, by the general structure of his genius, for seizing and possessing an extensive dominion over Scottish intellect, than David Hume. He was very nearly the beau ideal of the national understanding, and had he stood in any thing like the same relation to some other parts of the national character, without all question he might have produced works which would have been recognized by them as complete pictures of their mode of thinking and feeling, and which would, therefore, have obtained a measure of influence exactly coincident with the extent of their national existence. The defect of feeling in his composition, which has prevented his books from attaining the power which their genius might otherwise have commanded, was by no means hostile to the early diffusion of his celebrity; but it has acted with the force of a terrible lever, in pulling him down from that height of authority to which the spring of his originality at first elevated him. The empire which he at once framed to

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himself in the region of the speculative understanding of his countrymen, has not, indeed, been taken away; but the tyrannous interference, by which this empire at first contrived almost to swallow up every authority in its vicinity, has now received many checks, and, I should hope, bids fair to be ere long entirely discontinued. The only points on which David’s character seems to have found any room for ardent feeling, were the ideas of ancient loyalty and attachment to the blood of his native princes. This was a strange anomaly in the composition of so frigid an observer of human affairs. We hear it usually said, that it could have arisen only from the influence of early education; but even so, the wonder remains undiminished, how he, who threw off all other youthful prejudices with so much facility, should have continued to embalm this alone in the very recesses of his heart. I am rather inclined to be of opinion, that David had really persuaded himself, by the exercise of his speculative understanding, that the greatest danger, to which his country was likely to be exposed, would be nothing else than a too great dereliction of those ideas, on which the national character and constitution had been formed, and determined, in his capacity of philosopher, to make use of his powers as a historian to controvert, and, if possible, counterbalance this perilous tendency of his times. In the mysteries of Revealed Religion, there was something so very offensive to the unsatiable inquisitiveness of his mind, that he could not so far overcome his aversion, as to allow of any free use of his judgment, in regard to the impropriety and impolicy of attacking ideas so interwoven with the essence of the national character both of Englishmen and Scotsmen. He therefore continued to write against Christianity, and, if his conscience visited him with any passing touches of contrition, as, indeed, I think his writings prove abundantly to have been the case, it is probable he contrived to re-instate himself in his own good graces, by reflecting on the zeal with which he had fought the good fight of loyalty. But the truth is, that his consolation, if such there might be, was a very deceitful thing; for David Hume had spared no pains in convulsing the whole soil, wherein feelings both religious and national had taken root; and others saw well enough, although he himself might not, the absurdity of his undertaking to preserve, in the midst of the ruin occasioned by his own exertions, any particular item of that produce, for the sum total of which he had manifested so little reverence. In spite, therefore, of all his masterly genius—in spite of his style, unrivalled in English, or, perhaps, in any modern literature—and in spite, above all, of the attachment felt by a vast number of his readers, for the very notions whose advocate he

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is—in spite of all that nature and art could do, the devil has been too strong for David; and the Prince of Sceptics has himself been found the most potent instrument for diminishing, almost for neutralizing, the true and grave influence of the Prince of Historians. The doctrine of trying every thing by the standard of mere utility, which was set on foot anew with so much success by David Hume, Adam Smith, and the other philosophers of their sect, was undoubtedly the most dangerous present ever conferred by men of high and powerful intellects upon the herd of the species. It is no wonder, that a doctrine, so flattering to the mean compass of every coarse understanding, should have been received with the utmost readiness by the whole crowd of Scioli. But it is to my mind a very great wonder, that a person of such fine acumen as David Hume, should not have foreseen what a sad misapplication of his theory must be the infallible result of the weak and limited nature of those, for whose reception it was so admirably fitted. Hume himself, indeed, furnished many examples (such we conceive them to be) of the danger which must attend the application of that theory, even in the hands of the ablest of men—enough to convince those capable of examining him and his disciples, that the doctrine may, indeed, be a true one, but that it would require intellects of a very different construction from our’s, to make any satisfactory use of it. It might have been forgiven to David, had he overlooked his own incapacities only; but it is no easy matter to discover by what strange mist his clear and piercing eye has been blinded to those of a species, of whose nature he was, in other instances, so far from over-rating the excellencies. There can be little doubt, however, that what he wanted power to foresee and guard against, had he lived to taste the experience of a few succeeding years, he would have understood abundantly, and repented, too, in the retrospect. But, as Faustus says, O what is intellect?—a strange, strange web— How bright the embroidery—but how dark the woof!

Could we be permitted to correct our errors, we should no longer be men; nay, the poet, you know, has gone even farther than this, when he says, Τῶν δε ϖεϖραγμενων Εν δικᾳ τε και ϖαρα δικαν Αϖοιητον ουδ άν Χρονος ὁ παντων πατηρ Δυναιτο θεμεν εργων τeλος.

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As the Scotch nation could boast of no great philosophical names before the appearance of Hume, one cannot be surprised, that they should have felt a very lively pride in the display of his admirable powers. It is a thousand, and ten thousand pities, that the admiration we can scarcely blame them for according to him, might not have been gratified at less expense to themselves. I fear, indeed, there is but too much reason for suspecting, that the influence he has obtained both among them and others, will outlive many generations; although it is sufficiently amusing to observe in his writings, the quiet sort of confidence with which he himself looked forward to his literary immortality—not much doubting, it would appear, that the name of David Hume would continue to be reverenced by all persons of understanding many centuries after the Christian religion should have ceased to be talked of, excepting as one of the many hundred antediluvian and exploded species of superstition. Whatever may be his future fate, this much is quite certain, that the general principles of his philosophy still continue to exert a mighty influence over by far the greatest part of the literary men of his country; and that almost the only subject on which these his pious disciples dare to apply his principles in a different way from what he himself exemplified—is that of politics. Among them, as indeed I have hinted already, David’s Toryism is always talked of, as one little foible which should not be too hardly thought of in the character of so great a man. The fund of jokes which he has given them the means of employing against himself, is sufficiently obvious; but such as they are, the jokes are uniformly put into requisition, whenever the subject of conversation gives the least colour of excuse for their introduction. They are delighted with the notion, that, in one thing at least, they are wiser than their master; and it would almost be a pity to put an end to so much pleasantry. P. M.

LETTER IX TO THE SAME

OMAN’S DEAR WILLIAMS, I SAW yesterday, for the first time, an original portrait of David Hume; and you, who know my physiognomical and cranioscopical mania, will easily believe that this was a high source of gratification to me. Really you are too severe in your comments on my passion for “the human head divine.” I wish to God some plain, sensible man, with the true Baconian turn for observation, would set about devoting himself in good earnest to the calm consideration of the skulls and faces which come in his way. In the present stage of the science, there is no occasion that any man should subject himself to the suspicion or reproach of quackery, by drawing rash conclusions, or laying claims before the time, to the seerlike qualities, which a mature system of cranioscopy, well understood, would undoubtedly confer. All that can be done for a very long time, is, to note down the structure of men’s heads in one page of a memorandum-book, and brief outlines of their characters, so far as these are known, in another. If fifty rational persons, in different regions of Europe, would keep such books for a few years, and then submit the whole to be inspected by a committee of cool inquirers, there can be no doubt data enough would be found accumulated, either firmly to establish, or fairly, and for ever, to overturn the idea of such a system. Whatever might be the result, I cannot think but that the time devoted to the inquiries would be pleasantly, nay, profitably spent. The person engaged in such a study, I do not at all mean perpetually engaged in it, could not fail to extend his acquaintance with his own species; for he would be furnished with a stronger stimulus than is common, to be quick and keen-sighted in his scrutiny of individuals. I, for my part, have already my skull-book, and I flatter myself its pages, even now, might furnish no uninteresting subject of study. I promise you, I intend to enrich it prodigiously before you have any opportunity of inspecting it. The prints of David Hume are, most of them, I believe, taken from the very portrait I have seen; but, of course, the style and effect of the

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features are much more thoroughly to be understood, when one has an opportunity of observing them expanded in their natural proportions. The face is far from being in any respect a classical one. The forehead is chiefly remarkable for its prominence from the ear, and not so much for its height. This gives him a lowering sort of look forward, expressive of great inquisitiveness into matters of fact, and the consequences to be deduced from them. His eyes are singularly prominent, which, according to the Gallic system, would indicate an extraordinary developement of the organ of language behind them. His nose is too low between the eyes, and not well or boldly formed in any other respect. The lips, although not handsome, have in their fleshy and massy outlines, abundant marks of habitual reflection and intellectual occupation. The whole has a fine expression of intellectual dignity, candour, and serenity. The want of elevation, however, which I have already noticed, injures very much the effect even of the structure of the lower part of the head. It takes away all idea of the presence of the highest and most god-like elements of which our nature is capable. In the language of the German doctor, it denotes the non-developement of the organ of veneration. It is to be regretted that he wore powder, for this prevents us from having the advantage of seeing what was the natural style of his hair—or, indeed, of ascertaining the form of any part of his head beyond the forehead. If I mistake not, this physiognomy accords very well with the idea you have formed of David Hume’s character. Although he was rather fond of plaguing his theological contemporaries, there was not much of the fanaticism of infidelity about him. His object, in most cases, was to see what the mere power of ratiocination would lead to, and wherever he met with an illogical sequence of propositions, he broke it down without mercy. When he was led into ill-toned and improper feelings, it was chiefly by the intoxication of intellectual power, for there seems to have been much humanity and graciousness in his disposition. In the same room, I saw also a portrait, by the same hand, of David’s illustrious friend, and illustrious enemy, Jean Jacques. No person who sees their two heads in this juxta-position, can help wondering by what circumstances these two men should ever have been led to imagine themselves capable of entertaining true feelings of friendship for each other. As well might one conceive of an alliance between the calm, cudchewing, mild-eyed cow of the meadow, and the wild, fierce, untamed and untameable leopard or panther of the jungle. Rousseau is represented in his usual fantastic Armenian garb, a loose flowing brown vest

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or caftan, and a high furred bonnet on his head. This last piece of dress mingles itself admirably with his wiry hair, twisted and convolved, as if it grew through a skin that had no rest—and both harmonize, as well as possible, with the thin, pale, melancholy visage, the narrow irascible lips, the black wandering impenetrable eye, and the thick jetty eyebrows drawn together with such a look of visionary suspiciousness. One sees little of the forehead itself, but the bonnet gives the effect of great elevation, and such, I doubt not, was the truth, could we look below. What an eloquent expression of self-tormenting imagination! It seems, as if all thoughts came to that mysterious receptacle, and few could find there any resting place. Enthusiasm, with the strong wing, and the kingly eye of the eagle—the meaner ferocity of the kite—and passionate dreams, soft as the pinions of a dove—and broken touches of melody, more melting than the music of nightingales. Most strange, most unintelligible of men! what glimpses of more than earthly happiness must he have experienced, when, in the glory of his strength, he tossed from him for a time his besetting infirmities, and allowed his free spirit to soar and hover at its will! What more than mortal anguish, in the degradation and subjection of that which was capable of so aerial a flight—the imprisonment of the King of the Air! What wonder, that when mean thoughts festered in his nobler soul, he should have deemed all men traitors to his liberty, and poured his burning curses on them through the self-raised bars of his visionary dungeon! Alas! how easy to condemn, how difficult to sympathise in, the aberrations of such a spirit! The gentle, inflexible, intellectual David—the most consistent of men—how should he have been the friend, the companion, of this phrenzied enthusiast? How could these men have understood each other?—their very eyes speak languages which have scarce two words in common. In infidelity—the only point of their agreement, Hume was far more different from Rousseau, than half the Christians in the world are from half the infidels. They fought against different parts of the system, and they fought with different weapons. There was more danger by far to be dreaded from the Scot than the Swiss. His onset, indeed, was not attended with so much of the spectacular and imposing circumstance of combat—his troops were of a more still and quiet disposition, but they made their attacks with more cunning skill, and the effects of their impious triumphs have been far more durable and deadly. The high and lofty parts of man’s nature, which Rousseau audaciously enlisted against the Bible, struggled, for a season, with all

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the clamours of determinate warfare; but they are the natural allies of that which they assaulted, and throughout the world they have long since returned devoutly to their old allegiance. In Scotland, for I am still here, the nature of the conflict, has, I fear, corrupted even those that fought on the right side. Religion is too exclusively defended by arms of the same kind with those which attacked her. But I have no room at present to enter upon this. P. M.

LETTER X TO THE REV. D. WILLIAMS

DEAR DAVID, I TOLD you that Mr —— had sent me a letter of introduction to Mr Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling, and I need not tell you, that such an introduction to such a man, was as agreeable a circumstance as any that could have fallen in my way. I made all haste to deliver my credentials, but was told, when I called at his house, that the old gentleman had gone out a-riding. I really had no expectation of hearing his absence accounted for in that way, for I had always been accustomed to think of him as of one who had entirely outlived his contemporaries, and who must, therefore, be long past the years of active exertion. My surprise, however, was an agreeable one, and I prepared myself to find the veteran, when I should have the fortune to see him, a yet more interesting person than I had taught myself to look for. Yesterday morning I received a note from him, in which he apologized for not having immediately returned my call. He was extremely busy, he said, all the morning, but hoped I would come and dine with him in an unceremonious manner, the first day I found myself disengaged. I had half promised to dine at a tavern with one or two young gentlemen, friends of Wastle; but my curiosity was such, that I forthwith excused myself in that quarter, and accepted Mr Mackenzie’s invitation for the same day on which it reached me. I assure you, that I should not have grudged my journey to Scotland, although I had laid up nothing to bring back with me, excepting the recollection of this one day. As I walked in the direction of his house, with the certainty that a few minutes would bring me into his company, I was conscious of an almost superstitious feeling—a mysterious kind of expectation—something like what I can conceive to have been felt by the Armenian, when the deep green curtain hung before him, the uplifting of which, he was assured, would open to him a view into departed years, and place before his eyes the actual bodily presence of his long buried ancestor. I had read his works when yet in the years of my infancy. The beautiful visions of his pathetic imagination had stamped a soft and delicious, but

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deep and indelible impression on my mind, long before I had heard the very name of criticism; perhaps before any of the literature of the present age existed—certainly long, very long, before I ever dreamt of its existence. The very names of the heroes and heroines of his delightful stories, sounded in my ears like the echoes of some old romantic melody, too simple, and too beautiful, to have been framed in these degenerate over-scientific days. Harley—La Roche—Montauban— Julia de Roubigné—what graceful mellow music is in the wellremembered cadences—the “παλαιων ὀνοματ᾿ ονειρων!” And I was in truth to see “in the flesh” the hoary magician, whose wand had called those ethereal creations into everlasting being. A year before, I should have entertained almost as much hope of sitting at the same table with Goldsmith, or Sterne, or Addison, or any of those mild spirits so far removed from our nature “ὁι νυν ζροτοι εσμεν.” For the first time in my life, I could not help being ashamed of my youth, and feeling, as if it were presumption in me to approach, in the garb of modern days, the last living relics of that venerable school. The appearance of the fine old man had no tendency to dissipate the feelings I have just attempted to describe. I found him in his library, surrounded with a very large collection of books—few of them apparently new ones—seated in a high-backed easy chair—the wood-work carved very richly in the ancient French taste, and covered with black hair-cloth. On his head he wore a low cap of black velvet, like those which we see in almost all the pictures of Pope. But there needed none of these accessories to carry back the imagination. It is impossible that I should paint to you the full image of that face. The only one I ever saw which bore any resemblance to its character, was that of Warren Hastings—you well remember the effect it produced, when he appeared among all that magnificent assemblage, to take his degree at the installation of Lord Grenville. In the countenance of Mackenzie, there is the same clear transparency of skin, the same freshness of complexion, in the midst of all the extenuation of old age. The wrinkles, too, are set close to each other, line upon line; not deep and bold, and rugged, like those of most old men, but equal and undivided over the whole surface, as if no touch but that of Time had been there, and as if even He had traced the vestiges of his dominion with a sure indeed, but with a delicate and reverential finger. The lineaments have all the appearance of having been beautifully shaped, but the want of his teeth has thrown them out of their natural relation to each other. The eyes alone have bid defiance to the approach of the adversary. Beneath bleached and hoary

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brows, and surrounded with innumerable wrinkles, they are still as tenderly, as brightly blue, as full of all the various eloquence and fire of passion, as they could have been in the most vivacious of his days, when they were lighted up with that purest and loftiest of all earthly flames, the first secret triumph of conscious and conceiving genius. By and by, Mr Mackenzie withdrew into his closet, and having there thrown off his slippers, and exchanged his cap for a brown wig, he conducted me to the drawing-room. His family were already assembled to receive us—his wife, just as I should have wished to picture her, a graceful old lady, with much of the remains of beauty, clothed in an open gown of black silk, with deep flounces, and having a high cap, with the lace meeting below the chin—his eldest son, a man rather above my own standing, who is said to inherit much of the genius of his father, (although he has chosen to devote it to very different purposes—being very eminent among the advocates of the present time)—and some younger children. The only visitor, besides myself, was an old friend, and, indeed, contemporary of Mackenzie, a Mr Roland*, who was, in his time, at the head of the profession of the law in Scotland; but who has now lived for many years in retirement. I have never seen a finer specimen, both in appearance and manners, of the true gentleman of the last age. In his youth, he must have been a perfect model of manly beauty; and, indeed, no painter could select a more exquisite subject for his art even now. His hair combed back from his forehead and highly powdered, his long queue, his lace-ruffles, his suit of snuff-coloured cloth, cut in the old liberal way, with long flaps to his waistcoat, his high-heeled shoes and rich steel-buckles—every thing was perfectly in unison with the fashion of his age. The stately and measured decorum of his politeness was such, as could not well be displayed by any man dressed in our free-and-easy style; but in him it did not produce the least effect of stiffness or coldness. It was a delightful thing to see these two old men, who had rendered themselves eminent in two so different walks of exertion, meeting together in the quiet evening of their days, to enjoy in the company of each other every luxury which intellectual communication can afford, heightened by the yet richer luxury of talking over the feelings of times, to which they almost alone are not strangers. _____________________________________________ * This excellent man is dead since the publication of the Second Edition of these Letters.

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They are both perfectly men of the world, so that there was not the least tinge of professional pedantry in their conversation. As for Mr Mackenzie, indeed, literature was never anything more than an amusement to him, however great the figure he has made in it, and the species of literature in which he excelled was, in its very essence, connected with any ideas rather than those of secluded and artist-like abstraction. There was nothing to be seen which could have enabled a stranger to tell which was the great lawyer, and which the great novellist. I confess, indeed, I was a little astonished to find, from Mr Mackenzie’s mode of conversation, how very little his habits had ever been those of a mere literary man. He talked for at least half an hour, and, I promise you, very knowingly, about flies for angling; and told me, with great good humour, that he still mounts his poney in autumn, and takes the field against the grouse with a long fowling-piece slung from his back, and a pointer-bitch, to the full as venerable among her species as her affectionate master is among his. The lively vivacity with which he talked over various little minute circumstances of his last campaign in the moors, and the almost boyish keenness with which he seemed to be looking forward to the time of trouting—all this might have been looked upon as rather frivolous, and out of place, in another of his years; but, for my part, I could not help being filled both with delight and admiration, by so uncommon a display of elasticity in the springs of his temperament. He gave us an excellent bottle of Muscat-de-Rives-altes during dinner, and I must say I am inclined very much to approve of that oldfashioned delicacy. We had no lack of Château-la-Rose afterwards, and neither of the old gentlemen seemed to have the slightest objection to its inspiration. A truly charming air of sober hilarity was diffused over their features, and they began to give little sketches of the old times, in which perhaps their hilarity might not always be so sober, in a way that carried me back delightfully to the very heart of “High-jinks.” According to the picture they gave, the style of social intercourse in this city, in their younger days, seems, indeed, to have been wonderfully easy and captivating. At that time, you must know, not one stone of the New Town, in which they, and all the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh now reside, had been erected. The whole of the genteel population lived crowded together in those tall citadels of the Old Town, from one of which my friend Wastle still refuses to be dislodged. Their houses were small, but abundantly neat and comfortable, and the labour which it cost to ascend to one of them was sure to be repaid at all hours

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by a hearty welcome from its possessor. The style of visiting, altogether, was as different as possible from the ceremonious sort of fashion now in vogue. They did not deal in six weeks’ invitations and formal dinners; but they formed, at a few hours’ notice, little snug supper-parties, which, without costing any comparative expense, afforded opportunities a thousand-fold for all manner of friendly communication between the sexes. As for the gentlemen, they never thought of committing any excess, except in taverns, and at night; and Mr Roland mentioned, that, almost within his own recollection, it had been made matter of very serious aggravation in the offence of a gentleman of rank, tried before the Court of Justiciary, that he had allowed his company to get drunk in his house before it was dark, even in the month of July. At that time, the only liquor was claret, and this they sent for just as they wanted it— huge pewter jugs, or, as they called them, stoups of claret, being just as commonly to be seen travelling the streets of Edinburgh in all directions then, as the mugs of Mieux and Barclay are in those of London now. Of course, I made allowance for the privilege of age; but I have no doubt there was abundance of good wit, and, what is better, good-humour among them, no less than of good claret. If I were to take the evening I spent in listening to its history, as a fair specimen of the “Auld Time,” (and after all, why should I not?) I should almost be inclined to reverse the words of the Laureate, and to say, ——of all places, and all times of earth, Did fate grant choice of time and place to men, Wise choice might be their SCOTLAND, and their THEN. I assure you, however, that I returned to my hotel in no disposition to quarrel either with time or place, or “any other creature”—a bottle of excellent wine under my belt, and my mind richly dieted with one of the true Noctes Cœnœque. Ever your’s, P. M. P. S. I had forgotten to mention, that both Mackenzie and his friend are staunch Tories; but I don’t deny, that this might have some effect in increasing my love for them.

LETTER XI TO THE SAME

I HEARD it mentioned at Mr Mackenzie’s, that a triennial dinner, in honour of Robert Burns, was about to take place; and thinking it would be a good opportunity for me to see a larger number of the Scots literati than I had yet met with collected together, I resolved, if possible, to make one of the party. I found, on inquiring, that in consequence of the vast multitude of persons who wished to be present, the original plan of the dinner had been necessarily departed from, and the company were to assemble, not in a tavern, for no tavern in Edinburgh could accommodate them, but in the Assembly-Rooms in George-Street. Even so, I was told, there was likely to be a deficiency rather than a superfluity of room; and, indeed, when I went to buy my ticket, I found no more remained to be sold. But I procured one afterwards through Mr Mackenzie; and Wastle arriving from the country the same day, I went to the place in company with him. He is hand in glove with half of the stewards, and had no difficulty in getting himself smuggled in. I send you a copy of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, which contains the best newspaper account of the affair I have met with, but shall proceed to favour you with a few of my own observations in addition. Those who are accustomed to talk and think of the Scotch as a cold phlegmatic people, would have been convinced of their mistake by a single glance at the scene which met my eyes when I entered. I have never witnessed a more triumphant display of national enthusiasm, and had never expected to witness any display within many thousand degrees of it, under any thing less than the instantaneous impulse of some glorious victory. The room is a very large one, and I had already seen it lighted up in all the splendour of a ball; but neither its size nor its splendour had then made any thing more than a very common-place impression on my mind. But now—what a sight was here! A hall of most majestic proportions—its walls, and hangings, and canopies of crimson, giving a magical richness of effect to the innumerable chandeliers with which its high roof appeared to be starred and glowing—the air overhead alive with the breath of lutes and trumpets—

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below, the whole mighty area paved with human faces, (for the crowd was such that nothing of the tables could at first be seen,)—the highest, and the wisest, and the best of a nation assembled together—and all for what?—to do honour to the memory of one low-born peasant. What a lofty tribute to the true nobility of Nature!—What a glorious vindication of the born majesty of Genius! With difficulty we procured seats at the lower extremity of the Hall, at the table where Captain Adam of the Navy (son to the Judge) presided as croupier—a fine manly-looking fellow, with a world of cordial jollity in his face. Wastle chose to sit at this table, as he afterwards told me, because, in the course of a long experience, he had found the fare of a public dinner uniformly much better in the immediate neighbourhood of the croupier or president; and indeed, whatever might be the case elsewhere, the fare where we sat was most excellent. We had turbot in perfection—a haunch of prime venison—the red-deer I believe—and every thing, in short, which could have been selected to make a private dinner delicious. The port and sherry allowed by the traiteur were by no means to be sneezed at; but my friend had determined to make himself as happy as possible, and his servant produced a bottle of hock, and another of the sparkler during dinner. Afterwards, we exchanged our port for very tolerable claret, and we had filberts and olives at will; which being the case, entre nous, no man could complain of his dessert. The chair was occupied by Mr John Murray, an advocate of considerable note; a pleasant gentlemanlike person, so far as I could judge, (for he was quite at the other end of the room from us); and close around him were gathered a great number of the leading members of the same profession. Among the rest Jeffrey. An universal feeling of regret appeared to fill the company, on account of the absence of Mr Scott, who was expected to have taken his place at the right hand of the president, and would have come to town for the purpose, had he not been prevented by a severe attack of illness. In different parts of the room, a variety of distinguished individuals, of whom I had often heard, were successively pointed out to me by Wastle; but it was some time before I could collect my senses, sufficiently to take any very accurate inspection of their physiognomies. Wherever I looked, I saw faces ennobled by all the eloquence of a pure and lofty enthusiasm. It was evident, that all had the right feeling; and at such a moment it appeared to me a comparatively small matter which of them had the celebrity even of genius. After dinner, the president rose and proposed The Memory of the

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Poet. The speech with which he prefaced the toast was delivered with all the ease of a practised speaker, and was by no means devoid of traces of proper feeling. But, I confess, on the whole, its effect was to me rather a disappointing one. The enthusiasm felt by the company was such, that nothing could have been pitched in a key too high for them; and the impression of Mr Murray’s address had certainly, in their state of feeling at the moment, more of a chilling than an elevating effect. I thought him peculiarly unhappy in the choice of a few poetical quotations with which he diversified his speech—that from Swift’s Rhapsody, in particular, was extremely unfortunate. What good effect could be produced on such an occasion as this, by repeating such lines as those about Not beggar’s brat on bulk begot, Not bastard of a pedlar Scot, Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes, The spawn of Bridewell or the stews, Not infants dropped, the spurious pledges Of gypsies littering under hedges Are so disqualified by fate To rise in church, or law, or state, As he whom Phœbus, in his ire, Has blasted with poetic fire, &c.

Nor were the fine verses of Milton much more appropriate to the occasion, although their own grandeur would probably have prevented them from being at all disagreeable in the hearing, had Mr Murray’s recollection been such as to enable him to recite them with facility. Whatever may be the case with the most of those, whose lips “Phœbus tips with fire,” poor Burns was assuredly not one who neglected, for the sake of the Muses, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neæra’s hair.

But it would be quite silly to trouble you with such minutiæ as these;— the true defect lay in selecting, to preside in such an assembly upon such an occasion, any other than a man of great reputation and rank in literature. Had such a person been selected, and had he, as it might have happened, committed the very same faults which Mr Murray did commit, the impression of his general character would still have been sufficient to prevent the company from regarding, otherwise than with

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a favourable eye, even the defects of one in whom they would have been eager and proud to recognise the intellectual kinsman of their great poet. But, in the first place, it is not easy to understand why a man should be chosen to direct and guide the enthusiasm of a meeting in honour of Robert Burns, merely because he himself enjoys a tolerable degree of reputation as a Scottish barrister; and, in the second place, every point in which such a person so chosen fails in the discharge of his duties, has the effect of making men recur to this original difficulty, with an increasing and a most unpleasant pertinacity. There was, perhaps, an injudicious degree of courage in Mr Murray’s attempt; but “eventus docuit.” It is a much easier thing, however, to say who should not, than who should have presided on this occasion. It seems that, among others, Mr Jeffrey had been talked of; but he had the good sense to reject the proposal without hesitation. And with what face, indeed, could he, the author of the longest, and most deliberate, and most elaborate attack that ever assailed the character of Burns—an attack of which, with all my tolerance for Mr Jeffrey’s failings, I cannot help thinking the whole spirit and tone are radically and essentially abominable—with what face could he have presumed to occupy the first place in an assembly of men, whose sole bond of union could be nothing else than that feeling of deep, tender, and reverential admiration for poor Burns’s memory, his own want of which had been so decidedly, or rather so ostentatiously held forth? Many people can see some excuse—and I myself can imagine some explanation of the irreverent way, in which Mr Jeffrey has accustomed himself to treat his own great poetical contemporaries. But I know not, neither can I imagine, upon what principle a man of his fine understanding, and fine feeling too, should have esteemed himself justifiable in concentrating the whole pitiless vigour of his satire upon the memory of one, whose failings, whatever they might be, were entitled to so much compassion as those of Robert Burns—in exhausting his quiver of poisoned shafts in piercing and lacerating the resting-place of one, whose living name must always be among the dearest and most sacred possessions of his countrymen. I cannot help thinking, that Jeffrey displayed in that attack a very lamentable defect, not merely of nationality of feeling, but of humanity of feeling. If the pride of being the countryman of Burns was not enough to make Jeffrey a lenient observer of his errors, there were abundance of other considerations of a yet higher kind, which should not have come vainly to the aid of that honourable pride. Alas! how easy a thing is it for us, who

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have been educated in the atmosphere of ease—who have “been clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day”—how easy a thing is it for such as we are, to despise and deride the power of temptations, that might be enough, and more than enough, to unhinge all the resolutions, and darken all the destinies of one, who had been accustomed, in good earnest, to drink the water of bitterness and eat his bread in the sweat of his brow! It is an easy thing for those, who have comfortable homes, and congenial occupations, to rail against the dissipated habits of a poor wandering poet, compelled to waste his best days in degrading drudgeries, and night after night to find himself surrounded in his own narrow dwelling by all the depressing and contracting squalors of penury. The rule of judging as we would be judged, although an excellent one, surely, in the main, must be taken, I think, with a great sequela of exceptions. It is the besetting temptation of many natures, and honest natures too, to Compound for sins they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to.

And perhaps few sins are more “damned” upon this principle than those of the bottle. You might as well attempt to make a deaf man comprehend the excellencies of Mozart, as to convince some people that it is a venial thing to be fond of an extra glass of claret. Many even of those who take great pleasure in society, can never be brought to understand why people should get tipsy when they meet together round a table. The delight which they experience in company, is purely rational—derived from nothing but the animated and invigorated collision of contending and sporting intellects. They have wit and wisdom for their share, and they have little reason to complain; but what do they know about the full, hearty, glorious swing of jollity? How can they ever sympathise with the misty felicity of a man singing It is the moon—I ken her horn!

I think no man should be allowed to say any thing about Burns, who has not joined in this chorus, although timber-tuned, and sat till day-light, although married. The first healths (after some of mere formality,) were those of the mother of Burns—for she, it seems, is still alive, in extreme old age; his

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widow, the “Jean” of his poetry—and his sons. A gentleman who proposed one of these toasts, mentioned a little anecdote, which gave infinite delight to all present, and which will do so to you. After the last of these triennial meetings, a pension of L.50 per annum was settled on Mrs Burns, by a Scottish gentleman of large fortune, Mr Maule of Panmure. One of the sons of the poet, however, has since that time gone out to India in a military capacity; and being fortunate enough to obtain a situation of some little emolument, the first use he made of his success was to provide for his mother, in such a way as enabled her to decline any farther continuance of Mr Maule’s bounty—conduct, as was well said, “worthy of the wife and son of the high-souled Burns”—one who, in spite of all his faults, and all his difficulties, contrived in the true spirit of proud independence, to owe no man any thing when he died. By the way, the person who mentioned this was the same George Thomson, whose name is so intimately associated with that of Burns, in the great collection of Scots Music. The health of Mr Scott was then proposed, in terms of such warmth as might fit the occasion by the Chairman. That of Mr Mackenzie was given by Mr Cockburn, a celebrated advocate, and prefaced with some very elegant sentences respecting the early and effectual patronage extended by him to Burns in the Mirror. Mr Jeffrey then rose and proposed the health of Thomas Campbell, with a neat allusion to his late exquisite sketch of the character of Burns in the “Specimens.” I assure you, nothing could be more appropriate, or more delightful, than the way in which all these toasts were received by the company. But you will see well enough by the paper I have sent you, what toasts were given. I am sorry to say, that those which were not given, occupied not a little of my attention. It was obvious from the way in which things went on, that Mr Murray, Mr Jeffrey, Mr Cockburn, and one or two of their friends among the stewards, had previously arranged among themselves what toasts should be proposed, and in what order; nor could the business of such a meeting be well conducted without some such preparation. I well knew before I went, that, as it happened, those gentlemen who took the chief direction in this affair were all keen Whigs. But I never considered this as a circumstance of the slightest importance, nor expected, most assuredly, that it would at all shew itself in the conduct of the assembly. I regarded politics and parties as things that had not the least connection with the purposes of the meeting, and expected, indeed, that they would have been most studiously kept out of view, for the very purpose of rendering the meeting as universally

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and genially delightful as possible. I was, however, sadly disappointed. It is needless to multiply examples. It is sufficient to mention, that not one of these Edinburgh Reviewers had the common candour or manliness, in a meeting, the object of which was so purely to do honour to poetical genius, to propose the health either of Wordsworth, or of Southey, or of Coleridge. I could not have believed that the influence of paltry prejudices could ever be allowed to controul in such a way the conduct of men so well entitled to be above their sphere. Even by the confession of the Edinburgh Review itself, these men are three of the greatest poetical geniuses our island ever has produced. Their choice of subjects, their style of versification, and various other particulars, are ridiculed; but it is no where denied that even their errors are entitled to derive some little shelter from the originality, power, and beauty, of the productions in which they make their appearance. I am indeed very much at a loss to comprehend, how any man of intelligence could satisfy his conscience, that he did right in proposing, on such an occasion as this, the healths of Crabbe, Rogers, nay even of Montgomery, (for such was the case,) and omitting to do the same honour to the great names I have mentioned. Surely here was a sad descent from that pure elevation on which the true critic, and the true philosopher, must ever stand. I had no conception previously of the real extent to which, in this country of political strife, the absurdities of party spleen are carried, even by men of eminence and virtue. I had no suspicion, that such a man as Mr Jeffrey, or even as Mr Murray, would have dared to shew, almost to confess himself, incapable of overlooking the petty discrepancies of political opinion, in forming his estimate of a great English poet’s character. It is not thus that a man can hope to anticipate the judgment of posterity, or to exert a permanent sway over that of his contemporaries. In regard to Mr Jeffrey, above all, I confess I was grieved to detect so much littleness, where I had been willing to look for very different things. I was grieved, indeed, to discover that he also, even out of his Review, is in a great measure one that ——narrows his mind, And to party gives up what was meant for mankind. That Mr Jeffrey had found reason to change some of the opinions he had once expressed concerning Robert Burns, was, in part at least, admitted by himself, in one of the speeches he delivered on this very occasion. Nay, had it not been so, I am inclined to think it might have

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been better for him to have kept altogether away from the assembly. Having laid aside the worst of his prejudices against poor Burns, why should he not have been proud and joyful in finding and employing such an opportunity for doing justice to a great poet, who,—himself the purest of men, and leading and having ever led the holiest and most dignified of lives,—had not disdained to come forward at an earlier and a less triumphant period, as the defender and guardian of the reputation of his frailer brother? What had parties, and systems, and schools, and nicknames, to do with such a matter as this? Are there no healing moments in which men can afford to be free from the fetters of their petty self-love? Is the hour of genial and cordial tenderness, when man meets man to celebrate the memory of one who has conferred honour on their common nature—is even that sacred hour to be polluted and profaned by any poisonous sprinklings of the week-day paltriness of life?—My displeasure, in regard to this affair, has very little to do with my displeasure in regard to the general treatment of Mr Wordsworth in the Edinburgh Review. That the poems of this man should be little read and little admired by the majority of those who claim for themselves the character of taste and intelligence—that they should furnish little, except subjects of mirth and scorn, to those who, by their own writings, would direct the judgment of others—these are things which affect some of his admirers with astonishment—they affect me with no sentiments but those of humility and grief. The delight which is conferred by vivid descriptions of stranger events and stronger impulses than we ourselves experience, is adapted for all men, and is an universal delight. That part of our nature, to which they address themselves, not only exists in every man originally, but has its existence fostered and cherished by the incidents of every life. To find a man who has no relish for the poetry of Love or of War, is almost as impossible, as to find one that does not enjoy the brightness of the sun, or the softness of moonlight. The poetry of ambition, hatred, revenge, pleases masculine minds in the same manner as the flashing of lightnings and the roaring of cataracts. But there are other things in man and in nature, besides tumultuous passions and tempestuous scenes;—and he that is a very great poet, may be by no means a very popular one. The critics who ridicule Mr Wordsworth, for choosing the themes of his poetry among a set of objects new and uninteresting to their minds, would have seen, had they been sufficiently acute, or would have confessed, had they been sufficiently candid, that, had he so willed it, he might have been among the best and most powerful masters in other

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branches of his art, more adapted for the generality of mankind and for themselves. The martial music in the hall of Clifford was neglected by the Shepherd Lord, for the same reasons which have rendered the poet that celebrates him such a poet as he is. Love had he seen in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills; The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

Before a man can understand and relish his poems, his mind must, in some measure, pass through the same sober discipline—a discipline that calms, but does not weaken the spirit—that blends together the understanding and the affections, and improves both by the mixture. The busy life of cities, the ordinary collisions of sarcasm and indifference, steel the mind against the emotions that are bred and nourished among those quiet vallies, so dear to the Shepherd Lord and his poet. What we cannot understand, it is a very common, and indeed a very natural thing, for us to undervalue; and it may be suspected, that some of the merriest witticisms which have been uttered against Mr Wordsworth, have had their origin in the pettishness and dissatisfaction of minds, unaccustomed and unwilling to make, either to others or to themselves, any confessions of incapacity. But I am wandering sadly from him, who, as Wordsworth has beautifully expressed it, ——walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough along the mountain’s side.

—However, I shall come back to him in my next.

P. M.

LETTER XII TO THE SAME

DEAR DAVID, IN order to catch the post, a few days ago, I sent off my letter before my subject was half concluded; which, doubtless, you will attribute chiefly, or entirely, to my old passion for parentheses and episodes. To return to my epos—the Burns’s dinner. One of the best speeches, perhaps the very best, delivered during the whole of the evening, was that of Mr John Wilson, in proposing the health of the Ettrick Shepherd. I had heard a great deal of Wilson from Wastle, but he had been out of Edinburgh ever since my arrival, and indeed had walked only fifty miles that very morning, in order to be present on this occasion. He showed no symptoms, however, of being fatigued with his journey, and his style of eloquence, above all, whatever faults it might have, displayed certainly no deficiency of freshness and vigour. As I know you admire some of his verses very much, you will be pleased with a sketch of his appearance. He is, I imagine, (but I guess principally from the date of his Oxford prize poem) some ten years your junior and mine—a very robust athletic man, broad across the back—firm set upon his limbs—and having altogether very much of that sort of air which is inseparable from the consciousness of great bodily energies. I suppose, in leaping, wrestling, or boxing, he might easily beat any of the poets, his contemporaries—and I rather suspect, that in speaking, he would have as easy a triumph over the whole of them, except Coleridge. In complexion, he is the best specimen I have ever seen of the genuine or ideal Goth. His hair is of the true Sicambrian yellow; his eyes are of the lightest, and at the same time of the clearest blue; and the blood glows in his cheek with as firm a fervour as it did, according to the description of Jornandes, in those of the “Bello gaudentes, prælio ridentes Teutones” of Attila. I had never suspected, before I saw him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of complexion could be compatible with so much variety and tenderness, but, above all, with so much depth of expression. His forehead is finely, but strangely shaped; the regions of pure fancy and of pure wit, being

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both developed in a very striking manner—which is but seldom the case in any one individual—and the organ of observation having projected the sinus frontalis to a degree that is altogether uncommon. I have never seen a physiognomy which could pass with so much rapidity from the serious to the most ludicrous of effects. It is more eloquent, both in its gravity and in its levity, than almost any countenance I am acquainted with is in any one cast of expression; and yet I am not without my suspicions, that the versatility of its language may, in the end, take away from its power. In a convivial meeting—more particularly after the first two hours are over—the beauty to which men are most alive in any piece of eloquence is that which depends on its being impregnated and instinct with feeling. Of this beauty, no eloquence can be more full than that of Mr John Wilson. His declamation is often loose and irregular to an extent that is not quite worthy of a man of his fine education and masculine powers; but all is redeemed, and more than redeemed, by his rich abundance of quick, generous, and expansive feeling. The flashing brightness, and now and then the still more expressive dimness of his eye—and the tremulous music of a voice that is equally at home in the highest and the lowest of notes—and the attitude bent forward with an earnestness to which the graces could make no valuable addition—all together compose an index which they that run may read—a rod of communication to whose electricity no heart is barred. Inaccuracies of language are small matters when the ear is fed with the wild and mysterious cadences of the most natural of all melodies, and the mind filled to overflowing with the bright suggestions of an imagination, whose only fault lies in the uncontrollable profusion with which it scatters forth its fruits. With such gifts as these, and with the noblest of themes to excite and adorn them, I have no doubt, that Mr Wilson, had he been in the church, would have left all the impassioned preachers I have ever heard many thousand leagues behind him. Nor do I at all question, that even in some departments of his own profession of the law, had he in good earnest devoted his energies to its service, his success might have been equally brilliant. But his ambition had probably taken too decidedly another turn; nor, perhaps, would it be quite fair, either to him or to ourselves, to wish that the thing had been otherwise. As Mr Wilson has not only a great admiration, but a great private friendship for Mr Hogg, his eloquence displayed, it is probable, upon the present occasion, a large share of every feeling that might most happily inspire it. His theme was indeed the very best that the occasion

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could have thrown in his way; for what homage could be so appropriate, or so grateful to the Manes of Burns, as that which sought to attain its object by welcoming and honouring the only worthy successor of his genius? I wish I could recall for your delight any portion of those glowing words in which this enthusiastic speaker strove to embody his own ideas—and indeed those of his audience—concerning the high and holy connection which exists between the dead and the living peasant— both “sprung from the very bosom of the people,” both identifying themselves in all things with the spirit of their station, and endeavouring to ennoble themselves only by elevating it. It was thus, indeed, that a national assembly might most effectually do honour to a national poet. This was the true spirit for a commemoration of Robert Burns. The effect which Mr Wilson’s speech produced on Hogg himself, was, to my mind, by far the most delightful thing that happened during the whole of the night. The Shepherd was one of the stewards, and in every point of view he must have expected some particular notice to be taken of his name; but either he had not been prepared for being spoken of at so early an hour, or was entirely thrown off his balance by the extraordinary flood of eloquence which Mr Wilson poured out, to do honour to his genius; for nothing could be more visibly unaffected, than the air of utter blank amazement with which he rose to return his thanks. He rose, by the way, long before the time came. He had listened to Mr Wilson for some minutes, without comprehending the drift of his discourse: but when once he fairly discovered that he himself was the theme, he started to his feet, and with a face flushed all over deeper than scarlet, and eyes brimful of tears, devoured the words of the speaker, Like hungry Jew in wilderness, Rejoicing o’er his manna.

His voice, when he essayed to address the company, seemed at first entirely to fail him; but he found means to make us hear a very few words, which told better than any speech could have done. “I’ve aye been vera proud, gentlemen,” (said he,) “to be a Scots poet—and I was never sae proud o’t as I am just noo.” I believe there was no one there who did not sympathize heartily with this most honest pride. For my part, I began to be quite in love with the Ettrick Shepherd. In process of time, the less jovial members of the company began to effect their retreat, and the Laird and I, espying some vacant places at the table where Mr Wilson and the Ettrick Shepherd were seated, were

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induced to shift our situation, for the sake of being nearer these celebrated characters. I was placed within a few feet of Hogg, and introduced to Wilson across the table, and soon found, from the way in which the bottle circulated in this quarter, that both of them inherited in perfection the old feud of Burns against the “aquæ potores.” As to the bottle, indeed, I should exclude Hogg; for he, long before I came into his neighbourhood, had finished the bottle of port allowed by our traiteur, and was deep in a huge jug of whisky toddy—in the manufacture of which he is supposed to excel almost as much as Burns did— and in its consumption too, although happily in rather a more moderate degree. After this time, I suspect the prescribed order of toasts began to be sadly neglected, for long speeches were uttered from remote corners, nobody knew by whom or about what; song after song was volunteered; and all the cold restraints of sobriety being gradually thawed by the sun of festive cheer, Wit walked the rounds, and music filled the air.

The inimitable “Jolly Beggars” of the poet, which has lately been set to music, was got up in high style, the songs being exquisitely sung by Messrs Swift, Templeton, and Lees, and the recitative read with much effect by Mr B———. But even this entertainment, with all its inherent variety, was too regular for the taste of the assembly. The chairman himself broke in upon it the first, by proposing a very appropriate toast, which I shall attempt to naturalize in Cardiganshire; this again called up a very old gentleman, who conceived that some compliment had been intended for a club of which he is president; in short, compliments and toasts became so interlaced and interlarded, that nobody could think of taking up the thread of “The Jolly Beggars” again. By the way, this inimitable Cantata is not to be found in Currie’s edition, and I suspect you are a stranger even to its name; and yet, had Burns left nothing more than this behind him, I think he would still have left enough to justify all the honour in which his genius is held. There does not exist, in any one piece throughout the whole range of English poetry, such a collection of true, fresh, and characteristic lyrics. Here we have nothing, indeed, that is very high, but we have much that is very tender. What can be better in its way, than the fine song of the Highland Widow, “wha had in mony a well been douked?”

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A Highland lad my love was born, The Lowland laws he held in scorn; But he still was faithful to his clan, My gallant braw John Highlandman. With his philabeg and tartan plaid, And good claymore down by his side, The ladies’ hearts he did trepan, My gallant braw John Highlandman. Sing, hey, my braw John Highlandman, Sing, ho, my braw John Highlandman, There’s not a lad in a’ the lan’ Was match for my John Highlandman.

And that fine Penseroso close, But oh! they catch’d him at the last, And bound him in a dungeon fast; My curse upon them every one, They’ve hang’d my braw John Highlandman. And now, a widow, I must mourn Departed joys that ne’er return; No comfort—but a hearty can, When I think on John Highlandman.

The Little Fiddler, who (in vain, alas!) offers his services to console her, is conceived in the most happy taste. A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle, Wha used at trysts and fairs to driddle, Her strapping limb and gausy middle, (He reached nae higher,) Had holed his heartie like a riddle, And blawn’t on fire. Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward ee, He crooned his gamut, one, two, three, Then in an Arioso key, The wee Apollo Set off with allegretto glee, His giga solo.

But the finest part of the whole, is the old Scottish Soldier’s ditty. Indeed, I think there is no question, that half of the best ballads Campbell has written, are the legitimate progeny of some of these lines.

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1 I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, And shew my cuts and scars wherever I come; This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench, When welcoming the French at the sound of the drum. My prenticeship I passed where my leader breathed his last, When the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram; I served out my trade when the gallant game was play’d, And the Moro low was laid at the sound of the drum. 2 I lastly was with Curtis among the floating batt’ries, And there I left for witness an arm and a limb; Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me, I’d clatter on my stumps at the sound of the drum. What though with hoary locks, I must stand the winter shocks, Beneath the woods and rocks oftentimes for a home! When the t’other bag I sell, and the t’other bottle tell, I could meet a troop of hell at the sound of the drum.

What different ideas of low life one forms even from reading the works of men who paint it admirably. Had Crabbe, for instance, undertaken to represent the carousal of a troop of Beggars in a hedge alehouse, how unlike would his production have been to this Cantata? He would have painted their rags and their dirt with the accuracy of a person who is not used to see rags and dirt very often; he would have seized the light careless swing of their easy code of morality, with the penetration of one who has long been a Master-Anatomist of the manners and the hearts of men. But I doubt very much, whether any one could enter into the true spirit of such a meeting, who had not been, at some period of his life, a partaker in propriâ personâ, and almost par cum paribus, in the rude merriment of its constituents. I have no doubt that Burns sat for his own picture in the Bard of the Cantata, and had often enough in some such scene as Poosie Nansie’s— ——Rising, rejoicing

Between his twa Deborahs, Looked round him, and found them Impatient for his chorus.

It is by such familiarity alone that the secret and essence of that charm, which no groupe of human companions entirely wants, can be fixed and preserved even by the greatest of poets—Mr Crabbe would have described the Beggars like a firm though humane Justice of the

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Peace—poor Robert Burns did not think himself entitled to assume any such airs of superiority. The consequence is, that we would have understood and pitied the one groupe, but that we sympathize even with the joys of the other. We would have thrown a few shillings to Mr Crabbe’s Mendicants, but we are more than half inclined to sit down and drink them ourselves along with the “orra duds” of those of Burns. I myself—will you believe it?—was one of those who insisted upon disturbing the performance of this glorious Cantata with my own dissonant voice. In plain truth, I was so happy, that I could not keep silence, and such was the buoyancy of my enthusiasm, that nothing could please me but singing a Scottish song. I believe, after all, I got through it pretty well; at least, I did well enough to delight my neighbours. My song was that old favourite of your’s— My name it is Donald Macdonald, I live in the Hielands sae grand,

one of the best songs, I must think, that our times has produced; and, indeed, it was for many years one of the most popular. I had no idea who wrote the words of my song, and had selected it merely for its own merit, and my own convenience; but I had no sooner finished, than Mr Hogg stretched his hand to me, across two or three that sat between us, and cried out with an air of infinite delight, “Od’, sir—Doctor Morris”—(for he had heard my name,)—“od’, sir,—I wrote that sang when I was a herd on Yarrow,—and little did I think ever to live to hear an English gentleman sing it.” From this moment there was no bound to the warmth of our affection for each other; in order to convince you of which, in so far as I myself was concerned, I fairly deserted my claret for the sake of joining in the jug-party of the Shepherd. Nor, after all, was this quite so mighty a sacrifice as you may be inclined to imagine. I assure you, there are worse things in life than whisky-toddy; although I cannot go the same length with Mr Hogg, who declared over and over that there is nothing so good. A man may, now and then, adopt a change of liquor with advantage; but, upon the whole, I like better to see people “stick to their vocation.” I think nothing can be a more pitiable sight than a French count on his travels, striving to look pleased over a bumper of strong Port; and an Oxford doctor of divinity looks almost as much like a fish out of water, when he is constrained to put up with the best Claret in the world. In like manner, it would have tended very much to disturb my notions of

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propriety, had I found Hogg drinking Hock. It would have been a sin against keeping with such a face as he has. Although for some time past he has spent a considerable portion of every year in excellent, even in refined society, the external appearance of the man can have undergone but very little change since he was “a herd on Yarrow.” His face and hands are still as brown as if he lived entirely sub dio. His very hair has a coarse stringiness about it, which proves beyond dispute its utter ignorance of all the arts of the friseur; and hangs in playful whips and cords about his ears, in a style of the most perfect innocence imaginable. His mouth, which, when he smiles, nearly cuts the totality of his face in twain, is an object that would make the Chevalier Ruspini die with indignation; for his teeth have been allowed to grow where they listed, and as they listed, presenting more resemblance, in arrangement, (and colour too,) to a body of crouching sharp-shooters, than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead, towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and of an eye that illuminates their surface with the genuine lightnings of genius,— ——an eye that, under brows Shaggy and deep, has meanings, which are brought From years of youth,— these are things which I cannot so easily transfer to my paper. Upon the whole, his exterior reminded me very much of some of Wordsworth’s descriptions of his Pedlar:— ——plain his garb, Such as might suit a rustic sire prepared For Sabbath duties; yet he is a man Whom no one could have passed without remark. Active and nervous is his gait. His limbs And his whole figure breathe intelligence. Indeed, I can scarcely help suspecting, that that great poet, who has himself thought so much On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude—

must have thought more than once of the intellectual history of the Ettrick Shepherd, when he drew that noble sketch, which no man can ridicule, unless from a vicious want of faith in the greatness of human

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nature. Neither is there any thing unlikely in the supposition in another point of view, for Wastle tells me, the two poets have often met, and always expressed the highest admiration for each other. He says, From his sixth year, the boy of whom I speak, In summer tended cattle on the hills.

I believe poor Hogg tended them in winter also. ——From that bleak tenement,

He many an evening to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the hills Grow larger in the darkness, all alone Beheld the stars come out above his head, And travell’d through the wood, with no one near To whom he might confess the things he saw. So the foundations of his mind were laid. In such communion, not from terror free, While yet a child, and long before his time, He had perceived the presence and the power Of greatness; and deep feeling had impressed Great objects on his mind, with portraiture And colour so distinct, that on his mind They lay like substances, and almost seemed To haunt the bodily sense.

Those who have read the Shepherd’s latest writings, as I fear you have not done, would find still stronger confirmation of my idea in what follows:— ——Thus informed, He had small need of books; for many a tale, Traditionary round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourished imagination in her youth. * * * The life and death of Martyrs, who sustained, With will inflexible, those fearful pangs Triumphantly displayed in records left, Of persecution and the Covenant—Times Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour. But I must not think of discussing the Ettrick Shepherd in a single letter.—As for the Burns’s dinner, I really cannot in honesty pretend to give you any very exact history of the latter part of its occurrences. As

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the night kept advancing, the company kept diminishing, till about one o’clock in the morning, when we found ourselves reduced to a small staunch party of some five-and-twenty, men not to be shaken from their allegiance to King Bacchus, by any changes in his administration—in other words, men who by no means considered it as necessary to leave the room, because one, or even because two presidents had set them such an example. The last of these presidents, Mr Patrick Robertson, a young counsellor of very rising reputation and most pleasant manners, made his approach to the chair amidst such a thunder of acclamation as seems to be issuing from the cheeks of the Bacchantes, when Silenus gets astride on his ass, in the famous picture of Rubens. Once in the chair, there was no fear of his quitting it while any remained to pay homage due to his authority. He made speeches, one chief merit of which consisted (unlike Epic poems) in their having neither beginning, middle, nor end. He sung songs in which music was not. He proposed toasts in which meaning was not—But over everything that he said there was flung such a radiance of sheer mother-wit, that there was no difficulty in seeing the want of meaning was no involuntary want. By the perpetual dazzle of his wit, by the cordial flow of his good humour, but above all, by the cheering influence of his broad happy face, seen through its halo of punch-steam (for even the chair had by this time got enough of the juice of the grape,) he contrived to diffuse over us all, for a long time, one genial atmosphere of unmingled mirth. How we got out of that atmosphere, I cannot say I remember,—but am, notwithstanding, Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER XIII TO THE SAME

DEAR DAVID, WHEN you reproach me with being so long at the seat of a celebrated University, and yet preserving the most profound silence concerning tutors, professors, examinations, degrees, and all the other mighty items of academical life, you do no more than I might have expected from one, who has derived his only ideas of an university from Oxford and Cambridge. In these places, the university is everything; the houses of the town seem merely to be the appendages of the colleges, and the townsmen themselves only a better sort of menials to the gownsmen. If you hear a bell ring there, you may be sure it is meant to call together those whose duty it is to attend in some chapel, hall, or lecture-room; if you see a man pull off his hat in the street, you may be sure it is in honour of some tuft, sleeve, or scarf, well accustomed to such obeisances. Here the case is very different. The academical buildings, instead of forming the bulk and centre of every prospect—instead of shooting up towers and domes and battlements in every direction, far above, not only the common dwellings of the citizens, but the more ancient and more lofty groves of oak and elm, in which, for centuries, they have been embosomed—instead of all this proud and sweeping extent of venerable magnificence, the academical buildings of Edinburgh are piled together in one rather obscure corner of a splendid city, which would scarcely be less splendid than it is, although they were removed altogether from its precincts. In the society among which I have lived since my arrival here, (and I assure you its circle has been by no means a very confined one,) I am convinced there are few subjects about which so little is said or thought, as the University of Edinburgh. I rather think, that a well-educated stranger, who had no previous knowledge that an university had its seat in this place, (if we can suppose the existence of such a person,) might sojourn in Edinburgh for many weeks, without making the discovery for himself. And yet, from all I can hear, the number of resident members of this university is seldom below two thousand, and among those by whom their education

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is conducted, there are unquestionably some, whose names, in whatever European university they might be placed, could not fail to be regarded as among the most illustrious of its ornaments. The first and most obvious cause of the smallness of attention attracted to the University of Edinburgh, is evidently the want of any academical dress. There are no gownsmen here, and this circumstance is one which, with our Oxford ideas, would alone be almost sufficient to prove the non-existence of an university. This, however, is a small matter after all, and rather an effect than a cause. The members of the university do not reside, as ours do, within the walls of colleges; they go once or twice every day, as it may happen, to hear a discourse pronounced by one of their professors; but, beyond this, they have little connection of any kind with the locale of the academical buildings; and it follows very naturally, that they feel themselves to have comparatively a very slight connection with academical life. They live in their fathers’ houses, (for a great proportion of them belong to the city itself,) or they inhabit lodgings in whatever part of the city they please; and they dine alone or together, just as it suits them; they are never compelled to think of each other beyond the brief space of the day in which they are seated in the same lecture-room; in short, the whole course and tenor of their existence is unacademical, and by persons thinking and living in a way so independent of each other, and so dispersed among the crowds of a city such as Edinburgh, any such badges of perpetual distinction as our cap and gown, could scarcely fail to be regarded as very absurd and disagreeable incumbrances. The want of these, however, has its disadvantages as well as its advantages, even in regard to their own individual comfort. So far as I comprehend the first part of the general system of University education in this place, it is as follows. The students enter at fourteen, fifteen, or even much earlier—exactly as used to be the case in our own universities two centuries ago; for I remember it is mentioned in Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Memoirs, (and that, too, as a matter by no means out of the common course,) that he was not twelve years old when he came to reside at Oxford. When they enter, they are far less skilled in Latin than boys of the same age at any of our great schools; and with the exception of those educated at one particular school in Edinburgh, they have no Greek. Their acquisition of these languages is not likely to be very rapid under the professors of Greek and Latin, to whose care the University entrusts them; for each of these gentlemen has to do with a class of at least two hundred pupils; and in

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such a class, it would be impossible to adopt, with the least effect, any other method of teaching than that by formal prælections. Now, of all ways, this is the least adapted for seizing and commanding the attention of a set of giddy urchins, who, although addressed by the name of “Gentlemen,” are in fact, as full of the spirit of boyish romping, as at any previous period of their lives. A slight attempt is sometimes made to keep alive their attention, by examining them the one day concerning what they had heard on the other; and this plan, I understand, begins to be carried into execution, in a more regular way than heretofore. But it is not possible to examine so great a number of boys, either very largely or very closely; and I should be very apprehensive, that their many temptations to idleness must in general overcome, with little difficulty, this one slender stimulus to exertion. As for the professors of these languages, the nature of the duties which they perform, of course reduces them to something quite different from what we should understand by the name they bear. They are not employed in assisting young men to study, with greater facility or advantage, the poets, the historians, or the philosophers of antiquity; nay, it can scarcely be said, in any proper meaning of the term, that they are employed in teaching the principles of language. They are schoolmasters in the strictest sense of the word—for their time is spent in laying the very lowest part of the foundation, on which a superstructure of erudition must be reared. A profound and accomplished scholar may, at times, be found discharging these duties; but most assuredly there is no need either of depth or of elegance, to enable him to discharge them as well as the occasion requires. The truth is, however, that very few men give themselves the trouble to become fine scholars, without being pushed on by many kinds of stimulus, and I know of no very powerful stimulus within the action of which these gentlemen are placed. They have not the ambition and delight of making their pupils fine scholars, —feelings which, in England, are productive of so many admirable results—because the system of the University is such, that their pupils are hurried out of their hands long before they could hope to inspire them with any thing like a permanent love for studies attended with so many difficulties. Nay, they have not the ambition and delight of elevating themselves to a high and honourable rank in public estimation, by their own proficiency in classical lore; for this is the only country in civilized Europe, (whatever may be the cause of the phenomenon) wherein attainments of that kind are regarded with a very slender degree of admiration. How this may have happened, I know not; but the fact is

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certain, that for these two hundred years, Scotland has produced no man of high reputation, whose fame rested, or rests, upon what we call classical learning; nor, at the present day, does she possess any one who might be entitled to form an exception to this rule of barrenness. Before these Boys, therefore, have learned Latin enough to be able to read any Latin author with facility, and before they have learned Greek enough to enable them to understand thoroughly any one line in any one Greek book in existence, they are handed over to the professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Belles-lettres, quasi jam linguaram satis periti. You and I know well enough that it is no trifling matter to acquire any thing like a mastery, a true and effectual command, over the great languages of antiquity; we well remember how many years of busy exertion it cost us in boyhood—yes, and in manhood too—before we found ourselves in a condition to make any complete use of the treasures of wit and wisdom to which these glorious languages are the keys. When we then are told that the whole of the classical part of Scottish academical education is completed within the space of two years, and this with boys of the age I have mentioned, there is no occasion for saying one word more about the matter. We see and know, as well as if we had examined every lad in Edinburgh, that not one of them who has enjoyed no better means of instruction than these, can possibly know any thing more than the merest and narrowest rudiments of classical learning. This one simple fact is a sufficient explanation, not only of the small advances made by the individuals of this nation in the paths of erudition, strictly so called—but of much that is peculiar, and, if one may be permitted to say so, of much that is highly disagreeable too, in the general tone of the literature wherein the national mind is and has been expressed. It shews, at once, the origin of much that distinguishes the authors of Scotland, not from those of England alone, but from those of all the other nations of Europe. I do not mean that which honourably distinguishes them, (for of such distinction also they have much,) but that which distinguishes them in a distressing and degrading manner—their ignorance of the great models of antiquity—nay, the irreverent spirit in which they have the audacity to speak concerning men and works, whom (considered as a class) modern times have as yet in vain attempted to equal. This is a subject of which it would require a bolder man than I am to say so much, to almost any Scotchman whose education has been entirely conducted in his own country. If you venture only to tread upon the hem of that garment of self-sufficiency, in which the true Scotchman wraps himself, he is sure to turn round upon you as if you had aimed a

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dagger at his vitals; and as to this particular point of attack, he thinks he has most completely punished you for your presumption, (in the first place,) and checked your courage for the future, (in the second,) when he has launched out against you one or two of those sarcasms about “longs and shorts,” and “the superiority of things to words,” with which we have, till of late, been familiar in the pages of the Edinburgh Review. A single arrow from that redoubtable quiver, is hurled against you, and the archer turns away with a smile, nothing doubting that your business is done—nor, indeed, is it necessary to prolong the contest; for although you may not feel yourself to be entirely conquered, you must, at least, have seen enough to convince you, that you have no chance of making your adversary yield. If he have not justice on his side, he is, at least, tenacious of his purpose, and it would be a waste of trouble to attempt shaking his opinions either of you or of himself. The rest of the world, however, may be excused, if, absente reo, they venture to think and to speak a little more pertinaciously concerning the absurdity of this neglect of classical learning, which the Scotch do not deny or palliate, but acknowledge and defend. We may be excused if we hesitate a little to admit the weight of reasons from which the universal intellect of Christendom has always dissented, and at this moment dissents as firmly as ever, and to doubt whether the results of the system adopted in Scotland have been so very splendid, as to authorize the tone of satisfied assurance, in which Scotchmen conceive themselves entitled to deride those who adhere to the older and more general style of discipline. It would be very useless to address to one, who has not given to the writers of antiquity some portion of such study as they deserve, any description of the chaste and delightful feelings with which the labours of such study are rewarded—far more to demand his assent to conclusions derived from descriptions which he would not fail to treat as so purely fantastical. The incredulus odi sort of disdain, with which several intelligent and well-educated men in this place have treated me, when I ventured in their presence to say a few words concerning that absurd kind of self-denial, abstinence, and mortificatio spiritus, which seems to be practised by the gentlemen of Scotland, in regard to this most rational and most enduring species of pleasures—the air of mingled scorn and pity, with which they listened to me, and the condescending kind of mock assent which they expressed in reply, have sufficiently convinced me that the countrymen of David Hume are not over-fond of taking any thing upon trust. The language of their looks

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being interpreted, is, “Yes—yes—it is all very well to speak about feelings, and so forth; but is it not sad folly to waste so many years upon mere words?”—Of all the illogical, irrational sorts of delusion, with which ignorance ever came to the consolation of self-love, surely this is the most palpably absurd—The darkness of it may be felt.—During the few short and hasty months in which the young gentlemen of Scotland go through the ceremonious quackery which they are pleased to call learning Greek, it is very true that they are occupied with mere words, and that, too, in the meanest sense of the phrase. They are seldom very sure whether any one word be a noun or a verb, and therefore they are occupied about words. The few books, or fragments of books, which they read, are comprehended with a vast expense of labour, if they be comprehended at all—with continual recurrence to some wretched translation, English or Latin, or still more laborious recurrence to the unmanageable bulk and unreadable types of a Lexicon. It is no wonder, that they tell you all their time was spent upon mere words, and it would be a mighty wonder if the time so spent were recollected by them with any considerable feeling of kindliness. I must own, I am somewhat of my Lord Byron’s opinion, concerning the absurdity of allowing boys to learn the ancient languages, from books the charm of which consists in any very delicate and evanescent beauties—any curiosa felicitas either of ideas or expressions. I also remember the time, when I complained to myself (to others I durst not) that I was occupied with mere words— and to this hour, I feel, as the noble Childe does, the miserable effects of that most painful kind of exercise, which with us is soon happily changed for something of a very different nature—but which here in Scotland gives birth to almost the only idea connected with the phrase studying Greek. But that a people so fond of the exercise of reason as the Scotch, should really think and speak as if it were possible for those who spend many years in the study of the classics, to be all the while occupied about mere words, this, I confess, is a thing that strikes me as being what Mr Coleridge would call, “One of the voonders above voonders.”— How can the thing be done? It is not in the power of the greatest indexmaking or bibliographical genius in the world to do so, were he to make the endeavour with all the zeal of his vocation. It is not possible, in the first place, to acquire any knowledge of the mere words—the vocables—of any ancient language, without reading very largely in the books which remain to us out of the ruins of its literature. Rich above all example as the literature of Greece once was, and rich as the pure

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literature of Greece is even at this moment, when compared with that of the Romans, it so happens that all the classical Greek works in the world occupy but a trifling space in any man’s library; and were it possible to read philosophers and historians as quickly as novellists or tourists, they might all be read through in no very alarming space of time by any circulating-library glutton who might please to attack them. Without reading, and being familiar with the whole of these books, or at least without doing something little short of this, it is absolutely impossible for any man to acquire even a good verbal knowledge of Greek. Now, that any man should make himself familiar with these books, without at the same time forming some pretty tolerable acquaintance with the subjects of which they treat—not even a Scotchman, I think, will venture to assert. And that any man can make himself acquainted with these books (in this sense of the phrase,) without having learned something that is worthy of being known—over and above the words submitted to his eyes in their pages—I am quite sure, no person of tolerable education in Christendom will assert, unless he be a Scotchman. To follow the history of great and remarkable nations, as narrated by the clear and graphic genius of their own writers—and so to become acquainted with human nature as displaying itself under the guise of manners very different from our own,—learning thereby, of necessity, to understand both our own manners, and our own nature, better than we could otherwise have done—this is one of the first exercises in which the mind of the classical student must be engaged, and this alone, were this all, might be more than enough to redeem him from the reproach of being a mere hunter of words. There are only three great objects which can ever draw to them in a powerful manner the spirits of enlightened men, and occupy with inexhaustible resources the leisure that is left to them by the State of which they are members, and the Society with which their days are linked;—the Philosophy of life, the enjoyment arising from the Fine Arts, and the study of History. All the three are well fitted to exalt, and enrich, in many ways, the internal and eternal parts of our nature. But neither of the two first-mentioned can be compared in this respect with the study of history, the only study which presents to all our endeavours and aspirations after higher intellectual cultivation, a fast middle-point, and grappling-place,—the effects, namely, the outward and visible effects, which the various modifications of society and education have already produced upon man, his destinies, and his powers. Without the knowledge of this great and

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mighty past, the philosophy of life, with whatever wit she may enchant, with whatever eloquence she may charm us, can never effectually lift our view from the ground on which our feet tread—the present—from the narrow and limited circle of our own customs, and those of our immediate neighbours and contemporaries. Even the higher philosophy, the boldest, and in a certain measure, therefore, the most remarkable of all the exertions of human intellect, would in vain, without the aid of history, attempt to explain to us the formation and developement of our own faculties and feelings; because without it, she could not fail to present us with more of dark and inexplicable enigmas, than of clear and intelligible results. History, on the other hand, when she is not confined to the mere chronicling of names, years, and external events, but seizes and expands before us the spirit of great men, great times, and great actions, is in herself alone a true and entire philosophy, intelligible in all things, and sure in all things; and above all other kinds of philosophy, rich both in the materials and the means of application. The value of the fine arts, in regard to the higher species of mental cultivation, is admitted by all whose opinion is of any avail. But even these, without that earnestness of intention, and gravity of power, which they derive from their connection with the actual experience of man, his destiny, and his history—would be in danger of degenerating into an empty sport, a mere plaything of the imagination. The true sense and purpose of the highest and most admirable productions of the imitative arts, (and of poetry among the rest,) are then only clearly and powerfully revealed to us, when we are able to transport ourselves into the air and spirit of the times in which they were produced, or whose image it is their object to represent. If philosophy (strictly so called) grapples chiefly with our reason, and the Fine Arts with our feelings and imagination, History, on the other hand, claims a more universal possession of us, and considers the whole man, and all the powers of his soul, as alike within her controul. So, at least, she should do, when she does what is worthy of her high destination;—and thus it is that History occupies, in and by herself, in that glorious circle which embraces all the higher cultivation of man, if not the most splendid place, at least the most necessary. Without her, we should want the link and bond of connection which fastens the whole mighty structure together. One great, and, above all others, most interesting field, is opened for the study of history, by the extraordinary and unforeseen events which characterize the present. The remembrance of the great past,—the knowledge of its occurrences and its

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spirit, is the only thing which can furnish us with a fair and quiet point of view from which to survey the present—a standard by which to form just conclusions respecting the comparative greatness or littleness of that which passes before our eyes. Here then there is another instance of a coincidence which may often enough be observed in human affairs. The simplest of things is also the highest. History forms the apparently light and easy commencement of the education of the boy; and yet the more the mind of the man is informed and accomplished, the more manifold occasion will be found to make use of the stores of history,— the more will he find himself called upon to exert all his power, in order to penetrate and comprehend the deep sense of history. For, as there is no man of reflection so acute, that he can suppose himself to have thoroughly understood the scope of history, and no man of research so diligent, that he can suppose himself to have obtained possession of all the materials of history, so neither is there any man so low or so high, that he can suppose himself to be placed in a situation, wherein his own examination of that which is recorded may not be of essential benefit to himself, in regard to that which is and is to come. Now, where and how is History to be studied? I answer, first and best in the great historians of antiquity. The men whom these present to our view, have embodied, in their lives and persons, almost all that we can think of as forming the true greatness and true honour of our nature. The events which they describe, however small the apparent sphere of their influence may sometimes be, were those which decided the fate of nations which for ages ruled and disciplined the world, and the influence of whose rule and discipline is still preserved, and likely to be preserved, even in parts of the earth to which their actual and corporeal sway never found access. The thoughts, and feelings, and actions of these men and these nations, must forever be regarded, by all who can understand them, as the best examples or patterns of us, our nature, our powers, and our destinies. We are the intellectual progeny of these men. Even their blood flows in our veins—at least some tincture—but without them what had our Spirits been? That question cannot be answered—but, at least, they had not been what they are. In every thing which we see, hear, and do, some knowledge of them and their nature is taken for granted—that is a postulate in all communication between men who can read and write in Christendom. For what reason, therefore, should we be satisfied with a superficial knowledge of that, whereof knowledge is practically admitted to be not only an ornament, but a necessary? For what reason should we neglect to store our minds, when they are most

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open for impressions, with full, clear, and indelible memorials of the mighty past? It is possible, it is often said, to know all that is to be known about the ancients, without being acquainted with their languages. The assertion is a contradiction in terms. The most true, the most lasting, the most noble creation by which an independent nation seeks to manifest her spirit and her independence, is her formation and cultivation of an independent speech. And it is impossible to know such a nation as she deserves to be known, without knowing also, and that thoroughly, this the first and best of her productions. Her language is her history. What, after all, are battles, and sieges, and kings, and consuls, and conquerors, to the processes of thought, and the developements of feeling? Wherein does the essence of a nation exist, if it be not in the character of her mind? and how is that mind to be penetrated or understood, if we neglect the pure and faithful mirror in which of old it has stamped its likeness— her language? Men may talk as they choose about translations; there is in brevity and in truth, no such thing as a translation. The bold outline is, indeed, preserved, but the gentle, delicate, minute shadings vanish. And if our study be MAN, is it not clear enough that the more delicate and minute these may be, the more likely are they to reveal the true springs of his working? The advantages to be derived from a more patient and accurate course of classical study than prevails in Scotland, might be explained in a way that, to every rational person, could not have less than the power of demonstration. Of the poetry, and, above all, of the philosophy of antiquity, it would be easy to speak even at more length than of her history. But the truth is, that the whole of these things hang together in indissoluble union, and no man could, if he would, understand any one of them well, without understanding a very great deal of the others also. In Scotland, they understand, they care about none of the three. I have conversed with a very great number of her literary men—and surely it is not necessary to say any thing in praise of their manifold general attainments—but I honestly tell you, that I have not yet conversed with any one, who seemed to me ever to have gone through any thing like a complete course, either of Greek poetry or Greek history. As for Greek philosophy, beyond Xenophon’s Memorabilia, the Phaedon, and Aristotle’s Poetick, I have never heard any allusion made to the existence of any books connected with that subject; and I am convinced, that a man who had read through Plato or Aristotle, or even who was entitled to say that he had any tolerable acquaintance with the works of

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either of these great authors, would be scarcely more of a wonder at Otaheite than in Edinburgh. But this indeed it is extremely unnecessary to explain to you, who have read and admired so much of the works of Dugald Stewart; for nothing can be more clear to the eyes of the initiated, than that this great and enlightened man has been throughout contented to derive his ideas of the Greek philosophy from very secondary sources. When he dies, there will not, most assuredly, be found among his books, as there was among those of David Hume, an interleaved copy of Duvall’s Aristotle. And if such be his ignorance, (which, I doubt not, he himself would be candid enough to acknowledge without hesitation,) what may we not suppose to be the Cimmerian obscurity which hangs over his worshippers and disciples?—Without the genius, which often suggests to him much of what kindred genius had suggested to the philosophers of antiquity, and which still more often enables him to pass, by different steps, to the same point at which these had arrived,—the pupils of this illustrious man are destitute of the only qualities which could have procured any pardon for the errors of their master. The darkness is with them “total eclipse.” I have wandered, you will say, even more widely than is my custom. But you must keep in recollection the terms on which I agreed to write to you, during this my great northern tour. As for the subject from which I have wandered, viz. the Greek and Latin Muses of the University of Edinburgh, I assure you I feel very easy under the idea of having treated these ladies with slender courtesy. Their reputation is extremely low, and I verily believe they deserve no better. They are of the very worst and most contemptible of all kinds of coquettes; for they give a little to every body, and much to no one. The Professors of the two languages here are both, however, very respectable men in their way; that is, they would both of them do admirable things, if they had any call upon their ambition. Mr Christison, the Professor of Latin, or, as their style is, of humanity, is a very great reader of all kinds of books, and, what is rather singular in one fond of excursive reading, is a very diligent and delighted student of the higher mathematics. I went to hear his prælection the other day, and after the boys were sent away, began to ask him a few questions about the system adopted in their tuition, but in vain. He insisted upon talking of fluxions, and fluxions only; and, as I know nothing of fluxions, I was glad to break up the conference. With him, if a pun may be allowed, ——labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis aevum.

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Mr Dunbar, the Professor of Greek, has published several little things in the Cambridge Classical Researches, and is certainly very much above the common run of scholars. I observe by the way, that in one of his Latin title-pages, he subjoins to his name a set of English initials. *

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LETTER XIV TO THE SAME

AFTER Mr Christison and Mr Dunbar are supposed to have given their pupils as much Latin and Greek as people of sense ought to be troubled with, they are transferred to the Professor of Logic, and recorded in the books of the University, as students of philosophy. The style used by their new professor would, however, convey to a stranger a very erroneous notion of the duties in reality allotted to him. Logic, according to our acceptation of the word, is one of the least and last of the things which this gentleman (who is said to be a person of great shrewdness and masculine judgment) is supposed to teach. The true business of Dr Ritchie is to inform the minds of his pupils with some first faint ideas of the Scotch systems of metaphysics and morals—to explain to them the rudiments of the great vocabulary of Reid and Stewart, and fit them, in some measure, for plunging next year into the midst of all the light and all the darkness scattered over the favourite science of this country, by the Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dr Thomas Brown. I could not find leisure for attending the prælections of all the Edinburgh professors; but I was resolved to hear, at least, one discourse of the last mentioned celebrated person. So I went one morning in good time, and took my place in a convenient corner of that class-room, to which the rising metaphysicians of the north resort with so much eagerness. Before the professor arrived, I amused myself with surveying the well-covered rows of benches with which the area of the large room was occupied. I thought I could distinguish the various descriptions of speculative young men come thither from the different quarters of Scotland, fresh from the first zealous study of Hume, Berkeley, and Locke, and quite sceptical whether the timber upon which they sat had any real existence, or whether there was such a thing as heat in the grate which was blazing before them. On one side might be seen, perhaps, a Pyrrhonist from Inverness-shire, deeply marked with the small-pox, and ruminating upon our not seeing double with two eyes. The gaunt and sinewy frame of this meditative mountaineer—his hard legs set wide asunder, as if to take full advantage of their more usual integument, the

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philabeg—his features, bearing so many marks of the imperfect civilization and nomadic existence of his progenitors—all together could not fail to strike me as rather out of place in such a situation as this. On the other side might be remarked one, who seemed to be an embryo clergyman, waiting anxiously for some new lights, which he expected the coming lecture would throw upon the great system of Cause and Effect, and feeling rather qualmish after having read that morning Hume’s Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts. Nearer the professor’s table was probably a crack member of some crack debatingclub, with a grin of incorrigible self-complacency shining through his assumed frown of profound reflection—looking, as the French say, as grave as a pot-de-chambre—and longing, above all things, for seven o’clock in the evening, when he hoped himself to assume a conspicuous position behind a green table, with a couple of candles upon it, and fully refute the objections of his honourable and eloquent friend who spoke last. A little farther to the right might be observed a fine, healthy, wellthriven lad from Haddington-shire, but without the slightest trace of metaphysics in his countenance—one who would have thought himself much better employed in shooting crows on Leith sands, and in whom the distinction between Sensation and Volition excited nothing but chagrin and disgust. Throughout the whole of this motley assemblage, there was a prodigious mending of pens, and folding of paper, every one, as it appeared, having arrived with the determination to carry away the Dicta Magistri, not in his head only, but in his note-book. Some, after having completed their preparations for the business of this day, seemed to be conning over the monuments of their yesterday’s exertion, and getting as firm a grapple as possible of the last links of the chain whereof a new series was about to be expanded before them. There was a very care-worn kind of hollowness in many of their eyes, as if they had been rather overworked in the business of staring upon stenography; and not a few of their noses were pinched and sharpened, as it were, with the habitual throes and agonies of extreme hesitation. As the hour began to strike, there arose a simultaneous clamour of coughing and spitting, and blowing of noses, as if all were prepared for listening long to the lecturer, without disturbing him or their neighbours; and such was the infectiousness of their zeal, that I caught myself fidgetting upon my seat, and clearing out for action like the rest. At last, in came the professor, with a pleasant smile upon his face, arrayed in a black Geneva cloak, over a snuff-coloured coat and buff waistcoat. He mounted to his elbow-chair,

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and laid his papers on the desk before him, and in a moment all was still as the Tomb of the Capulets—every eye filled with earnestness, and every pen filled with ink. Doctor Brown has a physiognomy very expressive of mildness and quiet contemplativeness; but when he got fairly into the middle of his subject, his features kindled amazingly, and he went through some very subtle and abstruse disquisitions with great keenness and animation. I have seen few persons who pursued the intellectual chase with so much ardour; but as I observed before, it did not appear as if all his pupils were sufficiently well mounted or equipped to be able to keep up with him. His elocution is distinct and elegant, and in those parts of his subject which admitted of being tastefully handled, there was a flow of beautiful language, as finely delivered as it was finely conceived. It is very much his practice to introduce quotations from the poets, which not only afford the best illustrations of his own speculations, but are, at the same time, valuable, as furnishing a pleasing relaxation to the mind of the hearer in the midst of the toils of abstract thought. The variety of delightful images which he thus brings before the view, refreshes the mental eye, and enables it to preserve its power of examination much longer than it could do, were it condemned to experience no relief from the dry mazes of abstract disquisition. Dr Brown, in this respect, imitates with great wisdom and success, the example of Harris, whose intimate knowledge of Shakespeare has done more good to his books, and afforded more delight to his readers, than perhaps any one of all his manifold accomplishments. Nay, I might have quoted the still higher example of the Stagyrite himself, who produces an effect equally delightful by his perpetual citations from Homer, or, as he calls him, ̒Ο Ποιητης. The immediate predecessor of Dr Brown, in this important chair, was no less a person than Dugald Stewart; and it was easy to observe, in the midst of many lesser deviations, that the general system of this great man’s philosophy is adhered to by his successor, and that he is, in truth, one of his intellectual children. I have seen Mr Stewart once since I came to Edinburgh, but it was in a very hasty manner, so that I shall not attempt to describe him to you at present. I intend, before I leave Scotland, to pass very near the place of his residence, (for he now very seldom leaves the country,) and shall perhaps find an opportunity to become better acquainted with him. Of the style of philosophizing adopted by him and his successor, I need not say any thing to you, who are so much better acquainted with the works of both than I am. I may

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just venture to hint, however, that their mode of studying the human mind, is perhaps better adapted for throwing light upon the intellectual faculties, and upon the association of ideas, than upon human nature in general. There can be no doubt that the mind is, like physical nature, a theatre of causes and effects; but it appears extremely doubtful whether the same mechanical mode of observation, which enables us to understand the qualities of material objects, and the effects which they are capable of producing on each other, will be equally successful in elucidating the generation of human thoughts and feelings. In observing the manner in which a train of ideas passes through the mind, is it possible to notice and understand all that is really going on within us? Can every thing which appears be referred to its true source? From the mode in which images and conceptions succeed each other, we may perhaps infer some laws of suggestion—and from observing the sequence of propositions, we may arrive at the principles according to which intellectual operations take place—but such, probably, will be the most important results of intellectual operations, conducted according to Mr Stewart’s method. The scope and tendency of the different affections can never be gathered from the analyses of particular trains of thought, or by such a microscopic and divided mode of observation, as that which consists in watching the succession of ideas as they arise in the mind. It seems, indeed, quite improbable, that the affections ever can be made an object of science, or that their qualities and relations can ever be properly expressed in abstract propositions. Poetry and eloquence are alone capable of exemplifying them; and one may gather more true knowledge of all that most valuable, and perhaps most divine part of our nature, by studying one of Mr Wordsworth’s small pieces, such as Michael, the Brothers, or the Idiot Boy—or following the broken catches of multitudinous feelings, in the speeches of one such character as Madge Wildfire, than by a whole life-time spent in studying and imitating the style of observation exemplified by Mr Stewart. In regard to intellectual operations, it may be said, that a knowledge of their laws confers power, because it teaches method in conducting them. In regard to the laws of association, it may also be said, that knowledge is power, because it enables us to continue the succession of our ideas. But it appears very questionable, whether the empire of science can be extended much farther in this quarter. The power which is conferred by knowledge, is always of a merely calculating and mechanical sort, and consists in nothing higher than the adaptation of means to ends—and to suppose that man’s moral being can ever be

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subjected to, or swayed by, a power so much lower than itself, is almost as revolting as the theory which refers all ideas and emotions to the past impressions upon the senses. In studying the nature of the human affections, one object should be, —to obtain repose and satisfaction for the moral feelings, by discriminating between good and evil. Knowledge is nothing in a scientific point of view, unless it can be accumulated and transferred from individual to individual, and unless it be as valid in one person’s hands as in those of another; but this could never be the case with regard to a knowledge of the moral feelings. I do not throw out these little remarks with a view to disparage the usefulness or excellence of Dugald Stewart’s mode of philosophizing, so far as it goes. But it would be a very cold and barren way of thinking, to suppose, that through the medium of that species of observation which he chiefly makes use of, we have it in our power to become completely acquainted with human nature. And again, the habit of reposing too much confidence in the powers resulting from science, would have a tendency to terminate in utter supineness, and lethargy of character among mankind; for, if it were expected that every thing could be forced to spring up as the mechanical and necessary result of scientific calculations, the internal springs of the mind would no longer be of the same consequence as before, and the accomplishment of a great many things might then be devolved upon, and intrusted to, an extraneous power, lodged in the hands of speculative men. The true characteristic of science consists in this,—that it is a thing which can be communicated to, and made use of by, all men who are endowed with an adequate share of mere intellect. The philosophy of moral feeling must always, on the other hand, approach nearer to the nature of poetry, whose influence varies according as it is perused by individuals of this or that character, or taste. The finest opening to any book of psychology and ethics in the world, is that of Wordsworth’s Excursion. That great poet, who is undoubtedly the greatest master that has for a long time appeared in the walks of the highest philosophy in England, has better notions than any Scotch metaphysician is likely to have, of the true sources, as well as the true effects, of the knowledge of man. ——Urania, I shall need

Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such Descend to earth, or dwell in highest Heaven!

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For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds, To which the Heaven of Heavens is but a veil.— All strength—all terror, single or in bands, That ever was put forth in personal form; Jehovah—with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones, I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy scooped out By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often, when we look Into our Minds—into the Mind of Man, My haunt, and the main region of my song.

After such words as these, I durst not venture upon anything of a lowlier kind. Farewell, P. M.

LETTER XV TO THE SAME

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* * NEXT day I went to hear Professor Playfair’s lecture. I found him already engaged in addressing his class when I entered, but took my seat close by the door, so quietly as not to attract any notice from him. It was a very pleasing thing to see this fine old Archimedes with his reposed demeanour—(such as I have already described it to you)— standing beside his table covered with models, which he was making use of in some demonstrations relative to mechanical forces. There is something in the certainty and precision of the exact sciences, which communicates a stillness to the mind, and which, by calling in our thoughts from their own giddy and often harassing rounds, harmonizes our nature with the serenity of intellectual pleasure. The influence of such studies is very well exemplified in the deportment of this professor. In lecturing, he expresses himself in an easy and leisurely manner, highly agreeable to the listener, although he does not seem to study continuity or flow of diction, and although his delivery is sometimes a good deal impeded by hesitation with regard to the words he is to employ. I have already described his features to you; but perhaps their effect was finer while he was engaged in this way, than I had before been prepared to find. I think one may trace in his physiognomy a great deal of that fine intellectual taste, which dictated the illustrations of the Huttonian Theory.* I waited to pay my respects to the professor, after the dismission of his class, and he invited me to walk with him to the New Observatory upon the Calton Hill. This building, which is not yet completed, owes _____________________________________________ * This illustrious man is another that has died since my Letters were first published. Mr Leslie, as was right, has succeeded him in the Physical Chair.

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its existence entirely to the liberality of a few private lovers of astronomy, and promises to form a beautiful and lasting monument of their taste. Mr Playfair himself laid the foundation-stone of it last year, and already it presents to the eye, what is, in my humble judgment, the finest architectural outline in the whole of this city. The building is not a large one; but its situation is such, as to render that a matter of comparatively trivial moment. Its fine portico, with a single range of Doric pillars supporting a graceful pediment, shaped exactly like that of the Parthenon— and over that again, its dome lifting itself lightly and airily in the clear mountain sky—and the situation itself, on the brink of that magnificent eminence, which I have already described to you, just where it looks towards the sea—altogether remind one of the best days of Grecian art and Grecian science, when the mariner knew Athens afar off from the Ægean, by the chaste splendour of pillars and temples that crowned the original rock of Theseus. If a few elms and plantains could be made to grow to their full dimensions around this rising structure, the effect would be the nearest thing in the world to that of the glorious scene, which Plato has painted so divinely at the opening of his Republic.* After surveying the new building both without and within at great length, we quitted the summit of the hill, and began our descent. About half way down, there is a church-yard, which I had not before remarked particularly, and which, indeed, as Mr Playfair mentioned, has of late been much abridged in its dimensions, by the improvements that have taken place in this quarter of the city. He proposed that we should enter the burying-ground, in order to see the place where David Hume is laid. There are few things in which I take a more true delight, than in visiting the graves of the truly illustrious dead, and I therefore embraced the proposal with eagerness. The philosopher reposes on the very margin of the rock, and above him his friends have erected a round tower, which, although in itself not very large, derives, like the Observatory on the other side, an infinite advantage from the nature of the ground on which it is placed, and is, in fact, one of the chief landmarks in every view of the city. In its form it is quite simple, and the flat roof and single urn in front give it a very classical effect. Already lichens and ferns and wallflowers begin to creep over the surface, and a solitary willow-bush drops its long slender leaves over the edge of the roof, and breaks the outline in the air with a desolate softness. _____________________________________________ * The architect of this beautiful Edifice is Mr Playfair—nephew to the late Professor.

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There is no inscription, except the words DAVID HUME; and this is just as it ought to be. One cannot turn from them, and the thoughts to which they of necessity give birth, to the more humble names that cover the more humble tombs below and around, without experiencing a strange revulsion of ideas. The simple citizen, that went through the world in a course of plain and quiet existence, getting children, and accumulating money to provide for them, occupies a near section of the same sod which covers the dust of Him, who left no progeny behind him, except that of his intellect,—and whose name must survive, in that progeny, so long as Man retains any portion of the infirmity, or of the nobility of his nature. The poor man, the peasant, or the mechanic, whose laborious days provided him scantily with meat and raiment, and abundantly with sound sleep—he also has mingled his ashes with Him, whose body had very little share either in his wants or his wishes— whose spirit alone was restless and sleepless, the Prince of Doubters. The poor homely partner of some such lowly liver, the wife and the mother and the widow, whose existence was devoted to soothing and sharing the asperities of adversity—who lived, and thought, and breathed in the affections alone, and, perhaps, yet lives somewhere in the affections of her children, or her children’s children—she too, whose only hope and confidence were derived from the expectation of another life—she sleeps close beside one who walked upon the earth, not to feel, but to speculate, and was content to descend into her bosom, with scarcely one ray of hope beyond the dark and enduring sleep of nothingness. These grassy heaps lie amicably close, Said I, like surges heaving in the wind, Upon the surface of a mountain’s pool.—

Death, like misery, “makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows.” But surely never was a scene of strange juxta-position more pregnant with lessons of thoughtfulness than this. Adieu, P. M.

LETTER XVI TO THE SAME

A PERSON whose eyes had been accustomed only to such places as the schools of Oxford, or Sir Christopher Pegge’s lecture-room, would certainly be very much struck with the primâ facie mean condition of the majority of the students assembled at the prælections of these Edinburgh professors. Here and there one sees some small scattered remnant of the great flock of Dandies, trying to keep each other’s high collars and stays in countenance, in a corner of the class-room; but these only heighten, by the contrast of their presence, the general effect of the slovenly and dirty mass which on every side surrounds them with its contaminating atmosphere; and upon the whole, nothing can be more distinct and visible, than that the greater part of the company are persons whose situation in life, had they been born in England, must have left them no chance of being able to share the advantages of our academical education. I could not help taking notice of this circumstance the other day to my friend Wastle; who not only admitted the justice of my observation, but went on to utter his comments on the fact I had observed, in a tone of opinion and sentiment, for which, I must confess, my own private reflections had by no means prepared me. So far from proceeding, as I had supposed every Scotchman in like circumstances would do, to point out the advantages which might be expected to arise, and which, in Scotland itself, had already, in fact, arisen, out of a so liberal and extensive diffusion of the higher species of education, my friend seemed to have no hesitation in condemning the whole system as being not friendly, but eminently hostile, to the true interests both of Science in general, and of his country. Without at all understanding him in the literal sense of his words, I think it is possible that the result of his reflections may have really led him to doubt, whether the system which takes in so much may not be somewhat weakened and debased through the very extension of its surface. I can easily believe that he may be a little doubtful whether the obvious and distinct advantages which must spring out of such a system,

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may not be counterbalanced, upon the whole, by the disadvantages which I should suppose must be equally inseparable from the mode of carrying it into practical effect; in other words, whether the result of good may not be less considerable in the great issue than that of evil, both to the individuals themselves, and to the community, of whose general character so much must directly and indirectly be dependent upon theirs. For myself, I say even so much with great hesitation, concerning a subject of which I cannot imagine myself to have had time or opportunity for any adequate examination; and of which, even had I possessed more of time and opportunity than I have done, I am still suspicious that my own early prejudices might render it impossible I should form a fair and impartial judgment. The expences of University education, in the first place, amount in Scotland to no more than a very inconsiderable fraction of what they are in England. With us, we all know, a father of a family seldom thinks of sending his son to college, unless he can afford to give him an allowance of some £300 per annum, or thereabouts. It is, no doubt, quite possible, to have apartments in a college, to attend prayers in chapel, and eat commons in hall, and to arrive, after four years’ residence, at the style and dignity of a Bachelor of Arts, without having disposal of so large an income. But, taking young men as they are, and as they always have been, it is needless to expect, that any one of them will easily submit to lie under any broad and distinct mark of inferiority to his fellows; and therefore it is, that we in common parlance speak of it as being impossible to live at Oxford or Cambridge, on less expensive terms than those I have mentioned. So long as our church retains her privileges and possessions, (which, thank God, I see no likelihood of her losing,) the benefices she has in her gift will always be enough to create a regular demand for a very large number of graduates born in the higher classes of society—so large a number, indeed, that even they alone would be able to give the tone in any University, and any College in England. And while this is so, young men of generous dispositions, who cannot afford to keep up with the tone thus given, would much rather be excused from entering upon a course of life, which must bring their incapacity of doing so continually before the eyes of other people, and of themselves. It would take a long time, moreover, to satisfy the great majority of English fathers of families, even in the more elevated walks of society, that a University education is a matter of so very great importance as to warrant them in running the risk of injuring the feelings and comfort of their children, by compelling them to submit to residing in college on

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inadequate means. I believe it is well, that, in England, Character is generally regarded as a far more important thing than mere Intellect: and I consider the aversion I have just described, as one very honourable manifestation of this way of thinking. In Scotland, feelings of an equally honourable kind have led to a very opposite way of thinking and acting. The poverty of the colleges themselves, or at least of most of them, has prevented the adoption of any such regular and formal style of academical existence, as that which prevails in other countries, and most of all in our own. Instead of being possessed of large and ancient landed estates, and extensive rights of patronage in the church, and elsewhere, and so of forming in itself a very great and formidable corporate body in the state, as the University of Oxford or Cambridge does with us, the University of Edinburgh, for example, is a very recent and contracted institution, which possesses scarcely any property or patronage of any kind beyond the money paid annually in fees by pupils to their professors, and the necessary influence which the high character of some of these individual professors, must at times give to their favour and recommendation. The want of public or corporate splendour has taken away all occasion or pretence for large expenditure in private among the members of the University; and both the corporation, and the individuals, have long since learned to consider their honour as not in the least degree affected by the absence of all those external “shews and forms,” which, with us, long habit has rendered such essential parts of every academical exercise and prospect. The barriers which prevent English parents and English sons from thinking of academical education are thus entirely removed. Any young man who can afford to wear a decent coat, and live in a garret upon porridge or herrings, may, if he pleases, come to Edinburgh, and pass through his academical career, just as creditably as is required or expected. I am assured, that the great majority of the students here, have seldom more than £30 or £40 per annum, and that very many most respectable students contrive to do with little more than half so much money. Whatever may be thought of the results of this plan, there is no possibility that any man of good feeling should refuse his warmest admiration to the zeal both of the children and the parents by whose exertions it is carried into effect. The author of the Scotch novels has several times alluded, in a very moving way, to the hardships to which a poor man’s family in Scotland will submit, for the sake of affording to one of its members even those scanty means which a Scottish Uni-

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versity education demands. You must remember the touches of pathos which he has thrown over the otherwise ludicrous enough exertions made in this way by the parents of the redoubtable Dominie Sampson; and those of Reuben Butler, in the last Tales of My Landlord, are represented in much the same kind. I have seen a little book of Memoirs, lately written, and very well written, by a soldier of the 71st regiment, in which there occurs a still more affecting, because a real picture, of circumstances exactly similar. I question whether there can be imagined a finer display of the quiet heroism of affection and principle, than is afforded in the long and resolute struggle which the poor parents maintain—the pinching penury and self-denial to which they voluntarily submit, in order that their child may be enabled to procure advantages of which themselves are destitute, and which, when obtained, cannot fail to give him thoughts and ideas such as must, in spite of nature, draw some line of separation between him and them. There cannot be a nobler instance of the neglect of self—a more striking exemplification of the sublimity of the affections. Nor can the conduct of the son himself be regarded as much less admirable. The solitary and secluded life to which he devotes so many youthful years—the hard battle which he, too, must maintain against poverty, without any near voice of love to whisper courage into his bosom—the grief which he must feel when compelled to ask that which he well knows will be freely, but which, he too much fears, will be painfully given;—all these sorrows of poverty, united with those many sorrows and depressions which the merely intellectual part of a young student’s existence must always be sufficient to create—the doubts and fears which must at times overcloud and darken the brightest intellect that ever expanded before the influence of exertion—the watching and tossing of overexcitement—the self-reproach of languor—the tightening of the heart strings—and the blank wanderings of the brain—these things are enough to complete the gloomy fore-ground of a picture which would indeed require radiance in the distance to give it any measure of captivation. And yet these things are not more, unless books and men alike deceive us, than are actually operating at this moment in the persons of a very great proportion of the young men whom I have seen at work in the class-rooms of Brown and Playfair. Truly, I think there was too much of lightness in the remarks I made to you, a few days ago, concerning the first impressions of their external appearance and demeanour. The worst view of the subject, however, still remains to be given. To

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what end does all this exertion—this noble and heroic exertion, lead? That is a question which nothing can hinder from crossing us every now and then, in the midst of all our most enthusiastic admiration. It is one which it is perhaps a wrong thing to attempt answering in any way; and I much fear it is one which will not admit of being answered in a satisfactory manner, either by you or by me. There are few splendid rewards of worldly honour held up before the eyes of the Scottish student. The same circumstances which enable him to aspire, enable hundreds and thousands to do as much as he does; and the hope of obtaining any of the few prizes which do exist, is divided among so many, that no man would venture to count his own individual chance as worthy of much consideration. The style of education and exertion to which he submits are admirably fitted for sharpening and quickening the keenness of his understanding, but do not much tend to fill his mind with a store of thoughts, feelings, and images, on which it might repose itself, and in which he might possess for ever the means of a quiet and contemplative happiness. He is made a keen doubter, and a keen disputer; and in both of these qualities there is no doubt he will at first have pleasure. But in neither is he furnished with the elements of such pleasure as may endure with him, and increase with him throughout a laborious, and, above all, it may be, a solitary life. He is not provided with such an armoury of recollections as that which the scholar (properly so called) presents against the pressure of corporeal and mental evils. Without much prospect, then, of any great increase of worldly goods, and without procuring to himself any very valuable stronghold of peaceful meditation, the Scottish student submits to a life of such penury and difficulty, as would almost be sufficient to counterbalance the possession even of the advantages which he has not. At the end of his academical career, he probably finds himself either a burden upon his relations, or providing for himself by the discharge of some duties, which might have been as well discharged without so expensive a preparation. Is it worth while to bear so much, in order to have a chance of gaining so little? As Mr Macleod says in Miss Edgeworth’s novel,—“It may be doubted;” and yet perhaps it cannot be doubted without somewhat of a sin against the higher parts of our nature. But such sins we all commit often enough, both consciously and unconsciously. P. M.

LETTER XVII TO THE SAME

I REGARD, then, the academical institutions of England and Scotland, as things specifically distinct, both in their structure and in their effects. The Universities, here, educate, in proportion to the size and wealth of the two countries, twenty times a larger number than ours in England educate. They educate these persons in a very different way, and for totally different purposes—in reality at least, if not in profession. They diffuse over every part of the kingdom, and over many parts of the neighbouring kingdoms, a mighty population of men, who have received a kind and measure of education which fits them for taking a keen and active management in the affairs of ordinary life. But they seldom send forth men who are so thoroughly accomplished in any one branch of learning, as to be likely to possess, through that alone, the means of attaining to eminence; and, what is worse, the course of the studies which have been pursued under their direction, has been so irregular and multifarious, that it is a great chance whether any one branch of occupation may have made such a powerful and commanding impression on the imagination of the student, as might induce him afterwards to perfect and complete for himself what the University can only be said to have begun. In England, the object of the Universities is not, at present, at all of this kind. In order to prepare men for discharging the duties of ordinary life, or even for discharging the duties of professions requiring more education than is quite common in any country, it is not thought necessary that the University should ever be resorted to. Those great and venerable institutions have both existed from the very commencement of the English monarchy, and have been gradually strengthened and enriched into their present condition, by the piety and the munificence of many successive generations of kings and nobles. They are frequented by those only, who may be called upon at some future period to discharge the most sacred and most elevated duties of English citizenship; and the magnificence of the establishments themselves carries down a portion of its spirit into the humblest individual who

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connects himself with them. The student is lodged in a palace; and when he walks abroad, his eyes are fed on every side with the most splendid assemblages of architectural pomp and majesty which our island can display. He dines in a hall whose lofty compartments are occupied with the portraitures of illustrious men, who of old underwent the same discipline in which he is now engaged, amidst the same appropriate and impressive accompaniments of scene and observance. He studies in his closet the same books which have, for a thousand years, formed the foundation of the intellectual character of Englishmen. In the same chapel wherein the great and good men of England were wont to assemble, he listens, every evening and every morning, to the same sublime music and sublimer words, by which their devotion was kindled, and their faith sustained. He walks under the shadow of the same elms, plantains, and sycamores, beneath whose branches the thoughtful steps of Newton, Bacon, Locke, Milton, have sounded. These old oaks, which can no longer give shade or shelter, but which still present their bare and gnarled limbs to the elements around him— they were the contemporaries of Alfred. Here the memories of kings and heroes, and saints and martyrs, are mingled for ever with those of poets and philosophers; and the Spirit of the Place walks visible, shedding all around one calm and lofty influence, alike refreshing to the affections and to the intellect—an influence which blends together, in indissoluble union, all the finest elements of patriotism, and loyalty, and religion. That the practical usefulness of these institutions would be in any respect improved by any considerable change in their course of studies, I am far from believing; even were I certain that it would be so, I should still be very far from wishing to see such a change adopted. I am satisfied abundantly that they should continue as they are; and, not having much faith in the new doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature, I doubt whether, let them be altered as they might, the men of their production would be much altered for the better. I do not think that at our time of day in national existence, it is at all wise or desirable to begin learning new fashions. The world is not in its infancy: And where is the nation the world has produced, which can present a more glorious array of great and holy names than ours? To me this is a sufficent proof, that we have not all the while been stumbling in the dark, without the rays of the true lamp to enlighten us in our progress. The steady and enduring radiance of our national Past, cannot be the mere delusion of our self-love; for even the voice of our enemies is for ever lifted up in its praise. What future times may judge of the Present, and what our

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national Future may be, it is a little out of our power to decide. But I, for my part, have no fear that they who peruse in distant years the records of this age, will reproach us with having been a degenerate people. Neither do I expect that at any future period the national character can be greatly changed, without, at the same time, being greatly degenerate. Even in regard to many of those peculiarities of our system, which are the most easy and the most favoured marks of the wit of its enemies, I am persuaded that a compliance with what at first sight seems to be the most liberal spirit, would, in the end, be found productive of any thing but fortunate effects. It is very easy, for example, to stigmatize the rules which exclude, from more or less of our privileges, all who are not members of our national church, with the names of bigotry, intolerance, and superstition. It should be remembered, however, that these regulations were the work of men, whom even our bitterest revilers would not dare to insult with such language; and till we see some good reason to be ashamed of them, we may be pardoned, at least, if we refuse to be entirely ashamed of their work. If it be fitting that we should have a National Church, I think it is equally fitting that the church should have the National Universities. These do not profess to monopolize all the means of instruction; the number of great names, in all departments, which have grown up without their sphere of protection, would be more than enough to give such pretensions the lie, were they so audacious as to set them forth. But they profess to educate a certain number of persons, of a certain class, in a certain set of principles, which have been connected with that class throughout all the best years of our history— and which, through the persons of that class in former times, have become identified with our national existence, and must every where be recognized as entering largely and powerfully into the formation of our national character. In a word, they are designed to keep up the race of English gentlemen, imbued with those thoughts and feelings, with that illumination and that belief, which, as exemplified both in the words and in the actions of preceding years, have rendered the name which they bear second to none, perhaps superior to any, which the world has ever witnessed. Instead then of joining in with that senseless spirit of railing, wherewith Scotchmen are too often accustomed to talk of the English, and Englishmen of the Scottish Universities, I please myself in thinking that the two institutions have different objects, and that they are both excellent in their different ways. That each system might borrow

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something with advantage from the other, is very possible, but I respect both of them too much to be fond of hasty and rash experiments. In our great empire we have need of many kinds of men; it is necessary that we should possess within our own bounds, the means of giving to each kind that sort of preparation which may best fit them for the life to which they are destined. So there be no want of unity in the general character and feeling of the whole nation, considered as acting together, the more ways the intellect of the nation has, in which to shoot itself out and display its energies, the better will it be:—the greater the variety of walks of exertion and species of success, the greater the variety of stimulus applied; and the greater that spirit of universal activity, without which minds become stagnant like fish-pools, the greater is our hope of long and proudly preserving our high place in the estimation of the world. I shall return to the Universities in my next. P. M.

LETTER XVIII TO LADY JOHNES

DEAR AUNT, IF you meet with Mr David Williams of Ystradmeiric, he will tell you that I send him a long letter every other day, filled with histories of dinner-parties, and sketches of the Edinburgh literati; and yet, such is my diligence in my vocation of tourist, I am laying up stores of anecdotes about the northern beau-monde, and making drawings in crayon of the northern beauties, which, I flatter myself, will be enough to amuse your ladyship half the autumn, after I return to you. There is a very old rule, to do like the Romans when you are in Rome; and the only merit I lay claim to on the present occasion, resolves itself into a rigid observance of this sage precept. It is the fashion here for every man to lead two or three different kinds of lives all at once, and I have made shift to do somewhat like my neighbours. In London, a lawyer is a lawyer, and he is nothing more; for going to the play or the House of Commons, now and then, can scarcely be considered as any serious interruption of his professional habits and existence. In London, in like manner, a gay man is nothing but a gay man; for, however he may attempt to disguise the matter, whatever he does out of the world of gayety is intended only to increase his consequence in it. But here I am living in a city, which thrives both by law and by gayeties, and—would you believe it?—a very great share of the practice of both of these mysteries lies in the very same hands. It is this, so far as I can judge, which constitutes what the logicians would call the differential quality of the society of Edinburgh. It is, at this time of the year at least, a kind of melange of London, Bath, and Cheltenham; and I am inclined to think, that, upon due examination, you would find it to be in several particulars a more agreeable place than any of these. In many other particulars, I think any rational person would pronounce it, without difficulty, to be more absurd than any of them. The removal of the residence of the sovereign has had the effect of rendering the great nobility of Scotland very indifferent about the

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capital. There is scarcely one of the Premiere Noblesse, I am told, that retains even the appearance of supporting a house in Edinburgh; and by far the greater part of them are quite as ignorant of it, as of any other provincial town in the island. The Scotch courts of law, however, are all established in this place, and this has been sufficient to enable Edinburgh to keep the first rank among the cities of Scotland, which, but for them, it seems extremely unlikely she should have been able to accomplish. For the more the commercial towns thrive, the more business is created for this legal one; and the lawyers of Edinburgh may be said to levy a kind of custom upon every bail of goods that is manufactured in this part of the island, and a no less regular excise upon every article of merchandize that is brought into it from abroad. In this way, (to such wonderful exactness has the matter been brought,) it may be said, that every great merchant in Glasgow pays large salaries to some two or three members of the Law in Edinburgh, who conduct the numerous litigations, that arise out of a flourishing business, with great civility; and, with greater civility still, the more numerous litigations which attend the untwisting and dissevering of the Gordian knot of mercantile difficulties and embarrassments. And so, indeed, there is scarcely much exaggeration in the common saying, that every house which a man, not a lawyer, builds out of Edinburgh, enables a man, who is a lawyer, to build another equally comfortable in Edinburgh. A very small share of the profits set apart for the nourishment of this profession falls into the hands of the first branch of it—the Barristers. These are still, in general, although not so uniformly as in former times, younger sons of good families, who have their fortunes to make, but who have been brought up in a way more calculated to make them adepts in spending than in getting. The greater part of them, moreover, seldom have any opportunity of realizing much money, were they inclined to do so; for, with the exception of some six or eight, who monopolize the whole of the large fees, and the far greater share of the small ones, the most of the advocates may think themselves extremely fortunate, if, after passing eight or ten years at the bar, they are able to make as much by their profession as may suffice for the support of a family, in the most quiet and moderate style of living. A vast number of those who come to the bar have no chance, almost no hope, of getting into any tolerable practice; but as there are a great number of offices of various degrees of honour and emolument, which can only be filled by members of the Faculty of Advocates, they are contented to wear the gown year after year, in the expectation of at last being able to step into

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the possession of one of these births, by means of some connexions of blood, or marriage, or patronage. One should at first sight say, that this must be rather a heartless kind of drudgery; but, such as it is, it is submitted to by a very great number of well-educated and accomplished gentlemen, who not only keep each other in countenance with the rest of the world, but, what is much better, render this mode of life highly agreeable in itself. These persons constitute the chief community of loungers and talkers in Edinburgh; and such is the natural effect of their own family connexions, and the conventional kind of respect accorded to the name of their profession, that their influence may be considered as extending over almost the whole of the northern part of the island. They make the nearest approach, of any class of men now existing, to the modes of Templar-life described by Addison and Steele; for, as to the Temple wits and critics of our day, you know they are now sadly “shorn of their beams,” and are, indeed, regarded by the ruling powers of the West-end—the ὁι ἐν τελει of Albemarle-street, &c.—as forming little better than a sort of upper form of the Cockney-school. The chief wealth of the profession, however, if not the chief honour, is lodged with the attornies, or, as they are here called, the Writers. Of these there is such an abundance in this city, that I cannot for my life understand by what means they all contrive to live; and those of them with whom I have become acquainted, I do assure you live well. They are sub-divided into various classes, of which the highest is that of the Writers or Clerks to the Signet, so called because they alone have the privilege of drawing particular kinds of deeds, to which the king’s signet is affixed. Even of these there are many hundreds in actual practice at this moment, and many of them have realized large fortunes, and retired from business to enjoy the otium cum dignitate. It may be said, that almost every foot of land in Scotland pays something to the Writers to the Signet; for there is scarcely an estate in Scotland, the proprietor of which does not entrust the management of the whole of his affairs to one of their order. The connexion which exists between them and the landed interest is thus of the most intimate nature. The country gentlemen of Scotland, from whatever causes, are generally very much in debt. Their writers, or, as they call them, their agents or doers, are of necessity acquainted with the many secrets which men in debt must have; they are themselves the bankers and creditors of their clients. In short, when a gentleman changes his man of business, his whole affairs must undergo a complete revolution and convulsion; and in Scotland, it is a much easier thing to get rid of one’s wife, than of one’s doer.

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These advocates and rich writers may be considered as forming the nucleus of the society of Edinburgh. Their connexions of birth and business bind them so closely with the landed gentry, that these last come to Edinburgh principally in order to be in their neighbourhood; these again draw with them a part of the minor noblesse, and the whole of the idle military men who can afford it. Of late years also, the gentry of some of the northern English counties have begun to come hither, in preference to going to York as they used to do; and out of all this medley of materials, the actual mass of the society of Edinburgh is formed. I mean the winter society of Edinburgh; for, in the summer months—that is from April till Christmas—the town is commonly deserted by all, except those who have ties of real business to connect them with it. Nay, during a considerable portion of that time, it loses, as I am informed, the greater part even of its eminent lawyers, and has quite as green and desolate an appearance, as the fashionable squares in London have about the falling of the leaf. The medley of people, thus brought together for a few months every year to inhabit a few streets in this city, cannot afford to split their forces very minutely, so as to form many different spheres of society, according to their opinions of their relative rank and importance. It is now admitted everywhere, that no party is worth the going to unless it be a crowded one; now, it is not possible to form a party here that shall be at once select and crowded. The dough and the leaven must go together to make up the loaf, and the wives of lords and lairds, and advocates, and writers, must be contented to club their forces, if they are to produce any thing that deserves the honourable name of a squeeze. Now and then, indeed, a person of the very highest importance, may by great exertion succeed in forming one exception to this rule. But the rule is in general a safe one; and the Edinburgh parties are in the main mixed parties—I do not mean that they are mixed in a way that renders them at all disagreeable, even to those who have been accustomed to the style of society in much greater capitals, but that they are mixed in a way of which no example is to be found in the parties of London, or indeed of any European capital, except the Paris of the present time. People visit each other in Edinburgh with all the appearance of cordial familiarity, who, if they lived in London, would imagine their difference of rank to form an impassable barrier against such intercourse. Now, although the effect may not amount to any thing absolutely unpleasant, there is no question that this admission of persons not educated in the true circles, must be seen and felt upon the general

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aspect of the society of Edinburgh, and that, upon the whole, this society is, in consequence of their admission, less elegant than might otherwise have been expected in the capital of such a country as Scotland. * * Your’s very affectionately, P. M.

LETTER XIX TO THE SAME

DEAR AUNT, HOWEVER composed and arranged, the routs and balls of this place are, during their season, piled upon each other with quite as much bustle and pomp as those even of London. Every night, some half a dozen ladies are at home, and every thing that is in the wheel of fashion, is carried round, and thrown out in due course at the door of each of them. There is at least one regular ball every evening, and besides this, half of the routs are in their waning hours transformed into carpet-dances, wherein quadrilles are performed in a very penseroso method to the music of the piano-forte. Upon the whole, however, I am inclined to be of opinion, that even those who most assiduously frequent these miscellaneous assemblages are soon sickened, if they durst but confess the truth, of the eternal repetition of the same identical crowd displaying its noise and pressure under so many different roofs. Far be it from me to suspect, that there are not some faces, of which no eye can grow weary; but, in spite of all their loveliness, I am certainly of opinion, that the impression made by the belles of Edinburgh would be more powerful, were it less frequently reiterated. Among the hundred young ladies, whose faces are exhibited in these parties, a very small proportion, of course, can have any claims to that higher kind of beauty, which, like the beauty of painting or sculpture, must be gazed on for months or years before the whole of its charm is understood and felt as it ought to be. To see every evening, for months in succession, the same merely pretty, or merely pleasing faces, is at the best a fatiguing business. One must soon become as familiar with the contour of every cheek, and the sweep of every ringlet, as one is with the beauties or defects of one’s own near relatives. And if it be true, that defects in this way come to be less disagreeable, it is no less true, per contra, that beauties come to have less of the natural power of their fascination. The effects of this unceasing flood of gayety, then, are not perhaps so very favourable as might be expected to the great object of all gayeties—the entrapping of the unfortunate lords of the creation. But

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this is not the worst of the matter. I am really very free from any very puritanical notions, in regard to the pleasures of human life; but I do sincerely, and in honest earnestness doubt, whether any good is gained to the respectable citizens of this town, by having their wives and daughters immersed, for so considerable a portion of the year, in a perpetual round of amusements, so fatiguing to their bodies and their minds, and so destructive, I should fear, of much of that quiet and innocent love of home and simple pleasures, in which the true charm of the female character ought to consist, and in which its only true charm does at this moment consist in the opinion of all men of sense and feeling. It is a very pretty thing, no doubt, to see a young lady dressed with Parisian flowers and Parisian gauzes, and silk slippers and an Indian fan, and the whole &c. of fashionable array: But I question whether this be, after all, the style in which a young man of any understanding sees a young lady with most danger to his peace. It is very well that people in the more quiet walks of life should not be ignorant of what goes on among those that are pleased to style themselves their betters: But, I do think that this is rather too entire and bona fide an initiation into a train of existence, which is, luckily, as inconsistent with the permanent happiness, as it is with the permanent duties, of those who cannot afford all their lives to be mere fine ladies. For myself, after living so quietly in Cardigan, I have been on the whole much pleased with the full and leisurely view I have now had even of this out-skirt of the beau-monde. I do not think matters have undergone any improvement since I last peeped into its precincts. The ladies are undoubtedly by no means so well-dressed as they were a few years ago, before these short waists and enormous tetes of flowers and ringlets were introduced from Paris.—There is, perhaps, no one line in the whole of the female form, in which there lies so much gracefulness as in the outline of the back. Now, that was seen as it ought to be a few years ago; but now, every woman in Britain looks as if her clothes were hung about her neck by a peg. And then the truly Spartan exposure of the leg, which seems now to be in fashion, is, in my judgment, the most unwise thing in the whole world; for any person can tell well enough from the shape of the foot and ancle, whether the limb be or be not handsome; and what more would the ladies have? Moreover, the fashion has not been allowed to obtain its ascendency without evident detriment to the interests of the majority, for I have never yet been in any place where there were not more limbs that would gain by being concealed, than by being exposed. But, in truth, even those who have the shape of

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a Diana, may be assured that they are not, in the main, gainers by attracting too much attention to some of their beauties.—I wonder that they do not recollect and profit by the exquisite description of the Bride, in Sir John Suckling’s poem of the Wedding;— Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice stole in and out, As if they fear’d the light.

As for those, who, with bad shapes, make an useless display of their legs, I must own, I have no excuse for their folly. I know well enough, that it is a very difficult thing to form any proper opinion about one’s own face; because it is universally admitted that faces, which have no regularity of feature, may often be far more charming than those which have, and, of course, those who are sensible enough to perceive, that their heads could not stand the test of sculpture, may be very easily pardoned for believing, that their expressiveness might still render them admirable studies for a painter. But as to limbs,—I really am quite at a loss to conceive how any person should labour under the least difficulty in ascertaining, in the most exact way, whether handsomeness may, or may not, be predicated concerning any given pair of legs or arms in existence. Their beauty is entirely that of Form, and by looking over a few books of prints, or a few plaster-of-Paris casts, the dullest eye in the world may learn, in the course of a single forenoon, to be almost as good a critic in calves and ancles as Canova himself. Yet nothing can be more evident, than that the great majority of young ladies are most entirely devoid of any ideas concerning the beauty of Form, either in themselves or in others: they never take the trouble to examine any such matters minutely, but satisfy themselves with judging by the general air and result. In regard to other people, this may do very well; but it is a very bad plan with respect to themselves. Even you, my dear lady Johnes, are a perfect tyro in this branch of knowledge. I remember, only the last time I saw you, you were praising with all your might the legs of Colonel B——, those flimsy worthless things, that look as if they were bandaged with linen rollers from the heel to the knee. I beg you would look at the Apollo Belvidere, the Fighting Gladiator, and the Farnese Hercules. There are only three handsome kinds of legs in the world, and in these, you have a specimen of each of the three—I speak of gentlemen. As for your own sex, the Venus is the only true model of female form in existence, and yet such

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is your culpable ignorance of yourselves, that I devoutly believe she would be pronounced a very clumsy person, were she to come into the Aberystwith ball-room. You may say what you will, but I still assert, and I will prove it if you please, by pen and pencil, that, with one pair of exceptions, the best legs in Cardigan are Mrs P——’s. As for Miss J—— D——’s, I think they are frightful. * * * * * † It is a great mistake under which the Scotch people lie, in supposing themselves to be excellent dancers; and yet one hears the mistake reechoed by the most sensible, sedate, and dance-abhorring Presbyterians one meets with. If the test of good dancing were activity, there is indeed no question, the northern beaux and belles might justly claim the preeminence over their brethren and sisters of the south. In an Edinburgh ball-room, there appears to be the same pride of bustle, the same glorying in muscular agitation and alertness—the same “sudor immanis,” to use the poet’s phrase, which used of old to distinguish the sports of the Circus or the Campus Martius. But this is all;—the want of grace is as conspicuous in their performances, as the abundance of vigour. We desiderate the conscious towerlike poise—the easy, slow, unfatiguing glide of the fair pupils of D’Estainville. To say the truth, the ladies in Scotland dance in common pretty much like our country lasses at a harvest-home. They kick and pant as if the devil were in them; and when they are young and pretty, it is undoubtedly no disagreeable thing to be a spectator of their athletic display; but I think they are very ignorant of dancing as a science. Comparatively few of them manage their feet well, and of these few what a very insignificant portion know any thing about that equally important part of the art—the management of the arms. And then how absurdly they thrust out their shoulder blades! How they neglect the undulation of the back! One may compare them to fine masses of silver, the little awkward workmanship bestowed _____________________________________________ † A great part of this letter is omitted in the Second Edition, in consequence of the displeasure its publication gave to certain individuals in Cardiganshire. I hope I need not say how much I was grieved, when I learned in what way some of the passages had been regarded by several ladies, who have not a more sincere admirer than myself. As for the gentleman, who chose to take what I said of him in so much dudgeon, he will observe, that I have allowed what I said to remain exactly in statu quo, which I certainly should not have done had he expressed his displeasure in a more rational manner.

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on which rather takes from than adds to the natural beauty of the materials. As for the gentlemen, they seldom display even vigour and animation, unless they be half-cut—and they never display any thing else. It is fair, however, to mention, that in the true indigenous dances of the country, above all in the reel (the few times I have seen it), these defects seem in a great measure to vanish, so that ambition and affectation are after all at the bottom of their bad dancing in the present day, as well as of their bad writing. The quadrille, notwithstanding, begins to take with the soil, and the girls can already go through most of its manœuvres without having recourse to their fans. But their beaux continue certainly to perform these new-fangled evolutions, in a way that would move the utmost spleen of a Parisian butcher. What big, lazy, clumsy fellows one sees lumbering cautiously, on toes that should not be called light and fantastic, but rather heavy and syllogistic. It seems that there goes a vast deal of ratiocination to decide upon the moves of their game. The automaton does not play chess with such an air of lugubrious gravity. Of a surety, Terpsichore was never before worshipped by such a solemn set of devotees. One of our own gloomy Welsh Jumpers, could he be suddenly transported among some sets that I have seen, would undoubtedly imagine himself to be in a saltatory prayer-meeting; and yet these good people, put them fairly into a reel, can frisk it about with all possible demonstrations of hilarity. They prefer the quadrille, I imagine, upon something of the same principle which leads a maid-servant to spend her two shillings on a tragedy rather than on a comedy. I could not help in my own mind likening these dolorous pas seuls performed in rotation by each of the quadrillers, and then succeeded by the more clamorous display of sadness in their chaine Angloise, &c. to the account which Miss Edgeworth gives us of the Irish lyke wake, wherein each of the cousins chants a stave of lamentation, solo, and then the whole generation of them join in the screaming treble of the choral ulululuh! hu! “Why did you leave the potatoes?” “What ailed thee, Pat, with the butter-milk!” &c. &c. &c. The waltz has been even more unfortunate than the quadrille; it is still entirely an exotic in the North. Nor, in truth, am I much inclined to find fault with the prejudices which have checked the progress of this fascinating dance among the disciples of John Knox and Andrew Melville. I really am of opinion, that it might have been as well, had we of the South been equally shy of the importation. As for myself, I assure you, that ever since I spent a week at Lady L——’s, and saw those great fat girls of her’s waltzing every night with

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that odious Dr B——, I cannot endure the very name of the thing. By the way, I met the other day with a very nice poem, entitled, “Waltz— an Apostrophic Hymn, by Francis Hornem, Esq.;” and as I think you have never seen it, I shall transcribe a few lines for your amusement. Borne on the breath of Hyperborean gales, From Hamburgh’s port (while Hamburgh yet had Mails) Ere yet unlucky Fame—compelled to creep To snowy Gottenburgh—was chilled to sleep; Or, starting from her slumbers, deigned arise, Heligoland! to stock thy mart with lies; While unburnt Moscow yet had news to send, Nor owed her fiery exit to a friend, She came—Waltz came—and with her certain sets Of true despatches, and as true Gazettes; Then flamed of Austerlitz the blest despatch, Which Moniteur nor Morning Post can match; And—almost crushed beneath the glorious news, Ten plays—and forty tales of Kotzebue’s; One envoy’s letters, six composers’ airs, And loads from Frankfort and from Leipsig fairs; Meiner’s four volumes upon womankind, Like Lapland witches to ensure a wind; Brunck’s heaviest tome for ballast, and, to back it, Of Heynê, such as should not sink the packet. Fraught with this cargo—and her fairest freight, Delightful Waltz, on tiptoe for a mate, The welcome vessel reached the genial strand, And round her flocked the daughters of the land. *

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Not lovelorn Quixote—when his Sancho thought The knight’s fandango friskier than it ought; Not soft Herodias, when, with winning tread, Her nimble feet danced off another’s head; Not Cleopatra on her galley’s deck, Displayed so much of leg, or more of neck, Than thou, ambrosial Waltz, when first the moon Beheld thee twirling to a Saxon tune! To you—ye husbands of ten years! whose brows Ache with the annual tributes of a spouse; To you, of nine years less—who only bear The budding sprouts of those that you shall wear, With added ornaments around them rolled, Of native brass, or law-awarded gold;

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To you—ye matrons, ever on the watch To mar a son’s, or make a daughter’s match; To you—ye children of—whom chance accords, Always the ladies’ and sometimes their lords’; To you—ye single gentlemen! who seek Torments for life, or pleasures for a week; As Love or Hymen your endeavours guide, To gain your own, or snatch another’s bride; To one and all the lovely stranger came, And every ball-room echoes with her name. Endearing Waltz—to thy more melting tune Bow Irish jig—and ancient rigadoon; Scotch reels avaunt!—and country dance forego Your future claims to each fantastic toe; Waltz—Waltz—alone both arms and legs demands, Liberal of feet—and lavish of her hands; Hands which may freely range in public sight, Where ne’er before—but—pray ‘put out the light.’ Methinks the glare of yonder chandelier Shines much too far—or I am much too near; And true, though strange—Waltz whispers this remark, ‘My slippery steps are safest in the dark.’ But here the Muse with due decorum halts, And lends her longest petticoat to ‘Waltz.’ Observant travellers! of every time, Ye quartos! published upon every clime; O say, shall dull Romaika’s heavy round, Fandango’s wriggle, or Bolero’s bound; Can Egypt’s Almas—tantalizing groupe— Columbia’s caperers to the warlike whoop— Can aught, from cold Kamschatka to Cape Horn, With Waltz compare, or after Waltz be borne? Ah no! from Morier’s pages up to Galt’s, Each tourist pens a paragraph for ‘Waltz.’ Shades of those belles, whose reign began of yore With George the Third’s—and ended long before; Though in your daughters’ daughters yet you thrive, Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive! Back to the ball-room speed your spectred host, Fools’ paradise is dull to that you lost; No treacherous powder bids Conjecture quake, No stiff-starched stays make meddling fingers ache; (Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage, women in their shape;) No damsel faints when rather closely pressed, But more caressing seems when most caressed;

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Superfluous hartshorn and reviving salts, Both banished by the sovereign cordial ‘Waltz.’ *

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Though gentle Genlis, in her strife with Staël, Would e’en proscribe thee from a Paris ball; Thee Fashion hails—from Countesses to Queens, And maids and valets waltz behind the scenes; Wide and more wide thy witching circle spreads, And turns—if nothing else—at least our heads; With thee e’en clumsy cits attempt to bounce, And cockneys practise what they can’t pronounce. Gods! how the glorious theme my strain exalts, And rhyme finds partner rhyme in praise of ‘Waltz.’

And now, my dear aunt, I have surely written to you, at the least, with most dutiful fulness. P. M.

LETTER XX TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

DEAR WILLIAMS, THE life I have led here has been such a strange mixture of all sorts of occupations, that were I to send you a literal diary of my transactions, I believe you would not fail to discover abundant room for doubting the authenticity of the M.S. I shall therefore reserve the full and entire history of this part of my existence, till I may have opportunity of communicating it to you viva voce over a bottle of Binn D, and proceed in the meantime, as I have been doing, to give you little glimpses and fragments of it, exactly in the order that pleases to suggest itself. In Smollett’s time, according to the inimitable and unquestionable authority of our cousin, Matthew Bramble, no stranger could sleep more than a single night in Edinburgh, with the preservation of any thing like an effectual incognito. In those days, as I have already told you, the people all inhabited in the Old Town of Edinburgh—packed together, family above family, for aught I know clan above clan, in little more than one street, the houses of which may, upon an average, be some dozen stories in height. The aerial elevation, at which an immense proportion of these people had fixed their abodes, rendered it a matter of no trifling moment to ascend to them; and a person in the least degree affected with asthma, might as soon have thought of mounting the Jungfrau, as of paying regular devoirs to any of the fair cynosures of these ὑπερτατα δωματα. The difficulty of access, which thus prevented many from undertaking any ascents of the kind, was sufficient to prevent all those who did undertake them, from entering rashly on their pilgrimages. No man thought of mounting one of those gigantic staircases, without previously ascertaining that the object of his intended visit was at home—unless it might be some Hannibal fresh from the Highlands, and accustomed, from his youth upwards, to dance all his minuets on Argyle’s bowling-green. To seek out a stranger among a hundred or two such staircases, was of course an undertaking beyond the patience even of a person who had enjoyed such an education as this; and so it became a matter of absolute necessity, that Edinburgh should possess some body

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of citizens set apart, and destined ab ovo, for climbing staircases, and carrying messages. From this necessity, sprung the high lineage of “the Cadies of Auld Reekie.” When I use the word lineage, I do not mean to say that their trade ran in their blood, or that the cadies, as the Lake poet sings, To sire from grandsire, and from sire to son, Throughout their generations, did pursue With purpose, and hereditary love, Most stedfast and unwavering, the same course Of labour, not unpleasant, nor unpaid.

The cadies bore more resemblance in this respect to the Janissaries and Mamelukes of Modern, than to the hereditary hammermen, cooks, physicians, and priests of Ancient Egypt. The breed of them was not kept up in the usual way, By ordinance of matrimonial love;

but by continual levies of fresh recruits from the same rugged wilds, wherein alone, the Genus Iapeti was supposed to retain sufficient vigour for the production of individuals, adapted for so aspiring a course of life. Every year brought from the fastnesses of Lochaber and Braemar, a new supply of scions to be engrafted upon the stock rooted immoveably in the heart of Auld Reekie—so that season after season, the tree of the cadies, like that of Virgil, might be said, Mirari novas frondes et non sua poma.

However produced and sustained—whatever might be the beauties or the blemishes of their pedigree—this race continued for many generations, to perform with the same zeal and success the same large variety of good offices to the citizens of Edinburgh. The cadie preserved, amidst all his functions, not a little of the air and aspect natural to him in his own paternal wildernesses: A savage wildness round him hung, As of a dweller out of doors; In his whole figure and his mien A savage character was seen, Of mountains and of dreary moors.

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He climbed staircases with the same light and elastic spring which had been wont to carry him unfatigued to the brow of Cairngorm or BenNevis; and he executed the commands of his employer pro tempore, whatever they might be, in the same spirit of unquestioning submission and thorough-going zeal, with which he had been taught from his infancy to obey the orders of Maccallamore, Glengary, Gordon, Grant, or whosoever the chieftain of his clan might be. In order to qualify him for the exercise of this laborious profession, it was necessary that the apprentice-cadie should make himself minutely familiar with every staircase, every house, every family, and every individual in the city, and to one who had laid in this way a sound and accurate foundation of information, it could be no difficult matter to keep on a level with the slight flood of mutation, which the city and its population was at that period accustomed to. The moment a stranger arrived in Edinburgh, his face was sure to attract the observation of some of this indefatigable tribe, and they knew no rest till they had ascertained his name, residence, and condition—considering it, indeed, as a sort of insult upon their body, that any man should presume to live within the bounds of their jurisdiction, and yet remain unpenetrated by the perspicacity of their unwearied espionage. But why should I say any more of this race?—They are now gathered to their fathers; and their deeds, are they not written in the Book of the Expedition of Humphry Clinker? Although, however, the original and regular fraternity no longer exists, and although, indeed, the change which has taken place, both in the residence and in the manners of the inhabitants, has removed almost all shadow of pretence for the existence of any such fraternity— Edinburgh is still possessed of a species of men who retain the name, and, in so far as the times permit, the functions of the cadies. At the corner of every street is usually to be seen a knot of these fellows lounging on a wooden bench in expectation of employment. They are very busy in the evenings during the gay season of the year; for they are exclusively the bearers of the chairs which convey the beaux and belles from one rout and ball to another; but, even at that season, their mornings, for the most part, are passed in a state of complete inaction. A pack of sorely blackened cards, or an old rotten backgammon board, furnishes a small proportion with something like occupation; but the greater part are contented with an indefatigable diligence in the use of tobacco, which they seem to consume indifferently in all its shapes,— smoking, chewing, and snuffing, with apparently the same intensity of satisfaction. Whenever I pass one of these groupes, my ears are saluted

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with accents, which the persons I usually walk with talk of as coarse and disgusting, but which are interesting at least, if not delightful, to me, because they remind me most strongly of those of our own native dialect. At first, indeed, the only resemblance I was sensible to, lay in the general music and rythm of their speech; but, by dint of listening attentively on all occasions, I soon began to pick up a few of their words, and am now able, I flatter myself, to understand a great part of their discourse. With a few varieties in the inflections, and some more striking variations in the vowel sounds, the Gaelic is evidently the same language with our own. I do not mean merely, that it is sprung remotely from the same Celtic stem; but that it is entirely of the same structure in all essential respects, and bears, so far as I can judge, a much nearer resemblance to our tongue, than is any where else to be traced between the languages of peoples that have lived so long asunder. I shall pay particular attention to this subject during my stay in Scotland, and doubt not I shall be able to give you some very interesting details when we meet. In the mean time, I have already begun to read a little of the Gaelic Ossian, not you may believe out of any reverence for its authenticity, but with a view to see what the written Gaelic is. Nothing can be more evident than its total inferiority to the Welsh. It is vastly inferior in perspicuity, and immeasurably inferior in melody; in short, it bears no marks of having undergone, as our language has done, the correcting, condensing, and polishing labour of a set of great poets and historians. These defects are still more apparent in a collection of Gaelic songs which I have seen, and which I believe to be really antique. The wild and empassioned tone of sentiment, however, and the cold melancholy imagery of these compositions, render them well worthy of being translated; and, indeed, Walter Scott has already done this service for some of the best of them. But I have seen nothing that should entitle them to share in any thing like the high and devout admiration which we justly give, and which all Europe would give, had they the opportunity, to the sublime and pathetic masterpieces of our own great bards. I trust, David, you are not neglecting your truly grand and important undertaking.* Go on, and prosper; and I doubt not, you will confer the highest honour both on your country and yourself. _____________________________________________ * This refers to a great work on Welsh Poetry and History, in which Mr Williams has been engaged for some years, and which, when it is published, will, I doubt not, create a greater sensation in Wales, than any thing that has occurred since the death of Llewellyn.

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The cadies, from whom I have made this digression, have furnished me with another, and almost as interesting field of study, in quite a different way. Their physiognomies are to me an inexhaustible fund of observation and entertainment. They are for the most part, as I have said, Highlanders by birth, but the experience of their Lowland lives has had the merit of tempering, in a very wonderful manner, the mere mountaineer parts of their aspect. A kind of wild stare, which the eyes retain from the keen and bracing atmosphere of their native glens, is softened with an infusion of quiet urban shrewdness, often productive of a most diverting inconsistency in the general effect of their countenances. I should certainly have supposed them, prima facie, to be the most unprincipled set of men in the world; but I am told their character for honesty, fidelity, and discretion, is such as to justify the most implicit reliance in them. This, however, I by no means take as a complete proof of my being in the wrong. Honesty, fidelity, and discretion, are necessary to their employment, and success; and therefore I doubt not they are honest, faithful, and discreet, in all their dealings with their employers. But I think it is not possible for fellows, with such faces as these, to have any idea of moral obligation, beyond what is inspired in this way by the immediate feeling of self-interest; and I have no doubt, that, with proper management, one might find on occasion an assassin, almost as easily as a pimp, among such a crew of grinning, smiling, cringing savages, as are at this moment assembled beneath my window. I am making a collection of drawings of all the most noted of these cadies, and I assure you, my sketch-book does not contain a richer section than this will afford. You will be quite thunderstruck to find what uniformity prevails in the developement of some of the leading organs of these topping cadies. They are almost all remarkable for projection of their eye-brows—the consequence of the luxuriant manner in which their organs of observation have expanded themselves. At the top of their heads, the symbols of ambition, and love of praise, are singularly prominent. A kind of dogged pertinacity of character may be inferred from the knotty structure of the region behind their ears; and the choleric temperament betrayed in their gestures, when among themselves, may probably be accounted for by the extraordinary developement of the organ of self-love, just above the nape of the neck—which circumstance again is, no doubt, somewhat connected with the continual friction of burthens upon that delicate region. It is very ungrateful of me, however, to be saying anything disrespectful about a class of men, from whom I have derived so much

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advantage since my arrival in this place. Whenever a stranger does arrive, it is the custom that he enters into a kind of tacit compact with some of the body, who is to perform all little offices he may require during the continuance of his visit. I, myself, was particularly fortunate in falling into the hands of one whom I should take to be the cleverest cadie that at present treads the streets of Auld Reekie. His name is Donald M‘Nab, and, if one may take his word for it, he has gentle blood in his veins, being no less than “a bairn o’ our chief himsell.” Nor, indeed, do I see any reason to call this account of his pedigree in question, for Donald is broad of back, and stout of limb, and has, I think, not a little of the barbarian kind of pride about the top of his forehead; and I hear, the Phylarchus with whom he claims kindred, led, in more respects than one, a very patriarchal sort of life. *

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LETTER XXI TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

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I SPENT an afternoon very pleasantly the other day at Dr Brewster’s, the same who is so celebrated for his discoveries concerning light—his many inventions of optical instruments—and his masterly conduct of that best of all works of the kind, the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. Dr Brewster is still a young man, although one would scarcely suppose this to be the case, who, never having seen himself, should form his guess from considering what he has done. He cannot, I should think, be above forty, if so much. Like most of the scientific men in Edinburgh, the doctor is quite a man of the world in his manners; his countenance is a very mild and agreeable one, and in his eyes, in particular, there is a wonderful union of penetration and tenderness of expression. From his conversation, one would scarcely suspect that he had gone so deep into the hidden parts of science, for he displays a vast deal of information concerning the lighter kinds of literature, although, indeed, he does all this with a hesitative sort of manner, which probably belongs to him as a man of abstruse science. It is, no doubt, mainly owing to this happy combination of accomplishments, that he has been able to render his great work so much more truly of an Encyclopædic character, than any other which has been published under the same name in our island. In a work of that kind, which cannot be finished without the co-operation of a vast variety of contributors continued throughout many successive years, it is quite obvious how much must depend on the superintending and arranging skill and judgment of the editor. Now, it is a very rare thing indeed, to meet with a person of fine talents, who is alike a man of science, and a man of literature; and unless under the care of such a person, I do not see how an Encyclopædia can be conducted in such a way as to give equal satisfaction to both the great classes into which readers of Encyclopædias must necessarily be divided. All the other Encyclopædias published in this country have been edited either by persons possessed of skill in one department only, and negligent of the

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rest, or, what is still worse, by persons alike destitute of skill in all departments whatever—in other words, members of the great corporation of charlatans.* There were several very pleasant men of the party, and the conversation, both during dinner, and afterwards, was extremely lively and agreeable, as well as instructive; but from the time we sat down, there was one face which attracted my attention in a way that I was quite at a loss to account for. I experienced, in looking at it, a strange and somewhat uncomfortable sort of feeling, of which you must often have been sensible,—as if I had seen the countenance before, where, when, or how, it was impossible for me to recollect. At last, the gentleman who thus occupied my attention, happened in talking to Dr Brewster, to utter the word Freyberg, and the whole affair flashed across me as swift as lightning. That single sound had opened a key to the whole mystery, and a moment after, I could not help wondering how I should have been at a loss. Some years ago (I shall not say how many,) when I was stronger, and more active than I now am, and capable of making longer excursions in ruder vehicles than I now venture upon in my shandrydan, I remember to have travelled in the common post-waggon from Dresden to Leipsig. I had gone on horseback quite through the Hartz, and passed from thence in the same manner all up the delightful banks of the Elbe, from Magdeburg to the Saxon Switzerland. I then sold my horse, (much the worse for the wear I had given him,) and was making the best of my way towards the west, in that most coarse, and most jumbling of all machines, The neat post-waggon trotting in.

We had got as far as within a single stage of Leipsig, when a little adventure befel us, which, till this face recalled it, I had, for years, as utterly forgotten as if it never had occurred. We were just about to enter a village, (I cannot recollect its name,) when our vehicle was surrounded by a party of mounted gens-d’armes, and a fierce looking fellow, thrusting his mustachio and his pipe into the window, commanded the whole party to come out and shew ourselves. A terrible murder, he said, had been committed somewhere by a Jew—a watchman, I think, of Kœnigsberg, and he had every occasion to believe, that the murderer had left Dresden that morning in one of the post-waggons. After we had _____________________________________________ * I should have excepted Dr Millar, the modest and enlightened Editor of that excellent work, the Encyclopædia Edinensis.

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all complied with his order, and dislodged ourselves from the pillar of tobacco-smoke in which we sat enveloped, there were two of the company on whom our keeper seemed to look with eyes of peculiar suspicion. I myself was one, and the other was a thin, dark complexioned, and melancholy looking young man, whom, till this moment, I had not remarked; for of the six benches swung across the waggon, I had sate upon the one nearest the front, and he on that nearest the rear. I had allowed my beard to grow upon my upper lip, and I believe looked as swarthy as any Jew ever did; but my scanty allowance of nose would have alone satisfied a more skilful physiognomist, that I could not be the guilty man. The other had somewhat the same cast in that feature, and he wore no mustachio, but his hair seemed to be of the genuine Israelitish jet—and the gens-d’armes were positive that one or other of us must be the murderer. I spoke German with fluency, and with a pretty just accent, and made a statement for myself, which seemed to remove something of the suspicion from me. The other delivered himself with more hesitation, and with an accent, which, whatever it might be, was evidently not Saxon, and therefore the Hussar seemed to take it for granted that it was Jewish, imperfectly concealed. At last, after a good deal of discussion, we were both taken to the Amt-house, where the magistrate of the village sat in readiness to decide on the merits of our case. The circumstances which had determined the chief suspicion of the officers, appeared to weigh in the same manner on the mind of the magistrate, and, at the end of the examination which ensued of our persons and our papers, it was announced, that I might proceed on my journey, but that the other must be contented to remain where he was, till his passport should be sent back to Dresden for the examination of the police. Upon this, my fellow-traveller lost temper, and began to complain most bitterly of the inconvenience to which such a delay would expose him. He was on his way, he said, to Freyberg, where he had already studied one year under the celebrated Werner, as his passport testified, and he had particular reasons for being anxious to reach his university before a certain day in the following week. The magistrate, who was a very mild-looking person, seemed to consider with himself for a moment, and then said, “A thought strikes me—the son of our clergyman has studied at Freyberg, and if you have really been there, sir, it is probable he may recognize you.” My companion had no objections to an experiment, which at least could not place him in a worse situation than that in which he was—and in a few minutes the son of the clergyman made his appearance. I remember as distinctly

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as if the thing had occurred only yesterday, the expression of delight which illuminated the countenance of the accused, when this person declared that he recollected him perfectly at Freyberg, and that he had heard Professor Werner speak of him as a young Scotchman who gave infinite promise of being distinguished in the study of mineralogy. This removed every difficulty, and the magistrate, with many apologies, gave us permission to take our seats in the post-waggon. The distance of our positions in the vehicle rendered it impossible for me to exchange more than a very few words with my fellow-sufferer, after we began to move, although, having discovered him to be my countryman, I was sufficiently inclined to enter into conversation. It was late at night before we arrived at Leipsig; and, as I remained there for a day or two, while he passed on without stopping to Freyberg, we had no further opportunity of communication. In short, I had never seen the face from that time till now; but I felt assured, that, in spite of the years which had intervened, I could not be mistaken, and here was the very gentleman at the table of Dr Brewster. In the course of a few minutes, I heard him addressed by the name of Jameson, and immediately conjectured that he might probably be the well-known Professor of Natural History, whose System of Mineralogy you have often seen on my table. This turned out to be the case; and, after a second bottle had somewhat diminished our ceremony, I had a pleasure in recalling to him the story of the murderous Jew, and so of commencing (for it could scarcely be called renewing) an acquaintance with one from whose works I had received so much information and advantage. After the Doctor’s company dispersed themselves, I walked along Prince’s-Street with the Professor, and he invited me to call on him next day, and see his museum—an invitation which you, who know my propensities, will not suspect me of declining. He also offered to shew me the collection of mineralogy belonging to the University, of which I had heard a great deal. I went yesterday, and it is, undoubtedly, a very superb collection. It is of great value, and admirably arranged; and the external characters of minerals, particularly those derived from colours, are finely illustrated by an extensive series of the most valuable specimens arranged according to the system made use of by Werner. Professor Jameson is chiefly known to the world as a mineralogist, and in this character he certainly stands entirely without a rival in his own country; and when we consider that his system of mineralogy has been adopted by a celebrated Frenchman, as the text-book to his own lectures in Paris, we may fairly conclude, from the preference shown by

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so competent a judge, that the knowledge and ability displayed in that work, render it at least equal to the most approved publications of the continental authors. But it is not his intimate acquaintance with mineralogy alone, which renders Mr Jameson so capable of doing honour to the chair which he holds. He is also greatly versed in zoology, and, what is of great importance in these times, seems much inclined to indulge in those more general and philosophical views of that science, which the study of nomenclature and classification has well-nigh banished from the remembrance of most of his brethren in the south. A residence of many years in different parts of the continent, and, in particular, a perfect knowledge of the German tongue, which he acquired during his stay at Freyberg, have opened to him many sources of information, from which he continues to derive infinite advantage; and, at a time when, from the extent and multiplicity of his labours in mineralogy, one might naturally suppose his attention to be entirely engrossed by that study, his pupils, I am assured, find him on every occasion both able and willing to instruct them regarding all the recent and most important discoveries and improvements in the other branches of natural science. The professor delivers his lectures both during the winter and summer season, and he divides his course into five great branches: Meteorology—Hydrography—Mineralogy—a Sketch of the Philosophy of Botany, sufficient to enable his pupils to understand the relations which subsist between that science and a complete history of the inorganic parts of the globe—and, lastly, Zoology. The first of these divisions is rendered particularly interesting, by the number and variety of curious facts which are collected, and the more so, as there are scarcely any good books written professedly on the subject. In truth, I should think the whole science of Natural History, as a popular branch of education, is likely to assume a new aspect under the auspices of this ingenious and indefatigable man. Now, that all the known facts of Mineralogy are to him “familiar as household words,” he will have it in his power to devote more of his attention to the various branches of Zoology, which hitherto, as he says very candidly, he has not had either leisure or opportunity to discuss and illustrate, as his inclinations would lead him to do. The same acuteness which has enabled him so completely to overcome all the difficulties of his own favourite department, will ere long, I doubt not, elevate him to the first rank among the zoologists of Britain; and he will soon have the honourable satisfaction of instituting a school of Natural History in the northern metropolis, which may long

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remain unrivalled in any other country. This desirable object, I am happy to learn, he is now likely to accomplish more easily and speedily than he could before have expected, by means of a most valuable and interesting acquisition, which is about to be obtained by the University. The fine cabinet of M. Dufresne of the Jardin des Plantes, so well known and deservedly admired by all the Parisian sçavants, has just been purchased for the public Museum. This, with certain additions to be procured at the approaching sale of Mr Bullock’s extensive collections, when combined with the great treasures which the University already possesses, will certainly form by far the most magnificent Museum of Natural History in Britain. Such is the general view I have been able to form of the actual state of the science, under this celebrated professor. From various conversations, however, with himself, Dr Brewster, and some of the young gentlemen who attend the professor’s lectures, I am sorry to hear, that, on the whole, the science of Natural History neither has been, nor is, cultivated throughout Scotland, with any degree of zeal corresponding to the opportunity which the country affords. Its natural advantages are far superior, in most respects, to those of the sister kingdom; and the situation of Edinburgh, in particular, may be justly regarded as more favourable than any in the island for the pursuit of this delightful study. Indeed, it would not be easy to determine, why a higher state of advancement has not been attained; and the difficulty is much increased when we consider, that, in addition to the great facility which this most picturesque district affords for the practical pursuit of the science, the Professorship of Natural History has already been held for several years by the assiduous and intelligent gentleman, of whom I have spoken so much. I am inclined to attribute this to the joint operation of a great number of causes; but I observe, that Professor Jameson himself considers the too engrossing influence of the law as being the most immediate and effectual of all the dampers under which his favourite study has so long languished. Most of the young men of this city are trained up either as barristers or attornies: and it very unfortunately happens, that all more liberal pursuits, (both classical and scientific,) so far from being much respected or held in estimation by these classes of men, are, for the most part, regarded as quite inconsistent with a diligent discharge of their professional duties and functions. Professor Jameson informs me, that three-fourths of the students who attend his lectures, are strangers and students of medicine, chiefly English. Those of the last mentioned

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faculty, who are indigenous to Scotland, have, till very lately at least, either procured appointments in regiments stationed in foreign quarters, or retired to distant corners of the country, where the entire absence of books, and the laborious and unsettled life enjoyed, or rather endured, by rural practitioners, have been more than sufficient to extinguish every spark of science, which might have been kindled in their bosoms during their attendance at the University. And thus, though very great and increasing benefits are derived by the students of this science in Edinburgh, from the zeal and talents of Professor Jameson, and other causes, it would seem that the science must, for a considerable time, look for its best fruits in the south. I rejoice to find that the English students who resort to this place, are duly impressed with a sense of the advantages which they enjoy. I dined with Professor Jameson yesterday, with a small party of his most distinguished pupils. Among these there was one whom the Professor particularly introduced me to—a Mr James Wilson, brother to the poet. This young gentleman follows the profession of a Writer to the Signet, (which, as I have told you, is the name for the highest class of attornies in Edinburgh); but forms, as Mr Jameson assured me, a brilliant exception to the neglect with which matters of science are commonly treated by the members of the profession. He is very young—many years junior to his more celebrated brother, and no casual observer would suspect them to be of the same family. I have already described to you the exterior of the poet; James is a thin, pale, slender, contemplative-looking person, with hair of rather a dark colour, and extremely short-sighted. In his manners also, he is as different as possible from his brother; his voice is low, and his whole demeanour as still as can be imagined. In conversation he attempts no kind of display; but seems to possess a very peculiar vein of dry humour, which renders him extremely diverting. Notwithstanding all these differences, however, I could easily trace a great similarity in the construction of the bones of their two faces; and, indeed, there is nothing more easy to imagine, than that, with much of the same original powers and propensities, some casual enough circumstances may have been sufficient to decide, that the one of the brothers should be a poet, and the other a naturalist. The parts of the science of which Mr James Wilson is fondest, are Ornithology and Entomology—studies so delightful to every true lover of nature, that, I suspect, they are, in some measure, practically familiar to every poet who excels in depicting the manifestations, and in tracing the spirit of beauty in the external universe. Professor

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Jameson, indeed, informed me, that his young friend is, in truth, no less a poet than a naturalist—that he possesses a fine genius for versification, and has already published several little pieces of exquisite beauty, although he has not ventured to give his name along with them. On leaving the professor’s, young Wilson and I adjourned to this house (where, by the way, Mr Oman enjoys very little of my company,) and had a quiet bowl of punch together, and a great deal of conversation respecting subjects connected with the science in which he so greatly excels, and for which I myself, albeit nothing of an adept, have long entertained a special partiality. Among other topics, the brumal retreat of the swallow was handled at considerable length. Mr Wilson I find rather inclined to that theory, which would represent Africa as the principal winter-depot of at least several of the species—the Hirundo, Apus, and Rustica, in particular; and he adduced, in confirmation of this, a passage from Herodotus, which I had never before heard pointed out with a view to this subject—according to which, one kind of swallow (from the description, he seemed to suppose it must be the Swift,) remains in Egypt throughout the whole year—δἰ ετεος εοντες ουκ απολειπουσι. I have never, indeed, met with any man who seemed to possess a greater power of illustrating subjects of natural history, by quotations from writers of all kinds, and in particular from the poets. Milton and Wordsworth, above all, he appears to have completely by heart; and it was wonderfully delightful to me to hear matters, which are commonly discussed in the driest of all possible methods, treated of in so graceful a manner by one who is so much skilled in them. Nothing could be more refreshing than to hear some minute details about birds and insects, interrupted and illuminated by a fragment of grand melancholy music from the Paradise Lost, or the Excursion. I shall have occasion to say a great deal more to you both about Professor Jameson and his young friend. Meantime, believe me ever Most affectionately your’s, P. M.

LETTER XXII TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

DEAR DAVID, I BELIEVE I have already hinted to you, that the students in this University are very fond of Debating Societies, and, indeed, the nature of their favourite studies might prepare one abundantly to find it so. They inhale the very atmosphere of doubt, and it is in the course of nature that they should exhale the very breath of disputation. They are always either actually struggling, vi et armis, to get over some quagmire or another, or, after establishing themselves once more on what they conceive to be a portion of the Terra Firma, falling out among themselves, which of the troop had picked his way along the neatest set of stepping-stones, or made his leap from the firmest knot of rushes. Before they have settled this mighty quarrel, it is possible they may begin to feel the ground giving way beneath their feet, and are all equally reduced once again to hop, stride, and scramble, as they best may for themselves. The first of the institutions, however, which I visited, is supposed to be frequented by persons who have already somewhat allayed their early fervour for disputation, by two or three years’ attendance upon Debating Societies, of an inferior and of a far more ephemeral character. While he attends the prælections of the Professor of Logic, the student aspires to distinguish himself in a club, constituted chiefly or entirely of members of that class. The students of Ethics and of Physics are, in like manner, provided with separate rooms, in which they canvass at night the doctrines they have heard promulgated in the lecture of the morning. It is not till all this apprenticeship of discipline has been regularly gone through, that the juvenile philosopher ventures to draw up a petition, addressed to the president and members of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, which humbly sheweth forth, that he would fain be permitted to give to his polemical and oratorial faculties the last finish of sharpness and elegance under the high auspices of their venerable body.* _____________________________________________ * The names of some of the minor Debating Clubs are amusing enough—these are, among others, the Didactic, the Polemical, the Philomathic, the Dialectic, the Philalethic, the Select, the Select Forensic—and last not least, the Pansophical!

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Without sending in such a petition as this, and being admitted formally a member of the Society, it is not possible to be present at one of their meetings. These sages will scarcely allow a poor passing stranger to catch even one sidelong odour of their wisdom. No—it is necessary to assume the regular garb of the initiated, before these Hierophants will expand the gates of their Adytus, and reveal to you the inspiring glories of their mysteries. Although I could not help feeling some qualmish suspicions, that this arrangement might, in part at least, have been dictated by a due reverence for the old maxim, omne ignotum pro magnifico, yet the way in which I heard the Society spoken of, by persons for whose opinion I could not but entertain a high respect, and the curiosity which I certainly felt, to witness for myself all possible manifestation of the rising genius of Scotland, were enough to counterbalance any little scruples I might have, and I resolved, since less might not avail, to affix the name of Peter Morris, M. D. to the regular formula of supplication. It was attested by Mr ——, who is an honorary member of the Society, and by his nephew, a young man of considerable promise, that the said Peter Morris, M. D., was, in their judgment, possessed of such a measure of learning and ability, as might justify the Society in admitting him into their bosom; and after the usual ceremonies of doubt, delay, examination, and panegyric, the said Peter was ballotted for and admitted as aforesaid. I rather grudged a fee of three guineas, which, I was given to understand, formed an essential preliminary to my taking my seat; but, however, as I had been pretty fortunate at loo the evening before, I did not allow this to form any lasting impediment to my honours. As the poet sings,— I prize not treasure for itself, But what it can procure; Go hang, said I, the paltry pelf Would keep the spirit poor.

So I paid my three guineas, and prepared to make my appearance next Tuesday evening. For the sake of being near the scene of action, I agreed to the proposal of the gentlemen who had recommended me to the society, viz. to having a snug dinner with one or two friends in addition, in a tavern immediately adjoining. The name of the house is the Lord Nelson, and it is kept by one Barclay. We went at half past four, in order that we might have time to drink our bottle comfortably before the meeting; and I assure you, I have very seldom enjoyed either a better dinner or a better

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bottle. There is an ordinary in the house every day at that very hour, which is attended, as I was informed, by a considerable number of students, besides a host of bagmen, and other travellers of all descriptions, and many half-pay officers of the naval, military, and, above all, of the medical establishments. We had a glimpse of them and their dinner, en passant, and I promise you both made a very joyous appearance. As for us, we dined apart in a room of very magnificent proportions, which, of old, it seems, had been the dining-room of a celebrated President of the Court of Session;* a lofty hall, with a rich ceiling in the French style of stucco work, and decorated at one extremity with a huge portrait of the Hero whose name the tavern bears—evidently a genuine production of the sign-post school. The princely size of the room, however, and elevation of the roof, were sufficient to give the whole affair an air of gentility, and even of splendour, such as is not often to be met with in a house of this description. I don’t know whether your comfort is so much affected by accessories of this sort as mine are; but I do at all times enjoy a dinner tenfold, when it is served up in a room of airy and stately dimensions. The fare in itself was very excellent. We had a dish of Mullicatawny, and some cod’s-head and shrimp-sauce—superior corned beef, and a boiled turkey—a haricot—a pigeon-pie and macaroni—all for half-acrown a-head, being only a sixpence more than the charge at the ordinary. But to me the greatest luxury was some very fine draughtporter, the first I have met with since I came to Scotland, for the people of this place in general drink all their malt-liquor bottled—but the landlord of the Nelson is an Englishman, and knows better. After finishing a bottle of Madeira, we had some very fair Port, which we chose to drink mulled, being assured that Mrs Barclay piques herself upon her scientific use of spices in that kind of preparation. The skill of our hostess gave us entire satisfaction, and we kept her at work pretty closely till seven o’clock. Being so very agreeably seated and entertained, I could scarcely think of removing at so very extraordinary an hour, and dropped a modest hint that the Speculative might be advantageously deferred till another opportunity; but my objections were over-ruled by my companions. I insisted, however, that we should, at least come back after the debate, to enjoy an epilogue in the same taste with our prologue,—an idea which appeared to meet the wishes of the company, and was indeed agreed to per acclamationem. _____________________________________________ * Dundas.

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The Speculative Society is the only institution of the kind, whose existence is acknowledged in a formal manner by the University. It forms a part of the system, and, as such, is provided with chambers within the College—advantages which are, no doubt, owing to the high reputation the Society has at particular times enjoyed. At the present time, as it happens, the alterations and improvements which are going on within the University buildings, have dislodged the Society from their old chambers, and the new and more splendid accommodations designed for them, are not quite in readiness for their reception. Their temporary place of meeting is in the hall of the Theological Professor— a low roofed, dark, mean-looking place, surrounded with shelves groaning under Dutch and Puritanical Divinity; and here it was that I had the honour of being introduced to them. Right opposite to the door at which we entered, in a huge elbow-chair, or rather pulpit—from which the Professor of Divinity is, no doubt, accustomed to expound the mysteries of Calvinism,—and, with an air of grave dignity, which any professor might be happy to equal, sate a pale snub-nosed young gentleman, with a hammer in his hand, the President (primâ facie) of the Speculative Society. His eyes half-shut, as if to exclude the distracting dazzle of the tallow candles that blazed close before him; his right hand on his hammer, and his left supporting with two of its fingers the weight of meditation lodged within his forehead; his lips compressed with the firmness of conscious authority, and his whole attitude, as it were, instinct with the very spirit of his station, completed a picture, which, I should suppose, might have produced no trifling effect on the nerves of an entrant more juvenile than myself. Even on me, the “Vultus sedentis tyranni” was not entirely lost, and I confess I was glad when I found that I had fairly seated myself in a dark and remote corner of the room, without attracting any of his attention. Immediately under this imposing figure might be descried the less awful, but no less important face and figure of the secretary, who was employed at this moment in calling over the names of the members, according to their position in the muster-roll of the Society. Around a green table, at the head of which Mr Secretary was placed, a few of the more grave and dignified-looking members were accommodated with cane-backed chairs; while, on either side, the humilior caterva occupied some rows of narrow wooden benches, which rise one above another out of the area of the apartment. All together there was an appearance of expectation and preparation, both in their arrangement and in their

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countenances, which could not fail to excite a considerable degree of attention and respect. In general, they seemed to be very young men, the majority of them, I dare say, not above twenty; but here and there might be seen a few persons of somewhat maturer age in the midst of them. These, as Mr —— informed me, are, for the most part, incipient advocates—willing, I presume, to exercise their lungs here, because they have less opportunity than they could wish of exercising them elsewhere—and not, peradventure, without hope, that the fame acquired and sustained by them among their brethren of the Speculative, may tend to procure them readier access to a more lucrative species of reputation elsewhere. I thought I could see in some of the faces of these gentlemen, an air of peculiar suavity and graciousness, as if they were willing to have something of the credit of condescension to keep them in countenance with themselves and their neighbours. One gentleman, much older than any of these, occupied a place close by the table, with a mild and paternal look of protection. On asking Mr —— who this was, I learned that Mr Waugh (for that is his name) had long been treasurer of the Society, and had, in the course of his life, conferred upon its members, both in their individual and corporate capacity, so many important favours, that it is no wonder he should have formed a warm attachment to all their interests, and should take a sincere pleasure in coming regularly to be a witness of their exertions. It is easy to imagine the impression, which long custom, and the consciousness of having done good, may have been sufficient to make upon a person of benevolent dispositions, such, as I am informed, are those of Mr Waugh. By and by, the catalogue being finished, and some minor ceremonies duly performed, one of the young gentlemen stepped from his place, and ascending to a small tribune on the left hand of the President, began to read aloud from a MS. which he held in his hand. It is the custom, it seems, that the business of the Society is always opened by an essay from one of the members, and the person, whose turn it was to minister in this way to their edification, had already announced, as the title of his discourse—“A few Considerations on the Policy of the Corn-Bill.” I listened for some minutes to what he said; but soon perceived, that the whole of his merits amounted to nothing more than having translated from bad into worse English, a treatise on the same subject in the Edinburgh Review; so I amused myself during the rest of the performance with some hearty sighs, for having so easily been induced to distrust my own inclinations, and quit Mrs Barclay for the Speculative.

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After the essayist had brought his labours to a close, the President opened his eyes, (which as yet he had never found leisure to do,) and began to ask the members, if they had any remarks to offer in regard to the performance they had heard. A pause of several minutes ensued— during which the funereal silence of expectation was only disturbed by a few faint hems from those who intended to be most critical on the occasion, and the rustling of the leaves of the MS., which the author was restoring to his pocket, with a look that spoke as plain as look could speak it—“Jamque opus exegi!” At last, one of the gentlemen I have mentioned stood up in his place and observed, that, “considering it as a very improper thing, that an essay of so much brilliancy should be allowed to pass unnoticed, he could not help rising to express his astonishment at the delay which had just occurred. The essay,” he said, “displayed every quality which could render an essay honourable to its writer, and agreeable to the Society. Its matter was not, indeed, new: but in its arrangement, a very extraordinary degree of skill had certainly been exemplified. The language he could not help considering as still more worthy of admiration—it was simple, concise, and elegant, where matters of detail were treated of; but rose to a pitch of splendour and majesty in the more empassioned parts of the subject, such as he could not say he had often met with in any authors of our age. On the whole, when he reflected on the weight and importance of the subject, and the difficulty of treating such a subject in a way at once popular and scientific, he could not help saying, he looked upon the essay which the honourable gentleman had just delivered, as one of the most wonderful productions to which, in his long—his very long experience, even the Speculative Society of Edinburgh had ever had the honour of giving birth. (Hear! hear!) He begged to sit down with returning his warmest acknowledgments to the honourable essayist, for the instruction and delight which his genius had afforded to himself individually, and had no doubt, the Society would concur in the propriety of expressing similar sentiments, in a way more consistent with their dignity, and more gratifying to the honourable essayist, through the mouth of his honourable friend—their President.”—(Hear! hear!) The applauses with which the termination of this address was greeted, yielded in a few seconds to the sharp, shrill discordant accents of a stout young man, who had started up with an air of much vehemence, from a very aerial and distant part of the room, and descended into the centre of the assembly. “Mr President,” (said he—for the energy of his style would be lost were I to make use of the third person,)—“Mr President,

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I rise under such a mixture of feelings, as at no former period of my life ever agitated, overwhelmed, confounded, oppressed, and disturbed this struggling bosom. Mr President, I rise, I say, under the pressure and influence—under the weight, burden, and impending imperativeness of a host of feelings, in which, notwithstanding all their respect for the honourable and learned member who has just sat down, I am confident, and proudly confident, the great majority, the great and enlightened majority of this great and enlightened Society, will have no difficulty in expressing their entire, and hearty, and cordial concurrence. Mr President, I rise, in a word, to give vent to the conflicting tumults, which at this moment are displaying all their might in rending asunder the repose of a mind, which, whatever in other respects it may be entitled to, will be acknowledged, by all the members who hear me, to have at no period displayed any measure of lukewarmness, coldness, or indifference, to the high, enduring, and important interests of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh. (Hear! hear!) Mr President, I have been for seven years a member—I hope you will bear me witness, a faithful, diligent, and attentive member (more, my humble natural faculties will not permit me to be,) of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh. (Hear, hear.) Mr President, on my legs as I now am, in the presence of this Society, a body, for whom, so long as life stirs within my bosom, or consciousness within my brain, I shall always retain the warmest, and most affectionate, and most filial, and most fraternal admiration, gratitude, and respect,—(Hear! hear!—Bravo!—hear! hear!) Mr President, on my legs as I now feel myself to be,” (by the way, the orator stood only upon one of them, and kept the other extended behind him, as if to assist the effect of his manual gesticulations)—“Mr President, it is absolutely impossible that I should refrain from expressing my feeling of pain, horror, contempt, disgust, and indignation, that the Speculative Society of Edinburgh should ever have been subjected to listen to such an essay as has just been delivered, from any of its members. Mr President, the essay which you have just heard, possesses no one iota of such merit as an essay delivered in the Speculative Society of Edinburgh ought to possess—meagre in matter, cold in conception, impotent in illustration, false in facts, absurd in argument, and barren in basis, it would scarcely have been better than it is, though it had wanted its supernumerary sins and blazing blemishes, of dark diction, farragoed phraseology, lame language, and offensive figurativeness. (Hear! hear!) Mr President, I shall not stop at present to enlarge upon defects, which my mind tells me have excited the same

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sensations in almost every bosom that beats around this table. Mr President, I shall not waste breath in the vain endeavour to express an indignation, which is too big for utterance, too full for words. I shall sit down, with proposing, that the gentleman who delivered this essay receive from the chair a warning to consider better with himself before he again presumes to insult the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, with the crude and hasty suggestions of a mind, that, I am sorry to say, does not seem to be filled with proper ideas concerning the nature, the objects, and the duties of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh.” (Hear! hear! hear!) A small creaking voice arose from the right side of the President, on the conclusion of this harangue, and its proprietor proceeded in a tone of quiet, feeble, and querulous hesitation, (which afforded an irresistibly ludicrous contrast to the manner of his fiery and foaming predecessor,) to “reprobate the idea of the warmth—the unnecessary—the improper— and, he must add, the disagreeable warmth, with which his honourable and learned friend, who had just sat down, had expressed himself. The merits of an essay, such as his honourable and learned friend on the opposite side of the house had this evening delivered, were not to be annihilated by such an effusion of invective as that which his honourable and learned friend in his eye had thought proper to make use of. The essay of his honourable friend had probably been produced at the expense of very great labour and exertion of body and mind. The midnight oil had been wasted in the composition of his honourable friend’s essay. His honourable friend had, to his certain knowledge, absented himself from all parties of pleasure to which he had been invited during the greater part of this spring, in order to collect materials, and facts, and illustrations, for the essay, which they had that night heard from his friend. The honourable gentleman in his eye should have recollected, that it is not to be expected that every member of this Society should possess the same rapidity of genius as he (the gentleman in his eye) possessed. He should have considered, that the question of the corn bill is one attended with infinite difficulty in all its branches; that it is necessary, in order to write an essay on this subject, to undergo the fatigue of examining into a vast variety of documents and treatises, and to study what all the great authors on political economy, from Adam Smith downwards, have written concerning the nature of the sources of national wealth and prosperity, and to decide among the conflicting opinions of a vast variety of the most eminent persons who were at this moment occupied with the study of the whole question, both within and

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without the pale of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh. For himself, he had not come to this house with the view of merely criticising the production of his honourable and learned friend the Essayist, but rather of laying before the Society the results of his own investigations on the same highly interesting topic; and the first of these results, to which he begged to call the attention of the house, was a view of the effects which were produced on Hamburgh, by the occupation of that port and city by Marshal Davoust. It would be found, that no subject could be attended with greater difficulties than that now upon the table of the Society; they ought to enter upon the inquiry with all the calmness which subjects of that imperative interest demand; and he must say, that he expected, after they should have gone over the thirteen heads of argument which he had marked out for the subject of his present address, he expected the Society would come to the conclusion, that the question of the corn-bill was one, which at least required to be studied before it could be expected to be solved.— “The first topic to which I shall call the notice of this house,” said he, “is that of the true nature of corn—corn, Mr President— *

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corn—is not to be regarded,” &c. &c. &c.—But I think it would be rather too much, were I to trouble you with the rest of the silly, confused, unintelligible string of hackneyed facts, and hackneyed conclusions with which this young gentleman troubled his audience for at least an hour and a half.—At the end of that period, one half of the company were fast asleep; the rest yawning and fidgetting, and now and then shuffling with their feet. No hints, however, could produce the least effect on the unwearied indefatigable listlessness of their apathetic orator. Whole pages from the Parliamentary Debates, mixed up with whole pages from Malthus, and these again intermingled with endless trite disquisitions, stolen from Reviews, Magazines, and Weekly Papers—the whole mighty mass of dulness intermingled, with not one ray either of novelty or ingenuity—power or elegance—the dose proved too much even for my iron nerves. My uneasiness was such, that at last I fairly lost temper, and seizing my hat, escaped, as best I might, from the Speculative Society of Edinburgh. My companions on each side of me had been asleep for an hour, but my removal awakened them; and, after rubbing their eyes, and looking round them for a moment, they both had the good sense to follow my example.

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On looking at my watch, I found it was eleven o’clock, and I could not help reproaching myself a good deal for the time I had been wasting. The transition from this scene of solemn and stupid drivelling, to the warm fire-side of Mrs Barclay,—her broiled haddocks, her scolloped oysters, and her foaming tankards, was one of the most refreshing things I have ever experienced. But I see it is now late; so adieu for the present. P. M.

LETTER XXIII TO THE SAME

DEAR DAVID, I AM extremely delighted to observe how much effect the craniological remarks, so liberally, yet so modestly, distributed over the surface of my correspondence, have been able to produce upon you. I once thought you had the organ of stubbornness and combativeness very luxuriantly brought out, but shall from henceforth be inclined to think I had been mistaken in my observation of your head. My best advice to you in the meantime is, to read daily with diligence, but not with blind credulity, in Dr Spurzheim’s book, which, I rejoice to hear, you have purchased. Pass your fingers gently around the region of your head, whenever any new idea is suggested to you by his remarks, and I doubt not you will soon be a firm believer, that “there are more things in heaven and earth than we once dreamt of in our philosophy.” The aversion which you say you at first felt for the science is, however, a natural, and therefore I cannot help regarding it as a very excusable sort of prejudice. The very names which have been bestowed upon the science—Cranioscopy and Craniology—to say nothing of the still coarser Schädellehre (or skull doctrine) of its first doctor and professor, are disagreeable terms, on account of their too direct and distinct reference to the bones. They bring at once before the imagination a naked skull, and in persons who have not been trained to the callousness of the dissecting-room, conceptions of a nature so strictly anatomical, can never fail to excite a certain feeling of horror and disgust. I am glad to find that this feeling had been sanctioned by antiquity; for, in some quotations from Athenæus, which fell casually into my hands the other day, it is expressly mentioned, that the Greeks considered it as “improper to speak of the physical substances of the head.” I perfectly enter into the spirit of tastefulness and wisdom, which suggested such a maxim to that most intellectual people. Among them the doctrine of pure materialism had not merely been whispered in mystery in the contemplative gardens of Epicurus; it had gone abroad over the surface of the people, and contaminated and debased their spirit. The frail fabric of their superstitious

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faith presented but too obvious a mark for the shafts of infidel wit, and it was no wonder that they who were wise enough to feel the necessity of guarding this fabric, should have possessed no very accurate notions concerning the true limits of its bulwarks. In our days, however, there is assuredly no reason for being so very timorous; and I think a philosophical person like you should, bonâ fide, set yourself to get rid of a prejudice which is no longer entitled to be regarded as either a necessary or a convenient one. It is much to be wished notwithstanding, that some name could be found for this admirable science, which would give less offence even to those who are rather disposed than otherwise to give it its fair chance of thriving in the world. I have been thinking a great while on this subject, and have balanced in my own mind the merits of more oscopies and ologies, than I care to trouble you with repeating. Craniology itself, over and above the general and natural prejudice I have already talked of, labours under a secondary, an adventitious, and a merely vulgar prejudice, derived from the ignorant and blundering jokes which have been connected with it by the writers of Reviews and Magazines. It is wonderful how long such trifling things retain their influence; but I would hope this noble science is not to be utterly hanged (like a dog,) because an ill name has been given to it. Sometimes, after the essence of a man’s opinion has been proved to be false and absurd, even to his own satisfaction, it is necessary, before he can be quite persuaded to give it up, that we should allow a few words to be sacrificed. These are the scapegoats which are tossed relentlessly over the rock, after they are supposed to be sufficiently imbued and burthened with the sins of the blundering intellect that dictated them. And such, I doubt not, will, in the issue, be the fortune of poor, derided, despised, but innocent, although certainly somewhat rude and intractable Craniology.—Cranioscopy, (particularly since Dr Roget has undertaken to blacken its reputation in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica,) may be pretty sure of sharing the same melancholy fate. There is no doubt that Jack and Gill must tumble down the hill in company. Anthropology pleased me very much for a few days; but it is certainly too vague. It does not sit close enough, to show the true shape and character of that which it would clothe. Cephalology and Cephaloscopy would sound uncouth, and neither of them would much improve the original bargain with which we are quarrelling. Organology shares in something of the same defect with Anthropology. In short, as yet I have not been able to hit on any thing which exactly pleases on reflection.

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Although a worse cranioscopist, you are a better linguist than I am; so I beg you to try your hand at the coining of a phrase. A comparatively unconcerned person may perhaps be more fortunate than a zealous lover like myself; for it is not in one respect only that women are like words. In the mean time, when it is necessary to mention any person’s brain, it may be best to call it his Organization. It is perhaps impossible altogether to avoid employing expressions of an anatomical cast; but the more these can be avoided, the better chance there will most assuredly be of rendering the science popular. It is one in which the ladies have quite as much interest as we have; and I think every thing should be done, therefore, that may tend to smooth and soften their reception of it. In its essence, it possesses many, very many, points of captivation, which I should think were likely to operate with wonderful success on the imagination of the female sex. The best and the wisest of the sex, with whom I ever conversed in a confidential manner, confessed to me, that the great and constantly besetting plague of women, is their suspicion that they are not permitted to see into the true depths of the character of men. And indeed, when one considers what an over-balancing proportion of the allusions made in any conversation between two men of education, must be entirely unintelligible to almost any woman who might chance to overhear them, it is impossible to wonder that the matter should stand as it does. It is not to be expected, that she should be able to understand the exact relation which the intelligible part of their talk may bear to the unintelligible. She sees a line tossed into a depth, which is to her as black as night, and how should she be able to guess, how far down may be the measure of its descent? Now, what a charming thing must it appear in the eyes of one, who is habitually tormented in this way, to hear of a science that professes to furnish a key, not indeed to the actual truth of the whole characters of men, but to that of many important parts in their characters? I can conceive of nothing more ecstatic than the transport of some bitter unsatisfied Blue-Stocking, on first hearing that there is such a science in the world as Craniology. “Ha!” she will say to herself—“we shall now see the bottom of all this mystery. The men will no longer dare to treat us with this condescending sort of concealment. We shall be able to look at their skulls, and tell them a little plain truth whenever they begin to give themselves airs.” Now, I am for making the science as popular as possible—indeed, I think, if kept to a few, it would be the basest and most cruel kind of monopoly the world ever witnessed—and, therefore, I should like to see

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my craniological brethren adapt their modes of expression and explanation, as much as possible, to the common prejudices of this great division of disciples. It is well known what excellent proselyte-makers they are in all respects; and I am decidedly for having all their zeal on our side. One plain and obvious rule, I think, is, that the head should always be talked of and considered in the light of a Form—an object having certain proportions from which certain inferences may be drawn. Besides, in adhering to this rule, we shall only be keeping to the practice of the only great Craniologists the world ever produced—the Greeks.— I do not mean to their practice in regard to expressing themselves alone; but to their practice, in gathering and perfecting those ideas concerning this science, which they have expressed in a far more lasting way than words can ever rival. As dissection of human bodies was entirely unknown among the ancients, it is obvious, that their sculptors and painters must have derived all their knowledge from the exterior of the human form. The external aspect of the head is all that nature exhibits to us, or intends we should see. It is there that expression appears and speaks a natural language to our minds—a language of which our knowledge is vague and imperfect, and almost unconscious; but of which a few simple precepts and remarks are enough to recall to our recollection the great outlines, and to convince me at least, that a very little perseverance might suffice to render us masters of much of the practical detail. You will smile perhaps when you hear me talk in so satisfied a tone about the craniological skill of the Greeks; and yet there is nothing of which I am more thoroughly convinced, than that they did, practically at least, understand infinitely more of the science than any of the disciples of Gall and Spurzheim are likely to rival even a century hence. There is one circumstance,—a small one, you will say,—which suggested itself to me yesterday, for the first time, when I was sitting after dinner, in a room where several large plaster-of-Paris busts were placed on the extremities of a side-board. What is called Grace, is chiefly to be found in those movements which result from organs on the top of the head. In women, there is more of it than in men, because their animal faculties are smaller. Now, in all paintings of Madonnas, particularly of the Matres Amabiles, the attitude evidently results from the faculties in the region above the forehead. The chin is drawn in, and the upper forepart of the head leans forward. This is not done with a view to represent modesty and humility alone; which, by suspending the action of pride and self-love in the back part of the head, take away what kept it upright.

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The attitude of humility, therefore, results from a negative cause. But the Madonnas have often a look quite dignified and assured, of unquestioning adorable divine serenity; and the leaning forward of the brow in them, is accompanied with an air which denotes the activity of a positive cause—namely, the principle of love in the upper parts of the forehead. This was suggested to me, however, not by a picture of the Madonna, but by a Grecian bust—and I think you will scarcely suspect which this was. It was one of which the whole character is, I apprehend, mistaken in modern times—one which is looked at by fine ladies with a shudder—and by fine gentlemen with a sneer. Artists alone study and love it—their eyes are too much trained to permit of any thing else. But even they seem to me entirely to overlook the true character of that, which, with a view to quite different qualities, they fervently admire. In the Hercules Farnese (for this is the bust,) no person who looks on the form and attitude with a truly scientific eye, can possibly believe that he sees only the image of brute strength. There are few heads on the contrary more human in their expression—more eloquent with the manly virtue of a mild and generous hero. And how indeed could a Grecian sculptor have dared to represent the glorious Alcides in any other way? How do the poets represent him?—As the image of divine strength and confidence, struggling with and vanquishing the evils of humanity—as the emanation of divine benevolence, careless of all, but doing good—purifying the earth from the foulness of polluting monsters—avenging the cause of the just and the unfortunate— plunging into Hell in order to restore to an inconsolable husband the pale face of his wife, who had died a sacrifice to save him—himself at last expiring on the hoary summit of Athos, amidst the blaze of a funeral pile which had been built indeed with his own hands, but which he had been compelled to ascend by the malignant cruelty of a disappointed savage. The being who was hallowed with all these high attributes in the strains of Sophocles, Euripides, and Pindar—would any sculptor have dared to select Him for the object in which to embody his ideas of the mere animal power of man—the exuberance of corporeal strength? So far from this, the Hercules has not only one of the most intellectual heads that are to be found among the monuments of Greek sculpture, but also one of the most graceful. With the majesty which he inherits from the embrace of Jupiter, there is mingled a mild and tender expression of gentleness, which tells that he has also his share in the blood, and in the miseries, of our own lower nature. The stooping reflective attitude may be that of a hero weary with combat, but is one

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that speaks, as if his combatting had been in a noble cause—as if high thoughts had nerved his arm more than the mere exultations of corporeal vigour. His head is bent from the same quarter as that of the Madonnas, and whoever takes the trouble to examine it, will find, that in this particular point is to be found the chief expansion and prominence of his organization. *

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LETTER XXIV TO THE SAME

OMAN’S, TUESDAY EVENING DEAR DAVID, IN a place where education is so much diffused among the men, it is natural to suppose, that the women also must, in no inconsiderable degree, be imbued with some passion for literature. The kinds of information most in request here, (and, indeed, necessarily so, when we reflect on the means of education which the place affords,) are evidently much more within the reach of the Fair Sex, than in most other cities of the same importance. To be able to talk with fluency about the Politics and Belles Lettres of the day, is all that is required of an accomplished man in Edinburgh, and these are accomplishments which the ladies, modest as they are, would require more modesty than is either natural or proper to suppose themselves incapable of acquiring. That ignorance of the learned languages and ancient literature, which the men have not the assurance to attempt disguising, has broken down effectually the first and most insurmountable barrier which separates the intellectual pretensions of the two sexes in England, and, indeed, in almost all the capitals of Europe. The universal neglect with which the more ancient and massy literature, even of our own island, seems to be treated, has removed another mighty, although not quite so insurmountable barrier; and, in short, between the men and the women, for aught I can see, there is no “gulf fixed.” The men, indeed, seem still to be anxious to prolong, in their own favour, the existence of something of that old prestige, which owes the decay of its vigour entirely to themselves. But the greatest Mysogynists in the world have never accused the sex of being deficient in acuteness of discernment, and the ladies of Edinburgh are quite sufficiently quick-sighted, not to allow the advantages which have been given them, to slip unused through their fingers. So far as I may judge from my own short experience, however, the Scottish ladies, in general, are very far from pushing these advantages to any undue extent. It is not necessary to enter minutely into the causes of their forbearance in this respect; for a much slower person than Mr

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David Williams would have no great difficulty in forming a pretty fair guess, as to the most efficient of them. The merit which they do certainly possess and exemplify in this part of their conduct, may perhaps be divided into pretty equal shares between the influences of Nature and those of Art. Those gentler and more delicate feelings of our nature, which all their modes of life—their hopes, fears, pleasures, and sorrows, render them better able to appreciate, are alone, I should think, more than enough to weaken with the best of them the influence of those lighter and more transitory feelings, which derive gratification or uneasiness from the conscious possession or conscious want of such a measure of literary information, as is common among either the men or the women with whom they can be called upon to associate. With those of a less feminine and less just character, in point of mere feeling, there cannot be wanting enough of penetration to teach them, that the confession of inferiority is one of the most cunning treacheries with which to bait the hook of female fascination; and thus it is that the highest and most sacred of inspirations, on the one hand, co-operate with not a few less lofty and generous suggestions on the other, to keep within limits the infection of blue-stockingism—the one set of motives, as might befit their origin, attacking the secret root and essence of the mania for insignificant acquisition—the other no less appropriately, and no less powerfully, chilling and repressing the mania for insignificant display. There are, however, abundant exceptions to this rule even here. Innate and incorrigible vanity in some; particular incidents in the early history of others, too minute to be explained in any general terms of description; and in a few cases, without doubt, the consciousness of capacity of a really extraordinary nature, have been sufficient to create a certain number of characters, which are somewhat inaccurately and unjustly classed together by the gentlemen of Edinburgh, under the appellation of “our Blue-stockings.” With the chief and most prominent persons of this class, it has as yet been my good or evil fortune to come very little in contact. My introductions into society in this place, have been mostly through the intervention of the men of high literary character, and these are here, as everywhere, the greatest, that is to say, the most contemptuous enemies the Blue-stocking tribe has to encounter. Last night, however, I was present at a small rout, or conversazione, which, although the lady of the house is by no means a Blue-stocking, had not a little of the appearance of a Blue-stocking party about it. A number of the principal Bas-bleus were there, and a considerable proportion of the

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literati, small and great, were, of course, in attendance. In short, I suspect it was as near an approach to the true and genuine scene, as I am likely to have an opportunity of observing. I was ushered into a room decently crowded with very well-drest people, and not having any suspicion that much amusement was likely to be had, I privately intended to make my bow to Mrs ——, and retire as soon as possible—for I had left a very snug party over their claret at my friend Wastle’s, and certainly thought I could spend the rest of the evening more agreeably with them, than at any such rout as I had yet met with in Edinburgh. I had not been long in the room, however, when I heard Mr Jeffrey announced, and as I had not seen him for some time, I resolved to stay, and if possible, enjoy a little of his conversation in some corner. When he entered, I confess I was a good deal struck with the different figure he made from what I had seen at Craig Crook. Instead of the slovenly set-out which he then sported—the green jacket, black neckcloth, and grey pantaloons—I have seldom seen a man more nice in his exterior than Mr Jeffrey now seemed to be. His little person looked very neat in the way he had now adorned it. He had a very wellcut blue coat—evidently not after the design of any Edinburgh artist— light kerseymere breeches, and ribbed silk stockings—a pair of elegant buckles—white kid gloves, and a tri-color watch-ribbon. He held his hat under his arm in a very degagée manner—and altogether he was certainly one of the last men in the assembly, whom a stranger would have guessed to be either a great lawyer or a great reviewer. In short, he was more of a Dandy than any great author I ever saw—always excepting Tom Moore and David Williams. Immediately after him, Dr Thomas Brown came into the room, equipped in an equally fashionable, though not quite so splendid manner, and smiling on all around with the same mild, gentle air, which I had observed on his entrance to his Lecture-room. Close upon his heels followed Professor Leslie, with a large moss-rose in his bosom. The Professor made his obeisance to one or two ladies that stood near him, and then fixing himself close by the fire-place, assumed an aspect of blank abstraction, which lasted for many minutes without the least alteration. The expression of his massy features and large grey eyes, rolling about while he stood in this attitude, was so solemn, that nothing could have formed a more amusing contrast to the light and smiling physiognomies of the less contemplative persons around him. I saw that Mr Jeffrey was eyeing him all the while with a very quizzical air, and indeed heard him whisper something about heat to Lady ——, with

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whom he was conversing, which I fear could have been nothing more innocent than some sarcasm against the ruminating philosopher. For my part, I now perceived plainly, that I was in a rout of no ordinary character, and, rubbing my spectacles, prepared to make the best use of my time. While I was studying very attentively the fine hemispherical developement of the organ of Causality, in the superior part of Mr Leslie’s head, I heard the name of the Earl of Buchan, travelling up the stair-case, from the mouth of one lackey to that of another, and looked round with some curiosity to see the brother of the celebrated Chancellor Erskine. His lordship came into the room with a quick and hurried step, which one would not have expected from the venerable appearance of his white hairs—the finest white hairs, by the way, I ever saw, and curling in beautiful ringlets all down his shoulders. I could easily trace a strong family resemblance to his brother, although the Earl has much the advantage, in so far as mere beauty of lineament is concerned. I do not remember to have seen a more exquisite old head, and think it is no wonder that so many portraits have been painted of him by the artists of Edinburgh. The features are all perfect; but the greatest beauty is in his clear blue eyes, which are chased in his head in a way that might teach something to the best sculptor in the world. Neither is there any want of expression in these fine features; although, indeed, they are very far from conveying anything like the same ideas of power and penetration, which fall from the overhanging shaggy eye-brows of his brother. The person of the old Earl is also very good; his legs, in particular, are well shaped, and wonderfully muscular in their appearance, considering their length of service. He ran up immediately to Professor Leslie, with whom he seemed to be on terms of infinite familiarity, and began to talk about the new plan for a Grand National Monument in Scotland, in honour of the conclusion of the late war. “My dear Professor,” said he, “you must really subscribe—your name, you know, merely your name. As the Duke of Sussex says to myself, in a letter I received from his Royal Highness only this morning, upon this very subject—Lady Buchan’s nephew is aidede-camp to his Royal Highness, and he is particularly kind and attentive on my account—His Royal Highness says, he has just taken the liberty (he does me too much honour,) to put me down as one of the committee. My dear Lord Buchan, are his Royal Highness’s words, we positively can’t go on without you—you must give us your name—Now do, Professor, do give us your name.” And then, without looking or waiting for

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the worthy Professor’s reply, his Lordship passed across the room to Mr Jeffrey, and seizing him by the button, and whispering close into his ear, began making the very same request (for I could catch the words “Duke of Sussex,”) in, I doubt not, the same phrase. But he stopped not for the reply of Mr Jeffrey any more than for that of Professor Leslie; and after looking round the room for a single moment, he vanished through a folding-door into an inner apartment, where, from some preparatory screams of a violin that reached my ear, I had no doubt there was about to be an interlude of concert, to break the intense seriousness of thought, supposed to be inseparable from the keen intellectual collisions of a conversazione. On looking into the room which had just received Lord Buchan, I observed him take his place among a row of musical cognoscenti, male and female, who already occupied a set of chairs disposed formally all around the centre of enchantment. By and bye, a young lady began thumping on the piano-forte, and I guessed, from the exquisite accompaniment of Mr Yaniewicz, that it was her design to treat us with some of the beautiful airs in the Don Giovanni of Mozart. Nothing, however, could be more utterly distressing, than the mode in which the whole of her performance murdered that divine masterpiece, unless, indeed, it might be the nauseous sing-song of compliments, which the ignorance or the politeness of the audience thundered out upon its conclusion. After this blessed consummation had restored to us the free use of our limbs and tongues, (I say free—for in spite of nods, and whispers of rebuke, administered by some of the Dowagers, our silence had never been much more complete than the music merited,) I joined a small party, which had gradually clustered around Mr Jeffrey, and soon found that the redoubtable critic had been so unfortunate as to fall into an ambush laid to entrap him by a skilful party of blue-stocking tirailleures. There he was pinioned up against the wall, and listening with a greater expression of misery than I should have supposed to be compatible with his Pococurante disposition to the hints of one, the remarks of another, the suggestion of a third, the rebuke of a fourth, the dissertation of a fifth, and last, not least, in this cruel catalogue of inflictions, to the question of a sixth. “Well now, Mr Jeffrey, don’t you agree with me, in being decidedly of opinion, that Mr Scott is the true author of the Tales of my Landlord? O Lord!—they’re so like Mr Scott, some of the stories—one could almost believe one heard him telling them. Could not you do the same, Mr Jeffrey?”—The shrug of ineffable derision which Mr Jeffrey vainly endeavoured to keep down, in making

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some inaudible reply of two syllables to this, did not a whit dismay another, who forthwith began to ply him with query upon query, about the conduct of Lord Byron, in deserting his wife—and whether or not, he (Mr Jeffrey) considered it likely, that Lord Byron had had himself (Lord Byron) in his eye, in drawing the character of the Corsair—“and oh, now Mr Jeffrey, don’t you think Gulnare so romantic a name? I wish I had been christened Gulnare. Can people change their names, Mr Jeffrey, without an estate?”—“Why, yes, Ma’am,” replied the critic— after a most malicious pause, “by being married.”—* * * * “Mr Jeffrey,” exclaimed a fierce-looking damsel with a mop head—“I insist upon hearing if you have read Peter Bell—will you ever be convinced? Shall I ever be able to persuade you? Can you deny the beauty of the white sapling—‘as white as cream?’ Can you be blind to the pathetic incident of the poor ass kneeling under the blows of the cruel, hardhearted, odious Peter? Can you be blind to the charm of the boat?” “Why—oh—the laker has made a good deal of his tub—‘Twin sister to the Crescent-Moon’.” “Ah! naughty man, you are incorrigible—I’ll go speak to Mr Wilson.” I looked round, and saw Mr Wilson. He had a little book of fishingflies in his hand, and was loudly and sonorously explaining the beauty of a bit of grizzled hackle on the wings of one of them to Mr Mackenzie. My venerable friend seemed to be listening with the deepest interest to what he said, but the young lady broke in upon their conversation with the utmost intrepidity. I could just hear enough of what passed, to be satisfied, that the brother poet made as light of the matter as the adverse critic. I suspect, that from the cruelty of Peter Bell’s bludgeon, she made a transition to the cruelty of killing poor innocent trouts; but before that subject had time to be adequately discussed, supper was announced, and I descended close behind Mr Jeffrey, who had a lady upon each arm, one all the way down discussing the Bank Restriction Bill, and the other displaying equal eloquence in praise of “that delightful—that luminous Article in the last Number upon the Corn Laws.” Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER XXV TO THE SAME

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I WAS never a lover of Blue-Stockings either at home or abroad; but of all that I have met with, I think the French are the most tolerable, and the Scotch the most tormenting. In France the genuine power and authority which the women exert, and have long exerted, in swaying the course of public opinion in regard to a vast variety of subjects, are sufficient, were there nothing more, to make one excuse a great deal of their petulance and presumption. And then there is a light graceful ease about the manner of their trespasses, which would carry off the indignation of a Diogenes himself. How is it possible to feel any serious displeasure against a pretty creature that comes tripping up to you with a fan in her hand, and seems quite indifferent whether you ask her to dance a quadrille with you, or sit down by your side, and discuss the merits of the last roman? The truth is, however, that the French ladies in general talk about things they do understand something about—or at least, which it is easy and natural to imagine, may be interesting to their feelings. But what say you to the Scottish Blue-Stockings, whose favourite topics are the Resumption of Cash-payments, the great question of Borough Reform, and the Corn-Bill? They are certainly the very flour of their sex. “Ohe! jam satis est”—I would not be badgered as the great critic is for a moiety of his reputation. I was at another party of somewhat the same kind last night, where, however, I had the satisfaction of seeing several more characters of some note, and therefore, I repented not my going. Among others, I was introduced to Mrs Grant of Laggan, the author of the Letters from the

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Mountains, and other well known works. Mrs Grant is really a woman of great talents and acquirements, and might, without offence to any one, talk upon any subject she pleases. But I assure you, any person that hopes to meet with a Blue-Stocking, in the common sense of the term, in this lady, will feel sadly disappointed. She is as plain, modest, and unassuming, as she could have been had she never stepped from the village, whose name she has rendered so celebrated. Instead of entering on any long common-place discussions, either about politics, or political economy, or any other of the hackneyed subjects of tea-table talk in Edinburgh, Mrs Grant had the good sense to perceive, that a stranger, such as I was, came not to hear disquisitions, but to gather useful information; and she therefore directed her conversation entirely to the subject which she herself best understands—which, in all probability, she understands better than almost any one else—and which was precisely one of the subjects, in regard to which I felt the greatest inclination to hear a sensible person speak—namely, the Highlands. She related, in a very simple, but very graphic manner, a variety of little anecdotes and traits of character, with my recollections of which I shall always have a pleasure in connecting my recollections of herself. The sound and rational enjoyment I derived from my conversation with this excellent person, would, indeed, atone for much more than all the BlueStocking sisterhood have ever been able to inflict upon my patience. Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER XXVI TO THE SAME

I REMEMBER when Kean, in the first flush of his reputation, announced his intention of spending Passion-week in Edinburgh, to have seen a paragraph extracted from a Scots newspaper, in which this circumstance was commented on in a way, that I could scarcely help regarding as a little ridiculous. I cannot recall the exact words; but the northern editor expressed himself somewhat in this style—“We are happy to hear it rumoured, that the celebrated new actor, Mr Kean, proposes making his first appearance on our boards during the approaching holidays. He no doubt feels much anxiety to have the favourable opinion of the London public confirmed and sanctioned by the more fastidious and delicate discrimination, which, as all the sons of Thespis are well aware, belongs to the enlightened and refined, although candid and generous, audience of our metropolis.” What the measure of Mr Kean’s anxiety on this occasion might really have been, I possess no means of learning; but from all that I have seen and heard of the Edinburgh audience, I must confess I do not think, were I myself an actor, their favourable verdict would be exactly the crowning and finishing grace, for which I should wait with any very supernatural timidity of expectation. That they should for a moment dream of themselves as being entitled to claim weight and authority, equal (to say nothing of superior) to what is claimed and received by the great audience of the British capital—this is a thing, at the first glance, so superabounding in absurdity, that I could scarcely have believed it to be actually the case, unless, from innumerable little circumstances and expressions which have fallen under my own observation, I had been compelled to do so. How old this ridiculous prejudice of self-complacency may be, I know not; but I suspect that it, like many other ridiculous prejudices of the place, has been fostered and pampered into its present luxurious growth by the clamorous and triumphant success of the Edinburgh Review. Accustomed to see one or two of their fellowcitizens sitting in undisputed pre-eminence above all the authors of England, it must have seemed a small matter that they themselves

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should claim equal awe from the actors of England, when these ventured to think of strutting their hour on this side of the “Ideal Line.”— However this may be, there is no doubt the notion does exist, and the Edinburgh audience bonâ fide consider themselves as the most polite assemblage of theatrical critics that the world has produced since the days of Athens. I think Aristophanes, could he look up and see them, would observe a very sad change from his own favourite “σοφωτατοι θεαται.” There is no doubt, that the size of such a theatre as the Edinburgh one is much more favourable to accuracy of criticism, than a house of larger dimensions can be. It is somewhat larger than the Hay-Market; but it is quite possible to observe the minutest workings of an actor’s face from the remotest parts of the pit or the boxes; and the advantages, in point of hearing, are of course in somewhat the same measure. The house, however, has newly been lighted up in a most brilliant manner with gas, and this, I should think, must be anything rather than an improvement, in so far as purposes truly theatrical are concerned. Nothing, indeed, can be more beautiful than the dazzling effect exhibited, when one first enters the house—before, perhaps, the curtain is drawn up. The whole light proceeds from the centre of the roof, where one large sun of crystal hangs in a blazing atmosphere, that defies you to look up to it—circle within circle of white flame, all blended and glowing into one huge orb of intolerable splendour. Beneath this flood of radiance, every face in the audience, from the gallery to the orchestra, is seen as distinctly as if all were seated in the open light of noon-day. And the unaccustomed spectator feels, when his box-door is opened to him, as if he were stepping into a brilliant ball-room, much more than as if he were entering a theatre. But the more complete the illumination of the whole house, the more difficult it of course must be to throw any concentrating and commanding degree of light upon the stage; and the consequence, I should think, is, that the pleasure which this audience now derive from looking at each other, is just so much taken from the pleasure which, in former times, they might have had in looking at the performers. There is nothing more evident, than that the stage should always be made to wear an appearance in all respects as different as possible from the rest of the theatre. The spectator should be encouraged by all possible arts to imagine himself a complete eaves-dropper, a peeper, and a listener, who is hearing and seeing things that he has no proper right to hear and see. And it is for this reason, that I approve so much of the arrangement

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usually observed in the French, the German, but most of all in the Italian theatres, which, while it leaves the whole audience enveloped in one sheet of dim and softened gloom, spreads upon the stage and those that tread it, a flood of glory, which makes it comparatively an easy matter to suppose, that the curtain which has been drawn up was a part of the veil that separates one world of existence from another. In such a theatre, the natural inclination every one feels is to be as silent as possible—as if it were not to betray the secret of an ambush. The attention, when it is drawn at all to the stage, is drawn thither entirely; and one feels as if he were guilty of a piece of foolish negligence every moment he removes his gaze from the only point of light on which he has the power to rest it. * * * In such a theatre as that of Edinburgh, on the contrary, all is alike dazzle and splendour. The Dandy of the Greenroom is not a whit more ridiculous, or a whit better seen, than his double close by your side; and every blaze of rouge or pearl powder displayed by the Pseudo-Belles of the distance, finds its counterpart or rival on the cheek or shoulder of some real goddess on your fore-ground. In short, a poor innocent Partridge, introduced for the first time to theatrical spectacle in such a place as this, would, I think, be not a little at a loss to discover at what part of the house it should be his business to look. He would of course join in every burst of censure or applause; but he might, perhaps, be mistaken in his idea of what had called for the clamour. He might take the ogle of Miss —— for a too impudent claptrap, or perhaps be caught sobbing his heart out in sympathy with some soft flirtation-scene in the back-row of Lady ——’s side-box. Whatever other effects it might have, this mode of illumination was at least very useful to me in my inspection of the redoubtable Edinburgh audience. These great bug-bears of criticism could not hide one of their heads from me, and there I was armed cap-a-pee with the whole proof of Cranioscopical and Physiognomical acumen, to reconnoitre their points of strength and of weakness with equal facility and equal safety. I looked first, as in duty bound, to the gods; but could see nothing there worthy of detaining my attention, except the innocent stare of a young country-girl, who seemed to be devouring the drop-scene with both her eyes, and at the same time rewarding with an hysterical giggle, the soft things whispered into her ear by a smooth red-nosed, rather elderly serving-man, who appeared to have much the air of being at home on the brink of that Olympus. Neither did the boxes seem to present any very great field of observation; but, in fact, most of the leading physiognomies in that region of the house were already quite sufficiently

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familiar to me. It was in the pit that my eyes at once detected their richest promise of a regale. The light falling directly upon the skulls in that quarter, displayed, in all becoming splendour, every bump and hollow of every critical cranium below me. They belonged for the most part, as Mr W—— whispered to me, to young attornies, and clerks, and apprentices of the same profession, who are all set free from their three-legged stools and fustian-sleeves early every Saturday evening, and who commonly make use of this liberty to shew their faces in the pit. A few lawyers of a higher order might be seen looking rather superciliously around them, sprinkled here and there over the surface of the crowd. Nor were there wanting some faces of more stable breadth, and more immovable dulness, than are almost ever exhibited even by the dullest of the legal tribe—a few quiet comfortable citizens I could see, who certainly looked very much like sheep among foxes, although I by no means take them to be positive simpletons neither. Perhaps the unquestioning looks of happy anticipation with which these good people seemed to be waiting for the commencement of the play, gave quite as much promise of just criticism as the pert, peaked features, the impatient nasi adunci, and merciless pertinacity of grin displayed by the jurisprudential Zoili round about them. Such as the two elements were, I could perceive that they were to form between them, as best they might, the critical touch-stone of the evening.—Again I quote, omne ignotum pro magnifico.— *

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The piece was the new Drama founded upon the novel of Rob Roy. I had promised myself much pleasure in seeing it, from the accounts I had heard of the two principal performers that make their appearance in it, and I was never less disappointed. The scenery, in the first place, was as splendid as possible; indeed, till within these very few years, London never could shew any thing in the least capable of sustaining a comparison with it. Whether the stage was to represent the small snug parlour of Baillie Jarvie in the Saltmarket of Glasgow, or the broad and romantic magnificence of Loch Katrine, winding and receding among groves of birch and mountains of heather, the manager had exerted equal liberality, and his artists equal skill, to complete the charm of their counterfeit. There is something very delightful in observing the progress which theatrical taste is making among us, in regard to this part of its objects at least. Nothing gratifies one more than to see that great pains

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have been taken to please them; and a whole audience is sensible to this kind of pleasure, when they see a new play got up with a fine fresh stock of scenery, to salute their eyes with novelty at every turn of the story. Besides, in such a play as this, it would have been quite intolerable to discover any want of inclination to give its heroes every possible advantage of visual accompaniment to their exertions. Every body was already as well acquainted as possible with Mattie, Major Galbraith, Andrew Fairservice and the Dugald Creature—to say nothing of those noble kinsmen, Baillie Jarvie and Rob Roy; and every one would have looked upon it as a sort of insult to his own sense and discernment, had he seen any of these dear friends, otherwise than in the same dress and place in which they had already been introduced, and rendered familiar to him by the great Magician, whose wand had called them into being. I confess, however, that familiar as I had long been with these characters, and with that of the Baillie, imprimis, I was perfectly refreshed and delighted when they stood before me, living and moving in actual bodily presence. The illusion of theatrical deception cannot possibly be carried farther than it was in the case of Baillie Jarvie, as personified on this occasion by Mr Mackay. I could have sworn that every curl in his neat brown periwig—every button on his well brushed, dark, purple coat—every wrinkle in his well blacked, tall, tight boots, had been familiar to me from infancy. And then the face—what a fine characteristic leanness about the jaws—not the least appearance of starvation or feebleness, but the true horny firmness of texture that I had always pictured to myself in the physiognomy of a Common-councilman of the Land of Cakes! And what truth of expression in the grey eyes of the worthy warm-hearted Baillie! The high aerial notes at the ending of his sentences, and the fine circumnavigation of sound in his diphthongs, were quite new to my imagination, but I could not for a single moment suspect them of being any other than authentic. I could scarce believe him when he said, “a body canna carry the Saut-market upon his back.” The “Dugald Creature” was quite as good in his way—indeed even better, for it must have required no trivial stretch of power to be able to embody so much rudeness without taking a single iota from so much poetry of character. Rob Roy himself made a glorious appearance in his blazing tartans, eagle plume, target and broadsword; and nobody that saw him could question his right to levy “black mail”—a single glance was sufficient to shew, that, in the opinion of such a personage as this which trod the stage before us,

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Rents and Factors, Rights of Chace, Sheriffs, Lairds, and their domains, All had seemed but paltry things, Not worth a moment’s pains.

Mr Murray (the manager) himself personated “the Saxon Captain,” who is made prisoner by Roy’s wife, in a style of perfect propriety, looking more like a soldier, and infinitely more like a gentleman, than almost any actor of the present day, that I have seen on either side of the Tweed. I admired particularly the strict attention which he had paid to his costume; for he made his appearance in a suit of uniform, which I suppose, must have been shaped exactly after the pattern of the Duke of Cumberland’s statue. The profuse flaps and skirts of the coat, and the smart, ferocious cock of the small hat, perched on the top of several rows of beautiful stiff curls, carried one back at once to the heart of the days of Marlborough and Bickerstaff. Perhaps the most purely delightful part of the whole play, was the opening of one of the acts, when I found myself suddenly transported into the glen of Aberfoil, and heard the pibroch of the Macgregors stealing along the light breeze of the morning, among those very shores which had been spread before my fancy in so many hues of Arcadian delight, by the novel itself, and the Lady of the Lake, its kindred predecessor. Already I feel that it is impossible I should leave Scotland without visiting, in good earnest, these romantic scenes. However, I must allow the season to be somewhat better advanced, ere I think of venturing upon that excursion. I am determined, indeed, to delay it as long as I can, in order that I may see it when adorned with its whole midsummer garniture of leaves. Mr Murray acts as manager in behalf of Mrs Henry Siddons, whose husband had taken a long lease of the Theatre shortly before his death. I think you once told me that you had seen this charming actress play at Bath, therefore I need not say any thing about her style of performance. She is, I believe, appreciated here as she ought to be; indeed, I know not that it is possible for any audience, wherever assembled, or however composed, to be insensible to the chaste and delicate fascination of that most feminine sort of acting. In looking at her, one feels that there would be a want of gallantry in not being delighted with so pure a picture of every thing that renders the captivation of womanly gracefulness complete. I speak at present, of course, of her most favourite walk. But you probably are well aware that Mrs Henry Siddons is scarcely less successful, when she goes down many steps in the scale of character. Nor

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do you need to be told, that, in the highest walk of the art itself, she displays not unfrequently a power, and energy, and dignity of feeling, which are less talked of than they deserve to be, only because it is not possible to forget, when thinking of the daughter-in-law, the deeper and more majestic magic of the unrivalled mother. The birth of Mrs Siddons and her brother, (for they are of an ancient Scottish family,) creates no inconsiderable feeling of interest in their favour, among this pedigree-revering people. The uniform propriety, and indeed amiable and exemplary modesty of their own character and deportment, in all the relations of private life, may well furnish them with yet better claims to the kindness of their fellow-citizens. P. M.

LETTER XXVII TO THE SAME

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I SHOULD be very much at a loss, if I were obliged to say positively, either at what hour or from what point of view, the external appearance of this city is productive of the noblest effect. I walk round and round it, and survey it from east, west, north, and south, and everywhere it assumes some new and glorious aspect, which delights me so much at the moment, that I am inclined to think I have at last hit upon the true station from whence to survey its beauties. A few steps bring me to some new eminence, from which some yet wider and more diversified picture of its magnificence opens itself to my eyes, or perhaps to some winding ravine, the dark and precipitous sides of which, while they shut out much of this imposing expanse of magnitude, form a deep and concentrating framework, in whose centre some one isolated fragment assumes a character of sublimity, that seems almost to throw the wider field of variety and splendour into temporary shade. I have at last given up the attempt; and am contented to let my admiration be as impartial as the charm is universal. In every point of view, however, the main centre of attraction is the Castle of Edinburgh. From whatever side you approach the city— whether by water or by land—whether your fore-ground consist of height or of plain, of heath, of trees, or of the buildings of the city itself—this gigantic rock lifts itself high above all that surrounds it, and breaks upon the sky with the same commanding blackness of mingled crags, cliffs, buttresses, and battlements. These, indeed, shift and vary their outlines at every step, but everywhere there is the same unmoved effect of general expression—the same lofty and imposing image, to

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which the eye turns with the same unquestioning worship. Whether you pass on the southern side, close under the bare and shattered blocks of granite, where the crumbling turrets on the summit seem as if they had shot out of the kindred rock in some fantastic freak of Nature—and where, amidst the overhanging mass of darkness, you vainly endeavour to descry the track by which Wallace scaled—or whether you look from the north, where the rugged cliffs find room for some scanty patches of moss and broom, to diversify their barren grey—and where the whole mass is softened into beauty by the wild green glen which intervenes between the spectator and its foundations—wherever you are placed, and however it is viewed, you feel at once that here is the eye of the landscape, and the essence of the grandeur. Neither is it possible to say under what sky or atmosphere all this appears to the greatest advantage. The heavens may put on what aspect they choose, they never fail to adorn it. Changes that elsewhere deform the face of nature, and rob her of half her beauty, seem to pass over this majestic surface only to dress out its majesty in some new apparel of magnificence. If the air is cloudless and serene, what can be finer than the calm reposing dignity of those old towers—every delicate angle of the fissured rock, every loop-hole and every lineament seen clearly and distinctly in all their minuteness? or, if the mist be wreathed around the basis of the rock, and frowning fragments of the citadel emerge only here and there from out the racking clouds that envelope them, the mystery and the gloom only rivet the eye the faster, and half-baffled Imagination does more than the work of Sight. At times, the whole detail is lost to the eye—one murky tinge of impenetrable brown wraps rock and fortress from the root to the summit—all is lost but the outline; but the outline atones abundantly for all that is lost.—The cold glare of the sun, plunging slowly down into a melancholy west beyond them, makes all the broken labyrinth of towers, batteries, and house-tops paint their heavy breadth in tenfold sable magnitude upon that lurid canvass.—At break of day, how beautiful is the freshness with which the venerable pile appears to rouse itself from its sleep, and look up once more with a bright eye into the sharp and dewy air!—At the “grim and sultry hour” of noon, with what languid grandeur the broad flag seems to flap its long weight of folds above the glowing battlements! When the day-light goes down in purple glory, what lines of gold creep along the hoary brow of its antique strength! When the whole heaven is deluged, and the winds are roaring fiercely, and “snow and hail, and stormy vapour,” are let loose to make war upon his front, with what an

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air of pride does the veteran citadel brave all their well-known wrath, “cased in the unfeeling armour of old time!” The Capitol itself is but a pigmy to this giant. But here, as every-where, moonlight is the best. Wherever I spend the evening, I must always walk homewards by the long line of Prince’sStreet; and along all that spacious line, the midnight shadows of the Castle-rock for ever spread themselves forth, and wrap the ground on which I tread in their broad repose of blackness. It is not possible to imagine a more majestic accompaniment for the deep pause of that hour. The uniform splendour of the habitations on the left opening every now and then broken glimpses up into the very heart of the modern city— the magnificent terrace itself, with its stable breadth of surface—the few dying lamps that here and there glimmer faintly—and no sound, but the heavy tread of some far-off watchman of the night—this alone might be enough, and it is more than almost any other city could afford. But turn to the right, and see what a glorious contrast is there. The eternal rock sleeping in the stillness of nature—its cliffs of granite—its tufts of verdure—all alike steeped in the same unvarying hue of mystery—its towers and pinnacles rising like a grove of quiet poplars on its crest—the whole as colourless as if the sun had never shone there, as silent as if no voice of man had ever disturbed the echoes of the solemn scene. Overhead, the sky is all one breathless canopy of lucid crystal blue—here and there a small bright star twinkling in the depth of æther—and full in the midst the Moon walking in her vestal glory, pursuing, as from the bosom of eternity, her calm and destined way—and pouring down the silver of her smiles upon all of lovely and sublime that nature and art could heap together, to do homage to her radiance. How poor, how tame, how worthless, does the converse even of the best and wisest of men appear, when faintly and dimly remembered amidst the sober tranquillity of this heavenly hour! How deep the gulph that divides the tongue from the heart—the communication of companionship from the solitude of man! How soft, yet how awful, the beauty and the silence of the hour of spirits. I think it was one of the noblest conceptions that ever entered into the breast of a poet, which made Goethe open his Faustus with a scene of moonlight. The restlessness of an intellect wearied with the vanity of knowledge, and tormented with the sleepless agonies of doubt—the sickness of a heart bruised and buffeted by all the demons of presumption—the wild and wandering throbs of a soul parched among plenty, by the blind cruelty of its own dead affections—these dark and

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depressing mysteries all maddening within the brain of the Hermit Student, might have suggested other accompaniments to one who had looked less deeply into the nature of Man—who had felt less in his own person of that which he might have been ambitious to describe. But this great master of intellect was well aware to what thoughts, and what feelings, the perplexed and the bewildered are most anxious to return. He well knew where it is, that Nature has placed the best balm for the wounds of the spirit—by what indissoluble links She has twined her own eternal influences around the dry and chafed heart-strings that have most neglected her tenderness. It is thus, that this weary and melancholy sceptic speaks—his phial of poison is not yet mingled on his table—but the tempter is already listening at his ear, that would not allow him to leave the world until he should have plunged yet deeper into his snares, and added sins against his neighbour, to sins against God, and against himself. I wish I could do justice to his words in a translation,—or rather that I had Coleridge nearer me. Would thou wert gazing now thy last Upon my troubles, Glorious Harvest Moon! Well canst thou tell how all my nights have past, Wearing away, how slow, and yet how soon! Alas! alas! sweet Queen of Stars, Through dreary dim monastic bars, To me thy silver radiance passes, Illuminating round me masses Of dusty books, and mouldy paper, That are not worthy of so fair a taper. O might I once again go forth, To see thee gliding through thy fields of blue, Along the hill-tops of the north;— O might I go, as when I nothing knew, Where meadows drink thy softening gleam, And happy spirits twinkle in the beam, To steep my heart in thy most healing dew.

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END OF VOLUME FIRST

PETER’S LETTERS TO

HIS KINSFOLK

VOLUME THE SECOND

CONTENTS OF

VOLUME SECOND __________ LETTER XXVIII Scottish Bar ................................................................................................. Mr Scott and Mr Jeffrey .............................................................................. Edinburgh.................................................................................................... Parliament-Close ......................................................................................... St Giles’s ..................................................................................................... Parliament-House ........................................................................................ Statue of Charles II .....................................................................................

191 193 193 193 193 195 196

LETTER XXIX Court of Session—Outer House .................................................................. Clerks .......................................................................................................... Advocates.................................................................................................... Periwigs ......................................................................................................

197 199 200 200

LETTER XXX Court of Session .......................................................................................... Judges.......................................................................................................... Lord Pitmilly ............................................................................................... Irish Case ....................................................................................................

202 204 204 205

LETTER XXXI Statue of Lord Melville ............................................................................... Lord Melville .............................................................................................. Statues of Forbes and Blair ......................................................................... Lord President Blair ....................................................................................

206 207 207 208

LETTER XXXII Mr Clerk ...................................................................................................... 210 LETTER XXXIII Mr Cranstoun .............................................................................................. 216 LETTER XXXIV Mr Jeffrey.................................................................................................... 219

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LETTER XXXV Mr Henry Cockburn .................................................................................... 224 Comparison of Mr Cockburn and Mr Jeffrey.............................................. 228 Mr Jeffrey.................................................................................................... 228 LETTER XXXVI Mr Moncrieff .............................................................................................. 231 Mr Murray................................................................................................... 232 Mr J. P. Grant .............................................................................................. 233 LETTER XXXVII Scotch Bar ................................................................................................... Mr Forsyth .................................................................................................. Principles of Moral Science ........................................................................ Scotch Bar ...................................................................................................

235 236 238 239

LETTER XXXVIII Court of Session .......................................................................................... Lord Justice-Clerk Boyle ............................................................................ Lord Robertson ........................................................................................... Lord President Hope ...................................................................................

240 241 241 242

LETTER XXXIX Macqueen of Braxfield................................................................................ 246 Lord Hermand ............................................................................................. 250 LETTER XL Edinburgh Review....................................................................................... Charles Lamb .............................................................................................. Wordsworth................................................................................................. Edinburgh Review.......................................................................................

255 262 263 263

LETTER XLI Edinburgh Whigs ........................................................................................ 265 Stupidity of the Young Whigs..................................................................... 266 LETTER XLII Edinburgh Booksellers ................................................................................ 270 Mr Creech ................................................................................................... 271 Booksellers .................................................................................................. 275 LETTER XLIII Mr Constable ............................................................................................... Mr Robert Miller ......................................................................................... Peter Hill ..................................................................................................... Mr Laing ..................................................................................................... David Laing ................................................................................................

278 279 280 281 281

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

LETTER XLIV Mr Blackwood ............................................................................................ Periodical Literature.................................................................................... The Chaldee MS ......................................................................................... Salmon ........................................................................................................ Gabriel’s Road ............................................................................................

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LETTER XLV Blackwood’s Magazine ............................................................................... 292 LETTER XLVI Blackwood’s Magazine ............................................................................... Coleridge ..................................................................................................... The Cockney School ................................................................................... Blackwood’s Magazine ...............................................................................

293 299 301 302

LETTER XLVII Artists and Connoisseurs ............................................................................. Mr Bridges’ Shop and Bits.......................................................................... Mr Allan ...................................................................................................... Mr Allan’s Pictures ..................................................................................... The Circassian Captives ................................................. The Circassian Family .................................................... The Polish Jews ..............................................................

305 305 306 308 309 311 311

LETTER XLVIII Allan’s Pictures ........................................................................................... 315 The Press-Gang .............................................................. 315 LETTER XLIX Paintings...................................................................................................... 320 LETTER L Wilkie and Allan ......................................................................................... Hamilton and Runciman ............................................................................. Williams’s Pictures ..................................................................................... Greece............................................................................. Athens............................................................................. Delphi ............................................................................. Nasmyth and Thomson ............................................................................... Staff-Surgeon Schetky ................................................................................ Mr Raeburn ................................................................................................. Mr John Watson, and Mr Nicholson ........................................................... Mr William Thomson..................................................................................

328 328 330 331 332 333 335 335 336 336 336

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LETTER LI Borthwick Castle ......................................................................................... Gala Water .................................................................................................. The Tweed .................................................................................................. Mr Scott ...................................................................................................... Mr Wordsworth ........................................................................................... Mr Scott ......................................................................................................

337 338 338 339 344 345

LETTER LII Mr Scott ...................................................................................................... Huntly Burn ................................................................................................ Eildon Hill................................................................................................... Smaylholm Tower ....................................................................................... The Leader .................................................................................................. Abbotsford ..................................................................................................

347 348 349 349 350 351

LETTER LIII Melrose Abbey ............................................................................................ 352 Dryburgh Abbey ......................................................................................... 354 LETTER LIV Mr Scott ...................................................................................................... Scott and Byron........................................................................................... Craniology................................................................................................... Wordsworth................................................................................................. Coleridge—Campbell ................................................................................. Wilson ......................................................................................................... Hogg............................................................................................................

357 358 358 358 358 359 359

LETTER LV Mr Scott ...................................................................................................... 362 The Scotch Novels ...................................................................................... 365 Scottish Literature ....................................................................................... 366

LETTER XXVIII TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

I HAVE already told you, that the Bar is the great focus from which the rays of interest and animation are diffused throughout the whole mass of society, in this northern capital. Compared with it, there is no object or congregation of objects, which can be said to have any wide and commanding grasp of the general attention. The Church—the University—even my own celebrated Faculty, in this its great seat of empire—all are no better than the “minora sidera,” among which the luminaries of forensic authority and forensic reputation shine forth conspicuous and superior. Into whatever company the stranger may enter, he is sure, ere he has been half an hour in the place, to meet with something to remind him of the predominance of this great jurisprudential aristocracy. The names of the eminent leaders of the profession, pass through the lips of the ladies and gentlemen of Edinburgh, as frequently and as reverently as those of the great debaters of the House of Commons do through those of the ladies and gentlemen of London. In the absence of any other great centres of attraction, to dispute their pre-eminence in the general eye, the principal barristers are able to sustain and fix upon themselves, from month to month, and year to year, in this large and splendid city, something not unlike the same intensity of attention and admiration, which their brethren of the south may be too proud to command over the public mind of York or Lancaster, for two Assize-weeks in the year. I think the profession makes a very tyrannical use of all these advantages. Not contented with being first, it is obvious they would fain be alone in the eye of admiration; and they seem to omit no opportunity of adding the smallest piece of acquisition to the already over-stretched verge of their empire. It is easy to see that they look upon the whole city as nothing more than one huge Inn of Court, set apart from end to end for the purposes of their own peculiar accommodation; and they strut along the spacious and crowded streets of this metropolis, with the same air of conscious possession and conscious dignity, which one meets with in London among the green and shadowy alleys of the Temple Gardens.

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Such is their satisfied assurance of the unrivalled dignity and importance of their calling, that they hold themselves entitled, wherever they are, to make free use not only of allusions, but of phrases, evidently borrowed from its concerns; and such has been the length of time during which all these instruments of encroachment have been at work, that memory of their commencement and just sense of their tendency have alike vanished among the greater part of those in whose presence the scene of their habitual operation is laid. Even the women appear to think it quite necessary to succumb to the prevailing spirit of the place; and strive to acquire for themselves some smattering of legal phrases, with which to garnish that texture of political, critical, and erotical commonplaces, which they share with the Masters and Misses of other cities, wherein the pretensions of the Gens Togata are kept somewhat more within the limits of propriety. My friend Wastle tells me, that, in the course of a love-correspondence, which once, by some unfortunate accident, got into general circulation in Edinburgh, among many other truly ludicrous exemplifications of the use of the legal style of courtship, there was one letter from the Strephon to the Phyllis, which began with “Madam—in answer to your duplies, received of date as per margin.” But this, no doubt, is one of Wastle’s pleasant exaggerations. Although, however, the whole of the city, and the whole of its society, be more than enough redolent of the influence of this profession, it is by no means to be denied, that a very great share of influence is most justly due to the eminent services which its members have rendered, and are at the present time rendering to their country. It is not to be denied, that the Scottish lawyers have done more than any other class of their fellowcitizens, to keep alive the sorely threatened spirit of national independence in the thoughts and in the feelings of their countrymen. It is scarcely to be denied, that they have for a long time furnished, and are at this moment furnishing, the only example of high intellectual exertion, (beyond the case of mere individuals), in regard to which Scotland may challenge a comparison with the great sister-state, which has drawn so much of her intellect and her exertion into the overwhelming and obscuring vortex of her superiority. It is a right and a proper thing, then, that Scotland should be proud of her Bar—and, indeed, when one reflects for a moment, what an immense overshadowing proportion of all the great men she has produced have belonged, or at this moment do belong to this profession, it is quite impossible to be surprised or displeased, because so just a feeling may have been carried a little beyond the limit of mere propriety. It is not

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necessary to go back into the remote history of the Bar of Scotland, although, I believe, there is in all that history no one period devoid of its appropriate honours. One generation of illustrious men, connected with it throughout the whole, or throughout the greater part of their lives, has only just departed, and the memory of them and their exertions is yet fresh and unfaded. Others have succeeded to their exertions and their honours, whom they that have seen both, admit to be well worthy of their predecessors. Indeed, it is not necessary to say one word more concerning the present state of the profession than this—that, in addition to many names which owe very great and splendid reputation to the Bar alone, the gown is worn at this moment by two persons, whom all the world must admit to have done more than all the rest of their contemporaries put together, for sustaining and extending the honours of the Scottish name—both at home and abroad. You need scarcely be told, that I speak of Mr Walter Scott and Mr Jeffrey. The former of these has, indeed, retired from the practice of the Bar; but he holds a high office in the Court of Session. The other is in the full tide of professional practice, and of a professional celebrity, which could scarcely be obscured by any thing less splendid, than the extra-professional reputation which has been yet longer associated with his name—and which, indeed, is obviously of a much higher, as well as of a much more enduring character, than any reputation which any profession, properly so called, ever can have the power to bestow. The courts of justice with which all these eminent men are so closely connected, are placed in and about the same range of buildings, which in former times were set apart for the accommodation of the Parliament of Scotland. The main approach to these buildings lies through a small oblong square, which takes from this circumstance the name of “the Parliament Close.” On two sides this Close is surrounded by houses of the same gigantic kind of elevation which I have already described to you, and in these, of old, were lodged a great proportion of the dignitaries and principal practitioners of the adjacent courts. At present, however, they are dedicated, like most of the houses in the same quarter of the city, to the accommodation of tradespeople, and the inferior persons attached to the Courts of Law. The western side of the quadrangle, is occupied in all its length by the Church of St Giles’s, which in the later times of Scottish Episcopacy possessed the dignity of a Cathedral, and which, indeed, has been the scene of many of the most remarkable incidents in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. In its general exterior, this church presents by no means a fine specimen of

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the Gothic Architecture, although there are several individual parts about the structure which display great beauty—the tower above all which rises out of the centre of the pile, and is capped with a very rich and splendid canopy in the shape of a Crown Imperial. This beautiful tower and canopy form a fine point in almost every view of the city of Edinburgh; but the effect of the whole building, when one hears and thinks of it as a Cathedral, is a thing of no great significance. The neighbourhood of the Castle would indeed take something from the impression produced by the greatest Cathedral I am acquainted with, were it placed on the site of St Giles’s; but nothing assuredly could have formed a finer accompaniment of softening and soothing interest to the haughty and imperious sway of that majestic fortress, than some large reposing mass of religious architecture, lifting itself as if under its protection out of the heart of the city which it commands. The only want, if want there be, in the whole aspect of this city, is, that of some such type of the grandeur of Religion rearing itself in the air, in somewhat of its due proportion of magnitude and magnificence. It is the only great city, the first impression of whose greatness is not blended with ideas suggested by the presence of some such edifice, piercing the sky in splendour or in gloom, far above the frailer and lowlier habitations of those that come to worship beneath its roof. You remember those fine lines of Wordsworth, when, talking of the general external aspect of England, he says— Not wanting at wide intervals the bulk Of ancient Minster, lifted above the clouds Of the dense air, which town or city breeds, To intercept the sun’s glad beams.—

I know not, indeed, that any advantages, even of natural grandeur of situation or scenery, can entirely make up for the want of some such effect as the poet would describe, in the general view of any city set apart for the dwelling-place of Men, and of Christians. It seems to be the most natural and proper of all things, that from whatever side the traveller approaches to a Christian city, his eye should be invited, nay, commanded, to repose on some majestic monument of its Faith and its Devotion.—Every one, for example, that has ever sailed up the Thames—the only avenue that is worthy of LONDON—must recollect what a grand mixture of feelings arose within him, when—beyond forests of masts, and above one dark, impenetrable, and limitless ocean of smoke,—he saw for the first time the holy dome of St Paul’s, hung

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afar off, serene and golden among the clouds. What a calm radiance of sanctity and sublimity does that mighty temple appear to diffuse over the huge city, stretched out in endless pomp and endless darkness at its feet! How that one supreme presence sheds gracefulness and majesty over all that is done beneath its shadow! There is a plan in agitation at present for erecting a splendid church in Edinburgh, as a great National Monument, in memory of the events of the late war, and already I find a large sum of money has been subscribed for carrying this plan into execution. I heartily wish it speedy and entire success. The sketch which I have seen of the intended edifice, appears to me to be one of the finest things that architectural genius has for many ages produced. In front, there is a portico, as grand as that of the Pantheon; behind this, a dome of most majestic height and dimension is lifted above a hall, around the exterior of which, tier above tier, and line within line of massy columns, are seen swelling or diminishing in endless variety of classical splendour. This hall is destined for the reception of statues and inscriptions, and it forms the entrance-way into a stately church, which shoots out from the side opposite to the portico. Where it is proposed to place this fine edifice, I know not; but wherever it is placed, so it be placed at all, it cannot fail to add immeasurably to the effect of the finest situation, and the finest city in the world. But I have wandered widely from St Giles’s and the Parliament Close. The southern side of the square, and a small part of the eastern side, are filled with venerable Gothic buildings, which for many generations have been devoted to the accommodation of the Courts of Law, but which are now entirely shut out from the eye of the public, by a very illconceived and tasteless front-work of modern device, including a sufficient allowance of staring square windows, and Ionic pillars and pilasters. What beauty the front of the structure may have possessed in its original state, I have no means of ascertaining; but Mr Wastle sighs every time we pass through the Close, as pathetically as could be wished, over “the glory that hath departed.” At all events, there can be no question, that the present frontispiece is every way detestable. It is heavy and clumsy in itself; and extremely ill chosen, moreover, whether one considers the character and appearance of the hall to which it gives access, or the aspect of the cathedral, and the old buildings in immediate juxta-position without. Had it been resolved to remove entirely the seat of the Courts of Law, and provide for them more convenient and more extensive accommodation in some more modern part of the city, I am informed the money that has been thrown away within the last thirty

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years upon repairs and alterations, none of which have added any thing to the beauty or much to the convenience of the old Courts, would have been abundantly sufficient to cover the expense of building the new. Right in front of the main entrance to the Courts as they stand, a fine equestrian statue of Charles II enjoys a much more conspicuous situation than the merits of its original seem at all entitled to claim— more particularly from the people of Scotland. I think it rather unfortunate that this should be the only statue which salutes the public eye in the streets of Edinburgh. To say the truth, he is the only one of all our monarchs for whose character I think it impossible to feel one touch of sympathy or respect. Even his more unfortunate brother had honesty of principle, and something of the feelings of an Englishman. But why should the poor pensioned profligate, whose wit only rendered his vices more culpable, and whose good temper only rendered them more dangerous—why should he be selected for such a mark of distinguishing and hallowing remembrance as this? I should have been better pleased to see Scotland atoning by some such symbol of reverence for her sad offences against his father. I shall conduct you into the interior of the Parliament-House in my next letter. P. M.

LETTER XXIX TO THE SAME

AFTER passing through one or two dark and dungeon-like lobbies or anti-chambers, or by whatever more appropriate name they may be designated, one enters by a low pair of folding-doors into what is called the Outer House, wherein all civil cases are tried, in the first instance, by individual Judges, or Lord Ordinaries, before being submitted to the ultimate decision either of the whole Bench, or of one of its great Divisions. On being admitted, one sees a hall of very spacious dimensions, which, although not elegant in its finishing or decorations, has nevertheless an air of antique grandeur about it, that is altogether abundantly striking. The roof is very fine, being all of black oak, with the various arches of which it is composed resting one upon another, exactly as in Christ-Church Hall. The area of this Hall is completely filled with law-practitioners, consisting of Solicitors and Advocates, who move in two different streams, along the respective places which immemorial custom has allotted to them on the floor. The crowd which is nearest the door, and in which I first found myself involved, is that of the Solicitors, Agents, Writers, or Men of Business, (for by all these names are they called). Here is a perfect whirl of eagerness and activity—every face alert, and sharpened into the acutest angles. Some I could see were darting about among the different Bars, where pleadings were going forward, like midshipmen in an engagement, furnishing powder to the combatants. They brought their great guns, the advocates, to bear sometimes upon one Judge and sometimes upon another; while each Judge might be discovered sitting calmly, like a fine piece of stone-work amidst the hiss of bombs and the roar of forty-pounders. In the meantime, the “men of business,” who were not immediately occupied in this way, paced rapidly along—each borne on his particular wave of this great tide of the affairs of men, but all having their faces well turned up above the crowd, and keeping a sharp look-out. This was, I think, their general attitude. It reminded me of trouts bobbing near the surface of a stream, all equally sharp-set and anxious for a snap at

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whatever is going. Any staring or idle person must have appeared quite out of place amongst them, like a fixed point among Epicurus’s concourse of atoms; and indeed I think, after I began to collect myself a little, I could easily observe that I myself, standing firm in the midst of the hubbub, with my arms folded ut mos est, attracted some notice from a few of those that were hurrying past me, to and fro, and ever and anon. Whether I looked like a client either in esse or in posse, I know not, but ——Some fell to such perusal of my face, As they would draw me;

while I, in the meantime, could begin to discover here and there a few persons of more quiescent demeanour, who looked like some of those unfortunates, at whose expense this superb scene of motion is maintained and kept in action. Money may be compared to a momentum or impetus, of which one body loses as much as it imparts to another. The client, after having transferred a certain impetus to his agent, loses part of his alacrity, and is apt to stand still in the Parliament-House, with a rather disconsolate air; while he sees his agent (consolatory spectacle!) inspired with the momentum of which he himself is divested, and spinning about in every sort of curve, ellipsis, and parabola. The anxious gaze with which these individuals seemed to be contemplating the toss and tumult around them, formed a sufficient distinction between them and the cool, unconcerned, calmly perspicacious Dr Morris. It was evident, that they could not at all enter, with any delight kindred to mine, into the sentiment of the luxurious Epicurean, Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis, E tuto alterius magnum spectare laborem.

Such of these litigants, again, as had come from the country, could be easily pointed out from among the other clients. Here and there I noticed a far-travelled Gaffer, conspicuous for his farmer’s coat of grey, or lightest cærulean tincture—his staff in his ungloved horny fingers—and his clouted shoon, or tall, straight, discoloured pair of top-boots, walking about without reflecting,—to judge from his aspect,—that the persons by whom he was surrounded had mouths which would make very little of demolishing a litigious farmer, with his whole stock and plenishing, and leaving no more vestige of him than remained of Actæon, after he fell in with those very instruments which he himself had been

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wont to employ in the chase. He need only look about him, and see the whole pack. Here are, Pamphagus et Dorceus et Oribasus; Arcades omnes; Nebrophonosque valens et trux cum Lælape Theron, Et pedibus Pterelas et naribus utilis Agre, Hylæusque fero nuper percussus ab apro, Deque lupo concepta Nape, pecudesque secuta Pœmenis, et natis comitata Harpya duobus, Et substricta gerens Sicyonius ilia Ladon; Et niveis Leucon, et villis Asbolus atris, Et patre Dictæo sed matre Laconide nati, Labros et Agriodos, et acutæ vocis Hylactor, Quosque referre mora est.

If he had once fairly got into difficulties, and “a poinding” had gone out against him, the following would also apply: Ille fugit per quæ fuerat loca sæpe secutus Heu! famulos fugit ipse suos. Clamare libebat Actæon ego sum: Dominum cognoscite vestrum. Verba animo desunt: resonat latratibus æther.

Neither Pamphagus, nor Labros, nor Ladon of the “substricta ilia,” nor Leucon with the white wig, nor Asbolus with the black hair, nor the swift feet of Pterelas, nor the keen nostrils of Agre, nor the sharp bark of Hylactor, will relax into quiescence at his bidding, whose petitions had so often been sufficient to set all their energies in motion. How little will the memory of all his fees avail? how cruelly must he feel their fangs, whose snarling threats and tearing onset had afforded to himself so much matter of gratulation and applause, when some other was the victim! Contrasted with the elder and maturer “men of business,” who are generally attired in sober hues, the rising generation of Dandy-Clerks make a very shining appearance.—The dust of a process newly wakened from its sleep of lustrums is a sad thing on a snow-white pair of breeches; but it is amazing how clean and brilliant these young gentlemen contrive to look, and they deserve the utmost credit for it; for besides the venerable powder of resuscitated papers and documents, no trifling quantity of dust must be brought into the Parliament-House by the shoes of the multitude resorting thither, and kept flying about by the stir of their tumultuous parade. They are really the finest beaux I have seen in this city, or so at least they appeared to be, under the favourable

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circumstances of contrast in which I saw them. Their bright olive surtouts, with glossy collars of velvet—their smart green riding jackets—their waistcoats beaming in all the diversified dazzle of stripe and spot—their neckcloths à la Waterloo, or à la Belcher—all these rainbows of glory could not fail to charm the eye with a delightful sense of splendour, among such an immense hazy atmosphere of rusty black broad-cloth, and tattered bombazeens. The military swagger affected by some of these spruce scribes, and the ferocious audacity with which they seemed to be hurling their bunches of briefs from one desk to another, formed an equally striking contrast to the staid and measured step of the meditating pale-faced counsellors up to the ears in occupation on the one side,—and the careless pococurante lounge of their less busy juniors on the other. What a fine subject all this might have been for poor Bunbury! I wonder what made your friend Rose say, Your Dandy’s at a discount out of London.

The Advocates, in the midst of their peripateticism, receive their fair proportion of all the dust that is flying, and thus, perhaps, some young men of their body may have an opportunity of acquiring a fine sober brown, to which their complexions might not have been very likely to attain through the medium of hard study. Upon the whole, they are a well-thriven looking race of juvenile jurisconsults; but I certainly could not see many heads among them which Dr Spurzheim would think of setting down as belonging to so many future Voets and Pothiers. For the most part, however, they are at least so candid as to wear their own hair, and so to afford the initiated a fair opportunity of inspecting their various conformations of cranium. A few, indeed, bury all beauties and defects in that old bird’s-nest of horse-hair and pomatum, which is in this place usually adhered to by the seniors alone; for you must know the costume of the Scottish Bar is far from being regulated in the same uniform manner with that of Westminster-Hall; and those advocates, who hold no official situation under the crown, are at liberty to pace the floor of the Parliament-House with or without wigs, exactly as it may please their fancy. I confess I should think it were better, either that all had wigs, or that all wanted them; for at present the mixture of bushy heads of hair à la Berlin, or à la Cossack, with stiff rows of curls, toupees, and three tails, presents a broken and pyebald sort of aspect, to which my southern optics cannot easily reconcile themselves. Perhaps it were best to re-instate the wig in its full rights, and make it a sine qua

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non in the wardrobe of every counsellor; for if it be fairly allowed to disappear, the gown will probably follow; and in process of time, we may see the very Judges, like those Mr Fearon saw in Connecticut, giving decisions in loose great coats, and black silk neckcloths. Another circumstance that offended me in the appearance of the barristers, is their total want of rule in regard to their nether integuments. I, that have been a Pro-proctor in my day, cannot away with boots, trowsers, and gaiters, worn under a gown. I think a gown implies dress, and that the advocates should wear nothing but black breeches and stockings when in court, as is the case in the south. These are very small matters; but it is astonishing how much effect such small matters produce in the general appearance of a Court of Justice—where, indeed, above all places in the world, propriety of appearance, in regard even to the most minute things, should always be studiously considered. Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER XXX TO THE SAME

BY degrees I won my way through several different currents of the crowd, and established myself with my back to the wall, full in the centre of the Advocates’ side of the house. Here I could find leisure and opportunity to study the minutiæ of the whole scene, and in particular to “fill in my foreground,” as the painter’s phrase runs, much more accurately than when I was myself mingled in the central tumult of the place. My position resembled that of a person visiting a peristrephic panorama, who, himself immoveable in a darksome corner, beholds the whole dust and glare of some fiery battle pass, cloud upon cloud, and flash upon flash, before his eyes. Here might be seen some of the “Magnanimi Heroes,” cleaving into the mass, like furious wedges, in order to reach their appointed station—and traced in their ulterior progress only by the casual glimpses of “the proud horse-hair nodding on the crest”—while others, equally determined and keen ἐνι προμαχοισι μαχεσθαι, from their stature and agility, might be more properly compared to so many shuttles driven through the threads of an intricate web by some nimble-jointed weaver, Μικροι μεν ἀλλα Μαχηται. On one side might be observed some first-rate champion, pausing for a moment with a grin of bloody relaxation, to breathe after one ferocious and triumphant charge—his plump Sancho Panza busily arranging his harness for the next, no less ferocious. On another sits some less successful combatant, all his features screwed and twisted together, smarting under the lash of a sarcasm—or gazing blankly about him, imperfectly recovered from the stun of a retort; while perhaps some young beardless Esquire, burning for his spurs, may be discovered eyeing both of these askance, envious even of the cuts of the vanquished, and anxious, at all hazards, like Uriah the Hittite, that some letter might reach the directors of the fray, saying, “Set ye this man in the front of the battle.” The elder and more employed advocates, to have done with my similitudes, seemed for the most part, when not actually engaged in pleading, to have the habit of seating themselves on the benches, which

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extend along the whole rear of their station. Here the veteran might be seen either poring over the materials of some future discussion, or contesting bitterly with some brother veteran the propriety of some late decision, or perhaps listening with sweet smiles to the talk of some uncovered Agent, whose hand in his fob seemed to give promise of a coming fee. The most of the younger ones seemed either to promenade with an air of utter non-chalance, or to collect into groupes of four, five, or six, from whence the loud and husky cackle of some leading characters might be heard ever and anon rising triumphantly above the usual hum of the place. I could soon discover, that there are some halfdozen, perhaps, of professed wits and story-tellers, the droppings of whose inspiration are sufficient to attract round each of them, when he sets himself on his legs in the middle of the floor, a proper allowance of eyes and mouths to glisten and gape over the morning’s budget of good things—some new eccentricity of Lord Hermand, or broad bon-mot of Mr Clerk. The side of the hall frequented by these worthies, is heated by two or three large iron-stoves; and from the custom of lounging during the winter-months in the immediate vicinity of these centres of comfort, the barristers of facetious disposition have been christened by one of their brethren, the “wits of the Stove-school.” But, indeed, for aught I see, the journeyman days of the whole of the young Scotch advocates might, with great propriety, be called by the simple collective,—Stove-hood. What has a more striking effect, however, than even the glee and merriment of these young people close at hand, is the sound of pleaders pleading at a distance, the music of whose elocution, heard separate from its meaning, is not, for the most part, such as to tempt a nearer approach. At one Bar, the wig of the Judge is seen scarcely over-topping the mass of eager, bent-forward, listening admirers, assembled to do honour to some favourite speaker of the day—their faces already arrayed in an appropriate smile, wherewith to welcome the expected joke—or fixed in the attitude of discernment and penetration, as if resolved that no link of his cunning chain of ratiocination should escape their scrutiny. At another extremity, the whole paraphernalia of the Judge’s attire are exposed full to vision—all the benches around his tribunal deserted and tenantless, while some wearisome proser, to whom nobody listens except from necessity, is seen thumping the Bar before him in all the agonies of unpartaken earnestness, his hoarse clamorous voice floating desolately into thin air, “like the voice of a man crying in the wilderness—whom no man heareth.”

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The appearance of the Judges, or Lords Ordinaries, themselves, next attracted my attention, and I walked round the Hall to survey them, each in rotation, at his particular Bar. Their dress is quite different from what we are accustomed to in our civil courts in England, and bears much more resemblance to what I have seen in the portraits of the old Presidents of the French Parliaments. Indeed I believe it is not widely different from this; for the Court of Session was originally formed upon the model of the Parliament of Paris, and its costume was borrowed from that illustrious court, as well as its constitution. The Judges have wigs somewhat different from those of the Advocates, and larger in dimension; but their gowns are very splendid things, being composed of purple velvet and blue cloth and silk, with a great variety of knots and ornaments of all kinds. I could not see this vestment without much respect, when I reflected on the great number of men celebrated both for greatness and goodness that have worn it. It is the same gown in which the venerable Duncan Forbes of Culloden delivered judgment—in which Kaimes, and Hailes, and Braxfield, and Monboddo, and Woodhouselee—and later, perhaps greater than all, in which Blair was clothed. It struck me, that the Judges in the Outer Court were rather younger men than we commonly see on the Bench in an English Court of Law; but their physiognomies, and the manner in which they seemed to be listening to the pleaders before them, were in general quite as I could have wished to see them. At one end sat Lord Gillies, brother to the excellent Historian of Greece, and Translator of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Ethics. He has at first sight an air of laziness about him, and seems as if he grudged the labour of lifting up his eyes to view the countenance of the person addressing him. But every now and then, he muttered some short question or remark, which showed abundantly that his intellect was awake to all the intricacies of the case; and I could see, that when the Advocates were done, he had no difficulty in separating the essence of the plea from all the adventitious matter with which their briefs had instructed them to clog and embarrass it. He has a countenance very expressive of acumen, and a pair of the finest black eyes I ever saw, although he commonly keeps them half-shrouded under their lids—and I have no doubt, from the mode in which he delivered himself, that he must have been a most accomplished debater when at the Bar. At the other extremity, the greatest stream of business seemed to rush in the direction of Lord Pitmilly’s tribunal. This Judge has the most delightful expression of suavity and patience in his look and manner, that I ever saw in any Judge, unless it be our own venerable old Chan-

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cellor Eldon. The calm conscientious way in which he seemed to listen to every thing that was said, the mild good-tempered smile with which he showed every now and then that he was not to be deceived by any subtilty or quirk, and the clear and distinct manner in which he explained the grounds of his decision, left me at no loss to account for the extraordinary pressure of business with which this excellent Judge appeared to be surrounded. Before these two Lords it was, that all the principal causes of the morning appeared to be argued. I happened to be standing close beside Lord Pitmilly’s Bar, when a pleading was going on for aliment of a natural child, at the instance of a servant-wench against an Irish student, who had come to Edinburgh to attend the medical classes. The native of the Emerald Isle was personally present in rear of his counsel, arrayed in a tarnished green great-coat, and muttering bitterly in his national accent. I heard him say to one near him, that he had been prevented from getting out of the way in proper time, by the harsh procedure of a grocer in Drummond-street, whose account was unpaid, and who had detained him by what he called a “meditatione fugæ warrant.” The poor girl’s case was set forth with great breadth of colouring and verity of detail by Mr Clerk, (a fine sagacious-looking old gentleman, of whom I shall speak anon,) and the Bar was speedily surrounded by close ranks of listeners. Mr Jeffrey, who was of counsel for the son of Erin, observed that the exceeding rapidity with which the crowd clustered itself around did not escape my attention, and whispered to me, that cases of this kind are always honoured with an especial allowance of such honour—being regarded as elegant nugæ, or tasteful relaxations from the drier routine of ordinary practice—somewhat like snatches of the Belles-Lettres in the midst of a course of hard reading. I could perceive, that even the grimmest and most morose-looking Men of Business would, in passing, endeavour to wedge their noses into the crowd, and after catching a few words of the pleading, would turn away grinning like satyrs, with the relish of what they had heard still mantling in their opaque imaginations. Jeffrey also told me, that Irish cases of the sort above-mentioned are extremely frequent even in the Scottish courts; and, indeed, the great Philips himself seems never to enjoy the full command and swing of his powers, unless on the subject of a seduction; so that it may be said with truth of this wonderful man, and the gallant nation to which he belongs, that they mutually stand in much need of each other. ’Tis well that they should sin, so he may shine.

P. M.

LETTER XXXI TO THE SAME

DEAR WILLIAMS, THE walls of this Outer House are in general quite bare; for the few old portraits hung here and there, are insufficient to produce any impression in the general view; but the Hall has lately received one very important ornament—namely, a statue of the late Lord Melville by Chantry, which has been placed on a pedestal of considerable elevation in the centre of the floor. As a piece of art, I cannot say that I consider this statue as at all equal to some others by the same masterly hand, which I have seen elsewhere. I am aware, however, that it is seen to very little advantage in the situation where it is placed; and, moreover, that no statue can be seen to its utmost advantage, when it is quite new from the chisel of the sculptor. It requires some time before the marble can be made to reconcile itself with the atmosphere around it; and while the surface continues to offend the eye by its first cold glare of chalky whiteness, it is not quite easy for an ordinary connoisseur to form a proper idea of the lines and forms set forth in this unharmonious material. Making allowance for all this, however, I can scarcely bring myself to imagine, that the statue of Melville will ever be thought to do honour to the genius of Chantry. There is some skill displayed in the management of the Viscount’s robes; and in the face itself, there is a very considerable likeness to Lord Melville—which is enough, as your recollection must well assure you, to save it from any want of expressiveness. But the effect of the whole is, I think, very trivial, compared with what such an artist might have been expected to produce, when he had so fine a subject as Dundas to stimulate his energies. It is not often now-a-days, that an artist can hope to meet with such a union of intellectual and corporeal grandeur, as were joined together in this Friend and Brother of William Pitt. This statue has been erected entirely at the expence of the gentlemen of the Scottish Bar, and it is impossible not to admire and honour the feelings, which called forth from them such a magnificent mark of respect for the memory of their illustrious Brother. Lord Melville

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walked the boards of the Parliament House during no less than twenty years, before he began to reside constantly in London as Treasurer of the Navy; and during the whole of this period, his happy temper and manners, and friendly open-hearted disposition, rendered him a universal favourite among all that followed the same course of life. By all true Scotchmen, indeed, of whatever party in church or state, Melville was always regarded with an eye of kindliness and partiality. Whig and Tory agreed in loving him; and how could it be otherwise, for although nobody surely could be more firm in his political principles than he himself was, he allowed no feelings, arising out of these principles, to affect his behaviour in the intercourse of common life. He was always happy to drink his bottle of port with any worthy man of any party; and he was always happy to oblige personally those, in common with whom he had any recollections of good-humoured festivity. But the great source of his popularity was unquestionably nothing more than his intimate and most familiar acquaintance with the actual state of Scotland, and its inhabitants, and all their affairs. Here in Edinburgh, unless Mr Wastle exaggerates very much, there was no person of any consideration, whose whole connections and concerns were not perfectly well known to him. And I already begin to see enough of the structure of Scottish society, to appreciate somewhat of the advantages which this knowledge must have placed in the hands of so accomplished a statesman. The services which he had rendered to this part of the island were acknowledged by the greater part of those who by no means approved of the general system of policy in which he had so great a share; and among the subscribers to his statue were very many, whose names no solicitation could have brought to appear under any similar proposals with regard to any other Tory in the world.* In the two Inner Houses, as they are called, (where causes are ultimately decided by the two great Divisions of the Court,) are placed statues of two of the most eminent persons that have ever presided over the _____________________________________________ * As one little trait, illustrative of Lord Melville’s manner of conducting himself to the people of Scotland, I may mention, that to the latest period of his life, whenever he came to Edinburgh, he made a point of calling in person on all the old ladies with whom he had been acquainted in the days of his youth. He might be seen going about, and climbing up to the most aërial habitacula of ancient maidens and widows; and it is probable he gained more by this, than he could have gained by almost any other thing, even in the good opinion of people who might themselves be vainly desirous of having an interview with the great statesman.

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administration of justice in Scotland. In the hall of the Second Division, behind the chair of the Lord Justice Clerk, who presides on that bench, is placed the statue of Duncan Forbes of Culloden; and in a similar situation, in the First Division, that of the Lord President Blair, who died only a few years ago. The statue of Culloden is by Roubilliac, and executed quite in his usual style as to its detail; but the earnest attitude of the Judge, stooping forward and extending his right hand, and the noble character of his physiognomy, are sufficient to redeem many of those defects which all must perceive. The other statue—that of Blair, is another work of Chantry, and, I think, a vastly superior one to the Melville. The drapery, indeed, is very faulty—it is narrow and scanty, and appears to cling to the limbs like the wet tunic of the Venus Anadyomene. But nothing can be grander than the attitude and whole air of the figure. The Judge is not represented as leaning forward, and speaking with eagerness like Forbes, but as bending his head towards the ground, and folded in the utmost depth of quiet meditation; and this, I think, shews the conception of a much greater artist than the Frenchman. The head itself is one of the most superb things that either Nature or Art has produced in modern times. The forehead is totally bald, and shaped in a most heroic style of beauty—the nose springs from its arch with the firmness and breadth of a genuine antique—the lips are drawn together and compressed in a way that gives the idea of intensest abstraction—and the whole head is such, that it might almost be placed upon the bust of the Theseus, without offence to the majesty of that inimitable torso. The most wonderful circumstance is, that, unless all my friends be deceived, the statue, in all these points, is a most faithful copy of the original. Nor, to judge from the style in which the memory of the man is spoken of by all with whom I have conversed on the subject of his merits, am I inclined to doubt that it may have been so. He died very suddenly, and in the same week with Lord Melville, who had been through life his most dear and intimate friend; and the sensation produced all over Scotland by this two-fold calamity, is represented to have been one of the most impressive and awful things in the world. In regard to the best interests of the Scottish nation, perhaps the Judge might be even a greater loss than the Statesman; for there seems to be no reason to doubt, that he was cut off not far from the commencement of a judicial career, which, if it had been continued through such a space of time as the ordinary course of nature might have promised, would have done more for perfecting the structure of the Civil Jurisprudence of Scotland, than is likely to be accomplished under many

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successive generations of less extraordinary men. It would appear as if the whole of his clear and commanding intellect had been framed and tempered in such a way, as to qualify him peculiarly and expressly for being what the Stagyrite has finely called “a living Equity”—one of the happiest, and perhaps one of the rarest, of all the combinations of mental powers. By all men of all parties, the merits of this great man also were alike acknowledged, and his memory is at this moment alike had in reverence by them all. Even the keenest of his now surviving political opponents, himself one of the greatest lawyers that Scotland ever has produced, is said to have contemplated the supreme intellect of Blair with a feeling of respectfulness not much akin to the common cast of his disposition. After hearing the President overturn, without an effort, in the course of a few clear and short sentences, a whole mass of ingenious sophistry, which it had cost himself much labour to erect, and which appeared to be regarded as insurmountable by all the rest of his audience, this great Barrister is said to have sat for a few seconds, ruminating with much bitterness on the discomfiture of his cause, and then to have muttered between his teeth, “My man! God Almighty spared nae pains when he made your brains.” Those that have seen Mr Clerk, and know his peculiarities, appreciate the value of this compliment, and do not think the less of it because of its coarseness.

LETTER XXXII TO THE SAME

I BELIEVE I repeated to you, at the close of my last letter, a remark of Mr Clerk concerning the President Blair. This Mr Clerk is unquestionably, at the present time, the greatest man among those who derive their chief fame from their appearances at the Scottish Bar. His face and figure attracted my particular attention, before I had the least knowledge of his name, or suspicion of his surpassing celebrity. He has, by some accident in infancy, been made lame in one of his limbs; but he has notwithstanding every appearance of great bodily vigour and activity. I remember your instructions concerning the Barristers of Scotland, and after having visited their Courts with great assiduity, during the greater part of my stay in this place, shall now proceed to draw you portraits of the most eminent, as nearly as I can hit it, in the style you wish me to employ. I must begin with Mr Clerk, for, by the unanimous consent of his brethren, and indeed of the whole of the profession, he is the present Coryphæus of the Bar—Juris consultorum sui seculi facile princeps. Others there are that surpass him in a few particular points, both of learning and of practice; but, on the whole, his superiority is entirely unrivalled and undisputed. Those who approach the nearest to him, are indeed so much his juniors, that he cannot fail to have an immense ascendency over them, both from the actual advantages of his longer study and experience, and, without offence to him or them be it added, from the effects of their early admiration of him, while he was as yet far above their sphere. Do not suppose, however, that I mean to represent any part of the respect with which these gentlemen treat their senior, as the result of empty prejudice. Never was any man less of a quack than Mr Clerk; the very essence of his character is scorn of ornament, and utter loathing of affectation. He is the plainest, the shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men; his sceptre owes the whole of its power to its weight—nothing to glitter. It is impossible to imagine a physiognomy more expressive of the character of a great lawyer and barrister. The features are in themselves good—at least a painter would call them so; and the upper part of the

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profile has as fine lines as could be wished. But then, how the habits of the mind have stamped their traces on every part of the face! What sharpness, what razor-like sharpness, has indented itself about the wrinkles of his eye-lids; the eyes themselves so quick, so gray, such bafflers of scrutiny, such exquisite scrutinizers, how they change their expression—it seems almost how they change their colour—shifting from contracted, concentrated blackness, through every shade of brown, blue, green, and hazel, back into their own open, gleaming gray again! How they glisten into a smile of disdain!—Aristotle says, that all laughter springs from emotions of conscious superiority.—I never saw the Stagyrite so well illustrated, as in the smile of this gentleman. He seems to be affected with the most delightful and balmy feelings, by the contemplation of some soft-headed, prosing driveller, racking his poor brain, or bellowing his lungs out—all about something which he, the smiler, sees through so thoroughly, so distinctly. Blunder follows blunder; the mist thickens about the brain of the bewildered hammerer; and every plunge of the bog-trotter—every deepening shade of his confusion—is attested by some more copious infusion of Sardonic suavity, into the horrible, ghastly, grinning smile of the happy Mr Clerk. How he chuckles over the solemn spoon whom he hath fairly got into his power! When he rises, at the conclusion of his display, he seems to collect himself like a kite above a covey of partridges; he is in no hurry to come down, but holds his victims “with his glittering eye,” and smiles sweetly, and yet more sweetly, the bitter assurance of their coming fate; then out he stretches his arm, as the kite may his wing, and changing the smile by degrees into a frown, and drawing down his eye-brows from their altitude among the wrinkles of his forehead, and making them to hang like fringes quite over his diminishing and brightening eyes, and mingling a tincture of deeper scorn in the wave of his lips, and projecting his chin, and suffusing his whole face with the very livery of wrath, how he pounces with a scream upon his prey—and, may the Lord have mercy upon their unhappy souls!— He is so sure of himself, and he has the happy knack of seeming to be so sure of his case, that the least appearance of labour, or concern, or nicety of arrangement, or accuracy of expression, would take away from the imposing effect of his cool, careless, scornful, and determined negligence. Even the greatest of his opponents sit as it were rebuked before his gaze of intolerable derision. But careless and scornful as he is, what a display of skilfulness in the way of putting his statements; what command of intellect in the strength with which he deals the irresistible

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blows of his arguments—blows of all kinds, fibbers, cross-buttockers, but most often and most delightedly sheer facers—choppers.—“Ars est celare artem,” is his motto; or rather, “Usus ipse natura est;” for where was there ever such an instance of the certain sway of tact and experience? It is truly a delightful thing, to be a witness of this mighty intellectual gladiator, scattering every thing before him, like a king, upon his old accustomed arena; with an eye swift as lightning to discover the unguarded point of his adversary, and a hand steady as iron to direct his weapon, and a mask of impenetrable stuff, that throws back, like a rock, the prying gaze that would dare to retaliate upon his own lynx-like penetration—what a champion is here! It is no wonder that every litigant in this covenanting land should have learned to look on it as a mere tempting of Providence to omit retaining John Clerk. As might be expected from a man of his standing in years and in talent, this great advocate disdains to speak any other than the language of his own country. I am not sure, indeed, but there may be some little tinge of affectation in this pertinacious adherence to both the words and the music of his Doric dialect. However, as he has perfectly the appearance and manners of a gentleman, and even, every now and then, (when it so likes him), something of the air of the courtier about him,— there is an impression quite the reverse of vulgarity produced by the mode of his speaking; and, in this respect, he is certainly quite in a different situation from some of his younger brethren, who have not the excuse of age for the breadth of their utterance, nor, what is perhaps of greater importance, the same truly antique style in its breadth. Of this, indeed, I could not pretend to be a judge; but some of my friends assured me, that nothing could be more marked than the difference between the Scotch of those who learned it sixty years ago, and that of this younger generation. These last, they observed, have few opportunities of hearing Scotch spoken, but among servants, &c. so that there clings to all their own expressions, when they make use of the neglected dialect, a rich flavour of the hall, or the stable. Now, Mr Clerk, who is a man of excellent family and fashion, spent all his early years among ladies and gentlemen, who spoke nothing whatever but Scotch; and even I could observe (or so, at least, I persuaded myself,) that his language had a certain cast of elegance, even in the utmost breadth. But the truth is, that the matter of his orations is far too good to allow of much attention being paid to its manner; and after a little time I scarcely remarked that he was speaking a dialect different from my own, excepting when, screwing his features into their utmost bitterness, or else relaxing them

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into their broadest glee, he launched forth some mysterious vernacularism of wrath or merriment, to the tenfold confusion or tenfold delight of those for whose use it was intended. I had almost forgotten to mention, that this ancient barrister, who at the Bar has so much the air of having never thought of anything but his profession, is, in fact, quite the reverse of a mere lawyer. Like old Voet, who used to be so much laughed at by the Leyden jurisconsults for his frequenting the town-hall in that city, (where there is, it seems, a very curious collection of paintings), Mr Clerk is a great connoisseur in pictures, and devotes to them a very considerable portion of his time. He is not a mere connoisseur, however, and, indeed, I suspect, carries as much true knowledge of the art in his little finger, as the whole reporting committee of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh do in their heads. The truth is, that he is himself a capital artist, and had he given himself entirely to the art he loves so well, would have been, I have little doubt, by far the greatest master Scotland ever has produced. I went one day, by mere accident, into my friend John Ballantyne’s Sale-room, at the moment when that most cunning of all tempters had in his hand a little pen and ink sketch by Mr Clerk, drawn upon the outer page of a reclaiming petition—probably while some stupid opponent supposed himself to be uttering things highly worthy of Mr Clerk’s undivided attention. I bought the scrap for a mere trifle; but I assure you I value it very highly. I have shown it to Mrs ——, and Tom ——, and several others of my friends, and they all agree it is quite a bijou. The subject is Bathsheba, with her foot in the water. The David is inimitable. Mr Clerk is a mighty patron of artists, and has a splendid gallery of pictures in his own possession. But of it I shall perhaps have another opportunity of speaking. His rage for collecting, however, is by no means confined to pictures. He has a stock of dogs, that would serve to keep the whole population of a Mahometan city in disgust, and a perfect menagerie of the genus felinum. If one goes to consult him in his own chambers, I am told he is usually to be found sitting with a huge black Tom cat on his shoulder, (like the black Poodle of Albertus Magnus), and surrounded in every direction with familiars of the same species, but of lesser dimensions— ——Spirits, black, white, and grey.

The great Tom, however, is the pet par excellence; and, I am told, Mr Clerk maintains a milch-cow exclusively or nominally for his use. Truly

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such a sanctuary, with such accompaniments, might, I think, form a subject not unworthy of his own masterly pencil. Upon the whole, this gentleman at this moment holds a place in the public estimation, little if any thing inferior to the most celebrated men his country possesses even in this its age of wonders. That such eminence should be attained by a person of this profession in a country situated as Scotland is, forms at once a very high compliment to the profession itself, and the most unequivocal proof of the masterly and commanding power of the man’s intellect. If I have ever seen any countenance which I should consider as the infallible index of originality and genius—such is the countenance of Mr Clerk; and everything he says and does is in perfect harmony with its language.

LETTER XXXIII TO THE SAME

THERE cannot be a greater contrast between any two individuals of eminent acquirements, than there is between Mr Clerk and the gentleman who ranks next to him at the Scottish Bar—Mr Cranstoun. They mutually set off each other to great advantage; they are rivals in nothing. Notwithstanding their total dissimilitude in almost every respect, they are well nigh equally admired by every one. I am much mistaken if anything could furnish a more unequivocal testimony to the talents of them both. It was my fortune to see Mr Cranstoun for the first time, as he rose to make his reply to a fervid, masculine, homely harangue of my old favourite; and I was never less disposed to receive favourably the claims of a stranger upon my admiration. There was something, however, about the new speaker which would not permit me to refuse him my attention; although, I confess, I could scarcely bring myself to listen to him with much gusto for several minutes. I felt, to use a simile in Mr Clerk’s own way, like a person whose eyes have been dazzled with some strong, rich, luxuriant piece of the Dutch or Flemish school, and who cannot taste, in immediate transition, the more pale, calm, correct gracefulness of an Italian Fresco; nevertheless, the eyes become cool as they gaze, and the mind is gradually yielded up to a less stimulant, but in the end a yet more captivating and soothing species of seduction. The pensive and pallid countenance, every delicate line of which seemed to breathe the very spirit of compact thoughtfulness—the mild, contemplative blue eyes, with now and then a flash of irresistible fire in them—the lips so full of precision and tastefulness, not perhaps without a dash of fastidiousness in the compression of their curves—the gentle, easy, but firm and dignified air and attitude—every thing about him had its magic, and the charm was not long in winning me effectually into its circle. The stream of his discourse flowed on calmly and clearly; the voice itself was mellow, yet commanding; the pronunciation exact, but not pedantically so; the ideas rose gradually out of each other, and seemed to clothe themselves in the best and most accurate of phrase-

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ology, without the exertion of a single thought in its selection. The fascination was ere long complete; and, when he closed his speech, it seemed to me as if I had never before witnessed any specimen of the true “melliflua majestas” of Quinctilian. The only defect in his manner of speaking, (and it is, after all, by no means a constant defect,) is a certain appearance of coldness, which, I suspect, is nearly inseparable from so much accuracy. Mr Cranstoun is a man of high birth and refined habits, and he has profited abundantly by all the means of education, which either his own or the sister country can afford. His success in his profession was not early, (although never was any success so rapid, after it once had a beginning); and he spent, therefore, many years of his manhood in the exquisite intellectual enjoyments of an elegant scholar, before he had either inclination or occasion to devote himself entirely to the more repulsive studies of the law. It is no wonder, then, that, in spite of his continual practice, and of his great natural eloquence, the impression of these delightful years should have become too deep ever to be concealed from view; and that even in the midst of the most brilliant displays of his forensic exertion, there should mingle something in his air, which reminds us, that there is still another sphere, wherein his spirit would be yet more perfectly at home. To me, I must confess, although I am aware that you will laugh at me for doing so, there was always present, while I listened to this accomplished speaker, a certain feeling of pain. I could scarcely help regretting, that he should have become a barrister at all. The lucid power of investigation—the depth of argument—the richness of illustration— all set forth and embalmed in such a strain of beautiful and unaffected language, appeared to me to be almost too precious for the purposes to which they were devoted—even although, in this their devotion, they were also ministering to my own delight. I could not help saying to myself, what a pity that he, who might have added a new name to the most splendid triumphs of his country—who might perhaps have been equal to any one as historian, philosopher, or statesman, should have been induced, in the early and unconscious diffidence of his genius, to give himself to a profession which can never afford any adequate remuneration, either for the talents which he has devoted to its service, or the honour which he has conferred upon its name. Having this feeling, I of course could not join in the regret which I heard expressed by all my friends in Edinburgh, in consequence of a prevailing rumour, that Mr Cranstoun intends ere long to withdraw himself from the practice of his profession; and yet I most perfectly

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sympathise in the feelings of those, who, themselves compelled to adhere to those toils from which he is enabled to shake himself free, are sorry to witness the removal of one, who was sufficient of himself alone to shed an air of grace and dignity over the whole profession—and almost, as it were, over all that belong to it. Well, indeed, may they be excused for wishing to defer as long as possible the removal of such a brother. To use the old Greek proverb, which Pericles has applied on a more tragical, but not on a more fitting occasion—it is, indeed, “taking away the spring from their year.” In the retreat of Mr Cranstoun, however, (should it really take place,) even these gentlemen, when they have leisure for a little more reflection, will probably see anything rather than a cause of regret. The mind which possesses within itself so many sources of delightful exertion, can never be likely to sink into the wretchedness of indolence; and in whatever way its energies may be employed, there can be no question that good fruit, and lasting, will be the issue. Whether he return to those early pursuits in which he once promised to do so much, and of which, in the midst of his severer occupations, so many beautiful glimpses have from time to time escaped him; or whether he seek, in the retirement of his honourable ease, to reduce into an enduring form the product of his long assiduity in the study of his profession—whether he may prefer to take a high place in the literature, or the very highest in the jurisprudence of his country—all will acknowledge that he has “chosen a better part,” than he could have ever obtained, by remaining in the dust and fever of a profession, which must be almost as fatiguing to the body as it is to the mind.

LETTER XXXIV TO THE SAME

I HAVE already described Mr Jeffrey’s appearance to you so often, that I need not say any thing in addition here, although it is in the ParliamentHouse certainly that his features assume their most powerful expression, and that, upon the whole, the exterior of this remarkable man is seen to the greatest advantage. When not pleading in one or other of the Courts, or before the Ordinary, he may commonly be seen standing in some corner, entertaining or entertained by such wit as suits the atmosphere of the place; but it is seldom that his occupations permit him to remain long in any such position. Ever and anon his lively conversation is interrupted by some undertaker-faced Solicitor, or perhaps by some hot bustling Exquisite-clerk, who comes to announce the opening of some new debate, at which the presence of Mr Jeffrey is necessary; and away he darts like lightning to the indicated region, cleaving his way through the surrounding crowd with irresistible alacrity,—the more clumsy or more grave doer that had set him in motion, vainly puffing and elbowing to keep close in his wake. A few seconds have scarcely elapsed, till you hear the sharp, shrill, but deep-toned trumpet of his voice, lifting itself in some far-off corner, high over the discordant Babel that intervenes— period following period in one unbroken chain of sound, as if its links had had no beginning, and were to have no end. I have told you in a former letter, that his pronunciation is wretched— it is a mixture of provincial English, with undignified Scotch, altogether snappish and offensive, and which would be quite sufficient to render the elocution of a more ordinary man utterly disgusting; but the flow of his eloquence is so overpoweringly rapid, so unweariedly energetic, so entirely unlike every other man’s mode of speaking, that the pronunciation of the particular words is quite lost to one’s view, in the midst of that continual effort which is required, in order to make the understanding, even the ear of the listener, keep pace with the glowing velocity of the declamation. His words come more profusely than words ever came before, and yet it seems as if they were quite unable to follow, passibus aequis, the still more amazing speed of his thought. You sit,

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while minute follows minute uncounted and unheeded, in a state of painful excitation, as if you were in a room over-lighted with gas, or close under the crash of a whole pealing orchestra. This astonishing fluency and vivacity, if possessed by a person of very inferior talents, might for a little be sufficient to create an illusion in his favour; and I have heard that such things have been. But the more you can overcome the effect of Mr Jeffrey’s dazzling rapidity, and concentrate your attention on the ideas embodied with such supernatural facility, the greater will be your admiration. It is impossible to conceive the existence of a more fertile, teeming intellect. The flood of his illustration seems to be at all times rioting up to the very brim—yet he commands and restrains it with equal strength and skill; or, if it does boil over for a moment, it spreads such a richness all around, that it is impossible to find fault with its extravagance. Surely never was such a luxuriant “copia fandi,” united with so much terseness of thought, and brilliancy of imagination, and managed with so much unconscious, almost instinctive ease. If he be not the most delightful, he is certainly by far the most wonderful of speakers. Like Cranstoun, this splendid rhetorician was many years at the Bar, before his success was at all proportioned to his talents. The reputation enjoyed by his Review, was both a friendly and a hostile thing to him as a barrister; for it excited universal attention to him whenever he made any appearance at the Bar, and yet it prevented many people from soliciting him to undertake the conduct of their cases, by inspiring a sort of fear, that his other, and more delightful, and better-rewarded pursuits, might perhaps prevent him from doing full justice to matters of everyday character—the paltry disputes of traders, and the mean tricks of attornies. All this, however, has been long since got over, and Jeffrey is now higher than almost any of his brethren, in his general character of an advocate, and decidedly above them all in more than one particular department of practice. The same powers which have enabled him to seize with so firm a grasp the opinion of the public, in regard to matters of taste and literature, give him, above all, sway unrivalled over the minds of a jury. There cannot be a finer display of ingenuity, than his mode of addressing a set of plain conscientious men, whom it is his business to bamboozle. He does not indeed call up, as some have dared to do, the majesty of sleeping passions, to overawe the trembling indecision of judgment. The magic he wields is not of that high cast which makes the subject of its working the conscious, yet willing slave of the sorcerer. His is a more cunning, but quite as effectual a species of

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tempting. He flatters the vanity of men, by making them believe, that the best proof of their own superiority will be their coming to the conclusion which he has proposed; and they submit with servile stupidity, at the very moment that they are pluming themselves on displaying the boldness and independence of adventurous intellect. In criminal trials, and in the newly-established Jury-Court for civil cases, Mr Jeffrey is now completely lord of the ascendant; at least, he has only “one brother near the throne.”

LETTER XXXV TO THE SAME

THE three gentlemen whom I have already described to you, stand together, at a considerable elevation, above all the rest of their brethren, chiefly because they possess each of them a union of powers and talents, that must be sought for separately, (and may be found separately)— elsewhere. There are, indeed, no persons at present at the Scottish Bar, who can pretend to be quite so great lawyers as Mr Clerk or Mr Cranstoun, but there are some who come so near to them in this respect, that their inferiority would be much less observed or acknowledged, did they possess any of the extraordinary abilities in pleading displayed by those very remarkable men. And, in like manner, there are some others who speak so well, that they might easily take place with Mr Cranstoun or Mr Jeffrey, did they bring with them any measure of legal knowledge, which might sustain a comparison with that of the former, or were they capable of rivalling that intuitive keenness of intellect or of genius, which supplies, and more than supplies, the want of ordinary drudgery and ordinary information in the case of the latter. There is one gentleman, however, whose inferiority of practice I am much at a loss to account for, because I understand that he is, if not a first-rate, certainly a very excellent lawyer, and I have myself seen and heard enough to be able to attest, that as a pleader, he is, in many respects, of the very first order of eminence. His practice, however, is also very considerable, and perhaps he is inferior in this respect to his rivals, only because it is impossible that more than three or four men should, at the same time, hold first-rate practice at this Bar. He seems to have been cast by Nature in the happiest of all possible moulds, for the ordinary routine of business, and withal to have received abundantly gifts that might qualify him for doing justice to many of the highest and noblest functions, which one of his profession can ever be called upon to discharge. Nay, great and splendid and multifarious as are the faculties of the three wonderful men of whom I have spoken to you, there are some things in which they are each and all of them totally and manifestly deficient, and it so happens that those very things are to be

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found in perfection in this Mr Henry Cockburn. This, however, is only adding to a difficulty, which, as I have already said, I find myself unable adequately to resolve. It is, I think, a thousand pities that this gentleman should wear a wig in pleading; for when he throws off that incumbrance, and appears in his natural shape, nothing can be finer than the form of his head. He is quite bald, and his is one of those foreheads, which, in spite of antiquity, are the better for wanting hair. Full of the lines of discernment and acumen immediately above the eye-brows, and over these again of the marks of imagination and wit, his skull rises highest of all in the region of veneration; and this structure, I apprehend, coincides exactly as it should do with the peculiarities of his mind and temperament. His face also is one of a very striking kind—pale and oval in its outline, having the nose perfectly aquiline, although not very large—the mouth rather wide, but, nevertheless, firm and full of meaning—the eyes beautifully shaped, in colour of a rich clear brown, and capable of conveying a greater range of expression than almost any I have seen. At first, one sees nothing (I mean when he wears his wig) but a countenance of great shrewdness, and a pair of eyes that seem to be as keen as those of a falcon; but it is delightful to observe, when he gets animated with the subject of his discourse, how this countenance vibrates into harmony with the feelings he would convey, and how these eyes, above all, lose every vestige of their sharpness of glance, and are made to soften into the broadest and sweetest smile of good humour, or kindle with bright beams, eloquent to overflowing of deepest sympathy in all the nobler and more mysterious workings of the human heart. It is when these last kinds of expression reveal themselves, that one feels wherein Mr Cockburn is superior to all his more celebrated rivals. Of all the great pleaders of the Scottish Bar, he is the only one who is capable of touching, with a bold and assured hand, the chords of feeling; who can, by one plain word and one plain look, convey the whole soul of tenderness, or appeal, with the authority of a true prophet, to a yet higher class of feelings, which slumber in many bosoms, but are dead, I think, in none. As every truly pathetic speaker must be, Mr Cockburn is a homely speaker; but he carries his homeliness to a length which I do not remember ever to have heard any other truly great speaker venture upon. He uses the Scottish dialect—always its music, and not unfrequently its words—quite as broadly as Mr Clerk, and perhaps, at first hearing, with rather more vulgarity of effect—for he is a young man, and I have already hinted, that no young man can speak Scotch with the same

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impunity as an old one. Nevertheless, I am sure, no man who has witnessed the effect which Mr Cockburn produces upon a Scottish Jury, would wish to see him alter any thing in his mode of addressing them. He is the best teller of a plain story I ever heard. He puts himself completely upon a level with those to whom he speaks; he enters into all the feelings with which ordinary persons are likely to listen to the first statement from a partial mouth, and endeavours, with all his might, to destroy the impression of distrustfulness, which he well knows he has to encounter. He utters no word which he is not perfectly certain his hearers understand, and he points out no inference before he has prepared the way for it, by making his hearers understand perfectly how he himself has been brought to adopt it. He puts himself in the place of his audience; an obvious rule, no doubt; but in practice, above all others, difficult, and which it requires the skill of a very master in the knowledge of human nature to follow with precision. Instead of labouring, as most orators do, to impress on the minds of his audience a high notion of his own powers and attainments—this man seems to be anxious about nothing except to make them forget that he wears a gown, and to be satisfied that they are listening to a person who thinks, feels, and judges, exactly like themselves. He despises utterly the Ciceronian and Pindaric maxim, Χρὴ θέμεν πρόσωπον τηλαυγές.

It is not his ambition to be admired: he wishes only to be trusted. He does not, by one word or gesture, show that he aspires to be reckoned a great man; but it is plain, he would give the world they should believe him to be an honest one. And after he has been allowed to tell his story in his own way, for ten minutes, I would defy Diogenes himself to doubt it. His use of the language, and his still more exquisite use of the images and allusions of common Scottish life, must contribute in the most powerful manner to his success in this first great object of all his rhetoric. There is an air of broad and undisguised sincerity in the simple tones and energetic phrases he employs, which finds its way like a charm to the very bottom of the hearts around him. He sees it painted in their beaming and expanding faces, and sees, and knows, and feels at once, that his eloquence is persuasive. Once so far victorious, he is thenceforth irresistible. He has established an understanding between himself and his audience, a feeling of fellowship and confidence of communion,

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which nothing can disturb. The electricity of thought and of sentiment passes from his face to theirs, and thrills back again from theirs to his. He has fairly come into contact; he sees their breasts lie bare to his weapon, and he will make no thrust in vain. I heard him address a jury the other day in behalf of a criminal, and never did I so much admire the infallible tact of his homely eloquence. In the first part of his speech, he made use of nothing but the most pedestrian language, and the jokes with which he interspersed his statement were familiar even to coarseness, although the quaintness of his humorous diction was more than enough to redeem that defect. Nothing could surpass the cunning skill with which he threw together circumstances apparently (and essentially) remote, in order to make out a feasible story for his culprit, and for a time it seemed as if he had succeeded in making the jury see everything with such eyes as he had been pleased to give them. But when he came upon one fact, which even his ingenuity could not varnish, and which even their confidence could not be brought to pass over, there needed not a single word to let him see exactly in what situation he stood. He read their thoughts in their eyes, and turned the canvas with the touch of a magician. Instead of continuing to press upon their unwilling understandings, he threw himself at once upon the open hearts which he had gained. The whole expression of his physiognomy was changed in an instant, and a sympathetic change fell softly and darkly upon every face that was turned to him. His baffled ingenuity, his detected sophistry, all was forgotten in a moment. He had drawn more powerful arrows from his quiver, and he prepared to pierce with them whom he listed. His voice was no longer clear and distinct, but broken and trembling—his look had lost its brightness, and his attitude its firmness. His lips quivered, and his tongue faultered, and a large drop gathered slowly under his eyelids, through which the swimming pupil shot faint and languid rays, that were more eloquent than words. And yet his words, though they came slowly, and fell heavily, were far better than eloquent. The criminal had been the son of respectable parents—and he was yet young—and he had no hope but in their mercy; and well did his advocate know what topics to press on men that were themselves sons and fathers—and themselves conscious of weaknesses and errors and transgressions. It was now that I felt, in all its potency, the intense propriety of the native dialect, in which he chose to deliver himself. The feelings and sympathies which he wished to nourish—the reverend images which he wished to call up in aid of his failing

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argument—would have appeared weak and dim in comparison, had they been set forth in any other than the same speech to whose music the ears around him had been taught to thrill in infancy. The operation of translating them into a less familiar tongue, would have chilled the fresh fervour of Those common thoughts of Mother Earth, Her simplest thoughts, her simplest tears.

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The person against whom Mr Cockburn is most frequently pitched in the Jury Court for civil cases, is Mr Jeffrey; and after what I have said of both, you will easily believe that it is a very delightful thing to witness the different means by which these two most accomplished speakers endeavour to attain the same ends. It is the wisest thing either of them can do, to keep as wide as possible from the track which Nature has pointed out to the other, and both are in general so wise as to follow implicitly and exclusively her infallible direction. In the play of his wit, the luxuriance of his imagination, the beauty of his expression, Mr Jeffrey is as much beyond his rival, as in the depth of his reasoning, and the general richness and commanding energy of his whole intellect. In a case where the reason of his hearers alone is concerned, he has faculties which enable him to seize from the beginning, and preserve to the end, a total and unquestioned superiority. There is no speaker in Britain that deals out his illustrations with so princely a profusion, or heaps upon every image and every thought, that springs from an indefatigable intellect, so lavish a garniture of most exquisite and most apposite language. There is no man who generalizes with a tact so masterly as Jeffrey; no multiplicity of facts can distract or dazzle him for a moment; he has a clue that brings him safe and triumphant out of

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every labyrinth, and he walks in the darkest recesses of his detail, with the air and the confidence of one that is sure of his conclusion, and sees it already bright before him, while every thing is Chaos and Erebus to his bewildered attendants. The delight which he communicates to his hearers, by the display of powers so extraordinary, is sufficient to make them rejoice in the confession of their own inferiority; careless of the point to which his steps are turned, they soon are satisfied to gaze upon his brightness, and be contented that such a star cannot lead them into darkness. A plain man, who for the first time is addressed by him, experiences a kind of sensation to which he has heretofore been totally a stranger. It is like the cutting off the cataract from a blind man’s eye, when the first glorious deluge of light brings with it anything rather than distinctness of vision. He has no leisure to think of the merits of the case before him; he is swallowed up in dumb overwhelming wonder of the miraculous vehicle, in which one side of it is expounded. The rapidity with which word follows word, and image follows image, and argument follows argument, keeps his intellect panting in vain to keep up with the stream, and gives him no time to speculate on the nature of the shores along which he is whirled, or the point towards which he is carried. But when the object of all this breathless wonder has made an end of speaking, it is not to be doubted that a plain, sensible, and conscientious person, who knows that the sacred cause of justice is to be served or injured by the decision which he himself must give, may very naturally experience a very sudden and a very uncomfortable revulsion of ideas. That distrust of himself, which had attended and grown upon him all the while he listened, may now perhaps give way, in no inconsiderable measure, to distrust of the orator, whose winged words are yet ringing in his aching ears. The swiftness of the career has been such, that he cannot, on reflection, gather anything more than a very vague and unsatisfactory idea of the particular steps of his progress, and it is no wonder that he should pause a little before he decide with himself, that there is no safer and surer issue to which he might have been conducted in some less brilliant vehicle, and with some less extraordinary degree of speed. Nor can anything be more likely to affect the mind of a person pausing and hesitating in this way, with a delightful feeling of refreshment and security, than the simple, leisurely, and unostentatious manner in which such a speaker as Mr Cockburn may commence an address which has for its object to produce a quite opposite impression. When he sees a face so full of apparent candour and simplicity, and hears accents of so homely a character, and is allowed time to ponder

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over every particular statement as it is made, and consider with himself how it hinges upon that which has preceded, before he is called upon to connect it with something that is to follow—it is no wonder that he should feel as if he had returned to his own home after a flight in a parachute, and open himself to the new rhetorician with something of the reposing confidence due to an old and tried associate and adviser. As for causes in the Criminal Court, wherein mere argument is not all that is necessary, or such causes in the Jury Court as give occasion for any appeal to the feelings and affections—I fancy, there are few who have heard both of them that would not assign the palm to Mr Cockburn without the smallest hesitation. Whether from the natural constitution of Mr Jeffrey’s mind, or from the exercises and habits in which he has trained and established its energies, it would seem as if he had himself little sympathy for the more simple and unadorned workings of the affections; and accordingly he has, and deserves to have, little success, when he attempts to command and controul those workings for purposes immediately his own. I have never seen any man of genius fail so miserably in any attempt, as he does whenever he strives to produce a pathetic effect by his eloquence. It is seen and felt in a moment, that he is wandering from his own wide and fertile field of dominion, and every heart which he would invade, repels him with coldness. It is not by an artificial piling together of beautiful words, and beautiful images, that one can awe into subjection the rebellious pride of man’s bosom. It is not by such dazzling spells as these, that a speaker or a writer can smite the rock, and Wake the sacred source of sympathetic tears.

Mr Jeffrey is the Prince of Rhetoricians; but Mr Cockburn, in every other respect greatly his inferior, is more fortunate here. He is an Orator, and the passions are the legitimate and willing subjects of his deeper sway. As the Stagyrite would have expressed it, he has both the πιστις ἠθικη and the πιστις παθετικη; but Mr Jeffrey has no pretensions to the possession of either. P. M.

LETTER XXXVI TO THE SAME

FAR inferior to Mr Cockburn, or to any of the three gentlemen I first described, as a speaker—but far above Mr Cockburn, and far above Mr Jeffrey, as a lawyer, is Mr James Moncrieff, without all doubt at this moment the most rising man at the Scottish Bar. This gentleman is son to Sir Henry Moncrieff, a well-known leader of the Scottish Church, of whom I shall, perhaps, have occasion to speak at length hereafter. He has a countenance full of the expression of quick-sightedness and logical power, and his voice and manner of delivering himself, are such as to add much to this the natural language of his countenance. He speaks in a firm, harsh tone, and his phraseology aspires to no merit beyond that of closeness and precision. And yet, although entirely without display of imagination, and although apparently scornful to excess of every merely ornamental part of the rhetorical art, it is singular that Mr Moncrieff should be not only a fervid and animated speaker, but infinitely more keen and fervid throughout the whole tenor of his discourse, and more given to assist his words by violence of gesture, than any of the more imaginative speakers whom I have already endeavoured to describe. When he addresses a jury, he does not seem ever to think of attacking their feelings; but he is determined and resolved, that he will omit no exertion which may enable him to get the command over their reason. He plants himself before them in an attitude of open defiance; he takes it for granted that they are against him; and he must, and will, subdue them to his power. Wherever there is room to lay a finger, he fixes a grappling-iron, and continues to tear and tug at every thing that opposes him, till the most stubborn and obstinate incredulity is glad to purchase repose by assenting to all he demands. It cannot be said, that there is much pleasure to be had from listening to this pleader; but it is always an inspiriting thing to witness the exertion of great energies, and no man who is fond of excitement will complain of his entertainment. His choleric demeanour gives a zest to the dryness of the discussions in which he is commonly to be found engaged. His unmusical voice has so much nerve and vigour in its discords, that after

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hearing it on several occasions, I began to relish the grating effect it produces upon the tympanum—as a child gets fond of pepper-corns, after two or three burnings of its mouth. And as acquired tastes are usually more strong than natural ones, I am not disposed to wonder that Mr Moncrieff should have some admirers among the constant attendants upon the Scottish courts, who think him by far the most agreeable speaker of all that address them. They may say of him, as my friend Charles Lamb says of tobacco, Roses—violets—but toys For the smaller sort of boys— Or for greener damsels meant— Thou art the only manly scent.

It is not, however, as a speaker, that Mr Moncrieff has his greatest game before him. Mr Clerk has past his grand climacteric; and unless universal rumour say falsely, Mr Cranstoun is about to retire. There is no question, that whenever either of these leaders is removed, his baton of command must come into the strenuous grasp of Mr Moncrieff. Already he is a great and profound lawyer, so far as knowledge is concerned, and the natural energy of his intellect will by every day’s practice increase its power of throwing new light upon what is known to himself and to others. Moreover, in these Scottish Courts, a very great proportion of the most important pleadings are carried on in writing,— a department in which Mr Moncrieff has few rivals at present, and in all probability will ere long have none. For it is not to be supposed, that either Mr Jeffrey or Mr Cockburn, or any other barrister who possesses the more popular and fascinating kinds of elocution, will ever choose to interfere, to any considerable extent, with a style of practice so much more laborious. It is quite evident, that Mr Moncrieff is within sight of the very summit of his profession; and it does not seem as if there were any one lower down the hill, who might be likely, by any bold and sudden movement, to reach the post of honour before him. Another speaker of considerable note is Mr Murray, the same gentleman of whom I spoke as presiding at the Burns’s Dinner last month. This barrister is in some respects so very near the point of excellence, that the first time one hears him, one cannot help wondering that he should not be more talked of than he is. Of all his brother advocates, with the single exception of Mr Cranstoun, he has the most courtly presence and demeanour. His features are good, although not striking; his smile has something very agreeable in it; and his gestures

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are as elegant as Mr Cranstoun’s, and infinitely more easy. When he gets upon a sarcastic key, he keeps dallying with it in a very light, loving, and graceful manner, and is altogether very much calculated for delighting any popular audience in an ordinary case. As pleasantry, however, is his chief forte, it cannot be expected that he should attain through that alone to the first-rate eminence of favour and reputation, so long as he has to enter the lists with the far more pure and classical wit of Mr Cranstoun, the more copious and brilliant wit of Mr Jeffrey, and the more effectual, irresistible, sheer humour of Mr Clerk or Mr Cockburn. As for pathos, I hope he will never attempt it; if he does adventure upon such an Icarian flight, it will certainly be, like his prototype, mox daturus nomina ponto. These are all that are ever in the present time talked of as great speakers at the Scottish Bar. At whatever corner of the Parliament-House you may happen to take your stand, you are almost sure to be within hearing of one or other of them, or within the rush of listeners setting in towards the quarter where one or other of them is expected shortly to make his appearance. There are several, however, who would very fain be supposed to belong to the same class with these, and some, no doubt, who may hereafter belong to it. Among the former, conspicuous and loud, I found my old acquaintance Mr J. P. Grant, for he has deserted Westminster-Hall, and resumed of late the advocate’s gown he had worn here in the days of his youth; chiefly, I am told, with an eye to the new JuryCourt in civil causes, where he expected his English practice would be of great service to him. I do not discover, however, that his return to the Edinburgh Bar has borne much resemblance either To a re-appearing star, Or a glory from afar.

His extravagant vehemence of gesture, and his foaming cataract of words, seem to be regarded with rather a mortifying kind of indifference by the Juries; and as for the Judges, nothing can be less likely to prove effective in demolishing their quiet and resolute defensiveness, than that incessant crash of ill-directed artillery which is levelled against them by Mr Grant. He quite mis-calculates his elevation; there is a most mistaken curve in his parabolas; and the shot of this noisy engineer are all spent before they reach the point at which they are aimed. In short, Mr Grant is by no means listened to here in Edinburgh with the same attention which he is used to receive from the House of Commons; so

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that the rule about lawyers making bad speakers in Parliament may be considered as exactly inverted in this instance. Not that Mr Grant is a good speaker even in Parliament, but there he certainly is an useful, and apparently an acceptable one. It would be too much for poor human nature to meet with equal success in every thing. But although I am no admirer of Mr Grant’s eloquence, I assure you I was very glad to meet once more with an old acquaintance, for whose character, as a gentleman, no one can have a higher respect, and for whose good company over a bottle of good claret, nobody can have a more sincere relish than myself. I spent a very pleasant evening with him yesterday at Mr Jeffrey’s, where we talked over a thousand old Temple stories, and were as happy as kings. He used to be continually about poor Tom Harris’s Chambers, when he lived in Fig-tree Court—I won’t say how many years ago. P. M.

LETTER XXXVII TO THE SAME

THERE is another class of Lawyers, however, who have no ambition of rivalling the Cranstouns and the Jeffreys—who walk in a totally different course from them—and attain in their own walk, if not to an equally splendid, certainly to an almost as lucrative species of reputation. These are the class of your plain, thorough-going, jog-trot Lawyers, who are seldom employed in cases of the very highest importance, but whose sober, regular, business-like manner of doing every thing that is entrusted to them, procures for them an even, uninterrupted, unvarying life of well-paid labour. It is upon these men that the ordinary run of your common-place litigation scatters its constantly refreshing, but seldom brightening dew. The lungs of these men are employed, for a certain number of hours every morning, in pleading, and every evening in dictating. With them, the intellectual mill-horse never stops a moment in his narrow round, unless it be to allow time for eating, drinking, and sleeping. The natural attitude of these men, is that of labouring at a sidebar. Their heads do not feel comfortable when their wigs are off. If they call for a glass of ale during dinner, they astound the lackey with a big phrase from the Style-book. If you carry one of them into the midst of the most magnificent scenery of Nature, his thoughts will still tarry behind him within the narrow and dusty precincts of the Parliament-House of Edinburgh. You shall see him pluck a Condescendence from his pocket, and con over its sprawling pages, although the grandest of mountains be behind, and the most beautiful of lakes before him. Bear witness, many a pensive sigh Of thoughtful —— when he strays Alone upon Loch Veol’s heights, Or by Loch Lomond’s braes.

These are the true plodders of the profession—nothing can be more genuine than their obscure devotion—“they and the other slaves of the Lamp.”

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During one of my earliest visits to the Parliament-House, when I was picking up from various quarters the first rudiments of that information which I have now been retailing for your benefit, an elderly lawyer, by name Mr Forsyth, was pointed out to me, I forget by whom, as standing at the head of this class. On talking over these matters with my friend Mr Wastle, however, I found reason to doubt whether this person might not be well entitled to take his place among those of a higher order, and the result of my own subsequent observation and diligent attendance on these Courts of Justice, has certainly been to confirm me in this notion of the matter. There is, indeed, something so very singular and characteristic in the whole appearance of Mr Forsyth, that, even at first sight, I should scarcely have been persuaded, without some difficulty, to set him down as a mere ordinary drudge of his profession. I am so deeply imbued with the prejudices of a physiognomist and a craniologist, that I could not be easily brought to think there was nothing extraordinary in one on whom Nature had stamped so very peculiar a signet. I have never seen a countenance that combined in such a strange manner, originality of expression with features of common-place formation. His forehead is indeed massy and square, so far as it is seen; but his wig comes so low down, as to conceal about the whole of its structure. His nose is large and firm, but shaped without the least approach to one beautiful line. His mouth is of the widest, and rudelyfashioned; but whether he closes it entirely, or, what is more common, holds it slightly open with a little twist to the left, it is impossible to mistake its intense sagacity of expression, for the common-place archness of a mere practised dealer in litigation. His cheeks are ponderous, and look as if they had been cast in brass, and his chin projects with an irresistible air of ungullibility. But the whole of this would be nothing without his eyes. The one of these is black as jet, and looks out clearly from among a tangled and ever-twinkling web of wrinkles. The other is light in hue, and glimmers through a large and watery surface, contracted by no wrinkles—(the lids on that side being large, smooth, and oily)—generally in a direction as opposite as possible from that which its more vivacious neighbour happens to be following for the moment. It has not, however, the appearance of being blind, to one who views it disconnected from the other, and nothing, indeed, can be more striking than the total difference of effect which the countenance produces, according as it is viewed in sinistral or in dextral profile. On the one side, you have the large, glazed, gray eye, reflecting an air of unutterable innocence and suavity on all the features it seems to be

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illuminating. On the other, you have the small black iris, tipped in the centre with an unquenchable dazzling flame, and throwing on everything above and below it a lustre of acumen, that Argus might have been proud to rival with all his ubiquity of glances. Such a face as this was never meant to be the index of any common mind. “Nihil inutile, nihil vanum, nihil supervacaneum in naturâ,” as the Prince of English intellect has well expressed it. My friend Wastle informs me, that the history of this gentleman has been no less peculiar than is his physiognomy. In his youth he was destined for the Kirk, and proceeded so far in that way as to be dubbed a licentiate, or preacher, which is the nearest approach in the Scottish Church to our deacon’s orders. But—from causes, it is probable, of no uncommon nature—he soon became disgusted with the idea of the Presbyterian career, and determined to become an Advocate. In those days, however, that was not quite so easy a matter of attainment as it has since come to be. The Advocates at that time were accustomed to exercise a discretionary right, of excluding from their Faculty whomsoever they chose to consider as unfit to enter—not merely on the score of learning or talent, (for, in regard to these, the pretence still lingers)—but, if it so pleased their fancy, on the score of want of birth, or status in society— a notion, the revival of which, if attempted now-a-days, would probably be scouted by a very triumphant majority of their body. What Mr Forsyth’s birth might be I know not; but so it was, that the admission of the young licentiate, against whose character no one could say one word, was opposed most stiffly in the Faculty meetings, and he did not succeed in his object till after repeated applications had testified the firmness of his purpose, and time had produced its proper effect, in making his opponents ashamed of contradicting it. He became an Advocate, therefore; and by degrees, the same inflexible pertinacity of will which had procured his admission into the Faculty, elevated him to a considerable share of practice. Without making any one appearance that could ever be called splendid, and in the teeth of a great number of men that did make such appearances, Mr Forsyth was resolved that he should make a fortune at the Bar, and that was enough. From day to day, and from hour to hour, he was at his post. He came to the Court earlier than any one else, and he staid there later. His sagacious countenance was never amissing; and they who saw that countenance perpetually before them, could not fail to read its meaning. Other men laboured by fits and starts, and always with a view to some particular and immediate object of ambition; this man laboured con-

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tinually, because it was his principle and his belief that he could not be happy without labouring, and because he knew and felt that it was impossible a man of his talents should labour long without being appreciated and rewarded in the end. If he had no brief, he did not care for that want, or allow himself to take advantage of any pretence for idleness. His strong intellect could no more do without work, than his robust body could subsist without food. If he had not enough to occupy him in the affairs of individual men, he had always the species, and its concerns, on which to exercise his strength. And at a time when nobody suspected him of possessing either ambition or ability for anything more than the drudgery of his profession, he published a book on the Principles of Moral Science, coarse indeed in many of its conceptions, and coarse in its language, but overflowing everywhere with the marks of most intense observation, and most masculine originality. From this time, the stamp of his intellect was ascertained, and those who had been most accustomed to speak slightingly of him, found themselves compelled to confess his power. His natural want of high eloquence has prevented him from being the rival of the great lawyers I have described, in their finest field; and a certain impatience of all ornament, has prevented him from rivalling them in writing. Neither, as I am informed, has he ever been able to penetrate into the depths of legal arguments with the same clear felicity which some of those remarkable men have displayed. But he has been willing to task the vigour of an Herculean understanding to a species of work which these men would have thought themselves entitled to despise, and to slur over, if it did come into their hands, with comparative inattention; and it is thus that his fortune has been made. He cannot do what some of his brethren can do; but whatever he can do, he will do. While they reserve the full exertion of their fine energies for occasions that catch their fancy, and promise opportunity of extraordinary display, he allows his fancy to have nothing to say in the matter; and display is a thing of which he never dreams. He has not the magical sword that will shiver steel, nor the magical shield that will dazzle an advancing foe into blindness; but he is clothed cap-a-pee in harness of proof, and he has his mace always in his hand. He is contented to be ranged with the ordinary class of champions; but they who meet him, feel that his vigour might well entitle him to exchange thrusts with their superiors. It would surely argue a very strange degree of obstinacy, to deny that all this speaks of an intellect of no ordinary cast. There is no walk of exertion which may not be dignified; and I imagine it is not often that

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such a walk as that of Mr Forsyth has found such an intellect as his willing to adorn it. *

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There are still several of the Scottish Advocates whom I ought to describe to you; but I reserve them, and their peculiarities, for matter of oral communication. I shall have a particular pleasure in giving you my ideas concerning some of the younger, and as yet less known members of the profession, in order that when you make out your own long intended visit to Scotland, you may have your eye upon these, and report to me more accurately the nature of their progress. In truth, even here it would have been a very easy thing to expatiate a little on the expanding energies and rising reputations of such men as the acute and energetic Skene—Walker—Hope—Macniell, and many others, whom I could mention. But my only object, in the mean time, was to give you some general notion of those who at present make the most conspicuous figure among an order of men, of whom, although their fame and reputation be everywhere great, yet very little is, in general, known accurately by such as have not personally visited the scene of their exertions. I suppose I have already said enough to convince you that the high reputation enjoyed by the Scottish jurisconsults is far from being an unmerited reputation; and that, taking the size and population of the country into view, Scotland has at least as much reason to be proud of her Bar as any country in Europe. *

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LETTER XXXVIII TO THE SAME

TILL within these few years, it was the custom for the whole of the Judges of whom the Court of Session is composed, to sit together upon the same bench; and Scottish litigants had thus the advantage of submitting their causes to the joint decision of a much greater number of arbiters than those of England ever had to do with. The enormous increase of litigation, however, which resulted from the extended population, and, above all, from the extended commerce of Scotland, joined, perhaps, with sufficient experience that this multitude of counsellors brought disadvantages, as well as advantages along with it, gave rise to a separation of the Civil Court into two Divisions, each of which now exercises the full powers formerly vested in the whole body; the Lord President of the Session retaining his place as President of the First, and the Lord Justice-Clerk (who acts also, as his title denotes, as head of the Criminal Court,) being President of the Second of these Divisions. From all that I can hear, this arrangement has been productive of the happiest effects; an infinitely greater quantity of business being of course discussed, and no business whatever being less thoroughly, or less satisfactorily discussed, than when each individual case was at once, as the popular phrase ran, “ta’en before the Fifeteen.” The nature of the causes with which these two courts have been chiefly occupied since I began to attend their sittings, has been such, that although I have had great amusement in hearing the particular sides of many questions set forth to the best advantage, by the ingenuity of the particular pleaders, there has been much less to amuse me, a stranger to the technicalities of the Scottish law, in the more concise and more abstruse disquisitions wherein the several Judges have delivered their opinions concerning the legal merits of the arguments employed in my hearing. The external appearance of the Courts, however, is abundantly dignified and impressive; and, without being able to understand most of what was delivered from the Bench, I have heard more than enough to satisfy me that there is no want of talent in the Judges who take the principal direction and conduct of the business brought before them.

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The President of the Second Division, in particular, seems to be possessed of all the discernment and diligence which it is pleasing to see a Judge display; and he possesses, moreover, all that dignity of presence and demeanour, which is scarcely less necessary, and which is infinitely more rare, in those to whom the high duties of such stations are entrusted. In his other Court, (the Criminal, or Justiciary Court, of which also I have witnessed several sittings,) I could better understand what was going forward, and better appreciate the qualities by which this eminent Judge is universally acknowledged to confer honour upon his function. In his Division of the Civil Court, one of his most respected assessors is Lord Robertson, son to the great historian; nor could I see, without a very peculiar interest, the son of such a man occupying and adorning such a situation, in the midst of a people in whose minds his name must be associated with so many feelings of gratitude and admiration. It is perhaps the finest and most precious of all the rewards which a man of virtue and genius receives, from the nation to whose service his virtue and his genius have ministered, that he establishes for his children a true and lofty species of nobility in the eyes of that people, and secures for all their exertions, (however these may differ in species from his own,) a watchful and a partial attention from generations long subsequent to that on which the first and immediate lustre of his own reputation and his own presence may have been reflected. The truth is, that a great national author connects himself for ever with all the better part of his nation, by the ties of an intellectual kinsmanship—ties, which, in his own age, are scarcely less powerful than those of the kinsmanship of blood, and which, instead of evaporating and being forgotten in the course of a few generations, as the bonds of blood must inevitably be, are only rivetted the faster by every year that passes over them. It is not possible to imagine that any lineal descendant of Shakespeare, or Milton, or Locke, or Clarendon, or any one of the great authors of England, should have borne, in the present day, the name of his illustrious progenitor, and seen himself, and his great name, treated with neglect by his countrymen. The son of such a man as the Historian of Scotland, is well entitled to share in these honourable feelings of hereditary attachment among the people of Scotland;—and he does share in them. Even to me, I must confess it afforded a very genuine delight, to be allowed to contemplate the features of the father, as reflected and preserved in the living features of his son. A more careless observer would not, perhaps, be able to trace any very striking

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resemblance between the face of Lord Robertson and the common portraits of the Historian; but I could easily do so. In those of the prints which represent him at an early period of his life, the physiognomy of Robertson is not seen to its best advantage. There is, indeed, an air of calmness and tastefulness even in them, which cannot be overlooked or mistaken; but it is in those later portraits which give the features, after they had been divested of their fulness and smoothness of outline, and filled with the deeper lines of age and comparative extenuation, that one traces, with most ease and satisfaction, the image of genius, and the impress of reflection. And it is to those last portraits that I could perceive the strongest likeness in the general aspect of the Judge—but, most of all, in his gray and over-hanging eye-brows, and eyes, eloquent equally of sagacity of intellect, and gentleness of temper. In the other Division of the Court, I yesterday heard, without exception, the finest piece of judicial eloquence delivered in the finest possible way by the Lord President Hope. The requisites for this kind of eloquence are of course totally different from those of accomplished barristership—and I think they are in the present clever age infinitely more uncommon. When possessed in the degree of perfection in which this Judge possesses them, they are calculated assuredly to produce a yet nobler species of effect, than even the finest display of the eloquence of the Bar ever can command. They produce this effect the more powerfully, because there are comparatively very few occasions on which they can be called upon to attempt producing it; but besides this adventitious circumstance, they are essentially higher in their quality, and the feelings which they excite are proportionally deeper in their whole character and complexion. I confess I was struck with the whole scene, the more because I had not heard anything which might have prepared me to expect a scene of so much interest, or a display of so much power. But it is impossible, that the presence and air of any Judge should grace the judgment-seat more than those of the Lord President did upon this occasion. When I entered, the Court was completely crowded in every part of its area and galleries, and even the avenues and steps of the Bench were covered with persons who could not find accommodation for sitting. I looked to the Bar, naturally expecting to see it filled with some of the most favourite Advocates; but was astonished to perceive, that not one gentleman in a gown was there, and, indeed, that the whole of the first row, commonly occupied by the barristers, was entirely deserted. An air of intense expectation, notwithstanding, was stamped upon all the

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innumerable faces around me, and from the direction in which most of them were turned, I soon gathered that the eloquence they had come to hear, was to proceed from the Bench. The Judges, when I looked towards them, had none of those huge piles of papers before them, with which their desk is usually covered in all its breadth, and in all its length. Neither did they appear to be occupied among themselves with arranging the order or substance of opinions about to be delivered. Each Judge sat in silence, wrapt up in himself, but calm, and with the air of sharing in the general expectation of the audience, rather than that of meditating on anything which he himself might be about to utter. In the countenance of the President alone, I fancied I could perceive the workings of anxious thought. He leaned back in his chair; his eyes were cast downwards; and his face seemed to be covered with a deadly paleness, which I had never before seen its masculine and commanding lines exhibit. At length he lifted up his eyes, and at a signal from his hand, a man clad respectably in black rose from the second row of seats behind the Bar. I could not at first see his face; but from his air, I perceived at once that he was there in the capacity of an offender. A minute or more elapsed before a word was said, and I heard it whispered behind me, that he was a well-known solicitor or agent of the Court, who had been detected in some piece of mean chicanery, and I comprehended that the President was about to rebuke him for his transgression. A painful struggle of feelings seemed to keep the Judge silent, after he had put himself into the attitude of speaking, and the silence in the Court was as profound as midnight—but at last, after one or two ineffectual attempts, he seemed to subdue his feelings by one strong effort, and he named the man before him, in a tone that made my pulse quiver, and every cheek around me grow pale. Another pause followed—and then, all at once, the face of the Judge became flushed all over with crimson, and he began to roll out the sentences of his rebuke with a fervour of indignation, that made me wonder by what emotions the torrent could have been so long withheld from flowing. His voice is the most hollow and sonorous I ever heard, and its grave wrath filled the whole circuit of the walls around, thrilling and piercing every nerve of every ear, like the near echo of an earthquake. The trumpet-note of an organ does not peal through the vaults of a cathedral with half so deep a majesty; and I thought within myself that the offence must indeed be great, which could deserve to call down upon any head, such a palsying sweep of terrors. It is

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impossible I should convey to you any idea of the power of this awful voice; but, never till I myself heard it, did I appreciate the just meaning of Dante, where he says, “Even in the wilderness, the Lion will tremble, if he hears the voice of a just Man.” Had either the sentiments or the language of the Judge been other than worthy of such a vehicle, there is no question that the effect of its natural potency would soon have passed away. But what sentiments can be more worthy of borrowing energy from the grandest music of Nature, than those with which an upright and generous soul contemplates, from its elevation of purity, the black and loathsome mazes of the tangled web of deceit? The paltry caitiff that stood before him, must have felt himself too much honoured, in attracting even indignation from one so far above his miserable sphere. With such feelings, and such a voice, it was impossible that the rebuke he uttered should not have been an eloquent rebuke. But even the language in which the rebuke was clothed, would have been enough, of itself alone, to beat into atoms the last lingering reed of self-complacency, on which detected meanness might have endeavoured to prop up the hour and agony of its humiliation. Mens est id quod facit disertum; and whatever harrowing words the haughtiness of insulted virtue, the scorn of honour, the coldness of disdain, the bitterness of pity might supply, came ready as flashes from a bursting thunder-cloud, to scatter ten-fold dismay upon this poor wretch, and make his flesh and his spirit creep chill within him like a bruised adder. His coward eye was fascinated by the glance that killed him, and he durst not look for a moment from the face of his chastiser. He did look for a moment; at one terrible word he looked wildly round, as if to seek for some whisper of protection, or some den of shelter. But he found none. And even after the rebuke was at an end, he stood like the statue of Fear, frozen in the same attitude of immovable desertedness. *

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This Judge was formerly President of the Criminal Court; and after being present at this scene, I have no difficulty in believing what I hear from every one, that, in pronouncing sentence, he far surpassed every Judge whom the present time has witnessed, or of whom any memory survives. Had any gone before him, his equal in the “terrible graces” of judicial eloquence, it is not possible that he should soon have been forgotten. Feelings such as this man possesses, when expressed as he

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expresses them, produce an effect, of which it is not easy to say whether the impression may be likely to abide longest in the bosoms of the good, or in those of the wicked. As I came away through the crowd, I heard a pale, anxious-looking old man, who, I doubt not, had a cause in Court, whisper to himself— “God be thanked—there’s one true GENTLEMAN at the head of them all.” *

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LETTER XXXIX TO THE SAME

I HAVE endeavoured to give you some notion of the present state of the Bar and Bench of Scotland—and I have done so, it may be, at greater length than you were prepared to expect. The individuals whom I have pourtrayed are all, however, men of strong and peculiar intellectual conformation; and therefore, without taking their station or functions into view, they cannot be unworthy of detaining, as individuals, some considerable portion of a traveller’s attention. In our age, when so much oil is poured upon the whole surface of the ocean of life, that one’s eye can, for the most part, see nothing but the smoothness and the flatness of uniformity, it is a most refreshing thing to come upon some sequestered bay, where the breakers still gambol along the sands, and leap up against the rocks as they used to do. I fear, that ere long such luxury will be rarer even in Scotland than it now is; and, indeed, from all I hear, nothing can be more distinct and remarkable than the decrease in the quantum of it, which has occurred within the memory even of persons of my own time of life. The peculiarities, which appear to me so strong and singular in the present worthies of the Parliament-House, are treated with infinite disdain by my friend Mr Wastle, for example, who ridicules them as being only the last feeble gleanings of a field, which he himself remembers to have seen bending beneath the load of its original fertility. The Bench of former days, he represents to have been a glorious harvest of character, and he deplores its present condition, as, with scarcely more than a single exception, one of utter and desolate barrenness. He himself remembers the Lord Justice-Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield, and he assures me, that, since his death, the whole exterior of judicial deportment has been quite altered—and I verily believe he thinks it has been altered for the worse, although there are few of his opinions, probably, in which he is more singular than in this. Over the mantlepiece of his study, he has a very fine print of this old Judge, in his full robes of office, which he seldom looks at without taking occasion to introduce some strange grotesque anecdote of its original. If the

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resemblance of the picture be exact, as he says it is, old Braxfield must indeed have been a person, whom nobody could for an instant suppose to be one of the ordinary race of mortals. His face is broad, and the whole of its muscles appear to be firm and ponderous in their texture— you cannot suppose that such were ever nourished upon kickshaws— they have obviously borrowed their substance from a stintless regimen of beef, brandy, and claret. His nose is set well into his forehead, as if Nature, in making him, had determined to grudge no expenditure of bone. His mouth wears a grin of ineffable sagacity, derision, and coarse uncontrollable humour, all mingled with a copious allowance of sensuality. He must have had a most tyrannical quantity of Will, to judge from the way in which the wig sits on the top of his head; and nothing, indeed, can be more expressive of determined resolution than the glance of his light eyes beneath their pent-house brows, although from the style in which they are set, one sees that they must have been accustomed to roll about, more than the eyes of stedfast and masculine men are commonly used to do. I should think it impossible that any joke could have been too coarse for this man’s digestion; he must have experienced sensations of paradisiacal delight in reading Swift’s description of the dalliance between Gulliver and Glumdalclitch. Even the Yahoos neighing by the riverside, must have been contemplated by him with the most unmingled suavity.—It is, by the way, a strange enough thing, how many of our great English authors seem to have united the utmost activity and shrewdness of intellect, and commanding thorough-going pertinacity of character, with an intolerable relish for all the coarser kinds of jests. The breed of such men was continued uninterruptedly from Echard to Swift and his brethren, and from Swift to Warburton and his brethren. These were all churchmen; had Braxfield been in the church, he must have been an author, and I doubt not he would have caught the falling mantle. I should like to see a portrait of the Cardinal, for whose edification Poggio compiled his Facetiæ; I dare say, there must be a family likeness between it and this of Braxfield. In the days, when the strong talents of this original gave him a great ascendency over the whole of his brethren of the coif, and a still greater over the gentlemen of the Bar, with many of whom he lived on terms of the most perfect familiarity—the style of private life generally adopted by the principal Judges and Advocates, and the style in which the public intercourse between these two sets of worthies was carried on, were both, as might be conjectured, as remote as possible from the decorum at present in fashion. Not that there was in either any licence productive

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of seriously bad effects to the people of the country, but there certainly must have been something as different as possible from anything that has been witnessed in our English Courts of Law for these many centuries past. Braxfield was very fond of cards and of claret, and it was no very unusual thing to see him take his seat upon the Bench, and some of his friends take their’s at the Bar, within not a great many minutes of the termination of some tavern-scene of common devotion to either of these amusements. I have never heard, that any excesses committed by Braxfield had the least power to disturb him in his use of his faculties; but it is not to be supposed, that all his associates had heads as strong as his, nor to be wondered at, although many extraordinary things may have occurred on such trying occasions. I have heard of an Advocate coming to the Parliament-House fresh from the tavern, with one stocking white and the other black, and insisting upon addressing the Judges, exactly as ten minutes before he had been addressing the chairman of his debauch. One yet living is said to have maintained a stout battle on one occasion with the late President Dundas, (father to Lord Melville,) who refused to listen to him when he made his appearance in this condition. The check given to him seemed to have the effect of immediately restoring him to the possession of some moiety of his faculties; and, without being able to obtain one glimpse of the true reason which made the Judge reluctant to listen, or the true nature of the cause on which he conceived himself entitled to expatiate, he commenced a long and most eloquent harangue upon the dignity of the Faculty of Advocates, ending with a formal protest against the manner in which he had been used, and interspersing every paragraph with copious repetition of these words,— “It is our duty and our privilege to speak, my Lord; and it is your duty and your privilege to hear.” Another Advocate, also yet living, is said, in a similar state of haziness, to have forgotten for which party, in a particular cause, he had been retained; and, to the unutterable amazement of the agent that had fee’d him, and the absolute horror of the poor client behind, to have uttered a long and fervent speech exactly in the teeth of the interests he had been hired to defend. Such was the zeal of his eloquence, that no whispered remonstrance from the rear—no tugging at his elbow, could stop him in medio gurgite dicendi. But just as he was about to sit down, the trembling writer put a slip of paper into his hands, with these plain words,—“You have pled for the wrong party;” whereupon, with an air of infinite composure, he resumed the thread of his oration, saying,—“Such, my Lord, is the statement which you will probably hear from my brother on the opposite side of this case.

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I shall now beg leave, in a very few words, to show your Lordship how utterly untenable are the principles, and how distorted are the facts, upon which this very specious statement has proceeded.” And so he went once more over the same ground, and did not take his seat till he had most energetically refuted himself from one end of his former pleading to another. The race, however, of Judges, Advocates, and, of course, of Clients, among whom such things passed without remark or reproach, is now fast expiring. In spite of the authority of Blackstone, it seems to be generally believed now-a-days, that no man will study a point of law the better for drinking a bottle of port while he is engaged at his work. The uniform gravity of the Bench has communicated a suitable gravity to the Bar—the greater number of the practitioners at the Bar having, indeed, necessarily very much diminished the familiarity with which the Bench and the Bar were of old accustomed to treat each other; while the general change that has every where occurred in the mode of life, has almost entirely done away with that fashion of high conviviality in private, for which, of old, the members of the legal profession in this place were celebrated to a proverb. In short, it seems as if the business of all parties were now regarded in a much more serious point of view than formerly, and as if the practice of the Barristers, in particular, were every day getting more and more into a situation similar to that in which the practice of their southern brethren has long been—a situation which, as you well know, admits of very little of such indulgences as these old Scotch Advocates seem to have considered quite in the light of indispensables. There is still, however, one Judge upon the bench whom Wastle has a pleasure in bidding me look at, because in him, he assures me, may still be seen a genuine relic of the old school of Scottish Lawyers, and Scottish Judges. This old gentleman, who takes his title from an estate called Hermand, is of the Ayrshire family of the Fergusons of Kilkerran; the same family of which mention is frequently made in Burns’s Poems, one of whose ancestors, indeed, was the original winner of the celebrated “Whistle of Worth,” about which the famous song was written. *

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Craigdarroch began, with a tongue smooth as oil, Desiring Glenriddel to yield up the spoil; Or else he would muster the heads of the clan, And once more in claret, try which was the man.

&c. &c. in a strain equally delectable. He is now, I suppose, with one exception, the senior Judge of the whole Court, for I see he sits immediately on the left hand of the President in the First Division. There is something so very striking in his appearance, that I wonder I did not take notice of it in an earlier letter. His face is quite thin and extenuated, and he has lost most of his teeth; but instead of taking away from the vivacity of his countenance, these very circumstances seem to me to have given it a degree of power, and fire of expression, which I have very rarely seen rivalled in the countenance of any young man whatever. The absence of the teeth has planted lines of furrows about the lower part of his face, which convey an idea of determination, and penetration too, that is not to be resisted; and the thin covering of flesh upon the bones of his cheeks, only gives additional effect to the fine, fresh, and healthful complexion which these still exhibit. As for his eyes, they are among the most powerful I have seen. While in a musing attitude, he keeps his eye-lids well over them, and they peep out with a swimming sort of languor; but the moment he begins to speak, they dilate, and become full of animation, each gray iris flashing as keenly as a flint. His forehead is full of wrinkles, and his eye-brows are luxuriant; and his voice has a hollow depth of tone about it, which all furnish a fine relief to the hot and choleric style in which he expresses himself, and, indeed, to the very lively way in which he seems to regard every circumstance of every case that is brought before him. Although very hasty and impatient at times in his temper and demeanour, and not over-scrupulous in regard to the limits of some of his sarcasms, this old Judge is a prodigious favourite with all classes who frequent the Courts, and, above all, with the Advocates, at whose expense most of his spleen effervesces. He is a capital lawyer, and he is the very soul of honour; and the goodness of his warm heart is so well understood, that not only is no offence taken with anything he says, but every new sarcasm he utters endears him more, even to the sufferer. As for the younger members of the profession,—when he goes a circuit, you may be sure, in whatever direction he moves, to meet with an extraordinary array of them in the train of Lord Hermand. His innocent peculiarities of manner afford an agreeable diversity to the surface of the causes carried on under his auspices, while the shrewdness and

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diligence of his intellect completely provide for the safety of their essential merits. And then, when the business of the Court is over, he is the very “prince of good-fellows, and king of old men;” and you are well aware what high delight all young men take in the company of their seniors, when these are pleased to enter, bonâ fide, into the spirit of their convivialities. He has an infinite fund of dry, caustic, original humour; and, in addition to this, he cannot fail to possess an endless store of anecdotes; so that it is no wonder his company should be so fascinating to the young jurisconsults. In him they are no doubt too happy to have an opportunity of seeing a noble living specimen of a very fine old school, which has now left little behind it but the tradition of its virtues, and its talents, and its pleasantries;—a school, the departure of many of whose peculiarities was perhaps rendered necessary in a great measure by the spirit of the age, but of which it may be suspected not a little has been allowed to expire, which might have been better worth preserving than much that has come in its place. It is not, I assure you, from Wastle alone that I hear lamentations over the decay of this antique spirit. It is sighed over by many that witnessed its manifestations ere they had yet come to be rare, and will long be remembered with perhaps still greater affection by those who have seen the last of its relics in the person of this accomplished gentleman and excellent judge. There would be no end of it, were I to begin telling you anecdotes about Lord Hermand. I hear a new one every day; for he alone furnishes half the materials of conversation to the young groupes of stove-school wits, of which I have already said a word or two in describing the OuterHouse. There is one, however, which I must venture upon. When Guy Mannering came out, the Judge was so much delighted with the picture of the life of the old Scottish lawyers in that most charming novel, that he could talk of nothing else but Pleydell, Dandie, and the High Jinks, for many weeks. He usually carried one volume of the book about with him, and one morning, on the Bench, his love for it so completely got the better of him, that he lugged in the subject, head and shoulders, into the midst of a speech about some most dry point of law—nay, getting warmer every moment he spoke of it, he at last fairly plucked the volume from his pocket, and, in spite of all the remonstrances of all his brethren, insisted upon reading aloud the whole passage for their edification. He went through the task with his wonted vivacity, gave great effect to every speech, and most appropriate expression to every joke; and when it was done, I suppose the Court would have no difficulty in confessing that they had very seldom been so well entertained. During

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the whole scene, Mr Walter Scott was present, seated, indeed, in his official capacity, close under the Judge. Like almost all the old Scottish lawyers, Lord Hermand is no less keen in farming than in law, and in the enjoyment of good company. Formerly it was looked upon as quite inconsistent with the proper character of an Advocate, to say nothing of a Judge, to want some piece of land, the superintendence of the cultivation of which might afford an agreeable, no less than profitable relaxation, from the toils of the profession. In those days, it was understood that every lawyer spent the Saturday and Sunday of every week in the milder part of the year, not in Edinburgh, but at his farm, or villa;—and the way they went about this was sufficiently characteristic. In order that no time might be lost in town after the business of the Court on Saturday, the lawyers had established themselves in the privilege of going to the ParliamentHouse, on that morning, in a style of dress, which must have afforded a most picturesque contrast to the strictly legal costume of full-dress black suits, in which, at that time, they made their appearance there on the other mornings of the week. They retained their gowns and wigs, but every other part of their equipment was in the very extreme of opposition to the usual integuments worn in company with these— riding-coats of all the splendid hues, not then as now abandoned to livery-servants, bright mazarine blue, pea-green, drummers’ yellow, &c. &c., but always buckskin breeches, and top-boots and spurs. The steeds to be forthwith mounted by these embryo cavaliers, were meantime drawn up in regular lines or circles, under the direction of serving-men and cadies in the Parliament-Close; and no sooner did the Judges leave the Bench, than the whole squadron got rid of their incumbrances, and were off in a twinkling—some to their own estates— others to the estates of their friends—but every one to some place or other out of Edinburgh. Although all this parade has long since dropt into disuse and oblivion, the passion for farming has by no means deserted its hold of the Scotch lawyers. Among many others, as I have said, Lord Hermand keeps up the old spirit with infinite zeal. It is not now in the power of professional people to leave Edinburgh at the end of every week; but the moment any session of the Court is over, and a few weeks of intermission are put in his power, he quits the city on the instant, and buries himself among his woods, and corn-fields, and cattle, till necessity compels him once more to exchange these for the “pulvis, strepitusque Romæ.” Even in the city, there is in his dress and gait, a great deal that marks his Lordship’s rural attachments and habits. His

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stockings are always of the true farmer’s sort, with broad stripes alternately of black and white worsted—and his shoes are evidently intended for harder work than pacing the smooth granite of the streets of Edinburgh. I confess that my eye lingers with very singular delight, even upon these little traits in the appearance of one, that may well be considered, and therefore cannot fail to be honoured, as the last representative of so fine a class. P. M.

LETTER XL TO THE SAME

I THINK you will allow me no inconsiderable share of credit for the cordial manner in which I have lauded the excellencies of the Scottish Barristers, when I tell you, that those whom I have particularly described to you, are each and all of them Whigs—most of them fervent, nay, bigotted Whigs, or, as Dr Parr would say, χυιγ-ωτατοι. Nor will it diminish the merits of my liberality, when I inform you, that the friend, under whose auspices my inspection of Edinburgh has been chiefly conducted, so far from regarding these eminent men with the same impartial eye of which I have made use, has well nigh persuaded himself into a thorough conviction, that their talents and attainments are most extravagantly over-rated in common opinion; and has, moreover, omitted no opportunity of detracting from them in private, when he may have heard me expatiate upon their praises. There are only two exceptions to this—Mr Cranstoun and Mr Jeffrey. The former he cannot help admiring and loving for the beautifully classical style of his eloquence, and, indeed, of all his attainments; but I think it forms no small ingredient both in his love and admiration that Mr Cranstoun happens to be sprung from one of the greatest of the old Border families, and so, it may be supposed, to have been nourished in infancy with the same milk of romantic and chivalrous tradition, of which he himself imbibed so largely then, and with the influences of which even now his whole character and conversation are saturated and overflowing; for I have already said enough to satisfy you, that few men can quote the words of the poet with more propriety than Mr Wastle: The Boy is Father of the Man, And I could wish my days to be Linked each to each in natural piety.

In regard to Jeffrey, his mode of thinking may perhaps appear something still more peculiar. In the first place, indeed, the talents of this remarkable man are of such an order, that it is quite impossible a

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man of such talents as Mr Wastle should not admire them. The direction which has been given to these great talents, is a thing which my friend contemplates, and has long contemplated, “more in sorrow than in anger.” While nobody can more abominate the scope and tendency of the Edinburgh Review, than he does, he is very far from being one of those who extend the feeling of aversion due to the work, from it to its principal conductor, or, indeed, who feel any difficulty in sympathizing with some part, at least, of those early feelings and circumstances, to which, in all probability, the worst things in the conduct of this celebrated Journal may be traced. He understands too much of poor human nature, to be an inexorable judge of the failings of a man, whose general power of intellect, and general rectitude of feeling and principle, he cannot but acknowledge. At times, it is true, on some new piece of provocation, his temper deserts him for a moment; but he soon recovers his tranquillity, and, in common, the tone wherein he speaks of Mr Jeffrey, is assuredly more nearly akin to that of affectionate regret, than to that of impatient spleen, far less of settled aversion and dislike. In truth, my old friend’s views of literature are of so large a kind, and he has so much accustomed himself to trace the connection which subsists between the manifestations of mind in one age, and those in ages preceding and following, that it would be a very inconsistent thing, were he to concentrate any overwhelming portion of the wrath excited in his breast by any particular direction of intellectual forces, upon the head of any individual author whatever. Besides, were he inclined to heap the coals of his vengeance upon any one head, on account of the turn which literary and political criticism has taken in our days, most assuredly it would be on no living head that he would think of laying such a burden. He regards the Scotch philosophers of the present day, and among, or above the rest, Mr Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Reviewers, as the legitimate progeny of the sceptical philosophers of the last age; and although he is far from having any sympathy with the feelings which the whole style of that philosophy most eminently and powerfully tends to nourish, he cannot for a moment permit himself to lay at the door of any one individual, a larger share in the common blame, than in strict, and yet in comprehensive justice, he thinks that individual ought to sustain. There is only one point of view in which Mr Wastle is accustomed to talk of Mr Jeffrey, as having initiated a bad and destructive species of mental exertion among his countrymen, or, at least, as having so far assisted the natural tendency towards some such species, as to have merited, in no inconsiderable measure, the dispraise,

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both present and future, with which the initiator of any such species must of necessity lay his account. One of the greatest curses of a sceptical philosophy, is that, by leaving no object upon which the disinterested affections may exercise themselves, it is apt to cause the minds of mankind to be too exclusively taken up about the paltry gratifications of the personal feelings. When the true ornaments of our nature are forgotten, Pride and Vanity must become the arbiters of human life. All those periods of history, which are looked back upon as the most splendid, were times when men cared most about principles, and least about themselves; but when there are no longer any earnest notions about what is to be loved or respected, even the public themselves become infected with the delirium of wishing to despise every thing, and literature is made to assume a tone of petulance, which corresponds with this absurd and paltry passion, exactly in the same proportion in which it does violence to all the nobler thoughts and more delightful feelings, for whose nourishment the divine field of literature was originally intended by the great Author of our being. It is chiefly in having led the way in giving this direction to the criticism, and through that to the whole literature of our day, that my friend feels himself constrained to regard Mr Jeffrey as having been the enemy of his country, and as meriting, in all succeeding generations, the displeasure of high-minded and generous Englishmen. A man of genius, like Mr Jeffrey, must, indeed, have found it an easy matter to succeed in giving this turn to the public mind, among a people where all are readers, and so few are scholars, as is the case here in Scotland. Endowed by nature with a keen talent for sarcasm, nothing could be more easy for him than to fasten, with destructive effect of non-chalance, upon a work which had perhaps been composed with much earnestness of thought on the part of the author, and with a most sincere anxiety after abstract truth, either of reasoning or of feeling. The object of the critic, however, is by no means to assist those, who read his critical lucubrations, to enter with more facility, or with better preparation, into the thoughts, or feelings, or truths, which his author endeavours to inculcate or illustrate. His object is merely to make the author look foolish; and he prostitutes his own fine talents, to enable the common herd of his readers to suppose themselves looking down from the vantage-ground of superior intellect, upon the poor, blundering, deluded poet or philosopher, who is the subject of review. It is a pitiable thing to contemplate the extent to which these evil fashions have been introduced among us, and I have no doubt that their introduction has

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been far more owing to the prostitution of the exquisite talents of Mr Jeffrey, than to any one cause whatever—neither do I at all doubt, after what I have seen of Scotland, that the power of the unholy spells has been far greatest and far most effectual in the immediate centre of their ring. It is probable, I think, that if Mr Jeffrey were at last to throw aside his character of Reviewer, and come before the world in a volume filled with continuous thoughts, and continuous feelings, originating in his own mind, he would find that the public he has so well trained, would be very apt to turn upon himself, and think themselves called upon to laugh, more solito, even at Mr Jeffrey himself, when deprived of the blue and yellow panoply under which they have for so many years been wont to regard his blows as irresistible, and himself as invulnerable. The most vulgar blockhead who takes up and reads an article in the Edinburgh Review, imagines for the time that he himself is quizzing the man of genius, whose labours are there sported with. His opaque features are illuminated with triumph, and, holding the Journal fast in his hand, he pursues his fantastic victory to the last extremities. Month after month, or quarter after quarter, this most airy species of gratification is renewed, till, by long habit, our blockhead at last becomes bonâ fide satisfied and convinced, that he is quite superior to anything the age can produce. Now and then, to be sure, some passing event or circumstance may dart a momentary disturbance into the sanctuary of his self-complacency; but this will only make him long the more fervently for the next number of the Review, to convince him that he was all in the right—to rekindle the fluttering lamp of his vanity, and make the sanctum sanctorum of his conceit as bright a thing as ever. In the mean time, to talk in the plain way the subject deserves, whatever share of understanding or feeling has been allowed him by nature, remains totally uncultivated in the mind of this reader of Reviews, and the faculties of his mind are absolutely lost and sunk in one blind brute wish to see everything levelled before his self-love. Of all human passions, that of vulgar and envious insolence is the one which least requires to be pampered and stimulated. It has been the moving principle in all the most disgusting scenes recorded in history. Caligula could not bear to see a man of a handsome person, or with a fine head of hair, in the Circus, or in the streets, and generally ordered such persons to be taken away and disfigured. During the direst periods of the French Revolution, the self-love of the people had been gratified with the downfall of so many kinds of distinction, that at last it grew to be a blind, infuriate, ungovernable impulse, which could not remain

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quiet, while any individual yet retained qualities which raised him above the multitude. Every species of merit was sure to be brought to the block, or hoisted up to the lanterne, in this night of frenzy. The mad and ferocious scepticism also, which then prevailed, was only the principle of envy in disguise. It was envy which sought to extinguish every distinction between truth and falsehood, for fear it should be proved that any one thing was more excellent than any other. All was to be reduced to one dead level of uncertainty, and it was illiberal to consider a Greenlander as a less elegant or civilized person than an European. Such is the enthusiasm of the principle of popular self-love, when stimulated by a long series of indulgencies, and pushed to the last extremity of its slothful and unwieldy luxuriousness. That any man of genius should ever thoughtlessly or wantonly minister to it in literature, must be a source of the utmost sorrow and regret to every one who has a love, and a love of intelligence, for those qualities which most distinguish man from the brutes. Such a love (in spite of all his many little prejudices and peculiarities), glows no where with a more fervent flame than in the breast of my friend; and such are the sorrowful feelings with which he is accustomed to contemplate the main sin, which has disfigured and debased the splendid literary career of Mr Jeffrey. That such, however, must inevitably be the course and tendency of popular criticism among a nation which had become at once very fond of scepticism, and very weary of learning, might, I think, have been foreseen long ago, (I by no means think it might have been effectually guarded against). To despise all the most divine emanations, of which the human mind can be made the vehicle, was a necessary appendage to that system which despises the records of Divine Wisdom itself, and which would erect, in their stead, a structure built upon no more stable foundations than those of the self-sufficing, self-satisfied sagacity of the speculative intellect of man. It is a very easy thing to deny, that the doctrines of Religious Scepticism have been ever openly and broadly promulgated in the pages of the Edinburgh Review; but I think no candid person can entertain the slightest doubt, that the tendency of the whole work has been uniformly and essentially infidel. Unless it had been so, it must have been continually at variance with itself—it must have been but one string of discords from beginning to end. The whole tone of the jeering, sarcastic criticisms, with which it has been accustomed to salute the works of the more meditative and Christian authors of the time, would be enough to reveal to us the true purpose it has in view, even although it had never contained a single word expressly and distinctly

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bearing upon the subject of Religion. The truth is, moreover, that, in the present state of the world, all Christians are well entitled to say, that “they that are not with us are against us;” and the coldness and silence of the Edinburgh Reviewers would have been enough to satisfy any good Christian what their tenets are, even although they had never broken upon their general rule of coldness and silence by one single audacious whisper of mockery. The negative would have been enough without the positive side of the proof; but, alas! those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, can have little difficulty in acknowledging, that the Edinburgh Reviewers have furnished their adversaries abundantly with both. The system of political opinions, inculcated in the Edinburgh Review, is, in like manner, as I honestly think, admirably fitted to go hand in hand with a system of scepticism; but entirely irreconcilable with the notion of any fervent love and attachment for a religion, which is, above all other things, the religion of feeling. The politicians of this Review are men of great shrewdness and sagacity, and many of them are men of much honesty; but it is impossible to suppose for a moment, that they are men either of very high or of very beautiful feeling. The whole of their views, in regard to the most important series of political convulsions which modern times have ever witnessed, are at variance with deep or refined feeling—they appeal uniformly and unhesitatingly to ideas, which stand exactly in the opposite extremity from those which men inspired with such feelings would have inculcated upon such occasions. To submit to Buonaparte, for example, and to refuse aid to the young patriotism of Spain—these were advices which could only have been seriously pressed upon the consideration of such a nation as England, by men who had banished from their own minds a very great part of that reverence for Feeling (as abstracted from mere questions of immediate and obvious utility), in the strength and nourishment of which the true old character of England, and of English politicians, grew. In a word, it is sufficiently manifest, that whatever faults the system of these Reviewers may have had, or may still have, it has at least had the merit of being a system uniform and consistent in itself. To destroy in men’s minds the lingering vestiges of love for a religion which is hated by self-love, because its mysteries baffle and confound the scrutiny of the self-complacent—to reduce the high feeling of patriotism to a principle of arithmetical calculation of utility—and to counteract, by a continued series of sarcastic and merry antidotes, the impression likely to be produced by works appealing to the graver and

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more mysterious feelings of the human heart—these are purposes which I would by no means say the leaders of this celebrated Journal ever contemplated calmly and leisurely, as the prime objects of their endeavours—but they are purposes which have been all alike firmly, although some of them perhaps unconsciously, pursued by them; and, indeed, to speak the plain truth of the whole matter, no one of which could have been firmly or effectually pursued, without being pursued in conjunction with the others. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I am happy to say, however, that from all I have now seen and heard of the state of Scotland, this Review, in spite of the fierce popularity it for some years enjoyed, is by no means likely to effect any such lasting, and, of course, miserable change in the feelings and character of the people of Scotland, as might have been at one time expected by the Reviewers themselves, or dreaded by those who held sacred a very different set of feelings and principles, in all points, from those of which they have been the champions. In spite of the infidelity of the Edinburgh Review, (for I really feel no scruple in using the word broadly,) and, indeed, in spite of the sceptical tendency of the whole body of Scotch philosophy—the Scotch are still a religious people, and likely, I trust, very long to continue so. In spite of the mean views of general polity, illustrated and exemplified in the Edinburgh Review, and the still more offensive levity with which things nearer home have sometimes been treated by it, there is still an immense majority of the people of Scotland, who see things with the eyes, I do not say of sincere (for of no one do I question the sincerity,) but of enlightened patriots—men who understand the value of national experience, and venerate those feelings of loyalty and attachment to the more formal and external parts of the English constitution, with the general decay of which, I have very little doubt, the whole fabric to which they are fixed, would be found to have lost many of its firmest props, as well as of its finest ornaments. In regard to literature, I think the success of the Edinburgh Review has been far more triumphant than in any other department of its exertions. Here it had to encounter fewer obstacles in the previous character and habits of the Scottish people; for the influence of the Sceptical Philosophy, introduced by the great men of the last age, had very much removed all feelings of intense admiration for any works besides their own, from among almost the only class of people who in Scotland are much interested about such subjects. The Scottish education, too, as you have already seen in part, is not such as to oppose

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any very formidable barrier of repugnant feelings against the encroachment of the spirit of degrading mockery. Ignorant in a great measure of the mighty spirits of antiquity, the Scottish student wants in truth the most powerful of all those feelings, which teach and prepare other men to regard with an eye of humility, as well as of admiration, those who in their own time seem to revive the greatness of the departed, and vindicate once more the innate greatness of our nature. It is, indeed, no uncommon thing to meet with men, calling themselves classical scholars, who seem to think it a part of their character as such to undervalue, on all occasions, the exertions of contemporary genius. But these are only your empty race of solemn pretenders, who read particular books, only because few other people read them—and who, unable themselves to produce anything worthy of the attention of their own age, are glad to shelter their imbecility under the shadow of over-strained exclusive reverence for ages that have gone by. It is not necessary to suppose, that liberal and enlightened scholarship has anything in common with these reverend Tom Folios. The just and genuine effect of intimate acquaintance with the great authors of antiquity, is to make men love and reverence the great authors of their own time—the intellectual kinsmen and heirs of those whom they have so been wont to worship. It is, indeed, a very deplorable thing to observe, in what an absurd state of ignorance the majority of educated people in Scotland have been persuaded to keep themselves, concerning much of the best and truest literature of their own age, as well as of the ages that have gone by. Among the Whigs in Edinburgh, above all, a stranger from the south is every day thunderstruck by some new mark of total and inconceivable ignorance concerning men and things, which, to every man of education with whom he has conversed in any other town of Britain, are “familiar as household words.” The degree to which the intellectual subjection of these people has been carried, is a thing of which I am quite sure you cannot possibly have the smallest suspicion. The Edinburgh Reviewers have not checked or impeded only the influence of particular authors among their countrymen; they have entirely prevented them from ever coming beyond the Tweed. They have willed them to be unknown, absolutely and literally unknown, and so are they at this moment. I do not on my conscience believe, that there is one Whig in Edinburgh to whom the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey any distinct or definite idea. His John Woodvil was ridiculed in the Edinburgh Review, and the effect of this paltry ridicule has been not only to prevent

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the Scotch from reading John Woodvil, (a tragedy which, although every way worthy of Lamb’s exquisite genius, wants very many of the popular charms in which some of his other pieces are rich to overflowing)—but almost to prevent them from remembering that such a person as Charles Lamb exists, at least to prevent them most effectually from ever having recourse for delight and instruction to volumes, wherein as much delight and instruction may be found, as in any of similar size, which an English library possesses. Even the commanding, majestic intellect of Wordsworth has not been able to overcome the effect of the petty warfare kept up against it by a set of wits, one of whom only might have been expected to enter with some portion of intelligence into the spirit of so great and original a poet. To find fault with particular parts of Mr Wordsworth’s poems, or with particular points in the Psychological system upon which the whole structure of his poetry is built, this might have been very well either for the Reviewers, or the readers of the Review. But the actual truth of the case is something very different, indeed, from this. The reading public of Edinburgh do not criticise Mr Wordsworth; they think him below their criticism; they know nothing about what he has done, or what he is likely to do. They think him a mere old sequestered hermit, eaten up with vanity and affectation, who publishes every now and then some absurd poem about a Washing-Tub, or a Leech-Gatherer, or a Little Grey Cloak. They do not know even the names of some of the finest poems our age has produced. They never heard of Ruth, or Michael, or the Brothers, or Hart-Leap Well, or the Recollections of Infancy, or the Sonnets to Buonaparte. They do not know, that there is such a thing as a description of a Church-yard in the Excursion. Alas! how severely is their ignorance punished in itself. But after all, Mr Wordsworth can have no very great right to complain. The same people who despise, and are ignorant of him, despise also, and are ignorant of all the majestic poets the world has ever produced, with no exceptions beyond two or three great names, acquaintance with which has been forced upon them by circumstances entirely out of their controul. The fate of Homer, of Æschylus, of Dante—nay, of Milton—is his. The spirit of this facetious and rejoicing ignorance has become so habitual to the Scotchmen of the present day, that even they who have thrown off all allegiance to the Edinburgh Review, cannot divest themselves of its influence. There is no work which has done so much to weaken the authority of the Edinburgh Review in such matters as Blackwood’s Magazine; and yet I saw an article in that work the other day, in

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which it seemed to be made matter of congratulatory reflection, that “if Mr Coleridge should make his appearance suddenly among any company of well-educated people on this side the Tweed, he would meet with some little difficulty in making them comprehend who he was.”— What a fine idea for a Scottish critic to hug himself upon! How great is the blessing of a contented disposition! P. M.

LETTER XLI TO THE SAME

THE Whigs are still lords of public opinion in Edinburgh, to an extent of which, before visiting Scotland, I could scarcely have formed any adequate notion. The Tories have all the political power, and have long had it; but from whatever cause (and I profess myself incapable of assigning any rational one), their power does not appear to have given them command of much sway over the general opinions, even of those that think with them regarding political matters. I confess that I, born and bred a Tory, and accustomed, in my part of the country, to see the principles I reverence supported by at least an equal share of talent, was not a little mortified by certain indications of faint-heartedness and absurd diffidence of themselves among the Scottish Tories, which met my eye ere I had been long in Edinburgh. I am inclined, upon the whole, to attribute a good deal of this to the influence of the Edinburgh Review. That work was set on foot, and conducted for some years, with an astonishing degree of spirit; and although it never did anything to entitle it to much respect, either from English Scholars, or English Patriots, or English Christians, I can easily see how such a work, written by Scotchmen, and filled with all the national prejudices of Scotchmen, should have exerted a wonderful authority over the intellect of the city in which it was published. Very many of its faults (I mean those of the less serious kind—such as its faults in regard to literature and taste), were all adapted for the meridian of Scotland; and for a time, certainly the whole country was inclined to take a pride in its success. The prestige of the Edinburgh Review has now most undoubtedly vanished even there; but there still remains a shadow of it sufficient to invest its old conductors with a kind of authority over the minds of those, who once were disposed to consider them as infallible judges, de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis; and then the high eminence of some of these gentlemen in their profession of the law, gives them another kind of hold upon the great body of persons following that profession, which is every thing in Edinburgh; because the influence of those who follow it is not neutralized to any con-

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siderable extent by the presence of any great aristocracy, or of any great intellectual cultivation out of themselves. The Scotch are a people of talkers; and among such a people, it is wonderful how far the influence of any one person may be carried around and below him, by mere second—third—and fourth-hand babbling, all derived from one trivial source. I am not, however, of opinion, that this kind of work will go on much longer. Jeffrey has evidently got sick of the Review—and, indeed, when I look back to what he has done, and compare that with what he might have done, I think this is no wonder; Brougham has enough to do in Parliament—that is to say, he gives himself enough to do; and even there you well know what a charlatan kind of reputation he has—Horner is dead—Walter Scott has long since left them.—The Review is now a very sensible plain sort of book; in its best parts, certainly not rising above the British Review—and in its inferior parts, there is often a display of calm drivelling, much beyond what the British Review itself would admit. And then there is no point—no wit—no joke—no spirit, nothing of the glee of young existence about it. It is a very dull book, more proper to read between sleeping and waking, among old, sober, cautious tradesmen, than to give any spring to the fancy or reason of the young, the active, and the intelligent. The secret will out ere long—viz. That the Edinburgh Reviewers have not been able to get any effectual recruits among the young people about them. There is no infusion of fresh blood into the veins of the Review. When one visits Edinburgh, where one cannot stir a step without stumbling over troops of confident, comfortable, glib, smart young Whigs, one is at a loss to understand the meaning of this dearth. One would suppose, that every ball-room and tavern overflowed with gay Edinburgh Reviewers. One hears a perpetual buzz about Jeffrey, Brougham, the Review, &c. &c., and would never doubt, that prime articles were undergoing the process of concoction in every corner. But, alas! the fact is, that the young Edinburgh Whigs are a set of very stupid fellows, and the Review must wait long enough, if it is never to be resuscitated but by them. They are really a very disagreeable set of pretenders—I mean those of them that do make any pretensions at all to literary character. They are very ill educated in general; they have no classical learning; few of them can construe two lines of any Latin poet; and as for Greek, they scarcely know which end of the book should be held to their noses. They have never studied any philosophy of any kind—unless attending a course of lectures on metaphysics, delivered by a man far too ingenious to be comprehended for above five sentences at a time, by persons of

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their acquirements and capacity, can be called studying philosophy. They know sometimes a little about chemistry and geology, to be sure; but these are studies in which the proficiency of mere amateurs can never be any great matter. They know a very little of English history and politics—enough to enable them to spin out a few half-hours of blarney in their debating societies. But, upon the whole, it may safely be asserted, that all they know, worthy of being known, upon any subject of general literature, politics, or philosophy, is derived from the Edinburgh Review itself; and as they cannot do the Review any great service by giving it back its own materials, I conceive that this work is just in the act of falling a sacrifice to habits of superficial acquirement, and contented ignorance, which it was short-sighted enough to encourage, if not to create, in order to serve its own temporary purposes among the rising generation of Scotland. One would imagine, however, that these young Whigs might have begun, long ere this time, to suspect somewhat of their own situation. They must be quite aware, that they have never written a single page in the Edinburgh Review, or that, if they have done so, their pages were universally looked upon as the mere lumber of the book; contrasting, too, their own unproductive petulance, with the laborious and fruitful early years of those whom they worship, and in whose walk they would fain be supposed to be following—it is difficult to understand how they happen to keep themselves so free from the qualms of conscious imbecility. Perhaps, after all, they are au fond less conceited than they appear to be; but certainly, to judge from externals, there never was a more selfsatisfied crew of young ignoramuses. After being let a little into their real character and attainments, I cannot say but that I derived a considerable degree of amusement from the contemplation of their manners. As for their talk, it is such utter drivelling, the moment they leave their text-books, (the moment they give over quoting,) that I must own I found no great entertainment in it. It is a pity to see a fine country, like Scotland, a country so rich in recollections of glorious antiquity, so rich in the monuments of genius, at this moment adorned with not a few fullgrown living trees of immortal fruit—it is a pity to see such a country so devoid of promise for her future harvest. It is a pity to see her soil wasting on the nurture of this unproductive pestilential underwood, juices which, under better direction, might give breadth to the oak, and elevation to the pine.

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The respectable elder Whigs must, of a surety, feel very sore upon all this; for it is not to be supposed, that they can be quite so easily satisfied with these young gregarii, as the young gregarii are with themselves. I understand, accordingly, that nothing gives them so much visible delight, as the appearance of anything like a revival of talent among their troops. When a young Whig makes a tolerable speech at the Bar, or writes a tolerable law-paper, or adventures to confess himself author of a tolerable paragraph in a party print—in short, when he manifests any symptom of possessing better parts than the confessedly dull fellows around him, there is much rejoicing in the high places, a most remarkable crowing and clapping of wings in honour of the rising luminary. The young genius is fed and fattened for a season with puffs and praises; and, in consequence of that kind of dominion, or prestige, to which I have already alluded, the very Tories begin to contemplate him with a little awe and reverence, as a future formidable antagonist, with whom it may be as well to be upon some tolerable terms in private. Well—a year or two goes over his head, and the genius has not visibly improved in any thing except conceit. He is now an established young Whig genius. If any situation becomes empty, which it would be convenient for him to fill, and if, notwithstanding of this, he is not promoted to it by those, whom, on every occasion, he makes the object of his ignorant abuse—this neglect of him is talked of by himself and his friends, as if it were virtually a neglect of genius in the abstract;— with so much readiness do these good people enter into the spirit of a personification. A Dutch painter could not typify ideal Beauty under a more clumsy and heavy shape, than they sometimes do Genius; nor are the languishing, coy, and conscious airs of some Venus over a lust-huis at Schedam, a whit more exquisite in their way, than the fat indignant fatuity of some of those neglected geniuses of Scotland. So many of these geniuses, however, have now been puffed up, and pushed up to a little temporary reputation, and then sunk under their own weight into their own mud, that one should suppose the elevators

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must now be a little weary of exerting their mechanical powers in that way. Their situation is, indeed, almost as discouraging as that of Sisyphus, doomed for ever to struggle in vain against the obstinate, or, as Homer calls it, the “impudent” stone’s alacrity in sinking. Αὐτις ἐπειτα πεδονδε κυλινδετο λαας ἀναιδης.

P. M.

LETTER XLII TO THE SAME

DEAR WILLIAMS, I TRUST, that among the many literateurs of Edinburgh, there will ere long be found some person to compose a full and detailed history of this city, considered as a great mart of literature. I do not know of any other instance, in the whole history of the world, of such a mart existing and flourishing in a place not the seat of a government, or residence of a court, or centre of any very great political interest. The only place which at all approaches to Edinburgh in this view is Weimar; for the residence of so small a prince as the Grand Duke can scarcely be considered as conferring anything like what we would understand by the character of a capital. But even there it can scarcely be said that any great mart of literature exists, or indeed existed even at the time when Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe lived together under the wing of the palace. Books were written there in abundance, and many books were nominally published there; but the true centre from which they were diffused over Germany was always Leipsick. Till within these twenty years, I suppose there was no such thing in Edinburgh as the great trade of Publishing. Now and then some volume of sermons or so issued from the press of some Edinburgh typographer, and after lying for a year or two upon the counter of some of their booksellers, was dismissed into total oblivion, as it probably deserved to be. But of all the great literary men of the last age, who lived in Edinburgh, there was no one who ever thought of publishing his books in Edinburgh. The trade here never aspired to anything beyond forming a very humble appendage of understrappers to the trade of the Row. Even if the name of an Edinburgh bookseller did appear upon a titlepage, that was only a compliment allowed him by the courtesy of the great London dealer, whose instrument and agent he was. Every thing was conducted by the Northern Bibliopoles in the same timid spirit of which this affords a specimen. The dulness of their atmosphere was never enlivened by one breath of daring. They were all petty retailers, inhabiting snug shops, and making a little money in the most tedious

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and uniform way imaginable. As for risking the little money they did make upon any bold adventure, which might have tripled the sum, or swept it entirely away, this was a thing of which they had not the most remote conception. In short, in spite of Hume and Robertson, and the whole generation of lesser stars, who clustered around those great luminaries, the spirit of literary adventure had never approached the bibliopoles of Edinburgh. They never dreamed of making fortunes for themselves, far less of being the means of bestowing fortunes upon others, by carrying on operations in the large and splendid style of mercantile enterprize. The only thing that could be looked upon as any invasion of this quiescent state of matters, was the appearance of the Mirrors, and some other works in the same style, or by the same hands, which were published in the shop of Mr Creech, then the Prince of the Edinburgh Trade—and which, of course, must have attracted no inconsiderable share of attention to him and his shop. But this bibliopole was a very indifferent master of his trade, and wanted entirely the wit to take due advantage of “the goods the gods provided.” He was himself a literary character, and he was always a great man in the magistracy of the city; and perhaps he would have thought it beneath his dignity to be a mere ordinary money-making bookseller. Not that he had any aversion to money-making; on the contrary, he was prodigiously fond of money, and indeed carried his love of it in many things to a ridiculous extent. But he had been trained in all the timid prejudices of the old Edinburgh school of booksellers, and not daring to make money in a bold and magnificent way, neither did he dare to run the risk of losing any part of what he had made. Had he possessed either the shrewdness or the spirit of some of his successors, there is no question he might have set on foot a fine race of rivalry among the literary men about him—a race, of which the ultimate gains would undoubtedly have been greatest to himself. But he was not aware of the powers of that great momentum, of which I have spoken on a former occasion. He never had the sense to perceive, that his true game lay in making high sweepstakes; and the consequence was, that nobody would take the trouble either of training or running for his courses. Not thinking, therefore, of entering into competition with the great booksellers of the metropolis, in regard to the stimulating of literary ardour by the weight of his purse, his ambition was to surpass all his own brethren in Edinburgh, in the attractions of his shop—which, if the account I hear be true, he must certainly have succeeded in rendering a very delightful lounge. He had been originally

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educated with a view to the Kirk, and had performed in his younger days a considerable part of the grand tour, in quality of governor to a young nobleman; and he was thus entitled to look upon himself as quite a different sort of person from the ordinary brothers of the trade. And then he could write paragraphs in the newspapers—verse or prose, witty or sentimental, as might suit the occasion. Above all, he was a wit and a story-teller of high eminence—one who sat every day “at good men’s feasts,” and delighted the company with the narration of humorous incidents, or rather the dramatic exposition of humorous characters. His stories were not many, and they were all regularly built, and formal things in their way, but the man had a vein of pleasantry, the interest of which was not to be exhausted with the novelty of the tale, or even with the novelty of the particular expressions of which he made use in telling it. In short, Creech was one of the prime characters of the place, and it was a necessary thing to go to his shop every now and then, and see him there in his glory. I have seen a print of him, which represents him as a precise, intelligent-looking old gentleman, in stiff curls, and a nice suit of black, and having a great air of courtly suavity, mingled with not a little conceit and self-importance in his aspect. But Wastle, who knew him well, assures me that although this print gives his features very faithfully, and in all probability the air also in which he thought it fit and proper to sit to the painter, it gives not merely an inadequate, but a perfectly false idea of the real character of the man. The spirit of fun, he tells me, ran frolicking through his veins with the blood that filled them; and there was a roguish twinkle in his small, glittering gray eye, and a richness of jocularity in the wrinkles beneath and around them, that nothing could resist. It may be supposed that such a person would go through the ceremonial of a bookseller’s shop with something more than mere decorum. At the time when the periodical works I have mentioned were in the course of publication, it was the custom of many of their chief supporters to go and breakfast with Creech, which they called attending Creech’s levee—and his house was conveniently situated for this, being in the immediate vicinity of the Parliament-House, with which then, as now, all the literary characters of Edinburgh had a close connection. The pleasant conversation of the man, and his respectable appearance, and latterly, perhaps, his high civic dignities (for he was Lord Provost ere he died), all conspired in making Mr Creech a person of no ordinary importance, and in no ordinary request. The trade slumbered on year after year, in a quiet and respectable state of inaction, under the auspices

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of a man with whom nobody could enter upon any competition in so many important particulars, till, all of a sudden, there sprung up a new tribe of authors, who had tact enough to observe the absurdity of the way in which matters were going on, and forthwith there sprung up a new set of booksellers, who had the wit to understand that some great change was about to occur, and to prepare themselves vi et armis to take proper advantage of the commotion they foresaw. It is not easy to discover very accurately, how much of the merit of the change belongs to the new authors themselves, and how much of it belongs to the booksellers. They share the whole of it between them, and never assuredly was a change so remarkable, so suddenly, and yet so effectually produced. In one moment, Mr Creech was supplanted in his authority. Till the moment of his death, indeed, he was allowed to retain all manner of place, precedence, style, and dignity; but the essence of his kingship was gone—and the booksellers of Edinburgh, like the Mahratta Nabobs and Rajahs, owned the sway of one that bore not the name of Emperor. The first manifestation of the new state of things was no less an occurrence than the appearance of the first Number of the Edinburgh Review—a thing which, wherever it might have occurred, must have been a matter of sufficient importance, and which appearing here, was enough not only to change the style of bookselling, and the whole ideas of booksellers, but to produce almost as great a revolution in minds not so immediately interested in the result of the phenomenon. The projectors of this Journal—both writers and publishers I should imagine— were quite satisfied that nothing could be done without abundance of money. Whoever wrote for their book must submit to be paid for doing so, because they would have no distinction of persons. But, indeed, I never heard it suspected, that any one objected to receiving on the publication of an article, not only the honour of the thing, but a bunch of bank-notes into the bargain. If a man does not want money himself, he always knows abundance of people that do; and, in short, the root of all evil is a medicament, which requires little sweetening of the cup, either to the sick or the sound palate. The prodigious impetus given to the trade of Edinburgh by the first application of this wonderful engine, has never since been allowed to lose any part of its energy. The Review, in the first place, of itself alone, has been sufficient to keep all fear of stagnation far enough from the scene in which it makes its appearance. And from the Review, as might well have been foreseen, a kindred impulse has been continually carried into every region of the literary world—but most of all into the heart of

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the literature and the notions of the literary men of Edinburgh. Very shortly after the commencement of the Review, Mr Walter Scott began to be an author; and even without the benefit of its example, it is probable that he would have seen the propriety of adopting some similar course of procedure. However this might have been, ever since that time the Edinburgh Reviewers and Mr Walter Scott have between them furnished the most acceptable food for the reading public, both in and out of Scotland—but no doubt most exclusively and effectually in their own immediate neighbourhood; and both have always proceeded upon the principle of making the reading public pay handsomely for their gratification, through their fore-speakers, interpreters, and purveyors, the booksellers. It would be unfair, however, to omit mentioning what I firmly believe, that the efforts—even the joint efforts of these great authors, would not have availed to anything like the extent to which they have in reality reached, had they not been so fortunate as to meet with a degree of ardour and of tact, quite correspondent to their own, among the new race of booksellers, who had started into life along with themselves—above all, in Mr Constable, the original publisher of the Edinburgh Review—the publisher of most of Mr Scott’s works, and, without doubt, by far the greatest publisher Scotland ever has produced. There is no doubt that this person is deserving of infinite credit for the share he has had in changing the whole aspect of Edinburgh, as a seat of literary merchandize—and, in truth, making it, instead of no literary mart at all, a greater one than almost any other city in Europe. What a singular contrast does the present state of Edinburgh, in regard to these matters, afford, when compared with what I have been endeavouring to describe as existing in the days of the Creeches! Instead of Scotch authors sending their works to be published by London booksellers, there is nothing more common now-a-days, than to hear of English authors sending down their books to Edinburgh, to be published in a city, than which Memphis or Palmyra could scarcely have appeared a more absurd place of publication to any English author thirty years ago. One that has not examined into the matter would scarcely be able to believe how large a proportion of the classical works of English literature, published in our age, have made their first appearance on the counters of the Edinburgh booksellers. But we all know the practical result of this, videlicet, that at this moment an Edinburgh title-page is better than almost any London one—and carries a greater authority along with it. For my part, if ever I should take it into my head to publish a book, I should most undoubtedly endeavour to get it published in

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Edinburgh. No book can be published there, and totally neglected. In so small a town, in spite of the quantity of books published in it, the publication of a new book is quite sure to attract the attention of some person, and if it has the least interest, to be talked of in company. If the book be a very interesting one in any way, its popularity extends with the most wonderful rapidity—and, ere a few days have elapsed, the snow-ball has grown so large, that it can be hurled to a distance with steady and certain assurance of hitting its mark. And, indeed, it is only in consequence of the frequency with which all this has occurred, that the imprimatur of an Edinburgh bookseller has come to be looked upon with so much habitual respect even in the south. This is surely a very remarkable change; and, for all that I can hear, both authors and booksellers are indebted for it to nothing more than the genuine sagacity of the one individual I have mentioned. I believe it should also be observed, that the establishment of the press of Ballantyne, at the very same instant, almost, as the commencement of the Review, and the publication of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, helped to push on Scottish publications, or, indeed, Scottish literature. Before that press was set up in Edinburgh, I am told, nobody could venture a book to be printed in Edinburgh; afterwards, the Edinburgh press gained the same sort of celebrity as the Edinburgh title-pages. One of the first things I do, whenever I come to any town, is to make a round of visits to all the principal booksellers’ shops. I think they are by far the most amusing lounges in the world—picture-galleries and promenades they beat all to nothing. I am fond of all kinds of booksellers’ shops; I scarcely know which I would prefer to have, were I to be confined to one only; but they are all to be had in the utmost perfection, or very nearly so, in Edinburgh. The booksellers themselves, in the first place, are a race of men, in regard to whom I have always felt a particular interest and curiosity. They are never for a moment confounded in my mind with any other class of shop-keepers or traffickers. Their merchandize is the noblest in the world; the wares to which they invite your attention are not fineries for the back, or luxuries for the belly—the inward man is what they aspire to clothe and feed, and the food and raiment they offer are tempting things. They have whole shelves loaded with wisdom; and if you want wit, they have drawerfulls of it at every corner. Go in grave or merry, sweet or sour, sentimental or sarcastic, there is no fear these cunning merchants can produce an article perfectly to your mind. It is impossible that this noble traffick should not communicate something of its essential nobility to

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those continually engaged in it. Can a man put his name on the titlepage of Marmion, or Waverley, or Old Mortality, or Childe Harold, without gaining something from this distinction—I do not mean in his purse merely, but in his person? The supposition is absurd. Your bookseller, however ignorant he may be in many respects, always smells of the shop—and that which is a sarcasm, when said of any other man, is the highest of compliments when applied to him. In the way of his trade, moreover, he must continually come into contact with customers and employers, of a class quite superior to those who frequent any other shop in the street—yes, or warehouse or counting-house either. His talk is not with the ignorant brute multitude, but with the elite of the Genus Humanum, the Prima Virorum, as Lucretius hath it—the wise and the witty ones of the earth. Instead of haggling over the counter with a smooth-faced Miss or Master, about some piece of foppish finery, or disputing with some rude, boisterous, coarse-minded dealer, about casks or tuns, or ship-loads of rum, sugar, or timber—the bibliopole retires into some sequestered little speak-a-word nook, and seats himself beside some serious and refined author, or more serious and more refined authoress, to decide or pronounce upon the merits of some infant tragedy, epic poem, sermon, or romance—or he takes his stand in the centre of his outer court, and publishes to the Gentiles, with a loud voice, the praises of some new publication gone forth, or about to go forth, from his penetralia, to the illumination of the world. What an air of intelligence is breathed upon this man, from the surface of the universe in which he moves! It is as impossible for a bookseller to be devoid of taste and knowledge—some flavour at least—as it is for a collier to have a white skin, or a miller to want one. And then their claim to our respect is hereditary, as well as personal. “Noble of a noble stem,” they are representatives of worthies long since dead and sepulchred, whose names and atchievements are still fresh in all men’s recollection. What a world of associations are clustered about the bare name of any one of the great bibliopoles of days long since departed! Curll—whom Swift tormented—the audacious, hook-nosed Edmund Curll!—old Jacob Tonson, with his squint and his “two left legs”—and Lintot, with his orange-tawney waistcoat, and his gray ambling poney, who hinted to Mr Pope how easy a thing it would be for him to turn one of Horace’s Odes, as they were walking their horses up a little hill on the Windsor road. How green is the memory of these old “Fathers of the Row!” They will flourish a hundred years hence as brightly as they do now, and not less brightly, because perhaps another

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groupe or two of descendants may have “climbed the ascent of that mysterious tower,” and have left kindred names behind them to bourgeon with kindred blossoms. But the interest one feels about the person of a bookseller, is not sustained by fantasies and associations alone. I should like to know where it is that a man picks up so much interesting information about most interesting subjects, in so very easy a way as by lounging for half-anhour in a bookseller’s shop. It is in a city what the barber’s shop is in a village—the centre and focus of all information concerning the affairs of men—the arena for all disputation—the stage for all display. It is there that the sybil Fame sits scattering her oracular leaves to all the winds of Heaven; but I cannot add with the poet, Umile in tanta gloria, Coverta gia dello profetico nembo.

The bookseller is the confidant of his customers—he is the first to hear the rumour of the morning, and he watches it through all the stages of its swelling, till it bursts in the evening. He knows Mr ——’s opinion of Lord ——’s speech, sooner than any man in town. He has the best information upon all the in futuros of the world of letters; he has already had one or two peeps of the first canto of a poem not yet advertised— he has a proof-sheet of the next new novel in his pocket; and if you will but promise to be discreet, you may “walk backwards,” or “walk up stairs for a moment,” and he will shew it you. Are these things of no value? They may seem so to you among the green hills of Cardigan; but they are very much the reverse to me among the dusty streets of London—or here in Edinburgh. I do love, from my soul, to catch even the droppings of the precious cup of knowledge. To read books when they are upon every table, and to talk of them when nobody is silent about them, are rather vulgar accomplishments, and objects of vulgar ambition. I like to be beforehand with the world— I like both to see sooner and to see farther than my neighbours. While others are contented to sit in the pit, and gape and listen in wonder upon whatever is shewn or uttered, I cannot be satisfied unless I am permitted to go behind the scenes—to see the actors before they walk upon the stage, and examine the machinery of the thunder before its springs are set in motion. In my next I shall introduce you to the Booksellers’ shops of Edinburgh. P. M.

LETTER XLIII TO THE SAME

DEAR WILLIAMS, THE importance of the Whigs in Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh Review, added to the great enterprize and extensive general business of Mr Constable, have, as might have been expected, rendered the shop of this bookseller by far the most busy scene in the Bibliopolic world of the North. It is situated in the High-street, in the midst of the Old Town, where, indeed, the greater part of the Edinburgh Booksellers are still to be found lingering (as the majority of their London brethren also do,) in the neighbourhood of the same old haunts to which long custom has attached their predilections. On entering, one sees a place by no means answering, either in point of dimensions, or in point of ornament, to the notion one might have been apt to form of the shop from which so many mighty works are every day issuing—a low dusky chamber, inhabited by a few clerks, and lined with an assortment of unbound books and stationery—entirely devoid of all those luxurious attractions of sofas and sofa-tables, and books of prints, &c. &c., which one meets with in the superb nursery of the Quarterly Review in Albemarle-Street. The Bookseller himself is seldom to be seen in this part of his premises; he prefers to sit in a chamber immediately above, where he can proceed in his own work without being disturbed by the incessant cackle of the young Whigs who lounge below; and where few casual visitors are admitted to enter his presence, except the more important members of the great Whig corporation—Reviewers either in esse, or, at least, supposed to be so in posse—contributors to the Supplement of the Encyclopædia Britannica—and the more obscure editors and supporters of the innumerable and more obscure periodical works, of which Mr Constable is the publisher. The bookseller is himself a good-looking man, apparently about forty—very fat in his person, but with a face with good lines, and a fine healthy complexion. He is one of the most jollylooking members of the trade I ever saw; and moreover, one of the most pleasing and courtly in his address. One thing that is remarkable about

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him, and indeed very distinguishingly so, is—his total want of that sort of critical jabber, of which most of his brethren are so profuse, and of which custom has rendered me rather fond than otherwise. Mr Constable is too much of a bookseller, to think it at all necessary that he should appear to be knowing in the merits of books. His business is to publish books, and to sell them; he leaves the work of examining them before they are published, and criticizing them afterwards, to others, who have more leisure on their hands than he has. One sees in a moment that he has reduced his business to a most strictly business-like regularity of system; and that of this the usual cant of book-shop disquisition forms no part—like a great wholesale merchant, who does not by any means think it necessary to be the taster of his own wines. I am of opinion, that this may, perhaps, be in the end the wisest course a great publisher can pursue. Here, at least, is one sufficiently striking instance of its success. If one be inclined, however, for an elegant shop, and abundance of gossip, it is only necessary to cross the street, and enter the shop of Messrs Manners and Miller—the true lounging-place of the bluestockings, and literary beau-monde of the Northern metropolis. Nothing, indeed, can be more inviting than the external appearance of this shop, or more amusing, if one is in the proper lounging humour, than the scene of elegant trifling which is exhibited within. At the door you are received by one or other of the partners, probably the second mentioned, who has perhaps been handing some fine lady to her carriage, or is engaged in conversation with some fine gentleman, about to leave the shop after his daily half-hour’s visit. You are then conducted through a light and spacious anti-room, full of clerks and apprentices, and adorned with a few busts and prints, into the back-shop, which is a perfect bijou. Its walls are covered with all the most elegant books in fashionable request, arrayed in the most luxurious clothing of Turkey and Russia leather, red, blue, and green—and protected by glass folding-doors, from the intrusion even of the little dust which might be supposed to threaten them, in a place kept so delicately trim. The grate exhibits either a fine blazing fire, or, in its place, a beautiful fresh bush of hawthorn, stuck all over with roses and lilies, as gay as a Maypole. The centre of the room is occupied by a table, covered with the Magazines and Reviews of the month, the papers of the day, the last books of Voyages and Travels, and innumerable books of scenery— those beautiful books which transport one’s eye in a moment into the heart of Savoy or Italy—or that still more beautiful one, which presents

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us with exquisite representations of the old castles and romantic skies of Scotland, over whose forms and hues of native majesty, a new atmosphere of magical interest has just been diffused by the poetical pencil of Turner—Thomson—or Williams. Upon the leaves of these books, or such as these, a groupe of the most elegant young ladies and gentlemen of the place may probably be seen feasting, or seeming to feast their eyes; while encomiums due to their beauties are mingled up in the same whisper with compliments still more interesting to beauties, no doubt, still more divine. In one corner, perhaps, some haughty bluestocking, with a volume of Campbell’s Specimens, or Dr Clarke’s Scandinavia, or the last number of the Edinburgh Review, or Blackwood’s Magazine in her hand, may be observed launching ever and anon a look of ineffable disdain upon the less intellectual occupation of her neighbours, and then returning with a new knitting of her brows to her own paulo majora. In the midst of all this, the bookseller himself moves about, doing the honours of the place, with the same unwearied gallantry and politeness—now mingling his smiles with those of the triflers, and now listening with earnest civility to the dissertation, commendatory or reprobatory, of the more philosophic fair. One sees, in a moment, that this is not a great publishing shop; such weighty and laborious business would put to flight all the loves and graces that hover in the perfumed atmosphere of the place. A novel, or a volume of pathetic sermons, or pretty poems, might be tolerated, but that is the utmost. To select the most delicate viands from the great feast of the Cadells, Murrays, Baldwins, Constables, and Blackwoods, and arrange and dispose them so as to excite the delicate appetite of the fine fastidious few—such is the object and such the art of the great Hatchard of Edinburgh. This shop seems to have a prodigious flow of retail business, and is, no doubt, not less lucrative to the bookseller than delightful to his guests. Mr Miller is the successor of Provost Creech, in something of his wit, and many of his stories, and in all his love of good cheer and good humour, and may certainly be looked upon as the favourite bibliopole of almost all but the writers of books. He ought, however, to look to his dignity, for I can perceive that he is likely to have ere long a dangerous rival in a more juvenile bookseller, whose shop is almost close to his own—Mr Peter Hill. This young gentleman inhabits at present a long and dreary shop, where it is impossible to imagine any groupe of fine ladies or gentlemen could assemble, selon les regles; but he talks of removing to the New Town, and hints, not obscurely, that Mr Miller may soon see all the elegancies of his boudoir

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thrown into shade by an equally elegant salon. Mr Hill and you, my good fellow, would hit it to a hair; for, while his forenoons are past in the most sedulous attention to the business of a flourishing concern, his genteel and agreeable manners have made him a universal favourite with everybody, so that one frequently meets with him at evening parties, when “it is good to be merry and wise;” and I declare to you, that you never heard a sweeter pipe. Our friend Tom Moore himself is no whit his superior. As for shops of old books, classics, black-letter, foreign literature, and the like, I was never in any great town which possesses so few of them as this. It might indeed be guessed, that her riches in this way would not be great, after the account I have given you of the state of scholarship among the literateurs of the North. There is, however, one shop of this sort, which might cut a very respectable figure, even in places where attainments of another kind are more in request; and I confess I have visited this shop more frequently, and with more pleasure, than any of its more fashionable neighbours in Edinburgh. It is situated, as it ought to be, in the immediate vicinity of the College, and consequently quite out of the way of all the fashionable promenades and lounges; but, indeed, for anything I have seen, it is not much frequented even by the young gentlemen of the University. The daily visitors of Mr Laing, (for that is the name of its proprietor,) seem rather to be a few scattered individuals of various classes and professions, among whom, in spite of the prevailing spirit and customs of the place, some love of classical learning is still found to linger—retired clergymen and the like, who make no great noise in the world, and, indeed, are scarcely known to exist by the most part even of the literary people of Edinburgh. The shop, notwithstanding, is a remarkably neat and comfortable one, and even a lady might lounge in it, without having her eye offended, or her gown soiled. It consists of two apartments, which are both completely furnished with valuable editions of old authors, and I assure you, the antique vellum bindings, or oak boards of these ponderous folios, are a very refreshing sight to me, after visiting the gaudy and brilliant stores of such a shop as that I have just described. Mr Laing himself is a quiet, sedate-looking old gentleman, who, although he has contrived to make very rich in his business, has still the air of being somewhat dissatisfied, that so much more attention should be paid by his fellow-citizens to the flimsy novelties of the day, than to the solid and substantial articles which his magazine displays. But his son is the chief enthusiast—indeed, he is by far the most genuine

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specimen of the true old-fashioned bibliopole that I ever saw exhibited in the person of a young man. My friend Wastle has a prodigious liking for him, which originated, I believe, in their once meeting casually in Rotterdam, and travelling together over most part of Holland in the Treckschuyt—and, indeed, this circumstance has been expressly alluded to by Wastle in one of his poems. Here Wastle commonly spends one or two hours every week he is in Edinburgh, turning over, in company with his young friend, all the Alduses, and Elzevirs, and Wynkin de Wordes, and Caxtons in the collection, nor does he often leave the shop, without being tempted to take some little specimen of its treasures home with him. I also, although my days of bibliomania are long since over, have been occasionally induced to transgress my selfdenying rule. I have picked up various curious things at a pretty cheap rate—and one book in particular, of which I shall beg your acceptance when we meet; but at present I won’t tell you what it is. David Laing is still a very young man; but Wastle tells me, (and so far as I have had occasion to see, he is quite correct in doing so,) that he possesses a truly wonderful degree of skill and knowledge in almost all departments of bibliography. Since Lunn’s death, he says, he does not think there is any of the booksellers in London superior to him in this way, and he often advises him to transfer the shop and all its treasures thither. But I suppose Mr Laing has very good reasons not to be in a hurry in adopting any such advice. He publishes a catalogue almost every year, and thus carries on a very extensive trade with all parts of the island. Besides, miserable as is the general condition of old learning in Scotland, there is still, I suppose, abundant occasion for one bookseller of this kind; and, I believe, he has no rival in the whole country. For my part, if I lived in Edinburgh, I would go to his shop every now and then, were it only to be put so much in mind of the happy hours we used to spend together long ago at Mr Parker’s. This old gentleman and his son are distinguished by their classical taste, in regard to other things besides books—and, among the rest, in regard to wines—a subject touching which it is fully more easy for them to excite the sympathy of the knowing ones of Edinburgh. They give an annual dinner to Wastle, and he carried me with him the other day to one of these anniversaries. I have seldom seen a more luxurious display. We had claret of the most exquisite La-Fitte flavour, which foamed in the glass like the cream of straw-berries, and went down as cool as the nectar of Olympus. David and Wastle entertained us with an infinite variety of stories about George Buchanan, the Admirable Crichtonius,

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and all the more forgotten heroes of the Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum. What precise share of the pleasure might be due to the claret, and what to their stories, I shall not venture to enquire; but I have rarely spent an evening more pleasantly. P. M. P. S. They are also very curious in sherry.

LETTER XLIV TO THE SAME

DEAR DAVID, THE only great lounging book-shop in the New Town of Edinburgh is Mr Blackwood’s. The prejudice in favour of sticking by the Old Town was so strong among the gentlemen of the trade, that when this bookseller intimated a few years ago his purpose of removing to the New, his ruin was immediately prophesied by not a few of his sagacious brethren. He persisted, however, in his intentions, and speedily took possession of a large and airy suite of rooms in Prince’s-Street, which had formerly been occupied by a notable confectioner, and whose threshold was therefore familiar enough to all the frequenters of that superb promenade. There it was that this enterprizing bibliopole hoisted his standard, and prepared at once for action. Stimulated, I suppose, by the example and success of John Murray, whose agent he is, he determined to make, if possible, Prince’s-Street to the High-Street, what the other has made Albemarle-Street to the Row. This shop is situated very near my hotel; so Mr Wastle carried me into it almost immediately after my arrival in Edinburgh; indeed, I asked him to do so, for the noise made even in London about the Chaldee MS., and some other things in the Magazine, had given me some curiosity to see the intrepid publisher of these things, and the probable scene of their concoction. Wastle has contributed a variety of poems, chiefly ludicrous, to the pages of the New Miscellany; so that he is of course a mighty favourite with the proprietor, and I could not have made my introduction under better auspices than his. The length of vista presented to one on entering the shop, has a very imposing effect; for it is carried back, room after room, through various gradations of light and shadow, till the eye cannot trace distinctly the outline of any object in the furthest distance. First, there is as usual a spacious place set apart for retail-business, and a numerous detachment of young clerks and apprentices, to whose management that important department of the concern is intrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof, where various groupes of loungers and

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literary dilettanti are engaged in looking at, or criticizing among themselves, the publications just arrived by that day’s coach from town. In such critical colloquies, the voice of the bookseller himself may ever and anon be heard mingling the broad and unadulterated notes of its Auld Reekie music; for, unless occupied in the recesses of the premises with some other business, it is here that he has his usual station. He is a nimble active-looking man of middle age, and moves about from one corner to another with great alacrity, and apparently under the influence of high animal spirits. His complexion is very sanguineous, but nothing can be more intelligent, keen, and sagacious, than the expression of the whole physiognomy; above all, the gray eyes and eye-brows as full of loco-motion as those of Catalani. The remarks he makes are, in general, extremely acute—much more so, indeed, than those of any member of the trade I ever heard speak upon such topics. The shrewdness and decision of the man can, however, stand in need of no testimony beyond what his own conduct has afforded—above all, in the establishment of his Magazine (the conception of which, I am assured, was entirely his own), and the subsequent energy with which he has supported it through every variety of good and evil fortune. It would be very unfair to lay upon his shoulders any portion of the blame which particular parts of his book may have deserved; but it is impossible to deny that he is well entitled to a large share in whatever merit may be supposed to be due to the erection of a work, founded, in the main, upon good principles, both political and religious, in a city where a work upon such principles must have been more wanted, and, at the same time, more difficult, than in any other with which I am acquainted. After I had been introduced in due form, and we had stood for about a couple of minutes in this place, the bookseller drew Mr Wastle aside, and a whispering conversation commenced between them, in the course of which, although I had no intention of being a listener, I could not avoid noticing that my own name was frequently mentioned. On the conclusion of it, Mr Blackwood approached me with a look of tenfold kindness, and requested me to walk with him into the interior of his premises—all of which, he was pleased to add, he was desirous of shewing to me. I of course agreed, and followed him through various turnings and windings into a very small closet, furnished with nothing but a pair of chairs and a writing-table. We had no sooner arrived in this place, which, by the way, had certainly something very mysterious in its aspect, than Mr Blackwood began at once with these words,—“Well, Dr Morris, have you seen our last Number? Is it not perfectly glo-

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rious?—My stars! Doctor! there is nothing equal to it. We are beating the Reviews all to nothing—and, as to the other Magazines, they are such utter trash”—To this I replied shortly, that I had seen and been very much amused with the last number of his Magazine—intimating, however, by tone of voice, as well as of look, that I was by no means prepared to carry my admiration quite to the height he seemed to think reasonable and due. He observed nothing of this, however; or if he did, did not choose I should see that it was so.—“Dr Morris!” said he, “you must really be a contributor—We’ve a set of wild fellows about us; we are much in want of a few sensible intelligent writers, like you, sir, to counterbalance them—and then what a fine field you would have in Wales—quite untouched—a perfect Potosi. But any thing you like, sir—only do contribute. It is a shame for any man that dislikes whiggery and infidelity not to assist us. Do give us an article, Doctor.” Such an appeal was not easily to be resisted; so, before coming away, I promised, bonâ fide, to comply with his request. I should be happy to do so, indeed, were it only to please my friend Wastle, who, although by no means a bigotted admirer of Mr Blackwood’s Magazine, is resolved to support it as far as he conveniently can,—merely and simply, because it opposes, on all occasions, what he calls the vile spirit of the Edinburgh Review. Besides, from every thing I have since seen or heard of Mr Blackwood, I cannot but feel a most friendly disposition towards him. He has borne, without shrinking, much shameful abuse, heaped upon him by the lower members of the political party whose great organ his Magazine has so boldly, and, in general, so justly, attacked. But the public seem to be a good deal disgusted with the treatment he has received—a pretty strong re-action has been created— so that, while one hears his name occasionally pronounced contemptuously by some paltry Whig, the better class of the Whigs themselves mention him in very different terms, and the general conviction throughout this literary city is, that he is a clever, zealous, honest man, who has been made to answer occasionally for faults not his own, and that he possesses the essential qualities both of a bookseller and a publisher, in a degree, perhaps, not at all inferior to the most formidable of his rivals. Over and above all this, I must say, that I am fond of using my pen—witness my unconscionable epistles, David, past, present, and to come—and have long been seeking for an opportunity to try my hand in some of the periodical journals. In the present day, I look upon periodical writing as by far the most agreeable species of authorship. When a man sits down to write a history or a dissertation—to fill an

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octavo or quarto with Politics, Morals, Metaphysics, Theology, Physics, Physic, or Belles-Lettres, he writes only for a particular class of readers, and his book is bought only by a few of that particular class. But the happy man who is permitted to fill a sheet, or a half-sheet, of a monthly or quarterly journal with his lucubrations, is sure of coming into the hands of a vast number of persons more than he has any strict or even feasible claim upon, either from the subject-matter or execution of his work. The sharp and comical criticisms of one man are purchased by people who abhor the very name of wit, because they are stitched under the same cover with ponderous masses of political economy, or foggy divinity, or statistics, or law, or algebra, more fitted for their plain, or would-be plain understandings; while, on the other hand, young ladies and gentlemen, who conceive the whole sum and substance of human accomplishment to consist in being able to gabble a little about new novels and poems, are compelled to become the proprietors of so many quires of lumber per quarter, in order that they may not be left in ignorance of the last merry things uttered by Mr Jeffrey, or Mr Southey, or Mr Gifford, or Sir James Macintosh. It is thus—for that also should be taken into consideration—that these works pay so much better than any others; or rather that, with the exception of a few very popular poems, or novels, or sermons, (which are sold off in a week or two,) they are the only works that pay at all. One might suppose, that as all the best authors of our day are extremely willing to pocket as much as they can by their productions, the periodical works, all the world over, would be filled with the very best materials that living writers could furnish; and, in our country, there is no question a near approach to this has been made in the case of the two great Reviews, which, after all that has been said against them, must still be admitted to be, in the main, the most amusing and instructive works our time produces. But even these might be vastly improved, were it not for the vanity or ambition—(according to Gall and Spurzheim, the two principles are quite the same)—of some of our chief writers, who cannot, in spite of all their love for lucre, entirely divest themselves of the old-fashioned ideas they imbibed in their youth, about the propriety and dignity of coming out, every now and then, with large tomes produced by one brain, and bearing one name on the title-page. In time, however, there is reason to hope people may become sensible of the absurdity of such antediluvian notions, and consent, for their own sakes, to keep up all their best things for the periodicals. Indeed, I see no reason to doubt that this will be the case long before the National Bankruptcy occurs.

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I, for my part, have such a horror at the idea of writing a whole book, and putting my Christian and surname at the beginning of it, that I am quite sure I should never be an author while I live, were these necessary conditions to the dignity. I could not endure to hear it whispered when I might come into a room—“Dr Morris—who is Dr Morris?”—“O, ’tis the same Dr Morris that wrote the book on so and so—that was cut up so and so”—or even “that was praised so and so, in such and such a Review.”—I want nerves for this. I rejoice in the privilege of writing and printing incognito—’tis the finest discovery of our age, for it was never practised to any extent in any age preceding. There is no question that the other way of doing must have its own agrémens, when one happens to practise it with great success—but even so, I think the mask is better on the whole, and I think it looks as if the whole world were likely to be ere long of my opinion. I don’t suppose the author of Waverley will ever think of confessing himself—were I in his place, I am sure I never should. What fine persuasive words are those which Venus makes use of in the Æneid, when she proposes to the Trojan hero to wrap his approach to the city with a copious garniture of cloud—multo nebulæ amictu. Cernere ne quis te, neu quis contingere posset, Molirive moram, aut veniendi poscere causas.

There could be no resisting of such arguments, even without the additional persuasiveness of a “rosea cervix,” and “ambrosiæ comæ divinum vertice odorem spirantes.” Mr Wastle came into the sanctum sanctorum before the bookseller and his new author had quite made an end of their confabulation. He forthwith asked Mr Blackwood for his gem, upon which a silver snuffbox was produced, and I immediately recollected the inimitable description in the Chaldee MS., which had given rise to the expression used by my friend. Nothing, I think, can be more exquisite.—“And he took from under his girdle a gem of curious workmanship, of silver, made by the hand of a cunning artificer, and overlaid within with pure gold; and he took from thence something in colour like unto the dust of the earth, or the ashes that remain of a furnace, and he snuffed it up like the east wind, and returned the gem again into its place.” But I must reserve the famous Chaldee MS., and the character of this far-famed Magazine, for another letter. On coming away, Wastle reminded me that I had said I would dine

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with him at any tavern he pleased, and proposed that we should honour with our company a house in the immediate neighbourhood of Mr Blackwood’s shop, and frequently alluded to in his Magazine, as the great haunt of its wits. Indeed, it is one of the localities taken notice of by the archaic jeu-d’esprit I have just quoted—“as thou lookest to the road of Gabriel and the land of Ambrose,” which last proper name is that of the keeper of this tavern. Wastle had often supped, but never dined here before, so that it was somewhat of an experiment; but our reception was such as to make us by no means repent of it. We had an excellent dinner, and port so superb, that my friend called it quite a discovery. I took particular notice of the salmon, which mine host assured us came from the Tay, but which I could scarcely have believed to be the real product of that river, unless Wastle had confirmed the statement, and added, by way of explanation, that the Tay salmon one sees in London loses at least half of its flavour, in consequence of its being transported thither in ice. Here, it is certainly the finest salmon one meets with. The fish from the Tweed are quite poor in comparison. The fact is, I suppose, that before any river can nourish salmon into their full perfection, it must flow through a long tract of rich country. The finest salmon in the whole world are those of the Thames and the Severn— those of the Rhine and the Loire come next; but, in spite of more exquisite cookery, their inferiority is still quite apparent. We made ourselves very happy in this snug little tavern till nine o’clock, when we adjourned to Oman’s, and concluded the evening with a little Al Echam, and a cup of coffee. The street, or lane, in which Ambrose’s tavern is situated, derives its name of Gabriel’s Road, from a horrible murder which was committed there a great number of years ago. Any occurrence of that sort seems to make a prodigiously lasting impression on the minds of the Scotch people. You remember Muschat’s Cairn in the Heart of Mid-Lothian— I think Gabriel’s Road is a more shocking name. Cairn is too fine a word to be coupled with the idea of a vulgar murder. But they both sound horribly enough. The story of Gabriel, however, is one that ought to be remembered, for it is one of the most striking illustrations I have ever met with, of the effects of puritanical superstition in destroying the moral feelings, when carried to the extreme in former days not uncommon in Scotland. Gabriel was a Preacher or Licentiate of the Kirk, employed as domestic tutor in a gentleman’s family in Edinburgh, where he had for pupils two fine boys of eight or ten years of age. The tutor entertained, it seems, some partiality for the Abigail of the

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children’s mother, and it so happened, that one of his pupils observed him kiss the girl one day in passing through an anti-room, where she was sitting. The little fellow carried this interesting piece of intelligence to his brother, and both of them mentioned it by way of a good joke to their mother the same evening. Whether the lady had dropped some hint of what she had heard to her maid, or whether she had done so to the Preacher himself, I have not learned; but so it was, that he found he had been discovered, and by what means also. The idea of having been detected in such a trivial trespass, was enough to poison for ever the spirit of this juvenile presbyterian—his whole soul became filled with the blackest demons of rage, and he resolved to sacrifice to his indignation the instruments of what he conceived to be so deadly a disgrace. It was Sunday, and after going to church as usual with his pupils, he led them out to walk in the country—for the ground on which the New Town of Edinburgh now stands, was then considered as the country by the people of Edinburgh. After passing calmly, to all appearance, through several of the green fields, which have now become streets and squares, he came to a place more lonely than the rest, and there drawing a large clasp-knife from his pocket, he at once stabbed the elder of his pupils to the heart. The younger boy gazed on him for a moment, and then fled with shrieks of terror; but the murderer pursued with the bloody knife in his hand, and slew him also as soon as he was overtaken. The whole of this shocking scene was observed distinctly from the Old Town, by innumerable crowds of people, who were near enough to see every motion of the murderer, and hear the cries of the infants, although the deep ravine between them and the place of blood, was far more than sufficient to prevent any possibility of rescue. The tutor sat down upon the spot, immediately after having concluded his butchery, as if in a stupor of despair and madness, and was only roused to his recollection by the touch of the hands that seized him. It so happened, that the Magistrates of the City were assembled together in their Council-Room, waiting till it should be time for them to walk to church in procession (as is their custom), when the crowd drew near with their captive. The horror of the multitude was communicated to them, along with their intelligence, and they ordered the wretch to be brought at once into their presence. It is an old law in Scotland, that when a murderer is caught in the very act of guilt (or, as they call it, red-hand,) he may be immediately executed, without any formality or delay. Never surely could a more fitting occasion be found for carrying this old law into effect. Gabriel was hanged within an hour

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after the deed was done, the red knife being suspended from his neck, and the blood of the innocents scarcely dry upon his fingers. Such is the terrible story from which the name of Gabriel’s Road is derived. I fear the spirit from which these horrors sprung, is not yet entirely extinct in Scotland; but on this I shall have a better opportunity to make a few remarks, when I come to speak at length of the present religious condition of the nation—the most important of all objects to every liberal traveller in every country—but to none so important as to the traveller who visits Scotland, and studies the people of Scotland, as they deserve to be studied. Ever your affectionate friend, P. M.

LETTER XLV TO THE SAME

MY DEAR DAVID WILLIAMS, I TAKE no offence whatever with anything you have said, nor do I think it at all likely that I shall ever take any serious offence from anything you can say. The truth is, that you are looking upon all these matters in far too serious a point of view. I care nothing about this book, of which you have taken up so evil a report; but I insist upon it, that you spend one or two evenings in looking over the copy I send you, before you give me any more of your solemn advices and expostulations. When I have given you time to do this, I shall write to you at greater length, and tell you my own mind all about the matter. Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER XLVI TO THE SAME

I PRESUME you have now done as I requested; and if so, I have no doubt you are prepared to listen to what I have to say with a more philosophic temper. The prejudices you had taken up without seeing the book, have, I make no question, made unto themselves wings and passed away—at least the most serious of them,—and you are probably quite as capable of taking a calm and impartial view of the affair as I myself am; for as to my allowing any partiality for Wastle seriously to warp my judgment concerning a literary Journal, in which he sometimes writes—this is, I assure you, a most absurd suspicion of your’s—but transeat cum aliis. The history of Blackwood’s Magazine is very singular in itself, and I think must long continue to form an important epoch in the literary history of Scotland—above all of Edinburgh. The time of its first appearance was happily chosen, just when the decline of that intense and overmastering interest, formerly attracted to the Edinburgh Review, had fairly begun to be not only felt, but acknowledged on every hand; and had it not appeared at that particular time, it is probable that something, not widely different in spirit and purpose, must have ere long come forth; for there had already been formed in Scotland a considerable body of rebels to the long undisputed tyrannical sway of Mr Jeffrey and his friends; and it was necessary that the sentiments of this class should find some vehicle of convenient expression. In short, the diet of levity and sarcastic indifference, which had so long formed the stable nourishment of Scottish intellect, had by repetition lost, to not a few palates, the charming poignancy of its original flavour; and besides, the total failure of all the political prophecies of the Whig wits, and, indeed, the triumphant practical refutation given by the great events of the preceding years to all their enunciations of political principles, had, without doubt, tended very powerfully to throw discredit upon their opinions in regard to other matters. The Whigs themselves, indeed, were by no means inclined to acknowledge that the sceptre of their rulers had lost any portion of its power; but the continuance of their own firm

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allegiance was by no means sufficient to prevent this from being actually the case; for in preceding times, the authority of the critical sceptre had been acknowledged by Scottish Tories, no less humbly than by Scottish Whigs; and it was too natural for these last to suspect, at this alarming crisis, that the former would now think themselves in possession of a favourable opportunity for throwing off a sway, which had always with them rested much more on the potency of fear than on that of love. The subjection of the antecedent period had, indeed, been as melancholy and profound, as anything ever exemplified within the leaden circle of an eastern despot’s domination. There was, for a long time, no more thought among the Scottish reading public of questioning the divine right, by which Mr Jeffrey and his associates ruled over the whole realms of criticism, than there is in China of pulling down the cousin-german of the Moon, and all his bowing court of Mandarins. In many respects, there is no doubt the Scotch had been infinitely indebted to this government—it had done much to refine and polish their ideas and manners—it had given them an air of intelligence and breeding, to which they had been strangers before its erection among them. But these advantages were not of so deep a nature, as to fix themselves with any very lasting sway in the souls of the wiser and better part of the people. They were counterbalanced in the eyes of the simpler and less meditative classes, by many circumstances of obvious character and obvious importance too, (after these had once been able to fix attention;)—and those who were accustomed or able to reflect in a more serious and profound manner upon the condition of their country, could not, I suppose, be blind to another circumstance equally true, and far more generally and enduringly important than any other—namely, that the influence acquired by the Edinburgh Reviewers over the associations of the great majority of Scottish minds, was not an influence accompanied with any views of philosophy calculated to ennoble human nature, or with any genial or productive spirit of thought likely to draw out the genius and intellect of the country in which their Review was published. The national mind of any country is not likely to be elicited advantageously, if the reins of public association are managed with all the petulance of eager self-love, caring little for the investigation of any principle, or the expansion of any feeling, provided it can in the meantime assume to itself the appearance of superior smartness and cleverness. Love, which “hopeth all things and believeth all things,” is the true inventive principle. It is the true caloric, which calls out every

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sort of vegetation from the soil, which contains in its bosom the sleeping germs of national genius. Now, the Edinburgh Review cared very little for what might be done, or might be hoped to be done, provided it could exercise a despotic authority in deciding on the merits of what was done. Nobody could ever regard this work as a great fostering-mother of the infant manifestations of intellectual and imaginative power. It was always sufficiently plain, that in all things its chief object was to support the credit of its own appearance. It praised only where praise was extorted—and it never praised even the highest efforts of contemporary genius, in the spirit of true and genuine earnestness, which might have been becoming;—Even in the temple of their adoration the Reviewers still carried with them the swell and strut of their own worldly vanity; and, in the midst of their most fervent devotions, it was always easy to see that they conceived themselves to be conferring honour on the object of their worship. They never spoke out of the fullness of the heart, in praising any one of our great living poets, the majesty of whose genius would have been quite enough to take away all ideas, except those of prostrate respect, from the breasts of critics to whom any portion of the true mantle of an Aristotle, or a Longinus, or a Quinctilian, might have descended. Looking back now after the lapse of several years, to their accounts of many of these poems, (such as Mr Scott’s, for example,) which have now become so deeply interwoven with the most serious part of every man’s mind, it is quite wonderful to find in what a light and trivial vein the first notices of them had been presented to the public by the Edinburgh Reviewers. Till very lately, it may be doubted if there was any one critique on a contemporary poet, in the pages of the Edinburgh Review, which did not more or less partake of the nature of a quiz. Surely this was very poor work, and such was the view of it which a very large proportion, even of the Scottish public, had at last begun to entertain. These faults—faults thus at last beginning to be seen by a considerable number of the old readers and admirers of the Edinburgh Review,—seem to have been at the bottom of the aversion which the writers who established Blackwood’s Magazine had against it; but their quarrel also included a very just disapprobation of the unpatriotic mode of considering the political events of the times adopted all along by the Review, and also of its occasional irreligious mockeries, borrowed from the French philosophy, or soi-disant philosophy of the last age. Their great object seems to have been to break up the monopoly of influence which had long been possessed by a set of persons, guilty of perverting,

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in so many ways, talents on all hands acknowledged to be great. And had they gone about the execution of their design with as much wisdom and good feeling as would seem to have attended the conception of it, I have little doubt they would very soon have procured a mighty host of readers to go along with them in all their conclusions. But the persons who are supposed to have taken the lead in directing the new forces, wanted many of those qualities which were most necessary to ensure success to their endeavours; and they possessed others, which, although in themselves admirably qualified for enabling them to conduct their projects successfully, tended, in the manner in which they made use of them, to throw many unnecessary obstacles in their way. In short, they were very young, or very inexperienced men, who, although passionately fond of literature, and even well skilled in many of its finest branches, were by no means accurately acquainted with the structure and practice of literature, as it exists at this day in Britain. They saw well enough in what respects the literature of the day had been allowed to fall into a condition unworthy of the old spirit of English literature, but they do not seem to have seen with equal perspicacity, in how many points the literary practice of our time has been improved, beyond that of the ages preceding. With their minds full of love and veneration for the great serious authors of all nations and ages, and especially so for all the master-spirits of their own time, they appear to have entertained also a most singular warmth of sympathy for all the extravagancies, caprices, and madnesses of frolic humour that were ever in any age embodied in the vehicle of fine language, or made use of as the instruments of powerful intellect. Their veneration for intellectual power was too great—exactly as that of the Edinburgh Reviewers was too small: and they allowed this feeling, in the main a most excellent one, to shut from their eyes a thousand circumstances, both of agreement and disagreement, between the spirit of their own age, and the spirit of times antecedent,—all of which most especially and most imperatively demanded the attention of the Institutors of a new Literary Journal having such objects and such pretensions as theirs. In short, they were too fresh from their studies to have been able to look back upon any particular period of literary history, with the proper degree of coolness and calmness. They admired rather too indiscriminately, and whatever they admired they never thought it could be improper or unsafe for them to imitate. They approached the lists of literary warfare with the spirit at bottom of true knights; but they had come from the woods and the cloisters, and not from the cities and haunts of active

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men, and they had armed themselves, in addition to their weapons of the right temper, with many other weapons of offence, which, although sanctioned in former times by the practice of the heroes in whose repositories they had found them rusting, had now become utterly exploded, and were regarded, and justly regarded, as entirely unjustifiable and disgraceful by all who surveyed, with modern eyes, the arena of their modern exertions. But even for this, there might have been some little excuse, had their weapons, such as they were, been employed only in behalf of the noble cause they had espoused. Such, however, was by no means the case. These dangerous instruments were too powerful to be swayed easily by the hot hands into which they had come; and—as if intoxicated with the delight of feeling themselves furnished with unwonted accoutrements, and a spacious field—the new combatants began at once to toss their darts about them in directions quite foreign to those they should have had in view. They stained, in plain language, the beginning of their career with the sins of many wanton and malicious personal satires, not immediately subservient to the inculcation of any particular set of principles whatever, and in their necessary and ultimate tendencies quite hostile to the noble and generous set of principles, religious and political, as well as literary, of which these persons had professed themselves to be the champions. Since that time, experience and reflection seem to have taught them many lessons concerning the folly and vice of this part of their giddy career—but they have still not a little to learn before they can be made fully sensible of the true nature of some of their trespasses. And, in the meantime, after having been guilty of offences so manifest, they can have no right to complain, although those who witnessed their offences are slow in being made sensible to the sincerity of their repentance. They must take the consequences of their own audacious folly, in committing, or permitting, such gross outrages upon all good feeling—and submit to go through the full penalties of the Purgatory of Suspicion, before they hope to approach that Paradise of perfect Forgiveness, of which, among many other points of its beatitude, Dante has taken care to say, with a sagacity peculiar to himself, Molto è licito là, che quì non lece.

Great, however, as was the impropriety (to use the slightest phrase) of many of these early satires in this Magazine, I by no means would have you to believe (as you seem to have done), that the outcry raised

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against the Magazine among the Whigs of Edinburgh, and re-echoed by some of the minor oracles of the same party in London, was really produced by any just and pure feeling of indignation against them. The eagerness manifested by the enemies of the new Journal to add, by all possible exaggerations and misrepresentations, to the already large enough sum of its iniquities, betrayed that there was at the bottom of their zeal a very different set of causes—causes which, although in their own breasts far more effectual than any others, did not so well admit of being propounded in a way likely to captivate the popular assent. The true source of the clamour raised against by far the greater number of the articles in Blackwood’s Magazine, was not their personality (for of this, very many of those which excited most noise appear to me to be most perfectly guiltless), but the nature of the spirit of thought which these articles exhibited—which was indeed, at bottom, utterly at variance with the old current upon which Mr Constable’s lawyers had, for so many years, floated with so little expenditure of reflection, and managed their helms with so little risk of being perplexed by any variety in the tides. As one instance of this, I may refer you to the Essay on the Periodical Criticism of Great Britain, which appeared towards the beginning of the Magazine, under the mask of a translation from some German author. This essay, as Wastle informs me, was for many months a perfect text-book for vituperations of the work in which it made its appearance. And yet, when you have read it, I have no doubt you will agree with me in thinking that it is an able and excellent performance, which could only have excited so much clamour because it is too true and too effective. It was the first regular attack made with any striking degree of power of thought, or even with any display of nervous and manly language, against all the chief sins of the Edinburgh Review. It is written in a style of such perfect courtesy and good breeding to all parties, and it touches, with so much impartiality and independence, upon the quite opposite faults of the Quarterly Review, that I am mistaken if the Edinburgh Reviewers, now that they have had more experience of being attacked, would not be ashamed to say anything against any attack written as this was. They could not refrain from crying out at the time, for it was the first caustic that had ever touched the centre of their sore; and indeed, however silent they might have been, there is no question it could not have been applied with so firm a hand without making them wince to the quick. Of the many subsequent attacks on the Review, some were equally well written, but few so free of the faults with which the Magazine has

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been too often chargeable. The Letter to Dr Chalmers, for example, was an improper and unwarrantable expostulation, when considered as addressed to that eminent individual, and no doubt attached far greater blame to his conduct in occasionally assisting the Edinburgh Review, than the bulk of mankind are ever likely to think it deserved; it is probable, however, that the idea of writing such a letter might have been taken up rashly—merely as furnishing an occasion for more fully discussing the mode in which Religion had been treated in the Edinburgh Review, and without any wish to give pain to Dr Chalmers, who is indeed treated, throughout the whole of it, in a style of great personal respect. But if some apology might be offered for this letter, the other letter of the same series, addressed to Mr Playfair, could certainly admit of none. This was, undoubtedly, one of the worst of all the offences of the Magazine. I cannot well express the pain with which I perused it a second time, after having seen the venerable person to whom it is addressed, and become acquainted with the true character of his mind and dispositions. It was calculated to bring about no useful object whatever; it was a cruel interference with the private history of a most unassuming and modest man of genius; and the force of declamation with which much of it is composed, can be regarded in no other light than an aggravation of the offence of composing it at all. Another letter, addressed about the same time to Lord Byron on the publication of his Beppo, was meanly and stupidly represented as a malignant attack on this great poet; whereas it is, in truth, filled, from beginning to end, with marks of the most devout admiration for his genius, and bears every appearance of having been written with the sincere desire to preserve that majestic genius from being degraded, by wasting its inspirations on themes of an immoral or unworthy description. It is, to my mind, a complete proof, that this Magazine was vituperated not so much from good principle as from selfish spleen, that almost as great handle was made of this energetic letter, which, I doubt not, Lord Byron would peruse with any emotions rather than those of anger, as of the very offensive address to Professor Playfair—about which there cannot possibly be two opinions among people of just feeling. The attack upon Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, which appeared in one of the first Numbers of the Magazine, was another sad offence— perhaps even worse than this on Mr Playfair; because it was not merely the pushing to extravagance and illiberality a right and proper subject of reprehension, but a total departure from the principles of the Magazine itself, and almost, I think, a specimen of the very worst kind

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of spirit, which the Magazine professed to be fighting against, in the Edinburgh Review. This is, indeed, the only one of all the various sins of this Magazine for which I am at a loss to discover—not an apology— but a motive. If there be any man of grand and original genius alive at this moment in Europe, such a man is Mr Coleridge. A certain rambling discursive style of writing, and a habit of mixing up, with ideas of great originality, the products of extensive observation and meditation, others of a very fantastic and mystical sort, borrowed from Fichte and the other German philosophers, with whose works he is familiar—these things have been sufficient to prevent his prose writings from becoming popular beyond a certain narrow class of readers, who, when they see marks of great power, can never be persuaded to treat lightly the works in which these appear, with whatever less attractive matter they may chance to be intermingled. Yet even his prose writings are at this moment furnishing most valuable materials to people who know, better than the author himself does, the art of writing for the British public; and it is impossible that they should much longer continue to be neglected, as they now are. But the poetry of Coleridge, in order to be understood perfectly and admired profoundly, requires no peculiar habits of mind beyond those which all intelligent readers of poetry ought to have, and must have. Adopting much of the same psychological system which lies at the root of all the poetry of Wordsworth, and expressing, on all occasions, his reverence for the sublime intellect which Wordsworth has devoted to the illustration of this system, Coleridge himself has abstained from bringing his psychological notions forward in his poetry in the same open and uncourting way exemplified by his friend; and, what is of far more importance in the present view of the subject, he has adopted nothing of his friend’s peculiar notions concerning poetical diction. He is perhaps the most splendid versifier of our age; he is certainly, to my ear, without exception the most musical. Nothing can surpass the melodious richness of words which he heaps around his images—images which are neither glaring in themselves, nor set forth in any glaring framework of incident, but which are always affecting to the very verge of tears, because they have all been formed and nourished in the recesses of one of the most deeply musing spirits that ever breathed forth its inspirations in the majestic language of England. Who that ever read his poem of Genevieve can doubt this? That poem is known to all readers of poetry, although comparatively few of them are aware that it is the work of Coleridge. His love-poetry is, throughout, the finest that has been pro-

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duced in England since the days of Shakspeare and the old dramatists. Lord Byron represents the passion of love with a power and fervour every way worthy of his genius, but he does not seem to understand the nature of the feeling which these old English poets called by the name of Love. His love is entirely oriental: the love of haughty warriors reposing on the bosom of humble slaves, swallowed up in the unquestioning potency of a passion, imbibed in, and from the very sense of, their perpetual inferiority. The old dramatists and Coleridge regard women in a way that implies far more reverence for them—far deeper insight into the true grandeur of their gentleness. I do not think there is any poet in the world who ever touched so truly the mystery of the passion as he has done in Genevieve, and in that other exquisite poem (I forget its name,) where he speaks of ——Her voice, Her voice, that, even in its mirthful mood, Hath made me wish to steal away and weep.

Now, what could be the object proposed by a writer, in a work professing to hold the principles of this Magazine, when he adventured to descend from the elevation of his habitual reverence, and minister among the many paltry priests who sacrifice at the shrine of paltry selflove, by endeavouring to heap new ridicule upon the character of a great genius, who had already been made so much the butt of ignorant ridicule as Mr Coleridge? I profess myself unable to solve the mystery of the motive. The result is bad—and, in truth, very pitiable. I think very differently indeed, concerning the series of attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt, and the whole of that pestiferous crew, on which Blackwood’s Magazine has had the merit of fixing for ever that most just and expressive of all nick-names, “The Cockney School.” If the Magazine had done nothing more than giving these creatures the everlasting distinction of this happy name, it would have deserved eternally well of the literature of our age. The extreme contempt and loathing felt by the castigators for the subjects of their most just chastisement, was, indeed, able to make them overstep very absurdly the proper limits of critical language; and this has, no doubt, tended in some measure to weaken the effect of the attack, because it has probably prevented it from being carried on and concluded as it deserved to be. But, indeed, the name alone is enough—it has already been adopted by the Quarterly, and almost all the minor Reviews, and the whole regiment

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of the Magazines—and from these it has been carried into the vocabulary of half the Newspaper editors in the united kingdom. Such a fire of contumely, kept up on this most conceited knot of superficial coxcombs, cannot fail to produce ere long the salutary effect of entirely silencing their penny trumpets of sedition and blasphemy—to say nothing of their worthless poetry. They are all entirely made up of affectation, and the pompous stiffness of their fine attitudes merely required to be pointed out by one sharp finger, in order to be laughed at by all that looked upon them.—The Cockney School! It would have required the shoulders of so many Demigods to have been able to toss off such a load of ignominy; but on theirs the burden sticks like the robe of the Satyr, and they cannot get quit of the incumbrance, except by giving themselves the coup-de-grace. Sentence of dumbness has gone forth against them, and ere long they must be executioners of it themselves. They are by far the vilest vermin that ever dared to creep upon the hem of the majestic garment of the English muse. They have not one idea that is worthy of the name of English, in the whole circle of their minds. They talk for ever about Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Spenser—but they know no more about the spirit of these divine beings, than the poor printer’s devils, whose fingers are wearied with setting together the types, which are degraded by being made the vehicles of their crude and contumelious fantasies. And yet with what an ineffable air of satisfaction these fellows speak of themselves as likely to go down to posterity among the great authors of England! It is almost a pity to destroy so excellent a joke. Unless the salt of the nick-name they have got preserve them, they cannot possibly last twenty years in the recollection even of the Cockneys. The faults of this Magazine have been very great; the worst of them wanton and useless departures from the set of principles, and outrages upon the set of feelings, it has all along professed to hold sacred. These faults, however, I am inclined to attribute to nothing so much as to a total carelessness, in regard to the management of the work. The idea seems to have been, that a Magazine is not bound to maintain any one set of opinions, in regard to any one set of objects, throughout the whole of its pages; but that it was quite sufficient to insert in every Number, a certain number of articles, full of the traces of proper feeling and thinking, and to fill up the rest with anything that would amuse any class of Magazine-readers, without the least concern about their agreement or disagreement with the main and presiding spirit of the book. Perhaps, after all, the truth may be, that the whole work was set about without

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any plan of any kind; and that therefore, although the contributions of the chief writers, being throughout animated with the warmth of a particular set of feelings and principles, have been enough to create something like a presiding spirit, the contradictory effect of other contributions was never considered, even by these persons, in the light of any serious infringement upon any serious rule. How all this may have been I know not; but, to my mind, the effect of the whole is such as I have endeavoured to depict to you. I look on the book as a sad farrago; but I think the valuable part of the materials is so great, as to furnish no inconsiderable apology for the mixture of baser things. And yet how much better might it have been, had the same talents been exerted upon some more regular system, and, above all, under some more regular feeling of responsibility. This last, indeed, is an idea that seems never to have disturbed, for a moment, the minds of the writers of this Magazine. It is not known who the editor is—I do not see how that secret can ever be divulged, as things now stand—but my friend Wastle tells me that he is an obscure man, almost continually confined to his apartment by rheumatism, whose labours extend to little more than correcting proof-sheets, and drawing up plans, which are mostly executed by other people. The efficient supporters, however, are well known—or, at least, universally suspected—although nobody seems to be able to say, with the least approach to certainty, what particular articles are written by any one individual among them. I have as yet seen little of any of them; but now that I have agreed to be one of their coadjutors in a small way, I shall, no doubt, have opportunities of being better acquainted with them. Wastle has promised to ask several of them to dine with him some day next week—and, as usual, I shall have my eyes and ears about me. The history of this Magazine may be considered in quite a different point of view—as the struggle, namely, of two rival booksellers, striving for their respective shares in the profits of periodical publications. Of the respective conduct of the persons who, in this point of view, might come to be taken into consideration, I cannot pretend to judge in any way; but I think it looks as if nothing could be more fair than that some division should take place here, as every where else, in that sort of spoil. Had the Magazine not appeared as it did, it is probable that the natural tendency, which a thriving trade has to split into competitions, would soon have given rise to something of the same sort among the bibliopoles of Edinburgh. As for the great bookseller against whom Mr Blackwood seemed to have opened the war with so much vigour, I think

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he has shewn less skilfulness than might have been expected in the forces which he has brought to act immediately in defence of the position attacked. I do not speak of the Edinburgh Review, for it is well able to take care of itself; but of the Scots Magazine, one of the oldest works of the kind in existence, which Mr Constable has been endeavouring to revive, so as to render it a fit competitor with the new, and, indeed, audaciously original Magazine I have been talking about. It seems as if nothing could be more dull, trite, and heavy, than the bulk of this ancient work. The only enlivening things in it are a few articles now and then by Hazlitt, and a few better still by a gay writer of the name of Reynolds. But these are quite lost in the dulness all about them. In themselves, being all genuine gems of the Cockney School, they are of little intrinsic value, and their glitter only makes the lead in which they are set look more heavy than ever. Mr Reynolds, however, is certainly a very promising writer, and might surely do better things than copying the Cockneys. There is another circumstance about the writers of Blackwood’s Magazine, which cannot miss to catch your attention, viz. that they have never been in any degree studious of keeping up the imposing stateliness and guarded self-importance, usually made so much of by critics and reviewers. They have presented themselves in all the different aspects which lively fancy and good-humoured caprice could suggest. They assume new disguises every month, and have a whole regiment of fictitious personages into whose mouths they have thrown so much matter, that they almost begin to be regarded as real personages by the readers of the Magazine; for, to ask whether such or such a name be a real or a fictitious one, is always some trouble—and trouble is of all things what Magazine-readers in general hold in most cordial detestation. Had these young writers been more reserved, they might perhaps have enjoyed more consideration than they now do among the foolish part of the public. Probably the spirit in which they have written has been but imperfectly understood by the majority. As Mr Jeffrey says of the French Revolution—it is not easy to judge of the real scope of many movements and events, till a good while after they have taken place. Ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER XLVII TO THE SAME

ANOTHER of the great morning lounges has its seat in a shop, the character of which would not at first sight lead one to expect any such thing—a clothier’s shop, namely, occupied by a father and son, both of the name of David Bridges. The cause and centre of the attraction, however, is entirely lodged in the person of the junior member of the firm, an active, intelligent, and warm-hearted fellow, who has a prodigious love for the Fine Arts, and lives on familiar terms with all the artists of Edinburgh; and around whom, in consequence of these circumstances, the whole connoisseurs and connoisseurship of the North have by degrees become clustered and concentrated, like the meeting of the red and yellow stripes in the back of a tartan jacket. This shop is situated in the High-Street, not above a couple of hundred yards from the house of my friend Wastle, who, as might be supposed, is one of its most frequent visitors. I had not been long in Edinburgh before I began to make some enquiries concerning the state of art in Scotland, and Wastle immediately conducted me to this dilettanti lounge, saying, that here was the only place where I might be furnished with every means of satisfying all my curiosity. On entering, one finds a very neat and tasteful-looking shop, well stocked with all the tempting diversities of broad-cloth and bombazeens, silk stockings, and spotted handkerchiefs. A few sedate-looking old-fashioned cits are probably engaged in conning over the Edinburgh papers of the day, and perhaps discussing mordicus the great question of Burgh Reform; but there is nothing either in the place or the company that at all harmonizes with one’s notions of a great Φροντιστήριον of Gusto. After waiting for a few minutes, however, the younger partner tips a sly wink across his counter, and beckons you to follow him through a narrow cut in its mahogany surface, into the unseen recesses of the establishment. A few steps downwards, and in the dark, land you in a sort of cellar below the shop proper, and here by the dim and religious light which enters through one or two well-grated peeping-holes, your eyes soon discover enough of the furniture of the place, to satisfy you that you have at last

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reached the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Fine Arts. Plaster of Paris casts of the Head of the Farnese Hercules,—the Dancing Faun,—the Laocoon,—and the Hermaphrodite, occupy conspicuous stations on the counters; one large table is entirely covered with a book of Canova’s designs, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, and such sort of manuals; and in those corners where the little light there is streams brightest, are placed, upon huge piles of corduroy and kerseymere, various wooden boxes, black, brown, and blue, wherein are locked up from all eyes save those of the privileged and initiated frequenters of the scene, various pictures and sketches, chiefly by living artists, and presents to the proprietor. Mr Bridges, when I asked him on my first visit, what might be the contents of these mysterious receptacles, made answer in a true technicoCaledonian strain,—“Oo, Doctor Morris, they’re just a wheen bits—and (added he, with a most knowing compression of his lips),—let me tell you what, Dr Morris, there’s some no that ill bits amang them neither.” The bit that attracted most of my admiration, was a small and exquisitely finished picture, by William Allan—the subject, Two Tartar Robbers dividing their Spoil. I shall not describe this piece, because I have since seen a masterly etching of it in an unfinished state, executed by a young Scotch engraver of the name of Stewart, which I have ordered to be sent me as soon as it is completed, so that you will have an opportunity of judging for yourself. The energy of the design, however, and the inimitable delicacy of the colouring, made me very curious to see some of the larger productions of the same artist; and I had no sooner hinted so much, than Bridges proposed to carry me at once to Mr Allan’s atelier. The artist, he said, was extremely unwell, and confined to his room; but he could assure me of a kind reception. I needed very little pressing, so we proceeded immediately quâ data via fuit. We had no great distance to walk, for Mr Allan lives in the Parliament-Close, not a gun-shot from where we were. After climbing several flights of a stair-case, we were ushered into the house of the painter; and Mr Bridges, being quite at home, conducted us straight into his painting-room—the most picturesque painting-room, I fancy, in Europe. Mr Allan returned about two years ago to Edinburgh, (the place of his birth,) from a residence of many years in various regions of the East, and his apartment is decorated in a most splendid manner with the trophies of his wanderings. The wainscoat is completely covered with rich clusters of military accoutrements, Turkish scimitars, Circassian bows and quivers, hauberks of twisted mail from Caucasus, daggers, dirks, javelins, and all manner of

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long unwieldy fowling-pieces—Georgian, Armenian, and Tartar. These are arranged, for the most part, in circles, having shields and targets of bone, brass, and leather for their centres. Helmets, of all kinds and sizes, are hung above these from the roof, and they are interspersed with most gorgeous draperies of shawls, turbans, and saddle-cloths. Nothing can be more beautiful than the effect of the whole; and indeed I suppose it is, so far as it goes, a complete fac-simile of the barbaric magnificence of the interior decorations of an eastern palace. The exterior of the artist himself harmonized a good deal with his furniture; for he was arrayed, by way of robe-de-chambre, in a dark Circassian vest, the breast of which was loaded with innumerable quilted lurking-places, originally, no doubt, intended for weapons of warfare, but now occupied with the harmless shafts of hair-pencils; while he held in his hand the smooth cherrywood stalk of a Turkish tobacco-pipe, apparently converted very happily into a pallet-guard. A swarthy complexion, and a profusion of black hair, tufted in a wild, though not ungraceful manner, together with a pair of large sparkling eyes, looking out from under strong shaggy brows, full of vivacious and ardent expressiveness—were scarcely less speaking witnesses of the life of roaming and romantic adventure, which, I was told, this fine artist had led. In spite of his bad health, which was indeed but too evident, his manners seemed to be full of a light and playful sportiveness, which is by no means common among the people of our nation, still less among the people of Scotland; and this again was, every now and then, exchanged for a depth of enthusiastic earnestness, still more evidently derived from a sojourn among men whose blood flows through their veins with a heat and a rapidity to which the North is a stranger. The painter, being extremely busy, could not afford us much of his time upon this visit, but shewed us, after a few minutes, into an adjoining apartment, the walls of which were covered with his works, and left us there to examine them by ourselves. For many years I have received no such feast as was now afforded me; it was a feast of pure delight— above all, it was a feast of perfect novelty, for the scenes in which Mr Allan has lived have rendered the subjects of his paintings totally different, for the most part, from those of any other artist, dead or alive; and the manner in which he treats his subjects is scarcely less original and peculiar. The most striking of his pieces are all representations of human beings, living and moving under the influence of manners whereof we know little, but which the little we do know of them has tended to render eminently interesting to our imaginations. His pencil

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transports us at once into the heart of the East—the Land of the myrtle, the rose, and the vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the skies ever shine, And all save the spirit of Man is divine.

On one side we see beautiful creatures—radiant in a style of beauty with which poetry alone has ever attempted to make us familiar; on another, dark and savage men, their faces stamped with the full and fervid impress of passions which the manners and the faith of Christendom teach men, if not to subdue within them, at least to conceal in their exterior. The skies, too, are burning everywhere in the brightness of their hot, unclouded blue,—and the trees that lift their heads among them, wear wild fantastic forms, no less true to nature than they are strange to us. The buildings also have all a new character of barbarian pomp about them—cities of flat-roofed houses, mingled ever and anon with intervening gardens—fountains sparkling up with their freshening spray among every shade of foliage—mosques breaking the sky here and there with their huge white domes and gilded cupolas—turrets and minarets shooting from among the gorgeous mass of edifices—pale and slender forms, that ——Far and near, Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.

The whole room might be considered as forming of itself one picture— for, wherever I looked, I found that my eyes were penetrating into a scene, of which the novelty was so universal, as to give it at first sight something of the effect of uniformity. The most celebrated of the pictures still in his possession, is the Sale of Circassian Captives to a Turkish Bashaw.* I think it is probable you must have read some account of this picture in the newspapers more than a year ago; for it was one season in the London Exhibition, and attracted great admiration, as I hear, from all the critics who saw it there. You will find a pretty full description, however, in one of the Numbers of Blackwood’s Magazine, which I have lately sent you—although I cannot say that I think this description quite so accurate as it might have been. The picture does not stand in need of the aid of fancy, in order to _____________________________________________ * This picture has since been purchased by the Earl of Wemyss and March.

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make it be admired; and I cannot help thinking there has been a good deal of mere fancy gratuitously mixed up with the statement there given, both of its composition and its expression. The essential interest of the piece, however—the groupe, namely, of the lover parted from his mistress, and the fine contrast afforded to this groupe, by the cold, determined, brutal indifference in the countenance and attitude of the Bashaw, are given quite as they ought to be; and the adjuncts, which have been somewhat misrepresented, are of comparatively trivial importance. I can scarcely conceive of a finer subject for this kind of painting; nor can I easily suppose, that it could have been treated in a more masterly manner. The great number of the figures does not in the least mar the harmony of the general expression; nay, in order to make us enter fully into the nature of the barbarian scene represented, it was absolutely necessary to shew us, that it was a scene of common occurrence, and every day gazed on by a thousand hard eyes, without the slightest touch of compassion or sympathy. It was not necessary to represent the broken-heart-sufferers before us as bending under the weight of any calamity peculiar to themselves alone. They are bowed down, not with the touch of individual sorrow alone, but with the despair, the familiar despair of a devoted and abandoned race—a race, among whose brightest gleams of felicity, there must ever mingle the shadows of despondence—whose bridegrooms can never go forth “rejoicing in their strength”—whose brides can never be “brought out of their palaces,” without some darkening clouds of melancholy remembrances, and still more melancholy fears, to cast a gloom over the gay procession. Solitary sorrows are the privilege of freemen; it is the darker lot of slaves to suffer in crowds, and before crowds. Their misery has no sanctuary; they are not left alone even to die. They are cattle, not men; they must be counted by the head before being led forth to the slaughter. The colouring of this picture is as charming as its conception is profound. The fault found with it by some of the critics—I mean the grayness and uniform sobriety of its hues—strikes me as being one of its greatest beauties. Without this, it was impossible that the artist could have given so fine an idea of the studious coolness and shadiness of an oriental palace—so different, so necessarily different, from anything that luxury can ever demand in our northern climates. It harmonizes, too, in the happiest manner with the melancholy character of the scene represented. It seems as if even the eastern sun had been willing to withdraw his beams from such a spectacle of misery. Where the light

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does stream through the narrow window at the back of the lordly Turk, nothing can be richer than the tones of the drapery—the curtains that shelter—above all, the embroidered cushions and carpets that support the luxurious Merchant of Blood. The cold, blue dampness of the marble-floor, on which the victims of his brutality are kneeling, or staggering before him, contrasts, as it should do, with the golden pomp amidst which the oppressor is seated. It is so, that they who drink the waters of bitterness, and are covered with sackcloth and ashes, should be contrasted with him, who “is clothed in fine linen, and fareth sumptuously every day.” There are, however, many other pictures of the artist against which the same charge might have been brought with greater justice. There are several beautiful little pictures, the scene of which is laid in the same region; and I think they have an admirable effect as viewed in juxta-position with this splendid masterpiece. They afford little glimpses, as it were, into the week-day employments and amusements of the beings, who are represented in the larger picture as undergoing the last severity of their hard destiny. They prepare the eye to shudder at the terrors of the captivity, by making it familiar with the scenes of mirth, and gaiety, and innocence, which these terrors are fated so often to disturb. Such, above all, was the effect of a sweet little picture, which represents a Circassian Family seated at the door of their own cottage, beneath the shadow of their sycamore, while the golden sun is going down calmly behind them, amidst the rich, quiet azure of their own paternal mountains. The old father and mother, with their children sporting about their knees, while the travelling musician is dancing before them in his wild grotesque attitudes, to the sound of his rebeck— and the daughter just blushing into womanhood, that peeps, with that face of innocent delight, over the shoulder of her mother—how little do they think for the moment of anything beyond the simple mirth of their sequestered home! And yet such are the solitudes to which the foot of the spoiler may so easily find a path. Surely there is a fine feeling of poetry in the mind of this painter. He knows well that there are two sides to the great picture of Human Life; and he has imagination to feel how they reflect, mutually, interest, and passion, and tenderness, upon each other. Another picture, delightfully characteristic of his genius, is that of a Jewish Family in Poland making merry before a Wedding. The piece is small, and the colouring, as usual with this artist, the reverse of glaring; but the whole is suffused over with the quiet richness of twilight, and

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the effect is at once so powerful and so true, that we cannot sufficiently admire it, when we consider how studiously all the common quackery of the art has been avoided in its production. The left of the canvass is covered with a cluster of happy faces, grouped above, below, and around their rustic musician, and gazing on the evolutions of a dance, wild, yet graceful and stately in its wildness, like the melody which accompanies it. The bride has scarcely passed the years of infancy; for among the Jews of Poland, and we believe we might add, among the Jews of England too, the old oriental fashion of very early marriage is still religiously adhered to. Her hair is braided with jewels—another beautiful orientalism; and she surveys the scene from her post of eminence with a truly eastern mixture of childish delight, womanly vanity, and virgin bashfulness. Apart from the young people, near a window, the light of which comes mellowed through tangled tresses of ivy and rose-leaves, is seen a grave small group of the Elders of Israel. These patriarchal figures pay no respect either to the music or the dance; but they seem to make some atonement for this neglect by their close and assiduous attentions to a certain tall picturesque flask, Which leaves a glow like amethyst Upon the lips that it hath kiss’d.

The whole picture makes us feel delightfully present in a scene very far removed from our manners, but true in everything to nature, and, in spite of its geography, true in everything to that well-remembered East, which draws to itself the first morning-look and the last evening-look— which receives every hymn and prayer, and oath and vow—which is still the resting-place of the memory, the hope, and the faith of the expatriated Hebrew. The vile habits common among such of this exiled race, as are to be met with in our country, have had the effect of rendering the associations connected by us with the name of Jew, very remote from pleasing—to say nothing of poetical; nor have the attempts of a few poets and novelists to counteract these deep-rooted associations been at all successful in the main. In truth, they have not merited to be so, excepting in regard to their intention alone. It is useless to waste wit in attempting to gild over the meanness of a despicable old Hunks, who starves himself and his cat, and spends his whole time in counting rouleaus. A sentimental old clothes-man or pawnbroker is a being whom we can by no means admit into our world of imaginative existence. He

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is as completely and manifestly an ens meræ rationis, as any of the new species to which the human naturalist is introduced in the dangerous and delusive horti sicci of the circulating library. But the Polish Jews are a very different kind of people from our ones. They form a population of several hundred thousands, and occupy whole towns, villages, and tracts of territory by themselves. Here they live in a state of great simplicity and honesty, cultivating the soil, and discharging all the healthful duties of ordinary citizenship. Above all, they are distinguished from their brethren in Germany and elsewhere, by a rigid observance of the laws of their religion. In short, they are believers in the Old Testament, and still expect, with sincere devotion, the coming of their Messiah. The respect which a Polish Jew meets with all over the continent, so strongly contrasted with the utter contempt heaped upon all the other children of his race, is primarily, of course, the fruit of that long experience which has established the credit and honour of his dealings; but it is certainly very much assisted and strengthened by that natural feeling of respect with which all men regard those who are sincere in what they seem. The character of these Polish Jews, with their quiet and laborious lives, with their firm attachment to the principles of honesty, with their benevolence and their hospitality, and, above all, with their fervid and melancholy love for their old Faith—a love which has outlived so many centuries of exile, disappointment, and wretchedness—this character, whatever may be thought of it in other respects, cannot surely be denied to be a highly poetical one. Mr Allan, who has enjoyed so many opportunities of contemplating the working of human thoughts and passions under so many different shapes, has seen this character, and the manner in which it is bodied forth, with the eye of a poet and a painter; and I would hope the MerryMaking may not be the only glimpse of both with which he may favour us. *

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But there would be no end of it, were I to think of acting Cicerone through the whole of his gallery, in a letter such as this: and besides, these are not pictures whose merits can be even tolerably interpreted through the medium of words. They are everywhere radiant with an expression of pathos, that is entirely peculiar to the art of which they are specimens. They cannot be comprehended unless they be seen; and it is worth while going a long journey, were it only to see them. It is not on

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a first view that the faults of pictures possessing so much merit, can be at all felt by persons capable of enjoying their beauties. But I shall enter upon these in my next; I shall also say something of the pictures which Mr Allan has painted more lately, and the scenes of which are laid nearer to ourselves. Wide as is the field of the East, and delicious as is the use he has made of that untrodden field—I am glad to find that he does not mean to confine himself to it. The pictures he has painted of oriental subjects, are rich in the expression of feelings, gathered during his wanderings among the regions to which they belong. But there are other feelings, and more powerful ones, too, which ought to fix, and I think it probable they will do so, the matured and once more domesticated mind of such a painter as Mr Allan. P. M.

LETTER XLVIII TO THE SAME

THE largest and most finished picture, which Mr Allan has painted upon any subject not oriental, (or at least not partaking of an oriental character,) is that of the Press-Gang. The second time that I went to his house, he was in the act of superintending the packing up of this fine piece, for being sent into the country;* so that I was lucky in having a view of it at all—for I certainly was not allowed time to contemplate it in so leisurely a manner as I could have wished. It is of about the same dimensions as the Circassian Slaves, and the canvass, as in it, is filled with a very large number of figures; but I am not prepared to say, that I think the same happy effect is produced by this circumstance as in the other. I question, however, whether any scene of actual British Life could have been selected more happily calculated for such a pencil as Mr Allan’s. The moment one sees the picture, one cannot help being struck with wonder, that such a subject should have been left so long unhandled; but where, after all, was ever the British artist that could have occupied it in such a manner, as to throw any difficulties in Mr Allan’s way, or even to take away the least of the originality, which he has displayed in its management? The canvass represents the house of a fisherman by the sea-side—neat and cleanly, as the houses of respectable fishermen are always found—but more picturesque in its interior than the house of any other poor man can well be, from the mixture of suspended nets and fishing-tackle everywhere diversifying the more usual kinds of peasant-plenishing. It is supposed, that the son of the fisherman has just returned from a long voyage in a merchantship—his parents are preparing to welcome the wanderer with their fatted calf—and his mistress, having heard the news of his arrival, has hurried, half-clothed as she was, in the eagerness of her unsuspecting love, to be folded in his arms. Scarcely are the first warm, tearful greet_____________________________________________ * The picture belongs to Mr Horrocks of Tillihewan Castle, Dumbartonshire.

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ings over, ere a caitiff neighbour gives notice to the Press-Gang—and the picture represents the moment when they have rushed into the house, and pinioned their prey. The agony of the Sailor-Boy is speechless, and he stands with his hand upon his face, as if stunned and insensible to the nature of his misery. His other hand, however, has not quitted the hand of his sweet-heart, who has swooned away, and is only prevented from lying like a corpse upon the floor, by this his unconscious support. His father looks on in despair; but he has presence of mind enough to know, that resistance would be unavailing. The mother has seized the lieutenant by the hand, and is thrusting upon him all their little household store of guarded guineas, as if she had hoped to purchase her boy’s safety by her bribe. In a chair by the fire, meanwhile, which even joy could not have enabled him to leave, the aged and infirm grandfather sits immoveable, and sick at heart—his eyes turned faintly upwards, his feeble hands clasped together, and the big drops coursing each other down the pale and furrowed cheeks of his half-bewildered second childishness. The wife of the old man—for she, too, is alive to partake in all this wretchedness—is not so infirm as her partner, but she has moved from her chair only to give aid to him. Dear as are her children to her, her husband is dearer—he is everything to her, and she thinks of nothing but him. She has a cup of water in her hand, of which she beseeches him to drink, and gazes on his emaciated features with an eye, that tells of the still potency of long years of wedded love—a love that has survived all the ardours of youthful blood, and acquired only a holier power from the lapse of all their life of hardships. Perhaps this is the most noble conception in the whole picture—it does not disturb the impression of the parting of the youthful lovers; but reflects back a nobler sanctity upon all their sufferings, by bringing before us a fresh poetic vision of the eternal might of those ties, which that broken hearted agony is bruising— Ties that around the heart are spun, And will not, cannot be undone.

Even over the groupe of stubborn mariners around the captive boy, the poetical soul of the painter has not disdained to lavish something of its redeeming softness; their hard and savage features are fixed, indeed, and resolute: but there is no cruelty, no wantonness, no derision, in their steadfast look. Like the officer who commands them, they do what they conceive to be their duty—and such it is—but they do no more. It was

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a delightful delicacy of conception, which made the painter dare to part with so much of the vulgar powers of contrast, and to make the rainbow of his tenderness display its gentle radiance, even here in the thickest blackness of his human storm. The fainting girl is represented in a very difficult attitude (I mean difficult for the painter), her collapsed limbs, as I have said, being prevented from falling prostrate on the floor only by the hand of her lover, which, even in the speechless agony of despair, refuses instinctively to let her hand go. Her head, however, almost touches the floor, and her long dishevelled tresses of raven black, sweep it already with their disconsolate richness. Her virgin bosom, but a moment before bursting with the sudden swell of misery, is now calm and pale—all its throbbings over for a time, even as if the finger of death had been there to appease them. Her beautiful lips are tinged with an envious livid stain, and her sunken eye-lids are black with the rush of recoiling blood, amidst the melancholy marble of her cheeks and forehead. One cannot look upon her without remembering the story of Crazy Jane, and thinking that here, too, is a creature whose widowed heart can never hope for peace—one to whom some poet of love might hereafter breathe such words as those already breathed by one of the truest of poets:— But oh! when midnight wind careers, And the gust pelting on the out-house shed, Makes the cock shrilly in the rain-storm crow, To hear thee sing some ballad full of woe, Ballad of ship-wrecked sailor floating dead, Whom his own true-love buried in the sands! Thee, gentle Woman—for thy voice re-measures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures The things of Nature utter—birds or trees, Or moan of ocean gale in weedy caves, Or where the stiff grass ’mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.

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As I am not one of those who walk round a whole gallery of pictures in a single morning, and think themselves entitled to say they have seen them—and even to make criticisms upon their merits and demerits,—I

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by no means thought of perplexing my feeling of the power of the PressGang, by looking at any other of Mr Allan’s pictures on the same day; I have often gone back since, however, and am now quite familiar with all the pictures still in his own possession. Those painted on domestic British subjects, are all filled with the same deep and tender tastefulness, which the Press-Gang so eminently discovers; but none of them are so happily conceived in point of arrangement, nor, perhaps, is the colouring of the artist seen to the same advantage in any one of them. Indeed, in comparing the Press-Gang itself with the Circassian Slaves, the Jewish Family, and some of the earliest pieces, I could not help entertaining a suspicion, that in this great department the artist has rather retrograded than advanced since his return to Britain. It may be that his eyes had been so long accustomed to light, shade, and colour, as exhibited in oriental regions, that his mode of painting had become embued and penetrated with the idea of representing these effects alone—and that so the artist may not yet have entirely regained the eyes, without which, it is certain, he cannot possess the hand, of a British painter. It is very obvious, that this is a failing which, considering what masterpieces of colouring some of his older pictures are, cannot possibly continue long to lessen the power and beauty of his performances. I speak of the general colouring of his pieces—I have no doubt they may have lesser and more particular faults offensive to more scientific eyes, and perhaps not quite so likely to be got rid of. Almost all the artists, with whom I have conversed on the subject of his pictures, seem to say, that they consider him somewhat defective in his representation of the colour of the naked flesh. And I do think (although I should scarcely have made the discovery for myself), that he does make it rather dead and opaque, and gives it too little relief. But, perhaps, the small size of his pictures, and the multiplicity of figures which they contain, are circumstances unfavourable to this species of excellence. If his objects were less numerous, and presented larger surfaces, he would find it more easy to make them vivid, transparent, and beautiful, and to give them a stronger relief by finer gradations of shadow. A small canvass, occupied with so many figures, never has a broad and imposing effect at first sight. The first feeling it excites is curiosity about what they are engaged with, and we immediately go forward to pry into the subject, and spell out the story. A piece, with larger and fewer figures, if the subject be well chosen, is understood at once; and nothing tells more strongly on the imagination, or strikes us with a more pleasing astonishment, than a bold effect of light and shadow, seen at a convenient distance.

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The execution of a picture, however, is a thing of which I cannot venture to speak, without a great feeling of diffidence. The choice of subjects is a matter more within the reach of one that has never gone through any regular apprenticeship of Gusto; and much as I have been delighted with Mr Allan’s pictures, and much as I have been delighted with their subjects, too—I by no means think, that his subjects are in general of a kind much calculated to draw out the highest parts of his genius, or to affect mankind with the same high and enduring measure of admiration and delight, which his genius, otherwise directed, might, I nothing question, enable him to command. In this respect, indeed, he only errs (if error there be,) along with almost all the great artists, his contemporaries—nay, it is perhaps but too true, that he and they have alike been compelled to err by the frivolous spirit of the age in which they have been born. I fear, I greatly fear, that, in spite of all the genius which we see every day breaking out in different departments of this delightful art, the day of its loftiest and most lasting triumphs has gone by. However, to despair of the human mind in any one of its branches of exertion, is a thing very repugnant to my usual feelings. P. M. P. S. Before quitting Mr Allan’s atelier, I must tell you that I have seen an exquisite sketch of the Murder of Archbishop Sharpe, which he has just executed. The picture will, I doubt not, be his domestic masterpiece. The idea of painting a picture on this subject may probably have been suggested to him by a piece of business in which he is just about to engage, viz. making designs for the illustration of Waverley, and the other novels of the same author. What a field is here! I have seen none of his designs; but he will doubtless make them in a manner worthy of himself; and if he does so, his name will descend for ever in glorious companionship with that of the most original author of our days, and the most powerful author that Scotland ever has produced. Q. F. F. Q. S., quoth P. M.

LETTER XLIX TO THE SAME

I KNOW of no painter, who shows more just reflection and good judgment in his way of conceiving a subject, and arranging the parts of it, than Allan. His circumstances are always most happily chosen, and the characters introduced are so skilfully delineated, as to prove that the painter has been an excellent observer of life. His pictures are full of thought, and show a most active and intelligent mind. They display most graphically the fruits of observation; and the whole of the world which they represent, is suffused over with a very rare and precious breathing of tenderness and delicacy of feeling. In short, were his subjects taken from the highest field of his art, and had they any fundamental ideas of permanent and lofty interest at the bottom of them, I do not see why Mr Allan should not be truly a Great Painter. But his genius has as yet been cramped and confined by a rather over-stretched compliance with the taste of the times. The highest purpose to which painting has ever been applied, is that of expressing ideas connected with Religion; and the decay of the interest attached by mankind to ideas of that class, is evinced by nothing in a more striking manner, than by the nature of the subjects now (in preference to them) commonly chosen for painting, and most relished by the existing generation. It would seem, indeed, as if the decay of interest in great things and great ideas had not shown itself in regard to religion alone. Even subjects taken from national history seem to be scarcely so familiar to the imaginations and associations of ordinary spectators, as to be much relished or deeply felt in any modern exhibition-room. It is probable, that subjects like those chosen by Wilkie (and of late by Allan also,) come most home now-a-days to the feelings of the multitude. They pre-suppose no knowledge of the past— no cherished ideas habitually dwelt on by the imagination—no deep feeling of religion—no deep feeling of patriotism—but merely a capacity for the most common sympathies and sensibilities of human nature. The picture makes no demand on the previous habits or ideas of the spectator—it tells its own story, and it tells it entirely—but exactly

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in proportion as it wants retrospective interest, I am inclined to think it wants endurance of interest. I think Wilkie’s species of painting may be said to bear the same relation to the highest species which sentimental comedies and farces bear to regular tragedies. But in all this, as I have already hinted, it is probable the public is most to blame—not the painter. Indeed, the very greatest artists, were they to go on making creations either in painting, poetry, or any other art, without being guided by the responses of public enthusiasm, would run a sad risk of losing their way. The genius of a gifted individual—his power of inventing and conceiving—is an instrument which he himself may not always have the judgment to employ to the best advantage, and which is more safely directed to its mark by the aggregated feelings, I will not say, of the multitude, but at least of numbers. Even the scattered suffrages of amateurs, who, by artificial culture, have acquired habits of feeling different from those of the people about them, must always be a very trifling stimulus, when compared with the trumpet-notes of a whole nation, hailing an artist for having well expressed ideas alike interesting to them all. There is no popular sympathy in these days with those divinest feelings of the human soul, which formed the essence of interest in the works of the sculptors of Greece—still more in those of the painters of modern Italy—and the expression of which was rewarded in both cases by the enthusiasm, boundless and grateful, of those by whom these artists were habitually surrounded. I confess, there are very few things of which I am so desirous, as of seeing a true school of painting in its highest form established among the people of Britain. But this can never be, till the painters get rid of that passion for inventing subjects, which at present seems to predominate among them all. The object of a great painter should be, not to invent subjects, but to give a graphical form to ideas universally known, and contemplated with deep feeling. An Entombing of Christ— a Madonna and Child—a Flight into Egypt, are worth all the larmoyant scenes which can ever be conceived out of the circumstances of modern life—circumstances, which, although they may be treated with the utmost genius, can never cease to be in the main prosaic. Even the early history of any modern nation, however replete it may be with remarkable events, can present no objects of which the imagination, set a-musing by the contemplation of its likeness, does not speedily find the limits, and the barrenness—from which, in a word, it does not turn away as unpoetical, after the first movements of excited curiosity and weekday sympathies have ceased. How different from all this narrowness, is

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the endless and immeasurable depth of a Religious Allegory, wherein the whole mystery of man and his destiny is called up to breathe its solemn and unfading charm upon the creation of the artist, and the mind of the spectator! When one talks to a painter of the present day about the propriety of taking to subjects of religious import—above all, to those of the simplest construction, and the most purely allegorical nature,—there is nothing more common than to be told, that such subjects have been exhausted. If you are told, by way of confirmation of this, that the Scriptural pieces produced in this country are almost all very bad, you are, indeed, told nothing but the truth; because they are made up of insipid centos and compilations from former painters, or absurd misapplications of the plastic antique. Having no real life or expression in them, they are universally regarded with indifference; and probably the grossest violations of costume, and the most vulgar forms, are better than this. Rembrandt, in painting Scriptural subjects, took such forms and dresses as his own country supplied, and his compositions were esteemed, because, whatever might be their want of dignity, they were at least pregnant with traits of which his countrymen understood the meaning. The fundamental ideas conveyed had a religious interest, and the vehicles made use of to express them, were in a certain sense good, because they were national, and not mere garbled recollections of ancient pictures and statues, made up into new forms and groupes, utterly destitute of coherence and truth. Paul Veronese made use of Venetian figures and dresses in treating the most sacred subjects, and although these violations of costume may appear ridiculous at first sight, yet, if we reflect a little, we shall perhaps find that it was the most judicious course he could have pursued. To make use of such nature as is before us, is always to secure consistency and truth of expression. There is besides a noble sincerity and simplicity in each nation making use of such physiognomies and scenery as it is best acquainted with, to serve as the means of expressing ideas eternally to be loved and adored, in whatever way they may be represented. If I were a painter, and were engaged in painting Scripture pieces, I would boldly make use of such physiognomies and scenery as my country affords, and would think the surest way of exciting an interest in such performances would be, through the medium of common associations and well-known appearances, applied to subjects radically great and dignified in themselves. But all this poverty of modern artists, has no weight as an argument against the use of religious subjects. Any one who has gone through

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even a few of the great collections at home, must be satisfied that Christian subjects have been by no means exhausted by the Ancient Masters. Even in any one of the subjects, of which these were most fond, there is no appearance, as if any one definite conception had ever come to be regarded as the truest or best way of treating it—far less as precluding the attempts of succeeding artists. It is the more lamentable, when one looks back upon this endless fertility of the old, to think of the narrow-minded prejudice which has barred the new painters from the same inexhaustible ranges of ideas and subjects. Before the imitation can ever be imagined to have reached its limit, we must suppose that we have ascertained the limit of that which it proposes to imitate. Now where is the man, however ardent an admirer of the genius of the great dead masters he may be—however deeply and passionately he may worship the divine spirit which animated their works, and immortalizes their memories—where is the man who can persuade himself for a moment, that, in expressing the gestures and features of divine beings, or beings partaking of sanctity above the conception of ordinary men, any one of those masters has gone as far as it is possible to go? The best of their productions only take us so far—there is always a deeper path, which the imagination must travel in its own light alone—and where is the certainty that this path may not be abridged—that some yet nearer approach may not be made to that, which, even by the greatest of men, seems to have been seen afar off at an immeasurable distance? At all events, the result would be so grand, that the attempt is well worthy of being made by every artist who feels in himself the stirrings and the consciousness of genius. How natural and how fine a thing for a painter to desire to follow in the same path wherein Raphael, and Lionardo, and Perugino, have preceded him—to transplant himself anew into their ideas and their thoughts—to walk yet farther under the guidance of the same unwearied spirit which conducted them—and so to restore the broken links of connection between the art of past ages and the art of the present! And then how rich—how comprehensive is their sphere in all beauty which painting can need, in all expression after which the heart of man pants in its moments of reflective earnestness! What a lamentable contrast is that which the present condition of the art affords—how insecurely and unsatisfied the artist seems to be wandering about from one set of unfortunate subjects to another set yet more unfortunate! The old masters did not merely imagine themselves to possess a sufficient field for all the rich inventiveness of their genius, within the story

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and allegory of the Bible—they seem to have been satisfied not unfrequently with a very small portion of the space which this mighty field afforded—nay, to have been contented, month after month, year after year, and life-time after life-time, with some one little fragment of the whole—sometimes such as we should scarcely suppose it possible for them to have esteemed the best or richest in their power. Instead of seeking about for new subjects, they seem often to have formed such a love for some one subject as never, or, at least, seldom to leave it— unwearied in their admiration—in the intense fervour of their passionate love. It is thus that the divine Raphael seems to have delighted in manifold representations of the Madonna—each of them possessing an individual character—and yet each an aspiration of the same glorious spirit, after the same intangible evanescent divinity of conception. The far less lofty subject of the Herodias appears, in like manner, to have become a perfect common-place in all the school of Lionardo; while, in the Crucifixion, the soul of the great Durer seems to have found a more fitting theme on which to expend the ever unsatisfied, but never despairing depth of its melancholy musing sublimity. If it be true, that these men have exhausted anything, assuredly this is a discovery which neither themselves, nor any of their immediate disciples and most intelligent admirers, ever dreamed of. Although, however, Religion and the aspiration after the Godlike, was always the great centre spring of the ideas and endeavours of the old Italian Masters, there was another wide field upon which they moved with a grace and a freedom, no less superior to anything that is ever exhibited by modern artists—a field which has been less deserted by modern artists, and which they never do pretend to speak of as having been exhausted by those who preceded them—the Mythology of the Greeks. So far as I have been able to form any ideas concerning the Spirit of Greek Antiquity, I am of opinion that that Spirit—the internal being and essence of ancient Life and ancient Faith, was comprehended in a far more happy and more profound way by the old Italian painters— more, indeed, in all probability, from deep instinctive feeling of what is right and true, than from any great knowledge or learning—than ever seems to be attained to by any modern painters either of Italy, or Germany, or England—least of all by those of the most would-beclassical school in the world—the French. It might be reckoned unfair to draw any comparisons, or expect that any should be drawn between the gigantic genius of Michael Angelo, and the mind of any painter of our day, or, indeed, of any of the ages that have elapsed between

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Michael Angelo’s time and our own. The School of Athens of Raphael, in like manner, would be rejected as beyond the fair limit of comparison. But it is not necessary to seek for the confirmation of what I have said, in the works of such men as Buonarotti and Raphael alone. The Roman power, fulness, and magnificence of Julio Romano, and the fine voluptuousness in the Antiope of Correggio, are things clearly derived from deeper sources than any which our modern painters ever dream of exploring. And yet all these painters considered the Christian Allegory as the only true subject on which to expend the full resources of their genius.—This Greek Mythology, in which they found things so much deeper than any that modern painters can find there—was only regarded by them as a bye-field of relaxation—a mere πάρεργον of their art. They viewed the subject of antiquity far more profoundly than their successors do, but they always kept it in complete subjection to their own more serious and loftier faith. They sought in it only for allegories, conceptions, and images of a less overwhelming dignity than the Bible could afford, and they treated these pretty much as the oldest romantic poets did the fables of antiquity. The God Amur of the Provençals, is, perhaps, not much more different from the Eros of the Greeks, than the Mercury of Mantegna is from the true Athenian Hermes. Perhaps one of the finest exemplifications of the success with which modern art may make use of ancient mythology, is in the famous picture of the Contest of Virtue and Pleasure, by Perugino. It was in the Louvre a few years ago: I know not where it is now. The extremities of the fore-ground are occupied by two glorious trees, the one of bright and blooming foliage, on which some Cupids are seen tangled amidst the blossoms and fruit— the other is a dark and melancholy cypress, on one of whose barest branches an owl is perched, with its wings folded. Female figures with lances, the points of which terminate in flames, contend on the side of Love, others against him. Nothing can be finer than the diversity of attitudes among the combatants,—the very soul of antique luxury, and the very soul of antique severity, seem to have been caught by the pencil of the artist. The detail of the picture I have in a great measure forgotten, but the general effect I never shall—above all, the grand blue mountains in the distance, seen on the one side, over woods and wilds full of satyrs and nymphs, and, in the other, a magnificent landscape of temples and towers, rising calmly out of solemn and orderly groves, such as we might imagine to have given shelter to the Platos and the Ciceros. A modern painter would probably have confined himself, in handling such a subject, to some merely plastic groupe, in which form would have

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been almost every thing—expression little—and accompaniment nothing, Above all Scottish artists with whose works I am acquainted, I should like to see Mr Allan deserting the narrow field of modern art, and merely vulgar interest—and attempting once more to paint Scripture subjects as they deserve to be painted. The gentle and delicate character of his genius, seems not unworthy of being applied to the divinely benevolent allegories of our faith—or, if these be too much for him, to the simple, beautiful, unfailing situations of actual life, which the Bible history presents in such overflowing abundance. Should he be afraid of venturing so far from the ordinary themes in which spectators are now accustomed to find interest—the history of his country affords a fine field, which may be looked upon as intermediate between that on which he has as yet trodden, and that on which I would fain have him feel the ambition to tread. In taking hold of religious subjects in Scotland, he would undoubtedly have to contend (over and above the prejudices of which I have already spoken,) with another set of prejudices scarcely less difficult to be overcome—those, I mean, of a nation among whom Religion is commonly regarded in a way by far too speculative, and too little imbued with pure and beautiful feeling. It was worthy only of the savage soul of Knox, to banish all the most delightful of the arts from the house of God—to degrade for ever those arts from their proper purpose and destination, among the people whose Faith and Worship he reformed, only because his own rude (though masculine) mind wanted grace to comprehend what their true purposes, and destinations, and capacities are. This was indeed the triumph of a bigot, who had neither an eye nor a heart for Beauty. The light of the man’s virtues should not be forgotten; but why should an enlightened nation continue to punish themselves by walking in the cold shadow of his prejudices? But the old history of Scotland abounds in scenes of the most romantic and poetic interest; and the self-love of the nation, debarred from any exclusive pride in atchievements of later days, atones for this to itself by a more accurate knowledge of the national past, and a more fervent interest in the men and actions the national history discloses, than are commonly to be found among nations whose independent existence has continued unbroken down to the present day. Here then is a rich field, to which Mr Allan may turn not only without prejudices to encounter, but with the whole prejudices of his nation eminently interested in his endeavours, and, if he succeed, (as why should he not?) eminently and enthusiastically delighted in his success. I hope the

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Murder of Archbishop Sharpe is designed as the first of a great and magnificent series of Scottish Paintings; but I think it would have been better to choose, as the subject of the first of such a series, some scene which the whole of the Scottish nation might have been more likely to contemplate with the same species of emotions. P. M.

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THE length to which I have extended my remarks on Mr Allan’s pictures, may perhaps appear a little extravagant; but I think, upon the whole, that these pictures, and this artist, form one of the most interesting subjects which can at the present time attract the attention of a traveller in Scotland, and therefore I do not repent of the lengthiness of my observations. I wish I had been able to treat the subject more as it deserves to be treated in some other respects. The truth is that till Wilkie and Allan arose, it can scarcely be said Scotland had ever given any promise of expressing her national thoughts and feelings, by means of the pencil, with any degree of power and felicity at all approaching to that in which she has already often made use of the vehicle of words—or even to that which she had displayed in her early music. Before this time, the poverty of Scotland, and the extreme difficulty of pictorial education, as contrasted with the extreme facility of almost every other kind of education, had been sufficient to prevent the field of art from ever attracting the sympathies and ambition of the young men of genius in this country; and the only exceptions to this rule are such as cannot fail to illustrate, in a very striking way, the general influence of its authority. Neither can I be persuaded to think, that the only exceptions which did exist were at all very splendid ones. The only two Scottish painters of former times, of whom any of the Scotch connoisseurs, with whom I have conversed, seem to speak with much exultation, are Gavin Hamilton and Runciman. The latter, although he was far inferior in the practice of art— although he knew nothing of colouring, and very little of drawing—yet, in my opinion, possessed much more of the true soul of a painter than the former. There is about his often miserably drawn figures, and as often miserably arranged groupes, a certain rude character of grandeur, a certain indescribable majesty and originality of conception, which shows at once, that had he been better educated, he might have been a princely painter. The other possessed in perfection all the manual part of his art—he made no mistakes—he was sure so far as he went—he

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had the complete mastery of his tools. The subjects which he chose, too, were admirable, and in his treatment of many of them altogether, he has displayed a union of talents, which few even of the very first artists the world has produced could ever equal. But Gavin Hamilton was not a great painter. Nature never meant him to be one. He wanted soul to conceive, and therefore his hands, so ready and so skilful to execute, were of little avail. I have seen many of his works in Italy—as yet none of them here; for the artist always lived in Italy, and very few of his paintings have ever, I believe, reached the country of his birth. At a late period of his life, indeed, he came to Scotland, where he was possessed of a considerable paternal estate, had a painting-room fitted up in his house, and resolved to spend the remainder of his days among his countrymen. But great as he really was in many respects, and great above all comparison as he must have appeared, or, at least, was entitled to appear in Scotland then, he found little sympathy and little enthusiasm to sustain and reward his labours; and, after painting a few large pictures for the Duke of Hamilton (with whose family he was nearly connected), Gavin returned once more to Rome—never to leave it again. There indeed he enjoyed a high and brilliant reputation. He was a kind of Mengs among the cognoscenti, and his name, like that of Mengs, was rendered celebrated throughout the Continent by the praises of French travellers and Italian ciceroni. But Mengs has since been reduced to his due dimensions; and Gavin Hamilton could have no reason to complain that he has suffered the same fate, although indeed it is very true, the dimensions to which he has been reduced are yet smaller than those of Mengs. Such is the invariable destiny of all but the true demi-gods. For his own living hour, each may possess all the expansion of popular renown; but, when they come to take their place among the great assembly of the illustrious dead, Behold a wonder! they but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless.——

Even the raptures of Voltaire can no longer persuade men that either Mengs or Hamilton were worthy representatives of the great painters of the centuries preceding. It would seem, however, as if the first day-spring of art in Scotland had been enough to illuminate many regions besides those to which I have already alluded. For the first time is Scotland now possessed of

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admirable landscape painters, as well as of historical painters; and in the department of portrait, the progress she has made has been no less remarkable. With regard to landscape painting, it is very true, that she has not yet equalled the present glories of the sister kingdom—but then the world has only one TURNER, and Scotland comes far nearer to the country which has had the honour of producing that great genius, than any other country in Europe. She has reared many artists in this department, whose works are well known in England, and she has fixed the residence and affections of a countryman of our own, whose works, were they known as they deserve to be, would, I am persuaded, confer more pure delight on all that are capable of understanding and feeling their beauties, than it has almost ever fallen to the lot of any one artist to bestow upon his contemporaries. I owe my first acquaintance with this painter to my friend Wastle, who is extremely fond of his company, no less than of his pictures; but have since met him very often in the fashionable societies of the place. It is a singular enough coincidence, too, that Mr Williams (for he is your namesake) has owed scarcely less of his celebrity to his residence in foreign countries, and his choice of foreign subjects, than Mr Allan has done. It is true, that he has long been known as an admirable landscape painter, and, I think, you must have seen some of his works in Wales, as well as in London; but it was not till last year, when Mr Williams returned to Edinburgh, after travelling for some years in Italy and Greece, that his genius seems to have displayed itself in its utmost power. Familiar as he had all his life been with the beauty and the grandeur of mountains, lakes, and rivers, and skilful as he had shown himself in transfusing their shapes and their eloquence to his canvass— there seem to have slumbered in his breast the embers of a nobler fire, which never burst into a flame until he had gazed upon the majestic face of Nature in lands, where her majesty borrows a holier and a sublimer influence from the memory of men and actions, in comparison with which the greatest of modern men, and the most brilliant of modern actions, must be contented to appear as dim and pigmy. Even Italy, for there was the scene of his first wanderings, seems to have wanted the power to call forth this hidden spark into its full radiance. It was reserved for the desolate beauty of Greece, to breathe into this fine spirit such a sense of the melancholy splendour of Nature, in climes where she was once no less gay than splendid—such a deep and touching sympathy, with the decays of earthly greatness, and the vanity of earthly ambition—such a mournful tenderness of feeling and of pencil, as have

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been sufficient to render him at once one of the most original, one of the most impressive, and one of the most delightful of painters. Surely I am a lover of nature; but I confess, that pictured representations of external nature, when linked with no subject of human action or passion, have in general been able to produce comparatively but little effect upon my mind. The paintings of Claude, indeed, always affected me in the most powerful manner; but then, I think, the idea that the scene was in Italy, and the ruined shapes of Roman aqueducts, towers, and temples, gleaming beneath his sunny lustre, or more gentle moonlight, always entered very largely into the deep gratification I received from contemplating them. The same kind of instruments of excitement have been far more liberally employed by Williams, than by any of the great painters with whose works I am acquainted—and besides, the scenes of Greece, and the desolation of Greece, are things to my mind of yet nobler power than any of which even Claude had command. It is there,—I may be wrong in confessing it,—it is there, among the scattered pillars of Thebes or Corinth—or in full view of all the more glorious remains of more glorious Athens—or looking from the ivied and mouldering arches of Delphi, quite up through the mountain mists to the craggy summits of Parnassus, and the far off windings of the Castalian brook—it is there, that the footsteps of men appear to have stamped a grander sanctity even on the most magnificent forms of nature. It is there that Williams seems first to have felt, and it is in his transcripts of these glorious scenes, that I myself have been sensible of feeling, the whole fulness and awfulness of the works of the Creator— —All this magnificent effect of power, The earth we tread, the sky which we behold By day, and all the pomp which night reveals.

As yet Mr Williams has not had time to finish many pictures from the sketches he made in Greece; but, for the most part, these sketches are in themselves most charming pictures; for, in spite of the fierce suns which all preceding travellers dreaded and shunned as much as possible, and which no preceding painter ever braved, it was his custom to colour his sketches upon the spot where they were made. The effects which he has thus produced are so very new, that but for the certainty one has in regard to the mode of their production, it is not to be denied, they would appear somewhat extravagant. I have wandered over all the scenes of

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deserted grandeur in Southern France and Italy—but these Greek ruins make their appearance in a style of majestic splendour, for which my eyes were totally unprepared. The action of the atmosphere upon the marble seems to have been quite different here from any thing I have ever witnessed elsewhere; and this, taken together with the dazzling brightness reflected from innumerable fields of waving mustard, has thrown such a breadth of yellow radiance around the crumbling monuments of wisdom and valour, that the eye starts back at first, as if from the glare of the sun in half-complete eclipse. By degrees, however, the intense truth of the representation forces its way into one’s heart, and you gaze with your hand over your eyes upon the golden decline of Athens with the same unquestioning earnestness, as if you were transported all at once to one of the sunny slopes of Hymettus. I speak of Athens,—for it is there surely that the artist must have felt most, and it is in the large picture he has already finished of Athens, that the spirit of the place, the Religio Loci, seems to have infused its deepest charm into the pencil of the worshipper. Before you lies a long level of green and yellow grain, broken everywhere by tufted plantations of vines and olives—with here and there a solitary oak or sycamore, lifting itself broader and browner above their underwood—in the midst of which the gigantic Corinthian columns of what was once the Temple of Jupiter, form a resting-place of radiance half way between you and the city. The low roofs and fantastic outlines of the houses of the modern city spread along the verge of the hill, and separate it from the foreground; but the majestic remains behind seem to acknowledge little connection with the works of modern men, which intervene between us and their surpassing beauty. The whole brow of the Acropolis still beams with a labyrinth of splendour, which at first glance you could hardly suspect to be in decay—with such noble decision of outline do these yellow pillars break the sky behind them—towers, and gateways, and temples, and domes, and porticos, all gleaming together on the summit, in the same warmth of radiance that shone upon them when Pericles walked thither to offer up incense before the new-made masterpiece of Phidias. The Temple of Theseus stands lower down, more entire than the Parthenon but half lost in the shadow of the Acropolis. Behind, through a rich and wooded plain that stretches to the sea, the eye may trace some lingering vestiges of what once were the long walls of the Piræeus. The sea itself sleeps bright and blue beyond—beneath a bright sky, where not one speck of cloud is seen to hover above the glorious landscape. Far behind lies Salamis, and farther still Ægina.—In the centre of the piece, on the

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left hand, a small sheep-track, scarcely discernible among the mossy green, shows where once lay the high road to Marathon. To the right, close beneath where you stand, a groupe of Turks and Albanians are clustered together, with all the glaring hues of their barbaric splendour by a clear small pool— Thy banks, Cephisus, and the crystal lymph, With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lips, And moisten all day long these flowery fields.

What a landscape is here! how naked of men, yet how impregnated with the essence of humanity! Τας ἱερας ὁπως προσείποιμεν Αθανας.—

And yet perhaps the view from Castri may be a still more delightful one, and fitted perhaps to kindle yet deeper emotions. Here there is no pomp of ruins, no sweep of deserted richness, nothing but a few mossgrown tablets and columns beneath our feet, and before us, the mountain of inspiration, lifting its clear head high among the clouds, far above all its sweeping girdle of rocks and pines. It was here that the religion of Greece had its seat and centre—it was from hence that the Oracle of Apollo once dictated to all the kings of Asia—and that far later, even the relics of its power were sufficient to protect its soil from the foot of the spoiler—when The Gaul-King before Delphi lay.

The streams of Castalie glitter in the distance, and a single snow-white heifer, the only living thing in all the picture, browses upon the tall grass and wall-flowers, that spring from out the centre of the long silent sanctuary. A certain dim and sultry vapour of mystery seems to sleep upon everything around—a dreamy mistiness of atmosphere, fit mother and fit nurse for the most fanciful and graceful of superstitions. —In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman stretched On the soft grass through half a summer’s day, With music lulled his indolent repose: And in some fit of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds

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Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched, Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. The nightly hunter lifting up his eyes Toward the crescent Moon with grateful heart, Called on the lovely wanderer, who bestowed That timely light, to share his joyous sport: And hence a beaming goddess with her nymphs, Across the lawn, and through the darksome grove, (Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes, By echo multiplied from rock or cave), Swept in the storm of chase, as Moon and Stars Glance rapidly along the cloudy Heavens, When winds are blowing strong: ————The traveller slaked His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked The Naiad.—Sunbeams upon distant hills, Gliding apace with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly; The Zephyrs fanning as they passed their wings, Lacked not for love fair objects, which they wooed With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, From depth of shaggy covert, peeping forth In the low vale, or on steep mountain side; And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns Of the live deer, or goats’ depending beard; These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood Of gamesome Deities, or Pan himself, The simple Shepherd’s awe-inspiring God!

When Williams has finished a few more pictures such as these, I have no doubt it will be found, that his genius is entitled to exert a deep sway over the minds of his contemporaries. It seems as if nature had fitted him to complete among us the impression, which similar inspirations had already enabled one of the greatest poets of the day to introduce to us with so much majesty of effect. But the length of these remarks must not lead you to suppose, that there are no great landscape painters in Edinburgh besides Mr Williams. He is the only one whom I have met frequently in society, and perhaps his very elegant appearance and manners, and the interest his wanderings have given to his conversation, may sufficiently account for this circumstance. But there is no want of admirable artists in the same

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department in this city. There is the venerable father of landscapepainting in Scotland—Mr Nasmyth, whose son Peter enjoys a splendid reputation at present in London. There is a delightful sweetness in the old man’s pencil, and assuredly there is in it as yet no want of vigour. There is Mr Thomson, the clergyman of Duddingston, a village in the immediate neighbourhood of Edinburgh, whose works, in masterly ease and breadth of effect, seem to me to approach nearer to the masterpieces of Turner, than those of any other artist with whom I am acquainted, and who, you will be happy to observe, is engaged along with that Prince of Artists in Mr Scott’s great work of the Provincial Antiquities of Scotland. Among the younger artists, there are, I believe, not a few of very great promise, and one, above all, who bids fair ere long to rival the very highest masters in the department he has selected. I allude to Staff-Surgeon Schetky, a gentleman, whose close and eminent attention to his own profession, both here and while he served with Lord Wellington’s army, have not prevented him from cultivating with uniform ardour an art fitted above all others to form a delightful relaxation from the duties of professional men, and which, it is easy to see, must besides be of great practical and direct utility to a man of his profession. During the longest and most fatiguing marches of our Peninsular army, his active and intelligent mind was still fresh in its worshipping of the forms of nature; finding its best relief from the contemplation of human suffering, in the contemplation of those serene beauties of earth and sky, which that lovely region for ever offers to the weary eye of man. I think the Doctor is a very original painter. He has looked on nature with an eye that is entirely his own, and he has conceived the true purposes of his art in a way that is scarcely less peculiar. He seems to have the most exalted views of the poetical power of landscape-painting, and to make it his object on every occasion to call this poetical power into action in his works. He does not so much care to represent merely striking or beautiful scenes, as to characterize natural objects, and bring out their life and expression. A painter, who feels, as he does, what nature is, considers every tree or plant as in some measure an animated being, which expresses the tone of its sensations by the forms which it assumes, and the colours which it displays. How full of poetry and meaning is every vegetable production, when sprouting forth spontaneously in such places as nature dictates, and growing in the way to which it is led by its own silent inclinations! Even the different surfaces and shapes of soils and rocks have an expression relating to the manner in which they were formed, although they cannot be literally considered

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as expressive of sensation like plants. Mr Schetky seems more than almost any painter to be imbued with these ideas of universal animation. His trees—his rocks—his Pyrenees, seem to breathe and be alive with the spirit of their Maker; and he has no superior, but one, in everything that regards the grand and mysterious eloquence of cloud and sky. As you have seen the London Exhibitions as often as myself, you of course do not need to be told, that, in Raeburn, Edinburgh possesses a portrait-painter, whose works would do honour to any capital in Europe. I really am not certain, that this artist is in any important particular inferior even to Sir Thomas Lawrence. He also is an old man; but the splendid example of his career has raised about him several, that seem destined to tread in his steps with gracefulness scarcely less than his own. Such, in particular, are Mr Geddes, whose fine portrait of Mr Wilkie has lately been engraved in London—Mr John Watson, a very young artist, but (I prophesy) not far from very splendid reputation—a most chaste colourist, and one that wants nothing but a little more practice to be in all things a Raeburn—and, lastly, Mr Nicholson, whose delicate taste in conceiving a subject, and general felicity in executing it, do not always receive so much praise as they should, on account of a little carelessness in regard to drawing, which might be very easily corrected. You must have seen many etchings from his pictures. Mr Nicholson is also a very charming miniature-painter; indeed, he has no rival in that department but Mr William Thomson, a truly delicious master in this style. Ever your’s, P. M. P. S. You must not expect to hear from me again for several days, as I am to set off to-morrow morning to pay my promised visit to Mr Scott. I shall write you immediately on my return to Edinburgh. Pray, is there any truth in the newspaper paragraph about Sir Watkin?—Give my love to Lucy—“Quid Luce clarius?”

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AFTER passing the town of Dalkeith, and all along the skirts of the same lovely tract of scenery on the Esk, which I have already described to you, the road to Abbotsford leads for several miles across a bare and sterile district, where the progress of cultivation has not yet been able to change much of the general aspect of the country. There are, however, here and there some beautiful little valleys cutting the desert—in one of which, by the side of a small mountain stream, whose banks are clothed everywhere with a most picturesque abundance of blooming furze, the old Castle of Borthwick is seen projecting its venerable Keep, unbroken apparently, and almost undecayed, over the few oaks which still seem to linger like so many frail faithful vassals around the relics of its grandeur. When I passed by this fine ruin, the air was calm and the sky unclouded, and the shadow of the square massy pile lay in all its clear breadth upon the blue stream below; but Turner has caught or created perhaps still more poetical accompaniments, and you may see it to at least as much advantage as I did, in his magnificent delineation.* _____________________________________________ * In the first Number of the Provincial Antiquities of Scotland.

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Shortly after this the view becomes more contracted, and the road winds for some miles between the hills—while, upon the right, you have close by your side a modest little rivulet, increasing, however, every moment in breadth and boldness. This is the infant Gala Water—so celebrated in the pastoral poetry of Scotland—flowing on to mingle its tributary stream with the more celebrated Tweed. As you approach, with it, the great valley of that delightful river, the hills become more and more beautiful in their outlines, and where they dip into the narrow plain, their lower slopes are diversified with fine groupes of natural wood—hazel—ash—and birch, with here and there some drooping, mouldering oaks and pines, the scanty relics of that once mighty Forest, from which the whole district still takes its name. At last, the Gala makes a sudden turn, and instead of The grace of forest-charms decayed, And pastoral melancholy,

you have a rich and fertile vale, covered all over with nodding groves and luxuriant verdure, through which the Gala winds proudly towards the near end of its career. I crossed it at the thriving village of Galashiels, and pursued my journey for a mile or two on its right bank—being told, that I should thus save a considerable distance—for the usual road goes round about for the sake of a bridge, which, in the placid seasons of the Tweed, is quite unnecessary. I saw this far-famed river for the first time, with the turrets of its great poet’s mansion immediately beyond it, and the bright foliage of his young larches reflected half-way over in its mirror. You cannot imagine a more lovely river—it is as clear as the tiniest brook you ever saw, for I could count the white pebbles as I passed— and yet it is broad and deep, and above all extremely rapid; and although it rises sometimes to a much greater height, it seems to fill the whole of its bed magnificently. The ford of which I made use, is the same from which the house takes its name, and a few minutes brought me to its gates. Ere I came to it, however, I had time to see that it is a strange fantastic structure, built in total defiance of all those rules of uniformity to which the modern architects of Scotland are so much attached. It consists of one large tower, with several smaller ones clustering around it, all built of fine gray granite—their roofs diversifed abundantly with all manner of antique chimney-tops, battlements, and turrets—the windows placed here and there with appropriate irregularity, both of

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dimension and position—and the spaces between or above them not unfrequently occupied with saintly niches, and chivalrous coats-ofarms. Altogether it bears a close resemblance to some of our true old English manor-houses, in which the forms of religious and warlike architecture are blended together with no ungraceful mixture. But I have made a sketch with my pencil, which will give you a better notion of its exterior, than any written description. The interior is perfectly in character—but I dare say, you would turn the leaf were I to detain you any longer from the lord of the place, and I confess you are right in thinking him “metal more attractive.” I did not see Mr Scott, however, immediately on my arrival; he had gone out with all his family, to shew the Abbey of Melrose to the Count von Bulow, and some other visitors. I was somewhat dusty in my apparel (for the shandrydan had moved in clouds half the journey), so I took the opportunity of making my toilet, and had not quite completed it, when I heard the trampling of their horses’ feet beneath the window. But in a short time, having finished my adonization, I descended, and was conducted to Mr Scott, whom I found alone in his library. Nothing could be kinder than his reception of me,—and so simple and unassuming are his manners, that I was quite surprised, after a few minutes had elapsed, to find myself already almost at home in the company of one, whose presence I had approached with feelings so very different from those with which a man of my age and experience is accustomed to meet ordinary strangers. There is no kind of rank, which I should suppose it so difficult to bear with perfect ease, as the universally-honoured nobility of universally-honoured genius; but all this sits as lightly and naturally upon this great man, as ever a plumed casque did upon the head of one of his own graceful knights. Perhaps, after all, the very highest dignity may be more easily worn than some of the inferior degrees—as it has often been said of princes. My Lord Duke is commonly a much more homely person than the Squire of the Parish—or your little spick-and-span new Irish Baron. And, good heavens! what a difference between the pompous Apollo of some Cockney coterie, and the plain, manly, thorough-bred courtesy of a Walter Scott! There was a large party at dinner, for the house was full of company, and much very amusing and delightful conversation passed on every side around me; but you will not wonder that I found comparatively little leisure either to hear or see much of anything besides my host. And as to his person, in the first place—that was almost perfectly new to me,

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although I must have seen, I should suppose, some dozens of engravings of him before I ever came to Scotland. Never was any physiognomy treated with more scanty justice by the portrait-painters—and yet, after all, I must confess that the physiognomy is of a kind that scarcely falls within the limits of their art. I have never seen any face which disappointed me less than this, after I had become acquainted with it fully—yet, at the first glance, I certainly saw less than, but for the vile prints, I should have looked for—and I can easily believe that the feelings of the uninitiated—the uncranioscopical observer, might be little different from those of pure disappointment. It is not that there is deficiency of expression in any part of Mr Scott’s face, but the expression which is most prominent, is not of the kind which one who had known his works, and had heard nothing about his appearance, would be inclined to expect. The common language of his features expresses all manner of discernment and acuteness of intellect, and the utmost nerve and decision of character. He smiles frequently, and I never saw any smile which tells so eloquently the union of broad good humour, with the keenest perception of the ridiculous—but all this would scarcely be enough to satisfy one in the physiognomy of Walter Scott. And, indeed, in order to see much finer things in it, it is only necessary to have a little patience, ——And tarry for the hour,

When the Wizard shews his power; The hour of might and mastery, Which none may shew but only he.

In the course of conversation, he happened to quote a few lines from one of the old Border Ballads, and, looking round, I was quite astonished with the change which seemed to have passed over every feature in his countenance. His eyes seemed no longer to glance quick and gray from beneath his impending brows, but were fixed in their expanded eye-lids with a sober, solemn lustre. His mouth (the muscles about which are at all times wonderfully expressive,) instead of its usual language of mirth or benevolence, or shrewdness, was filled with a sad and pensive earnestness. The whole face was tinged with a glow that shewed its lines in new energy and transparence, and the thin hair parting backward displayed in tenfold majesty his Shakespearian pile of forehead. It was now that I recognized the true stamp of Nature on the Poet of Marmion—and looking back for a moment to the former expression of the same countenance, I could not choose but wonder at the facility with

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which one set of features could be made to speak things so different. But, after all, what are features unless they form the index to the mind? and how should the eyes of him who commands a thousand kinds of emotion, be themselves confined to beam only with the eloquence of a few?— It was about the Lammas tide, When husbandmen do win their hay; The doughty Douglas he would ride Into England to drive a prey.

I shall certainly never forget the fine heroic enthusiasm of look, with which he spoke these lines—nor the grand melancholy roll of voice, which shewed with what a world of thoughts and feelings every fragment of the old legend was associated within his breast. It seemed as if one single cadence of the ancestral strain had been charm enough to transport his whole spirit back into the very pride and presence of the moment, when the White Lion of the Percies was stained and trampled under foot beside the bloody rushes of Otterbourne. The more than martial fervours of his kindled eye, were almost enough to give to the same lines the same magic in my ears; and I could half fancy that the portion of Scottish blood which is mingled in my veins, had begun to assert, by a more ardent throb, its right to partake in the triumphs of the same primitive allegiance. While I was thus occupied, one of the most warlike of the Lochaber pibrochs began to be played in the neighbourhood of the room in which we were, and, looking towards the window, I saw a noble Highland piper parading to and fro upon the lawn, in front of the house—the plumes of his bonnet—the folds of his plaid—and the streamers of his bag-pipe, all floating majestically about him in the light evening breeze. You have seen this magnificent costume, so I need not trouble you either with its description or its eulogy; but I am quite sure you never saw it where its appearance harmonized so delightfully with all the accompaniments of the scene. It is true, that it was in the Lowlands—and that there are other streams upon which the shadow of the tartans might fall with more of the propriety of mere antiquarianism, than on the Tweed. But the Scotch are right in not now-a-days splitting too much the symbols of their nationality; as they have ceased to be an independent people, they do wisely in striving to be as much as possible an united people. But here, above all, whatever was truly Scottish could not fail to be truly appropriate in the presence of the great genius to whom

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whatever is Scottish in thought, in feeling, or in recollection, owes so large a share of its prolonged, or reanimated, or ennobled existence. The poet of Roderick Dhu, and—under favour—the poet of Fergus MacIvor, does well assuredly to have a piper among the retainers of his hospitable mansion. You remember, too, how he has himself described the feast of the Rhymer:— Nor lacked they, as they sat at dine, The Music, nor the tale, Nor goblets of the blood-red wine, Nor mantling quaighs of ale.

After the Highlander had played some dozen of his tunes, he was summoned, according to the ancient custom, to receive the thanks of the company. He entered more militari, without taking off his bonnet, and received a huge tass of aquavitæ from the hand of his master, after which he withdrew again—the most perfect solemnity all the while being displayed in his weather-beaten, but handsome and warlike Celtic lineaments. The inspiration of the generous fluid prompted one strain merrier than the rest, behind the door of the Hall, and then the piper was silent— his lungs, I dare say, consenting much more than his will, for he has all the appearance of being a fine enthusiast in the delights and dignity of his calling. So much for Roderick of Skye, for such I think is his style. His performance seemed to diffuse, or rather to heighten, a charming flow of geniality over the whole of the party, but nowhere could I trace its influence so powerfully and so delightfully as in the Master of the Feast. The music of the hills had given a new tone to his fine spirits, and the easy playfulness with which he gave vent to their buoyancy, was the most delicious of contagions. Himself temperate in the extreme (some late ill health has made it necessary he should be so,) he sent round his claret more speedily than even I could have wished—(you see I am determined to blunt the edge of all your sarcasms)—and I assure you we were all too well employed to think of measuring our bumpers. Do not suppose, however, that there is anything like display or formal leading in Mr Scott’s conversation. On the contrary, every body seemed to speak the more that He was there to hear—and his presence seemed to be enough to make every body speak delightfully—as if it had been that some princely musician had tuned all the strings, and even under the sway of more vulgar fingers, they could not choose but discourse excellent music. His conversation, besides, is for the most part of such a kind, that all can take a lively part in it, although, indeed, none that I

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ever met with can equal himself. It does not appear as if he ever could be at a loss for a single moment for some new supply of that which constitutes its chief peculiarity, and its chief charm; the most keen perception, the most tenacious memory, and the most brilliant imagination, having been at work throughout the whole of his busy life, in filling his mind with a store of individual traits and anecdotes, serious and comic, individual and national, such as it is probable no man ever before possessed—and such, still more certainly, as no man of great original power ever before possessed in subservience to the purposes of inventive genius. A youth spent in wandering among the hills and valleys of his country, during which he became intensely familiar with all the lore of those gray-haired shepherds, among whom the traditions of warlike as well as of peaceful times find their securest dwellingplace—or in more equal converse with the relics of that old school of Scottish cavaliers, whose faith had nerved the arms of so many of his own race and kindred—such a boyhood and such a youth laid the foundation, and established the earliest and most lasting sympathies of a mind, which was destined, in after years, to erect upon this foundation, and improve upon these sympathies, in a way of which his young and thirsting spirit could have then contemplated but little. Through his manhood of active and honoured, and now for many years of glorious exertion, he has always lived in the world, and among the men of the world, partaking in all the pleasures and duties of society as fully as any of those who had nothing but such pleasures and such duties to attend to. Uniting, as never before they were united, the habits of an indefatigable student with those of an indefatigable observer—and doing all this with the easy and careless grace of one who is doing so, not to task, but to gratify his inclinations and his nature—is it to be wondered that the riches of his various acquisitions should furnish a never-failing source of admiration even to those who have known him the longest, and who know him the best? As for me, enthusiastic as I had always been in my worship of his genius—and well as his works had prepared me to find his conversation rich to overflowing in all the elements of instruction as well as of amusement—I confess the reality entirely surpassed all my anticipations, and I never despised the maxim Nil admirari so heartily as now. I can now say what I believe very few of my friends can do, that I have conversed with almost all the illustrious poets our contemporaries—indeed, Lord Byron is the only exception that occurs to me. Surely I need not tell you that I met each and all of them with every

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disposition to be gratified—and now I cannot but derive great pleasure from being able to look back upon what I have so been privileged to witness, and comparing in my own mind their different styles of conversation. The most original and interesting, as might be supposed, in this point of view, are the same whose originality has been most conspicuous in other things—this great Poet of Scotland, and the great Poet of the Lakes. It is, indeed, a very striking thing, how much the conversation of each of these men harmonizes with the peculiar vein of his mind, as displayed in more elaborate shapes—how one and entire the impression is, which the totality of each of them is calculated to leave upon the mind of an honouring, but not a bigotted observer. In listening to Wordsworth, it is impossible to forget for a single moment that the author of “The Excursion” is before you. Poetry has been with him the pure sole business of life—he thinks of nothing else, and he speaks of nothing else—and where is the man who hears him, that would for a moment wish it to be otherwise? The deep sonorous voice in which he pours forth his soul upon the high secrets of his divine art— and those tender glimpses which he opens every now and then into the bosom of that lowly life, whose mysteries have been his perpetual inspirations—the sincere earnestness with which he details and expatiates—the innocent confidence which he feels in the heart that is submitted to his working—and the unquestioning command with which he seeks to fasten to him every soul that is capable of understanding his words—all these things are as they should be, in one that has lived the life of a hermit—musing, and meditating, and composing in the seclusion of a lonely cottage—loving and worshipping the Nature of Man, but partaking little in the pursuits, and knowing little of the habits, of the Men of the World. There is a noble simplicity in the warmth with which he discourses to all that approach him, on the subject of which he himself knows most, and on which he feels most—and of which he is wise enough to know that every one must be most anxious to hear him speak. His poetry is the poetry of external nature and profound feeling, and such is the hold which these high themes have taken of his intellect, that he seldom dreams of descending to the tone in which the ordinary conversation of men is pitched. Hour after hour his eloquence flows on, by his own simple fire-side, or along the breezy slopes of his own mountains, in the same lofty strain as in his loftiest poems— Of man and Nature, and of human life, His haunt and the main region of his song.

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His enthusiasm is that of a secluded artist; but who is he that would not rejoice in being permitted to peep into the sanctity of such a seclusion— or that, being there, would wish for a moment to see the enthusiasm that has sanctified it, suspended or interrupted in its work? The large, dim, pensive eye, that dwells almost for ever upon the ground, and the smile of placid abstraction, that clothes his long, tremulous, melancholy lips, complete a picture of solemn, wrapped-up contemplative genius, to which, amid the dusty concussions of active men and common life, my mind reverts sometimes for repose, as to a fine calm stretch of verdure in the bosom of some dark and hoary forest of venerable trees, where no voice is heard but that of the sweeping wind, and far-off waters— what the Ettrick Shepherd finely calls ——Great Nature’s hum,

Voice of the desert, never dumb.

Scott, again, is the very poet of active life, and that life, in all its varieties, lies for ever stretched out before him, bright and expanded, as in the glass of a magician. Whatever subject be mentioned, he at once steals a beam from his mirror, and scatters such a flood of illustration upon it, that you feel as if it had always been mantled in palpable night before. Every remark gains, as it passes from his lips, the precision of a visible fact, and every incident flashes upon your imagination, as if your bodily eye, by some new gift of nature, had acquired the power of seeing the past as vividly as the present. To talk of exhausting his light of gramourie to one that witnessed its play of radiance, would sound as absurd as to talk of drying up the Nile. It streams alike copiously, alike fervently upon all things, like the light of heaven, which “shineth upon the evil and upon the good.” The eye, and the voice, and the words, and the gestures, seem all alike to be the ready unconscious interpreters of some imperial spirit, that moves irresistibly their mingled energies from within. There is no effort—no semblance of effort—but everything comes out as is commanded—swift, clear, and radiant through the impartial medium. The heroes of the old times spring from their graves in panoply, and “drink the red wine through the helmet barred” before us; or Shred their foemen’s limbs away, As lops the woodman’s knife the spray.

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—But they are honoured, not privileged—the humblest retainers quit the dust as full of life as they do—nay, their dogs and horses are partakers in the resurrection, like those of the Teutonic warriors in the Valhalla of Odin. It is no matter what period of his country’s story passes in review. Bruce—Douglas—their Kingly Foe, in whose ——eye was set Some spark of the Plantagenet. James—Mary—Angus—Montrose—Argyle—Dundee—these are all alike, not names, but realities—living, moving, breathing, feeling, speaking, looking realities—when he speaks of them. The grave loses half its potency when he calls. His own imagination is one majestic sepulchre, where the wizard lamp burns in never-dying splendour, and the charmed blood glows for ever in the cheeks of the embalmed, and every long-sheathed sword is ready to leap from its scabbard, like the Tizona of the Cid in the vault of Cardena.—Of all this more anon. P. M.

LETTER LII TO THE SAME

NEXT morning I got up pretty early, and walked for at least two hours before breakfast through the extensive young woods with which Mr Scott has already clothed the banks of the Tweed, in every direction about his mansion. Nothing can be more soft and beautiful than the whole of the surrounding scenery; there is scarcely a single house to be seen, and excepting on the rich low lands, close by the river, the country seems to be almost entirely in the hands of the shepherds. The green hills, however, all around the horizon, begin to be skirted with sweeping plantations of larch, pine, and oak; and the shelter which these will soon afford, must no doubt ere long give a more agricultural aspect to the face of Tweeddale. To say the truth, I do not think with much pleasure of the prospect of any such changes—I love to see tracts of countries, as well as races of men, preserving as much as possible of their old characteristics. There hovers at present over the most of this district a certain delicious atmosphere of pastoral loneliness, and I think there would be something like sacrilege in disturbing it, even by things that elsewhere would confer interest as well as ornament. After a breakfast à la fourchette, served up in the true style of old Scottish luxury, which a certain celebrated Novelist seems to take a particular pleasure in describing—a breakfast, namely, in which tea, coffee, chocolate, toast, and sweetmeats, officiated as little better than ornamental out-works to more solid and imposing fortifications of mutton-ham, hung-beef, and salmon killed over-night in the same spear and torch-light method, of which Dandie Dinmont was so accomplished a master—after doing all manner of justice to this interesting meal, I spent an hour with Mr Scott in his library, or rather in his closet; for, though its walls are quite covered with books, I believe the far more valuable part of his library is in Edinburgh. One end seemed to be devoted to books of Scots Law—which are necessary to him no doubt even here; for he is Chief Magistrate of the county—and, indeed, is known among the country people, who passionately love him, by no other name than that of “the Sherra.” The other books, so far as I could

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see, were just what I should have expected to find Mr Scott draw round him in his retirement—not the new and flashy productions of the day, but good plain copies of the old English Classics—above all, the historians and poets—together with a copious intermixture of blackletter romances, and Spanish ballads of chivalry, and several shelves entirely filled with the best collection I have ever seen of German Volksmärchen and Volkslieder. Among these, no doubt, his mind has found, at once, useful employment, and delightful relaxation. We then mounted our horses, a numerous cavalcade, and rode to one of the three summits of the Eildon Hill, which rises out of the plain a little way behind Abbotsford, and forms, in almost every point of view, a glorious back-ground to its towers and rising woods. We passed, before leaving Mr Scott’s territories, a deep dingle, quite covered with all manner of wild bushes, through which a little streamlet far below could, for the most part, be rather heard than seen. Mr Scott paused at the rustic bridge which led us over this ravine, and told me, that I was treading on classical ground—that here was the Huntly Burn, by whose side Thomas the Rhymer of old saw the Queen of Faery riding in her glory, and called to this hour by the shepherds, from that very circumstance, the Bogle or Goblin Burn. He then went on to repeat the fine words of the original Prophesia Thomæ de Ercildoune. In a land as I was lent, In the gryking of the day, Ay alone as I went In Huntly bankys me for to play: I saw the throstyl and the jay, The mavis moved of her sange, The wodwale sang notes gay, That all the wood about range: In that longing as I lay Underneath a derne tree, I was aware of a ladye fair Cam riding over a fair lee— Her palfray was dappil graye, Such one saw never none, As the sun in somer’s day, All about that ladye shone, &c. &c.

I could not but express my delight to find, that the scene of so many romantic recollections was included within the domains of the great inheritor of the glories of “True Thomas,” and promised to myself to pay a more leisurely visit to Huntly Bank and the Goblin Burn. From

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this we passed right up the hill, the ponies here being as perfectly independent as our own of turnpike ways, and as scornful of perpendicular ascents. I was not a little surprised, however, with Mr Scott’s horsemanship—for, in spite of the lameness in one of his legs, he manages his steed with the most complete mastery, and seems to be as much at home in the saddle, as any of his own rough-riding Deloraines or Lochinvars could have been. He is, indeed, a very strong man in all the rest of his frame—the breadth and massiness of his iron muscles being evidently cast in the same mould with those of the old “Wats of Harden,” and “Bauld Rutherfuirds that were fow stout.” We took several ditches that would have astonished nine-tenths of the Epping sportsmen, and he was always foremost at the leap. All around the top of the hill, there may be seen the remains of Roman walls and ditches, which seem to have been brought very low down in one direction, in order to inclose a fine well—and, indeed, the very peculiar outline of the Eildon leaves no doubt, that it was the Trimontium of antiquity. The transitory visits of a few Roman legions, however, did not seem to me to confer much additional interest on this noble mountain, from whose summits the scenes of so many Scottish and English battles may be seen. The name of every hill and every valley all around is poetical, and I felt, as I heard them pointed out one by one, as if so many old friends had been introduced to my acquaintance after a long absence, in which I had thought of them all a thousand times. To the left, at the foot of the hill, lies the picturesque village of Melrose, with the Abbots-Law, or CourtMount, swelling close behind, and between it and the Tweed, the long gray arches of the magnificent Abbey itself. The river winds away for some miles among a rich succession of woods and lawns, at the end of which the fraternal towers of Dryburgh lift themselves from among their groves of elm. ——Dryborough, where with chiming Tweed The lintwhites sing in chorus.

The back-ground on this side consists, among other fine hills, of the Colding Knowes, so celebrated in Border song—on the other side, there is Ruberslaw, and the Carter, and Dunyon; and farther off, the Cheviots—and all between the beautiful windings of the Teviot. Right before my eye, Mr Scott pointed out a small round tower, perched upon some irregular crags, at the distance of some few miles—Smaylholm Tower,—the scene of the Eve of St John, and, what is still better, the

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scene of the early youth of the Poet himself. It was here, he told me, that in years of feebleness, which afforded little hope of the vigorous manhood which has followed them, he was entrusted to the care of some ancient female relations, who, in watching by his side, were never weary of chaunting, to the sad music of the Border, the scattered relics of that Minstrelsy of Love and War, which he himself has since gathered and preserved with so pious veneration. The situation of the Tower must be charming. I remember of no poet whose infancy was passed in so poetical a scene. But he has touched all this most gracefully himself: He passed the court-gate, and he oped the tower-grate, And he mounted the narrow stair, To the bartizan seat, where with maids that on her wait, He found his Lady fair. That Lady sat in mournful mood, Looked over hill and vale, O’er Tweed’s fair flood, and Mertoun’s wood, And all down Teviotdale.

Turning again to the left, Mr Scott pointed out to me an opening in the hills, where the Leader comes down to mingle with the Tweed—by whose side the remains of the Rhymer’s old castle are yet, I believe, to be seen; although, in conformity with one of the Rhymer’s own prophecies, the hall is deserted, and the land has passed to other blood.* The whole scene has been embraced by Mr Scott himself, in the opening of one of his finest ballads:— When seven years more were come and gone, Was war through Scotland spread; And Ruberslaw showed high Dunyon His beacon blazing red. Then all by bonny Colding Know, Pitched pallions took their room; And crested helms and spears a-rowe, Glanced gaily through the broom. The Leader, rolling to the Tweed, Resounds the ensenzie; They roused the deer from Caddenhead, To distant Torwoodlee.

_____________________________________________ * The hare sall kittle on my hearth-stane, And there never sall be Laird Learmont again.

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The feast was spread in Ercildoune, In Learmont’s high and ancient hall; And there were knights of high renown, And ladies laced in pall, &c. &c.

But if I were to quote all the poetry connected with the scenes among which I now stood—in truth, my letter might easily become a volume. After we had fairly descended the hill, we found that much more time had passed than we had thought of—and with me, indeed, I know not that time ever passed more delightfully—so we made haste and returned at a high trot—the chiding echoes of the dinner-bell coming to us long ere we reached Abbotsford,— Swinging slow with sullen roar.

The evening passed as charmingly as the preceding. The younger part of the company danced reels to the music of the bag-pipe, and I believe I would have been tempted to join them, but for some little twitches I had in my left foot. Indeed, I still fear the good cheer of the North is about to be paid for in the usual way; but Heaven send the reckoning may not be a long one. At all events, I am glad the fit did not overtake me in the country, for I should have been sorry to give my company to anybody but Mr Oman during the visitation. P. M.

LETTER LIII TO THE SAME

ANOTHER morning was devoted to visiting, under the same best of all Cicerones, the two famous ruins of Melrose and Dryburgh, which I had seen from a distance, when on the top of the Eildon. The Abbey of Melrose has been so often the subject of the pencil of exquisite artists— and of late, above all, so much justice has been done to its beauties by Mr Blore, that I need not trouble you with any description of its general effect. The glorious Oriel Window, on which the moon is made to stream in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, is almost as familiar to you as if yourself had seen it—and so, indeed, must be the whole of the most striking outlines of this venerable pile. But there is one thing about it of which you can have no idea—at least, I had none till I came to the spot— I mean the unrivalled richness and minuteness of all the decorations. Everywhere, without and within, the doors and windows are surrounded with specimens of sculpture, at once so delicately conceived, and so beautifully executed, that it would be quite ridiculous to compare them with any thing I ever saw, even in the most magnificent remains of Gothic architecture in England or Normandy. There is one cloister, in particular, along the whole length of which there runs a cornice of flowers and plants, entirely unrivalled, to my mind, by anything elsewhere extant—I do not say in Gothic architecture merely, but in any architecture whatever. Roses, and lilies, and thistles, and ferns, and heaths, in all their varieties, and oak-leaves and ash-leaves, and a thousand beautiful shapes besides, are chiselled with such inimitable truth, and such grace of nature, that the finest botanist in the world could not desire a better hortus siccus, so far as they go. The wildest productions of the forest, and the most delicate ones of the garden, are represented with equal fidelity and equal taste—and they are all arranged and combined in such a way, that it is evident they were placed there under the eye of some most skilful admirer of all the beauties of external Nature. Nay, there is a human hand in another part, holding a garland loosely in the fingers, which, were it cut off, and placed among the Elgin Marbles, would, I am quite sure, be kissed by the cognoscenti

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as one of the finest of them all. Nothing can be more simply—more genuinely easy—more full of expression. It would shame the whole gallery of the Boisserées. And yet all this was the work of an age, which the long-headed Presbyterians round about are pleased to talk of in a tone of contempt, scarcely compatible even with pity. Alas! how easy it is to be satisfied with ourselves, when there is no capacity to understand the works of others. The ruin has been sadly disfigured in former times, by the patch-work repairs of some disciples of the Covenant, who fitted up part of the nave for a place of worship, long after the arches that supported the original roof had given way in that quarter. Such was the perfection of their barbarity, that they sprung new arches in the midst of this exquisite church, entirely devoid, not only of correspondence with that which they were meant to repair, but of conformity with any of the most simple rules of the art—rude clumsy circles, deforming with their sacrilegious intrusion, one of the most airy canopies of stone that was ever hung on high by the hand of human skill—memorable trophies of the triumph of self-complacent ignorance. Surely it was beneath the shadow of some such outrage as this, that the bones of John Knox would have found their most grateful repose! But the Presbyterians have now removed from the precincts of the old sanctuary; and the miserable little kirk they have erected at the distance of a few fields, does not disturb the impression of its awful beauty. The Abbey itself stands on the ground of the Duke of Buccleuch, who has enclosed it carefully, so that what yet remains is likely to remain long as beautiful as it is. It must have been, in its perfect days, a building of prodigious extent—for even the church (of which only a part is standing) stretches over a larger space than that of Tintern—and there is no question, the accommodations of the lordly Abbot and his brethren must have been in a suitable style of magnificence. All about the walls and outskirts of the place, may yet be seen scattered knots of garden-flowers, springing up among the tall grass—and the old apple-trees that cluster the village around, are equally the relics of monastic cultivation. The long flat burial-ground to the east and south, receives the shadows of the shattered pillars and arches, as quietly as it did when all their beauty was entire—it is the only accompaniment of the scene, which remains in use and appearance such as it ever was. Within, too, the ancient families of the Forest still preserve the same resting-places, to which the piety of their forefathers established their right. Kers, Scotts, Pringles, Elliots,—they all sleep here each in their own antique aisle—the same

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venerable escutcheon carved or molten above the dust of every succeeding generation. After I had seen as much of this grand Abbey as one visit would admit of, we mounted our horses again, and rode to Dryburgh (a distance of four or five miles only), all the way keeping close to the windings of the Tweed. This edifice stands on a peninsula, the river making a circuit almost quite round its precincts, and behind its towers the whole slope of the hills is covered with oaks, pines, and elms, that shed a solemn gloom upon the ruin—quite different from the soft, undisturbed, unshaded loveliness of Melrose. We passed the river by means of a bridge of chain-work, very elegant in itself, I dare say, but not quite in taste so near such a scene as Dryburgh.—The bridge is one of the many devices of the Earl of Buchan, who is proprietor of the ground, and indeed has his seat close to the Abbey walls. A huge colossal statue of Sir William Wallace, executed in staring red free-stone, is another of his devices. This monument of the Earl’s patriotism is perched very magnificently on the brink of a rock above the river—and must undoubtedly appear a very grand and appropriate thing in the eyes of Cockney visitants; but my admiration, small as it originally was, suffered much further diminution, when I was informed that the base of the statue is made to serve as a pot-house, where a rhyming cobler, one of the noble Lord’s many protegées, vends odes, elegies, and whisky, for his own behoof, and the few remaining copies of that charming collection, “the Anonymous and Fugitive Pieces of the Right Honourable the Earl of Buchan,” for behoof of his patron. The ruins are in themselves very superb—although not to be compared in any respect with those I had just been seeing; and the Earl is virtuoso enough to keep them in the main in excellent order. But I confess, the way in which he has ornamented certain parts of them, was enough to weaken not a little the serious impression which the general view of the whole produced upon my mind. In the midst of one of the desolate courts of the Abbey, he has constructed a spruce little flowergarden, with trim gravel-walks and box-wood edgings;—a few jargonelle pear-trees display their well-clipped branches, nailed in regular lines upon the mouldering walls around, and in the midst of them a tall sign-post lifts its head, and (whether it lies or not I cannot say) proclaims to all whom it may concern, the presence of a less inviting crop—“Man-traps and spring-guns set in these premises.” A large bust is placed at one extremity of this cultivated spot, which, at first, I took it for granted, must be Faunus, or Pomona, or Priapus, at the least; but,

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on drawing near, I recognized at once the fine features of the noble proprietor himself, hewn by some village Phidias, with a measure of resemblance alike honourable to the charms of the subject, and the skill of the artist. A long inscription around the pedestal of the bust, informs us in plain Latin (but I have forgot the precise words), that “The great Author of our being sends now and then bright spirits among mankind, to vindicate his own power, and the dignity of our nature from the scoffs of the impious.” I wish I had taken a memorandum of the ipsissima verba. After wandering through all the labyrinth of towers and courts, the attendant conducted us into an immense vault, which has been set apart, in the true Dilettanti taste, for the reception of plaster-of-Paris casts of some others of these bright spirits. The sober religious light of the place did not at first enable me to recognize what busts they were, but a sudden gleam of sunshine, which occurred very fortunately, soon discovered to me another edition of the same features which I had just been admiring sub dio. DAVID BUCHANIÆ COMES occupies the central niche in this ——temple, where the great Are honoured by the nations. On his right hand he has Homer, and on his left Mr Watt of Birmingham, the inventor of the steam engine. Mæonides again is supported by General Washington, and Mr Watt by Sir Philip Sidney. Shakespeare— Count Rumford—Dr Matthew Baillie—Charles James Fox—Socrates—Cicero—and Provost Creech of Edinburgh—follow on the left; while on the right, the series Heroum is continued with equal propriety by the Author of the Seasons—Lord Nelson—Julius Cæsar—Benjamin Franklin—Mozart—John Knox—Michael Angelo—Aristotle—and a rueful caricature of the Ettrick Shepherd—bearing abundant marks of the agony with which that excellent but unsophisticated person must, no doubt, have submitted to the clammy application of the Savoyard castmaker. There are some dozens more of worthies dead and living, who partake in the same honours; and altogether the effect of the chalky congregation is as impressive a thing as need be. In riding back, I received from Mr Scott a good deal of interesting antiquarian information concerning these great religious establishments, of which there is such an uncommon quantity in this district of Scotland—for these two I have spoken of are only the last links of a complete chain of similar buildings, which stretches all along the banks

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of the Tweed from the border of England. That these rich ecclesiastical foundations were, in their origin, the pure products of piety, I have little doubt; but I as little question, that, in after times, they were found to be eminently useful in a more worldly point of view, and therefore protected and enriched by the munificence of many successive monarchs, in whose character piety formed but a slender ingredient. The sanctity of the soil, set apart for the support of the Ministers of Religion, was reverenced by the rudest foes that came to seek spoil in Scotland, and it is easy to see what wisdom there was in investing as large a portion as possible of the frontier soil with this protecting character. The internal state of the country, moreover, during those lawless times of baronial feuds, may have rendered the kings of Scotland fond of conferring as many of their richest fiefs as they could with safety on the less turbulent churchmen—a body, on whose general attachment to the cause of loyalty and order, they might always think themselves entitled to depend. As it was, I have no doubt the cultivation of the country throve much more uniformly under the superintendance of the monks and abbots of Kelso, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, and Melrose, than it would have done in any other hands which the times could furnish—and you know these holy men were commonly bound by their tenures to supply the king’s banner, either in offensive or defensive warfare, with the full proportion of soldiers which the value of their lands might seem to render fitting.* The rich abbeys of Northumberland, probably, owed their wealth to similar views of policy—and, perhaps, those on the Wye, and elsewhere along the march of our own principality, may be accounted for in the same way. P. M. _____________________________________________ * Durham was an exception to this rule. My excellent and learned friend, Mr Surtees of Mainsforth, mentions, that on one occasion, when the tenants of the bishoprick were called upon to contribute their assistance to a royal host advancing upon Scotland, they refused, saying, “We are halywerke folk, and must stay here, where we hold our lands by the tenure of guarding the body of our Bishop St Cuthbert.” This plea was admitted.

LETTER LIV TO THE SAME

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AFTER various attempts, I have at last succeeded in making what I am inclined to think a very fair sketch of the head of Mr Walter Scott. I send you a copy of it in pen and ink, on the other side of my sheet, and would hope you may consider it worthy of a double postage. I have made various drawings of him, both in more solemn and more ludicrous moods; but I think the expression of this comes nearest to the habitual character of his face. Study it well for a few minutes, and then listen to a few of my remarks on the organization of this remarkable man. In the general form, so very high and conical, and, above all, in the manner in which the forehead goes into the top of the head, there is something which at once tells you that here is the lofty enthusiasm, and passionate veneration for greatness, which must enter into the composition of every illustrious poet. In these respects, Scott bears some resemblance to the busts of Shakespeare—but a much more close resemblance to those of the great Corneille; and surely Corneille was one of the most favoured of all poets, in regard to all that constitutes the true poetic soaring of conception. No minor poet ever approaches to this conformation; it is reserved for “Earth’s giant sons” alone. It is lower down, however, that the most peculiar parts of the organization are to be found—or rather those parts, the position of which close beneath these symbols of high poetical impetus, gives to the whole head its peculiar and characteristic expression. The developement of the organ of imitation is prodigious, and the contiguous organ of pleasantry is scarcely less remarkable. This again leads off the swell into that of

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imagination, on which the upper region rests, as on a firm and capacious basis. I do not think the head is so long from stem to stern as Lord Byron’s, which probably indicates some inferiority in point of profound feeling. Like Lord Byron’s, however, the head is in general well brought out in every quarter, and there is a freedom in the air with which it sits upon his shoulders, which shews that Nature is strong in all the different regions—or, in other words, that a natural balance subsists among the various parts of his organization. I have noticed, on the other hand, that people whose strength lies chiefly in one direction, have, for the most part, a stiff and constrained way of holding their heads. Wordsworth, for instance, has the back part of his head—the seat of the personal feelings—small and little expanded, and the consequence is, that there is nothing to weigh against the prodigious mass of mere musing in front—so that his head falls forward in any thing but a graceful way; while, on the other hand, the deficiency of grave enthusiasm allows the self-love in the hinder parts of Mr Jeffrey’s head, to push forward his chin in a style that produces a puny sort of effect. Tom Moore has no want of enthusiasm, but it is not quite placed as it should be—or, at least, with him also the sinciput predominates in an irresistible degree. Now Scott and Byron are distinguished from all these by a fine secure swing of the head, as if they were prepared at all points. Lord Byron’s head, however, is, I think, still more complete all throughout, than that of Mr Scott. The forehead is defective in much that Scott’s possesses, but it is very fine upwards, and the top of the head is wonderfully capacious. The back part, in both of their heads, is manly and gallantlooking. Had they not been lame (by the way, what a singular coincidence that is!) I have no doubt they would both have been soldiers— and the world would have probably wanted Marmion and the Corsair. Lord Byron’s head is, without doubt, the finest in our time—I think it is better, on the whole, than either Napoleon’s, or Goethe’s, or Canova’s, or Wordsworth’s. The chin, lips, and neck are beautiful—in the most noble style of antique beauty,—and the nose is not unworthy of keeping them in company—and yet that of Wordsworth is more perpendicular, and belongs still more strictly to the same class which the ancients, having exaggerated it into the ideal—attributed to Jupiter. It is better shaped in the ridge, than any nose of modern times I have seen; it comes down so straight from the forehead, that the eyes are thrown quite back into the head, as in the loftiest antique. Coleridge has a grand head, but very ill balanced, and the features of the face are coarse—although, to be sure, nothing can surpass the depth of meaning in his eyes, and the

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unutterable dreamy luxury in his lips. Thomas Campbell again, has a poor skull upwards, compared with what one might have looked for in him; but the lower part of the forehead is exquisite, and the features are extremely good, though tiny. They seem to me to be indicative of a most morbid degree of sensibility—the lips, in particular, are uncommonly delicate, and the eyes are wonderfully expressive of poetical habits of feeling. His brow speaks him to be born with a turn of composition truly lyrical, and perhaps he should not have cared to aim at other things. An uncommon perception of sweetness and refinement sits upon the whole of his physiognomy, but his face like his mind seems also to glow ever and anon with the greater fires of patriotism and public glory. He should have been a patriotic lyrical poet, and his lays would not have failed to be sung, Mid the festal city’s blaze, When the wine-cup shines in light.

Indeed, why do I say he should have been? he has been, and Hohenlinden, and Ye Mariners of England, and the Battle of the Baltic, will never be forgotten as long as the British Jack is hoisted by the hands of freemen. I have already said something about the head of the author of the Isle of Palms—and that of the Ettrick Shepherd. They are both fine in their several ways. That of Wilson is full of the marks of genuine enthusiasm, and lower down of intense perception, and love of localities— which last feature, by the way, may perhaps account for his wild delight in rambling. I have heard that in his early youth, he proposed to go out to Africa, in quest of the Joliba, and was dissuaded only by the representations made to him on the subject of his remarkably fair and florid complexion—but I believe he has since walked over every hill and valley in the three kingdoms—having angling and versifying, no doubt, for his usual occupations, but finding room every now and then, by way of interlude, for astonishing the fairs and wakes all over these islands, by his miraculous feats in leaping, wrestling, and single-stick. As for the Ettrick Shepherd, I am told that when Spurzheim was here, he never had his paws off him—and some cranioscopical young ladies of Edinburgh are said still to practise in the same way upon the good-humoured owner of so many fine bumps. I hear Mathews has borrowed for his “At Home,” a saying which originally belongs to the Ettrick Shepherd. When Dr Spurzheim (or, as the Northern Reviewers very improperly christened him in the routs of Edinburgh, Dousterswivel),—when the

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Doctor first began to feel out the marks of genius in the cranium of the pastoral poet, it was with some little difficulty that Mr Hogg could be made to understand the drift of his curiosity. After hearing the Doctor’s own story—“My dear fellow,” quoth the Shepherd, “if a few knots and swells make a skull of genius, I’ve seen mony a saft chield get a swapping organization in five minutes at Selkirk tryst.” Since I have found my way once more into the subject of Craniology, I may as well tell you that I totally disagree with you, in regard to your remarks upon my notion of the Farnese Hercules. I do not think your eye has been sufficiently trained in the inspection of living skulls; you must not venture as yet upon the antique, in which there is always some allowance to be made for the proper and necessary exaggeration of artists, that knew well enough what was right, but knew also that things should be broadly told, which are meant for the distant eye. The Theseus is another statue of a hero of somewhat the same kind, and, on looking into these things more leisurely, I am inclined to think you will find in it also confirmation of all that I said. In this town, there is at the Drawing Academy, a cast of this Elgin Marble, which I saw only yesterday, and I am never weary of seeing any copy, however faint, of that glorious original. The most remarkable thing about the organization of the Theseus, however, is, that the front part of the head is higher than the back part, which is a circumstance that very seldom occurs in Nature. I am not sure whether the form, even of this part of the Theseus, has not been defaced by the weather, and I think that in the cast there is some look of a joining, as if the upper hemisphere of the head had been found separate, and afterwards united to the statue. This is a profound and delicate question, and, as I pass through London, I shall certainly endeavour to have a committee of craniologists summoned together to enquire into the fact—as one upon which the most important conclusions may depend. My own poor opinion is, that the sculptor probably did make the front part of the head higher than, or, at least, equally high with, the back parts. In most human heads, the point of will is the highest part— and from thence there is a slope more or less coming down to the forehead. In the Apollo Belvidere the slope is not much, and the line which it describes is convex and swelling. Now, in the Hercules Farnese, making allowance for the irregularities of the hair, there is no slope, but a level. If you look down on the top of the head of the Hercules, you will find it a very long one. The forehead is far pushed out—the middle is large—and the animal faculties are copious. The head of the Apollo, on the contrary, is far from being long in the same proportion—and it is

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singular how little the forehead is expanded, when considered in relation to the rest of the head. But I think the ancients had a notion that a small forehead expresses youth. But the animal faculties, even of the Hercules himself, are quite Lilliputian compared with those of a late hotel-keeper in this town, of whom a bust was taken after his death, by particular request of my friend Wastle. This fellow’s head (his name was Macculloch) is shaped exactly like a jelly-bag, the animal propensities, below and behind, having apparently drawn down to them the whole of the juices, from which his organization above ought to have been supplied. His ears can scarcely be seen for the masses of luxurious prominence among which they are buried, and no mad bull was ever thicker just above the nape of the neck. I think it is much to be regretted, that such a person should have died in the prime of life—he must have been a fine living symbol of the Epicureanism—not of the garden—but of the kitchen and the cellar. His forehead is low and retreating, his nose short, and snubbed up at the end—the nostrils purfled and swelled out as they were not the receptacles of air, but apertures made expressly for blowing out the fumes of wine—perhaps tobacco—and his throat looks as if it were never intended to be otherwise than gorged with good cheer. Altogether he bears considerable resemblance to some of the fine old toping satyrs I have seen on antique vases. I am told this man was of great use to Edinburgh, by introducing many most striking improvements in all departments of the profession wherein Nature had fitted him so eminently to excel. There was no such thing as a dinner well set down in a Northern tavern, till this great genius’s jelly-bag head was set to work, and now I confess the North appears to me to be in all these respects treading fast on the kibes of the South. I think there is no question, the tavern-keepers of Scotland ought to canonize Macculloch as their patron saint, and put up his effigy over their doors, as time out of mind the tobacconists have placed over theirs that of the celebrated Negro, who smoked in one day the weight of his own body in segars. *

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LETTER LV TO THE SAME

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I KNOW not how many days I might have lingered in the delightful society of Abbotsford, had it not been that I had promised Wastle to be back in Edinburgh by a particular day at dinner, and I was the less willing to break my engagement, as I understood Mr Scott was to come to town in the course of a week, so that I should not be compelled to take my final leave of him at his own seat. I quitted, however, with not a little reluctance, the immediate scene of so much pleasure—and the land of so many noble recollections. The morning, too, on which I departed, was cold and misty; the vapours seemed unwilling to melt about the hilltops; and I forded the darkened waters of the Tweed in assuredly a very pensive mood. Muffled in my cloak above the ears, I witnessed rather than directed the motions of the shandrydan, and arrived in Auld Reekie, after a ride of more than thirty miles, almost without having escaped, for a single second, from the same cloud of reverie in which I had begun the journey. The character of the eminent man whom I had been seeing, and the influence which his writings have produced upon his country, were, as might be supposed, the main ingredients of all my meditation. After having conversed with Mr Scott, and so become familiar with the features of his countenance, and the tones of his voice, it seemed to me as if I had been furnished with a new key to the whole purpose of his intellectual labours, and was, for the first time, in a situation to look at the life and genius of the man with an eye of knowledge. It is wonderful how the mere seeing of such a person gives concentration, and compactness, and distinctness to one’s ideas on all subjects connected with him; I speak for myself—to my mind, one of the best commentaries upon the meaning of any author, is a good image of his face—and, of course, the reality is far more precious than any image can be.

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You have often told me that Walter Scott has been excelled by several other poets of his time, in regularity and beauty of composition; and so far I have agreed, and do still agree with you. But I think there can be no doubt, that, far more than any other poet, or any other author of his time, he is entitled to claim credit for the extent and importance of the class of ideas to which he has drawn the public attention; and if it be so, what small matters all his deficiencies or irregularities are, when put in the balance against such praise as this. At a time when the literature of Scotland—and of England too—was becoming every day more and more destitute of command over everything but the mere speculative understanding of men—this great genius seems to have been raised up to counteract, in the wisest and best of all ways, this unfortunate tendency of his age, by re-awakening the sympathies of his countrymen for the more energetic characters and passions of their forefathers. In so doing he employed, indeed, with the skill and power of a true master, and a true philosopher, what constitutes the only effectual means of neutralising that barren spirit of lethargy into which the progress of civilization is in all countries so apt to lull the feelings and imaginations of mankind. The period during which most of his works were produced, was one of mighty struggles and commotions throughout all Europe, and the experience of that eventful period is sufficient to prove, that the greatest political anxieties, and the most important international struggles, can exert little awakening influence upon the character and genius of a people, if the private life of its citizens at home remains limited and monotonous, and confines their personal experience and the range of their thoughts. The rational matter-of-fact way in which all great public concerns are now-a-days carried forward, is sufficient to throw a damp upon the most stirring imagination. Wars are begun and concluded more in reliance upon the strength of money, than on the strength of minds and of men—votes, and supplies, and estimates, and regular business-like dispatches, and daily papers, take away among them the greater part of that magnificent indistinctness, through which, in former times, the great games of warfare and statesmanship used alike to be regarded by those whose interests were at stake. Very little room is left for enthusiasm, when people are perpetually perplexed in their contemplations of great actions and great men, by the congratulating pettinesses of the well disposed on one side, and the carping meannesses of the envious, and the malevolent, and the little-minded, on the other. The circle within which men’s thoughts move, becomes every day a narrower one—and they learn to travel to all their con-

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clusions, not over the free and generous ranges of principle and feeling, but along the plain, hard, dusty high-way of calculation. Now, a poet like Walter Scott, by enquiring into and representing the modes of life in earlier times, employs the imagination of his countrymen, as a means of making them go through the personal experience of their ancestry, and of making them acquainted with the various courses of thought and emotion, by which their forefathers had their genius and characters drawn out—things to which, by the mechanical arrangements of modern life and society, we have been rendered too much strangers. Other poets, such as Byron, have attempted an analogous operation, by carrying us into foreign countries, where society is still comparatively young—but their method is by no means so happy or so complete as Scott’s, because the people among whom they seek to interest us, have national characters totally different from our own—whereas those whose minds he exhibits as a stimulus to ours, are felt at once to be great kindred originals, of which our every-day experience shows us copies, faint indeed, but capable of being worked into stronger resemblance. If other poets should afterwards seek and collect their materials from the same field, they may perhaps be able to produce more finished compositions, but the honour of being the Patriarch of the National Poetry of Scotland, must always remain in the possession of Walter Scott. Nay, whatever direction the genius of his countrymen may take in future years, the benefit of his writings must ever be experienced in the great resuscitation of slumbering elements, which they have produced in the national mind. Perhaps the two earliest of his poems, the Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion, are the most valuable, because they are the most impregnated with the peculiar spirit of Scottish antiquity. In his subsequent poems, he made too much use of the common materials and machinery employed in the popular novels of that day, and descended so far as to hinge too much of their interest upon the common resources of an artfully constructed fable. In like manner, in those prose Tales— which I no more doubt to be his than the poems he has published with his name—in that delightful series of works, which have proved their author to be the nearest kinsman the creative intellect of Shakespeare has ever had—the best are those, the interest of which is most directly and historically national—Waverley and Old Mortality. The whole will go down together, so long as any national character survives in Scotland—and themselves will, I nothing question, prolong the existence of national character there more effectually, than any other stimulus its waning strength is ever likely to meet with. But I think the

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two I have mentioned, will always be considered as the brightest jewels in this ample crown of unquenched and unquenchable radiance. What Shakespeare has done for the civil wars of the two Roses, and the manifestations of national mind produced by the influence of the old baronial feuds—what the more than dramatic Clarendon has done for the great period of contest between the two majestic sets of principles, upon whose union, matured and tempered, the modern constitution of England is founded—the same service has been rendered by the author of these Tales (whosoever he may be), to the most interesting times in the history of the national mind of Scotland—the times, when all the various elements of her character, religious and political, were exhibited in their most lively fermentation of sharpness and vigour. As for the complaints which have been made of unfairness and partiality, in the views which he has given of the various parties—I think they are not only exaggerated, but altogether absurd. It is, indeed, very easy to see to which side the Poet’s own early prejudices have given his mind a leaning—but I think it is no less easy to see that the romance of his predilections has been tempered and chastened by as fine a mixture of sober reflection and generous candour, as ever entered into the composition of any man of high and enthusiastic feeling. There is too much chivalry about the man, to allow of his treating his foes unfairly; and had he been really disposed to injure any set of men, he had weapons enough at his disposal, very different from any which even his detractors can accuse him of having employed. But enough of such fooleries; they are only fit for those who have uttered them—a set of persons, by the way, who might have been expected to bear a little innocent ridicule with a little more Christian equanimity, after so ample experience of the “Cachinno monstrarier.” Altogether, it must be allowed that the situation of Scotland, as to literature, is a very peculiar one. No large crop of indigenous literature sprung out of its own feelings at the time when the kindred spirit of England was in that way so prolific. The poets it produced in the former times were almost all emigrants, and took up the common stock of ideas that were floating in England;—or at least their works, like those of Thomson, had no relation to their own country in particular, or its modes of feeling. It is a difficult question how two countries, standing in the relation of England and Scotland, should manage with their respective talents and histories. It cannot be doubted that there is a very considerable difference in their national genius—and indeed, the Scots seem to resemble the English much more in their power of thought than in their

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turn of character. Their first remarkable exhibition of talent was entirely in the line of thought—Hume—Smith, and the rest of that school are examples. The Scots dialect never having been a written language, at least to any important extent, and there being no literary monuments belonging exclusively to Scotland, of course the associations of the literary men were formed on English models and on English works. Now, after two nations have been long separate in their interests, and have respectively nourished their own turn of thinking—they may at last come to be united in their interests, but their associations cannot be so pliable, nor can they be so easily amalgamated. An union of national interests quoad external power relates chiefly to the future—whereas, associations respect the past. And here was an unfortunate circumstance of separation between the Scots literati and the mass of the Scottish people.—The essence of all nationality, however, is a peculiar way of thinking, and conceiving, which may be applied to subjects not belonging to the history of one’s own country, although it certainly is always most in place when exhibited in conjunction with the scenery and accompaniments of Home. In Scotland, there are many things that must conspire to wean men from the past—the disuse of their old dialect—the unpleasant nature of some of the events that have befallen them—the neighbourhood of triumphant and eclipsing England, which, like an immense magnet, absolutely draws the needles from the smaller ones—the Reformation, above all, which, among them, was conducted in a way peculiarly unfortunate, causing all the old religious associations to be considered as detestable and sinful; and gradually sinking into oblivion a great many ancient ideas of another class, which were entwined with these, and which were shaken off also as a matter of necessity, ne pars sincera trahatur. Puritanism, by its excessive exclusiveness, always brings along with it a nakedness and barrenness of mind in relation to all human attachments, and the temporal concerns of life. But human nature, in despite of Puritanism, can never be utterly extinguished. It still demands some human things for our affections to lean upon—some thoughts to be dear to our imaginations, and which we may join our countrymen in loving— for common attachments widely diffused, must always tend to civilize and improve human nature, and awaken generous and social habits of feeling. Shakespeare observes in Coriolanus, that, during the time of war, citizens always feel more benevolent towards each other; and the reason, no doubt is, that war reminds them in what respects their interests and feelings concur. Puritanism weighs too hard upon human

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nature, and does not tend to draw out its best aspect. It makes every man too much the arbiter of his opinions and their champion—hence too much self-love. It makes him look with too much jealousy and anxiety upon his neighbours, as persons in error, or capable of leading him into error—or as differing in their convictions from those at which he himself has had the happiness to arrive. Hence a want of cheerfulness, confidence, and settled good nature.—Lastly, Puritanism leaves a man alone to face and fight the devil upon the strength of his own virtue and judgment, which, I dare say, Colonel Harrison himself would feel to be as much as he was able for. Puritans confine their imaginations entirely to the Scriptures, and cut themselves off from the early Romish legends of saints—the true mythology of Christianity—the only part of it, at least, which poetry and the other fine arts can, without too great a breach of reverence, mould and adapt to their own purposes. Some of them surely are exquisite in beauty, and afford room for all manner of play of fancy. I speak, you will remember, entirely with an eye to literature. Whatever may be the orthodox opinions on these subjects, why should poetry refuse to invest them with preternatural attributes, or to take advantage of the fine poetical situations which sometimes occur in those old histories? Again, although the history of Scotland has not been throughout filled with splendid or remarkable events, fitted to show off the national character in the most luminous and imposing points of view, yet few persons will refuse to consider the Scots as a nation remarkable—most remarkable—for natural endowments. It would be difficult to say in what elements adapted to make a nation shine in literature they are at all deficient. Now, when the character of a nation has once fully developed itself in events or in literature, its posterity are too apt to consider its former achievements or writings as an adequate expression or symbol of what exists in themselves, and so to remain contented without making any farther exertions—and this, I take it, is one of the main causes of what appears externally in the history of nations, to be barrenness, degeneracy, and exhaustion of intellectual power,—so that it may perhaps be one of the advantages which Scotland possesses over England and many other countries, that she has not yet created any sufficient monuments of that “mightiness for good or ill” that is within her. If a remainder of her true harvest is yet to be reaped—if any considerable body of her yet unexpended force is now to make its appearance in literature, it will do so under the most favourable cir-

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cumstances, and with all appliances to boot, which the present state of intellectual cultivation in Europe can furnish, both in the way of experience, and as objects for examination and reflection. The folly of slighting and concealing what remains concealed within herself, is one of the worst and most pernicious that can beset a country, in the situation wherein Scotland stands. Although, perhaps, it is not now the cue of Scotland to dwell very much on her own past history, (which that of England has thrown too much into the shade,) yet she should observe what fine things have been made even of this department, by the great genius of whom I have spoken above—and learn to consider her own national character as a mine of intellectual wealth, which remains in a great measure unexplored. While she looks back upon the history of England, as upon that of the country to which she has suspended and rendered subordinate her fortunes, yet she should by no means regard English literature, as an expression of her mind, or as superseding the examination of what intellectual resources remain unemployed within her own domains of peculiar possession. The most remarkable literary characters which Scotland produced last century, showed merely (as I have already said) the force of her intellect, as applied to matters of reasoning. The generation of Hume, Smith, &c., left matters of feeling very much unexplored, and probably considered Poetry merely as an elegant and tasteful appendage to the other branches of literature, with which they themselves were more conversant. Their disquisitions on morals were meant to be the vehicles of ingenious theories—not of convictions of sentiment. They employed, therefore, even in them, only the national intellect, and not the national modes of feeling. The Scottish literati of the present day have inherited the ideas of these men, and acted upon them in a great measure—with scarcely more than the one splendid exception of Walter Scott. While all the rest were contenting themselves with exercising and displaying their speculative acuteness, this man had the wisdom—whether by the impulse of Nature, or from reflection, I know not—to grapple boldly with the feelings of his countrymen. The habits of self-love, so much pampered and indulged by the other style, must have opposed some resistance to the influence of works such as his—I mean their more solid, and serious, and abiding influence upon the characters and minds of those who read them; but these are only wreaths of snow, whose cold flakes are made to be melted when the sun shines fairly upon them. His works are altogether the most remarkable phenomenon in this age of wonders—

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produced among a people, whose taste had been well nigh weaned from all those ranges of feeling, on which their main inspiration and main power depend—they have of themselves been sufficient to create a more than passionate return of faith and homage to those deserted elements of greatness, in all the better part of his countrymen. I consider him, and his countrymen should do so, as having been the sole saviour of all the richer and warmer spirit of literature in Scotland. He is, indeed, the Facillime Princeps of all her poets, past and present, and I more than question the likelihood of his having hereafter any “Brother near the throne.” I should like to see a really fine portrait of Mr Scott, representing him in his library—or rather in his armoury at Abbotsford, musing, within sight of the silver Tweed, upon some grand evocation of the national genius of his country. By the way, I should have told you what a fine picturesque place this armoury is—how its roof is loaded with facsimiles of the best decorations of Melrose—how its windows glow with the rich achievements of all the old families of Border renown—how its walls are covered with hauberks, jacks, actons, bills, brands, claymores, targets, and every weapon of foray warfare. But I must not come back to my descriptions. P. M. P. S. If any of my remarks appear short and ill-tempered, be pleased to remember that they have been written under all the irritation of a foot swelling and reddening every hour into more decided Podagra. I feel that I am fairly in for a fit. I have at least a week of my sofa before me— so, instead of claret, and the writing of wordy epistles, I must e’en do the best I can with a sip of water-gruel, and the old luxury of conning over Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Once more adieu!—“A stout heart to a stiff brae,” as we say in Scotland; which, being interpreted, signifies Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.

P. M. END OF VOLUME SECOND

PETER’S LETTERS TO

HIS KINSFOLK

VOLUME THE THIRD

CONTENTS OF

VOLUME THIRD __________

LETTER LVI The Gout ..................................................................................................... 377 The Clergy .................................................................................................. 378 Peter’s Portrait ............................................................................................ 379 LETTER LVII The General Assembly ................................................................................ Commissioner’s Levee ................................................................................ Procession ................................................................................................... Clerical Precedence ..................................................................................... Modern Esquires ......................................................................................... Country Clergymen ..................................................................................... Town Clergymen ........................................................................................ Clerical Life ................................................................................................

380 382 383 384 384 386 387 387

LETTER LVIII The Assembly Aisle .................................................................................... The Galleries ............................................................................................... Moderates and Wildmen ............................................................................. The Leslie Controversy ............................................................................... Dr Robertson ............................................................................................... Dr Erskine ................................................................................................... Sir Henry Moncrieff .................................................................................... Dr Inglis ......................................................................................................

389 390 391 393 394 395 396 398

LETTER LIX The General Assembly ................................................................................ Regent’s Letter ............................................................................................ Scottish Prayers ........................................................................................... Commissioner’s Dinner ..............................................................................

399 399 399 400

LETTER LX The General Assembly ................................................................................ Lay Elders ................................................................................................... Fama Clamosa ............................................................................................. Dr Macknight .............................................................................................. Dr Skene Keith, and Mr Lapslie ................................................................. English Convocation ...................................................................................

402 402 403 403 403 405

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LETTER LXI Clergy of Scotland ...................................................................................... Sir Henry Moncrieff .................................................................................... Dr Inglis ...................................................................................................... Mr Andrew Thomson .................................................................................. Dr Macknight, and Dr Brunton ...................................................................

408 410 412 412 415

LETTER LXII Scottish Episcopalian Church ..................................................................... Dr Sandford................................................................................................. Mr Alison .................................................................................................... Episcopalian Fund ....................................................................................... Old and New Light Anti-burghers .............................................................. Dr M‘Crie.................................................................................................... Dr Jamieson ................................................................................................ Old Potts .....................................................................................................

417 418 419 422 423 424 425 425

LETTER LXIII Old Potts ..................................................................................................... Scottish Dandyism ...................................................................................... Dilettanti Society ........................................................................................ Dandyism ....................................................................................................

426 427 429 429

LETTER LXIV Visit to Lasswade ........................................................................................ Roslyn Glen ................................................................................................ Roslyn Chapel ............................................................................................. Roslyn Castle .............................................................................................. Hawthornden ............................................................................................... Drummond of Hawthornden ....................................................................... Mr Gillies .................................................................................................... Mr Wordsworth’s Sonnet to Mr Gillies ...................................................... The Ettrick Shepherd .................................................................................. Mr Lockhart ................................................................................................ Mr Howison ................................................................................................ Captain Hamilton ........................................................................................ The Ettrick Shepherd .................................................................................. P. P. C. ........................................................................................................

433 434 435 436 436 436 438 438 439 440 441 442 443 443

LETTER LXV Visit to Glasgow ......................................................................................... 446 Kirk of Shotts .............................................................................................. 447 Glasgow ...................................................................................................... 447

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375

LETTER LXVI Cathedral of Glasgow.................................................................................. Glasgow Royal Infirmary............................................................................ Rotten-row and Antiquities of Glasgow...................................................... Coffee-Room of Glasgow ........................................................................... Dinner Party and Glasgow Punch ...............................................................

452 455 457 457 458

LETTER LXVII Glasgow University..................................................................................... Hunterian Museum...................................................................................... Professor Young.......................................................................................... Professor Jardine ......................................................................................... Hunterian Museum...................................................................................... Supper at Archie Cameron’s .......................................................................

462 462 463 468 469 471

LETTER LXVIII Glasgow Manufactories, and Mr Kirkman Finlay....................................... Green of Glasgow ....................................................................................... Nelson’s Monument .................................................................................... Green of Glasgow ....................................................................................... Philosophical Weaver ................................................................................. His Opinion of the Present State of the Edinburgh Review ........................

472 473 474 474 476 477

LETTER LXIX Advice to Potts ............................................................................................ Buck’s-Head Inn ......................................................................................... Glasgow Punch ........................................................................................... Glasgow Dandies ........................................................................................ Glasgow Ball ...............................................................................................

482 484 485 486 487

LETTER LXX Glasgow Wit ............................................................................................... Gaggery ....................................................................................................... Trotting ....................................................................................................... Glasgow Clubs ............................................................................................

491 492 492 492

LETTER LXXI Glasgow Merchants..................................................................................... Observatory, and Botanical Garden ............................................................ James Grahame ........................................................................................... Mr Wilson ...................................................................................................

495 496 498 498

LETTER LXXII Covenanters................................................................................................. Observance of the Sabbath .......................................................................... Dr Chalmers ................................................................................................ State of Religion in Scotland....................................................................... Quarterly Review ........................................................................................

503 503 505 511 512

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LETTER LXXIII Paisley ......................................................................................................... Mr John Smith............................................................................................. Ride on the Clyde........................................................................................ Bothwell Castle ........................................................................................... Bothwell Bridge .......................................................................................... Hamilton Palace .......................................................................................... Pictures........................................................................................................ Vandykes ........................................................................ Poussin ........................................................................... Caracci’s Magdalen ........................................................ Cadyow Castle ............................................................................................ The Mountain Bull ...................................................................................... Valley of the Clyde ..................................................................................... Glasgow ......................................................................................................

515 516 516 516 517 518 518 518 519 519 520 521 521 521

LETTER LXXIV Country Sacrament...................................................................................... 523 LETTER LXXV Country Sacrament...................................................................................... 533 Sacrament Sabbath ...................................................................................... 537 Sunday Evening .......................................................................................... 540 LETTER LXXVI Breakfast at the Laird’s ............................................................................... Sacrament Monday ..................................................................................... Tent-Sermon ............................................................................................... Dinner at the Manse .................................................................................... Hotch-potch, and Lochfine Herrings........................................................... The Croupier ............................................................................................... SONG—The Shooting Minister .................................................................... Old Mortality .............................................................................................. Departure..................................................................................................... Glasgow Steam-Boat...................................................................................

541 541 542 543 543 544 545 546 546 546

POSTSCRIPT TO THIRD EDITION ........................................................ 547

LETTER LVI TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

MY DEAR DAVID, I HAVE not written to you for these eight days, simply because I have not been able to do so. The fit has been a severe one, and I feel that I am weakened, and see that I am thinned by it, beyond almost any preceding example in my own experience. My friend Wastle, however, was quite indefatigable in his attentions; and every now and then, some of the new friends I have made in Edinburgh would be dropping in upon me to relieve the tedium or the agony, (as might happen) by the charms of their good-humoured and sympathetic conversation. Mr Jeffrey, in his way home from the Parliament-House—Mr Playfair, immediately after delivering his lecture—and sometimes Professor Leslie and the Ettrick Shepherd, in the course of their walks, were among my morning visitors; and I had a regular succession of poets, artists, and young lawyers sipping coffee in my view every evening. An old maiden lady, nearly related to Mr Wastle, was also particularly kind to me. She sent her foot-boy every morning, with compliments and enquiries, and some small jar of sweetmeats, or bottle of cordial of her own manufacture— or the like. Indeed, the Laird informs me, that one day she went so far as to throw out some hints respecting a visit to the sick man, in propriâ personâ; but my friend easily spared me that addition to my uneasiness, by one or two dry remarks about “malicious tongues,” and the “rules of propriety.” But now, my good friend, I am well nigh a sound man again, and intend, God willing, to walk out and sun myself in Prince’s-Street a little while to-morrow forenoon. In the meantime, I have had my sofa removed close to the window, which commands a view of a short street, communicating between St Andrew’s-Square and Prince’s-Street—and which is tolerably frequented, although not quite so much so as I could wish. This, indeed, is the only fault I have to find with my hotel—it does not afford me a sufficient peep of the bustle and tumult of the city. In the country I like to be altogether in the country—but, I think in a town, above all, in a town hotel, the best situation is that which is nearest the heart of the hubbub. The heart is rather too strong an expression, but I think there is

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no use in having eyes to see and ears to hear, unless these avenues of knowledge are to be brought into something like contact with the busy sounds and sights of the place. However, even as it is, by help of a bright pair of spectacles, and a quick pair of ears, I make shift to gather some food for my speculation. One thing has already struck me—and that is, that there is a much greater number of gentlemen in black coats walking about, than before I was confined to my couch. They seem to have poured into the city during my illness—and, indeed, I see by the newspapers, that the General Assembly, or great Annual Convocation of their Kirk is at hand. On these I shall, of course, keep an especial look-out. Those, I have already remarked, seem, in passing along, to be chiefly occupied in recognizing and shaking hands with each other—and sometimes with old acquaintances among the citizens of the place. Their greetings seem to be given and returned with a degree of heartiness and satisfaction, which inspires a favourable idea of all parties concerned. I observed only this minute, a thin, hardy-looking minister, in a blue spencer over his sables, arrested immediately under my window, by a jolly-looking burgher, who, to judge by his obesity, may probably be in the magistracy, or council at least. “Hoo d’ye do, Mr Such-a-thing?” said the cit, (for I could not help lifting the glass an inch or two,) “and hoo did ye leave all at Auchtertirloch Manse? You must come and take your broth with us.” To which the man in black replies with a clerical blandness of modulation—“Most certainly—you are exceedingly good—and hoo fares it with your good leddy? You have lately had an addition to your family.”—“I understand from a friend in the North,” cries the other, “that you are not behind me in that particular—twins, Doctor! O, the luck of a manse!”—A loud cachinnation follows from both parties, and after a bow and a scrape—“You will remember four o’clock on Tuesday, Dr Macalpine.” In the course of an hour or two, I have had an opportunity of witnessing several other rencounters of the same kind, and I feel a sort of contemplative pleasure in looking upon them, as so many fortuitous idyllia presenting themselves amidst the common thoroughfare of the streets. I saw, among the rest, one huge ecclesiastical figure, of an apoplectic and lethargic aspect, moving slowly along, with his eyes goggling in his head, and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He was accosted by an old lawyer, whom I had often remarked in the Parliament-House, and who seemed to delight in reviving their juvenile remembrances, by using the broadest Scots dialect. Among other observations I heard, “Hech, man! I never think the yill so gude noo as

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when we war young”—and after some further interchange of sentiments, “Ye would hear that auld George Piper had pappit aff,” &c. &c. &c. But I see Mr Wastle’s old yellow chariot at the door—and, besides, my fingers won’t serve me for a longer epistle. Ever your’s, P. M. P. S. By the way, during my days of convalescence, I have been so vain as to sit for my portrait to Mr John Watson, the young painter of whom I have said something in a former letter. I did this at the urgent request of Mr Blackwood, the bookseller, who has taken a vehement desire to have my effigy among those of some other great men at his country-house. I fear, however, that the state of my health has made the painter give me a face at least ten years too old.

LETTER LVII TO THE SAME

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THE LAIRD seeing that I had recovered a considerable measure of my vigour, insisted upon carrying me with him to make my bow at the levee of the Earl of Morton, who has come down as the King’s Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of this year. Detesting, as he does, the Kirk—its Creed—and its practice—to wait in all due form upon the representative of Majesty, at this its great festival, is a thing which he would think it highly indecorous in him, or in the head and representative of any ancient Scottish family, to omit; and, indeed, he is of opinion, that no gentleman of any figure who happens to be in Scotland at the time, should fail to appear in the same manner. He was, besides, more than commonly anxious in his devoirs on this occasion, on account of his veneration for the blood of the old Earls of Douglas, whose true representative he says the Earl of Morton is. My curiosity came powerfully in back of his zeal, and I promised to be in all readiness next morning at the hour he appointed. In the mean time, His Grace (for such is the style of the Commissioner) had already arrived at the Royal Hotel, where, more avito, the provost and bailies, in all the gallantry of furred cloaks and gold chains, were in readiness to receive him, and present the ancient silver keys, symbolical of the long-vanished gates of the Gude Town of Edinburgh. The style in which the whole of this mock royalty is got up, strikes me as being extremely absurd. In the first place, I hold it a plain matter, that, if the King’s majesty is to send a representative to preside over the disputes of the Scottish ministers and elders, this representative should be lodged no-where but in the Palace of Holyrood, where he might hold his mimic state in the same halls and galleries which have been dignified by the feet of the real monarchs of Scotland. Instead of this, the Commissioner is lodged in a common hotel—a magnificent one indeed—but

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which has assuredly nothing royal about it but its name. And then, its situation is supposed to be too distant from the place where the Assembly meets, to allow of his walking all the way thither in procession, as it seems ancient custom requires him to do. So when the hour of meeting approaches, his Grace is smuggled over the bridge in a sedan chair, and stuck up in the Merchant’s Hall to receive the company that come to swell the train of his procession. The undignified uses to which the apartment is applied at other times (for it serves as a reading-room all the rest of the year) is enough to throw an addition, and surely a needless addition, of ridicule over the scenes of courtly greeting to which it is now devoted. But it is within an easy walk of St Giles’s Church, and that counterbalances all objections. Meaning to be in London, and kiss the Prince’s hand once more before I return to Wales, I had brought my old court suit with me—the same suit of modest chocolate-coloured kerseymere, David, which has figured in the presence of King George and Queen Charlotte at St James’s—of Napoleon and Louis le désiré at the Thuilleries—of smooth Pius the Seventh at the Vatican—of solemn Francis at the Schloss of Vienna—of grim whiskered Frederick William at Berlin—of pale monastic Augustus at Dresden—to say nothing of the late enormous Hector of Wirtemberg, the good worthy Grand Duke of Weimar and Eisenach, and some score of minor thrones, principalities, and dominations besides. I took it for granted, that I could not make my appearance in presence of the Ecclesiastical Lord Lieutenant, without mounting this venerable garb; so John had the coat, waistcoat, and breeches well aired, and amused himself half an evening in polishing the steel buttons and buckles—and my queue being dropped into a seemly bag, and my loins girded with my father’s somewhat rusty rapier—I drove—once more cap-a-pee a courtier—to my rendezvous in the Lawn-Market. I found my friend arrayed in a deputy-lieutenant’s uniform of blue and red, with (albeit somewhat against the rules) the little cross of Dannebrog, which he had conferred on him many years ago, when he was in Denmark—on his breast; but in spite of his own splendour, he quizzed me unmercifully on the sober pomp of my own vestments— assuring me, that, except the Commissioner, and his purse-bearer and pages, I should find nobody in a court suit at the levee. It was too late, however, to change; and as I am not a very nervous man about trifles, I did not choose to miss the sight merely because I had over-dressed myself. Wastle’s old coachman had combed his wig in full puff, and his

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lackey mounted behind us in a fine gala livery of green and white, as old as Queen Anne’s sixpences—so I question not the contents of the yellow chariot, outside and inside, made rather a conspicuous appearance. However, we soon reached the Merchant’s Hall, and were ushered into the Presence-chamber of his Grace. You know Lord Morton, so I don’t need to tell you that the heir of the Douglasses made a highly respectable appearance, standing in the midst of his circle, in blue and gold, with the green ribbon and star of the Thistle. I had often seen his lordship; so, after being introduced by Wastle, and making my lowest bow as in duty bound, I exercised my optics much more on the Court than the Commissioner—the needles than their magnet. You never saw such a motley crew of homage-doers. I myself and my old chocolate suit might be considered, it struck me, as forming a sort of link between the officers in scarlet uniform, and the Members of Assembly in black deshabilles, of which two classes of persons the greater part of the company was composed. But, altogether, there could not be a more miserable mixture of tawdriness and meanness. Here stood a spruce Irish hero, stuck all over with peninsular medals, in jack-boots—there, a heavy-headed minister, with his carrotty hair flying ad libitum about his ears—his huge hands half buried in the fobs of his velveteen breeches, and a pair of black worsted stockings, hanging line upon line, measure upon measure about his ankles. On one side, a tall, stately, very fine-looking peer of the realm, clad in solemn black from head to foot, and having a double bamboo in his hand, almost as tall as himself, might be supposed to represent the old Lords of the Covenant, who were glad to add to the natural consequence of their nobility, that of being “Elders in Israel.” On the other, a little shabby scrivener, in trowsers, (pro scelus!) might be seen swelling with vanity at the notion of his being permitted to stand so close to so many of his betters—and twirling his hat all the while in an agony of impudent awkwardness. To the left, the Procurator of the Kirk, (the official lawadviser of the Assembly,) in his advocate’s wig of three tails, and the Moderator himself, distinguished from his clerical brethren by a singlebreasted coat and cocked-hat, might be seen laying their heads together, touching some minutiæ of the approaching meeting—while the right was occupied, in all manner of civic solemnity and glory, by a phalanx of the magistracy of Edinburgh. The figure which these last worthies cut is so imposing, that I can easily believe in the truth of a story I have heard of last year’s Assembly, which, at first sight, would no doubt have somewhat the air of a quizz. The Earl of Errol was the Commissioner,

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and the University of Glasgow had thought fit to send an address of congratulation to his Lordship, on his having attained to so high an office. Their envoy was their Principal—an ancient divine, as I am told, who has been well used to Assemblies and Commissioners for more than half a century. On this occasion, however, his long experience seems to have been of little use to him, for he committed a sad blunder in the mode of delivering his address. The gorgeous array of Baillies, it is to be supposed, had caught his eye on first entering the presenceroom, and dazzled it so much, that it would have required some time to recover its power of discrimination. Of this gorgeous array, the centrestar was one Baillie Anderson, powdered with a particular degree of splendour, and the Principal, never doubting that he was the Commissioner, stepped close to him, and rolled out the well-poised periods of his address, with an air of unquestioning submission, that quite convulsed the whole of those who were up to the joke. The Baillie himself, however, was too much thunderstruck to be able to stop him, and the true dignitary enjoyed the humour of the thing too much to deprive his Double of any part of the compliment. In a word, it was not till the doctor had made an end of speaking, and stood in smiling expectation of his Grace’s reply, that some kind friend whispered him he was in the wrong box; and, looking round, he saw, in an opposite corner of the room, a personage, not indeed so fat, and perhaps not quite so fine as his Baillie, but possessing a native grace and majesty of port and lineament, which spoke but too plainly where the incense should have been offered. This was a cruel scene; but the awe with which some of the rural pastors about me seemed to survey now and then the grand knot of Baillies, was sufficient to convince me that it might have happened very naturally. The present levee, by the way, was, as Wastle informed me, by much the most splendid he had seen for a long while— the old Duke of Gordon was among the company, and a greater number than is common of the inferior orders of the nobility. The most conspicuous, however, in every point of view, was the Earl of Hopetoun, the Achates of Wellington, and a true hero in figure as well as in more important matters. Close by his side stood his heroic brother-in-arms, Colonel David Steuart of Garth, whom I met two years ago at Lord Combermere’s. By and bye, the tolling of the bells of St Giles’s announced that the time was come for the procession to move, and the Commissioner quitted the chamber, preceded and followed by a few awkward-looking pages in red coats, and some other attendants. The nobility then

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marshalled themselves in order due and descended—a baronet or two after them—after these a few new-made Knights of the Bath. The rest of the party seemed to follow without discrimination, pretty much as they stood nearest the door; but Wastle told me as we went, that not many years have elapsed since this quiet of precedence was unknown to the processions of the Commissioner. A grievous feud, it seems, had arisen between the Doctors of Divinity and Esquires—the Doctors claiming clamorously to walk immediately after the Knights, and the Esquires as stoutly asserting that the churchmen of Scotland have no precedence whatever, whether with or without the possession of academical degrees. To my surprise, Wastle, Oxonian as he is, appears to have been hostile to the pretensions of the reverend graduates; but it must be owned, there is at least some colour of reason in what he says on this subject. “The degree of doctor in divinity in the English Universities,” says he, “is allowed in England to confer very high rank, but then it is a degree which pre-supposes great standing in the University which has conferred it; and, besides, the fees attending its assumption are sufficient to prevent its being thought of except by men who have some very high station in the church. But here, this degree is conferred by the Universities on whomsoever they please—even the meanest of your English dissenters get it for the asking—and the fees are a mere bagatelle. Now, if you admit that this degree, so easily got and given, can confer any title to precedence, it is evident, that in a very short time there would not be a single Geneva cloak in Scotland, that would not cover a doctor in theology. There is no statute on the subject here as there is in England, and I think it would be a very great absurdity to proceed upon so slender a thing as the general ex facie analogy of the two cases. The truth is,” continued he, “that the subject of precedence in Scotland is a very difficult affair, principally owing, no doubt, to the long absence of the court. We have no such legal style as Esquire— unless for a few particular offices—Knights, Gentlemen, and Burgesses, were all the old gradations recognized among our commoners. Now, in the present state of things, there are very few Knights, and it would be a very hard thing to say who are and who are not Gentlemen— so that I suspect we are all in the eye of the law pretty much upon a level. I except, however, the Barons, (or lords of manors,) and all, indeed, who hold to any considerable extent of the crown in capite; these, I am quite sure, have a fixed precedence in the law, as well as in the common sense of the affair. The doctors acted very sillily in stirring the question. But how, after all, was the thing to be arranged? If they

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have no precedence, as I think they have none, as little surely have nineteen-twentieths of these soi-disant esquires who disputed with them—advocates—writers—merchants—any body.—Where is the fustian-sleeved clerk now-a-days, that does not write himself esquire? As for the under-graduated clergy, I confess I know not what their place should be. They themselves, in former times, seem to have put it low enough; for even in the wording of their notable masterpiece, the Covenant, the style runs,—‘We, the noblemen, gentlemen, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland.’ What a tempestas in matulâ is here!—and yet,” added the candid critic, “I confess I should not much admire seeing one of these crop ears thrusting himself out of a room before the blood of Wastle; I never heard that their kingdom was one of this world; but still if they are to have precedence any where, surely it should be here at the General Assembly of their Kirk. As it is, the dispute has been waved by those in authority—and we walk as we may—so allons!” In the meantime, we had been advancing up the magnificent HighStreet of Edinburgh, which was lined on either side by Heavy Dragoons and Connaught Rangers, and in every window and peeping-hole over the heads of these, by clusters of faces as eager as ever gazed on the triumph of Pompey. It is certainly rather an imposing thing, this procession. On its commencement, the ovation was greeted by a musical band, with “God save the King,” and all along its progress, there was the usual quantity of “stinking breath” uttered by the crowd of admirers. What occupied the principal share of my attention, was still the picturesque appearance of the clergy, who graced the triumph of the Lord Commissioner— ——quos trahet feroces,

Per sacrum clivum merito decorus Fronde Sygambros.

Several rows of them moved immediately in my neighbourhood, and, to my mind, there was something not a little fine and imposing in their progression, moving solemnly as they did, in the same style that Milton ascribes to a very dissimilar and opposite class of black-coats, With fixed thoughts, Moving in Silence to soft pipes, that charmed Their painful steps o’er the burnt soil.

I saw their polished heads gleaming under the meridian sun, and their

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hats decently carried under their arms—nay, such was the heat of the day, aided, no doubt, by the natural fervour of their zealous temperaments, that I could see their waving handkerchiefs, red or white, frequently lifted to foreheads, marked with all the symbols of profound reflection. I even thought that some of them looked thirsty, as if they had not swallowed a drop of liquid the preceding evening—but this was probably a mistake. Although they moved in silence, yet I could trace here and there copious capacities of eloquence in the configuration of their mute lips—I longed to hear these imprisoned meanings let loose— but was “patient in my strong desire,” as I knew they were going to the proper place where they would get all manner of relief; and I witnessed their approach to the Cathedral of St Giles’s, with something of the same pleasure which brightens the eyes of a Spanish way-farer, when he sees some goodly half-dozen of swollen wine-bags carried into the hostelleria where he is about to put up for the evening. To a person of a reflective mind, I think the concourse of clergymen which takes place at this time, is eminently adapted to convey ideas of a picturesque and romantic nature. The different pastors whom I saw moving before or beside me, might be supposed to carry in their persons a good many characteristic traces of the parishes and regions from which they respectively had arrived, to do honour to this great annual Feast of their Temple. I could easily recognise the inhabitant of a wild and tempestuous region, by his weather-beaten cheek-bones, his loose locks, and the loud and dissonant notes of his voice, if at any time he chanced to speak even to his neighbour. In seeing him, one thinks of the stunted crops of oats, that lie spread in patches upon the desolate hills among which his spire arises. Among many other inconveniences and annoyances he has to contend with, we think also of the lank Seceders, which are, it may be supposed, the natural product of such a soil, and we even conceive to ourselves, with a sympathetic liveliness of imagination, the shapeless, coach-roofed, spireless meeting-house, which they have erected, or may even be in the very act of erecting, opposite to the insulted windows of his manse. The clergyman of a lower and more genial parish, may equally be distinguished by his own set of peculiarities suitable to his abode. Such as come from good shooting countries, above all, from the fine breezy braes of the North, are to be known by the tightness and activity of their well-gaitered legs—they are the ἐυκνημιδες of the Kirk—and by a knowing cast of the eye, which seems better accustomed to watch the motions of a pointer, than to decipher the points of a Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, those

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accustomed to the “pabula læta” of flatter grounds, are apt to become unwieldy, and to think that the best sport is to catch hold of wheaten sheaves, which do not run away from them like the hares or muir-fowl. The clergymen of the cities and towns again, we recognised by the superior ease of their air—not staring up to the windows like the rustics—by the comparative smoothness of their faces, which are used to more regular shaving, to say nothing of umbrellas, and the want of long rides in the wind and frost—but most of all by the more urbane style of their vestures. Their coats, waistcoats, and breeches, do not present the same picturesque diversities of ante-diluvian outline—they have none of those portentous depths of flap—none of those huge horny buttons of black paper—none of those coats, shaped from the rough pulpit hangings, put up in honour of the umwhile laird’s funeral—no well-hoarded rich satin or silk waistcoats, with Queen Elizabeth taperings downward—no breeches of corduroy or velveteen, hanging in luxurious looseness about their thighs—none of those close-kissing boots, finally, with their dirk-like sharpness of toe, or those huge shoes of neat’s-hide, on which the light of Day and Martin has never deigned to beam. Their hats, in like manner, are fashioned in some tolerable conformity with the fashion of the day—neither sitting close about their ears, with no rims at all, nor projecting dark Salvator shadows over the whole physiognomy, like the slouches of a Spanish bandit—nor indulging in any of those lawless curves and twists, prospective, retrospective, introspective, and extraspective, from under which the unkempt tresses of the rural brethren may at times be seen “streaming like meteors to the troubled air.” They have gloves to their hands, and smooth canes to their fingers, and they move along with the deliberately dignified aspect of men who are sensible that it is no longer their destiny to “waste their sweetness on the desert air.” They have, indeed, a marvellous suavity of look about them. The extensive intercourse with mankind, which their profession must favour and promote, cannot fail to press frequently upon their attention the laws of true urbanity and agreeableness. And although myself a medical man, and aware, from experience, that the practice of a physician is calculated to make him see a good deal into human life, yet I willingly acknowledge that the clergyman is in habits of meeting with his fellow-creatures, under relations in which a much greater variety of sentiment is displayed, and which are better adapted to bring before his view all the chequered joys and griefs of humanity. I remember, David, once upon a time being called upon to visit Miss Barbara Bevan, who had got a fit of the tooth-

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ache. Her colour was gone, her cheek was swollen, her eye distorted and diminished, her whole countenance disfigured—and her person, under the influence of pain, appeared in the most unfavourable point of view, so that she inspired for the time no other feeling but that of compassion. I drew her tooth, (for you know an M. D. must not stand upon his P’s and Q’s in Cardigan,) and went off. Sometime after I was invited to her marriage, when I found my worthy friend, the Rev. Mr David Williams, had been engaged to perform the ceremony. The damsel had now recovered her looks, and stood blushing before the priest, in all the attractiveness of youth and high health. When the service was concluded, my reverend friend was the first, if I mistake not, to salute the rosy lips of the bride, after which he was presented with a tall bumper of Madeira, and a huge slice of cake, stuffed with almonds, which so engrossed his attention, that he could make no articulate reply for some minutes to the simplest question. Upon observing all which, I shook my head sagaciously, saying inwardly, “Ah, David, thou hast chosen a profession, which, like the magic of the poet, introduces you to the ‘gayest, happiest attitudes of things.’” Ever your’s, P. M. P. S. In my next I shall introduce you to the Presbyterian Convocation, in the aisle of St Giles’s.

LETTER LVIII TO THE SAME

MY DEAR WILLIAMS, THERE was such a crowd of people of all ages and conditions about the gate, that, in spite of all our pomp of macers and pages, we had some difficulty in getting access to the interior of the edifice—and after we had got within its walls, we had still a new set of difficulties to encounter in the lobbies of its interior, before the aisle set apart for the purposes of the General Assembly received our train. Nay, even within the aisle itself, the squeeze of ministers and elders, bustling to their places, was another source of delay. At last, however, the Commissioner mounted his throne, which is a huge elbow chair, placed under a red canopy, at one side of the room, and we, who had come thither as part of his retinue, found ourselves accommodated on his right, where, according to custom, a certain number of benches had been left vacant for our reception. My foot, in the meantime, had received a sad squeeze on the most tender part of its convalescent surface, and some minutes elapsed after I was seated, before I found myself in a condition to survey the scene before me, with any thing like the usual Morrisian eye of collectedness and coolness. The Assembly aisle is a square apartment, vaulted overhead like the rest of the Cathedral, but divided from its nave by a long dark lobby or two below, and above, by some galleries with glass folding-doors, through which a certain portion of the profanum vulgus may make shift to thrust their noses, and contemplate somewhat of the venerable scene. Opposite to this side, in the space between two tall shapeless windows, is situated the canopy as aforesaid, elevated considerably above the area of the place—from whence, “high on a throne of royal state,” the Commissioner looks down in theoretic calmness upon the more active part of the Convocation—his throne being surrounded with a due complement of awkward, chubby-cheeked pages, in long red coats, and serving-men, of different descriptions, in the colours of his own livery. Among these attendants of the mimic monarch, I could not help recognising, with some emotions of merriment, Duncan M‘Nab, and

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various of the cadies, his brethren—for, certainly, my old friends cut a strange enough figure in their new and gorgeous costumes of blue and red, some clad like beef-eaters, and some like lackeys, but all powdered as finely as butter and flour could make them, and all squeezing, or attempting to squeeze, their weather-beaten features into an expression of decorum and gravity, little consistent with the usual habits either of their minds or their occupations. I should, perhaps, make an exception in favour of Duncan; for I must admit, that this crafty Celt bore his new honours—bag, buckles, and all—with a measure of meek composure in his aspect, which shewed that he had taken the metamorphosis in comparative tranquillity of spirit. And, after all, perhaps, the powdered young puppies of plebeian pages, with their cheese-toasters bruising each other’s shins ever and anon, were the most absurd part of the whole group. So much for what Homer would have called, “ὁι ἀμφι τον Βασιληα.” Immediately under, and with his back towards the Commissioner, sits the Moderator, or Clerical President of the Assembly. A green table before him is surrounded by several clerks, arrayed in Geneva cloaks and bands, and a few of the more leading members of either party in the Kirk, “in close recess and secret conclave sitting.” From this table the benches rise in all directions upwards, lodging, row upon row, the ordinary stipendiarii of the ecclesiastical host. The arrangement of these, however, is, although tumultuous, by no means fortuitous. They stick, on the contrary, with the most senatorial pertinacity, each to his own side of the Senate-house—the right side of the throne being occupied exclusively by the Moderates, while, on the left hand, sit, equally pure and uncontaminated, the representatives of the Wildmen. Some tiny galleries, on either side, are appropriated to the use of ministers not actually members of the Assembly, and preachers and students of divinity, who come thither partly to suck in wisdom from the droppings of the “great consult”—partly, no doubt, if one may judge from their lean and scare-crow physiognomies, to indulge in fond dreams of future repletion, inspired by the contemplation of the goodly paunches of the beneficed brethren— A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, Frequent and full——

Above these, again, high up on either side, is another gallery, set apart not for the gods, but the goddesses—where, among others of the fair visitors,

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——whose eyes Reign influence and dispense the prize, I could perceive the sagacious countenances of some dozen or more of the Bas-bleus of Auld Reekie. I know not whether, in this quarter also, the division of parties be as strictly observed as in the lower regions of the place. I could not pretend, at least, to distinguish prima facie the Moderates from the Wild of the womankind; but, perhaps, Muretus would have remarked, that the majority of the “Mulieres Doctæ,” preferred the left side of the throne.* But perhaps, in truth, these noms de guerre, by which the two rival parties which have sprung up among the descendants of John Knox are distinguished, may be almost as inappropriate in the lower as in the upper parts of the aisle. I was a stranger to the existence of the parties themselves, or very nearly so, till I came into Scotland, and even now I am much at a loss to know what are the distinguishing tenets to which they respectively adhere. They are both, in profession at least, sound Calvinists—for whatever may be said of our XXXIX Articles, not even Paley himself could have pretended to consider the “Confession of Faith,” as a specimen of peace-promoting ambiguity and vagueness. Every thing is laid down there as broadly and firmly as if Calvin himself had held the pen, the very morning after the burning of Servetus; and the man who holds a living in the Scottish Kirk, cannot possibly do so with common honesty, unless he be a firm believer in the whole of a theological system—which, whatever may be thought of it in some other respects, must, at least, be admitted to be a far more rational thing than our English high-churchmen would wish us to believe—which, at all events, possesses the merit of singular compactness and harmony within itself—and which, moreover, can number among its defenders in past times, not a few, to whom, whether considered as divines or as authors, none of the theologians of these latter days, on either side of the Tweed, are worthy, as the phrase runs, of holding the candle. So far as doctrine is concerned, the two parties therefore profess themselves to be agreed; and, indeed, I believe the great leaders on either side of the Kirk have a pride in shewing themselves at all times in their sermons, to be alike the genuine disciples of their Institute. The truth, however, may perhaps be, that wherever the business of any polity, civil or ecclesiastical, is conducted in popular assemblies of debate, the infirmi_____________________________________________ * See Muretus. Opuscula, tom. XIII p. 374.

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ties of human nature make it necessary that at least two parties should exist; and when once they do exist, it is odds but they will find some feasible pretences for their separation. Of old, as you well know, the whole of the Presbyterian ministers were Whigs—and it was only by means of the stubborn zeal with which they adhered to the political principles of that state party, that they were enabled to revive so often, and at last to establish on its present firm basis, a system of church government, long so odious to the holders of the executive power. But after the oppressive measures under which the internal spirit of their sect long throve and prospered, exactly in proportion as its external circumstances suffered—after these had been laid aside, and the Kirk found herself in secure possession of all her privileges and emoluments, all those varieties of political opinion which prevailed among the body of the nation, soon began to find adherents in the very bosom of the Kirk— and men ere long learned to think, that a Geneva cloak and a Scottish stipend might just be as well applied to the uses of a Tory as to those of a Whig. And so, by degrees, (the usual influences of the crown and aristocracy finding their way, no doubt, among other things, into the minds of churchmen, against whom neither crown nor aristocracy any longer contended)—there arose even in the Kirk of Scotland a party of Tory ministers and elders. These are they, who, in general, go by the name of the Moderates; but that appellation—originally, I am told, assumed by themselves, and sarcastically adopted by their adversaries—is not derived from the style of their political opinions, but rather meant to denote the more gentle and reasonable interpretation which they would profess to put upon the religious tenets of the Kirk. The Whigs, in like manner, are called Wild-men, or High-flyers, entirely on account of the alleged ultra-Calvinistic austerity of their dogmas. The plain fact of the matter is, that both names are, like most other nicknames, sufficiently absurd—and were I to judge from what I have observed in the General Assembly, I should certainly be inclined to think that the attributes of Wildness and Moderation, are by no means confined to the opposite sides of the aisle, in the same regular manner as are the bodies of those to whom they furnish watch-words of partystrife. Of late, however, the emptiness of this distinction has become infinitely more apparent than ever; the few questions of any sort of moment, upon which their disputes were made to hinge, having been all settled—and there being in truth no longer any matter of ecclesiastical belief or practice, in regard to which it is possible for them to awaken

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the full zeal of their respective adherents. Of the great strife-producing questions, the law of Patronage was the last—and you may see a copious account of the way in which it was settled, in Sir Henry Moncrieff’s Life of the late Dr Erskine. The dispute about Mr Leslie’s professorship, is the only thing which has of late years excited any very general interest, or called into full action any of the old animosities. But even that was of too limited and personal a nature, to be considered as any thing more than a passing tempest—and the horizon soon became pretty calm when the first tumult of it blew over. Since that time, this tranquillity has been pretty regularly preserved—and the Moderates and the Wildmen may be seen, year after year, drawn up against each other without having an inch of debateable land to fight about. So that the General Assembly, of late years, may rather be considered as a kind of annual wappenshaw, than an actual campaign. The popinjays at which they shoot, are “trifles light as air”—and their only instruments are a few harmless επεα πτεροεντα. I am sorry, in one point of view, that this is the case; for I should undoubtedly have seen, with much satisfaction, a few specimens of the more true and fervid hostilities of the olden time. Nay, even to have heard the divines of the North arguing “in stern divan,” about the most profound questions in metaphysics—and launching their arrows, pleno impetu, against the Manes of their old adversary, David Hume—all which they did to much purpose in the Leslie case—even this would have been a luxury, for the sake of which alone I should have thought my shandrydanning to the North well bestowed. But, “ces sont des choses passés,” as the French infidels say—and I must be contented with having seen the brawny forms, and heard the hoarse voices of heroes, whose spears have in a great measure been turned into pruning-hooks. But I forget that you have not seen them, and that you will expect me to describe what I have seen. I wish I had seen the Assembly of the Kirk in the last age, on many accounts, but most of all because its affairs were then directed, and its parties led, by men, whose remarkable talents have not been inherited by any of those who now occupy the same places. The leaders of the Kirk, at the present time, are highly respectable men; but nobody pretends to disguise the fact, that they are but indifferent representatives of Robertson and Erskine; not the worst evidence of which circumstance may, perhaps, be found, in the exactness with which all the peculiarities of these departed leaders are still held in remembrance, even by those who never saw them, and indeed the zeal with which I myself have heard their merits enlarged upon by many who take comparatively little

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interest in matters merely ecclesiastical. The Historian, to be sure, was a person of so much importance, in all points of view, that it is no wonder the circumstances of his behaviour should have been treasured up affectionately, both by those who agreed, and those who disagreed with him as to the affairs of the Kirk. But his rival was nothing but an ecclesiastic; so that the honour in which his memory is held, may perhaps be considered as a still more unequivocal testimony to his ecclesiastical virtues. The truth is, that they were both men of great talents—great virtues—great prudence—and great piety—and the union of these excellencies was enough, without any further addition, to make their brethren of the Kirk proud of their presence living, and of their memories now that they are dead. In their time, the ascendance they had—each over his particular party in the church,—was entire and unquestioned—but each bore his honours so meekly, that even his adversaries rejoiced in acknowledging that his honours were due. For myself, I hear them both spoken of in terms of almost equal respect by both parties. The little irritations of temper which each, no doubt, encountered now and then when alive, have all passed away—even the shadows of them; and nothing is thought of but the honour which both of them equally conferred upon the church to which they belonged. These two leaders of the Church of Scotland were, as it happened, colleague ministers in the same Kirk in Edinburgh; but the party differences which separated them so widely in the Ecclesiastical Courts, were never permitted to disturb the kindness of that co-operative zeal, with which they discharged the common functions thus entrusted to their care. While the minor champions of the two parties were found disturbing with their jealousies, and envies, and aversions, every corner of the country—these excellent men might be seen, year after year, through a long period of their lives, walking together in brotherly love to the church in which they both officiated—each recommending to his people by his example, to listen with Christian confidence to the instructions of the other—forgetting utterly the paltry disputes of Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies, in the presence of their common Father and their common flock—and looking down with equal pity from the elevation of their common love and faith, upon all the little heart-burnings which agitated the bosoms of their less intelligent and less liberal adherents. The example which they thus afforded was, of course, valuable in proportion to the reputation they enjoyed—and in either case this was very great. Of Robertson, nothing need be said—his genius would have made him an object of reverence in any age and country—and in the age and

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country in which he did appear, there were a thousand circumstances which could not fail to enhance the natural value of his great and splendid genius. He was one of the most elegant, and he was by far the most popular, of the authors of his day in Britain; and he formed, in public estimation, the centre of a brilliant constellation, which rose with him on the hitherto dark horizon of the literature of Scotland. He was also at the head of the greatest University in Scotland; and altogether it is very easy to see what a powerful influence such a man as he was, must have exerted over the minds of those who lived in the country which he so eminently adorned—above all, of those who could not but feel a great and just pride in seeing such a man discharging the duties of their own profession. His mild and elegant manners, too, could not be without their effect, even upon those who were comparatively rude and coarse— and the graceful, yet energetic eloquence which he possessed, must have established for him a superiority which few could dispute in any popular assembly. Neither was Dr Erskine, on the other hand, without some peculiar advantages, besides his professional talents and virtues. He was a man of high birth—being a near descendant of the same house of Buchan which has of late years been so prolific in genius—and the share which many branches of his family had taken in the internal convulsions of the country, had given him additional claims to respect in the eyes of a large proportion of those who followed his political, no less than his religious persuasion. He possessed, moreover, a plentiful estate, and both his birth and his wealth enabled him to make an appearance in the world quite different from what is at all usual among the ministers of the Kirk. These things would probably have been of themselves sufficient to render Dr Erskine an object of more than common estimation among his brethren, even had his talents been of a comparatively unimportant class; but conjoined with the natural influence of a most masculine understanding—and that too improved and enriched by a very uncommon share of learning—it is no wonder that their effect should have been great indeed. If you look into his Sermons—and I have often seen them in the hands of clergymen of our church—you will have no difficulty in seeing that the grasp of this man’s intellect was of a very uncommon order—that his metaphysical acuteness was an admirable weapon—and that the noble simplicity of his feelings and sentiments enabled him to wield it with the most safe and beautiful dexterity. You will also see that he had at his command the treasures of an erudition far more extensive, and at the same time far more profound, than is in

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fashion even among the best theologians of our own time; and you will not be surprised to learn, that he lived on terms of equal and familiar correspondence with the giant intellect of Warburton, or that Hurd should have pronounced him to be the “deepest divine he ever knew after the Bishop of Gloucester.” Learning of this kind, however, must have been a much greater wonder in Scotland than it could have been elsewhere; for it is a singular enough thing, that although no country has been more distinguished than this for religious zeal, and although no country, I firmly believe, possesses a more religious population than this, Scotland has been poor beyond all example in the production of eminent theologians. The Kirk of Scotland has produced many sensible, and a few elegant, sermon-writers: but she has nothing to shew beside our great phalanx of biblical or doctrinal divines. Dr Erskine, however, was skilled not only in the branches of what is commonly called theological reading, but in many things besides, which must have enabled him to throw new lights upon the deeper parts of his theology. He was skilled, above all, in profounder kinds of philosophy than his countrymen or ours are fond of; and, among all modern authors, he used to say his chief favourite was Mendelssohn. Some Latin translations from the works of that illustrious Hebrew excited his first curiosity in regard to the Philosophy of Germany, and he acquired the language of that country, at a very advanced period of his life, without the assistance of any master. In all things he was an original man; and he carried with him into all his pursuits a full measure of that high and dauntless ardour, without which nothing great ever was accomplished in any department. I have seen a very fine engraving from a picture of him painted long ago by Raeburn, and I shall bring a copy of it with me to hang in my study beside my uncle’s old favourites, Barrow, Hooker, Butler, Warburton, and Horsley. It is an easy matter to see in his physiognomy the marks of profound reflection, blended and softened with all Christian gentleness of heart and mind. For a better portrait than the pencil can make, you may turn to Guy Mannering; you will there find it drawn to the life—(so I am assured)—by one who has preserved many fine things for Scotland, and few things better worthy of preservation than the image of this eminent divine. On the left hand of the Moderator, I saw the successor of Dr Erskine in the chieftainship of the Whig party of the Kirk of Scotland—Sir Henry Moncrieff. This gentleman is the representative of one of the oldest families in this kingdom, and stands, I believe, very near the head in the list of its baronets; and, like his predecessor, he also no doubt owes

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not a little of his pre-eminence to the influence of his birth and rank. The truth is, that these are things which always do command a very great share of respect everywhere—and in Scotland more than almost anywhere else in the world. You see that even the democrats of Westminster cannot shake off their old English prejudices in regard to these matters; they will never listen to their Gale Joneses and their Bristol Hunts, while they have any chance of being harangued by mistaken gentlemen, such as Burdett, Kinnaird, and Hobhouse. The herd of plebeian clergymen in the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland confess the same innate veneration for symbols of worldly distinction, by the half-proud, halfhumble glances which they are perpetually casting towards the orangetawney ribbon and Nova Scotia badge that decorate the breast of the only man of title in their body. Sir Henry, indeed, does not require these symbols to attest his claims to aristocratical distinction. His air is decidedly that of a man of birth and station—he holds himself with the true mien of a dignitary—and looks (under favour,) when surrounded by his adherents, very much like a Lord Bishop receiving the bows of his country curates at a visitation. All this, however, is very far from constituting his sole right to the eminence he holds. The marks of strong vigorous intellect are planted thick upon his physiognomy—his forehead is compact and full of nerve, and the head rises into a superb height in the region of Will—his nose is thick set between his brows, and the nostrils are curved like those of an Hercules. His lips are compressed with a decision of purpose that nothing can shake; and the whole face abounds in square massy lines, that pronounce his temperament to be that of one fond of gladiatorship. His smile, too, is full of a courtly suavity, which shews that he is skilful as well as bold—and, what is best of all for a leader of a party, the general air of the man is stamped with the expression of sheer honesty. Nobody can look upon the Baronet without perceiving that nature meant him to be a ruler, not a subject; and, if I may judge from the specimens I have seen, he is, in truth, a very admirable master in the great art of rule. He seems, indeed, to have a prodigious tact in the management of his tumultuous array; and the best proof of it is, that those whom he leads do not seem to have the least suspicion of the extent of their subjection. When he speaks, one is put very strongly in mind of the forensic eloquence of his son, which I think I have already described to you. Like him, his voice and gestures are harsh—like him, he disdains, or seems to disdain, all the elegancies of the art—but, like him, he plants himself resolutely before his difficulties—and, like him, if nothing else will do, he cuts the knots with the decision of a genuine

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Macedonian. The contrast which his plain downright method of attacking the understanding where it should be attacked, presents to the vague illogical rhapsodies of the rural fine speakers from the back rows of the aisle—or to the feeble irresolute middle-sailings of the smooth wouldbe sages that sit nearer himself—is as striking a thing as possible. But his main excellence seems to lie in the art with which he contrives to correct, almost ere they are made, the blunders of his ambitious—and to nerve, even while they are faultering, the courage and decision of his timorous associates. He is a great politician; and, had he come into Parliament, I have very little doubt his peculiar faculties would have made him as powerful a person there as he is here in the General Assembly of the Kirk. Nearly opposite to him, at the other hand of the Moderator, sits Dr Inglis, the chief of the Moderate or Tory party—or rather, perhaps, the chief of a small college of cardinals, by whom that party is managed, as the other party is by the undivided vigour of Sir Henry Moncrieff. The doctor is an ungainly figure of a man at first sight, but, on looking a little, one easily observes in him also the marks both of good breeding and strong intellect. His voice is peculiarly unfortunate—or, rather, he has two voices, a hoarse and a sharp, from the one to the other of which he sometimes makes different digressions in the course of the same sentence. But when once the impression of this disagreeable voice is got over, one finds that it is the vehicle both of excellent language and of excellent sense. He does not appear to speak under the same violent impulses of personal will which characterize the Baronet’s eloquence; but he is quite as logical in his reasoning, and perhaps still more dexterous in the way in which he brings his arguments to bear upon the conclusion to which he would conduct his hearers. In his illustrations, too, he displays the command of a much more copious reading, and a much more lively fancy than his rival. And even his voice, when he touches upon any topic of feeling, reveals a something totally unexpected by those who hear him for the first time—its harshest notes being, as it were, softened and deepened into a mysterious sort of tremour, which is irresistibly impressive, in spite of its uncouthness. The secret is, that Dr Inglis is a man of genuine power, and the eloquence of such men cannot be stayed by any minor obstacles from working its way to its object. But I am forgetting the order in which all these things appeared to me. P. M.

LETTER LIX TO THE SAME

IN witnessing the forms of the Presbyterian Convocation, I could not help feeling a greater degree of interest than I should otherwise have done, from the notion that in them, and, indeed, in the whole aspect of the Assembly, not a little might be perceived of the same appearances which characterized, two centuries ago, those more important meetings, in which the Presbyterian party in Church and State took the lead and direction. On the first day of the Assembly, for example, after the Commissioner had delivered his credentials, which consisted of a long pious epistle upon parchment, from the Prince Regent to the Ministers and Elders in General Assembly convened, wherein his Royal Highness stimulates them to a still more zealous discharge of their respective duties, by all manner of devout arguments, and copious quotations from the minor Prophets and Epistles—and after the Moderator had returned thanks for this favour, and intimated the firm resolution of himself and his brethren to profit, as far as the infirmities of their nature might permit, by the faithful admonitions of “the nursing father of our Zion,”—after these ceremonies had been duly gone through, the whole of the forenoon, that is from twelve till five o’clock, was devoted to a succession of extemporaneous or seemingly extemporaneous prayers delivered by the Moderator himself, and after him by various clergymen in different quarters of the house, who appeared to call upon each other for addresses to the Deity, in the same way as the members of less sacred assemblies call upon each other for glees and catches. This reminded me most strongly of the descriptions which Clarendon gives of the opening of the Sessions of the Rump—to say nothing of the committees of major-generals under Cromwell. The long, dreary, dreamy, wandering, threadless discourses, too, which some of the reverend performers took occasion to deliver, reminded me of some of the crafty vaguenesses of old Noll himself, and the more sincere absurdities of Sir Harry Vane. A few of the more sensible seniors, and most of the younger members, appeared to have some faint notion that a prayer to the Almighty ought not to be a composition of the same class with a

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homily to sinful men; but, in general, those who conducted the devotions of the Assembly on this occasion, although they began and concluded with the usual invocation and glorification, did not in fact pray, but preach, throughout the body of their addresses. It seems to me that there is something most offensively irreverent in the style of these extemporaneous effusions—Nay, I do not hesitate to say, that their character was such as entirely to take away from me all notion of joining mentally in the devotions which they were probably meant to express. Under the mask of supplication to the Deity, it seemed to be considered as quite a proper thing to introduce all manner of by-hits at the errors and corruptions observed, not only in the practice, but in the creed also of our fellow-men; and it was easy to see, that instead of humbly pouring out the aspirations of a devout spirit before the throne of Grace, the intention of the praying minister was not unfrequently to shew off his own skill in clearing up the darkness of points, which would never have been left mysterious in the oracles of God, had it been judged meet that our reason should fully comprehend them. And yet in spite of all this— the appearance of sincerity and ardour was so strong in most of the addresses, that it was impossible to listen to them without feeling respect for those from whose lips they proceeded, and I had no difficulty in believing that custom and ancient prejudice might have been sufficient to render them the most acceptable vehicles for the warmest devotional feelings of those, whose serious and earnest physiognomies met my too-excursive eye in every quarter of the Assembly. As the hour of dinner approached, however, I could not avoid observing a considerable diminution in the attentiveness of the majority of the audience, and, at last, an apparently interminable orator was fairly jogged on the elbow by his neighbours, as the finger of the clock began to come within a few lines of the appointed period. Wastle and I adjourned with many others to the Royal Hotel, where it is the custom, during the sitting of the Assembly, for such as have attended the levee of the Commissioner, to be present on the same day at the more substantial ceremonial of his dinner. The feast was a pretty thing in its way, and did credit to the taste of the bold individual who has adventured to finger the napkin of the peerless Macculloch. The company, too, was splendid at my end of the table, where the more fashionable members of the party were congregated within hearing of the Commissioner himself. Towards the other extremity, at which his Grace’s purse-bearer officiated as croupier, the company seemed to consist mostly of clerical personages—and I thought the broad hungry

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faces of some of these rural divines, looked somewhat aghast upon the fine Frenchified dishes, omelets, orissoles, crocats, and fricandeaus, which smoked in all the pomp of garlic beneath their sharp nostrils.— “Fat have we gotten hereawa?”—cried one of them—whose keen brazen voice penetrated quite across the room, in very indecorous distinctness, “Fat have we here, Dr Macbrair?—I wish I had a guid platefu’ of beef an’ reets—this is feed fit for naebody but Moushers.”— “Ye say naething but the trowth,” said the other—“an binna a bit fite fish, I’ve got naething to ca’ a moothfu’ since I cam here the day.”—A compassionate waiter, however, soon brought two large trenchers of roast mutton from the side-table, and soothed effectually the clamours of these ravenous Aberdonians. They were quite silent for some ten minutes, I imagine; but a salver of hock being carried round, they both drank with precipitation of the unwonted fluid—and I perceived them spitting and sputtering afterwards, as if they had swallowed vinegar. I heard them muttering something about “pooshening”—but the poison came my own way, and my attention was diverted from the conclusion of their colloquy. The dinner, however, was upon the whole rather a stately than an agreeable one; and although the wine was good, I can scarcely say I regretted the earliness of the hour at which the Commissioner rose, and the party broke up. It was no more than seven when we departed, so that I carried the Laird home with me to Oman’s, and gave him a bottle or two of better claret than his Grace’s—for wine, after all, is an equivocator with gout as well as with some other distempers, and if it accelerates the advent of the fit, there is no question it hastens also the departure of its relics. Such, at least, is the creed of PETER MORRIS, M. D. &c. &c. &c.

LETTER LX TO THE SAME

I WENT often to the Assembly during its sittings; but, in general, I found the business in which they were engaged of a nature so dull, that I was contented to make my visits short. It was only on one day that I was induced to prolong my stay during the whole sederunt—and, in truth, I am given to understand, that it is only when subjects of the sort then discussed come before them, that, even among the clergy themselves, much interest or attention is excited. On entering the house, indeed, I could not but remark, that the rows set apart for Members of Assembly were garnished with a plentiful admixture of persons, obviously of a totally different description from those with whose faces I had formed some acquaintance on the “day of prayers.” Here and there among the sober clergymen, on either side of the house, might be seen scattered knots of young men, who wore indeed black coats, but whose whole air and mien were decidedly the reverse of clerical. Not a few of their faces, moreover, were already familiar to me, although I could not at first bring myself to believe that they were actually the same faces I had so often speculated upon, among the far different accompaniments of the Outer-House and its side-bars. A friend, however, to whom I applied for information, told me at once that my suspicions were perfectly well founded, and that the young gentlemen whose unecclesiastical appearance had struck my observation, were no other than so many juvenile advocates, to whom it would seem their respective Presbyteries and Boroughs in the country had entrusted the duties of representing them in the General Assembly of the Church. You have heard, no doubt, that a certain number of Lay Elders are admitted to the counsels of all the Ecclesiastical Courts in Scotland—but nobody certainly would have suspected that such a venerable designation could be applied to such persons as these young limbs of the law. Could the spirit of Knox re-animate once more the dust that sleeps beneath the chancel of St Giles’s, what wrath would suffuse the “grim visage of verjuice, frowning over a red beard in shape like unto an otter’s tail,” on seeing the seats which such laymen as George Buchanan once held,

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profaned by the intrusion of such heirs as these. Truly, the great τειχεσιπλητας would have deemed it foul scorn that the Scottish Zion should seek her Ruling Elders in the Stove-School! The case which had induced all these worthies to congregate themselves among the more regular and conscientious Members of the Convocation, was that of a Northern Minister, (from the Hebrides I believe,) who had been accused of criminal conversation with his housekeeper, and who now, after having been tried in succession by the minor jurisdictions of the Presbytery and Provincial Synod, was about to have his guilt or innocence finally determined by the supreme fiat of the infallible Assembly. The moment his case was announced, I observed an unusual commotion in every part of the house—ministers, laymen, and ladies, all alike leaning forward to catch the ipsissima verba of the peccant parson’s dittay. It did not seem to be held proper, however, that the last named body of auditors should be indulged with the full gratification of their curiosity, for several of the leading ministers round the Moderator’s table began immediately by nods, winks, and pointings, to intimate to them the necessity of their withdrawing themselves. Nods and winks, however, did not produce much effect; and Dr Macknight, the principal secretary of the Assembly, was obliged to make himself very conspicuous by a terrific use of his lungs in exhortation, before the whole of the fair visitors could be prevailed upon to take themselves off. After they were gone, the remaining audience seemed to feel themselves at liberty to listen with more undisguised eagerness to the minutiæ of the affair; and, indeed, the prolixity of the details to which they listened, was no less extravagant than disgusting. For myself, after hearing an hour or two of the thing, I became heartily sick of it, and would have retired had it not been for the sake of the specimens of clerical eloquence which I hoped to hear after the evidence had been gone through. Even this, however, did not gratify me quite so much as I had expected. Dr Inglis and Sir Harry Moncrieff seemed to be contented with delivering their opinions (which, by the way, exactly coincided) in as few words as possible, and the banquet of expatiating and commenting was left almost untouched for the less delicate lips of the minorum gentium Dei from the country. The more conspicuous of the clerical orators, were Dr Skene Keith, a shrewd, bitter, sarcastic humourist from Aberdeenshire, and Mr Lapslie, an energetic rhapsodist from the west of Scotland. The last-mentioned individual is undoubtedly the most enthusiastic speaker I ever heard. He is a fine, tall, bony man, with a face full of fire, and a bush of white locks, which he shakes about him like the thyrsus of a

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Bacchanal. He tears his waistcoat open—he bares his breast as if he had scars to shew—he bellows—he sobs—he weeps—and sits down at the end of his harangue, trembling all to the fingers’ ends like an exhausted Pythoness. He possesses, undoubtedly, many of the natural elements of oratory—but of perfect oratory it may be said, as the Stagyrite has already said of perfect poetry, that it is the affair “οὐ μανικου τινος αλλα εμφρονος”. I won’t trouble you with the minutiæ—the poor minister was at last found innocent—and for how much of his safety he might be indebted to the impassioned defence of Dr Lapslie, I shall not pretend to guess. But whatever may be thought of the external shows and forms of their procedure, I should imagine there can be no more than one and the same respectful opinion concerning that severe and scrutinizing style of ecclesiastical discipline, of which such procedure constitutes so remarkable a part. It must be admitted, David, in spite of all our prejudices, that this popular form of church government carries with it manifold advantages. To you, who so well know the present state of discipline in the Church of England—it is not necessary that I should say much on this head. That no clergyman in the Church of Scotland can be suspected of any breach of that decorum, the absolute integrity of which is so necessary to his professional usefulness, without at once subjecting himself to the anxious and jealous investigation of Courts composed as these are—this one circumstance is of itself enough to convince me, that the clerical character in Scotland must stand very high in the sacred secureness of its purity. And so, indeed, is the fact, “their enemies themselves being witnesses.” Even Wastle, with all his Episcopalian prejudices, is proud of the uncontaminated character of the Clergy of the Established Church of Scotland, and scruples not to express his wish that some churches, with whose form of government he is better pleased, were better capable of sustaining a comparison with this. For me, I was always less of a bigot than Wastle; and really the more I see of the Kirk, the more do I begin to be of opinion that forms of ecclesiastical government are, after all, of comparatively little avail— and that here, perhaps as elsewhere, “whate’er is best administered is best.”* _____________________________________________ * Here some reflections, touching the Clergy of Wales, are omitted.

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Neither, after what I have heard you say so often and so well about the propriety of re-establishing the Ecclesiastical Convocation in England, can I at all doubt of your agreeing with me in admiring the institution of the General Assembly in Scotland. It may be true, that, in the present state of things, few questions of great moment are submitted to the consideration of this Court—and it may be true, that in the mode of considering such questions as are submitted to it, there is much that may call a smile into the cheek of a casual observer. But who can question that the clerical body, and through them the whole of those who adhere to the Church of Scotland—receive the most substantial good from this annual meeting, which calls all their representatives together? The very fact that such a meeting takes place, is enough to satisfy one that it is prolific in benefits. From it there must be carried every year, into the remotest districts which contribute to its numbers, a spirit and an impetus that cannot fail to infuse a new life into the whole body of the ecclesiastical polity in Scotland. From it there must spring an union of purpose—a condensation of endeavour—a knowledge of what ought to be done, and a wisdom concerning the mode of doing it— which I fear it is quite impossible the clergymen of a church, ruled without such convocations, should ever effectually rival. I think, in good truth, the churchmen of England should no longer permit themselves to be deprived of the advantages which a General Assembly cannot but confer—advantages, too, which it was always presumed, by the great founders of their own polity, that the Church of England should and must possess. To revive any claims to that political authority, which the Convocation of England formerly possessed, would be entirely absurd and unprofitable; and I think they are not true friends to the church, who throw obstacles in the way of re-establishing the convocation by such hints as these. But there is abundant occasion for a convocation, even although it should have nothing to do with taxation, and little with politics of any kind. Besides the general reason of the thing, the example of the Church of Scotland, and the superior success with which its fabric

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seems to hold out against the encroachments of sectaries, should not be overlooked or disdained. If the clergy of England possessed the means of bringing their intellects into collision, and so of shewing what their strength of intellect really is in the discussions of a great Ecclesiastical Court, I have no doubt the world would soon be satisfied that there is no body of men more largely entitled to the respect and confidence of their fellow-countrymen. The puny tribes of Dissenters, who keep up everywhere a noisy and petulant warfare against the scattered and unsupported ministers of our church, would at once be awed into silence and insignificance by the shew of intellectual might—erudition—and virtue, which would beam from this majestic Assembly. The ignorant ravings of one set of your enemies, and the cold degrading cant of another still worse set of them, would be alike rebuked into nothingness by the resurrection of the slumbering genius of your Union. I know your feelings on this subject—and I know that your opinions, in regard to it, have been far more matured by reflection than mine; but here I see with my own eyes the actual operation of a similar engine, and I cannot refrain from expressing to you the impression it makes upon me—too happy should any hint of mine be of the least power in stimulating the zeal of one so much better able to understand and to promote the interests of a church, which, however, you can neither love more warmly, nor venerate more profoundly, than I do. *

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I have, in some of my former letters, said a good deal about the sceptical style of philosophy prevalent among the Scottish Universities and Literati—and I have also said something about the general influence of the peculiar style of religious belief adopted by the great body of the nation; but I fear that, in regard to both subjects, my mode of talking may have been calculated to leave you with somewhat erroneous impressions. Of late, since the General Assembly, I have directed my attention much more closely than I had done to the state of religion in this kingdom—I have made it my business to go from church to church in this city, and hear with my own ears all the more celebrated preachers it possesses—things which, indeed, I should have done much earlier,

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had it not been for the violent prejudices of my good friend, Mr Wastle, who insisted, Sunday after Sunday, on my accompanying him to his pew in one particular Episcopalian Chapel, and, I firmly believe, would have thought it a fine thing could he have persuaded me to quit Scotland without having heard a single sermon in a Presbyterian kirk. I rejoice, on every account, that I broke through these trammels, and that in consequence of having done so, I shall now have it in my power to present you with much, and, I hope, interesting information, of which you must otherwise have been deprived. P. M.

LETTER LXI TO THE SAME

I HAVE remarked, that among the people of Scotland, conversation turns much more frequently, and much more fervently, on the character and attainments of individual clergymen, than is at all usual with us in England. Nor does it seem to me that this is any just subject of astonishment, considering what the nature of the Ecclesiastical Establishment in Scotland really is. The disdain of those external formalities, by which elsewhere so great, and I think so proper an impression is made on the minds of the people—the absence of all those arts which elsewhere enlist the imagination and fancy of men, on the side of that Faith which rather subdues than satisfies our finite Reason—the plain austere simplicity with which the Presbyterian Church invests herself in all her addresses to the intellect of her adherents—all these things may in themselves be rather injudicious than otherwise, in the present state of our nature—but all these things contribute, I should suppose, and that neither feebly nor indistinctly, to the importance of the individual priests, into whose hands this church entrusts the administration of her unadorned and unimposing observances. Deprived of the greater part of those time-hallowed and majestic rites, with which the notions of profound piety are in other countries so intimately linked in the minds of mankind, and by which the feelings of piety are so powerfully stimulated and sustained—deprived of all those aids which devotion elsewhere borrows from the senses and the imagination—the Presbyterian Church possesses, in her formal and external constitution, very few of those elements which contribute most effectually to the welfare of the other churches in Christendom. But the most naked ritual cannot prevent the imaginations and the feelings of men from taking the chief part in their piety, and these, debarred from the species of nourishment elsewhere afforded, are here content to seek nourishment of another kind, in the contemplation not of Forms, but of Men. To the devout Presbyterian—the image of his minister, and the idea of his superior sanctity, come instead not only of the whole calendar of the Catholic Christian, but of all the splendid liturgies, and chauntings, and pealing

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organs of our English cathedrals. The Church of Scotland may say with the Greek,—“It is not in wide-spreading battlements, nor in lofty towers, that the security of our city consists—Men are our defence.”— ουτοι εισιν τα τειχεα και τα πυργωματα ὁισπερ εκσωζεται ἡμων ἡ πολις. How great and commanding was the influence which the early ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland exerted over the minds of their people, is well known to you—and may easily indeed be gathered from all the histories of the times. In those days, of course, the natural effects of the naked ceremonial of the Kirk were mightily augmented by the persecution which prevented her from making free and open use of its scanty services; so that the Ministers were often not the chief only, but the sole symbols of the faith of those who followed their system, and were regarded as nothing less than so many moveable tabernacles, carrying with them into the wilderness the only visible types of their primitive devotion. Even now, however, there survive no inconsiderable relics of the same prejudices which then throve so luxuriantly in the “bare and desolated bosoms” of an oppressed and insulted people— growing like the Tannen of Childe Harold, Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks, Rooted in barrenness, where nought below Of soil sustained them ’gainst the Alpine shocks Of eddying storms.——

A thousand proud, no less than pious recollections, are connected in Scottish minds, with that integrity of their ecclesiastical polity, which was the reward of the long sufferings and constancy of their forefathers—and with the persons of those whom they regard as the heirs and offspring of the principal actors in all the scenes of that eventful period. I have already said something of the attempts which were made to represent the first Tales of my Landlord as a series of wanton attacks upon the heroes of the Covenant, and insults against the Presbyterian prejudices of the majority of the Scottish people. The best proof of the injustice and absurdity of these attempts, is their total failure. Had the Tale of Old Mortality been written in that spirit, it would not have taken its place, as it has already done, in the cottages of Scotland, beside the “big ha’ Bible,” and the original rude histories of the seventeenth century. And if more proof were wanting, it would be found in the very different fate which has attended a work of much amusement, and no inconsiderable cleverness, written really and plainly in that spirit of scoffing and irreverence, which the author of these Novels never could

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have been capable of displaying—I mean Mr Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s Edition of Kirkton’s History. Much may, no doubt, be pardoned in a descendant of the murdered archbishop—I speak not of the man, for whom there may be many apologies—but of his book, which cannot be anywise defended when considered per se, and which even the Quarterly Review will in vain endeavour to save from that utter neglect, which is at once the most just and the most severe punishment of all such offences against feelings in themselves respectable, and in their effects beneficial. You will comprehend, then, that the species of devotion with which the Scotch Presbyterians are accustomed to regard the persons of their clergymen, is a much more noble sort of thing than the homage paid to Methodist pastors by their saintly flocks in England. It partakes of the dignity of ancient recollections—and it borrows dignity, moreover, from the wide and national character of the feelings which it embodies and expresses. Our Methodist divines, on the contrary, are saturated with a vulgar banquet, which has not one element of grandeur to redeem any portion of its vulgarity. The slavish wonderment with which they are gazed upon by the goggling eyes of their mechanical followers, is a very different sort of thing from the filial respect with which the Moncrieffs, Inglises, and Chalmerses of Scotland, are regarded by the devout descendants of the old establishers of Presbytery. So much for proem. The first Presbyterian clergyman of Edinburgh, whom I went to hear, was the same Reverend Baronet of whose appearance in the General Assembly I have already spoken. In the pulpit, the appearance of this man is quite as commanding, and it is (under favour) far more amiable, than in the Ecclesiastical Court; and this is just as it should be. He has a pride, it would seem, in keeping up as much as the times will permit, not only of the animating spirit, but the external demeanour, of the old Presbyterian divines. They, you know, set their faces entirely against the notion of any superior sanctity being attached to the mere locale of any place of worship, and in order to mark this notion in a tangible way, they introduced the custom of entering the church covered. Sir Henry adheres even to this somewhat rude practice, and I observed him with astonishment walking from his vestry through the church, and ascending the steps of his pulpit with his hat on his head. It was not till he had fairly established himself in his seat, that he took off his hat, and hung it upon a peg immediately over him. I was surprised, and a little offended perhaps, by the apparent irreverence of this behaviour; but the

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service soon commenced, and my thoughts were speedily constrained to flow in a very different channel. In his prayer, however, and even through a considerable part of his sermon, I must not deny that the impression of strength and acumen, conveyed by the style of the Baronet’s eloquence, was still accompanied with some sense of coarseness, not much expected or relished in such a situation by my English ears. The novelty of such a way of preaching, notwithstanding, was sufficient to rivet effectually my attention, and the broad substratum of practical pith could not fail to shine brightly through the voluntary opakenesses he scattered over his surface. But towards the end, when he had done with all his bitter and dogmatic reprobations of those who interpret differently from him the passage on which he enlarged, and made an end also of his own somewhat technical expositions of the Calvinistic minutiæ in point, and began fairly to press home upon his people the use which they ought to make, in their daily life and conversation, of the truths which he had been promulgating or establishing—it was then that all the harsher parts of his mind seemed to have been stilled into quiescence, and that all the lines of his masculine countenance seemed to thrill and vibrate with the genuine apostolic tenderness of a Christian minister. Nor when I looked up and saw those features, which heretofore I had contemplated clothed in the rigid marble of unmixed austerity, dissolving now and trembling with the warm gushing inspirations of love and compassion—could I help feeling, that this is the true way in which the gentler and more delightful feelings of humanity ought to be made to come in the train and attendance of the sterner behests of that law which is nothing unless it be severe. What a different sort of effect has such a tender close as this, following after the bold and pealing alarums of an unsparing, (even should it be a rude) honesty, from the puling and piping echoes of eternal tenderness with which not a few of the popular sermon-makers of the day think fit to regale the effeminate ears of their admirers! How different from the eloquence of your white handkerchiefed whiners—your ring-displaying, faultering, fawning, frothy weavers of pathetic periods—your soft, simpering saints, from whose mouths the religion of the Bible falls diluted and dulcified, like the meretricious moonlight burdens of an Irish melody!—It is by the ministrations of these poor drawlers that the Christian faith is degraded in the eyes of men who are sharp enough to observe these superficial absurdities, but not wise enough to penetrate below their veil into its true and deep-placed majesty. It is, on the other hand, by the ministrations of such men as Sir Henry Moncrieff, that men

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are, or ought to be, inspired with an equal and a simultaneous reverence for the awful and the gentle notes that are ever mingled together in the true oracles of God. I also heard Dr Inglis preach; and the high idea I had formed of him, from his speaking in the Assembly, was certainly raised, rather than otherwise, by the style of his eloquence in the Pulpit. This preacher is far from exhibiting anything of the same extreme attachment to the externals of the old Presbyterian Divines, which I had remarked in Sir Henry Moncrieff. He preaches, indeed, like a sound Calvinist; but in the arrangement of his subject, the choice of his illustrations, and the whole strain of his language, he is very little different from the best of our own High-Church preachers in England. I am sure, indeed, that (laying aside his northern accent, and some characteristic gestures which are quite as peculiar to the atmosphere of the north,) Dr Inglis might preach the sermon I heard in any Cathedral in England, and would, in so doing, not only impress his audience with great admiration of his talents, but carry along with him, in the whole turn of his thoughts and sentiments, the perfect intelligence of their sympathies. And why, after all, should I state this as a circumstance any wise wonderful in regard to a man who is, as I have already told you, an accomplished scholar both in and out of his profession? The Scottish clergyman, who is an accomplished divine, must have become such only by having intensely studied and comprehended the great divines of England. With the language of these men, and the knowledge of these men, is it wonderful that he should also adopt their modes of thinking and of feeling? I think it were strange, indeed, if he should not do so. Sir Henry Moncrieff officiates in a church which lies out of the town altogether, at the western side of the Castle; and Dr Inglis in the Greyfriars Church, which is situated in an obscure part of the Old Town. But the most popular preacher of the time in Edinburgh occupies a new and magnificent place of worship in the finest square, and most fashionable neighbourhood, of the whole city. Mr Andrew Thomson (for that is his name) is a much younger man than either of those I have described; and perhaps his talents are still better adapted than those of either, for producing a powerful impression on the minds of people living in what may be called, strictly speaking, the Society of Edinburgh. Nor, indeed, can any better proof of his eminent qualifications be required, than the effect which, unless I am quite misinformed, his preaching has already produced in the place of his ministrations. I am assured, that churchgoing was a thing comparatively out of fashion among the fine folks of

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the New-Town of Edinburgh, till this man was removed from a church he formerly held in the Old-Town, and established under the splendid dome of St George’s. Only two or three years have elapsed since this change took place; and yet although he was at first received with no inconsiderable coolness by the self-complacent gentry of his new parish,—and although he adopted nothing that ordinary people would have supposed likely to overcome this coolness, he has already entirely subdued all their prejudices, and enjoys at this moment a degree of favour among all classes of his auditors, such as—(to the shame of the world be it spoken)—very seldom falls to the share of such a man in such a place. His appearance is good; and this is less of a trifle in regard to such matters than he himself would perhaps be willing to allow. He is an active and muscular man, about forty, and carries in his countenance the stamp of a nature deficient in none of those elements which are most efficacious in giving a man command over the minds of persons placed under the continual operation of his intellect. Most of his features, indeed, are rather homely than otherwise in their conformation—but they are all well defined, massy, and full of power. His eyes are quick, and firmly set—his lips are bold, and nervous in their motions, no less than in their quiescence—his nose is well carved, and joins firmly with a forehead of unquestionably very fine and commanding structure, expanded broadly below in sinuses of most iron projection, and swelling above in a square compact form, which harmonizes well with a strong and curled texture of hair. His attitude has no great pretensions to grace, but it conveys the notion of inflexible vigour and decision. His voice sounds somewhat harshly at first, but as he goes on one feels that it possesses a large compass, and that he wields its energies with the mastery of a musician. In his mode of preaching, he displays less play of fancy than Dr Inglis; and he never rises into any such broad and over-mastering bursts of pure passion, as I admired in the conclusion of Sir Henry Moncrieff’s sermon. But throughout, he sustains more skilfully than either, the tenor of his whole argument, and he mixes with it all throughout a thread of feeling, which is enough and more than enough to keep the interest alive and awake. But the chief origin of the power he has obtained, must be sought for, I doubt not, in the choice of his topics—the bold and unfearing manner in which he has dared to fix the attention of his audience, not upon matters best calculated to favour the display of his own ingenuity, or to flatter their vanity, by calling upon them to be

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ingenious in their listening—but upon plain points of radical importance in doctrine and practice, of which, as treated by preachers less acquainted with the actual ways of the world, it is probable most of them had become in a great measure weary, but which their own innate value and innate truth could not fail to render imperiously and decisively interesting, the moment they began to be handled by one possessed of the thorough manliness of tact and purpose, which Mr Thomson cannot utter five sentences without displaying. To talk, indeed, of exhausting the interest of any such topics by any method of treating them—would be an absurdity—and cannot be explained in any sense, without involving the severest of satires upon those to whom the discussion is addressed. But it is, after all, a very wonderful thing how seldom one does find a man carrying with him into the pulpit, the perfect knowledge of the world as it is—a complete acquaintance with all the evanescent manifestations of folly, existing, for the moment, in the thoughts and feelings of “the great vulgar and the small”—and it is no less wonderful, and far more pitiable to observe, with what readiness the cosmopolites of the day take up with the want of this sort of knowledge on the part of their clergyman, as a sufficient apology for slighting and neglecting the weight of his opinion in regard to matters, their own intense ignorance and non-comprehension of which is so much less excusable, or, I should rather say, is so entirely unaccountable and absurd. Till the fine gentlemen of the present day perceive that you understand all that they themselves do, their self-love will not permit them to give you credit for understanding anything which they themselves do not understand— nay—not even for thinking that things are important, about the importance or non-importance of which they themselves have never had the fortune to occupy any portion of their surpassing acumen and discernment. In a word, in order to preach with effect to the people of the world, as they are educated now-a-days, it is necessary to shew that you have gone through all their own little track—and then they may perhaps be persuaded that you have gone beyond it. Now, Mr Andrew Thomson strikes me to be, without exception, one of the most complete masters of this world’s knowledge I ever heard preach on either side of the Tweed; and therefore it is that he produces a most powerful effect, by shewing himself to be entirely and utterly its despiser. The person who hears him preach has none of the usual resources to which many are accustomed to retreat, when something is said from the pulpit that displeases their prejudices. They cannot pretend, even to themselves, that this is a secluded enthusiast who knows no better, and would not

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talk so, had he seen a little more of life. It is clear, from the moment he touches upon life, that he has looked at it as narrowly as if that observation had been his ultimatum, not his mean; and the probability is, that instead of smiling at his ignorance, the hearer may rather find occasion to suspect that his knowledge surpasses his own. Having command of this rare and potent engine, with which to humble and disarm that worldly self-love, which is among the most formidable enemies of a modern preacher’s eloquence,—and employing it at all times with the most fearless and unhesitating freedom,—and following it up at all times by the boldest and most energetic appeals to the native workings of the heart, which may be chilled, but are seldom extinguished,—it is no wonder that this man should have succeeded in establishing for himself a firm and lasting sway over the minds of his apparently elegant and fashionable audience. It has never indeed been my fortune to see, in any other audience of the kind, so many of the plain manifestations of attentive and rational interest during divine service. As for the sighing and sobbing masters and misses which one meets with at such places as Rowland Hill’s chapel, and now and then at an evening sermon in the Foundling, these are beings worked upon by quite a different set of engines—engines which a man of sagacious mind, and nervous temperament, like Mr Thomson, would blush to employ. I rejoice in finding that Edinburgh possesses, in the heart of her society, the faithful ministrations of this masculine intellect; and it is a great additional reason for rejoicing, that by means, the effect of which could not have been calculated upon beforehand, these his faithful ministrations should have come to carry with them not only the tolerance, but the favour of those to whom they may do so much good. It is very seldom that the stream of fashion is seen to flow in a channel so safe, and a direction so beneficial. Of the other members of the Established Church of Edinburgh whom I have heard preach, one of those who made most impression upon my mind was Dr Thomas Macknight, son to the author of The Harmony of the Gospels, and Translation of the Epistles. I went chiefly from a desire to see the descendant of one of the few true theological writers Scotland has produced, and I found that the son inherits the learning of his father. Indeed, I have seldom heard more learning displayed in any sermon, and that, too, without at all diminishing the practical usefulness of its tendency. Another was Dr Brunton, whom I confess I went to hear from a motive of somewhat the same kind—the wish, namely, to see the widowed husband of the authoress of Discipline, and the other novels

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of that striking series. He has a pale countenance, full of the expression of delicacy, and a melancholy sensibility, which is but too well accounted for by the grievous loss he has sustained. One sees that he is quite composed and resigned; but there is a settled sadness about his eyes which does equal honour to the departed and the survivor. In his sermon he displayed a great deal of elegant conception and elegant language; and altogether, under the circumstances which attended him, he seemed to me one of the most modestly impressive preachers I have ever heard. *

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LETTER LXII TO THE SAME

I BELIEVE, therefore, most entirely in the merits of the Kirk—I have no doubt it is as well fitted as any establishment in Christendom could be, for promoting the cause of religion among the people of Scotland— nay, I may go farther, and say, that with the intellectual tendencies and habits of this people, it is now perhaps much the best they could have. Presbytery, however, was not established in this country without a long and violent struggle, or series of struggles, in which it is too true, that the mere tyrannical aversion of the Stuart kings, was the main and most effectual enemy the Presbyterians had to contend with—but in which, notwithstanding, there was enlisted against the cause of that sect, no inconsiderable nor weak array of fellow-citizens, conscientiously and devoutly adhering to an opposite system. It was a pity that the Scottish Episcopalians were almost universally Jacobites; for their adoption of that most hated of all heresies made it a comparatively easy matter for their doctrinal enemies to scatter them entirely from the field before them. Nevertheless, in spite of all the disfavour and disgrace with which, for a length of years, they had to contend, the spirit of the Episcopalian Church did not evaporate or expire, and she has of late lifted up her head again in a style of splendour, that seems to awaken considerable feelings of jealousy and wrath in the bosoms of the more bigotted Presbyterians who contemplate it. The more liberal adherents of the Scottish Kirk, however, seem to entertain no such feelings, or, rather, they take a pleasure in doing full justice to the noble stedfastness which has been displayed through so long a period of neglect, and more than neglect, by their fellow Christians of this persuasion. To the clergy of the Episcopalian Church, in particular, they have no difficulty in conceding a full measure of that praise, which firm adherence to principle has at all times the power of commanding; and the adherence of these men has, indeed, been of the highest and most meritorious kind. With a self-denial and humility, worthy of the primitive ages of the church, they have submitted to all manner of penury and privation, rather than depart from their inherited faith, or leave the people of their sect without the

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support of that spiritual instruction, for which it was out of their power to offer any thing more than a very trivial and inadequate kind of remuneration. Nay, in the midst of all their difficulties and distresses, they have endeavoured, with persevering zeal, to sustain the character of their own body in regard to learning—and they have succeeded in doing so in a way that reflects the highest honour not only on their zeal, but their talents. Not a few names of very considerable celebrity, in the past literature of Scotland, are to be found among the scattered and impoverished members of this Apostolical Church—and even in our own time, the talents of many men have been devoted to its service, who might easily have commanded what less heroic spirits would have thought a far more precious kind of reward, had they chosen to seek, in other pursuits and professions, what they well knew this could never afford them. I might mention the present venerable Bishop Primus, Dr Gleig of Stirling, whose merits both as a theologian and a metaphysician are as well known in England as they are here—and many more besides. In Edinburgh, two very handsome new chapels have of late years been erected by the Episcopalians; and the clergymen who officiate in them possess faculties eminently calculated for extending the reputation of their church. Dr Sandford, the Bishop of the Diocese, preaches regularly in the one, and the minister of the other is no less a person than Mr Alison, the celebrated author of the Essays on Taste, and of those exquisite Sermons which I have so often heard you speak of in terms of rapture— and which, indeed, no man can read, who has either taste or feeling, without admiration almost as great as yours. The Bishop is a thin pale man, with an air and aspect full of a certain devout and melancholy sort of abstraction, and a voice which is very tremulous, yet deep in its tones, and managed so as to produce a very striking and impressive effect. In hearing him, after having listened for several Sundays to the more robust and energetic Presbyterians I have described, one feels as if the atmosphere had been changed around, and the breath of a milder, gentler inspiration had suffused itself over every sound that vibrates through the stillness of a more placid æther. Nothing can be more touching than the paternal affection with which it is plain this good man regards his flock; it every now and then gives a gushing richness of power to his naturally feeble voice—and a no less beautiful richness to his usually chaste and modest style of language. There is a quiet elegance about his whole appearance, which I suspect is well nigh incompatible with the Geneva cloak of Calvin, and I should have judged, from his exterior alone, (which is indeed the truth,) that he is a

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man of much accomplishment and learning. He has the character here, and, as Wastle says, at Oxford, where he was educated, also, of being at once a fine scholar and a deep divine. He preaches, however, in a very simple, unaffected, and pleasing manner—without any kind of display, beyond what the subject seems to render absolutely necessary. Mr Alison has a much larger chapel, and a more numerous congregation, and he possesses, no doubt, much more largely the qualifications of a popular orator. He has also about him a certain pensiveness of aspect, which I should almost suspect to have been inherited from the afflicted priests of this church of the preceding generation. He has a noble serenity of countenance, however, which is not disturbed but improved by its tinge of melancholy—large grey eyes, beaming with gentle lambent fire, and set dark and hollow in the head, like those which Rembrandt used to draw—lips full of delicacy and composure— and a tall pale forehead sprinkled loosely with a few thin, grey, monastic ringlets. His voice harmonizes perfectly with this exterior—clear— calm—mellow—like that far-off mournful melody with which the great poet of Italy has broken the repose of his autumnal evening, ——Squilla di lontano

Che paja il giorno pianger che si muore.

In spite of his accent, which has a good deal of his country in it, I have never heard any man read the service of our church in so fine and impressive a style as Mr Alison. The grave antique majesty of those inimitable prayers, acquiring new beauty and sublimity as they passed through his lips, could not fail to refresh and elevate my mind, after it had been wearied with the loose and extemporaneous, and not unfrequently, as I thought, irreverent supplications of the Presbyterian divines. In his preaching, the effect of his voice is no less striking; and, indeed, much as you have read and admired his Sermons, I am sure you would confess, after once hearing him, that they cannot produce their full effect, without the accompaniment of that delightful music. Hereafter in reading them, I shall always have the memory of that music ringing faintly in my ears—and recall, with every grand and every gentle close, the image of that serene and solemn countenance, which Nature designed to be the best commentary on the meanings of Alison. As to the peculiar views of the subjects of religion, which are most commonly presented by the Sermons of this elegant preacher—I need not say any thing on that head to one so much better acquainted with all

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his works than I can pretend to be. There is one point, however, in which I could not but remark a very great difference between him and all the other preachers I have ever heard in Scotland. He is the only man among them who seems to be alive as he should be to the meaning and power of the external world—and who draws the illustrations of his discourses from minute and poetical habits of observing Nature. A truly poetical air of gentleness is breathed over all that he says, proceeding, as it were, from the very heart of that benevolent All, which he has so delightedly and so intelligently surveyed. And, indeed, from what precious stores of thought, and feelings impregnated and enriched with thought, do they shut themselves out, who neglect this beautiful field, and address Christian auditors almost as if God had not given them eyes to drink in a sense of his greatness and his goodness, from every thing that is around them—who speak to the rich as if there were nothing to soften, and to the poor as if there were nothing to elevate, in the contemplation of the glorious handiworks of God—as if it were in vain that Nature had prepared her magnificent consolation for all the sick hearts and weary spirits of the earth— For you each evening hath its shining star, And every Sabbath-day its golden sun.

It is singular, I think, that the other distinguished preachers, of whom I have spoken, should so needlessly debar themselves from all this rich range of sentiment and of true religion. Above all, in the Presbyterian divines, I was not prepared to find such barrenness—having, I believe, too hastily interpreted in my own way, a certain beautiful passage in Wordsworth when the ancient Scottish Wanderer, the same on whom The Scottish Church had from his boyhood laid The strong arm of her purity——

—where the Wanderer is made to speak of the style of thought prevalent among the old persecuted Covenanters, and says proudly, Ye have turned my thoughts Upon our brave progenitors, who rose Against idolaters with warlike mind, And shrunk from vain observances, to lurk In caves and woods, and under dismal rocks, Deprived of shelter, covering, fire, and food; Why?—For the very reason that they felt

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And did acknowledge, wheresoe’er they moved, A spiritual Presence—oft-times misconceived, But still a high dependance, a divine Bounty and government, that filled their hearts With joy and gratitude, and fear and love: And from their fervent lips drew hymns of praise, With which the deserts rang—Though favoured less Were those bewildered Pagans of old time, Beyond their own poor nature, and above They looked; were humbly thankful for the good Which the warm sun solicited—and earth Bestowed; were gladsome—and their moral sense They fortified with reverence for the gods: And they had hopes which overstepped the grave.

Of all the Sermons of Alison, those which I love the most, are the four on the Seasons—they are by far, in my mind, the most original and the most delightful he has ever produced. But something of the same amiable inspiration may be observed mingling itself in every discourse he utters. It is easy to see that his heart is penetrated, and it is no wonder his tongue should overflow with the calm eloquence of Nature. The church to which these preachers belong, is at present, as I have said, supposed to be in a more flourishing condition than heretofore— nay, unless Wastle misinforms me, she numbers among her adherents a very large proportion of the landed gentry all over this part of the island. In the remoter districts, however, the Episcopalian clergy are said to be still labouring under a constraining weight of penury, which there does not seem to be any immediate prospect of relieving. In order to supply in some measure to their Pastors, the defects of the regular maintenances afforded by their small scattered flocks, a fund has been raised by subscription, the produce of which is annually applied, according to the best discretion of a committee of the most eminent members of the sect in Scotland. Of the subscriptions by which this fund is supported, a very large part is said to come from England. Nothing surely can be more laudable than the sympathizing zeal, which has led so many of the dignitaries of our church to come forward liberally in behalf of their less fortunate brethren in the North. But I think the Scottish Episcopalians ought to remember that independence was the old boast of their country, and insist upon providing for their own clergy entirely from their own funds. For the bishops of this church, however, from whatever quarter it may be derived, there is no question some more liberal provision should be made. It is a shame in those who profess to think, as good

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Episcopalians do, concerning the nature of the episcopal office, that they should permit excellent and learned bishops of their own church to be poorer, as is often the case, than the simple presbyters of the Established Kirk around them. I have told you, that, in general, the Church of Scotland holds her ground more firmly against Dissenters than that of England—and yet there are abundance of Dissenters in Edinburgh, over and above the Episcopalians, who would perhaps object to being included under that name. There are Tabernaclites, and Haldanites, and Wesleyan Methodists, and other Independents, of several different kinds, and a very few Unitarians—and there are some Catholics—all these congregations, for the most part, consisting of persons in very humble ranks of society. But the most formidable enemies of the Kirk, are those who have dissented from her on very trivial grounds, and are not, indeed, very easy to be distinguished from her in any way adapted to the comprehension of the uninitiated stranger. Such are the Burghers and the Anti-Burghers, both of whom separated themselves from the Established Church, in consequence of their adopting different views, concerning the lawfulness of a certain oath required to be taken by the burgesses of a few towns in Scotland. The Anti-Burghers are, I believe, the more numerous body of the two, and they again have fallen out among themselves, and so given rise to the rival sects of Old Light Anti-burghers and New Light Antiburghers. From what particular circumstances these most picturesque designations have been derived, I know not and care not, and I am sure your curiosity is as small as mine. It so happens, however, that both the Old Light and the New Light are in some considerable estimation at present in Edinburgh, by reason of the more than common talents and respectability of their respective pastors, both of whom, as it happens, are among the most distinguished Scottish literati of the day. The Old Light Anti-burghers enjoy the ministrations of no less a person than Dr M‘Crie, the author of the Life of John Knox—and the natural obscurity of the sect accounts for what at the time I could by no means understand—the ignorance, namely, under which the Edinburgh Reviewers professed themselves to have been even of the existence of such a person as Dr M‘Crie, till the day his history was published. The New Light, on the other hand, are ruled in spiritualibus by Dr Jamieson, the author of the admirable Dictionary of the Scottish Language, and many other works illustrative of the ancient history and manners of his country. Notwithstanding the eminent abilities and learning possessed by both of these individuals, their labours have not, so far as I have understood,

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attracted any considerable addition to the adherents of their respective sects—but the authority of their names must, without doubt, be efficacious in preventing those who have been educated in either of the Lights, from reverting to the darkness of the Established Kirk—to say nothing of the more than Cimmerian obscurity and “night palpable” of the Episcopalians. And yet nothing surely can be more absurd, than that two such clergymen should be lending support to two such pitiable sets of schismatics. I can understand very well, that there are many cases in which it would be wrong to interpret too strictly the great Scriptural denunciations against the errors of schism—but I am, indeed, very sorely mistaken if such matters as the disputes upon which these New and Old Light-men have separated from the Kirk of Scotland, can by any possible logic be brought into the number of allowable exceptions to so great and important a rule. If any thing were wanting to make the cup of their absurdities overflow, it is the pettish and splenetic hatred which they seem to bear to each other—for I believe the New thinks the Auld Light devotee in a much worse condition than the adherent of the Kirk itself— and, of course, vice versa. Nay—such is the extreme of the folly—that these little Lilliputian controversies about burgess oaths, &c. have been carried into America by Scottish emigrants, and are at this moment disturbing the harmony of the Church of Christ in a country where no burgess oath ever existed, or, it is probable, ever will exist. Beyond the mere letter of their formal disputes, these Dissenters can have no excuse to offer for their dereliction of the Kirk. They cannot accuse her clergy of any want of zeal, worth, or learning. In short, their dissent is only to be accounted for by the extravagant vanity and self-importance of a few particular theorists—absurdly inherited and maintained by men whose talents, to say nothing of their piety, should have taught them to know better.* I went, however, to hear Dr M‘Crie preach, and was not disappointed in the expectations I had formed from a perusal of his book. He is a tall, slender man, with a pale face, full of shrewdness, and a pair of black piercing eyes—a shade of deep secluded melancholy passing ever and _____________________________________________ * I have since heard that the Burghers and Anti-burghers are taking measures to form a coalition, and willing, bonâ fide, to drop all remembrance of their feuds. This is excellent, and does honour to their respective leaders: I would hope it may prepare the way for the return of all these dissenters (who can scarcely be said to have even a pretence for dissent) to their allegiance to the Mother-Kirk.

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anon across their surface, and dimming their brilliancy. His voice, too, has a wild but very impressive kind of shrillness in it at times. He prays and preaches very much in the usual style of the Presbyterian divines— but about all that he says there is a certain unction of sincere, old-fashioned, haughty Puritanism, peculiar, so far as I have seen, to himself, and by no means displeasing in the historian of Knox. He speaks, too, with an air of authority, which his high talents render excusable, nay, proper—but which few could venture upon with equal success. I went on the same day to hear Dr Jamieson, and found him also a sensible and learned preacher. He is a very sagacious-looking person, with bright grey eyes, and a full round face—the tones of his voice are kindly and smooth, and altogether he exhibits the very reverse of that anchoretic aspect and air which I had remarked in Dr M‘Crie. I could see that the congregations of both these men regard them with an intense degree of interest and affectionate humility—all which, to be sure, is extremely natural and proper. So much for the New and Auld Lights. As I am so very soon to visit the West of Scotland, where I am assured the head-quarters of Presbyterianism are still to be found in the old haunts of the Covenanters, I shall defer any farther remarks I may have to make upon the state of religion in Scotland, till I have added the whole of that rich field to the domain of my observation. P. M. P. S. Many thanks for your hint about Old Potts. I fear I have been behaving very badly indeed—but shall endeavour to find time for scribbling a few pages suitable to his tastes, before I set off for Glasgow. As for the £500—I rather think you ought to fight shy—but, no doubt, you are as well up to that matter as I am. I shall advise Potts to come down to the North, where, in good truth, I do think he would make a noble figure. There is no Dandy in Edinburgh worthy to hold the candle to our friend, P. M.

LETTER LXIII TO FERDINAND AUGUSTUS POTTS, ESQ. Clarendon Hotel, Bond-Street

I WISH to God, my dear Potts, you would come down to Edinburgh, and let me engage apartments for you at the Royal Hotel. Are you never to extend your conquests beyond London or Cardigan? Are you to lavish your captivations for ever on Bond Street milliners and blowsy Welshwomen? Why, my dear sir, your face must be as well known about St James’s as the sign of the White-Horse Cellar, and your tilbury and dun gelding as familiar to the cockneys as the Lord Mayor’s coach. Even Stulze himself cannot possibly disguise you as formerly. Your surtouts, your upper Benjamins, your swallow-tails, your club-coats, your orange tawny Cossacks, are now displayed without the slightest effect. It matters not whether Blake gives you the cut of the Fox, the Bear, or the Lion, whether you sport moustaches or dock your whiskers, yours is an old face upon town, and, you may rely on it, it is well known to be so. Not a girl that raises her quizzing-glass to stare at you but exclaims, “Poor Potts! how altered he must be. I have heard mamma say in her time he was good-looking; who could have believed it?” Every young Dandy that enquires your name is answered with, “Don’t you know Old Potts?” “Old Potts! why, that gentleman is not old.” “No! bless your soul, he has been on town for the last twenty years.” Yet let not all this mortify you, my dear fellow, for you are not old. Six-and-thirty is a very good age, and you are still a devilish good-looking fellow. What you want is a change of scene to extend your sphere of action, to go where your face will be a new one; and, whenever you do so, you may rely on it you will never be called “Old Potts.” Now, if you will take my advice, and decide on shifting your quarters, I know of no place that would suit you half so well as Edinburgh. Your tilbury and dun gelding (though they will stand no comparison with Scrub and the shandrydan,) will cut a much greater dash in Prince’s Street than in Hyde-Park; and your upper Benjamin and orange tawny Cossacks will render you a perfect Drawcansir among the ladies. As a Jehu, you will have no rivals in Scotland. A brace of heavy dragoons, to be sure, are occasionally to be

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seen parading in a crazy dog-cart, in the seat of which their broad bottoms appear to have been wedged with much dexterity, and a writer or two, particularly a Mr ——, the Lambert of the Law, (weighing about twenty stone,) is sometimes to be met with in a lumbering buggy, moving at the rate of the Newcastle waggon, and drawn by a horse, whose tenuity of carcase forms a striking contrast to the rotund abdomen of his master. Scotland, to say the truth, has produced many painters, poets, heroes, and philosophers, but not a single whip. Indeed, since my arrival in Edinburgh, I have heard of a Scotsman having discovered the perpetuum mobile, but never of any one who could drive four spanking tits in real bang-up style. Your talents in that department will, therefore, cast them all into the shade; and I will venture to predict, that neither writer nor heavy dragoon will dare to shew his nose in a buggy after your first appearance in the north. I assure you, by coming down to Edinburgh you will add mightily to your importance. In London you are but a star (a star of the first magnitude, I admit,) in the mighty firmament of fashion. Twinkle as bright as you please, there are a thousand others who twinkle just as brightly. In short, you are, and can be, but one in a crowd; and I defy you to poke your head into a large party without encountering fifty others whose claims to distinction are quite as good as your own. But here you will be the sun in the splendid heaven of Bon-ton, the patula fagus, under whose spreading branches the admiring and gentle Tityri of the north will be proud to recline:— Potts, like the Sun, in Fashion’s heaven shall blaze, While minor planets but reflect his rays.

All this, my dear friend, I submit to your own good sense and deliberate consideration. In the meanwhile, I shall endeavour to enable you to judge with more precision of the advantages of my plan, by throwing together, for your information, a few short remarks on the state of Dandyism in the North. The Dandies of Edinburgh possess a finer theatre whereon to display their attractions than those of any other city in the three kingdoms. You have nothing in London which, as a promenade, can be compared to Prince’s Street. Bond Street is abominably narrow and crooked, and really contains nothing to gratify the eye but the living beauties who frequent it, and the gold snuff-boxes and India handkerchiefs which decorate the windows. St James’s Street is better, but it wants extent,

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and Dame Street in Dublin has the same fault. Oxford Road is perhaps less exceptionable than either; but it is unfashionable, and, at best, holds no greater attractions than can be afforded by an almost endless vista of respectable dwelling-houses and decent shops. But Prince’s Street is a magnificent terrace, upwards of a mile in length, forming the boundary of a splendid amphitheatre, and affording to the promenading Dandy a view not only of artificial beauties, but also of some of the sublimest scenery of Nature. There, when the punch-bowl is empty, and “night’s candles are burned out,” he may stagger down the steps of the Albyn Club, and behold Jocund day Stand tiptoe on the misty mountain’s top,

as the sun majestically raises his disk above the top of Arthur’s Seat. There is something rural and grand in the prospect which it affords you. Not that sort of rurality (if I may coin a word) which Leigh Hunt enjoys at Hampstead, which arises chiefly from the presence of green trees, and may therefore be equally enjoyed in the Champs Elisées or Vauxhall; but those feelings of rural grandeur which we derive from gazing on the loftiest objects of Nature. From the crowded city we behold the undisturbed dwellings of the hare and the heath-fowl—from amidst the busy hum of men we look on recesses where the sound of the human voice has but rarely penetrated, on mountains surrounding a great metropolis, but which rear their mighty heads in solitude and silence. What pleases me more in this scenery is, that it is so perfectly characteristic of the country, so truly Scottish. Transport Arthur’s Seat to Paris, and the Champs Elisées to Edinburgh, and you disfigure both capitals, because the beauties you transpose are not in harmony or keeping with the rest of the picture. No man in Edinburgh can for a moment forget that he is in Scotland. He is in “the land of the mountain and flood,” and these, in their greatest beauty, are continually feeding his eyes. But I am treating you like a landlord, who, intending to give his guests an earnest of the good cheer he has provided for them, regales them with the prospect of the spit, but casts a veil over the only thing they care about, viz. the leg of mutton. I am not quite certain that Scotland can produce a single specimen of the genuine Dandy. In fact, the term here appears to me to be both imperfectly understood and very grievously misapplied. Were I to divine the meaning of the word from the qualities of those persons

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whom it is here used to designate, I should conceive a Dandy to be nothing more than a gentleman in a white great-coat and a starched cravat, or, in the most liberal extension of its meaning, a person who is rather gay and foppish in his dress. But a Dandy is something more, nay, a great deal more, than all this. I should define him, in few words, to be a person who has acquired such a degree of refinement in all matters of taste as is unattainable, or at least unattained, by the generality of his countrymen. Dress, therefore, does not constitute Dandyism; because dress is only one of the many modes in which this fastidious refinement is displayed. A true Dandy decorates his person far less with the view of captivation, than from the abstract love of elegance and beauty, in which he delights. His extraordinary attention to his toilet is therefore quite compatible with the utter absence of personal vanity, and the same ruling principle is uniformly visible in his habits, his manners, and his enjoyments. Nothing, therefore, is more easy than to distinguish the real Dandy from the impostor. The latter never can maintain the same consistency of character which is inseparable from the former. For instance, if, in Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house, I discover a gaudy coxcomb complacently devouring a tough beef-steak, and extracting the lining of a pot of porter, I know at once, from the coarseness and vulgarity of his appetite, that he has no real pretensions to the character of a Dandy. In this country, when I find the very Arbitri Elegantiarum, the Dilletanti Society, holding their meetings in a tavern in one of the filthiest closes of the city, braving, with heroic courage, the risk of an impure baptism from the neighbouring windows, at their entrance and their exit, and drinking the memory of Michael Angelo, or Raphael, or Phidias, or Milton, in libations of whisky-punch, I cannot but consider that the coarseness of their habits and propensities appears utterly inconsistent with that delicacy of taste in other matters to which they make pretension. But, that I may not carry my system of exclusion too far, I am inclined to divide the Dandies into two classes—the real and the imitative. The former being those who really accord with the definition I have already given, and the latter merely a set of contemptible spooneys, who endeavour to attract attention by copying peculiarities which they really do not possess. I have already hinted that the Dandies of the North are chiefly of the imitative description. They want that boldness of character, and strength of outline, which distinguish their more accomplished prototypes in the South. They have none of that redeeming elegance—that visible consciousness of superior bon-ton—that calm and non-chalant assurance of manner—that com-

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placent look of contemptuous self-approbation, which almost succeeds in disarming ridicule, by shewing that on such a subject ridicule would be exerted in vain. There are no Scottish Petershams, no Brummells, no Skeffingtons, no Cottons, no Nugents, no Churchills, no Cooks, no M‘Kinnons, no Websters, no Foxes, and, what is more, no Pottses. One reason for this striking inferiority certainly is, that this metropolis is only the casual and transient resort of the aristocracy of the country. Very few, indeed, of the nobility make Edinburgh their permanent residence; and those are scarcely sufficient to leaven the great mass of society in which they are mingled. By far the greater proportion, therefore—indeed I may say the whole of the young men of this city belong to a profession.—They are lawyers, attornies, merchants, soldiers, sailors, and India nabobs. Now, I need not tell you, my dear Potts, how utterly ridiculous it is, in most of these men, to set up in the character of Dandies. What do you think of a Dandy in a three-tailed wig? Of a Dandy making out a mittimus, and writing papers for the princely remuneration of three pence a-page? Of a Dandy who has been accustomed to reef top-sails, and swallow salt junk in a cockpit? Of a Dandy who sells sugar, and speculates in shag-tobacco? Or of a Dandy who has all his life been drilling black men, or growing indigo in the burning plains of Hindostan? It is such people, my dear Potts, whom I wish you to come hither to eclipse. It is over such loving and obedient subjects (as I am sure you will find them) that I desire you to reign. From a simple centumvir I would raise you to be a king. They have the capacity to admire, without the power of rivalling you; and, as Ingleby is acknowledged the Emperor of all Conjurors, so will Potts be instantaneously hailed as the Great Mogul of all the Dandies of Scotland. Fashion does not travel, like Fame, on the wind; and I have often remarked, with wonder, the prodigious length of time which she requires to perform even a journey of four hundred miles. The London newspapers arrive here in three days; but the London fashions are generally a couple of years on the road. For instance, white great-coats, which were utterly exploded three seasons ago in London, are now in full bloom in Edinburgh, and are reckoned quite the go. The hats, coats, and inexpressibles, which now greet my eyes, are all equally antique in point of fashion; and I remember, in 1817, that the beaux of Cheapside were distinguished by much the same cut and colour of dress as that which I now observe from my windows on those frequenting the wellknown shop of that accurate reasoner à posteriori, Christie the breeches-

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maker. There are, it is true, in this city, some agents or emissaries of London tailors, who receive orders to procure supplies of town-made habiliments for such gentlemen as are dissatisfied with the taste and skill of their indigenous Schneiders; but either these houses are not of the first water in their profession, or they presume considerably on the ignorance of their customers; for I really never could perceive much superiority in the articles thus imported, over the native productions of the country. But it were well if want of fashion were the only objection that could be made to the costume of the Scottish Dandies. There apparently exists, among some of them, a total want of taste, and ignorance of propriety in dress. Folks in this country may be seen writing law-papers in leather-breeches and jockey-boots, parading Prince’s Street in shooting-jackets and long gaiters, and riding on horseback in nankeen trowsers and double-channelled pumps. Now, nobody can appreciate better than you the gross errors of which these people are guilty;—nobody can shew them better a specimen of that true taste in dress, which confers even a grace upon foppishness, by never suffering it to deviate from the nicest propriety. There is a rule of fitness which you must teach these Scottish satellites of yours never to profane. Let them know that a man should dress differently when he intends to ride a fox-chace, or to walk the streets;—that he need not put on his sporting paraphernalia when he means merely to hunt for precedents in the Dictionary of Decisions;—that there is something absurd in eating ice enveloped in an upper Benjamin, and vulgar in going to the dressboxes of the Theatre in a morning surtout and coloured cravat. In short, you will have much to teach, and they much to learn; but as I am sure this will be a mutual pleasure to you both, I need say no more on the subject. At routs and balls, your appearance will form no less remarkable an era than on the pavé of Prince’s Street. In you the belles of Edinburgh will at once recognise a being of a superior order, whose slightest attentions cannot but confer honour on all to whom they are paid. If you want an heiress in a snug small way, there are abundance of little misses who will jump at your knowing exterior with an alacrity most pregnant of dismay to the discarded would-be Dandies, on whom their encouraging smiles are at present lavished, only because there is no opportunity of bestowing them more wisely. At the clubs, you will be hailed and greeted with a warmth which, in spite of its vulgarity, must be in some measure gratifying to your vanity. You need only, in a word, utter your fiat, and take possession of the Dandy sovereignty of the

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North by a single coup-de-main. Come down, my dear Potts—and yet why should I say so?—for I fear, were you once established in the sweets of Autocracy, there would be little chance of winning from you even a casual visit to your old friends in the South. I am much to blame for not having sooner redeemed my promise of writing to you; but I had made an earlier and more serious promise of the same kind to our cousin David Williams, and my correspondence with him has been as much as I could well manage. I have besides been obliged, for obvious reasons, to address a few epistles to Lady Johnes; and, in short, I propose keeping the cream of my observations to amuse you next Christmas, when we meet, as our use is, at the hospitable mansion of your uncle. I am just about to leave Edinburgh for the present— so that, if I find time to write again, I shall probably address you from Glasgow, or some of the other provincial seats of Dandyism. Meantime, believe me, my dear Potts, Most sincerely yours, P. M.

LETTER LXIV TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

YESTERDAY was one of the happiest days I have spent since my present travels began; and although I had almost made up my mind to trouble you with no more letters of a merely descriptive character, I think I must venture upon giving you some account of it. Part of it, however, was spent in the company of several individuals whom I had for some weeks felt a considerable curiosity to see a little more of— whom, indeed, my friend Wastle had long ago promised to introduce more fully to my acquaintance, and of whom, moreover, I am sure you will be very glad to hear me say a few words. But I shall be contented with giving you a narrative of the whole day’s proceedings just as they passed. Mr Wastle and I were invited to dine with a Mr Gillies, to whom I had been introduced by a letter from my old and excellent friend Sir Egerton Brydges; and whose name you have often seen mentioned in Sir Egerton’s writings. His residence, at the distance of some six or seven miles from Edinburgh, had hitherto prevented me from being much in his society; but I was resolved to set apart one day for visiting him at his villa, and Wastle was easily persuaded to accompany me. The villa is situated on the banks of the Eske, in the midst of some of the most classical scenery in all Scotland; so we determined to start early in the day, and spend the morning in viewing the whole of that beautiful glen, arranging matters so as to arrive at Holycot in good time for dinner. Knowing that the Ettrick Shepherd is a dear and intimate friend of Mr Gillies, I asked him to take the spare seat in the shandrydan, and promised to bring him safe home in the evening in the same vehicle. The Shepherd consented. The Laird gave us a capital breakfast in the Lawnmarket, and the shandrydan was in full career for Roslin Castle by ten o’clock. Horse and man, the whole party were in high spirits; but the gayest of the whole was the worthy Shepherd, who made his appearance on this occasion in a most picturesque fishing-jacket, of the very lightest mazarine blue, with huge mother-of-pearl buttons,—nankeen breeches, made tight to his nervous shapes,—and a broad-brimmed white chip hat,

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with a fine new ribbon to it, and a peacock’s feather stuck in front; which last ornament, by the way, seems to be a favourite fashion among all the country people of Scotland. The weather was very fine, but such, notwithstanding, as to give to the scenery through which our path lay, a grand, rather than a gay appearance. There had been some thunder in the morning, and rain enough to lay the dust on the road, and refresh the verdure of the trees; and although the sun had shone forth in splendour, the sky still retained, all along the verge of the horizon, a certain sombre and lowering aspect, the relics of the convulsions which the whole atmosphere had undergone. I know not if you have remarked it, but Gaspar Poussin, Turner, Calcott, and Schetky, and almost all the great landscape painters, seem to have done so—that this is precisely the situation of the heavens under which both foreground and distance are seen to the greatest effect. The dark inky mantle wrapped all round the circling mountains and plains, afforded a majestic relief to every tree, spire, and cottage which arose before us; and when we turned round, after proceeding a mile or two, and saw the glorious radiant outlines of Edinburgh, rock and tower, painted bright upon the same massy canopy of blue, it was impossible not to feel a solemn exultation in contemplating the harmonious blending together of so many earthly and etherial splendours. The newly-shaken air, too, had a certain elasticity and coolness about it which sent delightful life into our bosoms with every respiration. There was no rioting of spirits, but we enjoyed a rich, quiet, contemplative, and reposing kind of happiness. The country rather ascends than descends, all the way from Edinburgh to the line of the Eske, where a single turn shuts from the traveller the whole of that extensive stretch of scenery of which the capital forms the centre, and brings him at once into the heart of this narrow, secluded, and romantic valley. At the edge of the ravine we found Mr Gillies, and some of his friends whom he had brought with him from his house to join us. Among others, Mr Wilson, his brother, an uncle of theirs, Mr Sym, a fine active elderly gentleman, in whose lineaments and manners I could easily trace all the fire of the line, and an old friend of his, Mr McNair, Collector of the Customs at Leith, a charming fellow. In company with these, we immediately began to walk down the hill towards Roslyn, directing the shandrydan to be carried round to Holycot by the high-way, for the scenes we were about to explore do not admit of being visited except by pedestrians. Before we came to the Castle, we turned off into a field surrounded by a close

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embowering grove of venerable elms and chesnuts, to see that beautiful little chapel which Mr Scott has so often introduced in his earlier poems. It stands quite by itself, deserted and lonely; but it is wonderfully entire, and really an exquisite specimen of architecture. Within, the roof and walls are quite covered with endless decorations of sculpture, leaves, and flowers, and heads and groups, not indeed executed in the pure and elegant taste of Melrose, but productive, nevertheless, of a very rich and fanciful kind of effect. The eastern end towards the site of the altar, is supported by a cluster of pillars quite irregular in their shapes and position; some of them wreathed all over, from base to capital, with arabesque ornaments, others quite plain, but the whole suffused with one soft harmonising tinge of green and mossy dampness. Under foot, the stones on which you tread are covered with dim traces of warlike forms—mailed chieftains, with their hands closed in prayer, and dogs and lions couchant at their feet, in the true old sepulchral style of heraldry. It is said, that below each of these stones, the warrior whom it represents lies interred in panoply,— There are twenty of Roslin’s barons bold, Lie buried within that proud chapelle,—

while, all around, the lower parts of the wall are covered with more modern monuments of the descendants of the same high lineage—the cross ingrailed of St Clair, and the galleys of Orkney, being everywhere discernible among their rich and varied quarterings. From behind the altar, you step upon the firm stone roof of the sacristy, which projects from below, and it was from thence that I enjoyed the first full view of the whole glen of Roslyn. The river winds far below over a bed of rock; and such is the nature of its course and its banks, that you never see more than a few broken and far-off glimpses of its clear waters at the same time. On the side on which we stood, the banks consist of green and woody knolls, whose inextricable richness and pomp of verdure is carried down, deepening as it descends, quite to the channel of the stream. Opposite, there shoots up a majestic screen of hoary rocks, ledge rising square and massy upon ledge, from the river to the horizon—but all and everywhere diversified with fantastic knots of copsewood, projecting and clinging from the minutest crannies of the cliffs. Far as the eye can reach down the course of the stream, this magnificent contrast of groves and rocks is continued—mingling, however, as they recede from the eye, into one dim magnificent amphitheatre, over which the same presiding spirit of

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soothing loneliness seems to hover like a garment. The Castle itself is entirely ruined, but its yellow mouldering walls form a fine relief to the eye, in the midst of the dark foliage of pines and oaks which everywhere surround it. We passed over its airy bridge, and through its desolate portal, and descending on the other side, soon found ourselves treading upon the mossy turf around the roots of the cliff on which it stands, and within a few yards of the river. From thence we pursued our walk in pairs—sometimes springing from stone to stone, along the bed of the stream—sometimes forcing ourselves through the thickets, which drop into its margin—but ever and anon reposing ourselves on some open slope, and gazing with new delight from every new point of view, on the eternal, ever-varying grandeur of the rocks, woods, and sky. My close companion all along was the excellent Shepherd; and I could not have had a better guide in all the mazes of this Tempe, for often, very often had he followed his fancies over every part of it— ——which well he knew; for it had been his lot

To be a wandering stripling—and there raves No torrent in these glens, whose icy flood Hath not been sprinkled round his boyish blood. And in that region shelter is there none Of overhanging rock or hermit tree, Wherein he hath not oft essayed to shun The fierce and fervid day-star’s tyranny.*

The whole party, however, were congregated where the river washes the base of the caverned rocks of Hawthornden—the most beautiful in itself, and, in regard to recollections, the most classical point of the whole scenery of the Eske. The glen is very narrow here—even more so than at Roslyn, and the rocks on the right rise to a still more magnificent elevation. Such, indeed, is the abruptness of their sheer ascent, that it is with some difficulty the eye can detect, from the brink of the stream, the picturesque outlines of the house of Hawthornden, situated on the summit of the highest crag. The old castle in which Drummond received Ben Jonson, has long since given way; but the more modern mansion is built within the dilapidated circuit of the ancient fortress—and the land is still possessed, and the hall occupied by the lineal descendants of the poet. I know not that there is any spot in Britain made classical by the footsteps of such a person as Drummond, one’s notions respecting which _____________________________________________ * Stanihurst.

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are thus cherished and freshened by finding it in the hands of his own posterity, bearing his own name. We clombe the steep banks by some narrow paths cut in the rock, and entered at various points that labyrinth of winding caves, by which the interior of the rock is throughout perforated, and from which part of the name of the place has, no doubt, been derived. Nothing can be more picturesque than the echoing loneliness of these retreats—retreats which often afforded shelter to the suffering patriots of Scotland, long after they had been sanctified by the footsteps of the poet and his friend. Mr Gillies carried me into the house, chiefly to shew me the original portrait of Drummond, which is preserved there; and, in truth, I am obliged to him for having done so. The picture represents him at about the age of forty—the best of all ages, perhaps, for taking a man’s portrait, if only one is to be taken of him—when the substance of the face is in all its firmness and vigour, and the fire of youth has been tempered, but not obscured, by the gravity of manhood. Drummond’s features are singularly fine and expressive—and the picture is an admirable one, and in perfect preservation, so that we see them exactly as they were the day they were painted. His forehead is clear, open, and compact, with the short black hair combed back in dark glossy ringlets, in the true Italian style—as we see it in the pictures of Venetian Nobles, by Titian. The nose is high and aquiline, and the lips rich and full, like those in the statues of Antinous. His eyes are black as jet, (and so are his eye-brows,) but the dazzle of their brilliancy is softened by a melancholy wateriness, which gives to the whole visage an inexpressible air of pensive delicacy and sentiment. On the whole, I have seldom seen a more lyrical countenance—or one which presents a more striking contrast to the dry, intellectual, sarcastic harshness of the lineaments of Ben Jonson—a portrait of whom also hangs in the same room. Nature had framed them both, and both were marked By circumstance with intermixture fine Of contrast and resemblance. To an oak Hardy and firm, a weather-beaten oak, One might be likened. . . . . . The other, like a stately sycamore, That spreads in gentler pomp its honied shade.

It is wonderful, however, when one looks back into history, how many instances of the most sincere, fervent, and brotherly friendships, we see subsisting between men of apparently the most opposite characters and conformations. It would not do if the intellectual consorted only with the intellectual—the sentimental with the sentimental. The

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same wise regulation which binds the weakness of woman to the strength of man, unites, not unfrequently, the more gentle and amiable class of men in intimate and relying friendship with others of austerer and harsher disposition; and the effects of such union have been most blessed, not only to the men themselves, but to their species. Such was the tender friendship that subsisted between the proud, hot, imperious Martin Luther, and the mild, holy spirit of Melancthon. Such was the humanizing affection which connected Chillingworth with Hales; and such, I doubt not, was the love which sweetened the flow of wit on the one hand, and elevated the tone of feeling on the other, When Jonson sat in Drummond’s social shade.

Old Ben, however, is not the only English poet who has visited a Scottish poet in the glen of the Eske. It was while wandering among these very scenes that Mr Wordsworth composed his fine Sonnet to Mr Gillies, a sonnet which I think Mr Gillies should attend to more seriously than he has yet done. The testimony of Wordsworth is a thing on which he should place far more reliance than on the wavering and desponding fancies of his own too-sensitive and morbid mind. It is impossible to be in his company for such a length of time as I was, on this delightful day, and in the midst of such scenes, without being satisfied that he possesses many of the finest elements of poetical feeling. The labour of condensing and correcting our thoughts and expressions, which, I suppose, is what Mr Gillies’s poetry chiefly wants, is, no doubt, a great labour; but it is one, without which nothing can be done, and therefore Mr Gillies should submit to it.* ________________________________________________________________

* The sonnet is as follows: From the dark chambers of dejection freed, Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care, Rise, Gillies, rise: the gales of youth shall bear Thy genius forward like a winged steed. Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air, Yet a high guerdon waits on minds that dare, If aught be in them of immortal seed, And reason govern that audacious flight Which heavenward they direct. Then droop not thou, Erroneously renewing a sad vow In the low dell ’mid Roslin’s fading grove: A cheerful life is what the Muses love, A soaring spirit is their prime delight.

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We did not arrive at Holycot till about five o’clock; for in walking, loitering, and bathing, we had consumed the whole morning—so that we were well prepared to do justice to our dinner—but, indeed, the dinner might have been enough to tempt appetites more indifferently quickened. What a luxury a good dinner and a bottle of good wine is after a long walk! It always struck me as being a very silly thing in Mahomet, to represent his Paradise as being one unvaried scene of green silk sofas and sparkling goblets. The Northern mythologists, who imagined the Valhalla, have shewn far more knowledge of nature and truth, when they make the heroes of Odin to spend all their mornings in blood and dust, cutting, and slashing, and careering at each other as they had been used to do, till, at the setting of sun, all their wounds are closed at once by magical power, they are bathed, and dressed in soft raiment, and all sit down together to enjoy themselves over a friendly board—as we did now. This is the true way in which life should be made to pass sweetly in this fine time of the year. At dinner we found a large addition to our party—ladies and gentlemen, some residing for the time under the roof of Mr Gillies— others who had come out from Edinburgh the same morning like ourselves. There was no want of wit—how much of it might be owing to our host’s excellent champagne, I shall not pretend to guess. So far, indeed, it appeared to me Mr Gillies had followed his friend, the great Laker’s advice—for nobody ever lived a more “cheerful life” than he seemed to do, while the tall black bottles chased each other with persevering unrelenting speed around his table. The effect of the champagne on the Ettrick Shepherd, in particular, was quite delightful: Accustomed, for the most part, to the ruder stimulus of whisky-toddy, this etherial inspiration seemed to shoot life with subtler energy through a thousand less explored meanderings of his body and his brain. Among other good things he contributed to our amusement, music was one. Before the ladies left the dining-room, he insisted upon having a violin put into his hands, and really produced a measure of sweet sounds, quite beyond what I should have expected from the workmanship of such horny fingers. It seems, however, he had long been accustomed to minister in this way at the fairs and penny-weddings in Ettrick, and we on the present occasion were well content to be no more fastidious than the Shepherd’s old rustic admirers. He appears to be in very great favour among the ladies—and I thought some of the younger and more courtly poets in the company exhibited some symptoms of envying him a little of his copious complement of smiles—and well they might.

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We had a great deal of conversation, however, on sober matters of literature and criticism, intermingled with our mirth and the joyous notes of the Shepherd’s fiddle. Among other topics, the attacks on the Edinburgh Review in the Edinburgh Magazine, of which I have already spoken to you, were tabled, and a good many remarks were made on them by various persons in the company, among others, your humble servant. I was particularly free in my observations, being aware that a number of the young persons present wrote occasionally in the new Journal, and anxious, from friendly motives, to give them the benefit of a little advice from an unprejudiced and impartial stranger. I gave praise to some particular productions, and censure to others, in the hopes of detecting the authors, in case they should be present, from the variation of their faces; but, of a surety, either the public reports are quite erroneous, or these young gentlemen are masters of more face than I ever met with before in persons of double their years. It was on this occasion that I had an opportunity of seeing and conversing with Mr Lockhart, who, as well as Mr Wilson, is supposed to be one of the principal supporters of this Magazine, and so of judging for myself concerning an individual who seems to have cared very little how many enemies he raised up among those who were not personally acquainted with him. Owing to the satirical vein of some of the writings ascribed to his pen, most persons whom I have heard speak of him, seemed to have been impressed with the notion, that the bias of his character inclined towards an unrelenting subversion of the pretensions of others. But I soon perceived that here was another instance of the incompetency of the crowd to form any rational opinion about persons of whom they see only partial glimpses, and hear only distorted representations. I was not long in his company ere I was convinced that those elements which form the basis of his mind could never find their satisfaction in mere satire, and that if the exercise of penetration had afforded no higher pleasure, nor led to any more desirable result than that of detecting error, or exposing absurdity, there is no person who would sooner have felt an inclination to abandon it in despondency and disgust. At the same time, a strong and ever-wakeful perception of the ludicrous, is certainly a prominent feature in his composition, and his flow of animal spirits enables him to enjoy it keenly, and invent it with success. I have seen, however, very few persons whose minds are so much alive and awake throughout every corner, and who are so much in the habit of trying and judging every thing by the united tact of so many qualities and feelings all at once. But one meets with abundance

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of individuals every day, who shew in conversation a greater facility of expression, and a more constant activity of speculative acuteness. I never saw Mr Lockhart very much engrossed with the desire of finding language to convey any relation of ideas that had occurred to him, or so enthusiastically engaged in tracing its consequences, as to forget every thing else. In regard to facility of expression, I do not know whether the study of languages, which is a favourite one with him—(indeed I am told he understands a good deal of almost all the modern languages, and is well skilled in the ancient ones)—I know not whether this study has any tendency to increase such facility, although there is no question it must help to improve the mind in many important particulars, by varying our modes of perception. His features are regular, and quite definite in their outlines; his forehead is well advanced, and largest, I think, in the region of observation and perception. Although an Oxonian, and early imbued with an admiration for the works of the Stagyrite, he seems rather to incline, in philosophy, to the high Platonic side of the question, and to lay a great deal of stress on the investigation and cultivation of the impersonal sentiments of the human mind—ideas which his acquaintance with German literature and philosophy has probably much contributed to strengthen. Under the influence of that mode of thinking, a turn for pleasantry rather inclines to exercise itself in a light and good-humoured play of fancy, upon the incongruities and absurd relations which are so continually presenting themselves in the external aspect of the world, than to gratify a sardonic bitterness in exulting over them, or to nourish a sour and atrabilious spirit in regarding them with a cherished and pampered feeling of delighted disapprobation, like that of Swift. But Mr Lockhart is a very young person, and I would hope may soon find that there are much better things in literature than satire, let it be as goodhumoured as you will. Indeed, his friend Wastle tells me he already professes himself heartily sick of it, and has begun to write, of late, in a quite opposite key. It was here, too, that I first became acquainted with another young gentleman, whose writings in the same Magazine had, in a particular manner, interested and delighted me; and which, indeed, could not possibly excite any feelings but those of the purest delight, in the mind of any person capable of understanding them. This is a Mr William Howison; but the greater part of the company seemed to address him familiarly by the name of Monsieur de Peudemots, which nom-de-guerre was prefixed by him two or three years ago to an exquisite little separate

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publication of Tales and Essays, or, as he called them, “Fragments and Fictions.” I have already sent off this little book to Lady Johnes, and I beg you to get it from her and read it with all speed. It is, perhaps, the most perfect bijou our time and country has produced. It appears to me to bear to the prose of our day pretty much the same relation the poetry of Rogers does to our popular poetry. It displays a profound elegance of thought and language—a pure, playful, inoffensive wit—and a most thrilling and poetic tenderness of feeling, such as have very rarely been united in any work of any country, and such as I run no risk in saying were never before displayed in union in the work of a man not much above twenty years of age. Since his little book was published, however, M. de Peudemots (to judge from the writings, which the inimitable purity of style shews very plainly to be his,) has not a little enlarged his views in regard to men, and manners, and philosophy—and, I doubt not, he will soon shew this enlargement in some very splendid way. By what process of circumstances such a mind as his is, should have been formed and nurtured into its present condition, in the midst of the superficial talkers and debaters of Edinburgh, I am greatly at a loss to imagine. It must, indeed, have been a very noble armour of innate strength, which has enabled him to resist so much of precept and example—and, in spite of all that was passing around him, to train himself, from his earliest years, in so sure a reliance upon the finer examples and higher precepts of the old times of England. It is easy to see much of this inward strength beaming through the modesty of his physiognomy—and in his organization upwards, it is still more easy to detect the marks of a commanding intellect. He has a high pale forehead, the pure intellectual conformation of which is sufficient to render it perfectly beautiful. So much for one whose name will not long be an obscure one. I was introduced also to a third of these youthful coadjutors, in the person of a Captain Hamilton, a very fine-looking young officer, whom the peace has left at liberty to amuse himself in a more pleasant way than he was accustomed to, so long as Lord Wellington kept the field. He has a noble, grand Spaniard-looking head, and a tall, graceful person, which he swings about in a style of knowingness that might pass muster even in the eye of Old Potts. The expression of his features is so very sombre, that I should never have guessed him to be a playful writer, (indeed how should I have guessed such a person to be a writer at all?)— Yet such is the case—for, unless I am totally misinformed, he is the author of a thousand beautiful jeux-d’esprit, both in prose and verse,

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which I shall point out to you more particularly when we meet. In the conversation of this large party, and over the prime ChateauMargout of Mr Gillies, the time past most agreeably till ten o’clock, at which hour we transferred ourselves to the drawing-room, and began dancing reels in a most clamorous and joyous manner, to the music sometimes of the Shepherd’s fiddle—sometimes of the harpsichord. On these latter occasions the Shepherd himself mingled in the maze with the best of us, and indeed displayed no insignificant remains of that light-heeled vigour, which enabled him in his youth (ere yet he had found nobler means of distinction,) to bear the bell on all occasions from the runners and leapers of Ettrick-dale. The great beauty of this man’s deportment, to my mind, lies in the unaffected simplicity with which he retains, in many respects, the external manners and appearance of his original station—blending all, however, with a softness and manly courtesy, derived, perhaps, in the main, rather from the natural delicacy of his mind and temperament, than from the influence of anything he has learned by mixing more largely in the world. He is truly a most interesting person—his conversation is quite picturesque and characteristic, both in its subjects and its expression—his good-humour is unalterable, and his discernment most acute—and he bears himself with a happy mixture of modesty and confidence, such as well becomes a man of genius, who has been born and bred in poverty, and who is still far from being rich, but who has forfeited, at no moment of his career, his claim to the noble consciousness of perfect independence. A merry supper, followed by a variety of songs and stories, detained us at Lasswade till a late, or rather till an early hour; but the moon had arisen in all her brightness, and our drive to Edinburgh was a cooling and calm termination to all the hilarities of the evening. This morning I spent almost entirely in driving from one house to another, bidding adieu for a few months to such of my Edinburgh friends as are still in town. This would, indeed, have been a sad duty, but for the prospect of meeting them all again after my return from the ulterior part of my pilgrimage. In the meantime, however, it is a real sorrow for me to part, even with that consolation in view, for so long a time from my excellent old friend, Mr Wastle. His kindness has really been such as I never can repay—not even in gratitude. Ever since I came, he seems to have made me, my comfort, and convenience, and gratification, the sole subject of his concern. I trust I shall be able to induce him to give me, so far, my revenge, next summer in Cardigan— but, alas! what can I shew him there like much of what he has shewn

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me in Edinburgh? My time, however, presses, and I cannot possibly delay setting off for Glasgow any longer. I propose spending a week in and about that city, to several of the most respectable inhabitants of which I have received letters of introduction, through the kindness of my indefatigable friend. To-day Wastle dines with me, once more solus cum solo, at my hotel— and with to-morrow’s dawn I must gird myself for my journey. I shall write to you shortly after my arrival; but, in the meantime, in case you should write to me, address your letters to the Buck’s-Head Hotel, Glasgow. Ever your’s, P. M. P. S. Don’t forget to borrow M. de Peudemot’s book from my aunt. If you don’t get the “One Night in Rome” by heart, I shall lose all faith in your taste.

LETTER LXV TO THE SAME

BUCK’S-HEAD, GLASGOW I HAD a melancholy ride from Edinburgh—as every man of any sense or feeling must have who quits that beautiful and hospitable city, after a residence half so long as mine. When I had swallowed my solitary cup of coffee and bit of toast, and, wrapping myself in my great-coat, proceeded to the door of Oman’s—and saw there the patient Scrub, the lazy John, and the sober shandrydan, all prepared for the journey—I could not but feel a chillness creep over me at the now visible and tangible approach of my departure. I mounted, however, and seized the reins with a firmness worthy of myself, and soon found myself beyond sight of the obsequious bowings of Mr Oman and his lackeys—driving at a smart resolute pace along the glorious line of Prince’s Street, which I had so often traversed on different errands, and in such different glee. There was a thick close mist, so that I scarcely saw more than a glimpse or two of some fragments of the Castle as I past—the church-domes and towers floated here and there like unsupported things in the heavens;— and Edinburgh, upon the whole, seemed to melt from before my retreating gaze, “like the baseless fabric of a vision.” It was not till I had got fairly out of the town, that the sun shone forth in his full splendour, gilding with his Judas beams the dead white masses of vapour that covered the ground before me—and, by degrees, affording me wider and richer glances of the whole of that variously magnificent champaign. There is, indeed, a very fine tract of country, stretching for several miles westward from Edinburgh—its bosom richly cultivated and wooded, and its margin on either hand skirted by very picturesque, if not very majestic, ranges of mountains. After passing over these beautiful miles, however, the general character of the road to Glasgow is extremely monotonous and uninteresting—there being neither any level sufficient to give the impression of extent, or height sufficient to dignify the scene—but one unbroken series of bare bleak table-land, almost alike desolate-looking where cultivation has been commenced, as where the repose of the aboriginal heather has been left undisturbed.

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About the conclusion of the third long stage, which brings you within some fifteen or sixteen miles of Glasgow, the country does indeed rise high enough—but I never saw any high country so very dull. The Kirk of Shotts, from which the most dreary ridge takes its name, is situated certainly in one of the last of all places that a member of the old Melrose and Dryburgh school would have thought of for an ecclesiastical building. Yet it is pleasing to see such a building in such a place—and the little dove-cote belfrey rises with peculiar expressiveness amidst a land of so little promise. When we had passed the Kirk of Shotts, we gradually descended, and saw from the warmer slopes upon which we travelled, occasional peeps of the rich valley of the Clyde, smiling serenely with all its pomp of woods and waters to the left. The road, however, soon became quite flat again, and, excepting one or two little glens close by the way-side, I observed nothing particularly interesting till we came within sight of the city. The city is (even after Edinburgh) a very fine one. It has no pretensions to any such general majesty of situation as the metropolis—it has nothing that can sustain any comparison with the Rock and the Castle— to say nothing of the hills and the sea—yet it is a grand and impressive city, whether we look at its situation or at its buildings. The Cathedral, in the immediate neighbourhood of which the oldest part of the town stands, is placed on the brink of a commanding eminence, from which there is a continued descent of more than a mile southward to the river— all the intervening space having been long since covered with streets, and squares, and market-places, by the sons of traffic. The Old Church is at the eastern extremity also of the town—which now seems to be running, after the fashion of the fine people in London, entirely to the west. The main street through which I made my entrance, the Trongate, is a prodigiously fine thing—one of the very finest things, I venture to say, in all Europe—consisting, for the most part, of huge black structures, rising on either side many stories into the air, but diversified, all along, with very picturesque breaks and lights—pillars, turrets, spires, every thing, in a word, that can give the grandeur of variety to a long street cutting the centre of a great city. From this, various minor streets, old and new, sombre and gay, penetrate into the extremities of the peopled place. There is a vast hum, and bustle, and jostling, all along— things of which one meets with very little in Edinburgh; and, indeed, the general air of activity is only second to that of Cheapside. I felt at once that I had got into a very different sort of place from that I had left; but both I and my horse were somewhat wearied with the journey, and

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the horns of a genuine Buck, proudly projected over the gateway of the hotel to which I had been directed, were to me the most interesting features in the whole Trongate of Glasgow. I am now established in a very snug suite of apartments, from which I command, in the mean time, a view of the whole of this great street, and from which, God willing, I shall go forth to-morrow, refreshed and reinvigorated by a good supper and a good sleep, to examine and criticise Glasgow and its inhabitants. __________ I told you that I had received, before leaving Edinburgh, various letters of introduction to gentlemen of this place; and I was preparing to set about delivering some of them this morning, immediately after breakfast, when one of the persons I proposed waiting upon anticipated my intentions, and called at the Buck’s-head, with ready and cordial offers of all manner of civility and attention. This gentleman is a distant relation of my friend Wastle, who had informed him, by a different letter, of me and all my motions. From what I have seen of him, he is likely to prove a capital Lionizer; for he seems to know every thing about Glasgow, and to be very willing to communicate every thing that he does know. What is best of all, he is a perfectly idle man,—a character of very rare occurrence in such a town as this,—so that I shall not be troubled in receiving his attentions with the painful idea that I am wasting valuable time. In all the mercantile towns I have previously visited, at home and abroad, it has been my fortune to fall entirely into the hands of merchants; and these, though they are as kind as possible, and as willing as you could wish to entertain you all the evenings, have a sad aversion to having their mornings cut up with parading a stranger through their curiosities. Now, the Major is probably not unfrequently at a loss how to spend his own mornings in Glasgow, and I am doing him a favour by giving him occupation. He seemed resolved that I should feel myself perfectly at home in his company, for the very first subject he began to enlarge upon was his own history; and, as we walked along the streets towards the Cathedral, (for that was the first Lion he proposed shewing me,) he told me as many anecdotes of his adventures as would fill half-a-dozen even of my letters. He appeared to be very anxious, by the whole drift of his discourse, to create in my mind a very broad and marked line of distinction between himself and the other inhabitants of this his native city, for whom, indeed, it was easy to see he entertains no great feeling of partiality. “You will, no doubt, be much surprised,” said he, “to find a

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person so idle as myself living here among such a set of drudges: but there’s a reason for every thing, Doctor Morris; and, let me tell you, I have devilish good reasons for choosing to be a dweller in Glasgow, in spite of all my disgust for the doings of the place.” I comprehend, partly from what he has said, and partly from the conversation of my landlady, Mrs Jardine, that a generation or two back, Glasgow was entirely a place of merchandise, and not at all connected with manufactures; that in those days the principal merchants, who had every thing their own way in the town, were not unfrequently persons of very respectable birth and education—some of them younger sons of good gentlemen’s families—and all of them accustomed to live on terms of familiarity, if not equality, with the noblesse of the neighbouring counties. The introduction of manufactures, cotton-mills, sugar-works, soap-works, and a thousand other engines of prosperity, has had the effect of causing this primitive aristocracy of traffickers to be invaded in their privileges by a mighty swarm of mere novi homines—persons sprung from every variety of mean blood and place, and trained in every variety of narrow mindedness and ignorance, who have now, by strength of numbers and of purses, almost succeeded in pushing the relics of the old school from their seats of dignity, and who constitute, at this moment, the most prominent element in every large society of Glasgow. My new acquaintance, whose own family held a high place in the days of the elder system, has witnessed, with a most lively dismay, this sad diminution of their importance, and mourns, in other words, over the increased wealth, population, and importance of his native city, as if his own birthright had been invaded at every step of its progressive prosperity. He is attached, however, to the soil of the place, partly by the feelings and recollections of his youth—partly by the necessity of keeping on good terms with an old absurd uncle, who thinks Glasgow the only town in Britain where any man of taste and discernment ought to live; but, most of all, I suspect, (although he did not say any thing expressly on that head,) from the gratification his vanity receives, by means of his sojourn here, he being not only the most idle, but also the most genteel and elegant person in the city, and therefore enjoying, in all fulness, the delights and dignities of being its arbiter elegantiarum. He is the very Potts of Glasgow. The Major cannot shew his face in the Merchant’s house, or on the Exchange, or on any other scene, Where most our merchants use to congregate,

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without finding himself a very insignificant sort of person; but the matter is much otherwise when he enters a ball-room or assembly. His slim figure, so different from those of the brawny swollen moneygetters and punch-drinkers—his degagée and polite air, the fruit of his foreign travel, (for he, too, has been a wanderer in his day)—his skill in dancing—his knowledge of women—his flatteries—and his foibles— all have contributed to make him the favourite beau of the ladies of this mercantile city. No young bourgeoise can be said to have come out till the Major has done her the honour to walk down a country-dance with her. Nobody dare venture to say she is a beauty, till his infallible imprimatur has been fixed upon her. Although long past the hey-day and buoyancy of youth and youthful spirits, he walks unrivalled and alone, among a thousand more sanguine pretenders—secure in the nonchalance of his long-established sway—eternal master of the ceremonies—the Prince and Apostle of the Drawcansirs of the West. Of the many things on which he piques himself—one, and not the most trivial, is his connection with the ancient and lofty blood of my friend Wastle’s family. He goes into Edinburgh now and then, and the reception he meets with there, through the means of Wastle, so very different from the utter neglect with which most Glasgow visitors are received in that metropolis, is always sufficient to renew and refresh this vanity in the most effectual manner. He is proud, moreover, of the high personal character and literary reputation of the laird, and altogether this kinsmanship has become quite one of his hobbies. “My cousin, Mr Wastle of Wastle,” is a formula never out of his mouth. He can say by heart a variety of Wastle’s minor love poems, which he repeats in a most moving manner to the young ladies, when they are warmed with an extra glass of sherry-negus at a ball-supper. His chansons-a-boire furnish him in like manner with a no less appropriate armoury of fascination for the punch-table—and never does he either sing or say, without introducing a full account of the tie which subsists between his own family and that of his author. My friend, I suppose, has written concerning me in much higher terms than I deserve—for I observe that the Major takes it for granted I am a man of wonderful accomplishments. I have lost, however, not a little way in his good opinion, by not having been present at a ball and supper, given on board the flag-ship at Leith, the week before I left Edinburgh. He cannot understand how I should have neglected such an opportunity of exhibiting my Cambrian graces. I might tell him I have had the gout—but am quite willing to sustain the weight of his contempt as it is. It is very bad policy to make a man think he has no

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point of superiority over yourself. I have no ambition to rival the Toeocracy of the Major. Making some allowances for the prejudices of this gentleman—and, above all, for the jaundiced view he may be expected to give of some of the present prime ones in this mercantile city, and their manner of deporting themselves—and having, as usual, my own eyes about me to correct any mis-statements that may creep into his account of things, I imagine I have lighted upon an excellent cicerone. I am sure he is, at least, a civil, and he promises no less surely to be an indefatigable one. P. M.

LETTER LXVI TO THE SAME

THE situation of the Cathedral of Glasgow has been so exquisitely described in Rob Roy, that it would be quite useless to do anything more than refer you to it—only the fine pine trees which, in the novel, are represented as covering the whole of the opposite bank of the ravine, and extending their funereal shade quite to the back of the cemetery— these (miserabile dictu!) have been sacrificed to the auri sacra fames, and that bank is now bare and green, as if black pine had never grown there. The burial-ground, with which the Cathedral is on all sides surrounded, is certainly one of the largest and one of the most impressive I have ever visited. The long and flat grave-stones, in their endless lines, seem to form a complete pavement to the whole surface—making it a perfect street of the dead—the few knots of tall wiry grass and clustering nettles, which find room to shoot from between the layers of stonework, being enough to increase the dreariness, but not to disturb the uniformity of the scene. The building stands on the declivity of a slight hill, at the bottom of which a brawling rivulet tumbles along with a desolate roar of scanty waters—but it would seem the ground had been dug up originally, so as to give the Cathedral an uniform and even line of foundations. Yet—such in many succeeding centuries has been the enormous accumulation of the dead, that their graves have literally choked up the one end of the church altogether—so that of a tier of windows which are seen entire at the east, at the west the tops only can be traced, sculptured and ornamented like the rest, just peering above the surface of the encroaching tombs. The feelings one has in visiting a Gothic cathedral, are always abundantly melancholy, but the grand and elevating accompaniments by which this melancholy is tempered in a Catholic, and even in an English cathedral, are amissing—sadly amissing—in the case of a cathedral that has fallen into the hands of the Presbyterians. When one enters one of these antique piles in Southern Germany, or in Spain, (for there only can a Catholic Gothic cathedral be seen in all its glory,) I know not that it is possible for the heart of man to desire any addition to the majestic

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solemnity of the whole scene. The tall narrow windows, quite dark with the long purple garments of pictured martyrs, apostles, and kings, tinge every ray that passes through them with the colours and the memory of a thousand years of devotion. The whole immeasurable space below,— nave, transept, and sounding aisles—are left glowing in their bare marble beneath these floods of enriched and golden light—no lines of heavy pews are allowed to break the surface—it seems as if none could have any permanent place there except those who sleep beneath. You walk from end to end over a floor of tomb-stones, inlaid in brass with the forms of the departed—mitres and crosiers, and spears, and shields, and helmets, all mingled together—all worn into glass-like smoothness by the feet and the knees of long departed worshippers. Around, on every side—each in their separate chapel—sleep undisturbed from age to age the venerable ashes of the holiest or the loftiest that of old came thither to worship—their images and their dying prayers sculptured and painted above the resting-places of their remains. You feel that you are but a visitor amidst the congregation and home of the dead—and walk with gentle steps along the precious pavement, that answers with a clear prophetic echo to your living tread. The rich old tapestries which sometimes cover the walls of these cathedrals, mingle better with the storied windows than even the finest of paintings or Mosaics—for the exhibition of perfect art throws discredit on rude art, however impressive, and disturbs the uniform eloquence with which the whole should be made to teem. But the greatest of all our wants is, that of the long processions of kneeling priests, which carry the eye onward to the steps of some high illuminated altar—where the blaze of the antique candlesticks comes faint and dim through the clouds of perfumed smoke, swung ever and anon, slow and solemn, from their waving censers. It is, I sometimes think, a thousand pities that errors and corruptions, in far different matters, should have made Protestants part with so much of the old hereditary ceremonial of the church. Even the sacred music of our forefathers has been abandoned, as if poison had been breathed from its most majestic notes. Who, that ever heard the grand simple airs to which the Latin Psalms are chaunted in the Catholic Cathedrals, can doubt that in them we still hear the very sounds which kindled the devotion of the Origens, the Augustines, and the Gregories? They bear no resemblance to any music of modern days;—they are the venerable relics of that Greek music which consisted only in Melody. And why should we have discarded them?—Or why, having discarded them for a time, should we punish

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our ears and hearts by refusing to return to them? But if even we have done somewhat wrong—alas! how much greater have been the errors of our Scottish brethren. The line which we have drawn between ourselves and many of the ideas of our fathers, has been stretched by them into an impassable gulf. It is, indeed, true, that they have replaced what they have lost by many things of another description; but it is not when walking among the melancholy aisles of a deserted or profaned cathedral, that one is most likely to do justice to the value of their substitutes. It is more natural, in such a scene, to hope, that corruptions on the one side being amended, reverence on the other may be restored—that the Christian North may, in some after day, acknowledge that the faults were not all on the part of that South to which she owed arts, arms, and religion; and, in the words of the poet, ——all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. The Cathedral of Glasgow, however, with all its nakedness within, and all its desolation without, is a very valuable thing in Scotland; for it is one of a very few of the great ecclesiastical buildings in this country which escaped from the demolishing fury of the first disciples of John Knox. You have probably read, in some of the historians, the anecdote of the mode of its preservation—indeed, if my recollection serves me, it is mentioned in the novel of Rob Roy. Within, there is only the centre of the choir, which is left in a cathedral-looking style, with pillars, and scutcheons, and monuments; and here one sees that the whole building, when in its original state, must have been a noble and magnificent specimen of the Gothic architecture, in its best and purest, not its gaudiest age. At either extremity of the Cathedral, spaces have been partitioned off from the nave, sufficient to form large and commodious places of Presbyterian worship; and one of these is fitted up with some taste, as well, perhaps, as the eastern end of a cathedral can be, where the site of the grand altar is occupied with a pulpit—where the lofty pillars and windows are cut by heavy wooden galleries,—and the floor loaded with rows of snug pews boxed in, and lined with green cloth, for the accommodation of sitting, not kneeling worshippers. The transept seems never to have been finished, for it closes abruptly at either side, so as to afford but a faint idea of the shape of the cross. It runs out at one side, however, for a considerable space, in the shape of a low aisle, with a flat roof, on which, in the old times, a garden had been formed, and where a few very

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ancient apple-trees may still be seen lingering and drooping along the edge of the stone-work. This aisle has the name of “the dripping aisle,” derived, no doubt, from the water which finds its way through the crannies of that crazy roof—a name which, I think, Mrs Radcliffe would have borrowed for some of the scenes of her horrors, had she heard of it. It is the sepulchre of some particular family of the city or neighbourhood. Among the other profanations which this fine Old Cathedral has had to sustain, not the least has been the erection of various new buildings in its immediate vicinity, quite hostile to the impression its majestic form, left alone in its church-yard, might be so well fitted to convey. On the one hand, on the very edge of the burial-ground, there has been set up a little abominable would-be Gothic church, in the very worst of all possible styles of Gothic imitation—a thing full of windows and corners, with a roof like a barn—and covered—to the shame be it spoken of people who have such abundance of free-stone at their hands—covered with a rude patched coating of brown lime. It put me in mind of some little hunch-backed, heavy-headed dwarf, aping the port and gestures of a grand giant, whose knee he cannot touch. At the other side, they have put down, still nearer to the Cathedral, a building very passable in itself—nay, very elegant, as buildings go in Scotland—but scarcely, to my mind, less ill-judged in regard to its position. This is the Royal Infirmary—a spacious, handsome house, in the Grecian style, or, rather, in what is called now-a-days the Grecian style of architecture. In order to make room for it so near the Old Church, the good wise folks of Glasgow pulled down a few years ago, as my guide informs me, the ruins of the ancient Archiepiscopal Palace or Castle, which occupied, with a very different kind of propriety, the same commanding spot. Surely this was a very unnecessary piece of barbarity—but, if the Old Castle was to be removed, they might, at least, have erected in its room something that would have better harmonized with the neighbourhood of so grand a church. What one calls, in common parlance, a handsome building in these days, is often a thing which has neither grandeur nor beauty. Indeed, modern buildings, in general, are so uninteresting in their general shape, and their surface is so much frittered down with different rows of windows, and with a complexity of trivial and unprofitable parts, that they scarcely ever tell much upon the imagination, or convey to the eye any one broad and palpable concord of forms. The necessity of having different flats or stories, must always be in some measure hostile to

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simplicity. No pillar can stretch from the top to the bottom of such a building, without doing it more harm than good; and the expedient of piling different orders of architecture one above another, although it was employed with a noble effect in the Coliseum at Rome, and in other amphitheatres, seems to lose all its dignity when interspersed with the paltry little windows of modern days. These smooth and glazed rows never fail to destroy the conception of a vast and magnificent space in the interior. The Gothic buildings, in general, have no want of unity. The multiplicity of parts is indeed great, but they are made quite easy to be comprehended by their repetition: and the design of the whole, is always evidently subservient to one purpose. I take it, Mr Wastle, in his description of my character to his cousin, had done at least full measure of justice to my antiquarian propensities; for he seemed to think it a matter of course, that my inclinations would lead me to give the whole of my first day to the most ancient part of the city of Glasgow. This, as I mentioned, is the part immediately in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral—the archbishop and his court of deans, chaunters, precentors and prebendaries, having, of course, been the lords paramount of attraction in those days to the burghers, who lived chiefly by their means. There are several entire streets of the episcopal city still remaining—all in utter disrepute, as might be expected from their situation, and inhabited by the lowest vulgar: but all of them containing the shells of fine old houses, much superior in the taste of their architecture to the more splendid buildings which fill the more spacious streets of the modern city of merchandize. On some of these old houses, I could trace various coats-of-arms, from which, had Glasgow a Wastle to decypher them, I doubt not, much of their history might easily be gathered. His kinsman possesses a little tincture of his lore, and pointed out to me, in different quarters, the bearings of particular families or bishops in a sufficiently knowing style. In many quarters, he shewed me the shields of the House of Hamilton, and the Stewarts, Lords of Minto—in which families successively was vested the regality, or lay lordship of the archiepiscopal lands shortly after the Reformation. He shewed me also one large and fine old building, which formerly was a residence of the Montroses, and still bears the name of Montrose-lodge—and it was this very house, as he tells me, that Darnley occupied during that illness which brought Mary from Edinburgh to be his nurse, only a few weeks before the catastrophe of the Kirk-in-thefield. The most extensive of these ancient streets, however, is not so

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abundant in these vestiges of ancient pomp as the minor ones. It stretches quite along the brow of the hill, and commands a fine prospect of the whole city, old and new. Its name is the Rotten-row—a name, by the way, which my cicerone professed himself incapable of explaining, but which was quite familiar and intelligible to my ears. It comes, I doubt not, from the same root with routine, and signifies nothing more than the row or street of processions. It was here that the host and the images of the saints were carried on festivals, with all the usual splendour of Catholic piety. The same name, derived from the very same practice still subsisting, may be found in many towns in Germany. I remember, in Ratisbonne, in particular, a Rotten-gasse close by the Cathedral—and, indeed, all over Catholic Germany, the Domherr or Canon, who walks first on those occasions, bears a title of the same etymology—that of Rott-meister, namely—which is literally procession-leader, or master. I remembered to have met with the name of this Glasgow Rotten-row in my reading, and on applying to my friend, he told me, that it occurs in Blind Harry’s History of Sir William Wallace. After the famous exploit of the burning of the barns of Ayr, where Pembroke, and a great number of the English lords were destroyed together, Wallace marched during the whole night, that he might, if possible, surprise Glasgow. On reaching the Clyde, he divided his forces, leading in person the main body up the heart of the city, and sending Sir John the Grahame, his Achates, with another, to make a circuit, and enter by this Rotten-row. If you have Blind Harry by you, you may turn to the passage, and you will find a very animated description of the battle which ensued. Wallace was encountered midway up the town, exactly where the College of Glasgow now stands, by the English bishop of Edward’s making—Beck; and while the strife was adhuc sub judice, the scales were turned in his favour by the arrival of the Grahame, who took the bishop in the rear. After we had perambulated all these scenes, we found it was nearly time for dinner, and so parted for the day. I should have told you before, that I had another visitor early in the morning, besides the Major. This was a Mr P——, a respectable merchant of the place, also an acquaintance of my friend Wastle. He came before the Major, and after professing himself very sorry that his avocations would not permit him to devote his forenoon to my service, made me promise to dine with him—a proposal to which, indeed, I could have no kind of objection. Being afraid that I might have some difficulty in finding the way to his house, he proposed that I should meet him at the Coffee-room, or

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Exchange, exactly at a quarter before five o’clock, from which place, he said, he would himself conduct me to his residence. My rendezvous is a very large, ill-shaped, low-roofed room, surrounded on all sides with green cane chairs, small tables, and newspapers, and opening by glass folding-doors upon a paved piazza of some extent. This piazza is, in fact, the Exchange, but the business is done in the adjoining room, where all the merchants are to be seen at certain hours of the day. I have seldom seen a more amusing medley. Although I have travelled only forty miles from Edinburgh, I could, with difficulty, persuade myself that I was still in the same kingdom.—Such roaring!—such cursing!— such peals of discord!—such laughter!—such grotesque attitudes!— such arrogance!—such vulgar disregard of all courtesy to a stranger! Here was to be seen the counting-house blood, dressed in a box-coat, Belcher handkerchief, and top-boots, or leather gaiters, discoursing (Ædepol!) about brown sugar and genseng! Here was to be seen the counting-house dandy, with whalebone stays, stiff neckcloth, surtout, Cossacks, a spur on his heel, a gold-headed cane on his wrist, and a Kent on his head, mincing primly to his brother dandy some question about pullicat handkerchiefs.—Here was to be seen the counting-house bear, with a grin, and a voice like a glass-blower.—Here, above all, was to be seen the Glasgow literateur, striding in his corner with a pale face, and an air of exquisite abstraction, meditating, no doubt, some high paragraph for the Chronicle, or, perchance, some pamphlet against Dr Chalmers. Here, in a word, were to be seen abundant varieties of folly and presumption—abundant airs of plebeianism. I was now in the Coffee-room of Glasgow. My friend soon joined me, and observing, from the appearance of my countenance, that I was contemplating the scene with some disgust— “My good fellow,” said he, “you are just like every other well-educated stranger that comes into this town; you cannot endure the first sight of us mercantile whelps. Do not, however, be alarmed; I will not introduce you to any of these cattle at dinner. No, sir, you must know that there are a few men of refinement and polite information in this city. I have warned two or three of these raræ aves, and, depend upon it, you shall have a very snug day’s work.” So saying, he took my arm, and observing that five was just on the chap, hurried me through several streets and lanes till we arrived in the ——, where his house is situated. His wife was, I perceived, quite the fine lady, and, withal, a little of the bluestocking. Hearing that I had just come from Edinburgh, she remarked that Glasgow would be seen to much disadvantage after that elegant

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city. “Indeed,” said she, “a person of taste must, of course, find many disagreeables connected with a residence in such a town as this; but Mr P——’s business renders the thing necessary for the present, and one cannot make a silk purse of a sow’s ear—he, he, he!” Another lady of the company carried this affectation still further: she pretended to be quite ignorant of Glasgow and its inhabitants, although she had lived among them the greater part of her life; and, by the bye, she seemed to be no chicken. I was afterwards told by my friend, the Major, that this damsel had in reality sojourned a winter or two at Edinburgh, in the capacity of lick-spittle, or toad-eater, to a lady of quality, to whom she had rendered herself amusing by a malicious tongue; and that during this short absence, she had embraced the opportunity of utterly forgetting every thing about the west country. But there would be no end of it, were I to tell you all. The dinner was excellent, although calculated, apparently, for forty people rather than for sixteen, which last number sat down. Capital salmon, and trout almost as rich as salmon, from one of the lochs— prime mutton from Argyleshire, very small and sweet, and indeed ten times better than half the venison we see in London—veal not inferior— beef of the very first order—some excellent fowls in curry; every thing washed down by delicious old West India Madeira, which went like elixir vitæ into the recesses of my stomach, somewhat ruffled in consequence of my riotous living in Edinburgh. A single bottle of hock, and another of white hermitage, went round, but I saw plainly that the greater part of the company took them for perry or cider. After dinner we had two or three bottles of port, which the landlord recommended as being real stuff. Abundance of the same Madeira, but to my sorrow no claret—the only wine I ever care for more than half-a-dozen glasses of. While the ladies remained in the room, there was such a noise and racket of coarse mirth, ill restrained by a few airs of sickly sentiment on the part of the hostess, that I really could neither attend to the wine or the dessert; but after a little time, a very broad hint from a fat Falstaff, near the foot of the table, apparently quite a privileged character, thank Heaven! set the ladies out of the room. The moment after which blessed consummation, the butler and footman entered as if by instinct, the one with a huge punch-bowl, and the other with, &c. A considerable altercation occurred on the entrance of the bowl, the various members of the company civilly entreating each other to officiate, exactly like the “Elders” in Burns’s poem of The Holy Fair, “bothering from side to side” about the saying of grace. A middle-aged

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gentleman was at length prevailed upon to draw “the china” before him; and the knowing manner in which he forthwith began to arrange all his materials, impressed me at once with the idea that he was completely master of the noble science of making a bowl. The bowl itself was really a beautiful old piece of porcelain. It was what is called a double bowl, that is, the coloured surface was cased in another of pure white network, through which the red and blue flowers and trees shone out most beautifully. The sugar being melted with a little cold water, the artist squeezed about a dozen lemons through a wooden strainer, and then poured in water enough almost to fill the bowl. In this state the liquor goes by the name of Sherbet, and a few of the connoisseurs in his immediate neighbourhood were requested to give their opinion of it— for, in the mixing of the sherbet lies, according to the Glasgow creed, at least one half of the whole battle. This being approved by an audible smack from the lips of the umpires, the rum was added to the beverage, I suppose in something about the proportion of one to seven. Last of all, the maker cut a few limes, and running each section rapidly round the rim of his bowl, squeezed in enough of this more delicate acid to flavour the whole composition. In this consists the true tour-de-maitre of the punch-maker. The punch being fairly made, the real business of the evening commenced; and giving its due weight to the balsamic influence of the fluid, I must say the behaviour of the company was such as to remove almost entirely the prejudices I had conceived, in consequence of their first appearance and external manners. In the course of talk, I found that the coarseness which had most offended me, was nothing but a kind of waggish disguise, assumed as the covering of minds keenly alive to the ridiculous, and therefore studious to avoid all appearance of finery—an article which they are aware always seems absurd when exhibited by persons of their profession. In short, I was amongst a set of genuinely shrewd, clever, sarcastic fellows, all of them completely up to trap—all of them good-natured and friendly in their dispositions—and all of them inclined to take their full share in the laugh against their own peculiarities. Some subjects, besides, of political interest, were introduced and discussed in a tone of great good sense and moderation. As for wit, I must say there was no want of it, in particular from the “privileged character” I have already mentioned. There was a breadth and quaintness of humour about this gentleman, which gave me infinite delight; and, on the whole, I was really much disposed at the end of the evening, (for we never looked near the drawing-room,) to congratulate

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myself on having made a good exchange for the self-sufficient young Whig coxcombs of Edinburgh. Such is the danger of trusting too much to first impressions. The Glasgow people would, in general, do well to assume as their motto, “Fronti nulla fides;” and yet there are not a few of them whose faces I should be very sorry to see any thing different from what they are.—So much for my first day in Glasgow. P. M.

LETTER LXVII TO THE SAME

BUCK’S HEAD, GLASGOW NEXT morning I devoted to visiting the University here, and paying my respects to several of the Professors, to whom I had received letters of introduction from several of my friends in Edinburgh, as well as London. I found the buildings very respectable in appearance—and altogether much more academical in their style than those of Edinburgh. The reason of this is, that they are for the most part much more ancient—or rather, perhaps, that they resemble much more what my eyes had been accustomed to at Cambridge and Oxford. The University consists, as in Edinburgh, of a single College, but it is a much more venerable and wealthy foundation, and the Professors, instead of occupying separate houses in different parts of the town, as in Edinburgh, are lodged altogether in a very handsome oblong court, (like the close of some of our cathedrals,) immediately beside the quadrangles used for public purposes. These quadrangles are two in number, and their general effect is much like that of some of our English third-rate colleges. The first one enters is a very narrow one, surrounded with black buildings of a most sombre aspect, and adorned on one side with a fine antique stair, which leads to their Faculty-Hall, or SenateHouse. The second, to which you approach by a vaulted passage under a steeple, is much larger, but the effect of it is quite spoiled by a large new building in the Grecian style, which has been clumsily thrust into the midst of the low towers and curtains of the old monastic architecture. Both courts are paved all over with smooth flag-stones—for the Scottish academics are not of such orderly habits as to admit of their quadrangles being covered with fine bowling-greens as ours are. However, I was certainly much pleased with the appearance of the whole structure. From the second court, another arched way leads into an open square behind, which is not built round, but which contains in separate edifices the University Library on one hand—and, on the other, the Hunterian Museum, which you know was left in the collector’s will to this seminary, at which he had received the early part of his education. The

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Museum is certainly a beautiful and classical building—so much of it at least as meets the eye in looking at it from the College. As yet I have seen nothing in Scotland that can be compared with it. The front consists of a very magnificent portico, supported by fine Doric pillars, and rising behind into a very graceful dome of stone-work. The College gardens stretch away in the rear of this building, to apparently a very considerable extent, forming a rich back-ground of lawns and trees, and affording a delightful rest to the eye, after the dust and glare of the mobcovered streets of the city. It was in one of the walks of these gardens— (one can never help talking of the incidents of these novels as if they were all matters of fact)—that Rob Roy prevented the duel between Frank and Rashleigh Osbaldistone. It was in them that good worthy Dr Reid (honest man) used to pace when he was meditating the foundations of his Inquiry into the Human Mind. It was in them that the most absent of men, Adam Smith, used to wander and loiter when he was preparing for the world the more precious gift of his Wealth of Nations. It was here, no doubt, that Dr Moore walked, his features twisted with the pangs parturient of his famous Essay on the Greek Particles. It was here that his successor, Mr John Young, must have ruminated with far blander emotions over the yet unpromulgated wit of the exquisite “Criticism on the Elegy written in a Country Church-yard.” My principal object, however, was not so much to examine the minutiæ of these, the externals of the University, as to pick up some accurate notions of the way in which its business is conducted. As the hour, therefore, did not admit of my paying visits of ceremony, I determined to go before making myself known to any one, and hear some of the principal Professors deliver their prælections in their classrooms. My guide, being an old Alumnus of this Alma Mater, knew quite well the particular hours set apart for each individual teacher, and gave me all the information I could have desired about the respective merits of those I might have it in my power to hear. The man of highest reputation for talent among the whole body, he told me, was the same Professor of Greek to whom I have just alluded—so my first ambition was to hear him—indeed, that ambition had long before been kindled within me by the eulogies I had heard passed upon this eminent Grecian, not only by Mr Wastle, and the literati of Edinburgh—but by the much higher authorities of Porson, Burney, and Routh, with all of whom Mr Young lived in habits of close and intimate friendship, during the frequent visits he paid to England. Nay, the Professor’s fame had reached me in quarters still more remote, and at least as respectable; for

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I remember Old Wyttenbach asked me many questions about him in 1802, when I spent the spring under his roof at Leyden—and used to testify much astonishment at my knowing so little about this personage, whom he commonly called “eximius ille apud Scotos philologus.” Dismissing my cicerone, therefore, I walked about the courts of the College by myself, till the rush of lads began to flow towards Mr Young’s lecture-room, and then insinuated myself with the crowd into the interior of the place. I took my station at the extremity of a bench, in the darkest part of the room, which seemed to be occupied by a set of the more elderly students, among whom I imagined my own grave aspect would be less likely to attract attention from the Professor. By and bye, in he came and mounted his little pulpit, between two low windows at the opposite extremity—and I immediately hoisted my spectacles, in order that I might scrutinize the physiognomy of the Philologist before his lecture should begin. A considerable number of minutes elapsed, during which one of the students, perched above his fellows, in a minor sort of rostrum, was employed in calling over the names of all who were or should have been present, pretty much after the fashion of a regimental muster-roll. The Professor was quite silent during this space, unless when some tall awkward Irishman, or young indigenous blunderer, happened to make his entrée in a manner more noisy than suited the place—on which occasion a sharp cutting voice from the chair was sure to thrill in their ears some brief but decisive query, or command or rebuke—“Quid agas tu, in isto angulo, pedibus strepitans et garriens?”—“Cave tu tibi, Dugalde M‘Quhirter, et tuas res agas!”—“Notetur, Phelimius O‘Shaughnesy, sero ingrediens, ut solvat duas asses sterlinenses!”—“Iterumne admonendus es, Nicolæe Jarvie?”—“Quid hoc rei, Francisce Warper?” &c. &c. &c. It required no imagination to detect the marks of clear thorough-going perspicacity of intellect, intermingled, in no usual manner, with those of a fine fancy and an overflowing enthusiasm, in the lineaments of this admirable Professor. I know not that I ever met with any of the “Magnanimi Heroes” of philology, that could shew half so much of his art in his visage. Old Parr you have seen—and you know well that his face is but a heavy one, in spite of the relief it has from the unquenchable dazzle of his large eyes. Porson’s face was a grand one in its way, but I cannot say I could ever see much in it very distinctly, except the general all-pervading radiance of his sheer genius. Wyttenbach is a solemn, sadlooking, venerable, old gentleman, but one would, primâ facie, take him for a moral philosopher, rather than for a philologer. Hermann’s face is

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full of a mad fire like Porson’s—and I suppose Nature meant him to be not a professor but a poet—in spite of the De Metris. Tom Gaisford’s melancholy swarthy countenance has a certain fixed determined stare about it, that shews well enough he will never be weary of hunting authorities in the wildest thickets of that deep jungle-wood, which he mistakes for Parnassus. But the true, lively, keen, hair-splitting expression of a genuine root-catcher, was never exhibited any where so broad and so brightly as in the physiognomy of Professor Young. Never was I more strongly reminded of the truth of that wise saying of the wisest of men, which the sceptical wits of the present age are pleased to scorn as much as any of the dicta of poor Spurzheim,—“A man may be known by his look, and one that hath understanding by his countenance, when thou meetest him.”* The intense power of general observation marked immediately above the eye-brows of this remarkable person, might be supposed to exist in many kinds of individuals, noways resembling him in the peculiar turn of his mind. I have seen it as strong about the sinus frontalis of a lawyer—a calculator—above all, a painter—or a poet fond of drawing the materials of his poetry from what he sees in the world about him, and its actual inhabitants and doings. It is not there that the system of Spurzheim leads one to expect to find the differentia, properly so called, of a philological cranium. Gall says, that in his youth he had reason to be vexed, that, while several of his school-fellows learnt by heart even things which they did not understand, with great facility, he had the utmost difficulty in engraving on his memory a much less number of words; and by accident, first of all, he was led to make the observation, that in those individuals who possessed this extraordinary facility of learning by heart, the eyes were very prominent. In his system, therefore, he has established, among others, a separate organ of words, the greater than common developement of which is denoted by the greater than common prominence of the eyes. Refining by degrees on his observations and conclusions, he has said, that in some cases the eyes are not only prominent, but also depressed downwards, so that the under eye-lid presents a sort of roll, or appears swollen and tumid; and such persons, adds he, are fond of philology, that is, they like to study the spirit of different languages. _____________________________________________ * Ecclus. xix. 29.

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I must own that this was one of the good Doctor’s niceties, which I always regarded with some measure of scepticism, till I had an opportunity of observing the organization of this great Glasgow Philologist. The very appearance of the eyes, described so minutely and graphically by the German, is precisely the thing most remarkable in the whole of this remarkable countenance. The eyes themselves are grey, and full of a bright gleaming intelligence, but their effect is peculiar, and quite distinct from those of any bright eyes I ever observed; and, on close inspection, I can attribute their peculiarity to nothing but this most marked philological conformation in the way of their being set into the head. They are absolutely pushed out of their sockets by the redundance of this particular faculty below; their under-lids stand forth, square, and distinct from the texture of the face, as if half its muscular energy were concentrated in that minute point. It is true, however, that this effect is mightily favoured by the appearance of the other parts of the countenance—the broad girdle of wrinkles about the eyes themselves— the deep lines which converge from all the upper forehead upon the centre of the nose—the sharp bony angular nose itself—the lips compressed like the vice of a blacksmith;—each and all of these features must shed, no doubt, a cordial return of acumen upon the eloquence of the projecting eye which overlooks and illuminates them. His mode of lecturing, or rather of expounding (for it was in that exercise that I found him engaged) harmonizes most perfectly with the expectations this physiognomy would be likely to create. It is impossible that any man should display a more lynx-like intellectual glance than Mr Young scatters upon every subject that comes in his way. There is no satisfying of his restless mind, on any point, with half or quarter explanations; one sees that he must be in agony till he has got to the bottom of his difficulty, and grubbed up the entangling thorn, root by root, let it be planted as firmly, as deeply, and as broadly as it may. The way in which he goes about this business has, no doubt, been borrowed in a great measure from Horne Tooke; and at times, indeed, there were tones and gestures which almost made me dream I had leaped some ten years back, and was seated once more at the fire-side in Wimbledon, opposite to the old red sofa, from which that mighty intellectual Nimrod used to shoot his “επεα πτεροεντα.” But the Professor has abundance of originality about every part of his discourse; and, above all, he is quite a different sort of person from Horne in the article of fine and tender feeling. I own I was quite thunderstruck to find him, all of a sudden, passing from a transport of sheer verbal ecstacy about the particle ἀῤα,

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into an ecstacy quite as vehement, and a thousand times more noble, about the deep pathetic beauty of one of Homer’s conceptions, in the expression of which that particle happens to occur. Such was the burst of his enthusiasm, and the enriched mellow swell of his expanding voice, when he began to touch upon this more majestic key, that I dropped for a moment all my notions of the sharp philologer, and gazed on him with a higher delight, as a genuine lover of the soul and spirit which has been clothed in the words of antiquity. At the close of one of his fine excursions into this brighter field, the feelings of the man seemed to be rapt up to a pitch I never before beheld exemplified in any orator of the chair. The tears gushed from his eyes amidst their fervid sparklings; and I was more than delighted when I looked round and found that the fire of the Professor had kindled answering flames in the eyes of not a few of his disciples. Assuredly, Mr Young must have been a fine orator in any department. He is, without exception, the best reader I ever heard of Greek; and I have heard very few readers of English that I could for a moment compare with him. Nor is this slight praise from an Englishman to a Scotchman. The music of the northern tongue has never become grateful to my ears; but I could not find a moment’s time to recollect that there was any provinciality in the notes of this voice while I was listening to it. The Scottish method of pronouncing Greek, too, although I have no doubt it is in many points much more like the true way than our own, has always, from association or otherwise, appeared to me to have a great degree of barbarity and uncouthness about it; but this prejudice, like a thousand others, dissolved before the flash of this man’s genuine power. Assuredly, if the young men educated here do not become fervent Grecians, it is not for want either of precept or example in their Professor. But the truth is, as I have mentioned before, that, according to the present style of academical education in Scotland, it is a matter of comparatively little consequence whether a professor of languages be or be not himself an eminent scholar or a skilful teacher. The clay is not so long in his hands as to allow him the power of moulding it to his will. Before the vessel is tempered in its fabric—long, very long before it can receive the high finishing polish which such an artist as this could give it, it is hurried away and filled with a premature, and, what is worse, a chaotic infusion of ingredients. In spite of all these disadvantages, however, it is impossible that such very surpassing energies as those of this Professor, should be exerted so long without producing some effect; and, accordingly, I am informed the study of the ancient languages does thrive here

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at the present time in a degree much beyond any of the other Universities of Scotland. Let us hope that the spark he has kindled may, ere long, find vent to break out into a noble and illuminating flame. But, limited as he is in his means of benefiting those immediately about him by his admirable prælections, is it not a thousand pities that he should not atone to his genius and his fame for this sad defect, by making the world at large more extensively partakers in the fruits of his studies,—by creating for himself, in other words, a name as splendid as Nature has entitled him to bequeath to posterity? What Shakspeare has said of Royal Beauty, may be said as well of Mental Power— Shame it should die, and leave behind no copy.

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I made a visit immediately afterwards, in the same manner, to the Lecture-room of Mr Jardine, the Professor of Logic, for I had heard of this gentleman also in a thousand quarters, and was anxious to see and hear him in his own place. I heard him talked of in a particular style of commendation one day in a large company of the Edinburgh literati, among whom it appeared there was a great number of his former disciples; and, truly, the affectionate terms in which they delivered themselves, were almost as honourable to themselves as to their old teacher. They represented him as a person who, by the singular felicity of his tact in watching and encouraging the developements of youthful minds, had done more good to a whole host of individuals, and gifted individuals too, than their utmost gratitude could ever adequately repay. They spake of him as of a kind of intellectual father, to whom they were proud of acknowledging the eternal obligations of their intellectual being. I never heard so much enthusiasm expressed by pupils for their master— no not even at the commemoration of Rugby. I did not, however, hear the Professor deliver one of the lectures by which these gentlemen professed themselves to have been so largely benefited. It so happened, that at the hour I went, he was engaged, not in prælection, but in examining his pupils on some of the subjects of a lecture he had delivered on the preceding day. Perhaps, however, the

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benefits derived from his teaching may be traced in no inconsiderable measure to his peculiar excellence in this very branch of his duties. Such a clear manly method of putting his questions—such a ready manner of comprehending the drift of the replies he received—such skilful nicety in drawing out the workings of perplexed minds, and making those who were puzzled find for themselves the thread that should lead them out of their labyrinths—and all this accompanied with such an honest, downright, paternal sort of kindness in voice, look, and gesture—I have really never before seen a more amiable combination of the faculties most precious in a teacher of youth. I think it no wonder, that they who have sat at the feet of this good man, should be very slow in losing their memory of so much moral worth and real talent, exerted in so rare a style of union for the furtherance of their improvement. It is no wonder, that the days spent in drinking wisdom from so pure and liberal a fountain, should form, in feeling and intelligent minds, some of the dearest of those youthful recollections, which afford throughout the years of active and bustling life, the most charming breathing-places of reposing meditation. In such feelings it must be that such a spirit finds the best reward of all its labours. Wherever such a man as this goes, throughout all the districts of the land in which he has so long exerted himself, he is sure to meet with eyes that kindle into a filial flame, when they see once more the venerable lineaments of his well-known face. He has created for himself a mighty family, among whom his memory will long survive—by whom all that he said and did—his words of kind praise and kind censure—his gravity and his graciousness—will, no doubt, be dwelt upon with warm and tender words and looks, long after his earthly labours shall have been brought to their close. The good such men do is of such a kind, that it cannot “die with them.” *

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I waited upon this excellent person soon after the conclusion of his examination, and delivered several letters I had for him from his friends in Edinburgh. He asked me to dine with him, to which I assented, and in the mean time he proposed we should go and see the Hunterian Museum together, as there was still an hour or two we had to spare. This museum is chiefly remarkable for the very fine collection of anatomical preparations it contains; and I am glad I had an opportunity

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of seeing them, as one of them strongly exemplified a fact concerning the junction of the vertebræ, which I have stated at some length in my treatise, De Muliere, &c. p. 97.* There is also an excellent collection of medals, but I could not be permitted to see them at this time, owing to the strict regulations under which their inspection is laid—necessarily, I well believe, from what I know of the consciences of collectors. Their stuffed animals are not very numerous, nor have they been allotted a very conspicuous situation, being placed in small rooms below stairs, where the elephants and hippopotamuses look rather disconsolate. In one corner I saw an Egyptian mummy, which is shut up in a huge wooden case, strongly clasped with iron bars, as if to prevent it from coming out and chasing any of the Professors up stairs, when they happen to visit that apartment at a late and dreary hour. As it was entirely enveloped in the original linen swaddling-bands, I had no opportunity of investigating the organ of combativeness in the lower lateral part of the forehead, which is said by Spurzheim to be large in most mummies. In another apartment,—by the way a singularly elegant one both in shape and furniture,—there is a fine assemblage of pictures. The collection is not extensive, but most of the specimens are of rare excellence. There is a beautiful Guido, representing the Virgin watching the infant Christ asleep. There is a St Catherine, by Domenichino, full of expression—a head of St Peter, by Rubens, with rather too much of the homeliness of the human passions, but gloriously coloured. The collection is also graced with a Correggio—the Virgin and Child, and St Joseph,—a picture in capital preservation. The Virgin is represented with a sweet look of maternal tenderness, putting upon the child a new vest, which appears, from the implements introduced in the picture, to be the workmanship of her own hands. There is a Salvator, not a landscape, but a group of figures—Laomedon, detected by Apollo and Neptune, all in a very bold and striking style of mastery. There is a Danae and the Golden Shower, by my old favourite Luca Giordano, an artist of whom shamefully little is known or thought in this country. There is, besides, a small inimitable Murillo, the Good Shepherd. They have also a landscape by Rembrandt, a flat country, with a town in the distance, a scene in which it is evident no object has been intro_____________________________________________ * I should mention, that in the Second Edition, published at Paris in 1812, it is at page 103.

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duced for the sake of ornament. There is something in the perspective of level plains which always strikes me—Welchman though I be—as more sublime than any view clogged and obstructed with mountains, or other large objects. I think that a barrier of mountains rising between the spectator and the horizon, suggests the idea of limitation somehow, and circumscription. Your eye is stopped, and your attention trammelled, by the different summits and eminences; and in examining the localities of a particular spot, you lose the notion of what Homer calls the immeasurable earth. The ocean, by recalling the idea of infinitude, inspires a sense of the sublime; but, at the same time, in contemplating a marine landscape, we feel a certain coldness, resulting from the want of life and vegetation. The αναριθμον γελασμα, of which Æschylus speaks, is, after all, but a cheerless thing, compared with the smiling repose of sunbeams on the long vanishing distances of a tract glowing with the vestiges of human labour and human happiness. There are some other pictures, but I have mentioned the most remarkable. After dinner, and an excellent bottle of wine, the Professor took me with him to the porter’s lodge of the College, (Archy Cameron’s,) one of the rooms of which is used by some of the brethren as a kind of common-room. Here I spent the evening very delightfully, in a snug, quiet, intelligent little society. We played whist till ten, then supped on a glorious Glasgow luxury of fresh-herrings, and concluded the whole with a moderate quantum sufficit of rum-punch, in the manufacture of which some one or two of these learned persons seemed to be no whit inferior to the best of the neighbouring citizens. P. M.

LETTER LXVIII TO THE SAME

BUCK’S-HEAD NEXT day, I spent almost the whole morning in company with my excellent cicerone, in taking a survey of a few of the most extensive manufactories of this place. As these, however, must be in all respects quite similar to those of other towns which you have often seen, I shall not trouble you with any particular description of what I saw. It appeared to me, upon the whole, that the Glasgow manufacturers conduct matters with more attention to the comforts of those whom they employ, than most of their brethren elsewhere; a fact which, indeed, I remember to have heard mentioned in Parliament a few sessions ago, with a very laudable degree of pride, by the Member for the town, Mr Kirkman Finlay, himself one of the greatest merchants of Scotland, and, I well believe, one of the most intelligent also, in spite of all the jokes against him in the Courier. I was assured, at least, that there prevails in this place nothing of the vile custom of unceasing labour by day and by night, which has been, with so much noble passion, described and branded in the words of the Wanderer.* _____________________________________________ * The passage is as follows—The manufactory chiefly referred to, seems, from the description of the localities, to have been that near Newby-bridge, Lancashire. ——“When soothing darkness spreads O’er hill and vale,” the Wanderer thus expressed His recollections—“and the punctual stars, While all things else are gathering to their homes, Advance, and in the firmament of heaven Glitter—but undisturbing, undisturbed, As if their silent company were charged With peaceful admonitions for the heart Of all-beholding Man, Earth’s thoughtful Lord; Then in full many a region, once, like this, The assured domain of calm simplicity And pensive quiet, an unnatural light, Prepared for never-resting labour’s eyes, Breaks from a many-windowed fabric huge;

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After being confined for hours to the steam-heated atmosphere of these places, my ears dingling with the eternal rock and buzz of wheels and spindles, and my eyes fretted and inflamed with the flakes of cotton every where flying about; and, in spite of all that I have said, my spirits being not a little depressed by the contemplation of so many thousands of poor creatures shut out in their captivity from The gentle visitations of the sun— And in these structures mingled, old and young, And unripe sex with sex, for mutual taint,—

—my spirits being somewhat saddened with all these poisonous sights, and sounds, and reflections, I readily embraced the proposal of my friend—that we should walk forth, namely, into the fields, and refresh ourselves with breathing the unpolluted air of heaven, till the hour of dinner. He led me into a large piece of meadow-ground, which stretches along the banks of the Clyde to the east of the city, and which, being public property, is left in its free untainted verdure, forming a beautiful contrast to the dust of the city, and a precious breathing-place to its inhabitants. It forms, in fact, a fine park—indeed, excepting London and Dublin, there is no town in these islands which possesses any thing that can be compared with it. My friend told me, however, that, with all its natural attractions, it is far from being much frequented by the fashionables of the place, who prefer walking on the Trongate, or on some of _____________________________________________ And at the appointed hour a bell is heard— Of harsher import than the curfew knoll That spake the Norman Conqueror’s stern behest, A local summons to unceasing toil! Disgorged are now the ministers of day; And as they issue from the illumined pile, A fresh band meets them at the crowded door And in the courts—and where the rumbling stream That turns the multitude of dizzy wheels, Glares, like a troubled spirit, in its bed Among the rocks below—Men, maidens, youths, Mothers and little children, boys and girls, Enter—and each the wonted task resumes Within this temple—where is offered up To Gain—the master idol of these realms, Perpetual sacrifice,” &c.

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the narrow highways round the town, and leave this delicious Green (for that is the name it goes by) to be trodden almost exclusively by the feet of those whom they are pleased (in contradistinction from themselves,) to call the Vulgar. But my friend remembers the old times, when the Green was the constant lounge, and has a pride in being seen walking leisurely under the ancient elms which gave shade to the more judicious worthies of a generation that has passed away. A tall Monument, in the form of an obelisk, has been erected to the memory of Lord Nelson, in the midst of this Green, and contrasts itself agreeably with the level plain surface, out of which it arises. Shortly after it was erected, it was struck by lightning—the top was completely shattered—and a yawning fissure points out the course of the destructive element, more than half-way down one of the sides. But it would be a difficult thing to repair this injury, and the people of Glasgow have allowed the Monument to remain exactly as the thunder left it. It has stood for several years in this way—and, I doubt not, will stand for many centuries without any considerable alteration for the worse. In the neighbourhood of the Monument, we saw several elderly citizens playing at the old Scots game of golf, which is a kind of gigantic variety of Billiards—the table being a certain space in the Green, sometimes of many hundred yards in extent—the holes situated here and there, at great distances—and the balls, which are made very hard, stuffed with feathers, being swung to and fro in a terrific manner, by means of long queues with elastic shafts—a fine healthful game, which seems to be a mighty favourite both here and at Edinburgh. Nearer the margin of the river, which is really a very grand stream here, another wide division of the meadow seemed to be set apart for the purposes of a washing-green. It is here, upon the fine green turf, that the servant-maids of Glasgow love to spread forth their bleaching linen before the sun, wringing the sheets, and giggling and tittering at the passers-by. It is here that the corporal takes his forenoon lounge, with his Waterloo medal, and perhaps enters into some interchange of repartees with the rosy and joyful damsels; so that from less to more, he is ultimately, it may be, induced to add from among them a fifth or sixth wife, to the list of those whom he has already left weeping at Cork, at Manchester, at Hull, at Dundee, and elsewhere. In the present case, the devoted victim leans over her watering-pan, and admires his sinewy limbs, gracefully and freely exhibited beneath the scanty covering of the regimental philabeg—his spirited style of flourishing a sixpenny rattan—the knowing cock of his eye—and the readiness of his retorts—

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and, alas! reflects not how often, and how fatally, the same fascinations may have been practised before— Non sola comptos arsit adulteri Crines, et aurum vestibus illitum Mirata, regalesque cultus.

If, perhaps a shoemaker, or any other common mechanic, happens to pass the groupe, he is sure to be made the butt of their wit; and, in fact, appears but a poor sneaking devil for the time, although perhaps he treated them with curds and cream on Sunday last. Even a gentleman’s servant figures to disadvantage—his showy livery cannot rival the regales cultus—and a lamp-lighter is execrable, and fit only to be shuddered at by these fine ladies. But, as I said before, the devoted victim thinks only of him in scarlet; and while the deep tones of his voice sink into her ears, the river appears to flow more smoothly than it ever did before; and the fields to look fresher than ever summer could make them. She remembers the day, when the news of the glorious 18th of June arrived—the enthusiasm with which her master read aloud the newspaper at the breakfast table—the green branches that adorned the streets during the forenoon—and the charming dazzle of the windows, when she walked out to see the illumination in the evening. The remembrance of all these fine things rushes bright upon her fancy—and having once more surveyed the strapping corporal from head to foot, her fate is determined. Those of the damsels engaged in the actual occupation of washing their linen, were also worthy of some notice on account of the peculiar way in which they go about their operations. The greater part of their work is done, not by means of the hands, but the feet, each maiden standing in her tub, and thumping below like an Italian grape-treader, her petticoats being kilted considerably above the knee, and her ivory limbs frothed over half the way up, with the light foam of the ocean of suds which their extremities agitate. Some might turn away from this exposure as somewhat indelicate—but I confess I had a pleasure in seeing it—for I consider it as an interesting relic of the fearless purity of the olden times. But, indeed, I think a groupe of girls washing linen, in whatever way, is always a pretty spectacle, and revives pleasing ideas concerning the simple fashions of antiquity—when the daughters of kings used to think no shame of asking their father’s regal leave to go out and wash their own smocks, and the shirts of the princes their

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brothers—representing, too, the propriety of majesty itself making a clean appearance at the council-board.* Seeing that I could easily amuse myself in this place, my friend left me to myself, and went off to pay a visit in the town. I continued my stroll along the breezy banks of the river for a considerable space—but at length found myself a little fatigued, and sat down on one of the benches, which occur every now and then by the side of the walks. I had not sat long till I perceived a brother lounger advancing towards me from the opposite direction, in a meditative attitude; and, surveying the man, I thought I could distinguish him to be one of that class of philosophical weavers, with which the west of Scotland is known to be so plentifully stocked. Nor was I mistaken. The man edged towards the bench, and soon took his place within a yard of me, with an air of infinite composure. Being seated, he cast one or two sidelong glances upon me, and then fixed his eyes in a very speculative stare upon the water, which rippled within a little distance of his feet—while I, on my part, continued less politely to study him with the eye of a traveller and a craniologist. He was tall and slender in his person, with a bend forward, acquired, no doubt, through the stooping demanded by his vocation— considerably in-kneed and splay-footed—but apparently strong enough and nervous in every part of his muscular frame. He was clad in a very respectable short coat of blue—a waistcoat of deep yellow ground, with thin purple and green stripes crossing each other upon it—a pair of corduroy breeches, unbuttoned at the knees—a thick pair of worsted stockings, hanging loosely about his legs—and a dark red-coloured cravat. He seemed to be a man of about fifty years of age, and when he took off his hat to cool himself, the few lank hairs which escaped from below a small striped night-cap on the top of his cranium, were evidently of the same class with those of the Ghost in Hamlet—the _____________________________________________ * Πάππα φiλ̓,̓ οὐκ ἂν δή μοι ἐφοπλίσσειας ἀπήνην Ὑψηλὴν, ἐύκυκλον, ἵνα κλυτὰ εἵματ ἄγωμαι Ἐς ποταμὸν πλυνέουσα, τά μοι ῥερυπωμένα κεῖται; Καὶ δὲ σοι αὐτῷ ἔοικε μετὰ πρώτοισιν ἐόντι βουλὰς βουλεύειν καθαρὰ χροΐ εἵματ᾿ ἔχοντα. Πέντε δέ τοι φιλοι υἷες ἐνὶ μεγάροις γεγάασιν, Οἱ δύ᾿ ὀπυίοντες, τρεῖς δ᾿ ἠϊθεοι θαλέθοντες· Οἱ δ᾿ αἰεὶ ἐθέλουσι, νεόπλυτα εἵματ᾿ ἔχοντες, Ἐς χορὸν ἔρχεσθαι· τὰ δ᾿ ἐμῆ φρενὶ πάντα μέμηλεν.

ODYSS. Z.

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“sable silvered.” As to his face, its language was the perfection of selfimportant non-chalance. A bitter grin of settled scepticism seemed to be planted from his nostril on either side, down almost to the peak of his long unshorn chin—his eye-brows were scanty and scraggy, but drawn together in a cynical sort of knot—and altogether the personage gave one the idea of a great deal of glum shrewdness in a small way—I should have mentioned that he had a green apron (the symbol of his trade) wrapped about his middle beneath his upper garment—and that he held a number of the Edinburgh Review, twisted hard in his left hand. “This is a hot day, friend,” said I, willing to enter a little into conversation. The fellow’s features involuntarily relaxed themselves a little on the greeting, and he answered very civilly, “Middling warm, sir—Ye’ll have been taking a walk?”—“I have,” said I, “and I am glad I came this way, for I think the town looks better from where we are than anywhere else I have been.”—“Ye’ll be only a stranger, sir?— Indeed, I might have kenn’d by your language ye were fra the south.” “I only came to Glasgow two days ago,” said I.—“Glasgow’s a very grand ceety noo, sir—a very grand ceety—there’s no the like o’t in Scotland hooever. I have seen Manchester in my time, but Glasgow clean dings baith it and Edinburgh, and I believe it does most places— we’ve a noble situation here, sir—a pretty river, navigable quite up to the Broomielaw, for sloops, brigs, and gabbarts, and it might be made passable quite up to Hamilton, but the folk here are keen to keep it to themselves—and it’s natural it should be sae.”—“The weather is, in general, very wet hereabouts?” said I, “you have very seldom any such stretch of dry weather as the present.”—“Very seldom, sir; and I think it may be dooted whether it is not lucky it is sae—the agriculturist, no question, is against the lang weets, but the commercial interest is uppermost here, sir; and what wad come of the Monkland Canal, think ye, if we had not a perpetual drizzle to keep the springs running? There’s reason for a’ thing, sir—if folk could see it.”—“Is that the last number of the Review, friend?” said I; “has it just come out?”—“It is the last number, sir, but it is not just come oot—I ken not how it is, but altho’ I’ve gane every other morning to the leebrary, I’ve never been able to get a haud o’t till yestreen—and noo that I have gotten it, I think not that muckle o’t—it’s very driegh.”—“Driegh,” said I. “I am sorry I don’t just understand you—what’s the meaning of that word, friend, if you please? I am but a new comer, and don’t yet follow the Scots quite so well as I could wish.”—“Troth,” cried the fellow, with a most gracious smile, “it’s nae wonder after a’ ye shuid not tak me up—ane’s sae

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muckle in the habit of conversing with people that knows nathing but Scots, that ane really forgets what ane says when ane meets with a stranger. Driegh, ye see, means just a kind o’ mixture of dryness and dreariness, like a lang road atween twa brick walls or sae—the Review’s sairly fallen off—but they say Jeffrey’s sae muckle ta’en up with the law, that he has little time for thae things by what he used to have—and Horner, he’s gane—he was a fine lad—weel worth the hail bang o’ them—his report on the bullion always seemed to me to be a maisterly performance. But we have aye Harry Brougham—and, under correction, we have Sir Francis Burdett, sir, which is better still. He’s the puir man’s friend—I would to God that chap war whare he suld be.”— “Sir Francis,” said I, “is certainly a very elegant speaker—and, I believe, a very well-meaning gentleman—But where would you have him?”— “At the head, sir—at the head and the helm—there’s no salvation for Britain unless Burdett get his way—there’ll soon be a dooncome wi’ some folk—and that wull be seen.”—“Are the weavers hereabouts discontented with the present state of things in general?” said I; “or are you singular in your opinions about political matters?—I have heard a great deal of the men of your profession in this neighbourhood—and I see I have not been misinformed. Some years ago, several Glasgow and Paisley weavers were examined before the House of Commons, and they got great credit for the appearance they made.”—“Troth,” replied my friend, “there’s no question the maist feck o’ us are a little ill-pleased with the gate things are ganging—but as you say, sir, the operatives here are a tolerably well-informed class—we tak a philosophical view of what’s gaun on—but we have nane of your rampaging Luddite gowks hereawa. Na, na—we had a braw lesson in the ninety-three, and it will no be forgotten in a hurry—let me tell you that, sir. We have an auld Scotch saying—the burnt bairn dreads the fire. But, as Dauvid Hume says, honest man,—there’s no resisting the general progress of opinion. The march of intellect will carry a’ before it, sir. But I’m very sorry to see the Review fallen away; it was a great waipon ance, and it is a sair pity to see the edge aff.” “Works of that kind,” said I, “are subject to ups and downs, as well as ministries and governments—the Review might easily be revived surely—there is no want of ability in Scotland.” “We’re muckle beholden to you, I’m sure,” said he, with another still sweeter smile—“I believe it is pretty weel acknowledged noo that this is the country for abeelity; and yet I suppose it is no sae muckle ony natural superiority on oor part, but just oor education that lifts us so much above our neighbours. I know what the state of the English nation

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is mysell—I once wrought the most of twa years with M‘Taffie and Company, in Manchester.” “You have all the advantage,” said I, “of being taught to read and write—that is a great blessing, for which you are obliged to your Kirk.” “Ye have mentioned the greatest of oor obligations to it with which I am acquainted—it wad be weel, in my mind, if Parochial Schools were a’ the kirk establishment in Scotland.” “You are a Dissenter, I suppose?” said I.—“No, truly,” was his answer—“there would be few Seceders, if a’body cared as little about thae things as I do. But the world will become enlightened bit by bit. Dauvid Hume has weel remarked, that there is no resisting the silent progress of opinion. What think you, sir, of the doctrine of the perfectibility of the species?” “In truth, friend,” said I, “that is a point on which I have not yet been able to come to any very determinate opinion; but I think you said you did not belong to any of the dissenting bodies here. You go to church, then, I suppose, in spite of any of your little objections to the establishment.” “Objections!—Lord bless you, sir, I have nae objections to the church; in the present state of things, I’m persuaded the kirk is as good as any thing that could be put in its place—and I’m far from being clear that it would do to want some religious establishment for some time to come yet. If poor Thomas Paine had been spared—but perhaps—(taking himself up)—perhaps ye may be of another way of thinking; I wish to say nothing unceevil,” added he, with a most condescending grin,—“I hope I shall always respect the prejudices of my fellow-citizens—they are not to be trifled with, however erroneous.”—“My good friend,” said I, “do not put yourself into any alarm; I assure you my feelings are in no danger. I am to suppose that you don’t make a practice of going to church. Does not that appear singular in this part of the country, and give offence to the majority?” “Troth,” said he, “to tell you the plain fact, I would not be so very heeding about the majority oot of doors—but a person of a liberal turn in my line of life, cannot always be quite sure of peace in his own house and home. The women, says Hume, were always the chief friends of every superstition; and so I find it, sir, and that in my own family. I’ve an auld mither, sir, a guid body too, in her way, that keeps me in perfect hett water. I cannot bring in Sandy Spreull, and Jamie Jamieson, and one or two more friends, to talk over a few philosophical topics on a Sabbath at e’en,—but we’re worried—clean worried—with the auld wife’s bergin about infidelity and scoffing—and sic like—why, it’s only Martinmas was a year, that when I was reading a passage from the Review, she gruppit the book fairly oot of my hand, and had it at the

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back o’ the coal, and in a low, before ye could say Jack Robinson—but I bear with a’ that—as for the bairns, I find it absolutely necessary to allow her to tak her ain way wi’ them. Puir things, they’ll get light in time.”—“I think you mentioned that you get the Edinburgh Review from a public library,” said I, “pray what sort of a library is it—and how are these things managed among you here?”—“Oh—just in a small way, no doubt, as suits our means—but we have a pretty collection in our library noo—we’re aye on the increase—even in the warst times of a’ we never would hear of parting with our books—we have David Hume’s Essays, and several volumes of his Histories—we have Adam Smith—and Locke on the Human Understanding—and Voltaire’s Novels—and Lord Lauderdale’s Inquiry—and the Pleasures of Hope— and Tannahill’s Poems—the Queen’s Wake—and Struthers—and Robin Burns, that’s worth a’ the poets that ever tried the trade, in my humble mind—and we have very nearly a complete copy of the Encyclopædia—and we have the Edinburgh Review from the very beginning bound up, all but the three last numbers—and,” added he, sinking his voice—“we have twa copies of the Age of Reason—and a gay wheen odds and ends besides, that we would not fain have ony body see but oorsells—but I’m sure, sir, an intelligent stranger like you might see our puir collection, if you would do us the favour to look at it.”—“I am very much your debtor,” said I—“and have you no meetings of a regular kind to discuss the subjects of all your reading?”—“Why, yes,” he said; “we are pretty regular in the winter time—the Sabbath nights for ordinary—and as for simmer, we commonly take a walk to Ruglen, four or five of us, and have a quiet crack during sermon time at auld Jock Blair’s—him that was in trouble lang with Thomas Muir—he keeps a public there noo.” I would gladly have prolonged the conversation a little farther, but I heard the hour at which I was engaged sounded deep and hollow from the huge clock of the Cathedral, to which all the minor horologes of the city made ready response in their various tones of shrillness and clamour. I was therefore obliged to bid the weaver good bye—and to make the best of my way to my hotel, and from thence to Mr ——’s. What a sad picture is here of the state of these conceited creatures! Truly, I would hope this fashion of superficial infidelity may not be far from going out altogether, now it has got so very low down in the scale. After I had walked a good many paces towards the city, I looked back to the bench where I had been sitting, and could scarcely contain my laughter, when I saw the disciple of David Hume sitting with his arms folded

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solemnly upon his breast, drowned, apparently, to the very edge of his greasy night-cap, in some of the same profound meditations from which my intrusion had for a little space withdrawn him. *

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LETTER LXIX TO FERDINAND AUGUSTUS POTTS, ESQ. Clarendon Hotel, Bond-Street

IT was with great sorrow, I assure you, my dear Potts, that I found by your last letter that you are again laid up with an attack of your old complaint. From your description of the symptoms, I apprehend no danger, but still you cannot be too cautious, and I recommend you to take particular care of yourself for a month or two at least. I wish to God I had you under my hands. I am quite sure I know your constitution better, and could cure you sooner than any other practitioner—What is even Mr Cline, with all his genius, to me, that have known you ever since you had the measles? ——Experto crede Roberto.

The truth is, my good lad, that, after all, you have need of very little beyond what nature puts in your own power—but, my dear Potts, do take good care of yourself, I beg of you. Do not proceed in the old courses, my good fellow,—do not drink such enormous quantities of Vauxhall punch at night, nor smoke so many segars at the Cyder Cellar, nor guzzle so much Burton ale at that house in Henrietta Street, nor make a point of swallowing as much flip as would swim a goose at the Shades, nor give such liberal orders for champagne at the Cheshire, nor discuss such a quantity of gin twist at the Blue Posts, and the One Tun, nor go so often to that vile alley that runs between King Street and Pall Mall, nor sit so late at Roubel’s. In a word, you must remember that the indiscretions of a day are sometimes paid for by the sufferings of years. Do now, turn over a new leaf, and I have no doubt that my physic and your own sobriety, will soon make a man of you again. I am glad, however, to find that the arguments I employed in my former letter, to induce you to visit Scotland, have not wholly failed of their effect. But you have been accustomed to move in so extended a circle of society, that you seem rather dubious whether you could easily reconcile yourself to the more limited one, to which in this country you

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would necessarily be confined. You are clearly unwilling to curtail the sphere of your attractions from ten thousand people to three hundred, and imagine that those blandishments which have procured you the character of a man of fashion at Almack’s, would be utterly thrown away when displayed to a small set of female Sawneys in the George Street Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh. Believe me there is more vanity than sound reason in this anticipated objection, as I shall very briefly demonstrate. You remember, three years ago, how we walked the Gallery of the Louvre (then in its glory) together, and expressed our admiration of the most striking beauties which there fell under our observation. I say the most striking beauties, because it was only those which we had then either time or inclination to remark. We gazed with reverence on the mighty works of Raphael, Rubens, Domenichino, and Michael Angelo, because much of the excellence of these great artists is perhaps too glaring and prominent to be overlooked even by the most casual and ignorant observer. But how many of the most exquisite masterpieces of art, of the most transcendent works of genius, did we pass over like so much waste paper. How many fine Guidos and Correggios, how many Claudes and Poussins did we gaze on, with as much indifference as we do the sign of the Blue Boar in Fleet Street, or the Swan with Two Necks in Fetter-lane?—paintings which, with our eyes undazzled by so extensive and brilliant a collection, we could not chuse but have dwelt upon with admiration and delight. A fine man, my dear Potts, is like a fine picture. To be seen to advantage, he should be seen alone; at all events, he should never be surrounded with rivals quite as beautiful and brilliant as himself. The centre diamond (and it’s a very fine one) of your grandmother’s ring, whatever admiration it may attract on your finger, would probably pass quite unnoticed if transferred to the necklace of Mrs Long Wellesley. At present the young ladies at the Opera and Almack’s regard you with the most mortifying spirit of indifference. But only make your entré in the Edinburgh Theatre, and I will bet you two to one, either in fives, tens, poneys or hundreds, that the box in which you are seated will form precisely the point to which all the opera-glasses of the Scottish spinsters will be immediately directed. Another piece of advice which I have often given you before, but which I cannot help once more earnestly repeating, is—to get married. It was all very well to laugh at these things, as we used to do some ten or fifteen years ago; but we are all getting on, Potts, and depend upon it, if you allow other ten years to slip over your single blessedness, you

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will not find it so very easy a matter to noose yourself to advantage. The truth is, I have a fine buxom widow (and, without flattery, you are just the man for a widow) in my eye for you. She is just about your own age, with a fine languishing pair of black eyes, and a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, besides a large sugar plantation in Trinidad. Her husband only survived the honey-moon about a fortnight;—she was a most inconsolable widow for many months, and still continues to wear weeds for the “dear defunct.” I have often heard you say you liked a high-spirited woman, and express much contempt for those “dull domestic drudges,” as you call them, who are contented to sit pacifically at home, making puddings or darning stockings for their husbands. I assure you, you shall have no such complaint to charge on Mrs F——, who, though I have no doubt, with such a husband, she will have too much good sense to attempt to wear the breeches, yet is altogether too well informed of her rights not to stick up for her own. The mode of my becoming acquainted with her is too singular to be passed over in silence. When sitting quietly at breakfast, with my friend Mr Wastle, at the Hotel, we were suddenly alarmed with the most dreadful outcries from a neighbouring house. On running out to ascertain their origin, we found them to proceed from Mrs F——, who it appeared had broken her leg by an over-exertion in the act of kicking an impudent footman down stairs. I immediately made an offer of my professional skill, which was thankfully accepted, and thus had many opportunities of improving my acquaintance with the agreeable widow. With such a fine high temper as she has, I should be almost afraid to recommend her to any friend but you for a wife. But you are not a man to be henpecked, and I have no doubt will soon accustom her to the bit, and put her in proper training. If you mean to run for the plate, you must start immediately— no time to be lost. Verbum sapienti. This letter, as you may observe by the date, (if there is one) is written from the Buck’s-head Inn, Glasgow, a capital house, which I beg leave to recommend to your patronage, should you ever visit this city. I begin to think our friend Tom’s mode of choosing a hotel is not a bad one. His selection is generally regulated by the weight and dimensions of the different hosts, well judging, that the landlord who exhibits the most unquestionable marks of good living in his own person, is the most likely to afford it to his guests. On this principle of choice, I apprehend the Buck’s-head is entitled to a preference over most houses of entertainment in the kingdom. The precise weight of Mrs Jardine, the landlady, I certainly do not pretend to know, and certainly believe it to

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be something under that of the Durham Ox. But the size and rotundity of her person so greatly exceed the usual dimensions of the human frame, that were they subjected to that rule of arithmetic, entitled, Mensuration of Solids, I am very sure the result would be something extraordinary. Her jollity and good-humour, however, make her an universal favourite; and I can bear witness that her inmates have no cause to complain either of bad cheer or want of attention. I flatter myself I stand pretty well in her good graces; and, in consequence, am frequently invited to eat a red herring in the back parlour, and take a glass out of what she calls her ain bottle. The bottle contains not the worst stuff in the world, I assure you. It is excellent Burgundy, and the red herring commonly turns out to be a superb chop en papillote. Alas! my dear Potts, what frail and inconsistent creatures we are. Even I, who commenced this letter with preaching temperance and sobriety, am at this moment labouring under a most intolerable head-ache, from having last night been too copious in my libations. The fact is, I dined yesterday with one of the great civic powers of the city, and instead of sticking to my usual beverage, was fool enough to commute it for a treacherous and detestable liquor called Glasgow punch. Although I had frequently met with it, yet I had never been tempted to partake of it before; and seduced by its cool and pleasant flavour, and quite ignorant of its deleterious effects, Oh, I did quaff not wisely, but too well,

as the state of my head and stomach this morning can well testify. Amidst the agonies it occasioned, I could not help ruminating on the kindness and liberality with which Nature accommodates her gifts to the wants of her different children. Not only has she bestowed a face of brass on the lawyer, and a throat of brass on the mob orator; but, by the beard of Esculapius—(I really cannot help swearing)—she must have given bowels of brass to the Glasgow punch-drinker. On no other principle can the enormous quantities of punch, which the natives here swallow with impunity, be accounted for. For Godsake, Potts, profit by my experience, and if you ever visit this city, do not allow a drop of it to pass your throat. So will you escape those complicated tortures which I am now compelled to endure. The penance under which I groan, is one of a totally new description—it wants a name even in my copious vocabulary of Deipnosophism. It does not in the least resemble the dry husky agonies with which the sins of the too profuse port-bibber are

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visited in the morning—still less does it claim any kindred with the mad delirious dizziness which follows the delightful excitation of mingled champagne, green tea, and Eau de Garusse, in the Regent’s punch—no, nor yet has it any of the same features with the drunkenness of gin-twist and tobacco, the leaden penance of the bowels of Mynheer. It is a new species—Oh, never may it be naturalized in Cardigan!—An intolerable, griping, rending, shivering nausea within—cold feet and a burning brow—dim eyes—parched lips—and trembling fingers—(ecce signum!)—these are a few of the consequences of the enlightened hospitality of Glasgow. Yet you see all this does not prevent me from thinking on your still more desolate condition—and endeavouring, so far as my abilities permit, to contribute something to beguile the tedium of your couch in the Clarendon. If you can only resist the fascinations of this poisonous liquor, (which, indeed, I admit to be very great,) there is no doubt you may spend a few weeks in Glasgow very pleasantly, when you make out your expedition to the North—which, of a truth, I now expect you will do ere many months elapse. You will have to do with a sort of people quite as original as their liquor—and I am happy to say far more harmless, although, perhaps, not at first quite so fascinating as that is. You need not stand in the smallest apprehension of wearying or exhausting their kindness. Every day you will receive at least half-a-dozen new invitations—and if you were to prolong your stay for a twelvemonth, I am persuaded you would experience no sort of diminution in the fervour of their hospitality. I myself, who have been here only for three or four days, can already claim acquaintance with some three or four dozen of the prime ones of the place. I am engaged—(in case I remain here longer than it is likely I shall)—to dinner and supper every day for a month to come. The ladies share in the enthusiasm—and one—the very princess of the Bon-ton among these bourgeoises—gave a ball the other evening, principally, as she gave me to understand, in honour of your humble servant. If such be their reception of the plain Peter Morris, in his old long-backed brown coat and black silk breeches—think what would be the zeal with which the same individuals would hail the appearance of the dashing Mr Potts—the Potts—as fine as the united skill of Blake— Stulze—Binckley—and Hoby can make him. I would give ten guineas—poor as I am—to see you make your debut in the Trongate of Glasgow, either on foot in the centre of the pavé—or shaving its edge with the glowing wheels of your tilbury. Good Heavens! what a stir you would create among the usual frequenters of

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that plebeian promenade! What a treat it would be to see the chaotic fermentation of wonder, curiosity, admiration, and envy, in the countenances of the gazers! What a dimness of eclipse the first emerging of your star would scatter over all the present luminaries of this nether horizon! How vain would be their attempts! How ineffectual their aspirations! The whole Dandyism of this Northern Manchester would wither and crumble into nothing, before the brilliancy of the mirror of truth—the swing of the genuine beau! I cannot say, however, that your triumph would be one on which you might have much cause to pique yourself—you never in your life saw such an arrant set of spooney-pretenders. In their gait, in the first place—they bear no resemblance to any other set of human beings I ever met with, and henceforth I am confident I shall recognize, by means of it, a Glasgow man quite as easily as I would a Chinese, in the city of London. The fellows are, some of them, not ill made, and if drilled properly might cut a tolerable figure anywhere; but it is impossible to give you the least idea of the peculiar gesticulations of lith and limb, which accompany them every step they take, and scatter deformity over every part of their corporeal fabrics. They commonly move at a round swinging trot, with their arms dallying to and fro by their sides, like the eternal pendulum of an eight-day clock. Their legs are extended every step, so as to describe a circumference of a foot or two outwards, before they touch the ground, which they always do by the heel in the first instance—rising again from the fore-part of the foot with a kind of scrape and jerk, that beggars all description for its absurdity. I could sometimes burst with laughter, walking in the rear of one of them, and surveying at my leisure the fine play of inexplicable contortions all over the rear of the moving mass. Among them there are some egregious puppies: The most egregious all seem to be infected with a mania for sporting-paraphernalia—wearing foxes and tally-ho inscriptions on their waistcoat buttons—buckskin breeches and knee-caps—glazed hats with narrow rims, &c. &c. with exactly the same feelings of propriety which dictate the military swagger and costume of the men-milliners of the Palais Royal—their Polish surtouts—their chasseur pantalons—and their moustaches à la Joachim. Absurd, however, as is their appearance on the Mall, their appearance at the ball I mentioned, was still more exquisitely and inimitably absurd. I have seen all kinds of dances, from a minuet at St James’s to a harvesthome bumkin in the barn of Hafod—but I never saw anything that could match this Glasgow Assembly. I had dined that day very quietly,

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(comparatively speaking) and went quite in my senses; but I don’t believe there were half-a-dozen men in the room besides, that could be said to be within ten degrees of sobriety. The entrée of every new comer was announced in the Salle des presentations, not more distinctly by the voice of the lacquey, than by the additional infusion of punch-steam into the composition of the atmosphere all around. And then how the eyes of the boobies rolled in their heads, as they staggered up to the lady of the evening to make their counting-house bows! Their dress was the ne plus ultra of dazzle, glitter, and tastelessness. Their neckcloths were tied like sheets about their clumsy chins—their coats hung from their backs as if they had been stolen from a window in Monmouth Street—their breeches—or what was more common, their trowsers,—seemed to sit about their haunches with the gripe of a torturing machine—their chevelures were clustered up on the tops of their heads like so many cauliflowers, leaving the great red ears flapping below in the whole naked horrors of their hugeness. The ladies were as fine as the men— but many of them were really pretty creatures, and, but for the influence of that masculine contamination to which they must be so grievously exposed, I doubt not some of them would have been charming women in every respect. A few seemed to present a striking contrast of modest loveliness to the manners of the multitude—but the general impression produced by their appearance, was certainly very far from being a delicate one. The most remarkable of their peculiarities, is the loudness of their voices—or rather the free unrestrained use they make of them— for I give you my honour, sitting round the table at supper, I could hear every word some of them uttered, at the distance of thirty feet at least from where I sat. What a scene of tumult was this supper! There was plenty of excellent wines and excellent dishes, but I really could not get time to attend to them with the least of my usual devotion. Here was one reaching his arm across the table, and helping himself to something, with an accompaniment of jocular execration. There was another bellowing for boiled cabbage and a glass of champagne, both in the same breath. Here was a young lady eating a whole plate-full of hot veal cutlets, and talking between every mouthful as loud as a campaigner. There was an old fat dowager screaming for a bottle of porter—or interchanging rough repartees with a hiccuping baillie at the opposite side of the table. What a rumpus was here! What poking at pyes with their gigantic battlements of crust! What sudden demolition of what pyramids of potatoes! What levelling of forests of celery! What wheeling of regiments of decanters! What a cannonade of swipes! What

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a crash of teeth! What a clatter of knives! Old Babel must have been a joke to this confusion of sounds! The dancing was almost as novel a thing—I mean on the part of the gentlemen—for I must do the ladies the justice to say that they in general danced well, and that some of them danced quite exquisitely. The men seem to have no idea beyond the rudest conception of something like keeping time—and a passion for kicking their legs about them, apparently dictated by the same kind of hilarity which would have prompted them elsewhere to shying of black bottles against the mantlepiece, or a choral ululation of “here’s to jolly Bacchus!” or “variety is charming.” Yet some of the cattle—yes, some of the most clumsy of them all, had the assurance to attempt a quadrille—a dance which seems to have made still less progress here than in Edinburgh, for it appeared to be hailed and applauded as a kind of wonder. The moment the set was formed, which took place in a smaller apartment, communicating with the great dancing-room, the whole of the company crowded to see it, and soon formed a complete serried phalanx of gazers all about the performers. Nay, such was the enthusiastic curiosity of some of the ladies in particular, that they did not scruple to get upon their feet on the benches and sofas all around the wall—from which commanding situation there is no question they had a better opportunity both of seeing and being seen. At some of the pauses in the dance, the agility of the figurantes was rewarded, not with silent breathings of admiration—but with loud roars of hoarse delight, and furious clapping of hands and drumming of heels all about—nor did these violent raptures of approbation appear to give the slightest uneasiness to those in whose honour they were displayed. In short, my dear Potts, the last glimmering twilight hour of the Lord Mayor’s ball, when the dregs of civic finery gesticulate, as is their will and pleasure, beneath the dying chandeliers in the Egyptian Hall—even that horrible hour is nothing to the central and most ambitious display of this “at home” of Mrs —— ——. It is needless for me to give you any more particulars—You will comprehend at one glance what kind of scenes you would be introduced to, were you condescending enough to vouchsafe your presence for a week or two at the Buck’s-Head. You will comprehend what a sensation you would create both among the males and the females—with what clear undisputed supremacy you would shine the only luminary in this their night of unknowingness. Should you not approve of my Edinburgh widow—you would only need to look around you and drop the handkerchief to any one of the undisposed of, of the Glasgow ladies.

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Beauties they have some—heiresses they have many. The lower cushion of the tilbury would be pressed in a twinkling by any upon whom you might cast the glances of your approbation. I speak this the more boldly, because I observed that the Glasgow fair treated one or two young heavy dragoons from Hamilton Barracks, who happened to be present at this ball, with a kind of attention quite superior to any thing they bestowed on their own indigenous Dandies. The most audacious coxcombry of the cits had no chance beside the more modest coxcombry of these Enniskillings. But, my dear fellow, what can the Enniskillings produce that could sustain a moment’s comparison with the untainted, unprofessional, thorough-bred Bond Street graces of a Potts? Those true “—— Cupidinis arma,” ——quæ tuto fæmina nulla videt. I pledge myself, that in the ball-rooms of Edinburgh, still more indisputedly and alone in those of Glasgow, your fascinations will be surfeited with excess of homage. Nulla est quæ lumina, tanta, tanta, Posset luminibus suis tueri Non statim trepidansque, palpitansque, &c.

If the old proverb hold true, veniunt a veste sagittæ, I promise you there would not be many whole hearts the morning after you had danced your first pas-seul on the floor of the Glasgow Assembly-rooms. Ever very truly your’s, P. M.

LETTER LXX TO THE REV. DAVID WILLIAMS

THE chief defect in the society of this place is, specifically, pretty much the same as in every provincial town I have ever visited; but I think it seems to be carried to a greater length here than any where else. This defect consists in nothing more than an extreme fondness for small jokes and nicknames—the wit of the place being almost entirely expended in these ingenious kinds of paltrinesses;—its object being, as it would appear, never to give pleasure to the present, otherwise than by throwing impertinent stigmas on the absent. Almost every person of the least importance is talked of, in familiar conversation, not by his proper name, but by some absurd designation, borrowed from some fantastical view of his real or imaginary peculiarities. It is really distressing to see how much countenance this vulgar kind of practice receives, even from the best of those one meets with here. But the most amusing part of the thing is, that each is aware of the existence of every nickname but his own, and rejoices in making use of it, little thinking that the moment his back is turned, he is himself subjected to the very same kind of treatment from those who have been joining in his laugh. Another favourite species of Glasgow wit, however, is exercised in the presence of the individuals against whom it is levelled; and it is not to be denied, that there is much more both of ingenuity and of honesty in this species. I believe I should rather say there are two such kinds of wit—at least I have heard familiar use of two separate designations for their quizzing. I do not pretend to have analyzed the matter very closely; but, so far as I have been able to comprehend it, the case stands thus:— In every party at Glasgow, as soon as the punch has levelled the slight barriers of civil ceremony which operate while the cloth remains on the table, the principal amusement of the company consists in the wit of some practised punster, who has been invited chiefly with an eye to this sort of exhibition, (from which circumstance he derives his own nickname of a side-dish,) and who (as a fiddler begins to scrape his strings at the nod of his employer,) opens his battery against some inoffensive butt on the opposite side of the table, on a signal, express or implied,

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from the master of the feast. I say some punster, for punning seems to be the absolute sine qua non of every Glasgow definition of wit; in whatever way, or on whatever subject the wit is exerted, it is pretty sure to clothe itself in a garniture of more or less successful calembourgs; and some of the practitioners, I must admit, display very singular skill in their honourable vocation. There are two ways, as I have hinted, in which the punning Side-dish may perform the office in behalf of which he has been invited to partake of the less offensive good things that are going on the occasion; and for each of these ways there exists an appropriate and expressive term in the jocular vocabulary of the place. The first is Gagging: it signifies, as its name may lead you to suspect, nothing more than the thrusting of absurdities, wholesale and retail, down the throat of some too-credulous gaper. Whether the Gag come in the shape of a compliment to the Gaggee, some egregious piece of butter, which would at once be rejected by any mouth more sensitive than that for whose well-known swallow it is intended,—or some wonderful story, gravely delivered with every circumstance of apparent seriousness, but evidently involving some sheer impossibility in the eyes of all but the obtuse individual who is made to suck it in with the eagerness of a starved weanling,—or, in whatever other way the Gag may be disguised, the principle of the joke is the same in its essence; and the solemn triumph of the Gagger, and the grim applause of the silent witnesses of his dexterity, are alike visible in their sparkling eyes. A few individuals, particularly skilled in this elegant exercise, have erected themselves into a club, the sole object of which is its more sedulous and constant cultivation. This club takes the name of “the Gagg College,” and I am sorry to tell you some of the very first men in the town (—— —— I am told is one) have not disdained to be matriculated in its paltry Album. The seat of this enlightened University is in an obscure tavern or oysterhouse; and here its eminent professors may always be found at the appointed hours, engaged in communicating their precious lore to a set of willing disciples, or sharpening their wits in more secret conclave among themselves—sparring as it were in their gloves—giving blows to each other more innocent, no doubt, than those which are reserved for the uninitiated. The second species is called Trotting—but I have not learned that any peculiar institution has been entirely set apart for its honour and advancement. It is cultivated, however, with eminent industry at all the common clubs of the place, such as the Banditti, the Dirty-Shirt, the

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What-you-please, &c. &c. The idea to which its name points, (although somewhat obscurely perhaps you will think) is that picturesque exhibition of the peculiar properties of a horse, which occurs when the unfortunate individual of that race about to be sold, is made to trot hard upon the rough stones of a Mews-lane, kicking up and shewing his paces before the intending purchaser, in presence of a grinning circle of sagacious grooms, jockeys, and black-legs. You have seen such an exhibition. You have seen the agent of the proprietor seize the noble Houyhnmn by the white string fastened to his martingale, and urging him by hand and voice, to stretch his nerves and muscles to the cracking point—capering and flinging along as if the devil or the ginger were in him, till smack he comes against the brick wall at the end of the lane, where he is drawn suddenly up—his four extremities with difficulty collecting themselves so as to keep him upright upon the smooth round glossy knobs of granite, over which they have been moving with so much agility. You have seen the poor creature turned right about after the first trot—and compelled, invita Minerva, to a second no less brisk and galling—to a third—and to a fourth—while all the time the eyes of those concerned are fixed with Argus-like pertinacity on every quiver of his haunches. You have observed, above all, the air of pride and satisfaction, with which the generous animal sometimes goes through the trial—snuffing up the air with his nostrils—heaving his mane—and lashing the wind with his tail—and throwing superfluous vigour into all the ligaments of his frame at every step he takes—little knowing for what mean purposes the exhibition is intended—rejoicing with an innocent glee in the very acme and agony of his degradation. Even such is the condition of the poor Glasgow Trottee, upon whom some glorious master of the whip fastens his eye of cruelty, and his hand of guidance. He begins, perhaps, with a slight and careless assent to some unimportant remark, or a moderate response of laughter to some faint feeble joke, uttered by the devoted victim of his art. By degrees the assent becomes warmer, and the laughter louder—till at length the good simple man begins to think himself full surely either a wise man or a wit, as the case may be. It is not easy to say in which case the diversion afforded may be the most exquisitely delightful—whether it is most pleasing to see a dull man plunging on from depth to depth of grave drivelling, and finding in the lowest depth a lower still—laying down the law at last with the very pomp of a Lycurgus, on subjects of which he knows not, nor is ever likely to know, anything—his stupid features, with every new dictum of his newly-discovered omniscience, assuming

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some new addition of imposing solemnity—his forehead gathering wrinkles, and his eye widening in its lack-lustre glimmer as he goes on,—it is not easy, I say, to decide whether this exhibition of gravity be more or less delightful, than that of the more frisky and frolicksome Trottee, who is, for the first time in his life, made to imagine himself a wit, and sets about astounding those who gaze upon him by a continually increasing nimbleness, and alacrity of inept levities— pointless puns—and edgeless sarcasms—himself all the while dying with laughter at the conceptions of his own wonder-working fancy— first and loudest in the cachinnation which is at once the reward and punishment of his folly. I must own that the evil principle was strong enough within me to make me witness the first two or three exhibitions of this sort of festivity with not a little satisfaction—I smiled, instigante plane Diabolo, and not having the fear of the like before my eyes. On an after occasion, however, one of the most formidable of the practitioners thought fit to attempt making Dr Morris his butt, and I believe he did absolutely succeed in trotting me a few yards to and fro on the subject of the shandrydan. But I perceived what was going forward in good time, and watching my opportunity, transferred with infinite dexterity the bit from my own mouth to that of my trotter—aye, and made him grind it till I believe his gums were raw. I had the good sense, however, to perceive the danger of the practice in spite of my own successful debut, and, God willing, from this moment, hope never to fill the roll either of Trotter or Trottee. The ideas you will form of the style of society which prevails in this place, from these little data, cannot indeed be very high ones. Beware, however, of supposing that to faults of so detestable a nature, there are no exceptions. I have already met with many—very many—well-bred gentlemen in Glasgow, who neither trot nor are trotted—who never were so stupid as to utter a pun—nor so malicious as to invent or echo a nick-name. It is true, indeed, that they are the nigro simillimi cygno of the place; but their rarity only renders them the more admirable, and the less deserving of being crowded into the list of evil-doers, with whom they are continually surrounded. P. M.

LETTER LXXI TO THE SAME

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AFTER all, I am inclined to think that the manners of mercantile men are by no means so disagreeable as those of men engaged in most other active professions. In the manners of Glasgow, it is true, there is a sad uniformity of mercantile peculiarities—but how could this be otherwise in a town where no nobility resides, and where there is no profession that brings the aristocracy of talent much into view? In such a town, it is obvious there must be a miserable defect in the mechanism of society, from there being nothing to counteract the overbearing influence of mere wealth, or to preserve the remembrance of any other species of distinction. In a society where individuals claim importance on many different grounds, there must of course be produced an extension of thought, corresponding to the different elements which these individuals contribute to the general mass. But here, no doubt, the cup below is a dead one, and the one gilded drop floats alone and lazily upon the heavy surface. Yet taking matters as they are, perhaps the influence of the mercantile profession, although bad enough when thus exclusively predominant, is not in itself one of the worst. If this profession does not necessarily tend to refine or enlighten human nature, it at least does not distort it into any of those pedantries connected with professions, which turn altogether upon the successful exercises of a single talent. The nature of the merchant is left almost entirely free, and he may enter into any range of feelings he pleases—but it is true he commonly saves himself the trouble of doing so, and feels only for NUMBER ONE.

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In Glasgow, however, it would seem that the mercantile body is graced with a very large number of individuals, who are distinguished by a very uncommon measure of liberality of spirit. They are quite unwearied in their private and public charities; and although not much tinged with literary or philosophical enthusiasm in their own persons, they appreciate the value of higher cultivation to the community at large, and are on all occasions willing to contribute in the most laudable manner, to promoting, sustaining, or erecting institutions friendly to the cause of such cultivation. Two institutions of this nature have of late owed their being to this fine spirit of the Glasgow merchants, and I should hope they may long flourish, to reflect lasting honour on the names of their founders. I allude to the Astronomical Observatory—a very pretty building, magnificently furnished with all manner of instruments—and the New Botanic Garden, which is already of great extent, and which promises, I think, to be of amazing value. Both of these have been founded by private subscription among the leading members of the mercantile body in this thriving city—and the last mentioned is in the way of receiving continual augmentations to its riches from the kindred enthusiasm of liberality which exists among those young men connected with the place, of whom so many hundreds are scattered over every region of the world. The productions of distant climates are forwarded on every opportunity by these young persons to this rising garden in their native city; each, no doubt, deriving a generous pleasure in his exile, from the idea that he is thus contributing to the ornament of the place, with the localities of which his earliest and best recollections are connected. But a few of the members of this profession, with whom I have become acquainted since my arrival here, are really men of a very superior class in every point of view—and might, I take it, be presented, without the least alarm for their credit, in any European society, in which it has ever been my chance to move. These are commonly persons descended from some of the old mercantile families of the place—who, although they pursue the calling of their fathers—(and indeed to desert such a calling would, in their case, be pretty much the same sort of thing with giving up a fine hereditary landed estate)—yet enjoyed, in their early years, by means of the ancient wealth of their houses, every facility of liberal education such as their native city could afford—and who in not a few instances, moreover, have received many additional means of improvement from that foreign travel, in which a great part of their after, and more strictly professional education consisted. These

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men busy themselves in the mornings with their concerns in the town; but in the evenings, they commonly retire to the beautiful villas which they have in the neighbourhood—and with the abundance of which, indeed, the whole face of the country round about Glasgow, in every direction, is adorned and enriched. Here they enjoy as much, perhaps, of elegant leisure and domestic enjoyment, as falls to the lot of any other class of British subjects. The collisions in which they are constantly engaged with each other, and with the world, are sufficient to prevent them from acquiring any narrow and domineering ideas of sequestrated self-importance, while, on the other hand, the quiet and graceful method of their lives at home, softens and refines their minds from the tooexclusive asperities of struggling self-interest, and the conflictions of the baser passions. I question whether our island can boast of a set of men more truly honourable to her character—more admirable both in regard to their principles and their feelings—more unaffectedly amiable at home, or more courteous in their demeanour abroad, than some of those, the elite of the merchant-house of Glasgow, at whose hospitable mansions, during the later days of my stay in this neighbourhood, I have spent so many delightful hours. By degrees, it often happens, these gentlemen abstract themselves altogether from business, handing it over, I suppose, to some of their sons or relations. They purchase land, and then take their place in the great body of British gentry, with, for aught I see, as much propriety as any that elevate themselves to that most enviable of all human conditions, from any of those professions which think themselves too exclusively entitled to the appellation of liberal. After becoming acquainted with some of these enlightened and amiable individuals, and seeing the fine elegant way in which the quiet evenings of their days and of their lives are spent, I could not help recollecting, with some little wonder, the terms of unmitigated derision in which I had heard the lawyers of Edinburgh speak concerning “the people of Glasgow.” Truly, I think such language is well becoming in the lips of your porers over title-deeds—your fustian-sleeved writers— your drudging side-bar jurisconsults. I should like to know in what respect the habitual occupations of these men are more likely to favour the culture of the general mind, than those of the great merchant, who sends his ships to every region of the habitable world, and receives them back loaded with its riches; or the great manufacturer, who subdues the elements to his purpose, and by his speculations at once encourages the progress, and extends the fame of those arts and sciences, in which not a little of the truest glory of his country consists.

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The respectable families of this place have to boast, moreover, of having produced not a few individuals, who, abandoning the profession of their fathers, have devoted themselves to other pursuits, and achieved things that cannot fail to reflect honour both upon them and the city of their habitation. Such was that gentle and delightful poet, James Grahame, the author of the Sabbath, who died only a few years ago in the midst of his family here, and over whose remains a modest and affecting inscription is placed in the choir of the Cathedral. I have been gratified more than once, during my sojourn in Glasgow, with hearing the terms of deep and tender affection in which the memory of this good man is spoken of by those, whose admiration of his mild and solemn genius has been warmed and enriched into a yet nobler kind of enthusiasm, by their experience of his personal virtues—their own intimate knowledge of that fine heart, from which so many of his inspirations appear to have been derived, and with the pervading charm of which, each and all of his most beautiful inspirations appear to have been sanctified. It is, indeed, a precious pleasure which one receives in contemplating the sober endearing influences which survive the death of such a man, in the place where he was best known. This is the true embalming—such are the men who scarcely need the splendours of genius to preserve their memories—who may ————trust

The lingering gleam of their departed lives, To oral records and the silent heart.

The author of the Isle of Palms, and the City of the Plague (whose exquisite Lines on the Death of James Grahame are engraved on the memory of not a few here, and elsewhere) is himself also a native of this place, and connected by blood with many of the most respectable families of this vicinity. I mentioned this gentleman more than once to you in my letters from Edinburgh, and am glad that you were pleased with my account of his eloquence. The truth is, that I do not think justice is at all done in general to his genius—it is everywhere, indeed, admitted to be beautiful and various; but I suspect its strength and originality are not adequately appreciated, even by those who ought to be most capable of studying its productions. The meed of poetical popularity (in its proudest sense) has been bestowed in our time in a way that cannot be considered in any other light than that of extreme partiality, by all who contemplate the poetical works which have been produced among us, with a calm and deliberate eye. The reputation of those who have

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acquired great reputation, is perfectly just and proper; but there are not a few names which ought to share more than they do in the high honours which have been lavished on our first-rate favourites. Such, most assuredly, are the names of Coleridge, of Lamb, and of Wilson—three poets distinguished by very different kinds of acquirement, and very different kinds of genius,—but all agreeing in one particular, and that no unimportant one neither—namely, that they have appealed too exclusively to the most delicate feelings of our nature, and neglected, in a great measure, to call upon those more wide-spread sympathies, whose responses are so much more easy to be wakened—and, being once aroused, so much louder in their cheering and reverberating notes. I should except, however, from this rule, as applied to Mr Wilson’s poetry, his last and longest poem, the City of the Plague—in which there is surely no want of passionate and powerful appeals to all those feelings and propensities which have been most excited and gratified by the most popular poets of our day. Of the comparative unpopularity of that poem, something no doubt may be attributed to the hasty nature of its plan and composition, and something also to the defective structure of its blank verse, which is certainly by no means what it should be—but I think no person who reads it, can doubt that it displays altogether a richness and fervour of poetic invention, and, at the same time, a clear pathetic mastery of all the softer strings of the human heart—such as in a wiser or a less capricious age, would have long since procured for the poem very extensive popularity—and for the poet himself, a much more copious reward of serious admiration than seems as yet to have been bestowed by the general voice upon Mr Wilson. It has often occurred to me, in thinking of other individuals besides this poet, that early attainment of great fame is by no means most in the power of those who possess the greatest variety of capacities and attainments. A man who has only one talent, and who is so fortunate as to be led early to exercise it in a judicious direction, may soon be expected to sound the depth of his power, and to strengthen himself with those appliances which are most proper to ensure his success. But he whose mind is rich in a thousand quarters—who finds himself surrounded with an intellectual armoury of many and various kinds of weapons—is happy indeed if he do not lose much time in dipping into the surface of more ores than his life can allow him time to dig to their foundations—in trying the edge of more instruments than it is possible for any one man to understand thoroughly, and wield with the assured skill of a true master. Mr Wilson seems to possess one of the widest

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ranges of intellectual capacity of any I have ever met with. In his conversation, he passes from the gravest to the gayest of themes, and seems to be alike at home in them all—but perhaps the facility with which in conversation he finds himself able to make use of all his powers, may only serve to give him wrong and loose notions concerning the more serious purposes to which he ought to render his great powers subservient. In his prose writings, in like manner, he handles every kind of key, and he handles many well—but this also, I should fear, may tend only to render him over careless in his choice—more slow in selecting some one field—or, if you will, more than one—on which to concentrate his energies, and make a sober, manly, determinate display of what Nature has rendered him capable of doing. To do every thing is impossible. To do many things well is a very inferior matter to doing a few things—yes, or one thing—as well as it can be done; and this is a truth which I question not Mr Wilson will soon learn, without any hints beyond those which his own keen observing eye must throw in his way. On the whole, when one remembers that he has not yet reached the time of life at which most of the great poets even of our time began to come before the public, there seems to be no reason to doubt that every thing is yet before him—and that hereafter the works which he has already published, may be referred to rather as curiosities, and as displaying the early richness and variety of his capacities, than as expressing the full vigour of that “imagination all compact,” which shall then have found more perfect and more admirable vehicles in the more comprehensive thoughtfulness of matured genius and judgment. I regret his comparative want of popularity, chiefly for this reason, that I think the enthusiastic echoes of public approbation, directed loudly to any one production, would have afforded a fine and immediate stimulus for farther exertions in the same way—and such is his variety of powers, that I think it a matter of comparatively minor importance, on which of his many possible triumphs his ambition should be first fully concentrated. You will observe that I have been speaking solely with an eye to his larger productions. In many of his smaller ones—conceived, it is probable, and executed at a single heat—I see every thing to be commended, and nothing whatever to be found fault with. My chief favourites have always been the Children’s Dance—the Address to the Wild Deer seen on some of the mountains of Lochaber—and, best of all—the Scholar’s Funeral. This last poem is, indeed, a most perfect master-piece in conception—in feeling—and in execution. The flow of it is entire and unbroken in its desolate music. Line follows line, and

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stanza follows stanza, with a grand graceful melancholy sweep, like the boughs of some large weeping willow bending slowly and sadly to the dirges of the night-breeze, over some clear classical streamlet fed by the tears of Naiads. *

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* P. M.

LETTER LXXII TO THE SAME

IT was in this part of Scotland, as you well know, that the chief struggles in behalf of the Presbyterian form of church-government, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, occurred; and, in spite of the existence of many such individuals as the Philosophical Weaver I mentioned the other day, and of no inconsiderable extension of the tenets of the sceptical school of Scotch philosophy among persons of a higher order, it is here that the same love for the national system of faith and practice, out of which those struggles sprung, is seen still to survive, in not a little of its original fervour, in the breasts of the great majority of the people. I have witnessed many manifestations of the prevalence of this spirit since I came into the West of Scotland, and, I need not add, I have witnessed them with the sincerest pleasure. It is always a noble thing to see people preserving the old feelings and principles of their fathers; and here, there can be no doubt, there would have been a peculiar guilt of meanness, had the descendants of men who, with all their minor faults, were so honest and so upright as these old Covenanters were, permitted themselves to be ashamed of adhering to the essentials of the system for which they did and suffered so much, and so nobly. It is not to the people of the West of Scotland that the energetic reproach of the poet can apply. I allude to the passage in which he speaks of All Scotia’s weary days of civil strife— When the poor Whig was lavish of his life, And bought, stern rushing upon Clavers’ spears, The freedom and the scorn of after years.

The idle and foolish whimsies with which the religious fervour of the Covenanters was loaded and deformed, have given way before the calm, sober influences of reflection and improvement; but it is well that the spirit of innovation has spared every thing that was most precious in the cause which lent heroic vigour to the arms of that devout peasantry, and more than ghostly power to that simple priesthood. One of the most remarkable features which I have observed in the

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manners of the Scottish people, is their wonderfully strict observance of the Sabbath—and this strictness seems to be carried to a still greater height here than even in Edinburgh. The contrast which the streets afford on this day, to every other day in the week, is indeed most striking. They are all as deserted and still during the hours of divine service, as if they belonged to a City of the Dead. Not a sound to be heard from end to end, except perhaps a solitary echo answering here and there to the step of some member of my own profession,—the only class of persons who, without some considerable sacrifice of character, may venture to be seen abroad at an hour so sacred. But then what a throng and bustle while the bell is ringing—one would think every house had emptied itself from garret to cellar—such is the endless stream that pours along, gathering as it goes, towards every place from which that all-attractive solemn summons is heard. The attire of the lower orders, on these occasions, is particularly gay and smart; above all of the women, who bedizen themselves in this mercantile city in a most gorgeous manner indeed. They seem almost all to sport silk stockings and clean gloves, and large tufts of feathers float from every bonnet; but every one carries a richly-bound Bible and Psalm-book in her hand, as the most conspicuous part of all her finery, unless when there is a threatening of rain, in which case the same precious books are carried wrapt up carefully in the folds of a snow-white pockethandkerchief. When the service is over at any particular place of worship—(for which moment the Scotch have, in their language, an appropriate and picturesque term, the kirk-skailing,)—the rush is, of course, still more huge and impetuous. To advance up a street in the teeth of one of their congregations coming forth in this way, is as impossible as it would be to skull it up a cataract. There is nothing for it but facing about, and allowing yourself to be borne along, submissive and resigned, with the furious and conglomerated roll of this human tide. I never saw any thing out of Scotland that bore the least resemblance to this; even the emptying of a London theatre is a joke to the stream that wedges up the whole channel of the main street of Glasgow, when the congregation of one of the popular ministers of the place begins to disperse itself. For the most part, the whole of the pious mass moves in perfect silence; and if you catch a few low words from some groupe that advances by your side, you are sure to find them the vehicles of nothing but some criticism on what has just been said by the preacher. Altogether, the effect of the thing is prodigious, and would, in one moment, knock down the whole prejudices of the Quarterly Reviewer,

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or any other English High-Churchman, who thinks the Scotch a nation of sheer infidels. Yesterday, being Sunday, I threw myself into the midst of one of these overwhelming streams, and allowed myself to float on its swelling waves to the church of the most celebrated preacher in this place, or rather, I should say, the most celebrated preacher of the day in the whole of Scotland—Dr Chalmers. I had heard so much of this remarkable man in Edinburgh, that my curiosity in regard to him had been wound up to a high pitch, even before I found myself in the midst of this population, to which his extraordinary character and genius furnish by far the greatest object of interest and attention. I had received a letter of introduction to him from Mr Jeffrey, (for the Critic and he are great friends)—so I called at his house in a day or two after my arrival in Glasgow, but he had gone to visit his friends in a parish of which he was formerly minister, in the county of Fife, so that I was, for the time, disappointed. My landlady, however, who is one of his admirers, had heard of his return the evening before, and she took care to communicate this piece of intelligence to me at breakfast. I was very happy in receiving it, and determined to go immediately; upon which Mrs Jardine requested me to accept the loan of her own best psalm-book, and her daughter, Miss Currie, (a very comely young lady) was so good as to shew me the way to her pew in the church. Such, I presume, is the intense interest attracted to this preacher, that a hotel in Glasgow could not pretend to be complete in all its establishment, without having attached to it a spacious and convenient pew in this church, for the accommodation of its visitors. As for trusting, as in other churches, to finding somewhere a seat unappropriated, this is a thing which will by no means do for a stranger who has set his heart upon hearing a sermon of Dr Chalmers. I was a good deal surprised and perplexed with the first glimpse I obtained of his countenance; for the light that streamed faintly upon it for the moment, did not reveal any thing like that general outline of feature and visage for which my fancy had, by some strange working of presentiment, prepared me. By and bye, however, the light became stronger, and I was enabled to study the minutiæ of his face pretty leisurely, while he leaned forward and read aloud the words of the psalm—for that is always done in Scotland not by the clerk, but the clergyman himself. At first sight, no doubt, his face is a coarse one— but a mysterious kind of meaning breathes from every part of it, that such as have eyes to see cannot be long without discovering. It is very

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pale, and the large half-closed eye-lids have a certain drooping melancholy weight about them, which interested me very much, I understood not why. The lips, too, are singularly pensive in their mode of falling down at the sides, although there is no want of richness and vigour in their central fulness of curve. The upper-lip, from the nose downwards, is separated by a very deep line, which gives a sort of leonine firmness of expression to all the lower part of the face. The cheeks are square and strong, in texture like pieces of marble, with the cheek-bones very broad and prominent. The eyes themselves are light in colour, and have a strange dreamy heaviness, that conveys any idea rather than that of dullness, but which contrasts, in a wonderful manner, with the dazzling watery glare they exhibit when expanded in their sockets, and illuminated into all their flame and fervour, in some moment of high entranced enthusiasm. But the shape of the forehead is perhaps the most singular part of the whole visage; and indeed it presents a mixture so very singular, of forms commonly exhibited only in the widest separation, that it is no wonder I should have required some little time to comprehend the meaning of it. In the first place, it is without exception the most marked mathematical forehead I ever met with— being far wider across the eye-brows than either Mr Playfair’s or Mr Leslie’s—and having the eye-brows themselves lifted up at their exterior ends quite out of the usual line—a peculiarity which Spurzheim had remarked in the countenances of almost all the great mathematical or calculating geniuses—such, for example, if I rightly remember, as Sir Isaac Newton himself—Kaestener—Euler—and many others. Immediately above the extraordinary breadth of this region, which, in the heads of most mathematical persons, is surmounted by no fine points of organization whatever—immediately above this, in the forehead of Dr Chalmers, there is an arch of Imagination, carrying out the summit boldly and roundly, in a style to which the heads of very few poets present any thing comparable—while over this again there is a grand apex of high and solemn Veneration and Love—such as might have graced the bust of Plato himself—and such as in living men I had never beheld equalled in any but the majestic head of Canova. The whole is edged with a few crisp dark locks, which stand forth boldly, and afford a fine relief to the death-like paleness of those massive temples. Singular as is this conformation, I know not that any thing less singular could have satisfied my imagination after hearing this man preach. You have read his Sermons, and therefore I need not say any thing about the subject and style of the one I heard, because it was in all respects

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very similar to those which have been printed. But of all human compositions, there is none surely which loses so much as a sermon does, when it is made to address itself to the eye of a solitary student in his closet—and not to the thrilling ears of a mighty mingled congregation, through the very voice which Nature has enriched with notes more expressive than words can ever be of the meanings and feelings of its author. Neither, perhaps, did the world ever possess any orator, whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says—whose delivery, in other words, is the first, and the second, and the third excellence of his oratory, more truly than is that of Dr Chalmers. And yet, were the spirit of the man less gifted than it is, there is no question these his lesser peculiarities would never have been numbered among his points of excellence. His voice is neither strong nor melodious. His gestures are neither easy nor graceful; but, on the contrary, extremely rude and awkward—his pronunciation is not only broadly national, but broadly provincial— distorting almost every word he utters into some barbarous novelty, which, had his hearer leisure to think of such things, might be productive of an effect at once ludicrous and offensive in a singular degree. But of a truth, these are things which no listener can attend to while this great preacher stands before him, armed with all the weapons of the most commanding eloquence, and swaying all around him with its imperial rule. At first, indeed, there is nothing to make one suspect what riches are in store. He commences in a low drawling key, which has not even the merit of being solemn—and advances from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph, while you seek in vain to catch a single echo, that gives promise of that which is to come. There is, on the contrary, an appearance of constraint about him, that affects and distresses you—you are afraid that his breast is weak, and that even the slight exertion he makes may be too much for it. But then with what tenfold richness does this dim preliminary curtain make the glories of his eloquence to shine forth, when the heated spirit at length shakes from it its chill confining fetters, and bursts out elate and rejoicing in the full splendour of its dis-imprisoned wings!— Φαιης κε ζακοτον τινα εμμεναι, aφρονα θ’ αυτως. Αλλ᾿ ὁτε δη ῥ ὀπα τε μεγαλην εκ στηθεος ἱει Και επεα νιφαδεσσιν εοικοτα χειμεριησιν Ουκ αν επειτ᾿ Οδυσηι γ᾿ ἐρισσειε βροτος αλλος.

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Never was any proof more distinct and speaking, how impossible it is for any lesser disfavours to diminish the value of the truer and higher bounties of Nature. Never was any better example of that noble privilege of real genius, in virtue of which even disadvantages are converted into advantages—and things which would be sufficient to nip the opening buds of any plant of inferior promise, are made to add only new beauty and power to its uncontroulably expanding bloom. I have heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in regard to argument, and have heard very many deliver sermons far more uniform in elegance both of conception and of style. But most unquestionably I have never heard, either in England, or Scotland, or in any other country, any preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his. He does all this too without having recourse for a moment to the vulgar arts of common pulpit-enthusiasm. He does it entirely and proudly, by the sheer pith of his most original mind, clothing itself in a bold magnificence of language, as original in its structure—as nervous in the midst of its overflowing richness as itself. He has the very noblest of weapons, and most nobly does he wield them. He has a wonderful talent for ratiocination, and possesses, besides, an imagination both fertile and distinct, which gives all richness of colour to his style, and supplies his argument with every diversity of illustration. In presence of such a spirit subjection is a triumph—and I was proud to feel my hardened nerves creep and vibrate, and my blood freeze and boil while he spake—as they were wont to do in the early innocent years, when unquestioning enthusiasm had as yet caught no lessons of chillness from the jealousies of discernment, the delights of comparison, and the example of the unimaginative world. I trust his eloquence produces daily upon those who hear it effects more precious than the mere delights of intellectual excitement and admiring transports. I trust, that after the first tide has gone by, there is left no trivial richness of sediment on the souls over which its course has been. I trust the hearers of this good man do not go there only because he is a great one—that their hearts are as open to his sway as their minds are; and that the Minister of Christ is not a mere Orator in their eyes. Were that the case, they might seek the species of delight most to their taste in a theatre, with more propriety than in a church. I speak, I confess, from feeling my own feebleness in the presence of this man—I speak from my own experience of the difficulty there is in being able, amidst the human luxury such a sermon affords, to remember with

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sufficient earnestness the nature of its object—and the proper nature of its more lasting effects. What is perhaps impossible, however, on a first hearing, may, no doubt, become easy after many repetitions—so I hope it is—indeed why should I doubt it?—The tone of serious deep-felt veneration, in which I hear this great preacher talked of by all about him, is a sufficient proof that mere human admiration is not the only element in the feelings with which they regard him—that with the homage paid to his genius, there is mingled a nobler homage of gratitude to the kind affectionate warmth with which he renders this high genius subservient to the best interests of those in whose presence its triumphs are exhibited. The very delightful and amiable warmth of the preacher—the paternal and apostolic kindness which beamed in his uplifted eyes, and gave sweetness now and then to his voice, more precious than if he had “robbed the Hybla bees”—the affectionateness of the pastor, was assuredly one of the things that pleased me most in the whole exhibition, and it did not please me the less because I had not been prepared to expect any such thing by the reports I had heard of him in Edinburgh. He goes to that critical city now and then to preach a charity sermon or the like; and I can easily understand how it may have happened, that the impression produced by him there on such occasions, may have in general been very different from that which I witnessed here in his own church. I can easily suppose, that on these occasions he may put himself forward far more exclusively in the capacity of a combative reasoner— that then every look and gesture may speak too plainly his knowledge that he has hostile opinions all about him to grapple with. In fact, such a man must know that when he preaches any where out of his own church, his congregation is of a very mixed description, comprizing persons who entertain every variety of opinion in regard to matters of religion. In Edinburgh, in particular, he must be well aware the field on which he is sent to labour has its tares as well as its wheat, in abundance. The beadle at the door, who, by a long succession of sixpences, has had his mind expanded into principles of universal tolerance, admits with equal kindness birds of every different kind of plumage—he shoves the sanctified hozier into the same pew with the disciple of David Hume, learned in the law. Having such dissimilar auditors to deal with, a preacher like Dr Chalmers may very naturally be led to make use only of argumentation addressed to those reasoning faculties, wherewith all his auditors profess themselves to be more or less endowed. There is no doubt argument in the staple of his preaching even here—and so, in this

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age of doubt and argument, it ought to be—but here, at least, he contrives to adorn his argument with abundance of gentler accompaniments, which perhaps his modesty, among other things, may contribute to render him more slow in using elsewhere. For myself, I have described him as I saw him in the midst of his daily audience— In his allotted home a genuine Priest, The Shepherd of his Flock; or as a King Is styled, when most affectionately praised, The Father of his People.—

I shall not soon forget the looks of cordial love which seemed to beam from the pastor to his people, and back again from their eyes to their pastor in the Tron Church of Glasgow. I cannot help regarding it as a singularly fortunate thing, that the commercial population of this place should be favoured with the residence and habitual influence of such a man as Dr Chalmers. In such a place, the existence of such a person is precious, a thousand-fold more than it could be almost any where else—precious and very precious as it would be everywhere. In the midst of the continual collisions of interest, smaller and greater, in which these busy traffickers are engaged, it must have a soothing and an ennobling effect to turn round ever and anon, and contemplate a man of great and original genius, and well-nigh unrivalled reputation, pursuing among them the purer and simpler walk of a profession, which in this, above all other countries, is a profession of humility and lowliness of mind. The high name of this great preacher is chiefly valuable to my mind—and I doubt not such would be his own modest sense of it—on account of the aid it must afford to the natural influence of his piety, and his pastoral exertions. Assuredly there is no profession in which the gratifications of personal distinction are so compatible with the loftier gratifications derived, and only derived from the consciousness of doing good—“Truly the lines have fallen to him in pleasant places.” After hearing this man preach, and seeing the faces of his congregation—and, indeed, after every thing that I have seen since I came into this part of the country—I feel more and more sensible of the erroneousness of those opinions concerning the spiritual state of Scotland, which I myself formerly held. The fact is, my dear David, that, in my youth, I was a sharer, to my full measure, in all the usual prejudices of Oxonians; and that it is no easy matter to set me free in any one quarter from the clinging influence of those old prejudices. The plain truth of

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the whole matter is, that the ideas entertained in England respecting the state of religion in Scotland, are just as absurd as those which used to be in fashion about the external appearance of that country. I positively believe, that if the bench of bishops were requested at this moment to draw up, with the assistance of the Oxford and Cambridge Heads of Houses, and Regius Professors, a short account of its spiritual condition, they would talk as if it had as few men of rational piety in it as the Cockney wits used to think it had trees. According to these received opinions, the Scottish peasants are universally imbued with the most savage and covenanting fanaticism—a fault for which ample atonement is made by the equally universal free-thinking and impiety of the higher orders of their countrymen. Every Scotsman is a bigot to one or other of those equally abominable heresies—Atheism or Calvinism. They would represent the faith of this country as a strange creature, somewhat after the fashion of old Janus, dressed on one side in a solemn suit of customary blue, and on the other in the rainbow frippery of a Parisian fille-dejoie—giving with her right hand the grasp of fellowship to John Knox, and leering and leaning to the left on a more fashionable beau, David Hume. The principal mouth-piece of this Southern bigotry, is, I am very sorry to say, a work, for which I have in almost every other respect the greatest esteem—the Quarterly Review. It is a pity that that work, which exerts over the public mind of England so salutary an influence, as the guardian of her character—her true character, both political and religious—it is a great pity that this admirable work should in any way tend to keep up improper prejudices against the Scottish, among the majority of its readers. No doubt there is this excuse for them, that they view the mind of Scotland as represented in some measure in the Edinburgh Review. But I, who am certainly no admirer of the religion of the Edinburgh Review, think it extremely unfair to represent it as being either the oracle or symbol of the spirit of the country wherein it is produced. Why, although the Edinburgh Reviewers sit at times in the chair of the scoffer, should the English be taught to think with disrespect of the religious condition of a country, which not long ago possessed a Blair, and an Erskine, and which at this moment can boast of Moncrieff, Alison, and Chalmers? The truth is, that I believe no country in Europe is less tainted with the spirit of infidelity than Scotland. The faith of their devout ancestors has come down to them entire; it is preached throughout this country by a body of clergymen, who, if they cannot pretend to so much theological erudition as some of our English divines,

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are in general far better informed upon matters of actual life than they are—far more fitted to be the friends and instructors of their parishioners—far more humble in their desires, and, I may add, far more unexceptionably exemplary in their life and conversation. The Scotch have indeed got rid of a great many of those useless prejudices with which their forefathers were infected, and which still seem to linger in the bosoms of some of our own countrymen; but the trunk has been strengthened, not weakened, by the lopping off of its rotten branches and excrescences, and although the tree of their neighbours may cast a broader shade, I have my doubts whether it be productive of better fruit. One of the most remarkable changes which has occurred in the religious thinking of the Scotch, is that which may be observed in regard to their mode of treating those who profess a persuasion different from their own. Half a century ago, a Papist, or even an Episcopalian, appeared very little removed from the condition of a Heathen, in the eyes of a good Scots Presbyterian: here and there, people might be found who thought somewhat more judiciously, but the common opinion certainly was, that the idolatry of a Roman Catholic is quite as bad as that of a Cherokee or a South-sea-islander. The Scotch now no longer consider it as a matter of perfect certainty, that the Pope is the Antichrist, and the church of Rome the Babylon of the Revelations. They do full honour to those heroic and holy spirits who wrought the great work of the Reformation, but they do not doubt that even those who nominally adhere to the ancient faith, have derived great benefit from the establishment of the new. They refuse to consider the kingdom of Christ as composed only of the little province which they themselves inhabit. They are thankful, indeed, for the mode in which their own district is ruled;—they believe, perhaps, that their own municipal regulations are wiser than those to which most of their neighbours submit, but they never doubt, that throughout the whole of the empire, the general principles of government are substantially the same, nor hesitate to consider themselves as linked by the firmest bonds of common loyalty and devotion, both to each other and to that authority which all true Christians are equally proud to acknowledge and obey. But, above every thing, what shews the absurdity of the Quarterly’s notions upon these subjects in a most striking point of view, is this simple fact,—that in spite of the cuts which it is perpetually giving themselves, the Quarterly Review is a very great favourite among the Scotch. The Scotch have no such prejudice against English education, and the English forms of religion, as the Review attributes to them. On

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the contrary, they are delighted to hear these defended in the Quarterly, from the malignant aspersions of their own Edinburgh Reviewers;—so at least the enlightened and well-educated Scotchmen with whom I have conversed, have uniformly represented themselves to be, and I believe them most sincerely. It is time that all this foolery should be at an end, and that people, who in fact are of the same way of thinking, should not be persuaded into supposing themselves enemies to each other. I remain ever your’s, P. M.

LETTER LXXIII TO THE SAME

DEAR DAVID, YOU must attribute my silence during the last eight days entirely to the kindness and hospitality of the good folks of Glasgow, who have really gained more upon me than I could have conceived possible in so short a space. Their attention has not been confined to giving me good dinners and suppers alone; they have exerted themselves in inventing a thousand devices to amuse me during the mornings also; and, in a word, nothing has been omitted that might tempt me to prolong my stay among them.—In truth, I have prolonged it much beyond what I had at all calculated upon;—indeed, much beyond what I could well afford, considering how the season is advanced, and how much I have yet before me ere I can bring my tour to its conclusion. However, I shall probably get on with less interruption, after I have fairly entered the Highlands, which, God willing, shall now be very soon, for I have arranged every thing for going by the steam-boat on Thursday to the Isle of Bute, from which I shall proceed in the same way, next morning, as far as Inverary, to which place I have just sent forward the shandrydan, under the sure guidance of your old friend, the trusty John Evans. I have made good use of the shandrydan, however, in my own person, during the days I have lingered in this charming neighbourhood. In company with one or other of my Glasgow friends, I have visited almost every scene at all interesting, either from its natural beauty, or from the historical recollections connected with it, throughout this part of the country. I have seen not a few fine old castles, and several fields of battle. I have examined the town of Paisley, where some very curious manufactures are carried on in a style of elegance and ingenuity elsewhere totally unrivalled; and where, what is still more to my taste, there are some very fine remains of the old Abbey, the wealth of which was transferred at the time of the Reformation to the family of the Abbot Lord Claud Hamilton, son to the Duke of Chatelherault, whose descendant, the Marquis of Abercorn, now claims that old French title, as being the male representative of the House of Hamilton. The Duke

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of Hamilton, you know, derives his highest titles from a female ancestor, but is himself, by blood, a Douglas, and representative of the heroic Earls of Angus, who, upon the downfall of the first House of Douglas, succeeded to not a little of its power, although they never attained to so dangerous a measure of pre-eminence. But my most delightful excursion was to Hamilton itself, which lies about ten miles above Glasgow upon the Clyde; and is really one of the most princely places I have ever visited. This excursion was made in company with a most agreeable and intelligent young gentleman, Mr John Smith, one of the chief booksellers of this town, who is the publisher, and indeed the friend of Dr Chalmers. We met the Doctor riding, a few miles from the town, as we went along, and he was so kind as to accompany us also. His private manners and conversation are, I assure you, quite as admirable as his eloquence in the pulpit. He is, without any exception, the most perfectly modest man I ever met with—the most averse to all kind of display—the most simply and unaffectedly kind good man. Yet he is one of the most original men in conversation I have ever had the fortune to meet with—and I think throws out more new ideas, in the course of a few plain sentences, apparently delivered without the smallest consciousness that they embody any thing particularly worthy of attention, than any one of all the great men I have become acquainted with since I came to Scotland. It is easy to see that he has a mind most richly stored with all kinds of information—he is a profound master of Mathematics—and, at the same time, more passionately fond of ancient learning than any of the Scottish literati I have seen. But all his stores are kept in strict subservience to the great purposes of his life and profession—and I think, various as they are, they gain instead of losing, both in value and interest, from the uniformity of the object to which he so indefatigably bends them. It is the fault of the attainments of most of the gifted men of our time, that they seem to be in a great measure destitute of any permanent aim, with which these attainments are connected in any suitable degree. But with him there is ever present the sense and presiding power of an aim, above all others noble and grand—the aim, namely, and the high ambition of doing good to his countrymen, and of serving the cause of religion. We had a delightful ride after breakfast, along the side of the river, and reached, in a couple of hours, Bothwell, the seat of Lord Douglas, where we halted for a while to inspect the ruins of the old Castle. The situation is beautiful in the extreme—on a fine green bank, which slopes into the stream, and is overlooked from a grand skreen of rocks on the

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other side, covered with all kinds of wood. The Clyde is a majestic stream here—flowing calm, full, and clear as amber, between these massive crags on the one side, and the blooming verdure of the banks and trees below and around the old Castle on the other. The ruins themselves are very extensive, and in its day the fortress must have been a prodigiously powerful one indeed. They are preserved in a style of exquisite propriety and tastefulness—with a reverent feeling of their true character apparently, and a just hereditary pride. They put me altogether very much in mind of the deserted parts of Warwick—and, indeed, I do not think the circuit of the interior court is at all inferior in its dimensions. In many places around the buttresses and angles of the keep, tower, and curtain, I could see the sorely mouldering armouries of the Morays, who were the first lords of the Castle—and in others, the better preserved achievements of the family which succeeded them; precious memorials of those days, when, on every occasion in the armies of Scotland, ——the Bloody Heart blazed in the van, Announcing Douglas’ dreaded name. After we had satisfied our eyes with the luxury of gazing upon these fine remains, we proceeded on our way towards Hamilton, crossing the river by the Bridge of Bothwell—the same on which the poor insurgent Whigs were so easily vanquished, and so cruelly slaughtered by the Royalists in 1679. The high gate-way between two towers, of which mention is made in the accounts of the battle, has been removed, but otherwise the appearance of the structure perfectly corresponds with all the descriptions. There is a ridged bank on the opposite side, where the Covenanters had their camp, and which quite overlooks the whole of the way by which the troops of Monmouth made their approach—so that it is clear a very small measure of military skill might have been enough to render their position a very difficult one. But I suppose the account of their dissensions in Old Mortality, is a sufficiently accurate one, and it furnishes a very adequate explanation of the event as it occurred. Above the bridge, the river is seen winding for a mile or two from Hamilton, through a flat piece of meadow-land—or, as they call it, haughs—and such was the infatuation of the routed Covenanters, that they chose to fly in this direction, instead of keeping upward to the hills. That bloody old Muscovite, General Dalzell, is said to have galloped his dragoons upon the flying peasants, and to have made the river run

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in blood with his butcheries, in spite of the remonstrances of the gentler and wiser Monmouth. After the battle, a great number of the leading men, ministers and others, were hanged at the end of the bridge—where some hoary old willows, of enormous size, are still pointed out as having furnished the ready means of their execution. I met one day at Glasgow with a curious enough instance of the way in which these executions were regarded. A gentleman pulled a remarkably beautiful old chased silver snuff-box out of his pocket, and, asking him for a pinch—“Yes, sir,” said he—“do take a pinch, and let me tell you, you shall have your finger in the box that was found in my grandfather’s waistcoat-pocket after he was hanged.”—It is a common saying that “a man is scarce of news, when he tells you his father danced a jig upon nothing”—but the cause of this gentleman’s communicativeness was sufficiently explained, when I learned from one of the company, who remarked my consternation, that his grandfather was “one of the martyrs o’ Bothwell-brigg.” We rode on to the town of Hamilton, having on either hand a fine prospect of the woods and lawns, which stretch for miles in every direction around the ducal mansion; and then having left the shandrydan at the inn, proceeded to take a view of the interior of the Palace—for by that name it is called—in compliment, I suppose, to the copious infusion of royal blood in the veins of this high lineage. The Palace is not a very splendid one—but it is very venerable, and furnished throughout in a grand old style, which I take to be a much finer thing than any of the gaudy pomps with which more modern and more fashionable mansionhouses are filled. There is a noble suite of state apartments running the whole length of the edifice, all hung in rich crimson, (the colour of the family) with roofs and doors of black oak, carved over every where with their bearings. From the windows of these, you have a most delicious view of long green lawns, interspersed with fine dropping elms on the one side—and on the other, a yet bolder and yet richer prospect of groves ascending upon groves into the midst of the higher grounds, where the deer-park is situated. But the chief ornament is the collection of paintings—which is out of all sight the first in Scotland—and inferior indeed to very few of those in England. It is an old collection, and has long been esteemed a rich one, but the taste of the present representative of the family has added very much both to its extent and its value. There is a long gallery, in the first place, almost entirely filled with portraits, among which I could see, I fancy, not less than a dozen of the very finest Vandykes. One of these is King Charles on his white horse,

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another undoubted original, and quite as good in my mind as that which the Prince has at Carlton-House. The attitude is the very same, but the colour of the horse is more inclined to a creamy yellow—the Regent’s is almost pure white. There are magnificent Vandykes also of the two brothers, Marquisses of Hamilton, in the civil wars—and of I know not how many branches of the family. The finest of the whole, however, is the portrait of Lord Danby going a shooting, with a black boy in attendance, from which I am sure you must have seen an engraving somewhere. It is impossible that there should be a finer specimen of this master in the whole world—his grand graceful manner of conceiving every thing, and his soft delicate execution, are united in it in their utmost perfection of loveliness. In the middle of the gallery, there is the famous Rubens of Daniel in the Lions’ Den, of which I need say nothing, as you are quite familiar with the prints. It is every way a princely gallery—you never saw a place more impregnated with the air of nobility. The other rooms are full of cabinet pictures, chiefly of the Italian masters—among which I could easily have spent an hour for every minute I remained. I cannot pretend to describing or even enumerating them—but the ones I chiefly delighted in, were some very bold rich Spagnolettos in the billiard-room—a Nicolas Poussin—the Burying of Abraham—and a Dying Magdalen, by Ludovico Caracci. The Poussin is really about the most wonderful of his works I ever saw. It represents the dawn of day, a thick blue mantle of clouds lying heavy upon the surface of the earth, and scarcely permitting the one cold stream of uncertain light to enter, which shews the sleeping patriarch folded in his long vestments, just sinking below the rock from the arms of his children. There is a deep primeval simplicity about the arrangement of the groupe, and a deserted lonely sort of weight in the heavens, and the earth all around, which carries back the imagination into the very heart of the days of Shepherd Majesty. The Magdalen is preserved in a glass case—and truly it is worthy of all manner of attention. It is only a half length—it represents her as leaning backwards in that last gentle slumber, which slides unnoticed into the deeper slumber that has no end—her long golden tresses floating desolate and thin over her pale breast—her eye-lids weighed down with a livid pressure, and her bloodless lips closed meekly in a pensive smile of unrepining helplessness. A few little cherubs are seen looking with calm and rosy smiles of welcome from among the parting garments of the clouds above—stealing the eye upwards from the dim and depressing spectacle of repentant feebleness and mortality, into a faint far-off

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perspective of the appointed resting-place. I question whether it be not a pity to see such a picture at all—unless one is to be permitted to look at it till every lineament and hue is stamped for ever on the memory. But short as my time was, I treasured up something which I am sure I never shall forget. We then walked in the Duke’s Park, up the romantic glen of the Evan, which river flows into the Clyde almost close behind the palace, to see the remains of Cadyow Castle, the original seat of the family, and the scenery of that exquisite ballad of Scott’s, in the Border Minstrelsy. The banks of this stream are about the most picturesque I have ever seen, and the situation of the old Castle one of the most noble and sublime. Nothing remains of it, however, but a few damp mouldering vaults, from the loop-hole windows of which one has a terrific plunge of perspective down into the yawning ravine below—and the scanty traces of the moat and drawbridge, by which, on the other side, the approach of the fastness was defended. Originally, I believe, this was a royal seat, and conferred upon the first of the Hamiltons that came into Scotland, about the end of the thirteenth century. The situation is so very grand, that I am at a loss to account for their having deserted it, in order to remove to the plain where the present mansion—itself now of some three hundred years standing—is placed. They talk of building a new house about the present time. If they do so, I hope they will take to the hill again, and look down once more in supremacy over the whole of the beautiful valley, which stretches at the foot of the rocks of Cadyow—whose towers and vaults have now for centuries, in the words of their poet, only Thrilled to the music of the shade, Or echoed Evan’s hoarser roar.

In the neighbourhood of these ruins, are still visible some of the finest remains I have ever seen, of the old original forest, with which the whole of our island was covered—the most venerable trees, without question, that can be imagined—hoary, and crumbling, and shattered everywhere with the winds and storms of centuries—rifted and blasted in their main boughs—but still projecting here and there some little tufts of faint verdure—and still making a gallant show together, where their grey brotherhood crowns the whole summit of the hill—these are ——the huge oaks of Evandale,

Whose limbs a thousand years have worn;

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and among them I saw couched, most appropriately, the last relics of that breed of wild cattle, by which, in old times, the forests of Scotland were tenanted. Mightiest of all the beasts of chase, That roam in woody Caledon; Crashing the forest in his race, The mountain bull comes thund’ring on. Fierce on the hunters’ quiver’d band He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow; Spurns with black hoof and horn the sand, And tosses high his mane of snow.

The description in these lines is a perfectly accurate one—they are white or cream-coloured all over—but have their hoofs, and horns, and eyes, of the most dazzling jet. The fierceness of the race, however, would seem to have entirely evaporated in the progress of so many ages, for the whole of the herd lay perfectly quiet while our grave trio passed through the midst of them. I wonder some of our nobility do not endeavour to transplant a little of this fine stock into our parks. It is by far the most beautiful breed of cattle I ever saw—indeed, it bears all the marks of being the nervous original from which the other species have descended, taking different varieties of corruption into their forms, from the different kinds of less congenial soil to which their habitation has been transferred. But perhaps the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Tankerville, (for they are the only noblemen who are in possession of this breed,) may be very unwilling to render it more common than it is. I hope if it be so, they themselves, at least, will take good care to keep free from all contamination this “heritage of the woods.” The view we had from these heights, of the whole valley, or strath, or trough of the Clyde upwards, is by far the richest thing I have yet seen north of the Tweed. This is the Herefordshire of Scotland, and the whole of the banks of the river are covered with the most luxuriant orchards. Besides, there is a succession of very beautiful gentlemen’s seats all the way along—so that the country has the appearance of one continued garden. We dined quietly at Hamilton, and returned to Glasgow in the cool of the evening. There is absolutely no night here at present, for the red gleams of day are always to be seen over the east before the west has lost the yellow tinges of the preceding sun-set. I sometimes laugh not a little when I reflect on the stories we used to be treated with long ago,

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about the chillness and sterility of the Land of Cakes, sojourning, as I now am, among some of the finest scenery, and under one of the most serene and lovely heavens, I ever saw in the whole course of my wanderings. P. M.

LETTER LXXIV TO THE SAME

I SPENT the Friday of last week very pleasantly at —— Hill, the villa of one of my Glasgow acquaintances, situated a few miles to the north of that city. In the course of talk after dinner, when I had been enlarging on the pleasures I had received from hearing Dr Chalmers preach, and, altogether, from observing the religious state of the peasantry in this part of the world, a gentleman who was present asked me, If I had ever yet been present at the giving of the Sacrament in a country kirk in Scotland? and on my replying in the negative, expressed some wonder that my curiosity should not already have led me to witness, with my own eyes, that singular exhibition of the national modes of thinking and feeling in regard to such subjects. I allowed that it was strange I should not have thought of it sooner, and assured him, that it was a thing I had often had in my mind before I set out on my journey, to enquire what the true nature of that scene might be, and how far the description, given in the Holy Fair of Burns, might be a correct one. He told me, that, without question, many occurrences of a somewhat ludicrous nature sometimes take place at these Sacraments; but that the vigorous, but somewhat coarse pencil, of the Scottish bard, had even, in regard to these, entirely overstepped the modesty of nature, while he had altogether omitted to do any manner of justice to the far different elements which enter most largely into the general composition of the picture—adding, too, that this omission was the more remarkable, considering with what deep and fervent sympathy the poet had alluded, in “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” and many others of his compositions, to the very same elements, exerting their energies in a less conspicuous manner. While we were yet conversing on this subject, there arrived a very accomplished and agreeable clergyman, Dr Hodgson of Blantyre, who, on understanding what we were talking of, said, That the safest and shortest way for the stranger was to go and see the thing; he himself, he added, was so far on his way to assist at this very ceremony, at a parish some ten miles off, and nothing could give him greater pleasure than taking me with him. You may be sure I acceded to his proposal with great good will, and I offered to

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take him to the field of action in my shandrydan. He hesitated a little about the propriety of deferring his march till the Sunday morning, but soon allowed himself to be over-persuaded by the kindness of our host, who also determined to make one of the party. Accordingly, at an early hour on the Sunday morning, we mounted, and took the highway to the church of ——, for it was there the Sacrament was to be given. As we went along, Dr Hodgson prepared me for what I was about to witness, by telling me, that according to the practice observed in the Scottish kirk, the Eucharist is distributed, in general, only once, and never more than twice, at any one place in the course of the year. In the country parishes, there is rarely more than one such festival; and the way in which the preparations for it are conducted, are sufficient to render it a very remarkable feature in the year of the rural parishioners. Before any young person is admitted to be a partaker in the Sacrament, it is necessary to undergo, in presence of the minister, a very strict examination touching all the doctrines of the Church; and, in particular, to be able to shew a thorough acquaintance with the Bible in all its parts. Now, the custom of the country requires that at a certain age the Sacrament should be taken, otherwise, a very great loss of character must accrue to the delinquent; so that to prepare themselves by reading and attentive listening to what is said from the pulpit for undergoing this examination, forms universally a great point of ambition among the young peasants of both sexes; and the first occasion on which they are to be permitted to approach the Altar, is regarded by them with feelings somewhat akin to those with which the youth of Old Rome contemplated the laying aside of the Praetexta, and assumption of the Toga Virilis. Never, surely, can the vanity of our nature be taught to exert itself in a more useful manner; for the attainment of knowledge, and the preservation of moral purity, are alike necessary to the accomplishment of the young Scottish peasant’s desire,—and the object of his desire is, moreover, in itself the discharge of one of the most elevating and affecting of all the duties which our holy religion has enjoined. The preliminary examinations of the young communicants being over, the first part of the more public preparations commences on the Thursday preceding the Sunday on which the Sacrament is to be given. That day is denominated the day of fasting and humiliation, and is still, as Dr Hodgson said, observed in the way which the letter of that designation would imply, by not a few of the more elderly and strict of the good people. By all it is observed with a measure of solemnity, at least equal to that which usually characterises a Scottish Sabbath, and

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two sermons are preached, the tone of which, from immemorial custom, is pitched in such a way as to favour all humility and prostration of spirit on the part of those who hear it. The Friday is allowed to intervene without any public worship, but on Saturday again the church-doors are thrown open, and two more sermons are addressed to the people, the strain of which, in compliance with custom equally ancient and venerable, is of a more cheering and consolatory nature. These sermons are preached by different friends of the clergyman in whose church the Sacrament is to take place, a considerable number of whom are in use to be congregated in his Manse on this occasion, ready to assist him in every way with their advice and support in the conduct of the important scene over which it is his business to preside. The presence of these clergymen at the place in question, renders it necessary in most cases that their own churches should be left without service for that day: and this, taken together with the rarity of the spectacle, and the high interest which the Scottish peasantry take in all manner of religious services and institutions, is enough to account for the enormous conflux of people which pours from every parish of the surrounding districts to the church where the Sacrament is to be dispensed, on the morning of the Sunday. It is not to be denied, however, said my friend, that the very circumstance of the greatness of this religious conflux is sufficient to draw into its vortex an abundant mixture of persons, whose motives are anything rather than motives of a devotional character. The idle lads and lasses all over the country, think it a fine occasion of meeting together, and come to every Sacrament in their vicinity as regularly as the most pious of their seniors. Nay, to such a pitch of regularity has this been carried, that it is no uncommon thing for servants when they are being hired, to stipulate for permission to attend at so many Sacraments—or, as they style them in their way—occasions: exactly as is elsewhere customary in regard to fairs and wakes; and from this circumstance, perhaps, as much as from anything that ordinarily occurs at these Sacraments, the Poet of Ayrshire took the hint of his malicious nickname.* When we came within a few miles of ——, the greatness of the conflux, of whose composition I had been receiving some account, was abundantly apparent. The road along which we passed, was absolutely _____________________________________________ * I have heard that the bargain sometimes is, “one Sacrament or two fairs,”—which shews where the predilection lies.

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swarming with country people all bound for the same place, whatever differences there might be in their errands thither. Some of them cast enquiring glances at my worthy friend in black, as if desirous to know why he came among them in so unusual a kind of vehicle, and still more, if I mistook not their faces, what might be the character and purpose of his unknown companion. For my part, I was busy—contemplating the different groupes, sometimes as a painter, sometimes as a metaphysician. The modes of progression exemplified around me were threefold, viz.—1mo, in carts; 2do, on horseback; 3tio, by the expedient which a certain profound lawyer has denominated natural travelling (peregrinatio simplex,) being that which the wisdom of Nature (in order to check the exorbitant avarice of inn-keepers and hostlers) has made common to the whole human species. The carts were in general crowded with females, wrapt in large cloaks of duffle grey, or bright scarlet, which last might, perhaps, on this occasion, be considered as emblematical of their sins. In itself, however, it is without question not only a comfortable, but a very picturesque, and even graceful integument; and I thought I could perceive, by the style in which its folds were arranged, that some of the younger matrons were not quite careless of its capacities for fascination. As for the unwedded damsels who sat by their sides, they were arrayed in their gayest attire of ribbons and topknots, and retained still more visibly a certain air of coquetry, which shewed that the idea of flirtation had not been entirely expelled from their fancies by the solemn character of the day, and their destination. The elder ones exhibited a more demure fashion of countenance, and nodded their heads very solemnly in unison, as the cart-wheels jolted over the rough stones of their path. A bottle or two, and a basket of provisions, generally occupied the space at their feet; and the driver of the vehicle was most commonly some lint-haired boy, full of rosy life and vigour, but evidently a loather of the Shorter Catechism, and all manner of spiritual cross-questioning—one, no doubt, extremely desirous of liberty of conscience. I observed one little fellow in particular, who, although he stared us in the face, seemed little inclined to recognize, by any gesture of reverence, the sacred function of my friend in the shandrydan. But this omission could not escape the notice of his grim-wrinkled grandmother in the corner of the cart, who forthwith admonished the youngster to be more courteous in his demeanour, by a hearty thump over the elbow with her ponderous psalm-book—a suggestion, however, to which the urchin replied only by pulling his bonnet down more sulkily than ever over his freckled

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brows. This cart style of travelling seemed to be adopted chiefly by large families, a whole mighty household being sometimes crammed together in a way that must have precluded all possibility of sober reflection during their journey. On the other hand, some of those unfortunate couples whose union had not been blessed with any progeny, might be seen riding double on horseback, and thus making their way through the crowd with more eclat than any other person,—the affectionate housewife keeping her arm firm locked around the waist of her faithful John. A jolly, young, new-married farmer, might be found here and there, capering lightly along in like fashion, with his blooming bride behind him. But the class of pedestrian pilgrims was by far the most numerous, comprehending every variety of persons, from the blue-bonneted Patriarch, trudging slowly with his tall staff in his hand, and never for a moment lifting his solemn eyes from the dust which his feet set in motion, to the careless shepherd-boy, peeling a twig from the hedge, and in jeopardy every now and then of drawing some heavier wand about his ears by breaking forth into a whistle,—a sound, than which, when heard on a Sabbath-day, there can be no greater abomination to the tympanum of a Scottish peasant, male or female, but above all the latter. On reaching the village, we found the church-bell had not yet begun to ring, but a sufficient number had already arrived to fill completely the church-yard, and a considerable part of a grass field immediately adjoining. At the lower extremity of this field, a moveable sort of pulpit—(it is called a Tent)—had been erected,—from which, as Dr Hodgson told me, those of the people who could not be accommodated in the kirk itself, were, throughout the whole of the day, to be addressed in succession by some of the ministers who had come to assist the clergyman of the place. A beautifully clear little burn ran rippling along the side both of the church-yard and the field; and on the green turf of its banks I saw the country maidens who had come a-foot seat themselves immediately on their arrival, and begin dipping their hands and their feet into its refreshing stream. It is the universal custom of the females in this quarter to walk their journeys bare-footed; and even in coming to church, with all their finery in other respects, they do not depart from this custom. Each damsel, however, carries in her hand a pair of snowwhite stockings, and shoes, and these they were now preparing themselves to put on, by the ablutions I witnessed. It was a fine picturesque thing to see them laying aside their bonnets, and arranging their glossy ringlets into the most becoming attitudes, by help of the same mirror in

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which our first mother beheld the reflection of her own lovely form in Paradise. Among them many were extremely well-favoured; and some of them displayed limbs as elegantly shaped as were those which the charming Dorothea exhibited in a similar method to the enraptured gaze of Don Quixote. There was a sweet Arcadian simplicity in this untutored toilette; and the silence in which it was performed, added not a little to its air of artlessness; for each damsel sat by herself, and not a sound was heard near them but the chirping of the birds that hopped to and fro among the hawthorn bushes,—notes scarcely observed on any other day in the week, but heard clearly and distinctly at all times amidst the reverential stillness that pervades the atmosphere of a Sabbath-day in Scotland. My friend, however, seemed to think that I was spending rather too much time in contemplating these beautiful creatures, so I permitted him to guide my steps towards the gate of the church-yard. At each side of this gate was already drawn up a considerable band of the lay-Elders of the kirk, whose duty it is to receive the offerings of those who enter, and to superintend the distribution of them among the poor. Opposite to each of the groupes stood a tall three-legged stool covered with a very white napkin, on the top of which was laid the flat pewter dish intended for the reception of the alms. These Elders were a most interesting set of persons, and I believe I could have studied their solemn physiognomies as long as I had done those of the young rural beauties at the burn side. I regarded them as the elite of this pious peasantry, men selected to discharge these functions on account of the exemplary propriety and purity of their long lives spent among the same people, over whom they were now raised to some priest-like measure of authority. Some among them were very old men, with fine hoary ringlets floating half-way down their backs—arrayed in suits of black, the venerably antique outlines of which shewed manifestly how long they had been needed, and how carefully they had been preserved for these rare occasions of solemnity—the only occasions, I imagine, on which they are worn. The heads of these were very comfortably covered with the old flat blue bonnet, which throws a deep and dark shadow over the half of the countenance. Others, who had not yet attained to such venerable years, had adopted the more recent fashion of hats, and one could see more easily beneath their scantier margins the keen and piercing eyes with which these surveyed every person as he passed—scrutinizing with a dragon-like glance the quantum of his contribution to the heap of guarded copper before them. As for passing their capacious plates with-

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out putting in something, that is a thing of which the meanest Scottish peasant, that supports himself by the labour of his hands, would never dream for a moment. To be obliged to enter the house of God emptyhanded, is the very hardest item which enters into the iron lot of their parish paupers—and of these paupers there are so few in such rural places as this, that they scarcely need be talked of as furnishing an exception to the general rule. Even the youngest children who came, and I saw many who could do little more than totter on their little legs— would think it alike a sin and a shame to put no offering into the Elders’ plate. And yet there was no small degree of self-importance, I thought, in the way in which some of these little creatures dropped their halfpence upon the board—not hiding their candlestick under a bushel, but ringing metal against metal as loudly as they could, in order to attract the notice of the staid superintenders of the collection. By and bye, the Minister and his assistants came down the hill from the Manse, he being distinguished from the rest by his Geneva cloak, while they wore no badge of their office but their bands. They were preceded by the beadle of the kirk, carrying with difficulty (for he was very ancient) a huge folio Bible clothed in black skin, and a psalm-book of corresponding dimensions. As the clerical groupe passed the Elders, a scene of cordial greeting occurred which it was delightful to witness—all shaking hands as they passed with those old men, and receiving from them looks and words of encouragement, as if to support and sustain them during the approaching exertions of the day. The minister of the place was a singularly primitive figure, with a long pale face, in which it was easy to trace the workings of anxious meditation, and eyes which, I suspected, had not been closed during the preceding night. His friends were about six in number, and most of them younger men than himself, and they all entered the church along with him save one, who took the way to the Tent, there to commence the service out of doors at the same moment when it should be commenced within. Dr Hodgson introduced me to the minister’s wife, who made her appearance almost immediately afterwards—a seemly matron, who received me with infinite kindness in her way, and conducted me to her pew. When we entered, the old men were all sitting in the church with their bonnets on, and they did not uncover themselves until the minister began to read aloud the psalm—which was then sung, in a style of earnestness that was at least abundantly impressive, by them all—not one voice in the whole congregation, I firmly believe, being silent. The impression which I first received from hearing the singing in the

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Scottish churches was by no means an agreeable one, at least in regard to musical effect. After the psalm has been read by the clergyman, (which is often extremely well done) no solemn instrumental symphony opens the concert with that sure and exact harmony which proceeds from an organ, but a solitary clerk, (they call him precentor,) who is commonly a grotesque enough figure, utters the first notes of the tune in a way that is extremely mechanical and disagreeable. The rest of the congregation having heard one line sung to an end, and having ascertained the pitch, then strike in. Most of them sing the air in unison with the precentor, without attempting to take any other part, or to form concords. This is certainly the safest way for them, but even among those who sing along with the clerk, there are generally so many with bad ears, that the effect on the whole is dissonant. To introduce organs into the Scottish churches, has been proposed at different times by some of the clergymen, but the majority both of clergy and laity have always disapproved of that innovation. I have not heard what was the nature of the arguments employed against it; but I can easily understand that the aversion might not be in all cases the result of mere inconsiderate bigotry or blind prejudice. The modes of public worship are matters of such solemn usage, that they seldom undergo any sober, considerate, or partial alterations. They are left untouched, except in times when the passions of mankind are very deeply and terribly stirred, or when great revolutions of opinion take place—and then they are changed with a mad and headlong zeal—and certainly there would be something very like indecent quackery, in rashly shifting about the forms of worshipping God, according to the mutable tastes of each successive generation. The prayers and sermon of the old minister were very good in their style, but I waited with greater curiosity to witness the Scottish method of distributing the sacred symbols of the day. I used the word altar— but this you would easily see was a lapsus. They have no altar in the churches of Scotland—and, indeed, you know we had no altars such as we have them now, in the east end of the churches in England, till that fashion was brought back by Archbishop Laud. Here the sacramental symbols were set forth at the upper extremity of a long table, covered with a white cloth, which extended the whole length of the church, from the pulpit to the gate. At the head of this table, around which as many were already seated as it could at once accommodate, the minister of the place took his seat also; after his sermon was concluded, and he had read aloud several chapters of the Bible, which are pointed out for this

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purpose in the Directory of the Scottish Church, as containing words suitable to the occasion—words of encouragement to the worthy, and of warning to the presumptuous communicant. He then craved a blessing, and having broken a single piece of bread, and given of it to those immediately beside him, large loaves, cut into slices, were carried around the table, and distributed to all who sat at it by two or three of the lay-elders. The cup, in like manner, was sent round shortly afterwards—and during the time which elapsed in the distribution of these symbols, the minister delivered an address to those who were partaking in them—an address which I think had much better be spared—for silence surely is the only proper accompaniment to so awful a solemnity,—but in which, notwithstanding, he displayed a noble warmth and tenderness of feeling, which seemed to produce a very powerful effect upon those for whom it was intended, and which could not fail to excite a feeling of much respect for the person by whom it was delivered. After the address was terminated, those who had been its immediate objects withdrew, and left their seats free for the occupation of another company, and so in the same manner did company succeed company throughout the whole of the day—minister succeeding minister in the duty of addressing them,—which is called in their language serving the tables. Without pretending to approve of this method so much as of our own—nay, without attempting to disguise my opinion, that it is in many respects a highly improper method—it would be in vain for me to deny that there was something extremely affecting even in its extreme simplicity, and still more so in the deep and overwhelming seriousness which seemed to fill the spirits of the partakers. I have seldom been present at any scene so impressive; but I think the effect of the whole is much weakened by the length of time to which the service is protracted. Out of doors, in the meantime, there was carried on, in all the alehouses of the village, and in many of the neighbouring fields, a scene of a very different nature. After sitting for an hour or two, I walked out to breathe the fresh air, and in passing through the place, was quite scandalized to find such a deal of racketting and mirth going on so near the celebration of such a ceremony, regarded and conducted by those engaged in it with a feeling of reverence so profound and exemplary. Here, indeed, I doubt not, might not a little of what Burns has described be found going on among the thoughtless and unworthy idlers, who had flocked from every part of the surrounding country to be present at the sacrament of Mr ——. I was overtaken in my walk by a little girl, whom

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the minister’s wife had sent after me to invite me to come and refresh myself in the Manse. I went accordingly, and partook of a huge round of beef, which seemed to be intended to satisfy half the congregation, and then, at the request of my hostess, resumed my walk in her garden.—“Do not be seen strolling about the toon,” said she; “there’s eneugh o’ ill example without a friend o’ Dr Hodgson’s coming out of the Manse to set it to them. If ye will walk on the Sabbath—walk where naebody will see you.”

LETTER LXXV TO THE SAME

BUT the concluding evening scene was without doubt by far the most impressive of the whole. I have told you that a tent had been erected at the foot of the church-yard, and that from it different ministers preached to the multitude which overflowed after the church itself was filled, during the whole of the day: but now, after the sacrament had been dispensed to all who were admitted to that privilege, the kirk was shut up, and the whole of the thousands who had assembled, were summoned to hear one parting sermon at the tent together. The minister’s wife and I came down the hill from the Manse just as this part of the service was about to commence, and ere we had come within sight of the place, the sounds of the preparatory psalm they were all singing together, came to us wafted over the intervening bean-fields on a gale of perfume, and softened into the balmiest melody by the space over which they travelled, in the rich stillness of the evening air. There could not be a finer sight than that which presented itself to us when we came to the brink of the ravine which overhung, on the one side, the rustic amphitheatre now filled by this mighty congregation. All up the face of the opposite hill, which swept in a gentle curve before us,—the little brook I have mentioned flowing brightly between in the gleam of sunset,—the soft turf of those simple sepulchres rising row above row, and the little flat tomb-stones scattered more sparingly among them, were covered with one massy cluster of the listening peasantry. Near to the tent on one side were drawn up some of the carriages of the neighbouring gentry, in which, the horses being taken away, the ancient ladies were seen sitting protected from the dews of the twilight—while the younger ones occupied places on the turf immediately below them. Close in front of the preacher, the very oldest of the people seemed to be arranged together, most of them sitting on stools brought for them by their children from the village—yet fresh and unwearied after all the fatigues of the day, and determined not to go away while any part of its services remained to be performed. The exact numbers of those assembled I cannot guess, but I am sure they must have amounted

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to very many thousands. Neither you nor I, I am confident, ever beheld a congregation of the fourth of the extent engaged together in the worship of their Maker. The number was enough of itself to render the scene a very interesting one; but the more nearly I examined their countenances, the more deeply was I impressed with a sense of respectful sympathy for the feelings of those who composed the multitude. A solemn devotion was imprinted on every downcast eyelid and trembling lip around me—their attitudes were as solemn as their countenances—each having his arms folded in his shepherd’s cloak—or leaning in pensive repose upon one of those grassy swells, beneath which, Each in his narrow tomb for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Here and there I could perceive some hoary patriarch of the valley sitting in such a posture as this, with the old partner of his life beside him, and below and around him two or three generations of his descendants, all arranged according to their age and propinquity—the ancient saint contemplating the groupe ever and anon with a sad serenity,— thinking, I suppose, how unlikely it was he should live long enough to find himself again surrounded with them all on another recurrence of the same solemnity of the Midsummer. Near them might be seen perhaps a pair of rural lovers, yet unwedded, sitting hand in hand together upon the same plaid in the shadow of some tall tomb-stone, their silent unbreathed vows gathering power more great than words could have given them from the eternal sanctities of the surrounding scene. The innocent feelings of filial affection and simple love cannot disturb the feelings of devotion, but mingle well in the same bosom with its higher flames, and blend all together into one softened and reposing confidence, alike favourable to the happiness of earth and heaven. There was a sober sublimity of calmness in the whole atmosphere around—the sky was pure and unclouded over head, and in the west only a few small fleecy clouds floated in richest hues of gold and crimson, caught from the slow farewell radiance of the broad declining sun. The shadows of the little church and its tomb-stones lay far and long projected over the multitude, and taming here and there the glowing colours of their garments into a more mellow beauty. All was lonely and silent around the skirts of the assemblage—unless where some wandering heifer might be seen gazing for a moment upon the unwonted multitude, and then

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bounding away light and buoyant across the daisied herbage into some more sequestered browsing-place. In surveying these pious groupes, I could not help turning my reflections once again upon the intellectual energies of the nation to which they belong, and of whose peculiar spirit such a speaking example lay before me. It is in rustic assemblages like these that the true characteristics of every race of men are most palpably and conspicuously displayed, and it is there that we can best see in multiplied instances the natural germs of that which, under the influence of culture, assumes a prouder character, and blossoms into the animating soul and spirit of a national literature. The more I see of the internal life and peculiar manners of this people, the more am I sorry that there should not be a greater number of persons in Scotland sufficiently educated to enter into the true feeling of literary works—so as to influence, by their modes of thinking, the tone of the compositions produced among them—so, by furnishing responses according to their united impressions, to keep men of genius true to the task of expressing the mind and intellect of their nation, and of recording all its noble dictates of more peculiar sentiment. No person, who considers circumstances with an attentive eye, can suppose that the Scots have already run their literary career. The intellectual power of the nation has never yet been strongly bent upon exploring what is peculiar to itself; and, until the time of Walter Scott, almost all its men of talent, who had education, expended their powers in modes of composition which were never meant to have any relationship with the native tastes of their country. If Burns had formed his mind among them, he would perhaps have left all his native thoughts behind him, and gone to write tragedies for a London Theatre, in imitation of Otway or Rowe—in which case, I think it more than probable we should never have heard much about the divine genius of the Ploughman. The Scottish talent for ratiocination has already been splendidly displayed; but mere reason, like mathematics or chemistry, is in all countries the same—there is no peculiar triumph in its possession or its results. David Hume spent a great proportion of his earlier years in France, and carried on all his studies there just as successfully as he could have done at home. But poetry, imagination, fancy, sentiment, art, philosophical belief, whatever comes from the soul,—these are things in which every nation displays a character of its own, and which it consequently requires a separate and peculiar literature to express and embody; but these are things in which Scotland has not yet formed any school of its own—which, in other words, it has

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not yet cultivated upon principles sufficiently profound, or with enthusiasm sufficiently concentrated. If the national attention were more systematically directed towards these things, men of talent would have a definite object to aim at—they would seldom be led to exercise their powers in mistaken or unprofitable directions, and be seldom exposed to suffering the chagrin of failing to excite the interest of a public, which, in the very midst of its indifference, admits their ability. Neither, were such the case, would the peculiar veins of national thought be any longer left to be embodied in compositions written, like those of Burns, in the dialect of the lower classes. The bare circumstance of these compositions being so written, implies that they must be confined to a limited range of thought; but, had the sentiments they express such treatment as they deserve, they might be invested in the very highest and purest of forms, and applied, I nothing question, to adorn and enrich the most varied and boundless fields of conception. You will laugh, my dear friend, when I tell you what one of my chief thoughts was while surveying these crowds of listeners. I looked over them, and scanned every individual attentively, to see if I could trace any countenance resembling that of Burns. The assembly around me might be considered as the very audience he addressed; and I understood every trait in his writings ten times better, from the consciousness of being among them. I felt from the bottom of my soul the sweet throes of tenderness with which he spake to them of all that filled up their existence, and produced the chequered spectacle of its hopes and fears; and I recollected, with a new delight, the exquisite touches of humour and fancy by which he took hold of and sported with their imaginations. I said to myself—No dull and hopeless clods of earth are here, but men, who, in the midst of the toils and hardships of the life of husbandmen and shepherds, are continually experiencing all that variety of mental impressions which is to be found in the poetry of Ramsay and Burns. The sprightly rustic flute of old Allan utters only melodies similar to those which the real every-day life of these good folks copiously supplies—while the soiled and tattered leaves of the grand, the tender, the inimitable bard of Coila, placed on some shelf in every cottage, perhaps beside a bit of looking-glass, reflect, like it, true though broken snatches of the common scenes and transactions of the interior. The deep-toned Mantuan, when he wished to draw out the moral interest of a rural life, was obliged to contrast its serene and peaceable enjoyments with the more venturous occupations, and the perpetual anxieties of Rome. He probably did not think that the lives of Italian husbandmen

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had sufficient character, or peculiar meaning, to make them much worthy of being pryed into. Quos rami fructus, quos ipsa volentia rura Sponte tulere sua, carpsit; nec ferrea jura, Insanumque forum, aut populi tabularia vidit. Sollicitant alii remis freta cæca, ruuntque In ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina Regum, &c.

But Robert Burns has shewn, that within the limits and ideas of the rustic life of his country, he could find an exhibition of the moral interests of human nature, sufficiently varied to serve as the broad and sure foundation of an excellent superstructure of poetry. I would there were more to chuse their sites with equal wisdom, and lay their foundations equally deep; but I am half afraid you may be inclined to turn the leaf, and to compare my harangue with that of Don Quixote over the Acorns and the Golden Age. You will admit, however, that my theme is a noble one, and that the scene which suggested it was eminently noble. I wish, from the bottom of my soul, you had come this tour with me, and so spared me the trouble of sending you these written accounts of things which it would have given you so much greater delight to see with your own eyes for yourself. I wish, above all, my dear Williams, you had been present with me at this closing scene of the Scottish Sacrament-Sabbath, the only great festival of their religious year. You would then have seen what a fine substitute these Presbyterians have found in the stirring up of their own simple spirits, by such simple stimulants, for all the feasts, fasts, and holidays—yes, and for all the pompous rites and observances with which these are celebrated–-of the church from which they have chosen so widely to separate themselves. You would have seen, (for who that has eyes to see, and heart to feel, could have been blind to it?) that the austerities of the peculiar doctrinal system to which they adhere, have had no power to chill or counteract the ardours of that religious sentiment which they share with all that belong to the wide-spread family of Christians. You would have seen how compatible are all that we usually speak of as their faults, with every thing that we could wish to see numbered among the virtues of a Christian people. You would have seen it in the orderly and solemn guise of their behaviour—you would have heard it in the deep and thrilling harmony of their untaught voices, when they lifted them up all together in that old tune which immemorial custom has set apart for the last Psalm sung upon this sacred day,—a tune

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which is endeared to them by the memory of those from whose attachment its designation is derived, still more than by the low and affecting swell of its own sad composing cadences—“The plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name”*—The faint choral falls of this antique melody, breathed by such a multitude of old and young, diffused a kind of holy charm over the tall whispering groves and darkening fields around—a thousand times more grand and majestic than all the gorgeous stops of an organ ever wakened in the echoing aisles of a cathedral. There was a breath of sober enduring heroism in its long-repeated melancholy accents—which seemed to fall like a sweet evening dew upon all the hearts that drank in the sacred murmurs. A fresh sunset glow seemed to mantle in the palest cheek around me—and every old and hagard eye beamed once more with a farewell splendour of enthusiasm, while the air into which it looked up, trembled and was enriched with the clear solemn music of the departed devout. It seemed as if the hereditary strain connected all that sat upon those grassy tombs in bonds of stricter kindred with all that slept beneath them—and the pure flame of their Christian love derived, I doubt not, a new and innocent fervour from the deeply-stirred embers of their ancestral piety. *

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I had with some difficulty secured for myself a lodging at the little inn of the village, (for the Manse was so filled that the hospitable owner could not offer me any accommodation there,) and I was preparing at the close of the service to seek shelter beneath its tempting sign-post— Porter, Ale, and British Spirits— Painted bright between twa trees:

_____________________________________________ * This tune is a great favourite all over the west of Scotland, and was so among the ancient Covenanters, as the name imports, and the stanza to which it is usually sung in their schools— This is the tune the Martyrs sang When they, condemned to die, Did stand all at the gallows-tree, Their God to glorify.

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But one of the neighbouring gentlemen, (a Sir —— ——,) had, it seems, seen me in several parties during the spring, at Edinburgh, and he now came up, introduced himself to me, and requested me to spend the night at his mansion, where he said I should be quite as welcome, and a little more comfortable than at the public-house. There was something so very frank in the address of the Baronet, that I immediately accepted of his invitation, and as the ladies had already taken the carriage home with them, we proposed to walk across the fields—leaving John to bring up the shandrydan at his leisure. Our way lay at first up one of those beautiful narrow glens, covered on all sides with copse-wood, which are everywhere so common in this romantic country. A rude foot-path crept along the side of the burn, from which the glen takes its name, crossed and shaded at every step by some projecting arm of the luxuriant woods that ascend from its edge, up the airy height of the over-canopying bank. Here we walked in silence and single, for the path was too narrow to admit of our proceeding side by side—ruminating, I believe, with equal seriousness on all the affecting circumstances of the solemnity we had been witnessing. We sat down, however, for a considerable time, upon a log of newly cut oak, when we had reached the other extremity of the glen, and talked ourselves into a familiarity that might almost be called a friendship ere we rose again. To say the truth, I was more than I could well express delighted, to find that the fine character of this religious peasantry is regarded as it ought to be by at least some of their superiors. It is not always that we find men of higher rank, and more refined habits, able to get over the first and external rudenesses which sometimes cover so much of real purity and elevation in the manners of those beneath them. This gentleman, however, appeared to have studied these good people with the eye of an elder brother, or a parent, rather than with anything of the usual aristocratical indifference—an indifference, by the way, which was unknown to our ancestors, and which I detest among the aristocracy of the present day, because I regard it as more likely than anything else to weaken, in the hearts of the peasantry, those feelings of old hereditary attachment, for which so poor a substitute is found or sought in the flimsy, would-be liberal theories of the day. Sir —— talked of these rural worthies as if their virtues, in his eyes, were the dearest ornaments of all his possessions—and repeated with a proud enthusiasm, an expression of a Scottish author, which I feel to be true no less than you will admit it to be beautiful,—“It would take a long line,” said he, “to sound the depths of a grey-haired Scottish peasant’s heart.”

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Walking onwards we soon reached another little hamlet, at which its inhabitants had already arrived from the church by some nearer way— for we could perceive here and there, as we passed through it, some old goodman standing by himself in his little garden, or reposing with his wife and children upon some of the low stone-seats, with which the doors of their cottages are always flanked. It was a delightful thing to see the still thankful faces of these old people, enjoying the rich evening breath of the roses and sweet-briar, clustering about their windows— and the soft drowsy hum of their bee-hives. But here and there it was a still more delightful thing to hear, through the low door of the cottage, the solemn notes of a psalm sung by the family, or the deep earnest voice of the master of the household reading the Bible, or praying with his children and servants about him. “On the evenings of Saturday and Sunday,” said Sir ——, “these fine sounds are sure to proceed from every cot-house in these villages—so that here every father is, in a certain sense, the Priest of his House. But among the goodmen, there are not wanting some who renew them every night of the week—and that in my youth was still more generally the custom.” It is thus that the habitual spirit of devotion is kept up, and strengthened from year to year among these primitive people. These cotters are priests indeed, Detached from pleasure, and to love of gain Superior, insusceptible of pride, And by ambitious longings undisturbed, Men whose delight is where their duty leads Or fixes them; Whose least distinguished day Shines with some portion of that heavenly lustre, Which makes the Sabbath lovely in the sight Of blessed angels, pitying human cares.

P. M.

LETTER LXXVI TO THE SAME

I SPENT a very pleasant night at the Baronet’s—sleeping in a fine old vaulted bed-chamber, in one of the towers of his castle, from the window of which I had a command of one of the most beautiful tracts of scenery I have ever seen in Scotland. Close beneath, the narrow little glen was seen winding away with its dark woody cliffs, and the silver thread of its burn here and there glittering from under their impending masses of rock and foliage. At the far-off extremity, the glen opens into the wider valley of the larger stream, from which the whole district takes its name—of this, too, a rich peep was afforded—and its fields and woods again carried the eye gradually upwards upon the centre of a range of mountains, not unlike those over the Devil’s Bridge—hoary and craggy, traced all over with the winter paths of innumerable now silent torrents. I walked out before breakfast, and bathed in one of the pools of the burn—a beautiful round natural basin, scooped out immediately below a most picturesque waterfall, and shaded all around with such a canopy of hazels, alders, and mountain ashes, as might have fitted it to be the chosen resort of Diana and all her nymphs. Here I swam about enjoying the luxury of the clear and icy stream, till I heard a large bell ring, which I suppose was meant only to rouse the sleepers, for when I had hurried on my clothes, in the idea that its call was to breakfast, and run up the hill with an agility which nothing but my bath could have enabled me to display—I found the breakfast parlour quite deserted—not even the cloth laid. By and bye, however, the whole magnificent paraphernalia of a Scottish déjeune were brought in—the family assembled from their several chambers—and we fell to work in high style. In addition to the usual articles, we had strawberries, which the Scots eat with an enormous quantity of cream—and, of course, a glass of good whisky was rendered quite excuseable, in the eyes of a medical man, by this indulgence. After breakfast the Baronet informed me that the Sacrament was not yet over; and that we must all to church again once more. As the Sunday

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set apart for this great festival is preceded by several days of preparatory worship, so, in order to break off the impression produced by its solemnities, and allow of an easier fall into the ordinary concerns of life, the day immediately following it is also considered as in some measure a holy one—its observances, however, being conducted with a less profound air of seriousness, and its evening devoted to a kind of pleasant and innocent relaxation of mind, rather than to any studious preservation of the austere and unremitting spirit of devotion, exercised on the other days connected with the ceremony. There are two sermons, for sermons are great luxuries in the eyes of the Scottish peasantry, and they can never have too much of them. But after the sermons are over, it is expected that sober mirth shall occupy the rest of the evening. So far, in short, their Monday after the Sacrament may be considered as bearing some resemblance to our style of keeping Easter-Monday. We went to church, therefore, and heard two sermons—or rather I should say to the church-yard—for both preachers addressed us from the tent. The shandrydan was drawn up among the other vehicles to the right of the minister, and I flatter myself cut a very knowing and novel appearance there—but John would by no means occupy his place in it during the sermons, having already, as he said, had a copious belly-full of that sort of diet. And yet he might have had amusement as well as edification, had he had the grace to listen—for one of the preachers was certainly as comical an original, in his way, as I have ever chanced to meet with. He was an old man, with a fine rotund friar-like physiognomy, which, for a time, he in vain attempted to clothe with the true Presbyterian saturnity of expression. But after he had fairly got into the thread of his discourse, there was no occasion for so much constraint— the more jovial and sarcastic the language of his countenance, the better did it harmonize with the language of his tongue. This was a genuine relic of that old joking school of Puritans, of whose eloquence so many choice specimens have been preserved by certain malicious antiquarians. With him every admonition was conveyed in the form of a banter—every one of his illustrations, of however serious a subject, was evidently meant to excite something like a smile on the cheeks of his hearers; and, as if fearful that the sermon itself might be too scanty of mirth, the old gentleman took care to interrupt it every now and then, and address some totally extemporaneous rebuke or expostulation to some of the little noisy lads and lasses that were hovering around the outskirts of the congregation. As he has the character of being a great divine, and an eminently devout man in his own person, this peculiarity

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of his manner produced no want of respectfulness in the faces and attitudes of his auditors; but, on the contrary, even the grimmest of the elderhood seemed to permit their stern and iron cheeks to wrinkle into a solemn grin, at the conclusion of every paragraph. As for the young damsels of the country, they tittered scandalously at some of the coarsest of his jokes—the severest of which, indeed, were almost all levelled against their own passion for dress, finery, and gadding about fairs, markets, and sacraments. He quoted not a few texts against these fine ladies, which, I take it, might have been quoted with greater justice and propriety against others more worthy of the name. However, vanity is perhaps more an equal possession of rich and poor, than one might be apt to imagine—and I thought I could see some little symptoms of the failing in our old preacher himself, when he observed the respectable attendance of gentry in their equipages—above all, between ourselves, when his eye rested on the unusual and airy elegances of the unharnessed shandrydan. I nothing question this was the first time a tent-preaching in Scotland was ever listened to by one seated in such a vehicle. Indeed, if they borrow it from me, as I don’t much doubt they will, I should not be a whit surprised to find them changing its name, and christening it A PETER, in honour of the individual that introduced its beauties to their attention. That nothing might be awanting to complete my idea of the whole of the scene, the minister was so good as to ask me to dine at the Manse after the sermon, and Sir —— was included in the invitation. We both accepted, and really I have very seldom eat a dinner which I should have been more sorry to have missed. I don’t mean as to the viands in particular, although these too were not at all to be sneezed at. There was capital hotch-potch, a truly delicious kind of soup quite peculiar to Scotland, but worthy of being introduced into the very first leaf of the Almanach des Gourmands. It is made of mutton boiled—a complete chaos of vegetables of all sorts—green pease, however, being I think the predominant item. There was a dish of boiled, and another of broiled, herrings from Loch Fine—and I assure you I think this fish is superior here to any thing I have met with in Wales. There were no less than three sheep’s heads singed in the hair, which I am sure you would like, with the addition of a little Harvey. There was prime old mutton, which the minister’s wife took care to tell me had been sent by Lady ——. Lastly, there was a whole regiment of gooseberry pyes—and as much cream in bowls of all sizes as would have drowned Alderman Curtis—though I don’t know, if that worthy knight were reduced to the

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Duke of Clarence’s choice, whether this would be the liquor in which he would prefer to be extinguished— Like a dish of fresh strawberries smother’d in cream.

After dinner (which lasted a considerable time, and was done full justice to by all present,) we had a few bottles of excellent port and sherry, and then two punch-bowls were introduced. The one was managed by our host himself at the head of the table, (for by this time his wife had departed) and the other, at the lower extremity, acknowledged the sway of the same jocular orator I have just been describing, who had now been advanced to the pre-eminence of croupier. The bowl at the top was presently filled with hot whisky toddy—that at the bottom with the genuine Glasgow mixture, in compounding which our croupier displayed talents of the very highest order. By and bye, we were all in a state of charming merriment, although nothing could be more moderate than the measure of our indulgence. The conversation of the ministers was extremely picturesque and amusing, and opened up to me new glimpses at every turn, into the whole penetralia of their own existence and that of their parishioners. They seemed all to be most worthy persons, but nothing could be more striking than the diversity in their carriage and demeanour. Our host himself, whose pale meditative face I have before noticed, seemed unable to shake from him, so much as he could have wished, the load of those official anxieties which had been burthening his mind during so many days of exertion. He sat, therefore, with rather an absent air in the midst of us, and smiling sometimes quite at the wrong moment. Some of his friends were old—some young—some silently disposed—some talkative. Some of them seemed to think it necessary or proper to be very sparing in their indulgence even of laughter—although it was easy to see that the jokes which were going were not lost upon them. The only thing they all agreed in was enjoying prodigiously the good things of the reverend croupier, who really opened a budget that would make Mathews or Bannister rich for twelve months. Among other things he gave us song upon song—one I got a copy of, which I liked very well. It is written by himself, and expresses nothing but the true feelings of the man—for he is a great sportsman— although that part of his character is not quite to the taste of the peasantry. But I fear you will form but a very inadequate notion of the treat it afforded us, wanting the precious accompaniments of the good man’s fine clear pipe, and the liveliness of the air itself, which was one

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I never heard before—but shall endeavour to procure for you. As for the words, I think they are not deficient either in spirit or character—they might almost have been produced by the great Bucolic Jamie of Ettrick. THE SHOOTING MINISTER When inclined for a shot, I am up with Aurora, My jacket lies ready—my buskings are brief; I speak not a word at the Manse to the snorers, But whistle to Juno, and off like a thief. I leave dykes and hedges, and up to the muirlands, That stretch out so tempting, so brown and so wide; To me they are rich lands that others think poor lands, As I stalk o’er the heather in freedom and pride. I grudge not my time, nor of powder am chary, But roam, looking sharp after Juno’s white back: ’Mong the flows and the rough bits she scuds like a fairy, But, when fixed, she’s like marble to wait for the crack: It may shower—it may shine—or the big clouds may sever, And drift with long shadows o’er mountain and fell, But the muir-cocks still find that I’m their Fail-me-never, Nor will finish the day till I’ve tickled them well. When I spy at a distance a smoke gently curling, I can guess that some gudewife’s small cottage is near; She knows that the Minister brings nothing sinister, And beckons me in to partake of her cheer. Her cheese is most rich, and her cakes are delicious, And a glass with clear sparkle concludes the repast; O long could I sit—but my wife is capricious— And home to the Manse I must trudge away fast.

About nine o’clock we all departed. I was pressed very heartily to return to Sir ——’s, but preferred, in spite of the hour, to proceed back to Glasgow, as I had been losing more time than I could well afford already. Before I mounted the shandrydan, however, I enjoyed a rich treat in witnessing the departure of the several Ministers for their respective habitations,—their visit being now concluded with this last not disagreeable part of the ceremonial. Some trudged away on foot, lightly bounding under the gentle and moderate influences of an inspiration, than which nothing can be more innocent, ——ἑαν μετριως ελθει.

Others had their nags in readiness; and among these was my good friend the Croupier. I forgot to mention that he had also his wife with him, but she now added very much to the effect of the farewell glimpse I had of

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him. They both rode on the same horse, which, indeed, had length of back been the sole requisite, might easily have accommodated a still larger company. The divine, of course, occupied the saddle before; but ere he mounted, his wife pinned up the skirts of his coat in a most careful manner, under his arms, in order, I suppose, to prevent them from catching any injury from the somewhat rough and tufted grey coat of Old Mortality, for that was the name of the animal. Alas! how different from the fine, smooth, milk-white coat of its synonym, the inimitable Old Mortality bestrode by the more knowing limbs of my friend John Ballantyne, in Edinburgh! Such as it was, off they were at a round trot, the old lady shaking and jolting on her blue carpet-covered cushion behind her spouse, and he sitting firm upon his saddle, in a most bold and manly, if not in a graceful manner. Before they departed, however, the Croupier called loudly for the stirrup-cup, of which I also having partaken, ascended the shandrydan, and followed in the wake of this inimitable couple. Our roads separated after a little way, and the Minister turned up into a narrow country-road, while I continued in the line of the king’s highway. I heard him shouting out after I thought he had been out of sight, and looking back, saw him grinning a parting smile over the shoulder of his better half, and heard his valedictory joke,—“Post equitem sedet atra cura.” The joke was, perhaps, not a new one; but one cannot expect every thing at once. __________ BUCK’S-HEAD Miss Currie received and detains me with her kindest smiles; but on Thursday—my purposes are inflexible—on Thursday I am off for Rothesay. The weather seems to promise charmingly; so I look for a delicious trip in the steam-boat.

POSTSCRIPT TO

THE THIRD EDITION __________ Ch’agli nemici gli uomini sien crudi In ogni età sen’ è veduto esempio; Ma dar la morte a chi procuri e studi Il tuo ben sempre, è troppo ingiusto ed empio; E acciò che meglio il vero io ti dinudi, Perchè costor volesser fare scempio Degli anni verdi miei contra ragione,— Ti diro da principio ogni cagione.

ORLANDO FURIOSO. Canto V

__________ The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness And time to speak it in; you rub the sore When you should find the plaster.

SHAKESPEAR

TO

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ESQ. __________ MY DEAR COLERIDGE, BEING desirous of adding a few more last words to a new edition of my Letters from Scotland, I hope I may be pardoned for the liberty I have assumed in addressing them more immediately to you. To say truth, as the only criticisms on my book to which I have paid any considerable attention, are those contained in your two very interesting letters of last month, I know not to whom I could with so much propriety address the very short explanation which I have judged necessary upon the present occasion. But for what has fallen from yourself, I should never, most certainly, have thought of saying one word more in regard to a book, which I myself had considered so very much in the light of a bagatelle. The Letters were written in great haste, and published originally without much reflection; and if they furnished a little amusement and a little information to the “reading public” of the day, I should have been willing to suppose they had abundantly fulfilled all the purposes for which they were printed. That they have already done so, you are pleased to assure me—and so far I am satisfied. But it is easy for me to see, from the tenor of your remarks, that my ambition has not in general been believed to have been so moderate as it really was;— Under the guise of a simple traveller, apparently desirous only of describing what he had seen and felt in the course of a few months’ tour of idleness and relaxation—it has been suspected or discovered, as you inform me, that I had really gone forth as the champion of a particular set of literary, philosophical, and political opinions—and the nature of these opinions, it seems, has been such as to call down upon my head a measure of graver spleen, and severer criticism, than usually falls to the share of the letter-writer or the tourist. Although I must deny that my intentions were of so serious a kind as has been imagined—and still assure you that my book was written mainly with a view, not to the inculcation of opinions and the defence of dogmas, but the description of men and things—yet,

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as the opinions which have excited so much reprehension are most truly my opinions, I cannot refuse to stand by the consequences of having expressed them, even in this trivial shape and manner. The more I consider the present state of England, either in a literary or in a political point of view, the more am I confirmed in my belief that those opinions are just—and—(in spite of all the objections you have made to my Letters as to matters of minor moment)—it is my consolation and my pride to find, that both my opinions, and my mode of expressing them, are justified, in the main, by the approbation of a man whom I have always regarded as occupying one of the highest places among the intellectual ornaments of our most intellectual age. In the first place, however, I would fain be permitted to make a single remark or two, in answer to the censures which, you assure me, have been lavished by many on my choice of a vehicle for the expression of these my opinions—That the nature of these opinions themselves lies at the root of all, or almost all the objections which have been made to their vehicle, has been pretty distinctly hinted by yourself—and such, I have not the slightest doubt, is the truth of the case. Of all the classes of men with whose character I have ever had any opportunity of becoming acquainted, the Scottish Whigs are, without question, the most uniformly and consistently arrogant. Their consummate, unconquerable, and unapproachable coolness of self-conceit, may indeed be regarded as a very singular phenomenon in the present situation of the world. While the self-love of almost every other order of human beings has been reduced into some decent limits, or at least compelled to adopt some decent measure of disguise, among the keen collisions of our quick-sighted and ever ready generation—the members of this northern oligarchy alone suppose themselves, and are supposed by their dependents and worshippers, to be entitled not only to feel, but to exhibit,—on every occasion, and in the most prominent shapes,—the most entire and unquestioning confidence in the absolute perfection of themselves, and every thing and every body that in any sort belongs to them. They all believe (and few of them have any hesitation in confessing the belief) that among themselves alone is to be found the faultless standard of all human wit, wisdom, and excellence. They are the ideal of humanity—the very salt of the earth. The world has been going on for the last six thousand years—(we know not how much longer a period some of them may assign to it)—it has been the theatre of all manner of moral, intellectual, and physical convulsions—it has witnessed the generation of mountains and the transmutation of seas—

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thunders, lightnings, whirlwinds, and earthquakes, have blasted and desolated, and deformed and beautified its surface—the air around it has a million times passed through all the shapes and forms into which fire, frost, hail, snow, and stormy vapour, can diversify its substance;—its surface has been trod by innumerable successions of all living, moving, and breathing things—by corporeal and intellectual giants, and corporeal and intellectual dwarfs—by poets and philosophers, and princes and heroes, and knaves and fools, and madmen and hypocrites, of every hue and feature and tongue and kindred;—all the great games of wisdom, valour, love, hatred, ambition, pride, vanity, have been lost and won over and over again, by hundreds of generations that are all mouldered or mouldering into dust. And for what magnificent result has all this mighty round of nature and of man—all this experience of the globe and its inhabitants—prepared us? Why, truly—that at length our species might be reared to the divine altitude of its utmost possible perfection—and exhibit in these latter days, to the admiring gaze of men and angels, that faultless monster to which the world never saw any thing comparable before—that glorious compendium of all reason and all knowledge—that spirit extract—that oil essential of the universe— the Scottish Whig! But one might pardon to these men somewhat of their extravagant self-esteem, were it accompanied with any thing of that lofty tranquillity which poets and philosophers have ascribed to the possessors of superhuman excellence. Raised as they are, or as they suppose themselves to be, far above the competition, even above the comprehension of the ordinary brethren of the species, it might be fair to expect that these “Μακαριοι ὑψωτατοι” should survey, with something at least of a placid and benign indifference, the petty sayings and doings of those to whom they look down from such an etherial eminence of superiority. The little clouds and blasts that darken and disturb the lower surface of the world, could scarcely be supposed likely ever to agitate, in any degree, the serene summit of their Olympian region. As of the fabled divinities of old, so it might have been imagined of these modern demi-gods, that neither the hymns of those who worship, nor the scoffs of those who despise them, could approach with any effect either of exaltation or depression, the calm uniformity of that self-sufficing enjoyment, which they could not fail to derive from the consciousness of so many sovereign perfections—and that of the Northern Whig, as of the Epicurean Demon, it might have been said, in the words of the great Poet of Nature—

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Nec bene promeritis capitur nec tangitur irâ.

But alas! my dear sir, had any such beautiful imaginations been in fashion heretofore, I fear it must have been made abundantly evident that they had all proceeded through the ivory gate—by the woful and undignified display of clamorous indignation with which these self-elected SUPERI received the blasphemous sarcasms, and the scarcely (as they seem to have taken them) less blasphemous praises of the unfortunate Peter Morris. That the sarcasms, indeed, even of such a lowly individual, should have appeared to these high persons in the light not only of impious, but of disagreeable things,—might have excited less astonishment among those not acquainted with them, and the exact nature of the homage with which their ears are entertained, and with which alone their ears will condescend to be gratified. But, in every other region of the world, men are accustomed to find even the most elevated characters enduring the admiration of those who are immeasurably their inferiors;—satisfied, on most occasions, when this admiration is expressed in a manner not exactly suited to their notions of propriety, to take, in part at least, the will for the deed; and accept, without any visible symptoms of disgust, the well-meant tribute, however small may be its intrinsic or supposed merit, which they are convinced is all that those who offer it are in a condition to lay at their footstool. In an evil day, however, it would seem, and in an evil hour, did poor Peter put trust in these ordinary tricks of sovereign graciousness, and approach with his unhallowed lips the sublime merits of our northern worthies. There is, in truth, no accounting for the fastidious delicacies of beings as far removed from the common motives and habits as from the common excellencies of mankind. The doubt—the dissent—even the scorn of an uninformed and uninitiated stranger, might have been passed over with comparative mildness—but to be delineated and described, and praised by one who had never requested their permission to do so—by one who had approached and admired the shrine without soliciting password or safeconduct, either from the deities or the priests—to be made the subjects of common-place human discussion and commendation by one of the profanum vulgus, who had neither right nor title to gaze upon the intima penetralia of their mysterious greatness—this was indeed an insult that might move the spleen both of Pythoness and Python—this was indeed an intrusion for which no prostrate humility of the unhappy culprit could furnish any apology—this was indeed a sin worthy of being visited on

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the head of the rash Gentile who had committed it with all the indignation even of the Animæ Cœlestes. As the Lordly Brahmin, who believes that there is nothing either high, or holy, or pure, or tolerable, about any man that wears not the linen thread of Vishnu—who regards all the rest of the world as alike impious and obscene—and who, refusing to admit of any distinctions, even between the good and the evil intentions of the contaminated millions, among whom it is, for a season, their lot to move,—would hold in equal detestation the blessing and the curse of any unhappy stranger to their peerless caste—so, it would appear, have these hyperborean sages shuddered and shrinked, with horrescent purity, at the very idea of receiving a single salaam by the wayside from the Paria Peter. That a being, of line so abject, should have dared, for a moment, to lift his eyes from the dust as they were passing, would have been wickedness enough—but that he should have knelt down and reached forth his polluted hand to touch the hem of their garments, was the sin of sins, and the horror of horrors. What solemn lustrations must be necessary—what sequestered condolences—what choral soothings—before the stain can be washed away, and the pang assuaged, and the devout Brahmin enabled to resume the contemplation of his own sublime umbilicus with the same awful serenity which had been disturbed by the benediction of the accursed! But—to descend from these altitudes, which, to say truth, are scarcely more unsuitable to the writer than to the subject—the haughty partizans of this northern oligarchy, have not dared, in spite of all their conceit, to proclaim to the world the real grounds of their displeasure against me; and, since they have had recourse to pretences, it is proper, that even in regard to these I should not leave them in undisputed possession of the public ear. Far, however, be it from me to trouble either you or myself with an examination of all the pretences, to which, on this occasion, they have resorted. It will be enough, and more than enough, if I select one or two of those which have been most in vogue with them, and having detected their absurdity, leave the reader to exercise a little of his own penetration in the investigation, which, I nothing question, will end in the rejection of the rest. And, first of all, what can be more exquisitely ridiculous than the charges which they have brought against me of having violated the laws of delicacy and social confidence by those parts of my letters which contain sketches of the visits I made to some of the present great literary characters of Scotland? In answer to this, nothing at all could be necessary for the satisfaction of you, my dear sir, or of any person who

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knows any thing whatever of the literary practices and history of all the ages of the world. I have done nothing that has not been done a hundred times, and a hundred times more, by all the memoir-writers—and letterwriters—and tourists—and travellers of every nation, that ever knew the use of the pen. Let any, the most simple individual, that hears me blamed for what I have done in this respect, go to the library that is nearest him, and turn over the first twenty pages of the first book of travels that comes into his hands—and then judge for himself with what justice the guilt of innovation has, on this score, been laid to the charge of Peter Morris. That the ground on which I have sometimes trod was of a very delicate nature, is too obvious to require any confession of mine—but I am very willing to put it to the decision of any one of the eminent individuals that are immediately and personally concerned in what I have done—to say, whether—granting the thing were to be done at all—it were possible to do it with a more sacred regard to all that is really confidential and really sacred in the nature of such communication as occurs between any great literary character and any stranger who visits him only on account of his greatness. I have told no secrets—I have betrayed no confidence—I have ministered to no evil passion, either in myself or in others; and if, in any instance, I have stepped beyond the mark, and said a little more than I ought to have done, I throw myself upon the candour of my reader, to decide whether, ex facie at least, my transgression has not proceeded from the exuberance of good, and kindly, and reverent feelings, and not from any encroaching admixture of spleen that would fain be concealed, and malice that would fain be gratified. I cannot have done with this without alluding, in a single sentence, to the rapturous reception which these very Scottish Whigs gave only two or three years ago, to a book written on a plan, in essence, similar to mine. I mean that of the American Simond—a book in which liberties of the very same species are taken with, in many instances, the very same individuals of whom I have spoken;—and in which, in spite of all the praises it received, that offence was really committed—which has been falsely, and blindly, and stupidly, alleged against me. Let any unconcerned and impartial person compare my accounts of the Scottish Whigs, with some of this American’s notices of Scottish Tories, out of all comparison their superiors, both in intellect and in station,—and then say on whom the charges of insidiousness, and scandal, and malice, and misrepresentation, should have been laid. The squeamishness of these people, however, has gone much farther

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than this. They have carried their notion of the violation of delicacy to a point, which I should apprehend it cannot require even the most trivial acquaintance with books and the privileges of authors to pronounce altogether and ineffably absurd. I allude to the extraordinary and unheard-of extent which these people have been pleased to give to the idea of privacy, when they have accused me of violating the rights of privacy in my delineation of the public appearances and public merits of individuals, whom, till these oracles pronounced the reverse, I had, all my life, been in the habit of considering, as without exception, the most public of men. In good sooth, I should like very much to hear what places and what men are public—if churches, and colleges, and courts of law, and preachers, and professors, and barristers, be not so. Is St Stephen’s Chapel a private chamber? Is the stage of Drury-Lane the closet of Mr Kean? There would scarcely be more absurdity in thinking that a traveller has no right to tell you his opinion of the dinner he swallowed, or could not swallow, at a tenpenny table d’hôte, than in this chimæra, which would prevent a man from describing the impression that was made on his mind by a speech delivered before multitudes by a man hired for a certain number of guineas to compose and utter it. I can believe almost anything of the stupidity of some people;—but I really cannot bring myself to believe that any of those individuals of the Scottish Bar (in particular) who are described in my letters, have themselves been guilty of such a piece of stupidity as this. I have described none but men of sense and talent—and is it possible that any such men should have betrayed so much weakness, and at the same time so much ignorance? What? can a man whose whole object it is to make himself be talked about, be blind to the ridicule—the exquisite ridicule—of shewing wrath and indignation, because once in his life it has been his fortune to be written about? These gentlemen are conscious surely that they live, and breathe, and move, in the troubled air of notoriety—they know that their names and their merits are every day the most common of all common-places in the mouths of thousands of litigants,—and that unless it were so, their very existence as barristers would be at an end; nay more, they know that their names and their merits are not the only things about them, liable every day and every hour to the contamination and criticism of the multitude. They know that their very persons are continually at the mercy of all manner of vulgar contrectation—that they undergo, and rejoice in undergoing all the miseries which the tongue and the touch of doers and clerks can inflict—that the vilest hands in the world may, at any moment, approach them, provided they

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bring with them the all-hallowing propitiation of A FEE—that, by that unfailing charm, the thief, the robber, the murderer, can at any moment conjure all their mightiness into the circle of his cell—and that before he does so, he consults with all the noxious vermin of his prison, concerning the proper subject on which to exert his magic—They know in a word, that their minds and their bodies are, like the enslaved genii of the oriental tale, compelled at all times to start up, and execute the bidding of him, whosoever and howsoever vile he be, that rubs the Golden Ring—the omnipotent mistress of their energies. And yet these, forsooth, are the persons who complain with a grave face that the dignity of their privacy has been invaded—that the noiseless tenour of their calm sequestered lives has been disturbed—that the “purest ray serene” of their virgin bashfulness has been insulted—and that they can no longer breathe their pomatum on the barren air with the same lovely sense of security and retirement in which their delicate unsunned souls delighted before the ruffian intrusion of the Ravisher Peter!—words surely must be wanting to clothe the horrors of so much depravity, such cool, wanton, unrelenting barbarity as mine.—Surely, ——duris genuit ME cautibus horrens Caucasus—Hyrcanæque admorunt ubera tigres. But of this part of my alleged guilt, you, my dear Sir, appear to have heard nothing; and truly I doubt whether it be possible to persuade any man who is familiar as you are with the customs of England, that allegations of such a nature have really been listened to in Scotland with any thing more formidable than the scornful smile they deserve. In our end of the island, thank God, such fooleries, if they ever did exist, have long, very long since been exploded; and our barristers, and all who share among us the notoriety of barristers, have, for ages, been perfectly accustomed to see their minutest peculiarities of merit or demerit, scanned and re-scanned by all that please to do so, with at least as much boldness as I have thought fit to exhibit. The very mention of these northern qualms will, I am satisfied, excite nothing but a laugh among the less sensitive oracles of the Hall of Rufus. I confess I would willingly give something for a peep at the physiognomy of Sir Samuel Shepherd, while listening to the querulous or clamorous tones in which one of these stricken deer might breathe forth the soul of his agony. As for Charley Bush, (if you cross the water,) I believe the dear fellow would choak at the very mention of such a crying absurdity. I shall certainly

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get Ellis to tell the thing at the Beef-steak. Enough, however, and more than enough of this. I well know that I have been fighting with shadows, and that the true causes of the spleen that has been poured forth so lavishly against me must be sought for, not in the supposed indelicacy of my intrusions, or my descriptions, but in that true and unpardonable audacity which led me to beard the lion in his den, and strong, not in myself, but in the armour of ancient loyalty and ancient faith, proclaim myself, even in the midst of its myrmidons, an enemy to the pestilent Genius of Scottish republicanism and Scottish infidelity. The candour with which I acknowledge—nay, the fervour with which I expatiated upon the talents and merits of individuals, served only to exacerbate the collective indignation of the sects, against whose principles I had dared to avow my animosity. Praise proceeding from such a quarter was not listened to with surprise merely, but with scorn;—and the language of every victim of this more than Dardan jealousy, was not timeo, but ——Odi Danaum vel dona ferentem.

At a distance, nevertheless, from the immediate sphere in which these fixed stars of the north have accustomed themselves to suppose they possess a perpetual monopoly of light, I am far from suspecting that the wanderings of my less ambitious course have excited, or will hereafter excite any symptoms of the same imperious indignation. The generous people of England—for whom only, or chiefly, it was my ambition to write—will not take my character on trust from my enemies, while my conduct is as open to their own examination, as it ever was to that of any of their neighbours,—and while they can examine that conduct with feelings of calmness and impartiality, very different from what must be suspected to lurk beneath the moody and frantic gestures of those, with the result of whose investigations they have now been made acquainted.—Were my book to be written over again, there are indeed not a few things in it which I would omit—and not a few surely which I would alter; but of these, you may be assured, no one of all the passages, which have raised for me such a host of decriers, would form a part. I well know the deep-rooted pride of the prejudices I have assaulted—I well know the pampered and bloated luxury of the selflove against which I have dared to aim a wound. But if I comprehend inadequately, at least most sacredly do I venerate, the nature of that high old spirit of English thought and belief, against which those haughty

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prejudices have ever been enlisted—and in the utter ruin of which alone, that long-spared and foolishly dreaded self-love hopes one day to accomplish the great end of all its exertions, and to realize all the cherished visions of its hoodwinked malice. To that spirit I shall never be a traitor; and while, in spite of all that its enemies can do or say against it, its influence continues to be the palladium of our island, I shall never be without my sufficient consolation for all the worst injuries these enemies can heap on my own head:—In every assertion of English honour—in every spectacle of English glory—I shall well know that I contemplate what must abundantly revenge me, and suffuse their inmost souls with the worst bitterness of gall and wormwood. The whole course and tenor of our national triumphs was one unbroken series of confusion and disappointment, and wrath and envy to them; and now,—when the sky is overcast for a moment, and afflictions, beyond the reach of human aid, have been interpreted by a much suffering, and (little as they will acknowledge it) a much pitied populace, into the symbols and consequences of a fancied oppression—mark only with what a relentless pertinacity of spleen these short-sighted men have roused themselves from the silence to which their own faults and folly had compelled them, to pour oil upon the kindling embers of disaffection,—and to hail the internal enemies of our peace with the same encouraging huzzas and prophetic hosannas, which waited faithfully, through so many years of more perilous encounter, upon the march of that external tyranny, which would fain have swallowed up those that resisted and those that aided its efforts, in one sweeping flood of undistinguishing abasement. If sin there be in thirsting for abundance of such revenge as this—freely and unblushingly do I confess myself in that sort the chief of sinners. Long have they invited us to sup full upon their horrors—long, very long, may it be before their black arts are able to scare us from our posts of duty. Believe me, MY DEAR COLERIDGE, With the highest admiration and respect, Your faithful friend and servant, PETER MORRIS. PENSHARPE-HALL, November, 1819

WORKS OF THE SAME AUTHOR

__________

I DE MULIERE, LIBRI TRES. Lutetiæ Parisior. 1812.

II DE MOTU PERISTALTICO, DISSERTATIO INAUGURALIS LUGDUNI BATAVORUM HABITA QUUM GRADUM DOCTORIS IN PHILOSOPHIA SUSCIPERET A PETRO MORRISIO, CAMBRO-BRITANNO, NUPER COLLEGII JESU APUD OXONIENSES SOCIO. 1812.

III THREE LETTERS TO COLONEL JOHNES OF HAFOD, ON THE REMAINS OF TALIESSIN, WITH TRANSLATIONS.

At the Hafod Press, 1805.

IV

Preparing for Publication.

A VIEW OF THE PRESENT STATE OF THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE IN SCOTLAND, IN TEN LETTERS TO

SIR EVERARD HOME, BARONET. WITH PORTRAITS OF THE PRINCIPAL PRACTITIONERS.

Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

Volume Two: Introduction, Notes, and Editorial Material Edited by Peter Garside and Gillian Hughes

EDINBURGH

University Press

Introduction 1. Genesis On 29 November 1815, not long after settling in Edinburgh in pursuit of a legal career, the young John Gibson Lockhart wrote to his Oxford friend Jonathan Christie of the city then cried up as the Modern Athens: if the name Athens had been derived from the Goddess of Printing— not from the Goddess of Wisdom—no city in the world could with greater justice lay claim to the appellation […] Every other body you jostle is the father of at least an octavo, or two, and it is odds if you ever sit down to dinner in a company of a dozen, without having to count three or four quarto makers in the circle.1 Edinburgh’s two most prominent literary men were also lawyers: Walter Scott, one of the Principal Clerks of the Court of Session and the poet of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808), and Francis Jeffrey, leading advocate in the courts and editor of the Edinburgh Review. In such an environment Lockhart may well have hoped to fulfil his own literary ambitions as well as to start a legal career, Edinburgh seeming to favour success more than had either Glasgow or Oxford, where earlier phases of his life had been spent. Although Lockhart was born in the manse of Cambusnethan in Lanarkshire, on 12 June 1794, his clerical father was transferred to the Blackfriars College Kirk of Glasgow in 1796, so that Lockhart himself grew up in the heart of what was rapidly becoming the second city of the British Empire. Dr Lockhart lived in Charlotte Street, then a pleasant road of Georgian houses leading downhill towards the northwest corner of Glasgow Green, a large communal open green space near the River Clyde that acted as a lung for the increasingly industrialised city, used by citizens not only for washing laundry but also as recreational space. Lockhart was educated firstly at the city’s Grammar School and then at Glasgow College, until in 1809 he won a Snell Exhibition to study at Balliol College, Oxford. The four years in these privileged surroundings that culminated in a first-class degree in classics were in many ways idyllic, Lockhart’s subsequent writing in both Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (1819) and in his Oxford-centred novel Reginald Dalton

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(1823) showing how deeply responsive he was to the beautiful buildings, open spaces, and historic associations of Oxford. The society in which he participated there was nevertheless somewhat inward looking with strangely distorted views of his native Scotland, Lockhart noting in a letter to a friend of 20 February 1810 that ‘Edinburgh and Glasgow they view in no other light than as so many nurses of infidelity and scepticism’ (Lang, I, 41). Participation in this well-to-do society of young men drawn largely from prosperous gentry and clerical families, however, made it difficult for him to adjust to life in Glasgow after his return there in 1813 with scholarly distinctions to his name but no future income or realistic prospect of securing one. As he wrote to Christie on 25 November 1814: It is really a miserable thing to be without friends: out of my own family I have not a soul here I care for. The manners of men who talk perpetually of raw sugar and calicoes, and of chemical-botanical vulgar women, are intolerable to me. (Lang, I, 78) While awaiting a suitable career opening he began to write a Scottish novel, for which it now appeared there was a market not only in Scotland but in England also in the wake of the overwhelmingly successful publication of Walter Scott’s Waverley in July 1814. The first edition of 1000 copies of Scott’s novel was soon followed by second and third editions, comprising 4000 copies in all, published in August and October 1814 respectively.2 The publication of Waverley signalled a breakthrough for other Scottish authors with an impulse to describe the state of the Scottish nation who had hitherto been unsuccessful in achieving publication. Susan Ferrier’s Marriage (1818) seems to have been begun around 1809, John Galt in 1822 asserted that ‘before “Waverley” appeared I wrote to Constable proposing to execute a Scottish story’, while it was in 1813 that James Hogg offered Constable two volumes of ‘The Rural and Traditionary Tales of Scotland’, again without success.3 By his own account Lockhart had also been engaged in writing a Scottish novel before he had read Waverley, though once he had read it he naturally feared that ‘the rush upon Scotland consequent to that popular work is such that mine is likely to be crushed among the row’ (Lang, I, 74-75). Nevertheless he offered the work, entitled ‘The Romance of the Thistle’, to Constable in a letter of 29 December 1814:

INTRODUCTION

3

I have been amusing myself with writing a novel, and as it chiefly regards Scotland, I should wish to have it printed in Edinburgh. I am sensible that much has been done of late years in the description of our national manners, but there are still, I apprehend, many important classes of Scotch society quite untouched. The hero is one John Todd, a true-blue, who undertakes a journey to London in a Berwick smack, and is present in the metropolis at the same time with the Emperor of Russia and the other illustrious visitors in June last.4 Unfortunately Lockhart’s manuscript of ‘The Romance of the Thistle’ does not appear to have survived, but from this description it had a focus that was partly journalistic and partly ethnographic, reminiscent of The Ayrshire Legatees, serialised by John Galt in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine between October 1820 and March 1821, and which recounts the adventures of a Greenock minister and his family during a visit to London to claim a legacy described in a series of letters between themselves and their friends in Scotland. Lockhart’s model seems to have been partly Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), which takes a similar family party northwards to visit Edinburgh and the Highlands. He intended his novel to be chiefly ‘a receptacle of an immense quantity of anecdotes and observations I have made concerning the state of the Scotch, chiefly their clergy and elders’, marvelling that Smollett had largely neglected that aspect, giving ‘nothing full or rich, like his seamen’ (Lang, I, 72-73). It seems not unlikely that some at least of Lockhart’s ‘anecdotes and observations’ in this early novel draft could have been reworked subsequently into the third volume of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, which concerns itself with Glasgow society and the rural west of Scotland. Unlike Scott’s Waverley, subtitled ‘or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since’, a historical novel centring on the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Lockhart’s novel was intended to be markedly contemporary, set in June 1814 and taking in the public events of the visit of the allied sovereigns to London marking the defeat of France and abdication of Napoleon in April that year. A fundamentally similar relationship holds between the account of the Edinburgh literati around 1782 given at the end of the second volume of Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815) and Lockhart’s portrait of the Edinburgh literary men of 1818 and 1819 in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, in that Lockhart (as in the case of ‘The Romance of the Thistle’) concerns himself with contemporary figures and events as

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close as possible to the time of writing and first publication. It was for its ‘very capital anecdotes’ that he had praised Christian Isobel Johnstone’s anonymously-published novel The Saxon and the Gael; or, The Northern Metropolis (1814), which he had also read during his period of unemployment in Glasgow, recommending it to a correspondent on 28 February 1815 as ‘a clever enough representation of Edinburgh a few years ago. A number of very capital anecdotes, mostly old here, but new perhaps to you’ (Lang, I, 74). The Edinburgh scenes of Johnstone’s novel contain thinly-disguised satirical portraits of Edinburgh notables such as the Earl of Buchan (the Earl of Ego) and the lame advocate John Clerk (Johnny Macsnap), both of whom were also to feature as themselves in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. Johnstone’s novel also gestures towards Humphry Clinker in the introduction of an artist named FitzLismahago, supposedly a son of the Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble of Smollett’s earlier novel. At the same time Lockhart’s innate preference for the contemporary meant that the influence of Walter Scott’s work on the gestation of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk was most clearly exerted not through the earliest published of his historical novels but through his account of visiting Brussels and Paris in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (1816). This took the form of a series of letters written from the Continent by the eponymous Paul to his friends at home in Scotland, a simpler narrative structure than that of Humphry Clinker (which employs six letterwriters in all), and one which is also used by Lockhart whose title is a direct allusion to Scott’s fictionalised account of his recent continental tour. A brief comparison of Lockhart’s use of the correspondence narrative with that of Scott is revealing. In the first of its sixteen letters Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk describes an ‘evening circle’, clearly confined to one parish and comprising his cousin the ‘Major’ (who receives six letters), the ‘Laird’ (two letters), the ‘Minister’ (one letter), his cousin ‘Peter, the politician’ (three letters), and Paul’s sister Margaret, who is his housekeeper and domestic companion (four letters).5 Although in describing post-Waterloo Europe letters to the military man tend to predominate, even he receives less than half of them. Dr Morris’s circle of correspondents is both less close-drawn and less numerous, consisting (apart from the dedicatory epistle to the local bishop and the epistle liminary to Morris’s London publisher) of only three people, none of whom are in daily contact with one another: the scholarly clergyman, Rev. David Williams, and Morris’s aunt, Lady

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Johnes, clearly live within visiting distance of one another in Cardiganshire but are not daily intimates, while that dedicated follower of fashion, Frederick Augustus Potts, is resident in London. Of the seventy-six component letters of the main text of Peter’s Letters Williams receives seventy-one, and he is Morris’s sole correspondent for the second of the work’s three volumes, the three letters to Lady Johnes being confined to the first volume and the two letters to Potts to the third. Since, unlike Scott, Lockhart largely confines himself to cultural matters Morris does not require correspondents with a serious interest in military matters or in agriculture, and he can and does convey almost everything he wishes to describe to the scholarly clergyman, David Williams, with the exception of matters relating to the polite society of Edinburgh (for which he needs the more worldly and aristocratic Lady Johnes) and to social events and activities more accessible to a man (in this case Potts) than to a refined lady. Even for subjects such as painting, where an educated woman might be supposed to comprehend him fully, Morris prefers to address his remarks to David Williams. This probably reflects the different social standing of the two authors, between Scott as a middle-aged man of the world with a very extensive acquaintance beyond literature and Lockhart as a young man at the outset of his career moving mostly in literary and legal circles. Apart from the obvious reflection of Scott’s title in that of Lockhart’s work, Scott’s influence is possibly also to be felt in the naming of the latter’s characters: for instance, Morris’s Glasgow cicerone, originally (and in the present edition) is ‘the Major’, his military rank neatly and economically serving to mark him out as a professional man in a society dominated by tradesmen. Dr Peter Morris himself, with his Tory and Anglican prejudices and his concern with nationalist culture, could, perhaps as much as Scott’s character, be described as ‘Peter, the politician’. During the two years that Lockhart spent in his father’s family at Glasgow after his Oxford graduation he seems to have been preparing, consciously or unconsciously, to become a literary man. He had written from Balliol College to the publisher John Murray on 15 May 1814, suggesting a French work he might translate for publication and adding a general offer of his services as translator, ‘I should be happy to undertake any translation from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish or Portuguese which you may recommend’.6 Lockhart had a considerable aptitude for languages, and during his time at Oxford studied not only the classical Latin and Greek of the academic curriculum but a number

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of modern European languages as well. His letter to Murray does not mention German, however, and fluency in that language was probably acquired after his return to Glasgow, since his friend Christie describes his knowledge of German as ‘a later acquisition’ (Lang, I, 38). In a letter to Christie of 3 January 1815 he reported ‘I read during summer some of the late German histories of philosophy, and think I must make something of it’ (Lang, I, 84), which may or may not be an oblique reference to an intention of publishing criticism or a translation. Although Scott had published translations of Goethe and Bürger at the start of his own publishing career and there were other Scottish Germanists such as Robert Pearse Gillies (1788-1858) and James Skene (1775-1864), German was still a more unusual acquirement than French or Italian, even though German literature stood at the forefront of the current Romantic movement.7 It is therefore possible that Lockhart learned German during this time of unemployment in Glasgow in order to increase his chances of earning something by his pen. He also proposed to engage in the publication of an Oxford anthology along with a number of his college friends in the autumn of 1815 (Lang, I, 8889). His friend Christie states that Lockhart’s first publication was ‘an article on heraldry, in the “Edinburgh Encyclopedia”’ and mentions it in the context of Lockhart’s time at Oxford, although if this was indeed Lockhart’s work it seems more likely to have been produced after his removal to Edinburgh in 1815.8 Living a retired life in Glasgow, Lockhart had few literary or publishing contacts, and it seems improbable that he published anything much during this time. He had also been studying Scots law during his Glasgow residence, and in 1815 he moved to Edinburgh with the avowed objective of becoming a member of the Faculty of Advocates, a career path that was no doubt acceptable to his father while leaving him with a great deal of time on his hands. It was a surprising choice of profession for a shy man who was also partially deaf and therefore able to take part in conversation in a small party of intimates much more easily than in a crowded and noisy public space like Edinburgh’s Parliament Hall, and whose facility with his pen considerably exceeded his speech-making ability. A more worldly-wise father than Dr Lockhart might have dissuaded him, and when he came in later life to advise his own son as to a career Lockhart expressed regret that at the outset of life he ‘had no relations capable of understanding the case or of advising me judiciously’ and that as he had no gift for public speaking ‘it was the great error in my early days that I nevertheless selected the Bar’.9 The law

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was the customary resort of young men of good family in Scotland, but as Lockhart himself notes in Peter’s Letters most advocates could reasonably hope to support a modest household establishment only after years of unremitting toil while it was ‘impossible that more than three or four men should, at the same time, hold first-rate practice at this Bar’ (p. 224).10 It is perfectly possible that, writing in 1819 after several years’ experience of Edinburgh legal life, Lockhart had become wiser than he had been in 1815, but it may be that on some level he always had a literary career in mind. The Scottish essayist and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, in a later generation, got his father’s consent to his studying for the Bar while almost certainly having very little intention of becoming a practising lawyer.11 Having moved to lodgings in George Street in the New Town of Edinburgh (Lang, I, 91-92), Lockhart reported to his friend Christie on 29 November 1815, ‘I have passed my trials in the Civil Law, which cost me a little fagging, and am now seriously at work on the Scots’ in a letter that was otherwise full of information about authors and publications. He mentioned that he hoped to earn £25 from the bookseller William Laing for a translation from the French of a relation of the Battle of Waterloo (undertaken jointly with his friend William Hamilton), had got ‘a few articles in the [Edinburgh] “Encyclopædia”’, and had the intention of ‘reviewing a little’ (Lang, I, 96-97).12 Lockhart may also have written articles for newspapers. At least one such article, a two-part notice of Scottish artist William Allan’s paintings of Celebration of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd’s Birth Day and of Jewish Family in Poland making merry before a Wedding published in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 and 17 February 1819, has been identified as his work because the second part was subsequently subsumed into Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (see ‘Composition and Publication’ below). Much contemporary journalism was anonymous, making Lockhart’s early periodical contributions difficult to identify, but it seems highly probable that this was not the only newspaper article written by him at this time. In 1816 he was accepted as a member of the Faculty of Advocates. It was perhaps as a result of contributing to the Edinburgh Encyclopædia that Lockhart first became acquainted with William Blackwood, since Blackwood was its publisher. In the case of Blackwood’s new Edinburgh Monthly Magazine he was a contributor from the very first issue for April 1817, which included his ‘Remarks on Greek Tragedy’, and A. L. Strout considers that up to nine articles in its first six months

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may have been written or partly written by him.13 It is clear that Blackwood regarded his literary talents very highly, for when Lockhart wished to travel in Germany during the summer legal vacation of 1817 Blackwood was prepared to fund the trip to the extent of an advance of £300 on an unspecified work to be translated from German by Lockhart and published by him, an extraordinary offer that Lockhart himself always mentioned subsequently in terms of warm appreciation: ‘It was a generous act on Ebony’s [i. e. Blackwood’s] part, and a bold one too; for he had only my word for it that I had any acquaintance at all with the German language’.14 Traces of Lockhart’s trip in the autumn of 1817 are now scanty, though he seems to have accompanied his friend Sir William Hamilton whose objective was to inspect a library in Leipzig which he had recommended the Faculty of Advocates to purchase.15 They sailed from Leith to Hamburg and G. R. Gleig says merely that Lockhart ‘saw and conversed with Goethe in Weimar, traversed France, and what was then the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and returned to Edinburgh’.16 Lang mentions a notebook of Lockhart’s that contained a few sketches of German students and a drawing of the German Kantean philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte lecturing to his class, though this last cannot have been drawn from life, for Fichte had died in 1814 (Lang, I, 118-19). Lockhart’s choice of a German work for translation for Blackwood again shows his love of being up-to-the-minute, for Friedrich von Schlegel’s influential lecture series of 1811 Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur had been published as recently as 1815. Lockhart’s translation, Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, was published by William Blackwood in two volumes in April 1818.17 Schlegel’s cultural nationalism appealed deeply to Lockhart’s Romantic conservatism in arguing that literature at its best embodied the character of the nation that produced it, uniting the people, men of letters, and polite society, and was intrinsically antithetic to the universalising rationalism and scepticism of such philosophers as Hume, Rousseau and Voltaire. Ian Duncan indeed views Lockhart’s response to Schlegel as influential not only on nineteenth-century Scottish culture but far beyond it, as containing ‘nearly all the themes that reappear in twentieth-century Scottish nationalist criticism: the linguistic division between written English and spoken Scots, the social gulf between literati and folk, and even the castigation of “Puritanism,” as well as Enlightenment skepticism, as alienating doctrinal systems’.18 Moreover, this early work of Lockhart’s is very much a personal interpretation of

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Schlegel’s work. James Vigus points out that in his translation, which is often inaccurate, Lockhart ‘intensifies the nationalistic tone of Schlegel’s work’, for instance when translating ‘die Bildung des menschlichen Geistes’ (the education of the human spirit) as ‘the formation of a national character’.19 Peter’s Letters is on one level the application of a Schlegelian template to contemporary Scottish culture, the emotional and spiritual high points of the Welsh doctor Peter Morris’s tour being affirmations of a unifying Scottish national culture set against opposing and destructive Whig forces. The moving principle of the triennial dinner commemorating Robert Burns in the first volume is that ‘the highest, and the wisest, and the best of a nation’ should be ‘assembled together […] to do honour to the memory of one low-born peasant’ (p. 72), a unifying purpose initially threatened by a preconcerted attempt to impose a Whig party agenda on the meeting but defeated by the presence and recognition of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, as Burns’s natural successor, and by the conviviality initiated by a performance of Burns’s own ‘The Jolly Beggars’. Ian Duncan rightly focuses on Morris’s visit to Scott at Abbotsford as another emotional climax of Lockhart’s work: ‘Scott’s nation-forming authority resides in his joint character as interpreter and proprietor: Scotland, Abbotsford, and Scott’s poetry all stand for one another’ while the opposing Whig model represented by the Earl of Buchan’s crude Wallace statue and plaster pantheon of ancient and modern cultural figures at Dryburgh is not only ineffective but also ludicrous.20 The climax of the third volume is Morris’s participation in a country sacrament, viewed as another authentic manifestation of national spirit, the intelligent spiritual devotion of the peasantry offsetting what is presented as the crude and sterile scepticism of the Philosophical Weaver in the preceding Glasgow scenes and creating a climate of feeling in which Morris cannot help scanning the crowd of worshippers ‘to see if I could trace any countenance resembling that of Burns. The assembly around me might be considered as the very audience he addressed; and I understood every trait in his writings ten times better, from the consciousness of being among them’ (p. 536). Lockhart could afford to introduce personally favourable, indeed affectionate, portraits of many of Edinburgh’s individual Whig luminaries within Peter’s Letters, since he implicitly renders their political stance null in the context of this over-arching conservative and Romantic structure.

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At much the same time that Lockhart returned from Germany and was translating Schlegel’s work he came to have a much more significant role as a principal contributor to William Blackwood’s monthly magazine. The original editors, Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn, had produced only a mediocre periodical much along the lines of Constable’s moribund Scots Magazine rather than a rival to his prestigious Edinburgh Review, and Blackwood had been dissatisfied with their work almost from the start. Initially Blackwood himself had done nothing much to make it anything better, since his expectation of receiving mostly unpaid contributions made it highly unlikely that his periodical would attract the same quality of work secured by the liberal payment of contributors to Constable’s primary periodical. After six months Pringle and Cleghorn defected to Constable, editing his Scots Magazine under the new title of the Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany, while Blackwood retitled his work Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine with the issue for October 1817 and accepted that he would have to pay a basic sum of ten guineas per sheet of sixteen pages at least to secure the lively contributions that he needed for it. He complained on 23 July 1817 that during Pringle and Cleghorn’s tenure as editors he had undertaken the work of procuring contributions himself which he was unable to pay for and that he ‘could not permit my friends […] to go on in this way for any length of time’.21 That Lockhart, together with John Wilson, was chief among these friends is clear from Lockhart’s letter to the Welsh friend of his Oxford days John Williams, written later in 1817, outlining an offer made by Blackwood and his London associate John Murray: The two bibliopoles have offered John Wilson and myself £500 a-year between us to conduct their Magazine, and to pay us and our friends at the handsomest rate they can afford per sheet for what we write. This agreement we have made for one year, at the end of which we expect the work will be established, so as to afford better things.22 Lockhart probably represents the outcome of a tentative discussion as a firm arrangement (he was after all trying to enlist Williams as a contributor), for in 1820, when a summons was issued against Lockhart as editor in the preparation of a libel suit on behalf of John Leslie against Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the summons was withdrawn because Blackwood himself was prepared to state that ‘Mr L. is not, and never was, my Editor’.23 That such a proposal was in the offing in 1817,

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however, is proof of Lockhart’s close involvement in William Blackwood’s plans for his newly-refurbished periodical. Within the pages of Blackwood’s (as in Peter’s Letters) Lockhart outlined and fostered a Schlegelian scheme of Edinburgh literary society in which Burns, Scott and (to a degree) Hogg exemplified a healthy, imaginative national literature uniting the land, its pious folk, and the literati. This was supported and defended in a Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine that set its face against the reductively intellectual and sceptical Whig culture predominating in Edinburgh and centred upon the rival periodical, Constable’s Edinburgh Review. Reviewing his own translation of Schlegel’s Lectures in the August 1818 issue of Blackwood’s Lockhart castigates the complacency of contemporary British culture and its origin: According to the author of these lectures, the chief cause of those defects which may be discovered in the art and literature of the present time, is to be found in the spirit of thought introduced by the philosophy of the last century. The object of that philosophy was revolution; its engine was derision. Its masters devoted all their talents to destroy the habitual veneration with which their countrymen of France and of Europe were accustomed to regard the political, moral, and religious institutions of their fathers. Schlegel’s work is accordingly ‘a noble effort to counteract and repel its effects, to arouse forgotten thoughts and despised feelings, and to make men be national and religious once more, in order that once more they may be great’. In his concluding remarks Lockhart regrets that ‘in England [i.e. Britain], nothing has contributed so much as the host of periodical publications to obliterate sentiment, and substitute metaphysical restlessness in its place’.24 It was within this schema that Lockhart’s attacks in Blackwood’s on John Playfair and Thomas Chalmers took place. He condemned Chalmers as a zealous clergyman and great man who has ‘lately fallen into a great and dangerous error’ in contributing articles on any subject whatever to the Edinburgh Review, as a periodical which tacitly promotes infidelity. Playfair was much more comprehensively attacked for ‘the magnitude of that inconsistency between the Clergyman and the Reviewer’, an inconsistency which Lockhart argues renders him guilty either of hypocrisy in taking orders in the Church of Scotland originally or of meanness in seeking to render others miserable by drawing them

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into his own subsequent loss of religious faith.25 Lockhart’s Germanism was to be more pleasantly and productively shown in the item in the September issue immediately preceding his attack on Playfair, ‘Christian Wolf, A True Story—From the German’, which foreshadowed the later series of ‘Horae Germanicae’ introducing the magazine’s readers to recent works of German literature, through careful exposition and substantial translated passages.26 Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk is, however, far more than an application of Schlegelian literary theory to contemporary Edinburgh, or even to Scotland in general. It expresses the joy of a young man with intellectual aspirations at being fully involved in the centre of cultural eminence and innovation that Edinburgh had become by 1819, an exuberance and sense of fun featuring in many of his other writings in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. In his rhymed ‘Notices’ to contributors prefacing the issue for March 1818, for instance, Lockhart salutes as ‘Joyous the scribblers who have found a nook, / Gruff those deferred till April or till May’, and slyly records that overt moral disapproval of the magazine by no means excludes private reading. Ladies who denounce the magazine may nevertheless conceal an issue in their winter outer clothing, for example: My lady swears she will no more take in A journal which such tinker-stories tells; And now the winter’s o’er, the Magazine Can’t walk perdue in muff of modest belles. William Wastle, the Edinburgh cicerone and Tory friend of Dr Morris, is also the supposed author of Lockhart’s exuberant comic poem ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam’, which was published in five instalments in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine between July 1818 and January 1820.27 Lockhart’s delight in the absurd is similarly shown in his picture in Peter’s Letters of the eminent guests of Francis Jeffrey playing at leapfrog at Craigcrook, or the pretended fear in dark corners of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum that the mummy on display there might come to life one evening and chase a dignified Professor upstairs. Peter’s Letters participates in a more general feeling that Edinburgh during the post-war period was enjoying a cultural Golden Age, and that the details of this unique time should be recorded. Henry Cockburn accounted for his Memorials of his Time, written between 1821 and

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1830 although only published posthumously in 1856, in the following words: It occurred to me, several years ago, as a pity, that no private account should be preserved of the distinguished men or important events that had marked the progress of Scotland, or at least of Edinburgh, during my day. I had never made a single note with a view to such a record. But about 1821 I began to recollect and to inquire.28 The Northumberland-born artist William Nicholson (1781-1844) had moved to Edinburgh in 1814 with the intention of accumulating portraits of the city’s public characters, and in the two years succeeding exhibited portraits of James Hogg, William Tennant, Daniel Terry, the Earl of Buchan and twenty other notables. In April 1818 he began to publish a series entitled Portraits of Distinguished Living Characters of Scotland, drawn and etched partly from his own portraits and partly from those of other artists, although presumably as only two parts were issued the project was not commercially successful. He made etchings of Scott, Jeffrey, George Thomson, Playfair, John Wilson, William Allan, and James Watt. Possibly Nicholson’s commercially unsuccessful record in portraiture suggested the portrait engravings included in Lockhart’s Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, as another public record of the notabilities of Edinburgh at this time. While the art market in Edinburgh appears to have been relatively underdeveloped, the same was hardly true of the publishing market post-Waverley. As Lockhart himself noted, ‘at this moment an Edinburgh title-page is better than almost any London one—and carries a greater authority along with it’, whereas thirty years previously ‘Memphis or Palmyra could scarcely have appeared a more absurd place of publication to any English author’ (p. 274). The early issues of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine were regularly produced for transportation south to meet the London ‘magazine day’ as the prefatory ‘Notices to Correspondents’ of March 1818 acknowledged (‘Next Number shall grace April’s 20th day, / By May the 1st they’ll be in Baldwin’s shop’), but their contents assumed that Edinburgh writers and Edinburgh concerns might interest readers on both sides of the Border. The ‘Chaldee Manuscript’ of the first issue under the new editorship, for example, is an account of the magazine war in Edinburgh between Blackwood and Constable, providing coded biblical descriptions of each and of their supporters and friends, only some of which would be

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instantly recognisable to most English readers: Blackwood himself, for instance, features as a man whose name is ‘as ebony’ and Walter Scott as ‘the great magician’. Peter’s Letters seems to have originated within the pages of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine itself, with the appearance of two articles by Lockhart in the issues for February and March 1819 purporting to be a review of a scarce ‘first’ edition of the work published in Aberystwyth by the Welsh doctor Peter Morris, who describes his tour of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the West of Scotland.29 The reviewer declares in the February article that the ‘great object of the work before us seems to be to give a philosophical estimate of the legal and mercantile character of Scotland—and this our author tries to accomplish, by delineating the society of Edinburgh and of Glasgow’.30 The supposed extracts provided (and which were included in revised form in the later book publication) consist of a passage on the current decline of the Edinburgh Review, the falsity of English impressions concerning the state of religion in Scotland, a description of a Glasgow dinnerparty, and a briefer one concerning the University of Glasgow. The supposed extracts in the March article consist of one on the state of dancing in Edinburgh, including a lengthy extract from Byron’s anonymouslypublished poem Waltz—an Apostrophic Hymn, by Francis Hornem, Esq., and a series of sketches of Edinburgh advocates pleading in the Court of Session, including John Clerk, George Cranstoun, and Francis Jeffrey. It was the sketches of individual lawyers that particularly delighted Scott. Writing to Lockhart on 23 March 1819, shortly after seeing the March issue of Blackwood’s, Scott told him, ‘The pleaders portraits are about the best I ever read and will preserve these three very remarkable and original men for all of whom however differing in points whereon I wish we had agreed I entertain not only deep respect but sincere friendship and regard’.31 His comment probably also conveys a carefully guarded and delicate warning against the danger of too much satire in a book published in an environment like that of Edinburgh, where literary men of different parties mingled freely in society, and where Lockhart was currently trying to establish himself: it is in line with Scott’s later opinion expressed in a letter of 8 April 1819 to James Ballantyne that ‘all temptation to personal satire should be studiously repressd’ in the published volumes.32 Within the past year Lockhart had been falling more and more under Scott’s influence and to some extent quasi-paternal direction, since Scott was far more a man of the world than Lockhart’s own clerical

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father in Glasgow. At their first sustained meeting at an Edinburgh dinner-party in May 1818 Scott had enjoyed Lockhart’s conversation about his excursion to Germany of the previous year, and shortly afterwards had arranged for him to be offered some paid literary work for the ‘historical department’ of the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816.33 Scott encouraged Lockhart to call frequently on him in his Castle Street home, meeting him also as a fellow guest at the houses of friends such as John Ballantyne, where he was introduced to the publisher Archibald Constable. In October 1818 Lockhart had been invited to Abbotsford at a time when Lord Melville, the great dispenser of patronage in Scotland, was also to be there, the invitation being accompanied by a gentle warning, ‘I trust you have had enough of certain pranks with your friend Ebony [Blackwood], and if so, Lord Melville will have too much sense to remember them’.34 The developing relationship would be cemented by Lockhart’s marriage to Scott’s elder daughter in April 1820. The moderating influence of Scott, among others, was probably responsible for Lockhart’s attempt to make amends in Peter’s Letters for the least defensible of the Blackwood’s attacks on Edinburgh Whig notables. Morris virtually channels Scott in describing Lockhart on his personal encounter with him at a country dinner-party held by R. P. Gillies at Lasswade: But Mr Lockhart is a very young person, and I would hope may soon find that there are much better things in literature than satire, let it be as good-humoured as you will. Indeed, his friend Wastle tells me he already professes himself heartily sick of it, and has begun to write, of late, in a quite opposite key. (p. 441) A more explicit recantation of Lockhart’s magazine attacks on Chalmers and Playfair comes in his Peter’s Letters account of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine itself, the letter to Chalmers being ‘an improper and unwarrantable expostulation, when considered as addressed to that eminent individual’ even though it was probably conceived ‘merely as furnishing an occasion for more fully discussing the mode in which Religion had been treated in the Edinburgh Review’ (p. 299). The attack on Playfair is condemned outright as ‘a cruel interference with the private history of a most unassuming and modest man of genius’ (p. 299). Morris’s detailed portrait of Chalmers preaching in the Trongate church in Glasgow in Letter LXXII is downright

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reverential, and Playfair in demonstrating mathematical concepts to his university class is termed ‘this fine old Archimedes’ (p. 109). Lockhart’s satirical bent in the early issues of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was certainly both embodied in Peter’s Letters and counteracted there by the increasing influence of Scott. It remains unclear how far Lockhart had the entire work of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk in mind at the time he published the two ‘review’ articles of the suppositious ‘first’ edition in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for February and March 1819. Were the passages of text given in these articles composed as trailers for a more extensive work, or thrown off as simple magazine jeu d’esprit without any further objective? He certainly gives a bald summary of Morris’s Scottish tour in the first of his two magazine articles in the February 1819 issue of Blackwood’s: He performed his journey from Aberystwith […] arrived in Edinburgh about the middle of last winter—and past a month there— regularly attending the Parliament House, the theatre, routes, balls, churches, and all other places of public amusement […] He then ran his shandry-dan into Glasgow […]35 The magazine summaries of Morris’s various exploits during his excursion, however, vary significantly in detail from those described in the later published work. In Blackwood’s, for instance, after becoming acquainted with country clergymen near Hamilton, Morris travels by road to Edinburgh, whereas in Peter’s Letters he returns to Glasgow in order to take ship for the Western Highlands. It seems probable that if Lockhart had an idea of creating a larger work into which he might subsume materials from his unpublished novel ‘The Romance of the Thistle’, his forthcoming articles in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and possibly work published in other periodicals as well, his plan had not yet been fine-tuned. Scott’s praise may well have encouraged him to take the project further. 2. Composition and Publication The first clear sign of Lockhart’s determination to produce Peter’s Letters in book form appears in a letter of his to William Blackwood, mistakenly docketed 1818 in the Blackwood Papers, which is worth quoting in full:

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I saw James Ballantyne yesterday & sounded him a little about Dr Morris. He seems to say he would stake all his credit on the Dr’s success. Scott also writes in great terms touching the Dr. On the whole I do think that the writing of the book mt be soon accomplished and wd be singularly pleasant in the doing. 3 volumes 12mo size of Waverly [sic]. st 1 vol. Edinburgh—town described Education Scotch & English— Bar—Society—Portraits of the Professors & Barristers—Edinr Review. McKenzie. Scott—Tales of My Landlord discussed— Scott’s merits as a Tory writer in Scotland—a visit to Abbotsford. Dilettanti. Wilson. Hogg. Vol 2d. Glasgow—-—West country—residence at a manse— the life of the Clergy—Sacraments—Presbytery all graphically done but w. kindly feeling. Chalmers. Balfour. Moncrieff. MacCrie. Comparison of Scotch & English Churches—and peasantry. Marriages &c. Vol 3d. To be written chiefly by Wilson & to contain accounts of the Drs tours into the highlands, Tweedale [sic], & along the Clyde. All this to be done immediately currente calamo on smooth paper. What do you think on’t? I think it wd do much in every way & reflect much credit if successful upon yr Magazine. Let me therefore hear what you say.36 Though the letter itself bears no precise date, there is every likelihood that it came in the immediate wake of the encouragement received in Scott’s letter from Abbotsford of 23 March 1819, expressing enjoyment of ‘the exquisite Dr. Morris’, and in particular offering praise for the ‘pleaders portraits’, that is the extracts describing leading Edinburgh advocates in the March 1819 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.37 The plan offered by Lockhart also provides useful clues as to the progress of the project in his mind to date. Of the various items listed, a fair number match the passages extracted in Blackwood’s; while others, such as ‘Education Scotch & English’, ‘Society’, and ‘residence at a manse’ parallel the contents of the putative ‘first’ edition as more broadly outlined there. A number of other elements however appear to be new to the letter, prominent amongst which is the idea of a third volume to be undertaken mainly by his associate, John Wilson, embracing a tour of the Highlands as well of Tweeddale in the Borders and

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along the Clyde. In the event, Tweeddale and the Clyde valley appear in other guises in the completed work, while a journey to the Highlands features only as a prospect at its conclusion, later broached as a second series but never completed. Possibly in shifting to the idea of a threevolume work at this point, Lockhart felt the need to create an equivalent tripartite scheme, in the process offering a more extensive overview of contemporary Scottish ‘manners’. Whether Wilson himself was ever fully on board, and if so whether he failed to supply the required material, is open to speculation.38 In the event, however, Lockhart’s scope evidently expanded as a range of topics, previously unmentioned either in the Blackwood’s articles or the above plan, boosted his central accounts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, with the extensive description of the Scottish country sacrament in the final chapters also probably swelling beyond any original intention. Among such sequences, previously unmentioned, and presumably developed as Lockhart wrote ‘currente calamo’ [offhand, rapidly], might be counted the trip down the Canongate to Holyrood, the visit to Francis Jeffrey at Craigcrook, the Burns celebratory dinner, and accounts of the Speculative Society, General Assembly, and Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal, as well as the excursion to R. P. Gillies’s cottage at Lasswade, and the encounter with the Philosophical Weaver on Glasgow Green. Internal chronological evidence indicating the composition of several of such at a relatively late point will be discussed more fully later. The plan offered to Blackwood is also interesting for showing early signs of Scott’s personal input into the scheme. Almost certainly it was under Scott’s influence that Lockhart sounded out James Ballantyne in the first place. By 1819 Ballantyne’s printing firm was arguably the largest and most prestigious in Edinburgh, with up to twenty presses in operation, and had been responsible for publishing virtually all Scott’s own imaginative works, usually at Scott’s insistence when dealing with publishers. As a secret partner in the firm, Scott had good commercial reasons for directing work Ballantyne’s way; but another factor would have been that it allowed a measure of control over output, in this case allowing him to steer Lockhart away from causing personal offence, while more broadly helping shape his overview of Scottish life. Such is apparent in Scott’s letter to Ballantyne of 8 April 1819 warning that in ‘so small a society […] all temptation to personal satire should be studiously repressd’, while outlining ways in which ‘the history of literature in Edinr.’ might be presented, and expressing impatience ‘to see sheets’ (that is, early proofs).39 A further ‘new’ component in Lock-

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hart’s plan for Blackwood is the presence there of a sequence devoted entirely to Scott, concluding with his ‘merits as a Tory writer in Scotland’ and ‘a visit to Abbotsford’, indicative of a design to position Scott centrally and from the vantage point of his country residence rather than the metropolis. A sense of Scott’s ongoing influence can also be found in another letter to Lockhart on 1 April, which might be taken to provide a terminus for the initial approach to Blackwood: ‘I have much to say to you about Dr. Morris being delighted with his proposal of publishing his tour’. Interestingly, this same letter shows a particular concern to impart personal knowledge ‘respecting the state of our Scotch literature about twenty five years since’, which, taken together with the intervention involving Ballantyne a week later, offers a model for how whole sequences in the finished work might have been informed or even initiated through Scott’s influence.40 An early marker in the contracting of the work is found in an advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant for Thursday, 1 April 1819, announcing the forthcoming publication of a ‘corrected and enlarged’ second edition of Peter’s Letters in three volumes on 1 June. Negotiations over payment to the author however appear to have continued subsequently. In a note to Lockhart dated 5 April Blackwood states: ‘I hereby accept of your offer of £500 for the first Edition of “Peters Letters” to consist of 2000 Copies & to be paid for in the way you mention.’41 Such a sum at first sight might seem excessive for an unnamed author publishing his first original work. While Blackwood had evidently offered £300 for Lockhart’s earlier translation of Schlegel, this presumably was partly in order to finance his continental trip in 1817, as well as to secure Lockhart as a potential Germanist for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Once again it is difficult not to sense Scott’s invisible hand behind the scenes. Although the earliest Waverley novels had involved Blackwood’s rival Archibald Constable as the main Edinburgh publisher, for Tales of my Landlord (1816), his fourth work of fiction, Scott had turned instead to Blackwood, then the Edinburgh agent for John Murray in London, who at the time probably represented Scott’s main target in the transaction. Negotiations nevertheless were conducted in Edinburgh between James Ballantyne—closely guided by Scott—and Blackwood, himself deeply suspicious that he might be the victim of a scam. In the event, Ballantyne succeeded in securing a contract for 6000 copies, to be published singly or in successive editions, with the author receiving half profits after printing costs had been deducted.42 Since then Scott had reverted to Constable with his follow-

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PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

ing two novels, Rob Roy (1818) and the 2nd series of Tales [Heart of Mid-Lothian] (1818), contracted in May and October 1817 respectively, though Blackwood no doubt retained hopes of holding on to the author in some capacity, a prospect which was eventually dashed early in May 1819, when he learned that Constable had been given the rights to the 5th edition of the original Tales.43 In the present case Blackwood’s appetite would have been whetted by mention near the beginning of Lockhart’s initial proposal of ‘3 volumes 12mo size of Waverly’, with the prospect of a fashionable account of contemporary Scottish ‘manners’, after the manner of Scott’s first novel and its successors, which to date had dealt mainly with regions of Scotland in the not too distant past. The presence of Scott can likewise be sensed in a short altercation which apparently broke out in the immediate wake of Blackwood’s first offer, as evidenced in an interlude in the Blackwood Papers, in which Blackwood alludes to arguments over the first series of Tales of my Landlord, and expresses the view that his original proposal to Lockhart was ‘for the copyright and not for [the] edition’. This concludes with another statement of the offer on hand, dated 6 April, with the terms of payment clarified: ‘I hereby offer you Five Hundred Pounds for an edition of two thousand copies of Peter’s Letters in three [torn] of 350 pages each. To be settled by bills of six and nine months from publication.’44 No fuller contract than this has been discovered, though by the standard of the time such a brief record might easily suffice, not least when the participants were allied in other respects. Faced with such a large outlay, Blackwood’s first priority would have been to firm up arrangements with his London associates, Cadell & Davies, with the hope that they might share half the burden. With roots in the mid-eighteenth century, and a back history of publishing major works of the Scottish Enlightenment,45 the present partners in the firm (from 1793) were Thomas Cadell, junior, and William Davies, who had previously worked as assistant to the original Thomas Cadell, its founder. While Blackwood had served as their Edinburgh agent as early as 1816, the association became one of full cooperation after John Murray’s falling out with Blackwood early in 1819, and more particularly when Cadell & Davies formally took over the London agency of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. 46 This latter connection had obviously come as something of a mixed blessing, the firm having written on 16 June 1818 to express concern that articles there might have jeopardised Blackwood’s relations with fellow booksellers in

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Edinburgh and Glasgow,47 with William Davies then writing on 6 April 1819 about the continuing level of personal attacks: ‘We are, every now and then, made to hear complaints of so many people being roughly, or even unjustly, handled in it […] it has somehow acquired a character for severity, which will require some time and pains to wipe away’.48 It is in the same letter that one catches a first glimpse of the Peter’s Letters project, of which Davies would already appear to have gained a prior sighting through the articles in February and March numbers of Blackwood’s, intrigued no doubt by the tourist and supposed author being a Welshman.49 Blackwood’s proposal for a full share in the enterprise must have followed soon after, for on 10 April Davies was writing back in tentative agreement: Mr Cadell and I feel ourselves much obliged by your kind offer of a half share of Peter’s Letters, which we both think is as full of promise as you describe—the terms you have settled with the Author, for one edition merely, are certainly very handsome; but you, at same time, mean to make the publick pay as handsomely, and therefore we do not doubt that, in our next letter, we shall declare our readiness to accept the half share […] Much may certainly be done, both at Edinbr and London, to prepare the public interest for these “Letters”.50 Blackwood then wrote again on 14 April, in an effort to bring matters to a head, to be met with Davies’s fuller commitment on 27 April, made presumably after conferring with his (less involved) partner: if we did not at first speak positively on this point, it was not owing to any doubts that we then had of the interest of the work, but because we had not then both of us read the lively and able criticisms of my countryman Dr Morris’s first edition, the publication, as we now, both of us, look at it, strikes us as a very fair commercial speculation, and we, no longer, have any sort of hesitation about accepting the half share that you set us down for—51 In technical terms such an arrangement would involve the London partners being liable for half author’s payment and production costs, ownership of half the edition of 2000, and responsibility for advertising and distribution to the trade in England, where the sale might extend beyond 1000 by agreement. At some stage the Glasgow firm of John Smith and Son was also enlisted as sellers and local distributors, as is

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evident from their appearance on the imprint of the ‘second’ edition. Direct evidence of any such negotiations has not been discovered, though these are likely to have been informed by Lockhart’s prior knowledge of this concern and friendship with its younger proprietor, as well as a broader realisation that larger sales might be generated in that region by the planned Glaswegian component in the work.52 The succeeding correspondence between Blackwood and Cadell & Davies otherwise provides an especially full record of production up to the ‘second’ edition and beyond, and Davies’s own personal involvement in the work was such that he can be duly added to the group of people with an interest in shaping its contents and tone. Only four small fragments of Lockhart’s original manuscript relating to the main narrative of Peter’s Letters have been discovered. All matching sections of Volume 3 and describing aspects of Glasgow, these are now held in three library collections as follows: i) Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Cowie Collection: Autograph Album V, 308853. Single leaf, measuring approx. 20.5 x 13.1 cm. Pasted down so no watermark visible, if at all present. Text equivalent to p. 450, ll. 20-37 (‘are received […] understand how’). ii) Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh, Dk. 3811. Two leaves, each measuring approx. 20.5 x 13.1 cm, pasted into the inside of a folded card, obscuring any watermark, though it is clear no text exists on the reverse of the leaves. First leaf text equivalent to p. 456, l. 31 to p. 457, l. 10 (‘In many […] same practice’). Second leaf equivalent to p. 474, ll. 5-25 (‘constant lounge […] at Edinburgh’). iii) National Library of Scotland, MS 20437, fol. 48. Single leaf measuring approx. 21 x 13.1 cm with partial watermark interpretable as ‘WHATMAN 1818’. Text, written on one side only, equivalent to p. 477, l. 29 to p. 478, l. 8 (‘think ye […] seemed to me’). From the evidence of the above it would appear that Lockhart was using a similar batch of recently-manufactured paper, covering one side only, the individual leaves carrying the equivalent of about one page of printed text. While a number of local alterations were evidently made in the course of writing, there is little indication of retrospective revision, and the overall impression gained is one of spontaneous composition.

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Comparison with the printed text as found in the ‘second’ edition shows a number of routine changes being made, these including the expansion of Lockhart’s abbreviations, addition of grammatical commas, raising and lowering of initial letters, and standardisation of spelling, generally in accordance with contemporary printing conventions. At the same time a handful of more substantive changes, possibly exceeding any made by Lockhart in proof, are worth noting. In the Mitchell fragment Scott’s Glasgow friend and guide is referred to as ‘the Major’ whereas in the ‘second’ edition this becomes ‘Mr. H——’, the product arguably of James Ballantyne’s (sometimes mistaken) concern for coordinating proper names.53 Another instance of diminution can arguably be found in respect of the Glasgow landmark of the Green, in the second of the Edinburgh University Library fragments, where Lockhart’s upper-case ‘G’ (the first emphatically indicated by double underlining) is twice lowered, with the effect of turning a place name into a descriptive term. Two substantive variants in turn can be found in the National Library of Scotland fragment, where the manuscript reading “I am sorry I don’t ↑just↓ understand you—what’s the meaning of that word friend if you please—I am but a new comer & don’t yet follow the Scots quite so well as I could wish”54 is rendered in print so that so that ‘that word’ appears as ‘the word’ and ‘follow’ becomes ‘understand’. In the first case slippage in transmission is possible, whereas the second more substantive change (albeit creating rather than removing a repetition) might result from a more deliberate application of explicit literal sense by Ballantyne or his intermediaries. This last fragment also shows an intervention in the spelling of Scots, with Lockhart’s ‘Dreech’ twice being rendered as ‘Dreigh’, probably according to the preferences of the compositor. Why these particular fragments might have survived is a moot point, but one probable explanation is that they were handed out by Lockhart as souvenirs to friends and preserved as autograph items. At their outer margins they encompass some 60 pages of printed text, written no doubt when Lockhart was moving at speed to fill out his final volume, though there is no absolute reason for believing that the whole of the work was penned in this way. None of the above fragments show any sign of having passed directly through the printing house, nor is it certain that they would. One possibility is that a transcriber was employed to copy Lockhart’s manuscript first, as a means of hiding the author’s identity

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in the printing house, following a practice used by Scott for the Waverley novels. Such might be taken to underlie a letter from Lockhart to Blackwood, written shortly after the agreeing of terms: ‘I know not what is yr arrangement about the correcting of the proofs of Peter. Must Ballantyne copy my corrections, or could not the Transcriber take that trouble?’55 If that is the case, no evidence has survived regarding the transcriber or transcribers, and it is most likely the transcript would have been destroyed once its usefulness in the printing house was over. A further complication arises with regard to the incorporation of already-published material. Chief amongst these are the passages supposedly extracted from the ‘first’ edition in the February and March numbers of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Out of the ten supposed extracts given there, all but one is absorbed into the main narrative, the one exception describing Glasgow University evidently being overtaken by the much fuller account eventually provided.56 Comparison between the two printed states in the remaining cases reveals that the most common instances of rewriting occur at the edges of the original extracts, as Lockhart tailored his original texts to match their new context. The largest upheaval here is in the account of Francis Jeffrey at the end of the article in the March issue of Blackwood’s, with the original passage there being divided into two, so as to fit both Letter VI, leading up to the visit to Craigcrook, and Letter XXXIV, as part of the sequence describing Edinburgh lawyers (and at the beginning of which is positioned the original engraved portrait of Jeffrey). There are signs too of Lockhart attempting to soften the asperity of his initial description, as in the opening extract in the February issue, concerning the Whigs and Edinburgh Review, where the following passage, Jeffrey has evidently got sick of the Review—or rather, he has evidently written himself out (and indeed my only wonder is, that a person of such limited acquirements as his should not have written himself out much sooner in such a department)57 is reduced to read more blandly ‘Jeffrey has evidently got sick of the Review—and, indeed, when I look back to what he has done, and compare that with what he might have done, I think this is no wonder’ (p. 266). Another significant upheaval can be found in the opening to a passage on Glasgow Society in the February issue, where the Magazine’s relatively uncomplicated opening ‘Mr —— asked me to dine

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with him next day, and appointed me to meet him at the coffee-room’58 is expanded in a way that includes mention of ‘my friend W——’ as an acquaintance of the person (now ‘Mr P——’) making the invitation (compare p. 457, ll. 31-38). In fact Wastle himself, so important as a guide and interlocutor in Peter’s Letters, is a notable absentee in the Blackwood’s extracts and plot summaries, featuring only extraneously in spoof form as a budding poet in the Magazine.59 One final adjustment worth noting is the omission, apropos Morris’s purchase of a drawing by John Clerk of Eldin, of ‘It hangs, at this moment, over my chimneypiece, just under your old favourite, the blister-piece, by Jack’: a change no doubt necessitated by Morris in the book version being still in Edinburgh in his hotel room.60 In other respects the Magazine and book versions mirror each other closely, many of the minor variants found in the latter being of the kind attributable to the printing house, and with some occasional slippages arguably taking place in the process. Allowance perhaps ought to be made for Lockhart having freshly transcribed these passages, or even fallen back further on existing manuscript material. Far more likely however is that he provided marked-up copy of the Magazine articles, supplying these either directly to the printer or through the medium of a transcriber. The use of printed copy seems especially likely in the case of Lockhart’s recycling of his review of William Allan’s painting ‘A Jewish Family in Poland’ (see pp. 311-13) as exhibited in Mackintosh’s Gallery in Princes Street between 1 February and 20 March 1819, from Edinburgh Weekly Journal for 17 February. In this case the text is reproduced virtually verbatim, the product perhaps of Ballantyne having ready copy to hand as the proprietor of the containing newspaper. It is possible that other pre-existing materials were similarly absorbed—in a scathing review The Scotsman for 17 July 1819 was to refer to the work as ‘little else than a republication of the dullest, most prosing, and most malignant articles in Blackwood’s Magazine’—though to date no other such antecedents have been discovered. As a whole, including the Blackwood’s extracts, currently less than five per cent of the main narrative can be explained in this way. On the other hand, as previously suggested, there is strong evidence of large sections having been composed and even conceived not only after the extracts and summaries in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine but also on occasions in the wake of Lockhart’s outlining the project’s contents to Blackwood in early spring 1819. Internal chronology indicates a later composition in at least three distinct cases. The long

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account of the triennial Burns dinner, occupying Letters XI and XII in the first volume, relates to an event which took place on 22 February 1819. Similarly, later in the same volume, the account of the dramatization of Scott’s Rob Roy at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, can only have been written after its first performance there on 15 February, the play then being staged for forty-one consecutive nights. More tellingly still, the account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, occupying several of the opening letters in Volume 3, includes circumstances pertaining specifically to the occasion in 1819, when the Earl of Morton was Commissioner, and the Assembly sat from 20 May to 2 June. There are also some signs in the account of the visit to Abbotsford, near the end of the second volume, that Lockhart may be combining elements of visits there by himself both early in October 1818, when he arrived from the south with John Wilson, and at the beginning of May 1819 when he was accompanied by John Ballantyne. Notably Lockhart’s account combines a ride to the top of Eildon Hills and an excursion to Melrose and Dryburgh abbeys, whereas later in his Life of Scott the two are separated, the abbey excursion taking place on the first visit and the Eildon ride on the second.61 One particular pointer to a late composition, right at the onset of the excursion to Abbotsford, appears in the form of a footnote reference (p. 337n) to the first number of Scott’s Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, which was first issued in Edinburgh on 1 May 1819.62 There is also a suggestion of Abbotsford in its later state nearer the conclusion of the second volume where Scott is pictured sitting in the armoury in which the ‘windows glow’ (p. 370), this referring to a section of the house not fully completed until September 1819 and more particularly to the installation of Mrs Terry’s painted glass there.63 Possibly the ‘spoof’ advertising leaf of other published volumes written by Peter Morris was a late addition also. Morris’s visit to Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum in the middle of the third volume footnotes the Paris edition of his treatise ‘De Muliere’ by page number only (see p. 470n), implying a single volume, whereas in the list of ‘Works of the Same Author’ it is mentioned as being in three volumes. The original placement of the leaf following the List of Contents for the third volume of the ‘second’ edition may also support this idea, as it was the usual practice to print the preliminaries to a volume after its main text had been completed. One consequent result in such manoeuvrings is an overall shift in temporal dynamics between the original articles and published volumes. In the February 1819 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

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Morris is described as having ‘arrived in Edinburgh about the middle of last winter’, that is presumably in 1818 at the latest if allowance is made for the supposed Welsh publication of his book, and having spent a month in Edinburgh, followed by a fortnight in Glasgow; while in the March number his account confirms that ‘the present day’ is indeed 1818 since it features ‘the parliament-house of Edinburgh […] as he saw it with his own eyes, A. D. 1818’.64 Morris’s first missive in Peter’s Letters by contrast is dated ‘March 5’, after his arrival in Edinburgh ‘last night’, and from that point events from 1818 tend to be mentioned retrospectively, as in the case of the artist Hugh William Williams having returned to Edinburgh ‘last year’ (p. 330). At the same time, the ongoing narrative is flecked with references to occurrences belonging to the early months of 1819, with Lockhart under the guise of Morris responding in journalistic fashion to the shifting scene around him, in a way matching his later description in the ‘Postscript to the Third Edition’ of the Letters as having been ‘written in great haste, and published originally without much reflection’ (p. 549). In Volume 1 allusions are thus made to Thomas Campbell’s Specimens of the British Poets and Thomas Pococke’s Journal of a Soldier of the 71st, or Glasgow Regiment, Highland Light Infantry, from 1806 to 1815, both very recently-published items, as announced in the ‘Monthly List of New Publications’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in February and April 1819 respectively. As the narrative nears its conclusion, there is also a growing sense of the imagined timeframe matching Lockhart’s own position as he wrote rapidly and expansively to complete his task. Morris’s trip to Clydesdale, accompanied by Thomas Chalmers and John Smith the publisher, is envisaged at a time when ‘There is absolutely no night here at present’, placing it close to the summer solstice on 21 June; just as the long and detailed description of the Country Sacrament, which most probably far exceeds the stark ‘Sacraments’ of his original plan, is likewise described as a ‘solemnity of the Midsummer’ (pp. 521, 534). No proofs of the main narrative of Peter’s Letters have been discovered, though the surviving proofs of Lockhart’s supplementary ‘Postscript to the Third Edition’ indicate that he generally intervened efficiently rather than invasively. 65 Usual practice in Ballantyne’s printing works was to first draw up in-house proofs to check the original setting, after which author’s proofs would be produced, followed in exceptional cases by revises. One special aspect of Peter’s Letters seems to be the speed with which early proofs were produced and dis-

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tributed to external parties, both as a means of communication between publishers and for satisfying the curiosity of other individuals. The first three sheets of proofs, consisting of 48 pages and approximating Letters I–V of the finished work, were sent by Blackwood to Cadell & Davies as early as 14 April, and so in the firm’s hands in advance of their final acceptance of a half share, with William Davies on 27 April then requesting a continuing supply of sheets ‘after the first three with which you treated us’.66 By 29 May Davies was thanking Blackwood for yet further sheets, which he and his wife had much enjoyed reading, and greedily asking for more: ‘we devoured them with the utmost avidity, and we earnestly hope that you will soon have an opportunity of sending us another abundant supply. I find that I can, myself, supply almost the whole of the blanks’.67 And in his letter of 15 June he was able to acknowledge receipt of ‘your very acceptable packet, containing the two vol’s of Peter’s Letters’ (presumably made up from pre-publication sheets), which allowed him to comment at some length on the contents of the second volume: how admirably does our Author mark his peculiar attention to such men as Jeffrey, Cranstoun, Clarke [sic], and the many others of your superior Advocates, and how finely does he wind up with his Account of Mr Walter Scott, and the various interesting circumstances connected with him and his place at Abbot’s Ford [sic] —in short, my dear Sir, I could dwell for ever, in my peculiar way, on Peter’s Letters and their unknown author.68 Amongst other parties allowed access to proofs must surely be counted Walter Scott, whose impatience ‘to see sheets’, as expressed on 8 April, is hardly likely to have abated or been denied by Ballantyne. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that he was in receipt of the whole in advance of publication, his daughter Sophia writing to her governess on 5 July 1819 advising her ‘to read a new book which will be out soon called Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, being a description of the society of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is one of the most clever, and at the same time rather severe books that has been written for ages; this is Papa’s opinion’.69 There is also evidence of Blackwood keeping a keen eye on matters, and intervening in ways that Lockhart could find exasperating. In an undated note, probably belonging to May, he somewhat reluctantly grants Blackwood ‘permission to alter as you please all about yourself’, while protesting that ‘you have utterly sickened me with your

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eternal expostulations’. ‘Change but don’t speak to me again—If any other person mentioned had been allowed only one 50th of your remarks—the Book wd have been at the 2d vol at Doomsday!’70 In a similar note Lockhart can also be seen responding to pressure to intervene in the representation of James Ballantyne, this probably coming near the end of the process and relating to Morris’s expression of confidence in Ballantyne’s services in ‘The Epistle Liminary to the Second Edition’: ‘I have altered all you alluded to except the little bit about Ballantyne who you must see has taken more trouble than usual w[ith] me & well deserves a compt. He has really served the book by many of his suggestions.’71 Facing such various inputs, not least in relation to the contested field of the Edinburgh publishing scene, Lockhart must have felt at times as if he was juggling irreconcilable forces. Yet negotiating and responding to such pressures might equally have added a degree of stimulus for a young man writing at speed and confident in his abilities. Preparations for the final publication of the ‘second’ edition were conducted with some haste. On 30 June 1819 Davies was pressing for a consignment ‘in volumes or half volumes, or single sheets’ to be sent rapidly in view of the advancing season which would leave London ‘so very empty in two or three weeks’. In the same letter he reported that he and Mrs Davies had finally discerned that ‘Dr Morris is neither more nor less than Mr Lockhart’, a secret which needed to be more generally kept.72 By 10 July, Davies was in full possession of the three volumes, along with ‘several of the Etchings’, and able to see for the first time the prefatory ‘Epistle Liminary’ addressed to himself, which though flattering he would ideally have liked to have seen earlier when adjustments were possible. Arrival of a complete consignment in bales by sea on the vessel ‘Buccleugh’ however was not anticipated until ‘Monday or Tuesday next’ [18/19 July], when the binders would be ready to put all into boards granted the illustrations and title-pages were also to hand.73 Finally on 20 July he was able to tell Blackwood that ‘the Presentation copies were all sent out last evening’, the book ‘subscribed today’ among the trade, and that ‘the Advertisements will appear in all the papers tomorrow’.74 In Edinburgh, publication appears to have taken place slightly earlier. In the Caledonian Mercury of 10 July 1819 the work was advertised as forthcoming ‘On Wednesday the 14th July’, this being followed by another advert on 15 July announcing publication. In the first instance it is described as being ‘Handsomely printed by Ballantyne, and embellished with the Head of the author and other

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Twelve Portraits, and Four Vignettes, in three volumes 8vo price L. 1 11s. 6d.’: the same wording being used in the following advert, apart from ‘This day is published’ and mention instead of ‘other Thirteen Portraits’. 3. Early Responses As the terms of its advertisement suggest, Peter’s Letters was being promoted as a fashionable upmarket article, with credentials boosted by its topicality and array of illustrations. Whereas the original proposal had envisaged a duodecimo in the style of Waverley, the ‘second’ edition is actually in the larger and more prestigious octavo form, as normally used for histories, travels, and similar works. Combined with this the guinea-and-a-half (31s 6d: £1.57½) pricing puts it on a footing with Thomas Hope’s novel Anastasius, published by John Murray in the same year, which broke the threshold for three-decker novels to the amazement of rival publishers:75 even in the case of Scott’s fiction it was not until Kenilworth (1821) that the same premium sum was charged. The ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk was accordingly well publicised, and evidently sold briskly. Whereas William Davies on 30 July 1819 had reported that ‘we are not yet disposed of more than about 350 copies’, by 19 October his son was protesting that the firm had no more copies to sell.76 From the start extra copies of the detailed ‘List of Contents’ leaves had been circulated for inclusion in the advertising material on tinted paper that usually appeared at the front of the separate issues of contemporary monthly magazines as originally purchased.77 Sales must also have benefited from the practice of encouraging the printing of large extracts in these same journals, a procedure extending the initial appearance of the twopart article in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine that served as a trailer and advertisement for the following volume publication. The death of Professor John Playfair on 20 July 1819, soon after publication, lent Lockhart’s description of him a special topicality and it was accordingly reprinted in ‘The Mirror of Fashion’ column of the Morning Chronicle of 27 July 1819. Constable’s Edinburgh Magazine published an article in August consisting entirely of extracts, entitled ‘Clerical Portraits, from Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk’.78 On the other side of the Atlantic the Athenian and Literary Gazette published ‘Portrait of Francis Jeffrey’ in September, ‘Chalmers the Preacher’ in October, and ‘The Philo-

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sophical Weaver’ in November 1819,79 while the Washington Daily National Intelligencer provided its readers with Lockhart’s account of a blue-stocking conversazione under the title of ‘Society of Edinburgh’ on 3 December 1819. ‘Visit to Walter Scott’ similarly appeared in the Illinois Gazette of 4 December 1819. Anecdotal evidence relating to its earliest readers indicates that the work met with a generally favourable reception, fuelled in England by an interest in all things Scottish in the age of Jeffrey and Scott, and in Scotland helped on no doubt by the relative geniality of its local portraits. In a considered response on 28 July, Scott praised Lockhart for his ‘force of expression both serious and comic and for acuteness of observation’, attributes all the more acceptable from the use of ‘his lenient hand’.80 One instance of this new acceptability can be found in the veteran author, Henry Mackenzie, long a litmus test for literary propriety in Edinburgh, who on 31 March 1818 had returned his copy of Blackwood’s on the grounds of its ‘offensive’ contents: ‘In taking leave of its publisher & Editor, he cannot avoid warning them […] to abstain from personal Detraction’. This contrasts with his rapid response to the book in another letter to Blackwood on 24 July 1819: ‘Many thanks for Peter’s Letters wh. are very amusing & not at all too free. Such good humourd criticism I never found fault with. […] I never ask Secrets, but perhaps the Author of Peter’s Letters is known to every body but me; who live so much out of the World.’81 Peter’s Letters also apparently had an interest for those readers familiar with, or wishing to become familiar with, Edinburgh. In a letter to the Editor of the Caledonian Mercury newspaper on 26 July, ‘John of Rankleburn’, supposedly a native of Edinburgh newly returned from a long residence at Demerara (now in Guyana), describes how in acquainting himself with the recent improvements in Edinburgh he was spending his time ‘in roving about and admiring the beauties of the city and its environs during the day, and reading Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk in the evening’. An element of institutional hostility might be sensed in the pamphlet A Vindication of the Literary Classes in the University of Edinburgh against the Aspersions of Peter Morris, M. D. (1819), but this is mainly occupied with alleged injustices regarding the teaching of Greek, while carrying none of the bite or menace of the earlier antiBlackwoodian pamphlet Hypocrisy Unveiled, and Calumny Detected (1818). Among English readers who ‘did not reckon Peter’s book a pestilent libel’ might be counted Richard Jenkyns (1782-1854), Fellow of Balliol and recently installed as Master there, who wrote to Lockhart

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reporting how the Letters had ‘been much read in the South, and with great pleasure, which I felt at the perusal of them’, adding that ‘I could not help recognising the connection between Dr. Morris and our portly friend of Ystraed Meirie (Williams)’ (Lang, I, 225n).82 Besides the useful publicity accorded Peter’s Letters by the number of extracts reprinted in newspapers and magazines, it was widely reviewed, with full articles in mainstream monthly journals such as the British Critic, British Review, and Monthly Review. Here reception is not infrequently dependent on the political complexion of the journal publishing the review. At one extreme the High Tory Anti-Jacobin Review noted approvingly how Morris ‘exactly coincides with ourselves on most subjects’, identifying at the same time even more sharply with his friend Wastle’s ‘opinion of the Scotch Whigs’.83 In contrast the ‘literary hacks’ who produced Peter’s Letters, according to the Whig newspaper The Scotsman of 17 July 1819, displayed their ‘impudence in putting themselves not merely as a parallel, but above the highest and most favoured names in the republic of letters’. Somewhere between these extremes the British Review complained of a ‘high (we might almost say Jacobitical) tone [in] political opinions’, while the Monthly Review considered that the whole would have been better divested of ‘the shackles of party’.84 Lockhart himself would seem to have anticipated such partisan reviewing, a surviving manuscript in his hand containing one review with the deleted heading of ‘Comment by the Tories’ together with another with the deleted heading ‘Whig Paper’, both presumably his own composition.85 In each case the intrinsic value of the work is seen as overriding political affiliations: the ‘Tory’ review noting that though the book ‘will no doubt be cried down by the lower kinds of Whigs […] we are sure no such feeling will [be] agitated by it in the hearts of the more liberal & enlightened & honest members even of that Sect’; its Whig counterpart complimenting the Tories for ‘having turned out a writer—whose spirit & apparent independence are such that we do not think it is at all likely they will long retain him in their ranks’. In asserting that ‘The Politicks of Peter are however, but a small part of him’ the dual reviews are thereby left to highlight the literary qualities of the book, the Tory review likening it to ‘an excellent novel’, and nominating the visit to Scott at Abbotsford for extraction; the Whig review praising its ‘portraits of our own illustrious contemporaries’ and selecting the account of ‘our celebrated Preacher Dr. Chalmers’ as a specimen.

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All concurred in seeing through the persona of Peter Morris, the British Review finding therein ‘a nom-de-guerre, borrowed for the purpose of baffling the inquisitive’, the Monthly declaring him ‘a cat’s paw […] obliged to lend his authority to […] boyish tricks, to the exclusion of all acquaintance with medical men and more serious pursuits’.86 In a similar vein the British Critic felt it unlikely that a visiting Welsh doctor, while showing intimate knowledge of the lawyers in Parliament House, should make no mention of ‘the physicians of Edinburgh, […] men who figure so highly in the line of his own profession’. Instead the same review extrapolated from the contents an author no other ‘than a young Scot, about half the age of the Doctor, who had learned Greek at Oxford, and who professes law at Edinburgh’.87 From here it was one small step to the passage in Letter LXIV describing ‘Mr L——’ at Holycot, the true author thus effectively being revealed through self-description. Much the same process of deduction had been followed earlier by the reviewer in the Literary Chronicle, who thought that the ‘fresh and buoyant’ tone of the letters marked them out as the work of ‘a young—in all probability, a very young man’, not hard to identify as Lockhart.88 Other commentators were more inclined to see a collaboration involving Lockhart and John Wilson, encouraged by the tangible connection with Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the understanding that the pair were its prime movers if not editors. As the Monthly Magazine concluded: ‘The work issues from the Press of BALLANTYNE, and from the shop of BLACKWOOD; and its accuracy cannot be suspected, as it doubtless has received its finishing touches from Messrs. LOCKHART and WILSON!’.89 The Liverpool-based Kaleidoscope; and Literary and Scientific Mirror in turn reported how ‘Mr. Lockhart and Mr. Wilson [are] spoken of as the authors of these letters’, albeit with the proviso that ‘We consider it next to impossible that an author should be identified in Edinburgh’.90 Arguably the strongest statement of a ‘joint composition’ is found in the Monthly Review, though the reviewer there somewhat muddies his credentials by claiming plagiarism in a similarity between remarks on the cultural importance of history in Letter XIII and the recently published English version of Schlegel’s Lectures on History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, apparently oblivious of the fact that Lockhart had been the translator of the latter.91 In more general critical terms the reviewers were inclined towards leniency, the Monthly Review finding a ‘strain of good humour, cleverness, and even occasional wit’, and the London Literary Gazette

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applauding ‘a lively and entertaining picture of Scotland, Scotsmen, and Scots manners; rather overcharged and overcoloured, it is true, but […] more amusing than if represented with the fidelity of a cameraobscura’.92 Among particular incidents the leaping contest at Jeffrey’s home at Craigcrook drew the disapproval of the British Critic as ‘absurd’, though allowance is made elsewhere for its playfulness.93 Other passages that attracted attention include those on Jeffrey and his peers as advocates, Scottish education, the Edinburgh booksellers, David Hume’s monument on Calton Hill, the Burns dinner, and (quoted gleefully on a number of occasions) the Scots at dance. Special praise was reserved for the visit to Walter Scott, the British Critic observing that ‘the details are taken from nature’ and concluding that ‘Peter Morris must have been at Abbotsford’.94 In the case of Glasgow, commentary tended to focus on the passages concerning the Green, with particular attention to the Philosophical Weaver, in whom the British Review saw a special topicality: ‘There cannot be the least doubt that this is an authentic specimen of that pestilent genius which, within these few weeks, has excited the alarming riots at Glasgow and Paisley’.95 There was some dissatisfaction however with the letters involving Potts the Dandy, the Anti-Jacobin finding the praise seemingly offered to him as ‘fulsome and disgusting in the highest degree’, while there was widespread disapproval of the work’s apparent acceptance of the skullobserving theory of craniology, the jargon of which according to the British Review was ‘ineffably ridiculous’.96 As the New British Lady’s Magazine summarised: ‘Speculations on Craniology and Physiognomy occupy too large a portion of these volumes’.97 Discussion of Scotland’s painters on the other hand was widely ignored or cursorily dismissed in the reviews, indicating perhaps that these held out little interest for the English periodical reader. Across the Atlantic Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk was reviewed even before the appearance of an American edition. The Philadelphia-issued Analectic Magazine for November 1819, in reporting that an American edition was imminent, hoped nevertheless that ‘the New York edition will not be given to the public so early as our November number’ and proceeded to provide a number of extracts on the grounds of the magazine’s likely prior publication. This magazine gave the authorship of Peter’s Letters to John Wilson, ‘notwithstanding the very high praises, lavished in the letters on himself’, terming it a ‘remarkably entertaining work’, ‘full of sprightliness and animation’ and ‘instructive, as well as entertaining’.98 Its enthusiasm was not fully echoed by

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some American magazines which declared a religious affiliation in their titles. The Christian Spectator of New Haven, for instance, while praising the work’s condemnation of the irreligion of the Edinburgh Review, felt that its author’s own views of religion were ‘undefined and wavering’ and that Christianity was valued as ‘a mere appendage of a more civilised state of society’. Dr Morris’s fondness for wine and the pleasures of the table rendered him ‘doubly disgusting’, notably in his being ‘carried home drunk from a public dinner’ and his regaling his readers with ‘a description of the consequent agonies of head-ache, colick, and gout’. If such ‘debasing sensuality’ is to be regarded as a genuine characteristic of the Edinburgh literati then ‘much as we admire their abilities, we must say “farthest from them is best”’.99 The Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine concurred in disapproving of Morris’s ‘high relish, for good eating and drinking’ and disliked his emphasis on the attractions of religious ceremonial, noting tartly that the ‘decencies of religious worship are one thing, and the cant of antiquarian devotion is another’. After mocking one such description the reviewer concludes: ‘We suggest that it was written under the influence of Glasgow punch’. Even so the reviewer finds much to praise in what is admitted to be an enjoyable work, signalising particularly the Philosophical Weaver as ‘a good thing in its way, [which] very handsomely takes off the folly of the coarse and low sort of infidelity which prevails among us’.100 On no occasion in all the reviews seen is there any sign of sympathy for the weaver’s position, a horror of atheism here amply replacing that of threatened insurrection in the British journals. 4. The ‘Third’ and Subsequent Editions With sales of the ‘second’ (actually the first) edition going well, discussions between the Edinburgh and London publishers as to the preparation of both a ‘third’ edition and a second series of Peter’s Letters soon got underway, probably in the course of a visit to London by William Blackwood in the early autumn of 1819.101 As Davies wrote to Blackwood on 30 September: Amongst the objects to which you will first give your attention on your return to Edinbr is the new Edition of Peter’s Letters, which I find from Mr Mutlow [presumably a Blackwood employee] you

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still incline to fix at 2000 in the same size, demy octavo, as the Second Edition; he tells me also that you mean to divide it between three printers, which, I imagine, under the present circumstances will be best, […] you will naturally take care that the Advertisements announcing the third Edition as in preparation are properly worded, including also the announcement of the Second Series, and send us the exact form of it as soon as you can.102 William Davies seems to have been a warm advocate for a second series of Peter’s Letters from the outset. Towards the end of the ‘Epistle Liminary’ the mythical Dr Morris had jocularly mentioned his eagerness to see Davies (to whom it was addressed), ‘as I have some thoughts of looking over my papers, and giving you Peter’s Letters from Italy and Germany, in the course of the winter’ (p. 9). Davies had responded in his letter to Blackwood of 30 July 1819, ‘I confidently hope he [the author] will find, in the due attention paid to Peter’s Letters, sufficiently encouraged to continue in the disposition to bring forward the publiccation of the Letters from Italy and Germany’.103 It seems unlikely that such a second series was ever considered seriously by Lockhart, who (unlike his avatar Peter Morris) had not travelled extensively in Europe, never having been to Italy at this stage in his life and having spent only a few weeks in the autumn of 1817 on a first visit to Germany that would hardly have allowed him to portray its society and literati in any detail. The original outline for Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk in Lockhart’s letter to Blackwood of early 1819, however, was not completed at the end of the work as published, for the third volume, to be ‘written chiefly by Wilson’, was then intended to include ‘the Drs tours into the highlands’.104 It may be that this contribution to be made by Wilson, not forthcoming for the original publication, was postponed until it could form the substance of a second series. Wilson had undertaken a strenuous pedestrian and fishing tour of nearly two months in the Western Highlands, accompanied (to the amazement of polite Edinburgh society) by his wife, in the summer of 1815 and returned to the Highlands the following summer.105 Lockhart’s own Highland experience, so far as the surviving evidence of his early life indicates, comprised only a limited holiday with his brother and William Hamilton in 1815, his restricted financial circumstances dictating that most of his holidays were spent with his parents in countryside within easy reach of Glasgow (Lang, I, 84-87). A second series describing the Highlands, with Wilson as a major contributor if not as sole author, was certainly more feasible

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than a second series set on mainland Europe, and seems to have been determined upon by the publishers by the end of October 1819, when Davies requested Blackwood to send him the wording of an announcement of ‘the Second Series of “Peter’s Letters from the Highlands”’.106 Such a Second Series was certainly advertised, initially on the verso of the Contents page for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for September, where it might perhaps have been regarded as something of a joke, for among the other ‘Books Preparing for Publication’ listed there were titles such as The Southside Papers edited by Timothy Tickler, and The Autobiography of Christopher North, Esq. It was to be in three volumes, ‘Comprising (inter alia) an account of the present state of Men and Manners in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’. By December, however, both the New Monthly Magazine in London and the Edinburgh Monthly Review were reporting that ‘A Second Series of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, in three volumes, is preparing for publication’.107 Blackwood and his London partner clearly wanted a ‘third’ edition of the original work to be available as soon as possible, since their plan was to have each volume produced by a different printer. The usual courtesies of the trade would appear to dictate that the printing of a subsequent edition ought to be offered initially to the firm that had printed the first edition of a work, and as in this case the printer was James Ballantyne Blackwood needed to be cautious about offending him, not least because of his association with Scott, whose quasipaternal influence upon Lockhart was soon to culminate in Lockhart’s announcement in a letter to his own father of 17 January 1820 that he was to marry Scott’s elder daughter.108 Having made it clear to Davies that he would prefer to employ three different printers for the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters Blackwood therefore offered the printing of one volume only to Ballantyne in a note of 9 October 1819: Mr Blackwood presents Compliments to Mr Ballantyne and would thank him to say if he could finish and be ready to deliver one volume of Peters Letters in three weeks from Monday next when it could be put into his hands.109 Whether this note was preceded or followed by any informal personal exchanges between Blackwood and Ballantyne it is impossible to say, but in the event Ballantyne did not print any of the ‘third’ edition, perhaps because he was occupied with other work or more likely because he had been offended by not having been given the preference,

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as expected, for printing the whole of this new edition. In the event the first volume was printed by Oliver and Boyd; the second volume by Charles Stewart; and the third by Balfour and Clarke. All three were well-established printers conveniently located in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Oliver and Boyd had their premises in Tweeddale Court, just off the High Street, and as they were the current printers of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine they seem a natural choice for William Blackwood. Charles Stewart had premises in Old Bank Close off the Lawnmarket at the top end of the High Street, and had worked for the Highland Society of Scotland and was printer to the University of Edinburgh.110 Both Andrew Balfour and James Clarke had premises in Merchant Court, Cowgate, and collaborated on a number of Edinburgh publications between 1818 and 1822, though also working independently, Clarke being the printer subsequently, for instance, of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).111 The publishers’ hurry to bring out a new edition and the consequent employment of three different printers almost certainly meant that opportunities were lost in correcting some obvious errors in the ‘second’ edition text. A misnumbering of some of the Letters in the ‘second’ edition was not put right, and while the copy for each printer would almost certainly have been a marked copy of the ‘second’ edition little attempt otherwise appears to have been made to ensuring uniformity of appearance, with the printer of each volume adhering to some extent to his own preferred typological conventions. For instance, Balfour and Clarke rendered abbreviated titles such as ‘Mr.’ and ‘Dr.’ with a stop, and the other two printers without one. Naturally enough, some new errors were also introduced into the text through haste and misunderstanding by each of the printers. In the first volume, for example, ‘proportion’ became ‘porportion’ (I, 290: compare present text, p. 161, l. 19), in the second, ‘placed’ became ‘placid’ (II, 338: compare p. 358, l. 18), and in the third ‘broad’ became ‘bread’ (III, 331: compare p. 537, l. 10). Some corrections were evidently made during the course of printing, resulting in different readings in surviving copies of the published book. For instance, the date of the battle at Bothwell Bridge is given incorrectly in some copies as 1677 and correctly in others as 1679 (III, 290: compare p. 517, l. 23). The paucity of surviving correspondence between Lockhart and Blackwood at this time means that the date of their agreement is unknown: it is probable, but not certain, therefore, that Lockhart would have been paid another £500 for this further volume-edition equal in

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extent to the first. Despite the haste in which the ‘third’ edition was printed, it certainly had the advantage of significant authorial revisions and additions. In the ‘second’ edition the use of initials followed by blanks as substitutes for proper names was inconsistently applied and in the end served no useful function, since for many readers the identity of the individuals referred to was obvious enough. For the ‘third’ edition these names were now given in full, facilitating a smoother and more uniform reading experience, even though occasionally the change was not carried through with consistency. (Scott is ‘Mr S—’, for instance, in both editions at p. 336, l. 28 when his forthcoming visit to the poet’s country house is mentioned, even though in the ‘third’ edition Morris arrives shortly afterwards and meets ‘Mr Scott’ (p. 339).) Lockhart evidently made other more local revisions with the object of improving sense or style. For instance, where in the ‘second’ edition Morris declared that it would be out of keeping had he discovered ‘the Ettrick Shepherd drinking Champaigne or Hock’ (I, 138) in the ‘third’ edition the sharper alliterative ‘Hogg drinking Hock’ (as at p. 87, l. 1) was employed. He may also have taken the opportunity to undo in part the second edition’s renaming of the character referred to as ‘the Major’ in the surviving fragment of his manuscript in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, as ‘Mr H—’, since one subsequent instance of ‘Mr. H—’ in the ‘second’ edition, at III, 171, has been replaced in the ‘third’ edition by ‘the Major’ (see p. 459, l. 8), restoring in the process a reading in the passage as it had first been printed in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in February 1819 (4, 619). A further change for the ‘third’ edition, the elimination of references to the Black Bull Inn, was made only under duress. According to William Blackwood’s own account as supplied to his solicitor, the landlady, a Mrs Robertson, had called upon him soon after publication of the ‘second’ edition to complain about Dr Morris’s description of her establishment in the first of his letters home to Wales as ‘a crowded, noisy, shabby, uncomfortable inn, frequented by all manner of stagecoaches and their contents, as my ears were well taught before morning’ (I, 4: compare p. 17, ll. 18-20). Blackwood had then told her ‘that altho’ he could not conceive that any thing in the work wd prove injurious to the Black Bull Inn as at present managed, yet he was sorry that their feelings should be hurt, and that he would endeavour on this account to prevail upon the Editor of his Magazine to insert a paragraph of such a nature as would he was sure be satisfactory’.112 As promised, the following appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for August:

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By the bye, speaking of Peter’s Letters, the only mistake of any great consequence which the doctor appears to have committed, is in his character of the Black Bull Inn in this city—which, so far from being either a noisy or disagreeable house, is, to our certain knowledge, an extremely snug and pleasant one, and kept by a most worthy, intelligent, and obliging couple. We are sure that the doctor will make the amende honorable to them on his return next winter to Edinburgh, and that he must have been led into this mistake by his recollection of the house in former times.113 This attempt at conciliation was unsuccessful, however, since Mrs Robertson put the matter into the hands of a lawyer who wrote to Blackwood on 28 August to demand the name of the author of Peter’s Letters, clearly in preparation for taking legal action against him, a demand which Blackwood refused, declaring that ‘he holds himself alone as responsible for any thing contained in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, and that he declines to give up the Author’.114 A subsequent letter from Blackwood of December 1819 to James Ballantyne refers to an action for libel ‘having been raised before the Court of Session, at the instance of Robertson of the Black Bull Inn here against me and Messrs Smith & Son Booksellers in Glasgow, as Publishers, and against you as Printers, of the work’ and takes the form of an ‘Obligation of Relief’, effectively absolving the Ballantyne firm from all financial and legal penalties resulting from the suit.115 In the event the lawsuit seems to have been resolved by an out-of-court settlement with a payment of £400 damages to the proprietors of the Black Bull, which, according to Lang (I, 225), was ultimately paid by Lockhart himself and which, if so, amounted to four-fifths of his author’s payment for the ‘second’ edition.116 More positively, Lockhart included in the new edition his entirely fresh ‘Postscript to the Third Edition’ in the form of a letter addressed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and originally referred to by William Davies as ‘the New Preface’.117 Lockhart had treated Coleridge with great respect throughout the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters, as a poet who ought to be generally rated more highly than he was by his contemporaries and whose spirit is invoked by an attempt, perhaps Lockhart’s own, to provide a translation of a passage from Goethe’s Faust at the end of the first volume. Significantly, in two of his letters Morris had also disapproved of an article by John Wilson attacking Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

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for October 1817.118 Coleridge had reacted by writing a letter to the anonymous author of the work indicating how much he appreciated this gesture of support. This was followed by two other letters, and by a gift of copies of those of his works which he had to hand.119 William Blackwood as publisher and Lockhart as a chief contributor clearly saw this opening up of friendly communication as an opportunity to secure Coleridge as a contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and the Postscript to Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk was evidently an important part of their campaign. William Davies must have been told of their hopes, for he wrote in his letter to Blackwood of 20 November: Your description of the New Preface strikes us as being of exactly the right sort, particularly as we cannot but think that it will tend to draw some additional Notice from our Friend Coleridge, who, we are pleased to hear, has at length, given you some new hopes of his shortly becoming a more frequent Correspondent.120 The chief substance of this Postscript, however, was directed against two charges levelled against Peter’s Letters by its critics: that the work was a partisan Tory reinforcement of the views expressed in Blackwood’s; and that its author had violated the confidence of those whom he had portrayed in the work, retailing in public the social intercourse of private life. It may be that at this period, during his courtship of Sophia Scott, Lockhart was particularly sensitive in that direction and felt the need to put on record that he had set down nothing that did not relate to a public setting or a commonplace visit by an ordinary visitor to a great man.121 His defence against the other charge, that he had written as ‘a simple traveller’ rather than as ‘the champion of a particular set of literary, philosophical, and political opinions’ (p. 549), is more obviously disingenuous. Exceptionally both Lockhart’s manuscript and a set of proofs for the ‘Postscript’ with corrections marked in ink and in his hand have survived, bound together in the National Library of Scotland, MS 4817, the manuscript at fols 1-30 being followed by the proofs at fols 31-42. Lockhart’s manuscript gives no indication of when it was written, further than the obvious parameters provided by the receipt of Coleridge’s first undated letter and the publication of the ‘third’ edition in which it was included. Clearly it had been written or was in the process of being written, though, by 20 November when Davies referred to it in his letter to Blackwood.122 It consists of 30 leaves, each measuring

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approx. 20.5 x 12.5 cm, with a partial watermark on some, seemingly RUSE & [T]URNERS [and] [1]818. Lockhart’s text is mostly on the rectos only, with the following exceptions: the mottoes are on a verso facing the title, while leaves 13 and 24 have text on both sides, and 14 has both sides blank. Minimal corrections and additions are sometimes marked on the facing versos of the previous leaf. Leaf 25 has ‘24’ at its head, one of only two instances of what is apparently original numbering by Lockhart. Alterations mostly seem to have been made in the course of writing, Lockhart adjusting syntax, improving rhetoric, eliminating verbal repetitions and the like, with only two brief embellishments added on the verso of the manuscript leaves. The manuscript bears signs of three distinct phases of composition: the first consisting of fols 1-13, where the final passage of text is completed on a verso (fol. 13v); a shift to a clearer text and possibly different pen-stroke from fol. 15 (numbered originally ‘14’ in ink at the head) perhaps indicating the start of a second phase of composition; with finally the start of a third phase signalled by the original number ‘24’ at the head of fol. 25.123 A high density of alteration towards the end of this manuscript may additionally suggest that Lockhart was drafting in an excited state and/or anxious to finish in a hurry. The proofs that follow Lockhart’s manuscript here are paginated as in the equivalent portion of the ‘third’ edition (pp. [355]-76), and Lockhart has marked his corrections on them in ink. His corrections reveal an efficient process of proof-reading, mostly to secure the effective representation of his manuscript in print rather than directed towards substantial enhancement of it. Lockhart corrects the occasional misprint or misreading of his manuscript by the printer and ensures the absolute accuracy of quotations from foreign languages. He pays some care to punctuation, introducing dashes to pick out various internal clauses, occasionally creating a new sentence break, replacing stops with question marks, and sometimes correcting pointing to clarify his meaning. Apart from his fondness for the dash, his proof-corrections show an inclination to prefer initial capital letters not only for proper names but also for set phrases and terms, such as ‘Scottish Bar’. One instance of Lockhart’s infrequent stylistic enhancements in proof is probably sufficient. In his manuscript he had written ‘our quick-sighted & quick-fingered generation’ at fol. 6, with ‘ & quick-fingered’ as the insertion of a second thought in drafting. At the proof-stage Lockhart was evidently unsure about ‘quick-fingered’, for he altered it firstly to

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‘light’ and finally to ‘ever ready’, this leading to the reading ‘our quicksighted and ever ready generation’ as at p. 550, ll. 26-27. Besides its inclusion as a ‘Postscript’ to the ‘third’ edition this letter to Coleridge was also published separately as a shilling pamphlet.124 This would allow those who had already purchased copies of the ‘second’ edition to include the new postscript in their copies, and some copies of the earlier edition exist into which the pamphlet has indeed been bound. The pamphlet version is separately paginated from [1] to 24, and has a different title-page, which for instance specifies that it is a postscript to the third edition of Peter’s Letters rather than just to the third edition (it being unnecessary of course to name the work within a bound volume of that work itself). However, the text of both pamphlet and volume versions appears to be identical, apart from a variation in the opening line of the Italian title-page motto, even though their pressmarks at points differ. An additional engraved portrait of Francis Jeffrey was added to the work for this ‘third’ edition, whether at the publisher’s or author’s instigation is unknown. Perhaps this was an attempt to defuse criticism of the one included in the second edition, although in that case it is hard to understand why both Jeffrey portraits were included, one after the other, in the second volume of the ‘third’ edition rather than the new portrait being substituted for the old (see ‘The Engravings’, pp. 361-62). On 30 October 1819 Davies wrote to Blackwood expressing that he was ‘happy to find from your last letter, that the Printers are getting on so rapidly with the third Edition of Peter’s Letters, as the Demand for it is still as lively as we could wish’; he consequently expected a good subscription, and requested a form of words for the announcement both of that and of the second series of Peter’s Letters ‘without delay’.125 Publication was planned for November, Davies writing again on 8 November to remind him that he was awaiting the approved form of words for advertisements and adding, ‘I hope that the New Edition of Peter is either shipped for us, or very nearly ready—for I still earnestly recommend that, if possible, the Books be actually in the Strand before the Meeting of Parliament’, that is before 23 November. Three days later a letter as from the firm stated, ‘We cannot but now deplore that we are losing so many days in the Newspaper Announcements of Peter’s Letters’.126 Publication in Edinburgh seems to have taken place on Friday, 26 November, an advertisement for the new edition as to be published ‘To-morrow’ appearing in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 25 November and as ‘This day’ published in the same newspaper for 27

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November 1819, the latter advertisement also mentioning the availability of the Postscript as a separate shilling pamphlet. Publication in London, however, appears to have been delayed. On 4 December Davies wrote to Blackwood: Respecting Peter’s Letters, the only point I have to mention at present is that we have hitherto received no more than 250 of Vol 1—and 500 of Vols 2 & 3, besides sufficient Impressions of the Plates, for completing the boarding of these Volumes, and 300 of the Postscript.—We are therefore, precluded from subscribing the Book, before some more of the three vols. have arrived.—We are still, however, in expectation of having a good Subscription, as the Demand appears to be sufficiently alive,—and I cannot help thinking that, ere long it will be desirable for you to send an enlarged Supply for the London Sale, in addition to the 750 already sent.127 By 8 December Cadell & Davies had received more sheets and were in daily expectation of receiving others sent from Edinburgh on 30 November, so that Davies felt they had enough to go ahead with the London subscription that very day, the immediate outcome of the subscription being ‘500 Copies—which I certainly consider as a very good one for a New Edition, the publication of which has been delayed till so near the End of the Year’.128 Two days later, however, the London firm reported that they had still not received the sheets sent on 30 November due to ‘the late very rough and severe weather’ that had delayed the ship on which they were being transported from Scotland, so that they were still without ‘any supply of the 3 volumes complete, beyond what we have already subscribed’. By that date they were also expecting ‘a fourth cargo of 250 Copies, making in all, a complete 1000 of this 3rd Edition’.129 By 14 December the London firm were still anxiously awaiting this consignment and fearing that it had ‘gone down at Sea, during the late tremendous Storms’, although it did in fact arrive on the following day.130 The London publication was thus delayed for about a fortnight after publication in Edinburgh, being advertised as published that day in the Morning Post of 11 December 1819. On 28 December, however, Davies was happy to report that ‘our Sales have already advanced rather beyond the 700, with every appearance of still going on extremely well’.131 Indeed by 8 February the following year Davies added that ‘the third Edition of Peter’s Letters has every fair prospect of soon coming to a termination’ and recommended that

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Blackwood ought to be considering to what extent a ‘fourth’ edition might safely be ventured upon: If the Second Series of Peter be likely to be soon published, I imagine that a fourth Edition of the first Series will, in due time be advisable, but as all the circumstances, relative to both Series, are more clearly understood by you than by us, […] perhaps it is still quite early enough to agitate it just now.—I do not yet know how many Copies of the third Edn remain unsold with you at this time.132 Despite the rapid sale of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, the bulk of two editions totalling 4000 copies having probably been sold in something like eight months from first publication, no ‘fourth’ edition was published, nor did a second series of the work appear. A variety of factors may have contributed to this somewhat surprising state of affairs. It may be that John Wilson, for instance, always most dilatory in the fulfilment of his literary promises and agreements, was as tardy in providing material for the projected second series of the work as he seems to have been for the first, and Davies’s letter of 8 February 1820 certainly shows that the production of a ‘fourth’ edition of the original work was linked in his mind at least to the imminent appearance of a second series. The death on 28 April 1820 of William Davies, who had taken such a strong personal interest in the work, may also have militated against the production of another edition. Furthermore, the very topicality of Peter’s Letters that had contributed to its immediate success would also have rendered its attractions somewhat ephemeral, leading to its becoming outdated more rapidly than other contemporary volume publications—this title having always been received, to a certain extent, as an adjunct of a well-known monthly magazine. More immediately still there are signs that the supply of copies of the ‘third’ edition, at least those held by Blackwood, had not been fully exhausted as late as 1823, when the work is found advertised along with the ‘Postscript’ in a 12-page list of Works by the Publisher appended to a copy of Lockhart’s third novel Reginald Dalton. The close association between Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine had a similarly double-edged effect on publication of editions of the work in America. Early publication of extracts in American periodicals from the two-part article on Peter’s Letters of February and March 1819 and from the ‘second’ British edition would have fostered initial North American interest and

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stimulated the production of an American edition. A single-volume edition of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, without illustrations, was published in New York for A. T. Goodrich & Co, Kirk & Mercein, C. Wiley & Co., W. B. Gilley, and James Olmstead, and dated 1820 on the title-page, where it is described as the first American from the Second Edinburgh Edition. This probably appeared close to the start of the year, since (as noted) the Philadelphia-published Analectic Magazine refers to a New York edition as ‘in preparation’ but trusts that it ‘will not be given to the public so early as our November number’.133 It must have sold well, since a second American edition was also published in 1820, carefully advertising on the title-page that it included the postscript addressed to Coleridge.134 The main text, however, was not based as might be supposed from this on the text of the ‘third’ British edition. The publisher had instead made his own attempt to bring the text of the ‘second’ British edition up to date: while the references to the Black Bull Inn were not removed, an overall attempt was made to fill in the proper names represented in the ‘second’ only by initials and blanks, not always successfully. For instance, the proposer of Henry Mackenzie’s health at the Burns anniversary dinner is said to be ‘Mr. Clerk’ rather than the ‘Mr Cockburn’ of the British ‘third’ edition.135 No further editions of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk appear to have been published in North America. As suggested, it seems likely that the minuteness of its portrayal of Edinburgh cultural life in 1819 made Peter’s Letters feel dated once the initial impetus of publication had been allowed to slacken. Including the work only four years after first publication in a list of recommended reading for his brother Jack, Thomas Carlyle described it as ‘a worthless book’ that would nevertheless give his brother ‘some idea of the state of literature in Edinr at this time: it was in great vogue three years ago, but is now dead as mutton’.136 The lapse of a greater period of time, however, eventually revealed its unique importance as an intimate, detailed historical portrait of a particular time and place. Scott seems to have prophetically understood that this might come to pass when he regretted that the Edinburgh society of his own youth had not been so recorded: What an acquisition it would have been to our general information to have had such a work written I do not say fifty but even five and twenty years ago and how much of grave and gay might then have been preserved as it were in amber which have now moulderd away.

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[…] Dr. Morris ought […] to revive every half century to record the fleeting manners of the age and the interesting features of those who will be only known to posterity by their works.137 In the event it took rather longer than fifty years for interest in Peter’s Letters to revive sufficiently for any kind of volume republication. The Blackwood and Murray firms brought out new editions of a number of Lockhart’s works in the 1840s (including even his early translation of Schlegel’s Lectures on the History of Literature), but Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk was not among them. Its value as essential source-material for the period is nevertheless reflected in the publication of two singlevolume selections from Peter’s Letters in the later twentieth century. The first of these, a pocket edition published in the ‘Nelson Classics’ series in 1952, was presumably edited by the unnamed writer of its Introduction, ‘C. P. H.’, who in ‘Note on this Edition’ thanks the eminent Scott scholar James C. Corson for his ‘invaluable help’. This selection cuts Lockhart’s work by approximately half, renumbering the selected letters from 1-35, with the original number given in square brackets, and claiming to have chosen ‘those portions that will interest the modern reader most’.138 Spelling and punctuation have been modernised, and while significant omissions within the chosen letters are indicated by ellipses, not all omissions are thus marked. Some readings are supplied in this abridged ‘third’ edition text from the ‘second’ edition in square brackets (most notably, though not exclusively, the initial description of the Black Bull Inn), but none of the engraved portraits are reproduced. The Edinburgh selection comprises the descriptions of notable literary figures, lawyers, publishers, and clergymen, and includes the Burns dinner, the visit to Abbotsford, and excursions to Craigcrook and Lasswade. Several of its accounts are trimmed, so that the picture of Edinburgh University omits the passages on the study of history and the Dugald Stewart school of philosophy, while the letter recounting the Speculative Society meeting is shorn of the surrounding visit to Barclay’s tavern. The Nelson selection’s most obvious omission is of Lockhart’s detailed account of Scottish artists and their paintings, centred on the studio of William Allan. Its Glasgow selection contains the visits to the Cathedral and University and the description of Thomas Chalmers preaching, as well as the excursion to Bothwell and Hamilton Palace, but omits the detailed account of the paintings at the Hunterian Museum and the whole climactic conclusion of the country sacrament and its national significance. Throughout the

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selection Morris’s craniological descriptions have been omitted or severely truncated. A second selection from Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk was edited by William Ruddick and produced by Scottish Academic Press in 1977 for the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, as an early publication in the series of annual volumes the Association began to produce in 1971. Based also on the ‘third’ edition text and again omitting the portrait engravings, this selection is rather shorter than the Nelson Classics one, roughly equal in extent to one of Lockhart’s original three volumes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in view of his selection’s appearance in the publications of a literary society, Ruddick’s choices continue the Nelson selection’s emphasis on ‘Jeffrey, Scott and other early nineteenth century figures’.139 However, he demonstrates more awareness of the shape of the whole work, in that his selection marks the beginning and end of each of the original volumes and also in that he generally gives each chosen letter in its entirety, with a few exceptions. Ruddick also reinstates the climax of Lockhart’s work, his detailed and emotionallycharged account of a country sacrament. Recognising that Peter’s Letters provides much otherwise scarce information on contemporary visual art Ruddick has chosen to include Lockhart’s account of Scottish artists and paintings and to reduce the emphasis on the law of the previous Nelson selection, though curtailing the Glasgow scenes by omitting Morris’s account of the university. Surprisingly, neither of these twentieth-century selections include Morris’s fascinating encounter with the Philosophical Weaver on Glasgow Green. Both include a useful contextualising introduction and notes, motivated partly by the need to provide for a readership no longer familiar with the detail of the cultural and social world of Regency Scotland. Awareness of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk as a deliberately-crafted work of literature and cultural criticism (only partially indicated by Ruddick’s selection), rather than as a mere quarry of illustrative materials, has increased in recent years. Francis Hart’s study of Lockhart as Romantic Biographer (1971) includes a chapter entitled ‘Peter’s Letters as the Biography of a Culture’, preceding his account of Lockhart’s subsequent biographical studies of Burns, Napoleon, and of course Scott. He argues that the work does have a significant structure and firmly repudiates the notion that this early Lockhart work is only ‘an omnium gatherum of scurrilous sketches, a mere jeu d’esprit’.140 Ian Duncan in his critical study Scott’s Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (2007) interprets Peter’s Letters as a considered and detailed

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attempt to construct a national culture for Scotland based on the theories of Schiller and Schlegel, and, in Romantic opposition to the scepticism of the Whig Edinburgh Review, as a ‘virtual construct […] which restores the lost homology between individual and nation’.141 In such a critical climate Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk must be considered in its entirety, and a new critical edition of the whole work, removing errors in the text of the early editions and providing appropriate contextualising editorial material, has increasingly become a desideratum. 5. The Present Text This new edition of Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk is based on the ‘third’ (actually second) edition of 1819, but incorporates readings from earlier states of the text, including the ‘second’ edition of the same year, where errors or enforced changes are deemed to have been made. It also incorporates a number of editorial interventions, as described more fully later in this section. There are a number of reasons for prioritising the ‘third’ over the ‘second’ edition as the base-text for the present edition. In several respects, the ‘second’ edition proves to be far from the polished article. Though the main tendency is to disguise names by reduction to the initial letter followed by a dash, this was not always the case, and implementation in certain cases is far from consistent. At an early point, for example, ‘J——’ and ‘Jeffrey’s’ appear in close proximity, while ‘S——’ can suddenly feature as ‘Scott’. Compounding the issue, captions to engraved portraits sometimes offer full names in areas where the running headline or main text is disguising the same. Another feature is the absence at any expansion of ‘Mr W——’ as ‘Mr Wastle’, though facetiously ‘W. Wastle’ is found twice in the accreditation of the engravings. Something of the same capriciousness, redolent of the pages of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, can be sensed in the list of spoof ‘Works of the Same Author’ inserted here after the ‘Contents’ list in the third volume. Haste in production, either through Lockhart misremembering at the start of one batch where numeration of the last batch had left off or as a result of a lack of coordination between compositors when handling different portions of text, is also apparent in lapses in chapter numbering, with no Letter XIV but two Letters XV in the first volume, and a jump from Letter LXV to LXVII in the final volume leading to a confusion of numbers in all those following. Pagination

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likewise lapses in Volume 1 where page 64 is followed by 61 with an absence of any subsequent correction to the end of the volume. In such respects, Lockhart arguably had more than one reason for feeling that the work had been ‘published originally without much reflection’, and for so welcoming any opportunity for adjustment. There is plenty of internal evidence of Lockhart’s engagement in the production of the ‘third’ edition text not only in organisational terms but creatively too. While no direct evidence of transmission of changes to the main text has survived, the most probable means of communication with the three printers engaged on the ‘third’ edition was through marked-up copies of their respective volumes of the ‘second’, perhaps with papers attached where longer changes were required. The latter seems most feasible in the case of two longer insertions relating to the up-and-coming younger advocates (p. 239, ll. 7-15), and also possibly with regard to another additional passage introducing Dr Gleig as Primus of the Episcopal Church of Scotland (p. 418, ll. 14-16). Among some other thirty substantive verbal changes found, the majority have a strong feel of Lockhart about them. One special feature here is a number of new footnotes, two recording deaths in the interim between the editions (pp. 68n, 109n), and another somewhat facetiously detailing the names of debating societies other than the Speculative (p. 149n: see also footnotes at pp. 110, 141). At points one also senses a continuance of external social pressures at work, as in the shift from S[cott] as the provider of letters of introduction to Edinburgh notables to the more amorphous ‘My friends’ (p. 41, l. 12), Scott presumably not wanting to be seen in that light, despite a distinct echo of his Guy Mannering in the original situation.142 Other small interventions, such as the expansion of ‘Champaign’ to ‘Champaign moussu’ at p. 50, ll. 35-36 and the alliterative replacement ‘Hogg drinking Hock’ (as already mentioned), have the flavour of more spontaneous involvement. The ‘third’ edition also allowed an opportunity for correction of factual errors, with Charles Lamb replacing Charles Lloyd as the author of ‘A Farewell to Tobacco’ at p. 232, l. 8, and allegiances involving the Old Light and New Light Anti-burgher religious sects being successfully sorted out at p. 423, ll. 29-38. Another notable feature of the ‘third’ edition is its identification through spelling out of a large majority of disguised proper names, amounting as a whole to some 350 interventions. While this might seem a fairly routine job, special knowledge would have been needed in at least some cases, and it is possible that the bulk was carried out by

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Lockhart in marking up copy-text. Signs of creative involvement can be found in instances where an alternative wording features in place of a direct substitution, as when the much-repeated Wastle features instead as ‘my friend’ or ‘the Laird’, or when Jeffrey on one occasion appears as ‘the great critic’ (p. 171, l. 24). An even fuller engagement is found as when ‘Captain A—— of the Navy’ becomes ‘Captain Adam of the Navy (son to the Judge)’ (p. 72, l. 8), while the rendering of ‘Lord B——’ (II , 331) as ‘DAVID BUCHANIÆ COMES’ (p. 355, l. 16), matching the signature on Buchan’s sepulchral monuments, is surely based on special knowledge. Whatever the circumstances underlying the original disguising of names—whether to provide a measure of protection or to actively encourage a guessing game—by the time of the ‘third’ edition after widespread public identification these had largely become redundant; nor in turn would the current editors wish to impose on a present-day reader any further degree of puzzlement in facing them. Lockhart himself was likewise almost certainly responsible for the ‘Contents’ listings found near the beginning of each of the volumes, and also possibly for the running headlines at the top of pages which generally (but not always) reflect the items listed there. One early indication of authorial involvement is that ‘Lawn-Market’ appears in the ‘List of Contents’ in both ‘second’ and ‘third’ editions for Letter II (and as ‘The Lawnmarket’ as a running-head in the ‘third’ as well) in relation to a point in the main text where there is no other indication of the whereabouts of Wastle’s Edinburgh residence other than that it is in the Old Town. Furthermore the Lists for the ‘third’ edition are appreciably more detailed than those in its predecessor, offering in some respects a precis of the whole work. Specific marks of Lockhart’s engagement in the ‘third’ edition can be found in the Latinate ‘alter et idem’ pointing to the additional portrait of Jeffrey in the opening ‘List of Embellishments’, as in the case of the items ‘Fama Clamosa’ and ‘P. P. C.’ in the main ‘Contents’ listing for Letters LX and LXIV respectively. The exact relationship between the Contents listings and the mechanically-complex running headlines has not been fully deduced, though a possible starting-pointing lay in the provision of volumespecific lists to each of the printers. The running-heads would have been set in the course of the printing of the main text while the Contents listings, as part of the preliminaries to a volume, would most probably have been printed after the rest of the volume was complete. This being so, the Contents listings would have allowed for the inclusion of second

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thoughts on Lockhart’s part about the topics covered in each letter. Furthermore, the necessary limitation created by the precise correspondence of a running-head to the text page printed below it could have tended to separate there items grouped together in Lockhart’s mind, these being subsequently regrouped more successfully in the Contents listings. For instance, the running-heads in the ‘third’ edition have ‘Mr Raeburn—Mr Watson’ (II, 293) followed by ‘Mr William Thomson’ (II, 294), with no mention of ‘Mr Nicholson’ at all (probably because of the difficulty of adding a third name within the space available for the running-head on page 293). The Contents listing (II, viii: see present text, p. 189) has the more accurate grouping of topics in the text of ‘Mr Raeburn / Mr John Watson, and Mr Nicholson / Mr William Thomson’. On the basis that these must be primarily Lockhart’s work, the present edition includes all the Contents listings belonging to the ‘third’ edition, along with a few editorial adjustments and with page numbers altered to match the present edition. These are positioned at the commencement of each relevant volume, themselves also set off by reproduction of the original title-pages (including the vignette engravings, which symbolise key moments in Morris’s adventures).143 For technical and related reasons it has not been possible to reproduce the running headlines in the present edition, though their function is largely duplicated by the Contents lists, and the present reader also has the advantage of a new editorially-supplied end index to the full work. While the ‘third’ edition can lay claim to being the fullest representation of Lockhart’s creative input, it was also the most vulnerable to the incremental errors that could occur during textual transmission and in the processes of printing. In this respect it has been the editors’ aim to locate mistakes and wherever possible restore previous superior readings. As suggested, the areas of surviving manuscript for the main narrative are strictly limited, and from these only a handful of cases have been found where Lockhart’s intention appears to have been misinterpreted or overridden. Verbal emendations in the present edition based on manuscript evidence include ‘this kinsmanship’ (p. 450, ll. 2324) rather than ‘his kinsmanship’, ‘that word’ (p. 477, l. 37) instead of ‘the word’, and ‘follow’ instead ‘understand’ at p. 477, l. 38. In two instances the manuscript is also used to raise the initial letter in ‘green’ where the Glasgow location of the Green is being described (p. 474, ll. 9, 20). One final emendation from the original manuscript is the replacement of ‘Mr. H——’ with ‘the Major’ at p. 450, l. 33, a change in nomenclature with larger repercussions to be discussed later. A more

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complete record of transmission is provided by the ‘Postscript to the Third Edition’, where in addition to a full manuscript it is possible to trace movements through proofing to the final printed state. Even here only three cases of apparent misrepresentation have been discovered, all occurring between the manuscript and proof, and of a kind Lockhart might not notice once they were so embedded. On this basis, the present edition prefers ‘undisputed’ to ‘undisturbed [possession]’ at p. 553, l. 27; the more abstract ‘my reader’ rather than ‘my readers’ at p. 554, l. 22; and restores the marks around ‘purest ray serene’ (p. 556, l. 12), a quotation from Gray’s Elegy. Possession of larger parts of the manuscript would no doubt have led to further emendations, though according to the evidence to hand these would not have been extensive, and as a whole it seems reasonable to trust in the main to Lockhart’s proficiency in providing copy and in proofreading. Additional evidence is provided by those areas where a printed record existed prior to the ‘second’ edition, notably in the two articles in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for February and March 1819, from which nine of the ten supposed ‘extracts’ are subsumed into the main text. As previously suggested, the main areas of verbal differences are related to changes needed for integration into the fuller narrative, while in the case of Jeffrey there are signs of some softening in the asperity of the original depiction. Apart from this, the main variants found in the ‘second’ edition are presentational in nature, with a general tightening of punctuation and occasional raising of initial letters for terms such as ‘Whig’. In two cases the original Blackwood’s punctuation has been preferred in the present edition, with especially invasive commas being removed between ‘land’ and ‘should’ (p. 213, l. 12) and ‘cast’ and ‘which’ (p. 221, ll. 38-39). The Magazine also serves as the immediate authority for the correct spelling of ‘Brunck’s’ at p. 131, l. 23, and the more complete hyphenation of ‘South-sea-islander’ at p. 513, l. 19. Two more substantive emendations originate in the passage taken from Lockhart’s review of ‘Mr Allan’s Picture of the Polish Jews’ for the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 17 February 1819, where ‘marriage’ provides a superior reading to the printed editions’ more literal ‘marriages’ at p. 312, l. 9, and ‘manner’ reads more correctly than ‘manners’ for ‘the manner in which it is bodied forth’ (p. 313, l. 27). The newspaper text also provides an authority for the addition of a guiding comma between ‘race’ and ‘as’ at p. 312, l. 28. The most significant source for emendations however is provided by the ‘second’ edition itself. Notwithstanding the imperfections and

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absences already noted, this is the version of the whole work which takes us closest to Lockhart’s original composition, as well as having the advantage of a single printer in James Ballantyne. Among other things, the ‘second’ edition provides the source for the largest emendation in the present text, namely the restoration of the original passages concerning the Black Bull Inn. Unlike the various cases where Lockhart might be sensed bending in the face of external social pressures, such as those emanating from Scott, the expunging of the derogatory references to the Black Bull in the ‘third’ edition came under threat of legal action, and one can hardly have expected Lockhart (himself potentially subject to threat) to resist Blackwood’s insistence that they should be removed. The two excised passages concerned (p. 17, ll. 1720; p. 21, ll. 19-20) dovetail neatly back into the ‘third’ edition text, and by so doing arguably result in a thematically stronger narrative, with Dr Morris’s experiencing an older kind of ramshackle hostelry before finding security in a hotel, the sequence thus shadowing the arrival of Colonel Mannering at an inn in Edinburgh in Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815) at a time when ‘hotels […] were there none’.144 The ‘second’ edition is also the source of two shorter restorations, where factors relating to printing appear to have led to omission. In the third edition, after inset verses from Burns’s ‘The Whistle’, the follow-up wording of ‘in a strain equally delectable’ was omitted, apparently as a result of the compositor having run out of space (II, 117: see p. 251, l. 5). Similarly at II, 96, the insertion of the long passage on emergent young advocates led to a situation where no room was left at the end of the Letter XXXVII for the rows of asterisks found in the ‘second’ edition as well as the end signature ‘P. M.’ (now both restored at p. 239, ll. 25-27). The ‘spoof’ advertising leaf of Peter Morris’s other publications from the ‘second’ edition is also included in the present edition, repositioned as seems appropriate at the end of the full text. It is not entirely clear why it was omitted from the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters, but it is at least possible that Balfour and Clarke, printing the third volume from a copy of the ‘second’ edition hastily, interpreted it as a genuine advertising leaf and therefore intended to be specific to that edition only. Its inclusion, however, reinforces the Blackwoodian credentials of Lockhart’s work. Apart from these restorations, the ‘second’ edition provides the authority for over sixty other local changes, mostly mending situations where the ‘third’ edition printing led to deterioration. Some twelve of these can be broadly described as typographical errors, as when

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‘proportion’ becomes ‘porportion’ as noted above. Here the compositor of the third volume seems to have been especially remiss, either through incompetence or pressure of time, or a mixture of both. Fairly flagrant examples include ‘silk waitcoats’, ‘oridanary’, ‘wordly’ (for ‘worldly’), ‘eys’ ‘cemetry’, and ‘connot’, all now duly mended. More general slippages are also perceptible, leading for example to the restoration on the ‘second’ edition’s authority of ‘so fortunate’ for the patently wrong ‘so unfortunate’ at p. 52, l. 28, and of ‘conformation’ in describing physical qualities for ‘confirmation’ at p. 442, l. 27. Two instances of Scots (‘so gude’ and ‘Ye would’) are likewise brought back into the mouth of a speaker described as ‘using the broadest Scots dialect’ (p. 378, l. 40; p. 379, l. 2). The ‘second’ edition also allows for the recovery of two cases where an abstract singular noun (‘repetition’ and ‘exaggeration’) has been made plural: see p. 249, l. 26; p. 360, l. 12. It also warrants the raising of initial capital letters in ‘Time’ (p. 66, l. 35), ‘Spirit [of the Place]’ (p. 118, l. 20), ‘Muse’ (p. 132, l. 23), ‘Paradise’ (p. 439, l. 7), and ‘the Old [Church]’ (p. 447, l. 25). Latin is also corrected from the ‘second’ in ‘nasi adunci [not ‘adunsi’]’ (p. 176, l. 19), and the correct spelling of the surname Hoby (as opposed to ‘Hobby’) is retrieved at p. 486, l. 36. Of the remainder of individual emendations from the ‘second’ edition, the majority broadly concern spelling or punctuation, details of which can be found in the Emendation List provided by the present edition. In addition some eighty editorial changes have been made, in cases of obvious error, imperfect transmission, and where the compositors appear not to have performed their function correctly. One grouping here involves the renaming throughout of Morris’s Glaswegian guide from ‘Mr. H—’ to ‘the Major’, a decision following on from his appearance as ‘the Major’ in the Mitchell Library MS fragment and Lockhart’s evident intervention in the ‘third’ edition at p. 459, l. 8 (where the relevant fragment in Blackwood’s similarly has ‘the major’). One possibility is that James Ballantyne, whose usual practice included the standardising of names, intervened during preparation of the ‘second’ edition faced with an apparent inconsistency in the copy supplied. Lockhart’s intervention in the ‘third’ edition however strongly indicates that ‘the Major’ was his final choice, and this preference has been implemented in full by the present edition. As such the character arguably stands out more clearly, instead of being submerged among other disguised names involving dashes, and it seems appropriate that as a (presumably retired) military person he should disapprove of

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Morris having missed a naval fete held aboard the flagship in Leith prior to leaving Edinburgh (see p. 450, ll. 34-38).The editors have also intervened in a handful of instances to further reveal names previously disguised by dashes, mainly on the assumption that they were overlooked by Lockhart through appearing in isolated form in the text. The solitary ‘Mr S——’ at the end of Letter L (p. 336, l. 28) just prior to the visit to Abbotsford, where there is no doubt as to the owner’s identity, is consequently filled out. Not dissimilarly Lord Hermand and John Clerk are allowed to emerge undisguised from brief mentions (p. 203, ll. 15-16) prior to their much fuller descriptions later; while Jeffrey is now fully revealed as Morris’s dinner host at p. 234, ll. 10-11. Two further interventions deal with cases of egregious error: the son of Burns who went India did so in a military not ‘medical’ capacity (see p. 76, l. 7); and chronologically it must have been the Vatican of Pius the Seventh rather than the Sixth that Morris visited on his continental travels (p. 381, l. 18). The spelling of a number of literary titles and figures are also corrected (e.g. ‘Smollett’s’ not ‘Smollet’s’: p. 134, l. 10), either on the basis that they have been misread or, failing that, that Lockhart would have preferred the correct form given a choice. Other proper names have been made consistent where they differ over the three volumes, so that in the case of Goethe he now appears in unumlauted form throughout. Errors in a number of individual names have also been corrected, especially where slippage looks likely, as in the case of ‘Henztner’ for Hentzner at p. 38, l. 11. No attempt has been made however to regularise or correct spelling of names more generally, apart from a few instances where there is no evidence of the form found having any currency in Lockhart’s time. The remaining emendations in this category are primarily presentational in nature, involving matters such as the application of quotation marks and raising where appropriate of initial letters. In addition to the individual changes described above, all of which are itemised in the Emendation List, a number of silent emendations have also been made to supply an element of regularity within the text. The lapses in the sequencing of letter numbers in chapter headings, which were carried over in the ‘third’ edition, are here corrected, so that there is now properly a Letter XIV in the first volume, while the numbering in the third volume follows on correctly from Letter LXV reaching now only as far as LXXVI (with comparable changes to the Contents List). Adjustments have also been made in the case of inset quotations of verse, where the ‘third’ edition sometimes has quotation

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marks at the start and end of the inset and sometimes not. Since this is an apparently arbitrary variation, the present editors have chosen to remove such quotation marks silently throughout the text. Another area concerns the asterisks which are employed by Lockhart to mark pretended omissions, often at the start or end of a chapter, or in a place where a narrative shift takes place. Such interspersing of text with asterisks was a contemporary fashion, providing an appropriately rough-edged feel to what was supposedly a printed representation of an ‘original’ manuscript and probably aiming to signify the omission of a dull or irrelevant ‘manuscript’ passage in the print version. The present edition retains this feature, but has not slavishly reproduced the number of asterisks used in all such places, since it seems likely that this was the result of the compositor using to best advantage the available space on a page. It quietly follows the same principle that would have governed the original compositor, and thus avoids such potential awkwardnesses as an isolated row of asterisks at the top or foot of a typeset page. In presentational terms the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters tends to have punctuation stops at the end of headings and sub-headings, as was customary in the early nineteenth century but which now looks unnecessarily antiquated in a modern scholarly text. Such stops have been silently removed throughout. Stops likewise follow the occasional Roman numerals within the original text as well as at the end of the headings to individual letters and these have likewise been removed in the present edition. The employment of three different printers for the three volumes of the ‘third’ edition also led to some typographical differences between volumes, the printer of each presumably adhering to his own customary preferences in such matters. The first and second volumes have abbreviations such as ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’ ‘Dr’ and ‘St’ without a final stop, whereas the third volume employs the stop to give ‘Mr., ‘Mrs.’, ‘Dr.’, and ‘St.’ in such cases. The present edition silently regularises these to the forms without the stop throughout. In similar fashion the first and second volumes place the asterisk marking the place in the text to which a footnote relates after the end-punctuation in its vicinity, but the third volume places it before it. The present edition also silently regularises this to place such asterisk markers after the relevant end-punctuation. At the same time the present edition by no means attempts to achieve modern uniformity in all cases, accepting a range of inconsistencies in orthography and other forms of representation which would

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have been considered acceptable and even normal by early nineteenthcentury standards. To give just one example: the printers of both original editions produced ‘Arbitri Elegantiarum’ at III, 112, but ‘arbiter elegantiarum’ at III, 152, and these variant forms are also carried over into the present edition (see p. 429, l. 22; p. 449, l. 36). One overall result, it is hoped, will be to give a sense both of immediacy and solidity, fully appropriate to a work which while offering a spontaneous response to a moment in time also stands as a record of a crucial turningpoint in cultural history.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

Andrew Lang, The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, 2 vols (London, 1897), I, 95. References to Lang hereafter will be given within the text. Walter Scott, Waverley, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 1 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 404. See respectively Susan Ferrier, Marriage, ed. by Dorothy McMillan (Glasgow: ASLS, 2020), pp. xvii-xviii; Mrs Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and his Sons, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1897), I, 452; and James Hogg to Archibald Constable, 20 May 1813, in The Collected Letters of James Hogg, ed. by Gillian Hughes and others, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004-08), I, 145. For Galt, see also his Autobiography, 2 vols (London, 1833), II, 227-28; and for a modern reappraisal, indicating elements of retrospective embroidery in his claims, Robert P. Irvine, ‘Introduction’, John Galt, Annals of the Parish (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), pp. xvi-xvii. Thomas Constable, Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1873), III, 151. Walter Scott, Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (Edinburgh, 1816), pp. 1-2. National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS) MS 42445, unfoliated. For early English translations or loose versions prepared by Scott of German poems written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Gottfried Augustus Bürger, see Walter Scott, The Shorter Poems, ed. by P. D. Garside and Gillian Hughes, EEWSP 7 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020). R. P. Gillies, who was to collaborate with Lockhart on the subsequent ‘Horae Germanicae’ series in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, recalls his own difficulties in finding suitable tuition in the German language in Edinburgh around 1817 in his Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, 3 vols (London, 1851), II, 222-30.

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8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

59

As cited by George Robert Gleig, ‘Life of Lockhart’, Quarterly Review, 116 (October 1864), 439-82 (p. 448). Lockhart to Walter Lockhart, 15 March 1844, NLS MS 1556, fol. 90, printed in Lang, II, 200. References to Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk are to Volume 1 of the present edition unless otherwise specified, with page (and where appropriate line) number(s) being given for citations within this Introduction. Where a specific edition, such as the ‘second’, is intended the reference to that edition is given by volume and page number (e.g. as II, 72). Claire Harman, Robert Louis Stevenson A Biography (London: Harper, 2006), p. 68. Lockhart’s contributions are now difficult to identify. A list of attributions is provided in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, ed. by David Brewster, 18 vols (Edinburgh, 1830), I, ix-xv, but the author of the article on ‘Heraldry’ (X, 711-38) is not specified and the sole attribution to Lockhart is the article on ‘Romance’ (XVII, 372-83), which must have been written after Peter’s Letters since there is a reference to Scott’s Ivanhoe, not published until December 1819, in its opening paragraph. Alan Lang Strout, A Bibliography of Articles in Blackwood’s Magazine: Volumes I through XVIII, 1817-1825 (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Technological College Library, 1959), p. 158. Hereafter cited as Strout. Gleig, ‘Life of Lockhart’, p. 452. John Veitch, Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, Bart. (Edinburgh, 1869), p. 89. Gleig, ‘Life of Lockhart’, p. 452. Lockhart’s anonymous translation was advertised as ‘This day is published’ in the Caledonian Mercury of 16 April 1818. Ian Duncan, Scott’s Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 60. James Vigus, ‘Continental Romanticism in Britain’, in The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. by David Duff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 691-706 (p. 701). Duncan, Scott’s Shadow, pp. 65, 67. Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House, I, 104. Oliphant, I, 191. Oliphant, I, 370.

60

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

24. ‘Remarks on Schlegel’s History of Literature’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (August 1818), 497-511 (pp. 498-99, 511); for attribution to Lockhart, see Strout, p. 159. 25. ‘Letters to the Supporters of the Edinburgh Review. No. I—To the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, D.D.’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (May 1818), 155-62 (p. 156), and ‘Letter to the Reverend Professor Laugner, occasioned by his writings in the Köningsberg Review. By the Baron von Lauerwinkel’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (September 1818), 689-95 (p. 691). For attributions to Lockhart, see Strout, pp. 40, 45. 26. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (September 1818), 679-89. 27. Instalments were published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (July and August 1818), 402-07, 530-33, 4 (February and March 1819), 563-67, 729-34, and 6 (January 1820), 390-93. 28. See ‘Preface’, Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), p. [iii]. 29. ‘Observations on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk”’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 612-21 and ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk”, with extracts from that popular work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52. 30. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), p. 614. 31. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. by H. J. C. Grierson and others, 12 vols (London, 1932-37), V, 324. Hereafter cited as Scott Letters. 32. Scott Letters, VI, 89. 33. J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 7 vols (Edinburgh, 1837-38), IV, 147. Hereafter cited as Scott Life. 34. Scott Life, IV, 185. 35. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), pp. 613-14. 36. NLS MS 4003, fols 131-32. 37. Scott Letters, V, 322, 324. Compare Scott to J. B. S. Morritt, 26 March 1819: ‘Look at the last Blackwoods Magazine for an admirable sketch of our popular lawyers here’ (V, 329). 38. For a fuller account of the proposed second series, and Wilson’s possible involvement with Peter’s Letters, see section on ‘The “Third” and Subsequent Editions’. 39. Scott Letters, VI, 89. 40. Scott Letters, V, 332. 41. NLS MS 4004, fol. 169.

INTRODUCTION

61

42. See ‘Essay on the Text’, The Black Dwarf, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 4a (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), pp. 12527. 43. Blackwood had confirmation of this from James Ballantyne on 6 May 1819, protesting against the decision in a reply of the same date, and subsequently threatening legal action: see NLS MS 4004, fols 12-13. This would have inevitably soured relationships during Ballantyne’s printing of Peter’s Letters. 44. NLS MS 4004, fols 171-72. Accepted bills from the publisher could be discounted for cash on receipt, the amount deducted by bankers increasing with the length of time between the bill being presented for cashing and the date it bears of its being payable. 45. See Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland & America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006). William Strahan (1715-1785), the long-standing associate of Thomas Cadell the elder, was a native of Edinburgh. Sher notes how Strahan & Cadell publishing catalogues have ‘a strong Scottish emphasis’ (p. 370). Works published by them include Henry Mackenzie’s novels and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). 46. Thomas Besterman, The Publishing Firm of Cadell & Davies: Select Correspondence and Accounts 1793-1836 (London, 1938), p. xvi, suggests that London control of the Magazine had effectively taken place as early as June 1818, though the first number to appear with the firm in the imprint was that of February 1819. Further evidence that the change probably happened in the process of preparing the February1819 number can be found in a privately-owned copy which has a new publisher imprint with Cadell & Davies pasted over John Murray. Previously there had been a three-month break with Murray, the May, June, and July 1818 issues having ‘Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, Paternoster Row’ as the London publishers. 47. NLS MS 4003, fol. 19. 48. NLS MS 4004, fol. 66r. 49. No clear Welsh origin for Davies has been discovered, though Lockhart seems to assume such in the ‘Epistle Liminary to the Second Edition’, where Morris anticipates a visit by him ‘to some of your old friends in your native country’ (p. 9). 50. NLS MS 4004, fol. 67v. Though begun on 8 April, this part of the letter is headed 10 April 1819. 51. NLS MS 30001, fol. 169; MS 4004, fol. 69v. The letter from Blackwood in MS 30001 is a draft and mistakenly pencilled ‘[to Hogg?]’. Though undated, reference therein to sending ‘the three first

62

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

52.

53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

sheets of Peter’s Letters’ clearly connects it with Davies’s acknowledgment on 27 April of Blackwood’s ‘letter of the 14th’ (fol. 69v). Blackwood’s letter also interestingly comments on the agreement reached with Lockhart: ‘The Author’s terms are certainly high when only for one edition, but I expect this will speedily go off, and that we will publish other editions, and have these on the same terms’ (fol. 169). For a full account of operations of John Smith and Son in Lockhart’s time, see Stephen Hall, ‘John Smith, Youngest (1784-1849), and the Book Trade of Glasgow’ (University of Glasgow, Ph. D. dissertation, 2017). The two proprietors of the firm at the time of Peter’s Letters were John Smith, Younger (1753-1833) and John Smith, Youngest (1784-1849). There is some possibility that Blackwood might have met John Smith Younger while superintendent of the Glasgow branch of Mundell & Co. in 1801; but imprints involving him as an Edinburgh publisher and the Glasgow firm before 1819 are relatively rare. John Smith and Son however were involved as the Glasgow publishers of The Isle of Palms (1812) and City of the Plague (1816) by John Wilson, Lockhart’s collaborator on Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine; and were the primary publishers of works by the Glasgow preacher Thomas Chalmers, including the highly popular A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, Viewed in Connection with the Modern Astronomy (1817; nine edns to 1818). Another possibility is that the name was seen as too close to that of one of the addressees in Scott’s Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (see above). For further discussion of this change and its ramifications, see section on ‘The Present Text’. In transcriptions from manuscript material additions have been marked between pairs of vertical arrows ↑thus↓ and deletions between pointed brackets . NLS MS 4004, fol. 173v. For the omitted extract, see Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 620. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 614. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 618. The article in the March number of Blackwood’s refers in passing to ‘some poem of Wordsworth or Wastle’ and to ‘Mr Wastle’s Sixth Canto’, the latter as forthcoming and including an account of ‘Mr Clerk’s gallery’ (4: 745, 749). Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 749. For the surrounding passage in Letter XXXII, as addressed to the Rev. David Williams, see text at p. 214.

INTRODUCTION

63

61. Scott Life, IV, 185-204, 259-67. 62. See William B. Todd and Ann Bowden, Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History 1796-1832 (Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998), entry 132Aa, p. 483. 63. Scott describes the completion of the Armoury in a letter to Daniel Terry of 28 September 1819: ‘We use it much as a sitting-room, being now compleated and in order’ (Scott Letters, V, 501). Compare his letter to Terry c. 20 September 1818: ‘I am impatient to see the painted glass’ (V, 197). Mrs Elizabeth Terry was the daughter of the artist Alexander Nasmyth and had married Daniel Terry, the actor and dramatist, in 1815. 64. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 614; (March 1819), 748. 65. NLS MS 4817, fols 31-43. For further discussion of these proofs, see section on ‘The “Third” and Subsequent Editions’. 66. NLS MS 30001, fol. 169 (‘I send you the three first sheets’); MS 4004, fol. 69v. 67. NLS MS 4004, fol. 73; ‘blanks’ refers to the disguised names in the ‘second’ edition. 68. NLS MS 4004, fols 75v-76r. 69. Letters, hitherto unpublished, Written by Members of Walter Scott’s Family to their old Governess, ed. by P. A. Wright Henderson (London, 1905), pp. 59-60. 70. NLS MS 4721, fol. 298: apparently applying to the description of Blackwood in Letter XLIV, midway through the second volume. Some allowance must be given for Blackwood having seen the text in manuscript, though proof sheets would probably have offered an easier means of communication. 71. NLS MS 4003, fol. 135. Lockhart’s following remark that ‘I think the Vignette will be a glorious finis indeed’ would seem to place the note near to the end of the production process. 72. NLS MS 4004, fol. 79. 73. NLS MS 4004, fol. 81. 74. NLS MS 4004, fol. 83. 75. See for example Robert Cadell to Archibald Constable on 5 December 1819: ‘Murray yesterday subscribed a Book in three Vols crown 8vo at £1 11s 6d!!! […] it is a Novel’ (NLS MS 323, fol. 107). Cadell, then Constable’s junior partner, bears no relationship to the London Cadells. 76. NLS MS 4004, fols 86v and 94.

64

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

77. Davies reported to Blackwood in his letter of 30 July 1819 that ‘we have had a proper number of the Lists of the Contents made ready for being sticked in the Nos of the most material of the next monthly publications’ (NLS MS 4004, fol. 86). These advertising leaves would normally be stripped out and thrown away when the separate monthly magazine issues were subsequently bound into volumes. 78. Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (August 1819), 113-20. 79. Athenian and Literary Gazette, 5 (15 September 1819), 475-76, and 6 (1 October and 15 November 1819), 40-41 and 156-57. 80. Scott Letters, V, 430. 81. NLS MS 4003, fols 146-47; MS 4004, fol. 194. 82. It is perhaps not clear whether this is referring to Lockhart’s University friend, John Williams, or his father, Vicar of Ystrad Meurig. The younger John Williams was teaching in Winchester between 1818 and 1820. 83. Anti-Jacobin Review, 56 (August 1819), 497-507 (pp. 504, 505). 84. British Review, 14 (November 1819), 438-58 (p. 439); Monthly Review, 90 (November 1819), 308-21 (p. 321). 85. In NLS MS 4889, fols 81-85. Though neither review was apparently published, from internal evidence the Tory review was clearly intended for a London magazine or review and the Whig one for a Glasgow newspaper, and they were evidently written after the appearance of the notice in The Scotsman of 17 July 1819, since the Tory review refers to its ‘beslavering’ the work in ‘sulky wrath’. 86. British Review, p. 440; Monthly Review, p. 312. 87. British Critic, new series, 12 (October 1819), 361-78 (p. 363). 88. Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review, 21 August 1819, pp. 215-18 (p. 217). 89. Monthly Magazine, 47 (November 1819), 641-52 (p. 641). 90. Kaleidoscope; or, Literary and Scientific Mirror, 14 September 1819, 38-39 (p. 38). 91. Monthly Review, pp. 320-21. In spite of the accusation of plagiarism, there is no direct verbal correlation between the two. 92. Monthly Review, p. 310; London Literary Gazette, 31 July 1819, 48184 (p. 481). 93. British Critic, p. 367. 94. British Critic, p. 374. 95. British Review, p. 458. 96. Anti-Jacobin Review, p. 507; British Review, p. 451.

INTRODUCTION

65

97. New British Lady’s Magazine, 3 (November 1819), 22-30 (p. 229). 98. Analectic Magazine, 14 (November 1819), 383-405 (p. 383). 99. Christian Spectator, 2 (April and May 1820), 199-206, 256-64 (p. 264). 100. Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine, 3 (April, May, August, and September 1820), 175-85, 232-36, 374-84, 418-32 (pp. 175, 427, 428). 101. The precise time of William Blackwood’s visit to London in the early autumn of 1819 is unclear, though it perhaps took place in the second half of September. William Davies expected him to have returned from London to Edinburgh by the time his letter to Blackwood of 30 September was written (NLS MS 4004, fol. 90). James Hogg, writing to Blackwood on 29 October 1819, indicates only that the visit may have been a last-minute decision on the publisher’s part: ‘The intelligence I got of your going to London was so short that I did not write knowing it could not reach you’: The Collected Letters of James Hogg, ed. by Gillian Hughes and others, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004-08), I, 418. 102. NLS MS 4004, fol. 90v. 103. NLS MS 4004, fol. 86v. 104. NLS MS 4003, fol. 131v. 105. Mary Gordon, ‘Christopher North’ A Memoir of John Wilson, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1862), I, 188-202. 106. NLS MS 4004, fol. 95v (30 October 1819). 107.‘Literary Report’, New Monthly Magazine, 12 (December 1819), 590; ‘Literary and Scientific Intelligence’, Edinburgh Monthly Review, 2 (December 1819), 733. 108. For this letter see National Records of Scotland, GD 463/6/1. 109. NLS MS 30301, fol. 93v. 110. For further information on the printers of the ‘third’ edition see the Scottish Book Trade Index (SBTI) at https://www.nls.uk/catalogues/ scottish-book-trade-index. 111. A partnership dating from 1821 is suggested by SBTI, but it is more likely that between 1818 and 1822 Balfour and Clarke were two firms involved together in various Edinburgh publications: see James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, ed. by P. D. Garside (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), p. lix. 112. Blackwood’s account of his dealings with Mrs Robertson is provided in a copy in the Blackwood Papers (NLS MS 30301, fol. 92) of a letter from his solicitor, H. Ellis, to hers, John Gibson, of 3 September 1819.

66

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

113. ‘The true and authentic Account of the Twelfth of August, 1819’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (August 1819), footnote on p. 602. 114. See the letter from H. Ellis to John Gibson of 3 September, NLS MS 30301, fol. 92. 115. See a draft among the Blackwood papers of Blackwood’s letter to Messrs James Ballantyne & Co of December 1819, in NLS MS 30001, fol. 167. Lockhart had previously written to John Smith Youngest on 31 August apprising him of the possibility of a prosecution: ‘I thought the thing had been entirely over particularly in consequence of a Note in the Magazine but have no doubt some low Whig blackguard is at the bottom of the whole affair & has recommended Glasgow in consequence of the liberality of the juries there on some late occasions’ (NLS MS 20349, fols 10-11). This might be a factor underlying the absence of John Smith and Son from the imprint of the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters. 116. Lang states that ‘Lockhart had to pay £400 of damages, without going into court’, but without giving his authority for the statement. In view of Blackwood’s statement in his solicitor’s letter of 3 September 1819 (NLS MS 30301, fol. 92) that ‘he holds himself alone as responsible for any thing contained in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, and that he declines to give up the Author’, it is at least possible that these damages were paid by the publisher and not by the author. 117. Davies to Blackwood, 20 November 1819, in NLS MS 4004, fol. 99. His mention of the ‘New Preface’ as probably drawing ‘some additional Notice from our Friend Coleridge’ makes its identity with the published ‘Postscript’ clear. 118. In Letters XL and XLVI. For the offending article see ‘Observations on Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (October 1817), 3-18, attributed to Wilson in Strout, p. 29. 119. For the three letters from Coleridge ‘To the Author of “Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk”’, undated but probably of November 1819, see The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71), IV, 966-74. The manuscript of the first of these letters from Coleridge survives in NLS MS 4937 fols 26-29 and is endorsed ‘Letter / S. T. Coleridge Esq / to / Dr Peter Morris’ and ‘Inserted in No. 42’, a sign that it was used as copy for ‘Letter to Peter Morris, M. D. on the Sorts and Uses of Literary Praise’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 7 (September 1820), 629-31. 120. NLS MS 4004, fol. 99.

INTRODUCTION

67

121. For an example of such an accusation see British Critic, new series, 12 (October 1819), 361-78 (p. 374). 122. A note from Lockhart to Blackwood in NLS MS 4004, fol. 192, signed ‘Peter Morris’ and accompanying his manuscript is unfortunately undated. This note is also interesting in that Lockhart mentions getting his manuscript transcribed, this reinforcing the possibility that the whole work was transcribed in order to hide the author’s identity, following a pattern used by Scott in the Waverley novels. 123. The equivalents in the final volume of the ‘third’ edition printed text are from pp. 355-64 (to ‘benediction of the accursed!’) for the first phase of composition, the second running from pp. 364-72 (‘But—to descend […] at the Beef-steak’), and the third from pp. 372-76 (‘Enough, however’ to the end). 124. An advertisement for the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 27 November 1819 notes that ‘THE POSTSCRIPT may be had separately, price 1s.’. 125. NLS MS 4004, fol. 95v. 126. NLS MS 4004, fols 97 and 37v. ‘Strand’ refers to the premises of Cadell & Davies at 141 Strand, London. 127. NLS MS 4004, fol. 102. 128. NLS MS 4004, fol. 103. 129. NLS MS 4004, fol. 60. 130. Davies to Blackwood, 14 and 15 December 1819, NLS MS 4004, fols 110v and 111v. 131. NLS MS 4004, fol. 116. 132. NLS MS 4005, fol. 53v. 133. Analectic Magazine, 14 (November 1819), 383-405 (p. 383). 134. This second American edition was published in New York and printed by James and John Harper for ‘W. B. Gilley, L. & F. Lockwood, A. T. Goodrich & Co., Collins & Hannay, and Elam Bliss’. While there is some overlap with the names given as publishers on the title-page of the first American edition there are also differences between the two. 135. For the reference to ‘Mr. Clerk’ proposing Henry Mackenzie’s health at the Burns dinner see p. 66; compare the British ‘third’ edition ‘Mr Cockburn’ at I, 121 (p. 76, l. 19). 136. Thomas Carlyle to John A. Carlyle, 11 November 1823, in The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle: Volume 2, (1822-1823), ed. by Charles Richard Sanders and others (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1970), p. 467. The letter is also available online at https://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu.

68

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

137. Scott to Lockhart, 28 July 1819, Scott Letters, V, 430-31. 138. John Gibson Lockhart, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (Edinburgh and London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1952), pp. xvii, xvi. 139. John Gibson Lockhart, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, ed. by William Ruddick (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1977), p. xxi. 140. Francis R. Hart, Lockhart as Romantic Biographer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971), pp. 46-75 (p. 49). 141. See ‘“A Fast Middle-Point, and Grappling-Place”’, in Duncan, Scott’s Shadow, pp. 58-65 (p. 59). 142. See Guy Mannering, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 2 (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 226, where the lawyer Pleydell hands the visiting Colonel Mannering introductions to David Hume, Adam Smith, and other leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. 143. In the case of the first volume the Contents are placed after the ‘Epistle Liminary’ as in the original editions. 144. Guy Mannering, ed. by Garside, p. 200.

Emendation List The emendations listed below indicate changes made in creating the text in the first volume of the present edition. They endeavour to correct printing errors in the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, while reflecting superior readings from manuscripts or printed sources such as the ‘second’ edition (designated ‘Ed2’). A number of conjectural readings have also been introduced, in an effort to improve consistency or accuracy, though without any attempt at overall standardisation and always with respect to contemporary usage. Additionally, Greek symbols have been silently regularised. Each item below is initially referred to by page and line number after which the corrected reading of the present edition appears: this is then followed by the reading and volume and page reference in the ‘third’ edition base text (designated ‘Ed3’). A brief explanation of the editorial reasoning behind the emendation is then provided when required: where no source is given for the emended reading this is editorial. In counting line numbers, titles and headers have been ignored. For a fuller account of editorial principles and practice, see Introduction, ‘The Present Text’, pp. 49-58. 10.7

and Mr Scott and Mr S— (Ed3, I, [xvi]) [Ed3 supplies the name in full elsewhere]

10.9

Mr Jeffrey of Mr Jeffrey (Ed3, I, [xvi]) [preceding dash already implies ‘of’]

12

[third item for Letter IX omitted] David Hume’s Portrait (Ed3, I, xix) [avoiding duplication of contents items for the same page]

12.28

Warren Hasting’s Face

Warren Hastings’ Face (Ed3, I, xix)

17.17-20 My evil genius, in the shape of an old drivelling turnpike-man, directed me to put up at the Black Bull, a crowded, noisy, shabby, uncomfortable inn, frequented by all manner of stage-coaches and their contents, as my ears were well taught before morning. Having devoured Having devoured (Ed3, I, 4) [References to the Black Bull Inn have been restored from Ed2, I, 4, as omitted from Ed3 only under duress—see Introduction, pp. 39-40] 17.21

breakfast, however, I began to feel breakfast, I began to feel (Ed3, I, 4) [‘however’ has been restored from Ed2, I, 4, as part of the preceding references to the Black Bull Inn, which were omitted from Ed3 only under duress—see Introduction, pp. 39-40]

70

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

21.19-20 P. S.—You will observe by the date of my letter, I have already left the Black Bull. I write P. S. I write (Ed3, I, 12) [References to the Black Bull Inn have been restored from Ed2, as omitted from Ed3 only under duress—see Introduction, pp. 39-40] 23.13

my baggage and horse my baggage and horses (Ed3, I, 15) [Morris has only one horse, named Scrub]

26.19

pale-faced pale faced (Ed3, I, 22) [Hyphen restored from Ed2]

26.22

broad brim broad brims (Ed3, I, 23) [A hat has only one brim]

29.1

projectings, recedings projectings recedings (Ed3, I, 27) [Comma restored from Ed2]

29.6

old clothes-men

old clothes’-men (Ed3, I, 27)

29.21

Heart and Stars

heart and Stars (Ed3, I, 28)

38.11

Hentzner

Henztner (Ed3, I, 46)

38.39

Miss ***** [space as in Ed2]

Miss***** (Ed3, I, 47)

41.25

Stewart Steuart (Ed3, I, 52) [Emendation to avoid potential confusion of persons]

43.18

parvo;” parvo; (Ed3, I, 56) [Ed2 punctuation restored]

45.15

Altisidora Altesidora (Ed3, I, 60) [as in source title by Scott: see Note for 45.14-15]

50.36

blue-stocking [Ed2 hyphen restored]

blue stocking (Ed3, I, 70)

51.17

dessert

desert (Ed3, I, 71)

52.3

bearings. It [as in Ed2]

bearings, It (Ed3, I, 73)

52.28

so fortunate [Ed2 reading restored]

so unfortunate (Ed3, I, 74)

55.16

‘thick […] Vallambrosa,’ “thick […] Vallambrosa,” (Ed3, I, 79) [standardisation for single speech marks for a speech within a speech]

55.21

place,” says he, “the

place, says he, the (Ed3, I, 80)

55.27

part,” he concludes. “I

part, he concludes. I (Ed3, I, 80)

55.35

Tory

tory (Ed3, I, 80)

62.1

features are features, are (Ed3, I, 94) [disruptive comma removed; as in Ed2]

EMENDATION LIST

71

63.24

aberrations

66.7

Montauban Montalban (Ed3, I, 101) [correction to accurate name in Mackenzie’s novel, possibly misread in the transmission of Lockhart’s MS]

66.35

Time time (Ed3, I, 103) [as in Ed2: presentation of abstract noun]

74.5

Robert Burns [as in Ed2]

76.7

military medical (Ed3, I, 120) [reflecting actual career of J. G. Burns: see Note for 76.6]

78.8

parties, and systems parties and systems (Ed3, I, 125) [as in Ed2: items in a list]

82.26

speaker, [as in Ed2]

86.16

one of One of (Ed3, I, 141) [sentence continues after inset quotation]

86.27

jug-party [as in Ed2]

86.32

may, now may now (Ed3, I, 142) [as in Ed2, improving an otherwise awkward reading]

91.40

gentlemen [as in Ed2]

gentleman (Ed3, I, 152)

100.9

Aristotle. And [as in Ed2]

Aristotle, And (Ed3, I, 170)

106.31 psychology

abberrations (Ed3, I, 97)

Roburt Burns (Ed3, I, 116)

speaker. (Ed3, I, 134)

jug party (Ed3, I, 142)

psycology (Ed3, I, 183)

114.13 us, the us; the (Ed3, I, 196) [grammar dictates one uninterrupted sentence here] 118.20 Spirit of the Place spirit of the Place (Ed3, I, 205) [as in Ed2: presentation of an abstract noun] 131.3

Esq.;” [as in Ed2]

Esq.; (Ed3, I, 230)

131.23 Brunck’s Brunk’s (Ed3, I, 231) [correction of proper name; as in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and agreeing with source poem] 132.23 Muse muse (Ed3, I, 233) [as in Ed2 and as in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, also agreeing with source poem] 134.10 Smollett’s

Smollet’s (Ed3, I, 235)

72

135.4

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

word lineage word lineage (Ed3, I, 237) [restoring original emphasis, as in Ed2]

136.22 Humphry Humphrey (Ed3, I, 239) [‘Humphry’ in title of Smollett work] 137.34-35 undertaking.* […] confer the undertaking. […] confer the* (Ed3, I, 242) [realigning asterisk placement in text to suit footnote] 141.35 Kœnigsberg Kœningsberg (Ed3, I, 251) [removing incorrect second ‘n’ in place name] 151.8

which, of old [as in Ed2]

161.19 proportion [as in Ed2]

which of old (Ed3, I, 269) porportion (Ed3, I, 290)

166.37 conversazione converzatione (Ed3, I, 301) [to correct Italian, and as at Ed3, I, 306] 168.34 Lady Buchan’s nephew Lady B—’s nephew (Ed3, I, 305) [Ed3 has ‘Lord Buchan’ nearby, and he mentions his wife] 170.13 ‘as white as cream?’ “as white as cream?” (Ed3, I, 309) [standardisation, adding closing single speech marks for a speech within a speech] 170.16-17 ‘Twin … Crescent-Moon’.” “Twin … Crescent-Moon.” (Ed3, I, 309) [standardisation, adding closing single speech marks for a speech within a speech] 176.19 nasi adunci nasi adunsi (Ed3, I, 322) [restoring correct Latin: as in Ed2] 177.27 warm-hearted [as in Ed2]

warm hearted (Ed3, I, 325)

182.35 Goethe Göethe (Ed3, I, 335) [conforming to predominant rendition of proper name in Ed3: see, for instance, I, 54] 187.7

Statue of Charles II King Charles II (Ed3, II, [v]) [running-head description is more appropriate]

190.1

Borthwick Castle Borthwick castle (Ed3, II, viii) [restoring Ed2 capitalisation]

194.12 majestic [as in Ed2]

majectic (Ed3, II, 10)

195.19 wherever

where-[eol]-ever (Ed3, II, 13)

EMENDATION LIST

73

203.15 Lord Hermand Lord H— (Ed3, II, 28) [later description allows for identification here] 203.16 Mr Clerk Mr C— (Ed3, II, 28) [later description allows for identification here] 213.12 land should land, should (Ed3, II, 47) [as in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine] 221.38-39 that high cast which the high cast, which (Ed3, II, 63) [as in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine] 230.30 the πιστις

the πισις (Ed3, II, 78)

230.31 the πιστις

the πισις (Ed3, II, 78)

234.10-11 Mr Jeffrey’s Mr J—’s (Ed3, II, 85) [context aids identification] 239.25-26 [two lines of asterisks] [no lines of asterisks] (Ed3, II, 96) [asterisks in Ed2 probably cut in Ed3 due to reduced space from preceding insertion] 239.27 P. M. [no end-signature] (Ed3, II, 96) [end-signature in Ed2 probably cut in Ed3 due to reduced space from preceding insertion] 249.26 repetition [as in Ed2]

repetitions (Ed3, II, 115)

251.4-5 man./ &c. &c. in a strain equally delectable. man./ &c. (Ed3, II, 117) [as in Ed2: truncation in Ed3 probably due to lack of space at foot of page] 262.39 Woodvil Woodville (Ed3, II, 142) [‘Woodvil’ in title of Charles Lamb work] 263.1

Woodvil Woodville (Ed3, II, 142) [‘Woodvil’ in title of Charles Lamb work]

266.15 British Review British review (Ed3, II, 149) [as in in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and Ed2] 270.13 Goethe Göethe (Ed3, II, 157) [conforming to predominant rendition of proper name in Ed3; see, for instance, I, 54] 284.10 threshold

thresh-[eol]hold (Ed3, II, 186)

295.38 soi-disant

soi-disante (Ed3, II, 209)

297.34 Dante

Danté (Ed3, II, 213)

300.8

Fichté (Ed3, II, 218)

Fichte

74

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

306.15 neither.” [as in Ed2]

neither. (Ed3, II, 233)

306.20 Stewart Steuart (Ed3, II, 233) [usual form of engraver’s name as given in Ed3 at I, xiii and on his engravings] 312.9

marriage marriages (Ed3, II, 243) [as in Edinburgh Weekly Journal]

312.28 race, as race as (Ed3, II, 244) [as in Edinburgh Weekly Journal] 313.27 manner manners (Ed3, II, 246) [as in Edinburgh Weekly Journal] 319.20 atelier 325.6

attelier (Ed3, II, 258)

Correggio Coreggio (Ed3, II, 271) [correct spelling at Ed3, I, 31 and III, 196]

336.28 Mr Scott Mr S— (Ed3, II, 294) [Scott otherwise named in full in Ed3, and identifiable from following account of Abbotsford] 350.34 ensenzie enzenzie (Ed3, II, 322) [as in source poem by Scott] 355.3 355.8

honourable impious.” [as in Ed2]

358.18 placed [as in Ed2]

hono[eol]rable (Ed3, II, 330) impious. (Ed3, II, 331) placid (Ed3, II, 338)

358.30 Goethe’s Göethe’s (Ed3, II, 338) [conforming to predominant rendition of proper name in Ed3; see, for instance, I, 54] 360.12 exaggeration [as in Ed2]

exaggerations (Ed3, II, 342)

373.15 The Leslie Controversy Leslie’s Controversy (Ed3, III, [v]) [running-head description is more appropriate to text] 375

[first item for Letter LXVI omitted] Glasgow (Ed3, III, vii) [avoiding duplication of contents items]

375.2

Glasgow Royal Infirmary [no equivalent item] (Ed3, III, vii) [useful addition from running-heads]

375.18 Advice to Potts Old Potts (Ed3, III, viii) [running-head description is more appropriate to text]

EMENDATION LIST

75

376.7-10 Pictures / Vandykes / Poussin / Caracci’s Magdalen Pictures (Ed3, III, ix) [running-heads provide detailed description similar to list for Allan’s pictures in Ed3, II, vii] 378.10 look-out [as in Ed2]

look out (Ed3, III, 5)

378.40 so gude so good (Ed3, III, 7) [Scots restored from Ed2 for speaker using ‘broadest Scots dialect’] 379.2

“Ye would “You would (Ed3, III, 7) [Scots restored from Ed2 for speaker using ‘broadest Scots dialect’]

381.18 Pius the Seventh [See Note for 381.18]

Pius the Sixth (Ed3, III, 11)

382.19 carrotty [as in Ed2]

carotty (Ed3, III, 14)

382.28 scrivener [as in Ed2]

scriviner (Ed3, III, 14)

383.32 every point [as in Ed2]

ever point (Ed3, III, 16)

387.14 waistcoats [as in Ed2]

waitcoats (Ed3, III, 24)

390.21 ordinary [as in Ed2]

oridinary (Ed3, III, 31)

391.32 therefore profess therefore, profess (Ed3, III, 34) [comma removed to aid flow; as in Ed2] 399.16 “the nursing [as in Ed2]

the nursing (Ed3, III, 52)

401.11 side-table [as in Ed2]

side table (Ed3, III, 55)

404.7

wont (Ed3, III, 61)

won’t

405.14 Church of Scotland

church of Scotland (Ed3, III, 64)

409.1

church of Scotland (Ed3, III, 71)

Church of Scotland

411.29 echoes echos (Ed3, III, 77) [for conformity with other uses, as ‘echoes’] 415.7

worldly [as in Ed2]

418.15-16 well known

wordly (Ed3, III, 85) well know (Ed3, III, 91)

419.19 —Squilla . . . . Squilla (Ed3, III, 93) [Ed3 initial omissions in quotation generally signified by a dash]

76

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

425.10 sagacious-looking person [as in Ed2]

sagacious looking-person (Ed3, III, 103)

430.8

nobility make nobility, make (Ed3, III, 114) [as in Ed2: comma is disruptive]

431.4

Schneiders [as in Ed2]

431.30 pavé [as in Ed2]

Shneiders (Ed3, III, 116) pave (Ed3, III, 117)

434.35 Mr McNair Mr M— (Ed3, III, 123) [mention of his public post enables identification: see Note for 434.35] 437.22 eyes [as in Ed2]

eys (Ed3, III, 128)

438.23 Gillies’s poetry G—’s poetry (Ed3, III, 131) [correction of oversight in supplying full proper names] 439.1

Holycot Mr G—’s villa (Ed3, III, 131) [correction of oversight in supplying full proper names: ‘Mr G—’s villa’ in Ed2 has previously been ‘Holycot’ at Ed3, III, 120, 123]

439.7

his Paradise [as in Ed2]

442.2

Lady Johnes Lady Jones (Ed3, III, 138) [spelling altered for conformity elsewhere]

442.27 conformation [as in Ed2]

his paradise (Ed3, III, 131)

confirmation (Ed3, III, 139)

harpsichord harpischord (Ed3, III, 141) [as in Ed2] 447.25 the Old Church the old Church (Ed3, III, 147) [as in Ed2: no church other than the cathedral is indicated]

443.6

448.26 the Major Mr H— (Ed3, III, 149) [restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56] 449.37 The Major Mr H— (Ed3, III, 152) [restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56] 450.9

the Major Mr H— Ed3, III, 153) [restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56]

450.23-24 this kinsmanship his kinsmanship (Ed3, III, 154) [as in Mitchell Library MS fragment]

EMENDATION LIST

77

450.33 the Major Mr H— (Ed3, III, 154) [as in Mitchell Library MS fragment: restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56] 451.2

the Major Mr H— (Ed3, III, 155) [restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56]

452.5

cemetery [as in Ed2]

cemetry (Ed3, III, 156)

457.12 Domherr Dommherr (Ed3, III, 167) [correction of the German, which originates in der Dom, the cathedral] 457.33 the Major Mr H— (Ed3, III, 168) [restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56] 457.35 the Major H— (Ed3, III, 168) [restoring Lockhart’s original and preferred name: see Introduction, pp. 55-56] 457.37 promise [as in Ed2]

promised (Ed3, III, 169)

459.2-3 Mr P—’s Mr —’s (Ed3, III, 171) [previously ‘Mr P—’ at Ed3, III, 168, and here named by his wife who has no reason to further obscure his identity] 464.28 “Quid hoc

Quid hoc (Ed3, III, 183)

465 footnote Ecclus. xix. 29

Eccles. xiv. 29 (Ed3, III, 184n)

474.9

this Green this green (Ed3, III, 202) [as in Edinburgh University Library MS fragment]

474.20 the Green the green (Ed3, III, 203) [as in Edinburgh University Library MS fragment] 476.4

town. I [as in Ed2]

477.24 it’s natural [as in Ed2]

town, I (Ed3, III, 207) its natural (Ed3, III, 210)

477.37 that word the word (Ed3, III, 210) [as in NLS fragment, MS 20437] 477.38 yet follow yet understand (Ed3, III, 210-11) [as in NLS fragment, MS 20437] 478.27-28 will no be will be no (Ed3, III, 212) [as in Ed2: Scots probably lost through slippage]

78

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

479.38 it’s only [as in Ed2]

its only (Ed3, III, 215)

483.19 Correggios Corregios (Ed3, III, 222) [correct spelling at Ed3, I, 31 and III, 196] 486.36 Hoby Hobby (Ed3, III, 229) [correct spelling for this person: as in Ed2] 487.21 pendulum pendulums (Ed3, III, 231) [a clock has only one such regulatory mechanism] 487.30 sporting-paraphernalia

sporting-parepharnalia (Ed3, III, 231)

487.39 bumkin [as in Ed2]

bumbkin (Ed3, III, 232)

490.11 thorough-bred [as in Ed2]

thorough bred (Ed3, III, 237)

498.32 at all at [eol] at all (Ed3, III, 256) [removing eol duplication] 498.36 in our in [eol] in our (Ed3, III, 256) [removing eol duplication] 509.18 of weapons

of his weapons (Ed3, III, 273)

510.33 tolerance [as in Ed2]

intolerance (Ed3, III, 276)

511.13 cannot [as in Ed2]

connot (Ed3, III, 277)

513.19 South-sea-islander South-sea islander (Ed3, III, 282) [as in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and Ed2] 520.27 Thrilled Thrill (Ed3, III, 297) [as in Ed2, matching grammar and reflecting contemporary practice, even though Ed3 reflects the reading of the Scott source poem. Possibly Lockhart corrected over-hastily for Ed3, ignoring the syntax.] 521.8

hunters’ hunter’s (Ed3, III, 298) [as in Ed2, which reflects source poem]

521.26 themselves, at themselves at (Ed3, III, 299) [reconnecting punctuation; as in Ed2] 523.17 take place [as in Ed2]

takes place (Ed3, III, 302)

525.28 Sacraments—or, [Ed2 ‘sacraments—or,’]

Sacraments—, or, (Ed3, III, 306)

EMENDATION LIST

526.11 peregrinatio simplex [correction of Latin]

79

peregratio simplex (Ed3, III, 308)

527.37 stockings, and shoes stockings and shoes (Ed3, III, 311) [as in Ed2, since Ed3 could suggest the shoes were also white] 529.14 staid superintenders [as in Ed2]

said superintenders (Ed3, III, 314)

537.10 broad [as in Ed2]

bread (Ed3, III, 331)

539.1

Sir — — Sir— — (Ed3, III, 334) [space required between title and implied forename of this person, as in Ed2]

539.25 rudenesses [as in Ed2]

rudeness (Ed3, III, 336)

541.24 paraphernalia

parepharnalia (Ed3, III, 340)

544.32 Mathews Matthews (Ed3, III, 347) [correct spelling of this name, as at Ed3, II, 341] 547.1

Ch’ agli Ch’ alli (Ed3, III, 353) [as in pamphlet ‘Postscript’]

547.1

uomini sien crudi nomini sien crudeli (Ed3, III, 353) [as in pamphlet ‘Postscript’]

553.27 undisputed possession undisturbed possession (Ed3, III, 365) [restoration from NLS MS; changed by printer in proof] 554.22 my reader my readers (Ed3, III, 367) [restoration from NLS MS; changed by printer in proof] 556.12 “purest ray serene” purest ray serene (Ed3, III, 371) [quotation, see Note for 556.12: restoration from NLS MS; changed by printer in proof]

Hyphenation List The following list is of ‘hard’ end-of-line hyphens, that is not ‘soft’ ones produced incidentally in the present typesetting of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, but rather those which should remain firm in whatever format the text is produced and ought therefore to be retained in making quotations. Each entry is referred to by page and line number in the present edition; in counting line numbers, titles and headers have been ignored. 9 footnote 25.40 35.7 40.12 44.13 53.24 61.12 62.37 63.5 66.8 69.25 95.34 103.9 103.16 103.30 110.34 115.28 129.8 129.11 136.2 151.21 151.23 160.24 162.37 167.18 168.34 170.14 170.20 172.21 173.30 175.13

printing-press hot-iron common-place hunch-backed active-looking Château-Margout seer-like cud-chewing eye-brows well-remembered old-fashioned index-making debating-club well-thriven over-worked wall-flowers over-excitement re-echoed pre-eminence Ben-Nevis half-a-crown draught-porter scape-goats fore-part well-cut aide-de-camp hard-hearted fishing-flies Blue-Stocking fellow-citizens Green-room

175.23 177.25 182.5 192.11 192.26 195.26 203.10 219.2 221.26 233.23 235.15 236.22 246.29 252.25 253.14 267.25 267.33 270.26 275.36 276.1 277.7 278.29 279.18 280.9 282.12 288.27 301.20 306.12 313.28 315.25 318.1

clap-trap Common-council-man Prince’s-Street common-places fellow-citizens ill-conceived half-dozen Parliament-House every-day Jury-Court side-bar rudely-fashioned mantle-piece Outer-House Parliament-House self-satisfied full-grown title-page drawer-fulls title-page half-an-hour jolly-looking blue-stockings blue-stocking self-denying snuff-box self-love technico-Caledonian Merry-Making merchant-ship Press-Gang

HYPHENATION LIST

321.39 324.36 333.15 335.1 339.2 342.3 343.13 348.4 349.24 354.32 355.30 358.25 362.11 370.15 382.31 382.33 383.8 383.10 385.16 387.40 392.29 392.34 397.10 397.11 398.4 403.7 412.39 423.22 430.39 430.40 431.24 441.29 443.2

week-day would-be-classical moss-grown landscape-painting coats-of-arms Mac-Ivor dwelling-place black-letter Court-Mount flower-garden cast-maker gallant-looking hill-tops fac-similes law-adviser single-breasted presence-room centre-star High-Street tooth-ache nick-names party-strife half-humble orange-tawney would-be house-keeper church-going Anti-burghers well-known breeches-maker dress-boxes good-humoured Chateau-Margout

450.3 450.13 451.1 452.13 456.39 457.26 458.38 460.6 462.19 463.8 463.27 464.38 477.1 487.38 489.9 491.29 492.30 497.11 504.22 512.16 513.20 518.25 525.32 526.21 527.7 527.36 529.3 529.11 551.23 552.32 554.3 557.35

81

money-getters non-chalance Toe-ocracy stone-work Kirk-in-the-field mid-way blue-stocking net-work Senate-House mob-covered class-rooms sad-looking self-important harvest-home mantle-piece nick-name oyster-house too-exclusive pocket-handkerchief fille-de-joie Anti-christ mansion-houses nick-name top-knots house-wife snow-white empty-handed half-pence super-human safe-conduct letter-writers self-love

Explanatory Notes In the Explanatory Notes that follow, page references to the present edition are followed by the line number(s) in which the text appears; for example, 1.26 refers to page 1, line 26. In counting line numbers, titles and headers have been ignored. These Notes attempt to identify quotations, geographical locations, historical contexts, individual personages, and other references that might not be familiar to the reader. They also explain phrases and single words where the meaning is now obscure or where guidance might otherwise be required. There is no individual Glossary. Textual matters are largely dealt with in the Introduction, and individual emendations are provided in a separate List. Quotations from the Bible are normally from the Authorised King James Version, the translation most familiar to Lockhart and his contemporaries, and references to Shakespeare are from The Complete Works, ed. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). The Notes are also greatly indebted to the following resources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionaries of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk), and Loeb Classical Library (www.loebclassics.com). References to Classical texts generally relate to the Loeb editions. The following abbreviations are used in the Explanatory Notes: Child The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. by Francis H. Child, 5 vols (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882-98). EEWN The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, 30 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993-2012). EEWSP The Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott’s Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018-). Glasgow Delineated Glasgow Delineated; in its Institutions, Manufactures, and Commerce, 2nd edn (Glasgow, 1826). Kinsley The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. by James Kinley, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). References are by item number. Lang Andrew Lang, The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, 2 vols (London, 1897). Life of Scott J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 7 vols (Edinburgh, 1837-38). Minstrelsy Walter Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1803). NLS National Library of Scotland.

84

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

ODEP The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd edn, ed. by William George Smith and F. P. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Scott Letters The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. by H. J. C. Grierson and others, 12 vols (London, 1932-37). Strout Alan Lang Strout, A Bibliography of Articles in Blackwood’s Magazine: Volumes 1 through XVIII, 1817-1825 (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Technological College Library, 1959). VOLUME ONE Dedication (5 heading) BISHOP OF ST DAVIDS Thomas Burgess (1756-1837, ODNB), appointed bishop of St Davids Cathedral, St Davids, Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1803. An English author and philosopher, he produced over a hundred publications, as well as developing an interest in Welsh culture and founding St David’s College in Lampeter. (5 end-signature) PENSHARPE-HALL, / ABERYSTWITH An apparently fictional location, serving to introduce the writer’s ‘sharp pen’. Epistle Liminary (7 heading) MR DAVIES William Davies (d. 1820, ODNB), a bookseller, was assistant to the elder Thomas Cadell (1742-1802, ODNB) and from 1793 partner to his son, also Thomas Cadell (1773-1836, ODNB), the business trading as Cadell & Davies, whose headquarters were at 141 Strand, London. He and his wife Jessy had eight children. Davies’s Welsh name obviously reinforces the assumed authorship of Peter’s Letters by a Welshman, but Davies’s correspondence with William Blackwood in 1819 suggests that the Epistle Liminary may have been addressed to him because he and his wife took a particularly close interest in the work (see Introduction, pp. 20-22, 27-28). Although objecting to the mention of his wife in the Epistle, Davies expressed his gratitude in his letter to Blackwood of 20 July 1819 for ‘so handsome a compliment’ (NLS MS 4004, fol. 83v). (7.12-13) rashness of a certain publication An allusion to the pretended review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine of a suppositious first edition of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, purportedly published in Aberystwyth, and which gives the author’s name as Dr Morris: see Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 612-21 (pp. 613-14); also Introduction, pp. 1418. (7.19-20) Mr William Blackwood, of Edinburgh William Blackwood (17761834, ODNB) became the Edinburgh agent of London publisher John Murray in 1811, and in 1816 opened fresh premises at 17 Princes Street in Edinburgh, beginning an Edinburgh Monthly Magazine in April 1817, the title of which

EXPLANATORY NOTES

85

was altered to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in October that year. He was the chief publisher of Peter’s Letters, in partnership with Cadell & Davies of London, who are promoted here as the chief publishers, partly presumably to reinforce the supposed Welsh origins of the work. (8.4) Mr James Ballantyne James Ballantyne (1772-1833, ODNB) had set up in Edinburgh as a printer in November 1802 at Abbey Hill as ‘The Border Press’; eventually moving in 1805 to Paul’s Work at the North Back of the Canongate, he printed the works of Walter Scott, among others, and in April 1817 had acquired proprietorship of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal. He printed the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters for Blackwood, but clearly Blackwood required the ‘third’ edition to be produced in a hurry since on 9 October 1819 he offered Ballantyne only one volume to print, ‘in three weeks from Monday next when it could be put into his hands’ (NLS MS 30301, fol. 93v). In the event the three volumes of the ‘third’ edition were allocated elsewhere, each to a different printer: see Introduction, pp. 37-38. (8.8) The First Edition A suppositious edition reviewed in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February and March 1819), 612-21 and 745-52. The details are footnoted there (p. 612) as ‘Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk; being the Substance of some familiar Communications concerning the present State of Scotland, written during a late Visit to that Country. Aberystwith. 1819’, while subsequent mentions state that the work consists of ‘two very amusing volumes’ (p. 613) and that the printer was ‘Mr Reece, who is the very Ballantyne of Aberystwith’ (p. 614). A William Rees is listed by the British Book Trade Index as travelling in Wales in 1817, but possibly the name echoes that of the well-known Welsh publisher Owen Rees (1770-1837, ODNB) of the Longmans firm. (8.16) Mr Wastle Further details of this fictitious person are given subsequently in Peter’s Letters. He is William Wastle of Wastle with a family estate in Berwickshire and an Edinburgh house in the Lawnmarket of the Old Town, and was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Oxford, which he left abruptly without taking a degree. ‘William Wastle’ was a signature used for articles in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine by Lockhart, but also sometimes by others. Wastle features in a traditional Scottish children’s rhyme that is a variant of ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, and there is also a song by Burns beginning ‘Willie Wastle dwalls on Tweed’ (Kinsley 373). (8.25) rich portfolio Several of the engraved portraits included in Peter’s Letters were initialled ‘P. M.’ and supposedly based on drawings made by Morris: for details see ‘The Engravings’, pp. 356-57. (8.30-31) Man of Feeling Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831, ODNB), essayist and novelist, author of The Man of Feeling (1771). (8.31) Mr Scott The poet and novelist Walter Scott (1771-1832, ODNB), who was to become Lockhart’s father-in-law in 1820.

86

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

(8.31) Mr Jeffrey Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850, ODNB), leading Scottish advocate and editor of the Edinburgh Review. (8.31) Mr Alison Archibald Alison (1757-1839, ODNB), Scottish episcopal clergyman and writer on aesthetics. (8.31) Dr Chalmers Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847, ODNB), Glasgow-based minister of the Church of Scotland and social reformer. (8.37) Mrs Davies Jessy Davies (1777/8-1854), wife of William Davies (see Note for 7 heading). The couple had eight children. (9.1) Mr Lizars William Home Lizars (1788-1859, ODNB), Scottish painter and engraver, who did indeed engrave many of the plates for illustrations of Peter’s Letters. (9.4) Mr Stewart The first independent plate produced by the engraver James Stewart (1791-1863, ODNB) was from William Allan’s painting Tartar Robbers Dividing the Spoil (see notes to 306.17 and 306.17-18), this being succeeded by several others also from works by Allan. He engraved several plates for illustrations to Peter’s Letters, including the portraits of Mr Playfair, Mr Clerk, and Mr Wilson. (9.5) Sir Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820, ODNB), prominent naturalist and patron of science. (9.6) new invention of Mr Lizars The frontispiece portrait of Peter Morris for Peter’s Letters is described as ‘Engraved in alto relievo by W. Lizars’. For an account of this new process and early reactions to it, see ‘The Engravings’, p. 358. (9.8) Albert Durer Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), print-maker, painter, and art theorist of the German Renaissance. (9.15-16) before the rising of Parliament In 1819 the British Parliament was in session from 14 January to 13 July, before the summer recess. The ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters was advertised for publication in Edinburgh ‘On Wednesday the 14th July’ in the Caledonian Mercury of 10 July 1819, and as ‘This day is published’ in the same newspaper for 17 July. (9.21) my good friend, Mr Cadell Davies’s business partner, for whom see Note for 7 heading. (9.21-22) tanto melius So much the better (Latin). (9.26) giving you Peter’s Letters from Italy and Germany Perhaps a halfserious intention, since Lockhart knew both Italian and German, and had undertaken a tour in Germany in 1817 sponsored by the publisher William Blackwood during which he had met Goethe and other German writers, and which had led to his first publication, a translation of Schlegel’s Lectures on the History of Literature (2 vols, 1818).

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(9 footnote) portrait of Dr Morris This faced the title-page to the first volume of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, where the plate notes ‘Painted by John Watson’ and ‘Engraved in alto relievo by W. Lizars’. List of Embellishments (10.10) alter et idem Another of the same (Latin). List of Contents (11.7) of that Ilk In Scotland ‘of that ilk’ is properly used when a person’s name is the same as that of their estate; it also distinguishes the main branch of a family from that of the cadet lines. (13.25) Ethical Class-room An alternative name for the Moral Philosophy Class at the University of Edinburgh. Letter I (17 heading) REV. DAVID WILLIAMS Williams is a common Welsh surname. Lockhart may have had in mind the name of his Oxford friend John Williams (1792-1858, ODNB), son of the Vicar of Ystrad Meurig, and currently a schoolmaster in Winchester. Scott subsequently committed his son Charles to Williams’s tutelage at Lockhart’s recommendation. (17.1) OMAN’S HOTEL Charles Oman (d. 1825) was a prominent hotelier in Edinburgh. Oman’s Tavern Hotel at West Register Street was supplemented by his purchase of one of the grandest New Town houses, 6 Charlotte Square, in 1816 for use as another hotel. He also leased the Waterloo Hotel, Waterloo Place that year. Morris seems to have been envisaged as staying at the West Register Street establishment. (17.1) MARCH 5 No year is given for Morris’s tour, though he clearly arrives in Edinburgh ‘last night’ (4 March), while the country sacrament that concludes the work takes place at ‘Midsummer’ (p. 534). Many of the reported historical events date to the spring of 1819, a date hardly compatible with the supposed publication of the first edition in Aberystwyth sufficiently early for it to be reviewed in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in February and March 1819. (17.3) Liverpool Port in northwest England on the River Mersey, and about 100 miles northeast from the coastal market town of Morris’s home near Aberystwyth. Possibly this initial stage of the journey was in fact undertaken by sea. (17.4) Musselburgh A town on the coast of the Firth of Forth, about 6 miles east of Edinburgh. (17.4-7) Scrub […] John Morris’s horse and his servant, respectively. The servant’s full name is given as John Evans at 515.18.

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(17.9) farrier’s shop That of a smith who shoes horses, or more generally treats their ailments. (17.12) shandrydan A light two-wheeled cart, or a chaise with a hood. (17.14-15) gig […] chariot A gig is a light, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage, while a chariot, sometimes referring to a light four-wheeled carriage with back seats only, presumably here alludes to the seating compartment. (17.16) quizzing Mocking or making fun of a person or thing (slang). (17.16) Hobby A favourite pursuit or obsession that occupies one’s attention, taken from ‘hobby-horse’. (17.17) turnpike-man The man employed to collect a fee at a toll-gate from those travelling on an improved main road maintained by these fees. (17.18) Black Bull The Black Bull Inn was situated on Leith Street and ‘the last building proper to Edinburgh’, from and whence the London coaches started: see Mary Cosh, Edinburgh: The Golden Age (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 2003), pp. 310-11. In the ‘third’ edition the sentence beginning ‘My evil genius’ was omitted, this coming as a result of a legal action threatened by the proprietors of the Black Bull, for which see Introduction, pp. 39-40. (18.8-9) White Horse, Fetter-lane An inn present by 1766 at 90 Fetter Lane in Holborn in London, which was also known as the Oxford House since it was the starting-point for stage-coaches to Oxford. (18.13) Fleet-Street One of the oldest roads in London outside the original City of London, running eastwards from Temple Bar and known for its importance to the printing trade. (18.14) Temple-Bar Standing across Fleet Street, a principal ceremonial entrance to the City of London. It was located on the route from the Tower of London to Westminster. The arched gateway, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was removed in 1878. (18.15-16) very stones […] brave old Balmerino Arthur Elphinstone, 6th Lord Balmerino (1688-1746, ODNB ), a Jacobite officer who unwisely gave himself up after the battle of Culloden, was tried for treason, condemned and executed on Tower Hill on 18 August 1746. The dignity of his bearing and his integrity were widely admired. (18.17) the Strand A major London thoroughfare in Westminster, running approximately three-quarters of a mile from Trafalgar Square eastwards to Temple Bar. (18.20) Charing Cross London junction where six roads meet to the east of Trafalgar Square, named for the medieval Eleanor Cross taken down by order of Parliament in 1647. (18.21) statue of the Martyr An equestrian statue of Charles I, designed by the sculptor Hubert Le Sueur (c. 1580-c. 1658, ODNB) and probably cast in

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1633, was subsequently erected at Charing Cross in 1675. Charles had been accorded the status of a martyr after his execution in 1649. (18.21) Whitehall Once the site of an extensive royal palace, most of which (apart from the Royal Banqueting House of 1622 designed by Inigo Jones) was destroyed by fire in 1698. Whitehall is now the name of a road running south towards Parliament Square, Westminster, which contains many government offices. Whitehall is also sometimes used to denote government administration itself. (18.21-22) Westminster Abbey Church and palace originally founded by Edward the Confessor in the 1040s, and rebuilt in grand Gothic style under Henry III in the mid-thirteenth century; traditionally where English and British monarchs have been crowned. (19.2-3) the poet […] speaks of “all that mighty heart!” See the closing line of William Wordsworth’s sonnet ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’, dated to 3 September 1802 and first published in 1807. For Wordsworth himself, see Note for 56.27. (20.4) once contained a lake The North Loch, a natural defence to the Old Town of Edinburgh to the north, was drained for the contruction of the North Bridge, built between 1763 and 1772. (20.5) huge earthen mound The Mound in Edinburgh was built of spoil from the foundations of the buildings of the New Town and made a passage from Princes Street up to the Lawnmarket at the head of the High Street in the Old Town. (20.6) magnificent bridge of three arches The North Bridge, joining the Old Town with the east end of Princes Street, rose 95 feet above the valley and was designed by William Mylne, the foundation stone being laid in 1763. (20.9) Arthur’s Seat A once-volcanic hill east of Edinburgh city centre about one mile from Edinburgh Castle, with a height of 822 feet. (20.11) Calton Hill Just beyond the eastern end of Princes Street, upon which several iconic monuments were built. (20.15) circled all round with spacious gravelled walks The first circulatory pleasure walk was built around Calton Hill in 1775, after the Council had received petitions from David Hume and others. (20.20) New Town A large Georgian city development created to the north of the Old Town of Edinburgh, the first phase of which, begun in 1767, consisted of a grid-pattern of streets of self-contained terraced houses. The New Town then spread northwards on the slope down towards Leith. (20.23) Leith Burgh serving as a port to Edinburgh, situated to the north at the mouth of the Water of Leith on the coast of the Firth of Forth. (20.27) rock of the Bass An island in the outer part of the Firth of Forth, situated about a mile offshore and three miles northeast of North Berwick.

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(20.29) Holyrood An area to the east of the Old Town of Edinburgh at the foot of the Canongate and featuring the royal park, Holyrood Palace, and the ruins of Holyrood Abbey founded by David I of Scotland. (20.31) Castle rock The volcanic plug in the centre of Edinburgh upon which Edinburgh Castle sits, dominating the surrounding area. (20.33) concentrated “walled city,” Various defensive walls were built for the old city of Edinburgh from the twelfth century onwards, these including the mid-fifteenth century King’s Wall, the Flodden Wall following the national defeat of 1513, and the early seventeenth-century Telfer Wall. Various ports or gates gave entrance to the city, but demolition of the walls began soon after 1745. Since the expansion of the extent of the Old Town was limited by the city walls, the buildings inside their bounds were unusually high, tenements being composed occasionally of as many as nine or ten storeys. (21.3) Prince’s Street The southernmost street of Edinburgh’s New Town, running east to west for about a mile, the construction of which began around 1770. Built up on one side it was open on the other, offering a splendid view of the neighbouring Old Town and Edinburgh Castle, and it became a popular promenade. (21.13-14) semel et simul Once and together; one and the same (Latin). (21.14) Sir John Carr The travel writer Sir John Carr (1772-1832, ODNB) published Caledonian Sketches in 1808, which was wittily reviewed by Walter Scott in the Quarterly Review for February 1809 (I, 178-93). (21.14) our dear countryman Mr Pennant Thomas Pennant (1726-1798, ODNB) was born in Whitford parish near Holywell in Flintshire, and was the author of A Tour in Scotland, 1769 (1771). (21.15) “a fisher of men;” See Matthew 4. 19, where Jesus calls the fishermen Simon Peter and his brother Andrew to be his disciples by saying to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’. (21.16) stick to my vocation Not directly identified as a quotation here, though perhaps echoing Henry IV Part I, I. ii. 104. Letter II (22.3) Trinity A constituent college of the University of Oxford founded in 1555 and situated on Broad Street. (22.5) North’s Possibly referring to John Wilson (1785-1854, ODNB), through his pseudonym of Christopher North as the fictitious editor of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Wilson had attended Magdalen College, Oxford, matriculating in 1803 and proceeding to a Master’s degree in 1810. Morris denies at 303.15-20, however, that he knows the identity of the editor of the magazine.

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(22.5) determined Determination is the name of certain disputations which completed the taking of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the University of Oxford. (22.9-10) sudden elopement […] having astonished the examining masters An account perhaps derived from an episode in the life of Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859, ODNB): see Robert Morrison, The English Opium Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009), pp. 133-34. (22.13) Jesus Jesus College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford and is situated centrally between Turl Street, Ship Street, the Cornmarket and Market Street in Oxford. In the early nineteenth century various restrictions on its fellowships and scholarships meant that it was predominantly full of Welsh students and academics. (22.14) school at Harrow A famous public school, located at Harrow, London, founded by Royal Charter in 1572. (22.17) eating ice at Jubb’s Pigot’s Trade Directory for Oxfordshire for 1830 lists under ‘Confectioners and Pastry-Cooks’ ‘George Jubber, High Street’. There is a notice in the Morning Chronicle of 14 November 1839 to the creditors of ‘George Jubber, late of High-street, in the city of Oxford, Confectioner, deceased’. (22.17) Miss Butler Not identified. (22.17-18) bathing in the Charwell The River Cherwell is a tributary of the Thames flowing through Oxford, where it is flanked by the University Parks. Lockhart may intend an allusion to Parson’s Pleasure, an area set apart for male-only nude bathing. (22.21) Evensong Attendance at morning and evening chapel was compulsory for Oxford undergraduates in the early nineteenth century. (22.22-23) Isis […] Mother Hall’s boats The Isis is an alternative term for the Thames as it flows through Oxford. There is a similar reference in Lockhart’s, Reginald Dalton, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1823), II, 57. Mother Hall has not been identified. (22.24) Iffley or Sandford Settlements on the River Thames to the southeast of Oxford, about two miles and three and a half miles away respectively. (22.26-27) Christ Church meadows A flood meadow popular for walking bounded by the Thames, Cherwell, and Christ Church College, to which the land belongs. (22.28) Bishop See Lockhart’s footnote in Reginald Dalton, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1823), I, 342: ‘Port, mulled with roasted lemons, is BISHOP; Claret, similarly embellished, is CARDINAL; and Burgundy, POPE.’

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(22.30) Tom Vere (of Corpus,) Corpus Christi is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, founded in 1517 and situated on Merton Street. Tom Vere has not been identified. (23.18) Cicerone A guide who shows the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers. (23.35) Gothic antiquities Medieval as opposed to Classical literature and relics; a style of architecture characterised by pointed arches and prevalent in Europe between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. (24.33) as far up as the Pyramids The most famous pyramids of ancient Egypt are located on the Giza plateau on the river Nile about 8 miles southwest of Cairo. (24.37-38) Spain […] cathedrals Spain’s cathedrals include magnificent specimens of Gothic architecture, that of Seville, for instance, being Europe’s largest Gothic religious building. (24.38) white cliffs Those of Dover. (24.40) Berwickshire County in southeast Scotland whose southern boundary is along the River Tweed. It borders with Northumberland in England. (25.4-5) five pair of stairs […] Old Town For the characteristic high-rise tenement buildings of the Old Town and the probable location of Wastle’s lodging as being in the Lawnmarket, see Introduction, p. 51, and Notes for 8.16 and 381.29-30. (25.7-8) “ideal line.” One which is theoretical not physical, in this case the Border between England and Scotland. (25.9-10) antediluvian testers A tester is a canopy over a bed, either supported from the bed-posts or from the ceiling. Antediluvian means from the time before Noah’s flood (for which see Genesis 6-8): hence antiquated. (25.11) Queen Mary Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, ODNB). (25.19-20) elegant houses […] New Town See Note for 20.20. (25.21) Lord of Session A judge of the Court of Session, the supreme civil court of Scotland and part of the College of Justice. (25.22) habitaculum Dwelling-place (Latin). (25.24) tallow-chandler A person whose trade it is to sell candles made of tallow, or animal fat. (25.30-31) Bachelor’s table of Trinity For Trinity College, Oxford, see Note for 22.3. Undergraduates would sit at the bachelor’s table in the college dininghall rather than at the high table on the dais, reserved for the fellows of the college. (25.34) Methuselamitish Denoting ancient. ‘And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years’ (Genesis 5. 27). (25.35) primo First (course) (Italian).

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(25.38) Burgess Popular essence of anchovies sauce marketed by John Burgess (1750-1820) from 1775 onwards from his premises on the Strand in London. (25.39) Secundo Second, following: from the Latin secundo (secondo in Italian, often referring to the main dish). (25.39-40) in propria persona In its own person (Latin). (26.2) Exmoorian A native or inhabitant of Exmoor in southwest England. (26.3) gusto Taste; flavour or savour (Italian). (26.3) me judice With me as judge, in my opinion (Latin). (26.4) Beauvilliers Antoine Beauvilliers (1754-1817) was a pioneering French restauranteur, who had opened his first prominent grand restaurant in Paris by 1786, with an extensive wine cellar. (26.5-6) Castlemains of Wastle The home farm of the castle belonging to Wastle. (26.8) Falstaff Possibly an allusion to sack (an early type of sherry), a fortified wine from Spain or the Canary Islands.The elderly knight Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor extolls sack in a lengthy speech in 2 Henry IV, IV. ii. 93-121. (26.8) Johannisberg Johannisberg Castle was a centre of the wine-culture of the Rheingau in Germany. (26.9) cellars of Metternich In 1816 Johannisberg Castle was ceded to the Austrian State Chancellor, Count von Metternich, in recognition of his services at the Congress of Vienna the previous year. (26.11) Pays de Vaud The canton of Vaud in Switzerland, bordered by Lake Geneva to the south and France to the west. (26.14) Marasquin Maraschino, a liquor obtained from a distillation of Marasco cherries. (26.14) Curaçoa A liquor flavoured with dried peel from the Laraha citrus fruit. (26.15) Usquebaugh of Lochaber Water of life (Gaelic); whisky from the Highlands of Scotland. Lochaber is a large area east of Fort William on the west coast of the Scottish mainland. (26.15) Chateau-la-fitte Wine from Lafite, one of the four first-growth wineproducing chateaux of Bordeaux, and one of the world’s most expensive red wines. (26.16) nectar and ambrosia Respectively the drink and the food of the gods in Classical mythology. (26.22) Quaker A member of a Christian denomination founded by George Fox (1624-1691, ODNB), who was often depicted as wearing a wide-brimmed

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hat. Quakers were called the Religious Society of Friends, or more simply Friends. They were generally marked out by the plainness of their dress. (26.25) “but throughout the sunny portion of the year,” See line 5 (‘And, through the sunny portion of the year’) of the first poem in ‘Three Original Sonnets of Wordsworth; Suggested by Westall’s Views of the Caves in Yorkshire’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (January 1819), 471. (26.29-30) to say nothing about bees Sir John Suckling (bap. 1609, d.1641?, ODNB) describes the full upper-lip of a woman being as though ‘Some bee had stung it newly’ in his ‘A Ballad upon a Wedding’ (l. 63). (26.31) burning-glass A convex lens used to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a small area, which then heated up and eventually ignited. (26.34) Valladolid Capital of the old Spanish kingdom of Castile in Spain. (27.7) sederunt A sitting or prolonged meeting, as for discussion (Latin). (27.14) Lionizer One who shows the ‘lions’ (sights or celebrities worth seeing) of a place to a visitor, supposedly deriving from the practice of taking visitors to see the lions formerly kept in the Tower of London. Letter III (28.11) took orders Became ordained as a priest, involving the conferment of holy orders. (28.15) elite The best, most select (French). (28.22) days of Dr Johnson The lexicographer and author Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, ODNB) visited Scotland with James Boswell in 1773 and published A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland in 1775. (28.24) Holyrood See Note for 20.29. (28.27) the old palace A royal residence originating in the guest-house of the nearby Holyrood Abbey. The palace was a rectangular building created by James IV of Scotland in preparation for his marriage to Margaret Tudor in 1503. James V added the existing tower containing the royal apartments and in 1535-36 he reconstructed the west front in early Scots Renaissance style. After partial destruction by fire in 1650 the present building was designed by Sir William Bruce and built for Charles II in 1671-78. (28.28) only great street of the Old Town The High Street in Edinburgh leads into the Canongate, the two together stretching eastwards and downwards from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood. It was described by Thomas Pennant as ‘as fine a street as most in Europe, being in some places eighty feet wide’: see A Tour of Scotland (Chester, 1771), p. 49. The Canongate, between the city limits of Edinburgh and Holyrood Palace, had declined in importance after the Scottish court moved to London in 1603, but its death-blow socially was probably the opening of Regent Street at the foot of Calton Hill in 1817, which meant that the Canongate was no longer the principal thoroughfare into the city of

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Edinburgh from the east. By 1819 traditional brewing in the Canongate was already in the process of becoming an industry, with the area’s social prestige declining even further. (29.10) Canongate A street leading from the eastern limit of the burgh of Edinburgh downhill towards Holyrood Palace, in effect an extension of the High Street. It had been a fashionable district where many of the Scottish nobility had their town houses. Canongate also indicates a burgh in this district. (29.18) tressure In heraldry, a thin border inset from the edge of a shield. (29.19) in pale In heraldry, a device arranged vertically, commonly a band. (29.19) escutcheon of pretence A small shield within a larger coat of arms, being another to which the bearer has a claim, especially one to which his wife is heir. (29.20) Seatons The Seton family were based in Lothian and secured their position by service to Robert I of Scotland. Morris is probably referring here to the coat-of-arms of the Earls of Winton, a title held by the Seton family until their forfeiture for treason in 1716. This showed three sheaves on two quarters and three crescents on two quarters, with a smaller inset shield divided vertically with a sword on the left and a star on the right. In 1582 the French ambassador resided as a guest at the Seton house in the Canongate: see E. Patricia Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate: A Thousand Years of History (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005), p. 77. The site of ‘Lord Seyton’s lugeing in the Canongait’ is by Galloway’s Entry, opposite to Queensberry House, and is now occupied by Whitefoord House, of the Scottish Veterans’ Housing Association: see George Seton, History of the Family of Seton, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1896), I, 196. (29.20-21) Oh! domus antiqua, heu! quam dispari dominare domino! O good old house! alas, how different from the owner who now occupies you: Cicero, De Officiis, I. 139. (29.21) Heart and Stars of Douglas Emblems of the noble house that at various times rivalled the power of the Scottish crown. Its arms included three white stars on a blue background above a heart within a crown, commemorating the mission of Lord James Douglas to carry the heart of the deceased Robert I to the Holy Land. Much rebuilding has taken place in the Canongate, and no record or trace of the Douglas arms there appears to have survived. Moray House, Acheson House and Queensberry House now represent the old family homes of important aristocratic Scottish families there (see following Notes). (29.22) Lymphads of Argyle The coat of arms of the Duke of Argyll has a lymphad, or ancient galley, in two of its quarters, with sails furled, oars in action and pennons and flags flying. (29.22) Lion of Dundas The coat of arms of the Dundas family includes a red lion rampant. There is a lion rampant and thistle device over the entry to

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Sugarhouse Close in the Canongate but no firmer evidence of a former Dundas residence there. (29.26) more ancient hotels in Paris Rather than public hotels Lockhart probably intends to indicate hôtels particulier or private mansions, large and elegant Parisian houses that first appeared in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and were originally lived in by the nobility attending on the royal court. They later became the preferred residences of bankers, lawyers, parliamentarians, and wealthy merchants. (29.27) Hamiltons The noble family of royal descent with hereditary lands in Lanarkshire, who also enjoyed accommodation within Holyrood Palace as its Heritable Keepers. (29.27-28) house without the walls, in the time of James VI No evidence of such a residence has been found. (29.29-30) liberty […] strand Although then in ruins, the former Holyrood Abbey retained its status as a sanctuary for debtors. The sanctuary was five miles in circumference, including Holyrood Park, and had been walled by James V. For a description of its boundaries and Scott’s supposed narrator’s haunting of the line between the sanctuary and the part of the Canongate that lay outside it, see Chronicles of the Canongate, ed. by Claire Lamont, EEWN 20 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 14-16 (volume 1, chapter 1). Coming from the Canongate to the Palace, Morris and Wastle would have crossed the gutter going from the middle of Horse Wynde towards the Watergate and thereby entered the sanctuary itself. (29.32) Two huge square towers The older tower containing the royal apartments was added to the palace by James V in 1528-32, while the newer one was part of the reconstruction undertaken for Charles II in 1671-78. (29.34) curtain A term used in fortification to indicate a wall connecting two gates or towers. (29.35) canopy A roof-like projection over the gate. (29.35) crown imperial A closed crown with bands joining over the top of the wearer’s head, rather than a king’s crown, which was generally an open circlet. (29.37) a few kilted grenadiers Possibly referring to grenadier companies of the 42nd (Highland) Regiment of Foot, which had taken up residence in Edinburgh Castle in 1790. (29.39) uncovered himself Removed his hat, as a mark of respect. (30.3-4) death of Queen Elizabeth On the death of Elizabeth I of England James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne in 1603. The transference of his court to London was crucial in the decay of the Canongate and the area surrounding Holyrood Palace. (30.4) ancient gentlewoman The Dukes of Hamilton took over the rooms in James V’s tower from 1684 and their servants, notably the housekeeper, had

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an additional source of income in displaying the rooms to visitors. Initially only the rooms associated with Mary Queen of Scots were shown, but subsequently the rooms on the first floor were included in the tour and known as the Darnley Rooms. (30.8-9) vile daubs of Fergus I and his progenitors Fergus I is a mythical Scottish king mentioned in John Fordun’s account of the beginnings of Scottish history composed in the mid-fourteenth century. The Great Gallery of Holyrood Palace presently contains 96 of the original series of 111 ‘portraits’ of the real and legendary Kings of Scotland from Fergus I (dated 330 BCE) to James VII, created between 1684 and 1686 by Jacob de Wet II (1641-1697). He was given a two-year contract in 1684 at £120 p.a. to produce a series of 110 portraits and when Charles II died before its completion gained an extra £30 for adding one of the new King, James VII. (30.10) apartments of Queen Mary These include a vestibule, an audience chamber, and a bed-chamber, and are entered from a staircase in the northwest angle of the courtyard. (30.10-11) use of the family of Hamilton In 1646 a royal charter appointed James, Duke of Hamilton and his male heirs Heritable Keepers of Holyroodhouse (Dennison, Holyrood and Canongate, p. 50). By virtue of this office the Dukes of Hamilton were able to live in the Queen’s Apartments in James V’s Tower after 1684, in some luxury. (30.14) most unfortunate of Queens and Beauties Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, ODNB). (30.17-18) cypher […] Henrietta Maria A cipher is an intertexture of initials or monogram. Holyrood was remodelled for the coronation of Charles I in 1633. He had married the French princess Henrietta Maria in 1625. The panelled ceiling of the ante-chamber, as well as the bedroom, in the apartments of Mary Queen of Scots display various painted monograms including ‘MR’, ‘CR’, and ‘HR’. (30.19) bed in which Mary slept with Darnley Queen Mary’s second husband was her cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the marriage taking place at Holyrood in September 1565. The Duke of Hamilton when he occupied the rooms on the floor below moved some of his furniture up to the apartments associated with Mary, Queen of Scots, these pieces gradually coming to be passed off to visitors as Queen Mary’s possessions. It is possible, therefore, that the bed often shown as that of Mary was in fact a bed belonging to the Hamiltons. (30.19-20) closet where Rizzio was murdered A small room opening from the left-hand side of the entry to Queen Mary’s bedroom at the top of the spiral staircase from the floor below and where dark stains are supposedly those of the blood of David Riccio, a musician and courtier in her confidence. On 9 March 1566 Darnley and a band of armed men broke into the Queen’s supperroom and dragged Riccio into the adjoining room where he was murdered.

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(30.20-21) ante-chamber in which Knox insulted his sovereign A main source for the four dramatic interviews between Queen Mary and the religious reformer John Knox (c. 1514-1572, ODNB) taking place between September 1561 and June 1563 is Knox’s own History (see next Note). They took place in the audience chamber or ante-room, hung with tapestries and containing some richly-embroidered chairs. (30.21-22) “cared little […] gentlewoman.” Book IV of John Knox’s own History of the Reformation in Scotland is the principal historical source of information about his interviews with Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland from France in 1561. When she sent for him to answer for a sermon he had preached on the laxity of her court the following year his severity led her to turn her back on him, at which several Catholics who saw him commented that he was not afraid. He reportedly responded, ‘Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman fear me? I have looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been afraid above measure’: see History of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. by William M’Gavin (Glasgow, 1831), p. 271. (30.23-24) portrait […] lovely Queen This small picture presently still hangs in the bed-chamber, and is one among various versions of the portrait by François Clouet (c. 1520-1572) showing Mary in white mourning for the death of various family members in c. 1560-61 and as having dark-brown or hazel eyes (Royal Collection, RCIN 403429). (30.29-31) Mackenzie […] eyes In Henry Mackenzie’s novel The Man of Feeling (London, 1771) those of Henrietta Walton are described as ‘that gentle hazel-colour which is rather mild than piercing’ (p. 20). (30.38-39) that in the picture gallery of the Bodleian The portrait of Queen Mary described by Lockhart apparently now survives only in the form of a print of 1812 by Charles Turner (British Museum: see https://www.britishmuseum. org/collection/object/P_1871-1209-922), the canvas of the original painting at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, having been cleaned in 1838 and the portrait removed in order to reveal another portrait underneath. (31.10) Correggio Antonio Allegri Correggio (c. 1489-1534) was an Italian painter who took his name from the small town where he was born, active in Parma by 1516. (31.12) a saint A reflection of eighteenth-century historical debate about Mary, focused on the authenticity or otherwise of the Casket Letters, which Queen Mary allegedly wrote to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and which indicate her complicity in the murder of her second husband, Henry Stewart, Earl of Darnley. William Robertson’s History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and James VI (1759) portrays Mary as a tragic heroine, whereas the fourth volume of David Hume’s History of England (1759) regards her as a foolish and stubborn woman. More recently George Chalmers’s Life of Mary Queen of Scots (1818) had adopted Robertson’s side of the dispute.

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(31.13-14) Charles I […] Vandykes The Flemish Baroque artist Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) became the leading court painter in England. No portrait of King Charles matching this description forms part of the current Royal Collection at Holyrood. Of the two portraits on display there one is part of the De Wit series (see Note for 30.8-9) and the other is by Daniel Mytens. A portrait of Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I, from the studio of Van Dyck of 1636, presently at Holyrood (Royal Collection, RCIN 405663), may perhaps be a companion portrait to one of Charles I at Windsor Castle (RCIN 404398), but this does not fit the description given here by Lockhart, depicting the king instead in ermine-lined robes. Another possibility is the portrait ‘Le Roi à la Chasse’, c. 1635, now in the Paris Louvre, and showing Charles in elegant silver doublet, red pantaloons, and wide-brimmed hat, with an equerry behind holding his horse. Three equestrian portraits of Charles I (IV. 47, 51-52) are itemised in Susan J. Barnes, Nora de Poorter, Oliver Millar, and Horst Vey, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). See also Notes for 518.40 and 519.2. (31.17) Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658, ODNB), Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, instituted the trial and execution of Charles I at Whitehall in January 1649 and signed his death warrant. (31.17) Bradshaw John Bradshaw (bap. 1602, d. 1659, ODNB), the president of the court appointed to try Charles I and the man who handed down his sentence of death. (31.20) “grey discrowned head?” From verses attributed to Charles I himself in imprisonment at Carisbrook Castle in 1648. They were included under the title of ‘Majesty in Misery’ by Gilbert Burnet in Memoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton and Castleherald (London, 1677), pp. 381-83 (p. 381, l. 14). (31.21) Laud preached William Laud (1573-1645, ODNB), Archbishop of Canterbury, attempted to bring the Scottish church into conformity with the episcopalian Church of England, pressing for the adoption of the English prayer-book in the later 1630s and thus sparking rebellion. (31.21) Rothes John Leslie, 6th Earl of Rothes (c. 1600-1641, ODNB), an opponent of royal attempts to force episcopacy onto the Scottish church, but nevertheless an accomplished courtier who later in his life stood well with Charles I and sought royal patronage. (31.26-27) Bourbon princes during their stay Originally the youngest brother of the former Louis XVI of France and of the current French King Louis XVIII, Charles, Count d’Artois (1757-1836), was exiled from France following the French Revolution and given Holyrood Palace as his residence by the British government between 1796 and 1803. His rooms continued to be occupied by members of his suite until 1815. For the presence also of the sons of the Count d’Artois, see also Note for 31.30.

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(31.27) Prie-dieu used by Monsieur Monsieur was a title used to indicate the brother next in age to the French King, in this case indicating in 1819 the Count d’Artois, subsequently Charles X of France, who turned the Great Gallery of Holyrood into a Catholic chapel. A prie-dieu is a piece of furniture used during prayer with a kneeling surface and a narrow upright front with a rest for the elbows or for books. Holyrood was provided with new furniture by Edinburgh manufacturers Young, Trotter and Hamilton in readiness for his occupation. (31.30) younger sprigs of the lily The heraldic flower of the lily or fleur-delys was borne as a charge on the French royal coat of arms. The ‘younger sprigs’ probably refers to the sons of the Count d’Artois: Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (1775-1844) and Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry (17781820). The diarist Joseph Farington in his entries for 1819 described the latter as ‘a profligate’, adding that during the family’s time at Holyrood,‘[b]eing invited to accompany His Father the Count D’Artois, to pass some days with the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith, He there behaved rudely to Lady Dalkeith wife to the Dukes eldest Son, who on being informed of it, gave Him notice to quit the House in half an Hour’: see Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, ed. by James Greig, 8 vols (London, 1922-28), VIII, 216-17. (31.31) good old king The restored Louis XVIII of France (1755-1824). (31.32) its incumbrances Even in Tory opinion the restored Bourbon monarchy was considered to have retained too many of its old privileged adherents and courtiers. Scott in Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (Edinburgh, 1816), voices ‘fears that he has, or may call, evil counsellors around him, who, at some time or another, will persuade him to attempt the re-establishment of the feudal rights of the nobility and the domination of the church’ (pp. 441-42). (32.4-5) emerge […] of a Sunday Sunday was sacred from all legal proceedings according to Roman Law, a feature borrowed by Scots Law: see Walter Scott, Chronicles of the Canongate, ed. by Claire Lamont, EEWN 20 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 386 (Note for 15.17-18). Lamont suggests that another consideration may have been to afford debtors the opportunity to go to church, the old Abbey itself being in ruins. (32.6) catch-poles Sheriff’s officers, who would normally arrest for debt. (32.7) “rest from working.” One of the commandments in Exodus 23. 12: ‘Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest.’ Letter IV (33.5-6) murder of Archbishop Sharpe James Sharp (1618-1679, ODNB), Archbishop of St Andrews, had been sent to London in 1661 to negotiate with the government of Charles II on behalf of the presbyterian Church of Scotland, so that his subsequent appointment as Archbishop was widely viewed by his colleagues as a betrayal. He was assassinated by a band of Covenanters on Magus Moor near St Andrews on 3 May 1679.

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(33.10) French ambassadors and generals Scotland had long-standing dynastic and political links with France, a connection generally known as the Auld Alliance. (33.13-15) fleurs-de-lis […] Mincing-lane Mincing Lane is a short street in the City of London linking Fenchurch Street to Great Tower Street, once a leading centre of trade in tea and spices. The fleur-de-lys (lily) is the heraldic symbol of France: no origin for its presence as a decoration in this location has been discovered. (33.16) land Plot of land on which a building stands; in Scotland referring more specifically to a tenement of several storeys divided into flats for different households. (33.21) causes celebres Famous cases (French); controversial issues that attract a great deal of public attention. (33.22) Scandalous Chronicle of Scotland The term ‘scandalous chronicle’ stems from the earlier version of the Chronica Majora of Thomas Walsingham (c.1340-c.1422, ODNB), a historian and monk of St Albans Abbey. This covered the years 1328 to 1388, and was deeply critical of John of Gaunt, but after the accession to the throne of Gaunt’s son Bolingbroke as Henry IV the unpleasant remarks about John of Gaunt were omitted. (33.28) woof The threads that cross from side to side of a web of cloth, at right angles to the warp threads with which they are interlaced. (33.30) pas-a-pas Step by step (French). (34.1) au fait Literally ‘to the fact’ (French); having a good or detailed knowledge of something. (34.11) magical mirror A legendary mirror by means of which something absent may be viewed as though it were present. Scott relates how when the Earl of Surrey was on his travels abroad the alchemist Cornelius Agrippa showed him a vision of his mistress in such a looking-glass: see The Lay of the Last Minstrel (Edinburgh, 1805), pp. 176-78, 307n. A similar glass features as betraying the bigamous marriage of a Scottish gentleman abroad to his wife at home in Scott’s later story ‘My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror’: see Scott, The Shorter Fiction, ed. by Judy King and Graham Tulloch, EEWN 24 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 47-75. (34.13) robe-de-chambre Dressing-gown (French). (34.15) Edinburgh reviewers Contributors to the Edinburgh Review, a quarterly periodical published by Archibald Constable and edited by Francis Jeffrey and his Whig companions from 1802 onwards. (34.16) disjecta membra poetae Dismembered limbs of a poet (Latin): matching ‘disiecti membra poetae’ as used by Horace in Satires, I. iv. 62. More generally, disjecta membra is used to convey ‘scattered fragments’.

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(34.22) “whiggery,” Originally a term for adherence to the Presbyterian cause in Scotland in the seventeenth century, but subsequently affiliation to the political party opposed to the Tory party in British politics, and known later in the nineteenth century as representing liberalism. (34.24) Mr Halkston of Rathillet David Hackston of Rathillet (d. 1680, ODNB ) was one of the assassins of Archbishop Sharp (see Note for 33.5-6), for which he was tried and executed. (34.24-25) Mr Francis Jeffrey Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850, ODNB ), advocate and editor of the Edinburgh Review, the influential periodical which popularised the teachings of the Scottish Enlightenment and generally represented Whig liberal opinion. Letter V (35 heading) LADY JOHNES The surname is that of a gentry family associated with large country estates in Carmarthenshire in Wales, such as Dolaucothi and Hafod (for which see text at 487.39 and Note). (35.6) hard-favoured Having a hard or unpleasing appearance; harshfeatured. (35.17) Scottish physiognomists While generally fashionable in the late eighteenth century, as a result of the writing of the Swiss Johann Casper Lavater (1741-1801), physiognomy (the science of interpreting a person’s character from their face) was not particularly associated with Scotland, although it is possible that it interacted there with the more popular phrenology (see Note for 37.18). (35.22) very Argus Someone who is acutely watchful. According to Greek mythology Argus had a hundred eyes and Juno set him to watch Io, of whom she was jealous. (37.7) quizzing Mocking or making fun of a person or thing (slang). (37.12) subæthric Out-of-doors, under the clear air; derived from the Latin ‘sub’ (under) and ‘aether’ (upper air, sky). (37.18) doctrine of the Spurzheims The German physician Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) was one of the chief exponents of phrenology, a pseudo-science based on the belief that the skull accommodated different areas of the brain as a glove does when worn on a hand, so that a person’s skull was shaped by the underlying part of the brain and could therefore be measured to estimate a particular personality trait. Spurzheim moved to Britain in 1813 and travelled to Edinburgh in 1816, the city becoming an important centre for phrenology. (37.20) Bayards Pierre Terail, Seignor de Bayard (1473-1524) symbolised the perfect chivalrous knight, and was said to be ‘Sans peur et sans reproche’ (without fear and without reproach).

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(37.21) Duguesclins Betrand de Duguesclin (c. 1320-1380), known as ‘The Eagle of Brittany’, was a Breton knight who was an important French military commander during the Hundred Years’ War and from 1370 Constable of France to Charles V. (37.21) Harlays Probably referring to the French soldier and diplomat Nicolas de Harlay, Lord of Sancy (1546-1629), supervisor of finance to Henry IV of France, purchaser of the Sancy diamond, and author of Discours sur l’occurrence de ses affaires (Discourse on the occurrence of affairs). (37.21) Du Thous Jacques Auguste Du Thou (1553-1617) was a French historian and book collector. (37.26) Burleighs John Balfour, 3rd Lord Balfour of Burleigh (d. 1696/7, ODNB), had a posthumous and undeserved notoriety as a covenanting rebel because his identity was confused with that of John Balfour of Kinloch (16631683, ODNB), nicknamed ‘Burley’ on account of his appearance, and one of the killers of Archbishop Sharp. The pairing of the name with Claverhouse (see next Note) suggests that it is the second that Lockhart has in mind here. (37.27) Claverhouses John Graham of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount Dundee (1648?-1689, ODNB), royalist military commander, close associate of James, Duke of York (subsequently James VII and II), and represser of the Covenanters of southwest Scotland during the ‘Killing Times’ of the later 1680s. (37.27) Bell-the-Cats Alluding to the nickname given to Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus (c. 1449-1513, ODNB ), a politician in the reigns of James III and James IV. In a conference about the removal of the royal favourites of James III during a political crisis in 1482-83, he volunteered to be the mouse that would bell the cat. (37.27-28) Kirkpatricks According to legend Roger de Kirkpatrick of Closeburn accompanied Robert Bruce to his meeting with his political rival John Comyn, known as the Red Comyn, in Greyfriars Church in Dumfries. After Bruce had stabbed Comyn and left the church Kirkpatrick supposedly returned to finish the murder, saying ‘I mak siccar’ (I make sure). (38.5) Messalinas and Poppæas Leaders of female fashionable society in Imperial Rome: Messalina (c.17/20-48 CE) was the third wife of the Emperor Claudius, and Poppæa (30-65 CE) was the second wife of the Emperor Nero. (38.6) tetes Women’s heads of hair; in the later eighteenth century wigs dressed high and elaborately ornamented. (38.6-7) from the hair of the poor girls Wearing such is a key sign of a pretentious, vain woman in Lockhart’s Roman novel: see Valerius, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1821), II, 100, 217. (38.7) the Sicambri and the Batavi Germanic tribes who in Roman times lived on the east bank of the Rhine and the Rhine delta respectively.

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(38.10) Henry VIII and Elizabeth Henry VIII of England (1491-1547, ODNB) and his daughter Elizabeth I (1533-1603, ODNB). (38.10) Erasmus The leading humanist and scholar of the northern Renaissance, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Although calling for reform he adhered to the papacy, and prepared important Greek and Latin editions of the New Testament, as well as writing works such as In Praise of Folly. He visited England four times, the first time in 1499. In Epistles of Erasmus, ed. and trans. by Francis Morgan Nichols (London, 1901), p. 203, mention is made of the beauty of English ‘nymphs’ with their ‘divine features’, but without reference to hair colour. (38.11) Paul Hentzner Hentzner (1558-1623) was a German lawyer who published an account of his travels in England during the late Elizabethan era. It was translated into English by Richard Bentley and published in Latin and English by Horace Walpole as A Journey into England by Paul Hentzner in the Year MDXCVIII (Strawberry Hill, 1757). No reference to Englishwomen as fair-haired has been found there. (38.13) “may be in aught believed,” From Douglas’s opening soliloquy in Act V (scene i, l. 10) of Douglas. A Tragedy (1756) by John Home, a standard theatrical play. (38.17) Churchill In his anti-Scots polemic ‘The Prophecy of Famine’ the satirical poet Charles Churchill (1732-1764, ODNB) describes a typical Scotsman as ‘JOCKEY, whose manly high-bon’d cheeks to crown / With freckles spotted flam’d the golden down’: see The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill, ed. by Douglas Grant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 203 (ll. 285-86). (38.29) Bistre and Burnt Sienna Bistre is a brownish-yellow pigment made from the soot of burnt wood, while Burnt Sienna is a deep reddish-brown pigment made by calcining sienna. (38.36) beau-monde Fine world (French); fashionable society. (38.39) Miss ***** Not identified. (39.2) the knight Presumably the unidentified and apparently fictitious ‘Sir Thomas’ previously referred to, though no full name is given. (39.3-4) “seeing is believing” Proverbial expression expressing scepticism: see ODEP, p. 710. (39.19) Canova’s testa d’Helena A bust of Helena of Troy, the first of a series of ‘ideal heads’ of women, created by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) around 1812 and of which various copies were made. Byron celebrated it in his lines ‘On the Bust of Helen by Canova’ written in November 1816. (39.23) Sirmē From the Turkish sürme, drawing along: another word for kohl, a cosmetic used for outlining the eye-lids to draw attention to the eyes.

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(39.25) Lucretius […] admitted The philosophical epic of the Roman poet Lucretius (c. 99-c. 55 BCE), De Rerum Natura, adheres to the Epicurean view that the soul dissolves with the body. (39.31) Mrs * * * * * * * * * * * * Not identified. In the ‘second’ edition six asterisks were used to stand in for the name rather than twelve. (40.4) a birth-day A court gathering to mark the birthday of the reigning sovereign. (40.8) the saddle Regency or empire-line gowns were high-waisted, with the full skirt beginning just below the bust, thus concealing the outline of the back. (40.10-11) scrophula […] high shirt collars Scrofula, or the King’s Evil, is a disease characterised by degeneration of the lymphatic glands and resulting in blotched and irregular skin. Regency males wore high shirt collars and stocks that came close under the chin and concealed the neck. (40.11) the Spectator A ground-breaking and popular essay-periodical, produced largely by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele and published each day of the week (except Sunday) in 1711 and 1712. The passage alluded to however is probably from the Female Spectator of Eliza Haywood, a periodical in imitation of The Spectator published in monthly parts between 1744 and 1746, purportedly produced by a club of four women: see The Female Spectator, 7th edition, 4 vols (London, 1771), III, 160-62 (Book XVI). (40.12) fardingale More often in the eighteenth century called the hoop: a framework of hoops, used to extend the skirts of women’s dresses. (40.17) ne sutor ultra crepidam The shoemaker should not judge matters beyond the shoe (Latin); see the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), XXXV. 85. Pliny recounts how a shoemaker told the painter Apelles of a fault he had made in depicting a sandal, which Apelles duly corrected. Encouraged by this the shoemaker started pointing out other supposed faults in the painter’s work, whereupon Apelles made this reply, its becoming proverbial. The English version is ‘The cobbler should stick to his last’ (see ODEP, p. 130). Letter VI (41.6) routs Fashionable assemblies, large evening parties or receptions. (41.11-12) castle […] upon the banks of the Tweed Abbotsford. (41.12) My friends In the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters the letters of introduction came from Scott. (41.13) Mr Mackenzie the Man of Feeling See Note for 8.30-31. (41.14) Mr Jeffrey See Note for 8.31. (41.14) Mr Playfair John Playfair (1748-1819, ODNB), mathematician and geologist, from 1785 Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, and author of Elements of Geometry (1795). In 1805 he was elected to the Chair of

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Natural Philosophy, producing Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802) in support of his friend, the geologist James Hutton. He was a founder-member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, editor of its Transactions, and a leader in establishing the Astronomical Institution of Edinburgh in 1811. From 1804 onwards he published approximately 60 articles on science in the Edinburgh Review as well as contributing to the Encyclopædia Brittanica. He died in Edinburgh on 20 July 1819. (41.14-15) both sides of the question Whigs and Tories. (41.15) Dons A Spanish title given to men of high rank, but more widely referring to distinguished men or leaders. (41.25) Stewart The philosopher Dugald Stewart (1753-1828, ODNB) passed on much of the ‘common sense’ philosophy of Thomas Reid. He was appointed to the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1785 and published his Outline of a Course in Moral Philosophy in 1793, from 1800 also teaching a separate course in political economy, attended by several among the founders of the Edinburgh Review. He was an active writer before and after his retirement in 1810, publishing Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792, 1814, 1827) and Philosophical Essays (1810). His journeys to France and friendship with Burns helped give him a reputation as a political radical. He spent much of his retirement at Kinneil House in Linlithgowshire. (41.32) residence of Mr Jeffrey In Edinburgh Jeffrey lived at 92 George Street in the New Town: see Post-Office Annual Directory for 1818-19, p. 180. (42.3) bugbear of authors Jeffrey was notorious for his savage notices in the Edinburgh Review. (42.23) I first saw Goethe Lockhart himself had visited the German author and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) at Weimar during his continental tour of 1817. (42.29-30) whole artists of St Luke’s St Luke is the patron saint of artists, tradition claiming that he painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary. There were Guilds of St Luke in many early modern north European cities, amongst which that of Antwerp was the best known. (42.30) Hyperion curls In Greek mythology Hyperion is one of the Titans, son of Uranus and Gæa. ‘Hyperion’s curls’ are alluded to among the best traits of gods belonging to Hamlet’s father in Hamlet, III. iv. 55. (42.31) Canova’s See Note for 39.19. (43.8-9) Campbell […] Tom Moore, or the late Monk Lewis The poets Thomas Campbell (1777-1844, ODNB) and Thomas Moore (1779-1852, ODNB), and the novelist and poet Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818, ODNB). (43.9-10) Lord Clarendon Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674, ODNB), royalist politician and advisor to Charles II, eventually becoming Lord Chancellor, a post from which he was dismissed in 1667. His daughter Anne

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married James, Duke of York, brother to Charles II and the future James VII and II, in 1660, Hyde becoming Earl of Clarendon the following year. Clarendon left for exile in France in 1667 when threatened with impeachment and charges of treason. His A History of the Rebellion was published posthumously in 1702-04, and his Life in 1759. (43.10-11) prime manhood […] Coleridge The expression is known to have been used by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, ODNB), but evidently more in relation to persons than to other cultural eras. See his letter to Thomas Allsop of 2 December 1818: ‘But, alas! during the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold water thrown on my efforts’; also that to Richard Sharp 15 January 1804, apropos Wordsworth, ‘from the first dawn of his manhood’ (Letters, 2 vols (London, 1895), II, 696, 449). Compare his Biographia Literaria, chapter 10: ‘Yet in these labors I employed, and in the belief of partial friends wasted, the prime and manhood of my intellect’ (2 vols, London 1817, I, 211). No evidence of these terms being applied to the age of Clarendon (see previous Note) has been discovered. (43.11-12) a very large proportion […] short in stature See Clarendon’s remarks in The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon […] Written by Himself, 2 vols (Oxford, 1760), I, 43: ‘MR CHILLINGWORTH was of a Stature little superior to Mr Hales (and it was an Age, in which there were many great, and wonderful Men of that Size)’. For William Chillingworth himself see next Note. (43.13) Hales, and Chillingworth The scholar and theologian John Hales (1584-1656, ODNB), and William Chillingworth (1602-1644, ODNB), royalist and theologian, author of The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (1638). See also text at 438.8 and Note. (43.13) Godolphin The poet and courtier Sidney Godolphin (bap. 1610, d. 1643, ODNB), nicknamed ‘Little Sid’. (43.13-14) Lord Falkland The politician and author Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland (1609/10-1643, ODNB), was at the centre of an influential group of friends, including Chillingworth and Hyde, at his house of Great Tew in Oxfordshire. Lord Falkland was presumably a little taller than Godolphin, as he ‘used to say merrily, that He thought it was a great Ingredient into his Friendship for Mr. Godolphin, that He was pleased to be found in his Company, where He was the properer Man’: The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon […] Written by Himself, 2 vols (Oxford, 1760), I, 36. (43.17-18) “Mens magna in corpore parvo;” A great mind in a little body (Latin), probably alluding to the more usual mens sana in corpore sano (healthy mind in a healthy body) of Juvenal, Satires, X. 356. (43.18) Buonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), outstanding French general and Emperor of the French between 1804 and 1815, but now in exile on St Helena after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He was measured as being 5 feet 2 inches tall at the time of his death, and although there is now an argument that this was probably in French units, which would

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make him 5 feet 7 inches tall, he was generally thought of in his lifetime as a short man, nicknamed ‘the Little Corporal’, for instance. (43.31) those of the Kemble blood The famous theatrical family included Stephen Kemble (1758-1822), John Philip Kemble (1757-1823, ODNB) and his sister Sarah Siddons (1755-1831, ODNB). Several more of their Kemble siblings were connected with the stage, besides Mrs Siddons’s son, Henry, who had been manager of the Edinburgh Theatre Royal until his death in 1815. (44.1-45.10) I have heard […] on copper This passage is substantially republished from ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” with extracts from that popular work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52 (pp. 751-52). It represents the first part of a description of Francis Jeffrey later redistributed as two sections in Peter’s Letters (compare text at pp. 219-23). For Jeffrey himself, see Note for 34.2425. (44.8) “the human face divine,” See John Milton, Paradise Lost, III. 44. (44.23) as Sterne’s As that of the novelist and clergyman Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, ODNB). (44.23-24) sinuses above the eyes Sinuses are natural holes or cavities in the substance of a bone or other tissue. (45.9-10) on copper As an engraving: from the copper plate from which the portrait was printed. (45.14-15) “the wee reekit deil,” […] Altisidora See Scott’s ‘The Inferno of Altisidora’, in The Shorter Fiction, ed. by Judy King and Graham Tulloch, EEWN 24 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 9, 235 (Note for 9.33): the words, meaning ‘small smoky devil’, appear there as a quotation from Burns’s ‘Kellyburnbraes’ (see Kinsley 376). This article by Scott was first published anonymously in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, 2 part 2 (Edinburgh, 1811), 582-99. Altisidora is a character in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605, 1615) who tells of a trip to the gates of hell, where she saw devils playing tennis and using books as balls (Part II, chapter LXX). (45.19) his country house Craigcrook, a country house at the back of Corstorphine Hill, just outside Edinburgh. In Edinburgh Jeffrey lived at 92 George Street: see Note for 41.32. Letter VII (46.7) Cuyp The Dutch landscape painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) was particularly known for his views taken in the early morning or late afternoon light. (46.7-8) Sachtleeven Probably Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), a Dutch painter known for his rural scenes with an aerial perspective. Alternatively, his

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brother, Cornelius Saftleven (1607-1681), though he was better known for his genre scenes. (46.18) watering the streets Sprinkling water on the pavements in dry, warm weather, to refresh them and prevent dust being blown into the faces of passersby. During 1807, according to Sir John Carr, it was ‘in contemplation to introduce a copious spring of water from the side of the Lothian-road, westward of the Castle, which at present runs entirely to waste. This spring may be most beneficially applied in watering the streets in hot weather; in cleansing the public markets, which sadly require it; and the surplus may be used for affording occasional supplies to the common sewers’: Caledonian Sketches, or a Tour in Scotland in 1807 (London, 1809), p. 169. (46.21) dog-days Days of great heat. The Romans called the hottest weeks of summer caniculares dies, believing that the heat of the dog-star Sirius rising with the sun in July added to its heat. (46.23) ad libitum As much as is desired, at one’s pleasure (Latin). (46.24) “O! cæcas hominum mentes!” O, the blind minds of men (Latin). Perhaps from ‘O miseras hominum mentes’ (O pitiable minds of men) in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II. 14. (46.28) Craigcrook See Note for 45.19. (46.29) molto gustosamente Very deliciously (Italian). (47.8) Arcadian From Arcadia, a district of the Peloponnesus chiefly inhabited by shepherds, the home of pastoral simplicity and happiness. (47.14-15) Swedish turnip, and Fiorin grass Rutabaga or Swede is a root vegetable used as winter fodder for livestock, while Fiorin grass or agrostis stolonifera is a perennial grass valued as forage for cattle. (47.16) Curwen John Christian Curwen (1756-1828, ODNB) was a prominent agriculturalist and author of Hints on Agricultural Subjects (1809). (47.21) credite posteri! Believe me, future hearers! (Latin): Horace, Odes, II. xix. 2. (47.23) Playfair See Note for 41.14. (47.24) Leslie The mathematician John Leslie (1766-1832, ODNB) had been appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at Edinburgh University in 1805, but the Moderate party of the Church of Scotland agitated for him to be deposed as an atheist because of his adherence to David Hume’s views on causation. Besides contributing to the Edinburgh Review and Encyclopædia Britannica he was the author of Elements of Geometry (1809). He succeeded Playfair as Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1819. (47.25) Robert Morehead The episcopalian clergyman and poet Robert Morehead (1777-1842) was Jeffrey’s close friend as well as his cousin. He had studied divinity at Balliol College, Oxford, and been ordained in 1802. He had been a minister of a church in the Cowgate of Edinburgh but in 1818 became

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the junior incumbent of St Paul’s, York Place in the New Town. He served as Dean of Edinburgh from 1818 to 1832. (47.26) celebrated orator Alison Archibald Alison (1759-1839, ODNB), minister of an episcopalian church in the Cowgate from 1800 and author of Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790) and Sermons (1814), of which a series on the seasons was particularly popular. He and his congregation transferred to the newly-built St Paul’s, York Place in 1818, and he retired in 1830. According to the Post-Office Annual Directory for 1818-19 (p. 51) he lived at 44 Heriot Row in Edinburgh. (47.29) old High-Street faces Faces seen previously when passing by on Oxford’s High Street. (47.31-32) alma mater Bounteous mother (Latin); the university, school, or college one formerly attended. (47.34) strength in leaping According to G. R. Gleig ‘This sportive description was deeply resented by the Whig dignitaries, to whom the sensation of being quizzed was entirely new’: ‘Life of Lockhart’, Quarterly Review, 116 (October 1864), 439-82 (p. 461n). In his entries for 1819 the diarist Joseph Farington nevertheless reported that ‘Jeffreys [sic] attended to no form in his dress. He wore a Jacket & Trowsers & half boots and had a silk handkerchief round his neck—after dinner an eminent pleader at the Scotch bar, put his wine glass in his waistcoat pocket & saying “We have sat long enough,” threw up his window & leapt through it to the grass plot and being followed by the rest, they drank champagne in the open air, and then played at leap frog’: see Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, ed. by James Greig, 8 vols (London, 192228), VIII, 225. (47.40) “accinctus ludo.” Prepared for play (Latin). (48.2) Port-Meadow A large meadow of open common land beside the river Thames to the north and west of Oxford. (48.13-14) ancient peripatetic ideas The Peripatetic philosophers were those of a school founded by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) in ancient Greece, so called because they walked about in a cloister to discuss their ideas. (48.28-29) according to Spurzheim […] mathematical foreheads For a detailed description see ‘Organ of Number’, The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), pp. 371-72. (48.30) ad clerum To the clergy (Latin). An expression used for a communication primarily addressed to ordained ministers, and here perhaps signifying ‘in need of special exposition’. (48.30) Pindar Greek poet from Thebes (c. 517-438 BCE). (48.31-32) προς το παν / Έρμηϖνεων χατίζει For the whole subject they need interpreters (Greek). See Pindar, Olympian Odes 2, ll. 85-86. Pindar has ἐς δὲ instead of προς.

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(50.13-15) passages of richly-coloured writing […] in the Edinburgh Review According to the ODNB article by Jack Morrell: ‘From 1809 Leslie supplemented the lucid writings of Playfair in the Edinburgh Review with seven contributions on the history of science and travel in his characteristically ornate, almost affected, style.’ (50.23) Mrs Jeffrey Charlotte Wilkes of New York met Jeffrey when touring Europe in 1810 and he followed her back to the United States in 1813, despite the 1812 War with America. They married in New York on 1 October 1813, and on their return the couple set up house at 92 George Street in Edinburgh. (50.26) little girl This daughter, named Charlotte, was married to William Empson (1789-1852, ODNB) in 1838. (50.28-29) Hessian boots So-called from Hesse in Germany. They were a style of light and low-heeled riding boot with a semi-pointed toe, reaching the knee with a decorative tassel near the top. (50.29) Grub-street A street in London’s Moorfields district, inhabited by impoverished literary men doing hack work for publishers. It was renamed Milton Street in 1830. (50.31) sitesco referens I’m getting thirsty thinking back on it (Latin). (50.34) black-strap An inferior port wine, or sometimes a mixture of rum and molasses. (50.35-36) Champaigne moussu Sparkling wine from the Champagne district in France. (50.36) devilled biscuit Water biscuits or fingers of toast spread with a paste of hot ingredients such as mustard, curry powder, anchovy essence, etc. and reheated. (50.36-37) blue-stocking lady Alluding to the coterie of literary ladies in Edinburgh, sometimes criticised for their disapproving attitude to any supposed immorality. James Hogg considered them especially hostile: ‘The literary ladies, in particular, agreed, in full divan, that I would never write a sentence which deserved to be read’ (‘Memoir of the Author’s Life’, Altrive Tales, ed. by Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), p. 25). (50.39) The sweet new poem Perhaps a mimicry of fashionable conversation rather than a direct quotation from a literary work. (51.2) “let in” Admitted, given entrance. (51.3) Dandie’s phrase The above phrase is not noticeably used by Dandie Dinmont, a Border farmer, in Walter Scott’s novel Guy Mannering (1815). (51.3) Monsieur Viard André Viard (1759-1834), author of Le Cuisinier Impérial (1806), which passed through more than thirty editions and was the essential reference work for French cuisine in the nineteenth century. It became Le Cuisinier Royal with the Restoration of the Bourbon kings.

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(51.5) some lines of my friend Wastle Not otherwise identified, and presumably by Lockhart himself: see also Note for 51 footnote below. (51.7) days of Tonson, Lintot, Curll Effectively the first third of the eighteenth century. Jacob Tonson (1655/56-1736, ODNB) was the publisher of Dryden and promoter of Milton’s literary reputation; Bernard Lintot (16751736, ODNB) was probably the most important bookseller of the period and is mentioned by many playwrights as well as in Alexander Pope’s Dunciad; Edmund Curll (d. 1747, ODNB) was an enemy of Pope and an opportunistic bookseller, who nevertheless was instrumental in creating the modern literary marketplace. (51.14) quire A set of four sheets of paper, doubled so as to form eight leaves, or more generally any collection of leaves one within another as in a manuscript. (51.20) babillage Chatter (French). (51.23) fore-thought Premeditated or planned (Scots). (51.26) green-room phrase One used in theatrical circles, the green-room of a theatre being that behind the scenes for the use of actors and actresses when not on stage. (51.28) “preparation,” The French word, like the English, means to plan or to get ready for use. (51 footnote) Advertisements for ‘The Modern Dunciad, a Poem in Two Cantos, by William Wastle, of that Ilk, Esq.’ as forthcoming can be found in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal on 10 March 1819 and the Caledonian Mercury of 13 March 1819. It likewise features in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for March 1819 as ‘preparing for publication’ in a footnote to Lockhart’s own ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam’ (4, 734n). There is also an advertisement on the verso of the title-page of the Blackwood’s issue for September 1819 (vol. 5), where—now described as in four cantos—this is included along with a number of largely ‘spoof’ Blackwood publications such as ‘The Southside Papers; edited by Timothy Tickler’. The lines given in the present text suggest that the work was imagined as a modern imitation of Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad (1728-43), satirising bad writers and corrupt statesmen and politicians. (52.15) sçavoir faire To know how to do (French); the instinctive ability to act appropriately in social situations. (52.22) persiflage Light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter (French). (52.26) Stagyrite A native of Stagira in ancient Macedonia, used particularly to refer to the Greek philosopher Aristotle who was born there. (52.26) summum bonum The chief or highest good (Latin).

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(52.26-27) in having one’s faculties kept at work One of the keys to maximising one’s happiness, according to Aristotle, was to fulfil one’s human potential, as well as to live virtuously and to engage with others. (52.28) Elysium In Greek mythology the abode of the blessed, the home of the fortunate dead. (52.29) Chian Wine from the Greek island of Chios, among the most prized in the Classical world. (52.39-40) perfect widow’s cruise From the story in I Kings 17. 9-16. Elijah is commanded by God to seek sustenance during a famine of a poor widow, whose small barrel of meal and cruse of oil were to be inexhaustible until the rains came. (53.24-25) Château-Margout Wine from a famous estate of that name in Bordeaux. Letter VIII (54.31) Calvinist Adhering to the doctrine of the Protestant theologian Jean Calvin (1509-1564), whose teaching is expressed in his Institutio Religionis Christianae (1536). The presbyterian Church of Scotland is Calvinist in its direction. (55.16) ‘thick as the leaves in Vallambrosa,’ See John Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 302. (55.22) cavalier […] roundheads Names for the two sides in the civil wars of the 1640s, the cavaliers being adherents of Charles I, while the roundheads were their opponents who adhered to the parliament. Wastle’s preference for the royalist side marks his Toryism. (55.23) good son of the true church Wastle indicates his adherence to episcopalianism, whereas Scotland’s national church is presbyterian. (55.24-25) covenanters […] sceptic and infidel tribe Covenanter is a name applied to the signatories of various bonds or covenants for the security and advancement of the presbyterian Church of Scotland. Between the Restoration of 1660 and the Revolution of 1688 they were harried and proscribed, but exhibited a brave and sometimes fanatical resistance. The terms sceptic and infidel relate to the disciples of various Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, notably David Hume, who was considered an atheist. (56.9) the church The established Church of England, which was episcopalian. Its clergymen were often drawn from established gentry families. (56.20) Shepherd Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760-1840, ODNB), SolicitorGeneral from 1813 and knighted the following year, becoming AttorneyGeneral in 1817. He was Lord Chief Baron of Exchequer in Scotland from June 1819 to February 1830.

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(56.21) our excellent Chancellor John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838, ODNB), had become Lord Chancellor in 1801, his earldom being later granted in 1821. He was a prominent political figure and widely regarded as the greatest lawyer of his time. (56.26) Canning George Canning (1770-1827, ODNB) was a disciple of Pitt the Younger and a leading light of the Anti-Jacobin (1797-98) periodical, becoming Foreign Secretary between 1807 and 1809, and eventually Prime Minister. (56.26) Frere John Hookham Frere (1769-1846, ODNB), diplomat, writer for the Anti-Jacobin, and one of the founders of the Tory Quarterly Review. (56.27) Wordsworth and Coleridge William Wordsworth (1770-1850, ODNB) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, ODNB ), chief among the English Lake Poets. (56.28) inexhaustible Southey Robert Southey (1774-1843, ODNB), the current Poet Laureate, and also a historian and periodical reviewer. (57.19) cloak of Geneva Name for a Calvinist minister’s gown. Geneva in Switzerland was the base of the Protestant theologian Jean Calvin (1509-1564), whose teaching is expressed in his Institutio Religionis Christianae (1536). The presbyterian Church of Scotland is Calvinist in its direction. (57.20) John Knox Knox (c. 1514-1572, ODNB ), Scottish religious reformer who was influential upon the formation of a Protestant Church of Scotland. See also Notes for 30.20-21 and 30.21-22. (57.28) David Hume Hume (1711-1776, ODNB) was influential both as a historian and philosopher. (57.28) beau ideal Literally, ideal beauty (French); representing the highest possible standard of excellence in a particular respect. (58.7-8) attachment to the blood of his native princes Presumably referring to the Tory emphasis in Hume’s The History of Great Britain (1754-61), including its attempt to arouse the reader’s sympathy for the fate of Charles I. (58.20-21) mysteries of Revealed Religion Revealed religion is based on divine revelation rather than reason. The allusion is perhaps to Section X, ‘Of Miracles’, of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), where a miracle is defined as ‘a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity’ and therefore problematic. (59.4) Prince of Historians Hume was highly valued in his lifetime for being the author of The History of Great Britain (1754-61), this arguably exceeding his reputation as a philosopher. (59.7) Adam Smith, and the other philosophers of their sect In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) Hume avoided a religious or providential explanation of morality, expounding instead a theory of utility, that morality involves assessing the painful or pleasing consequences of actions

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on the persons affected by them. This was developed by Adam Smith (bap. 1723, d. 1790, ODNB) in his major work The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), which emphasised man’s sociability, his need for approval by others and capacity to form moral codes through social interaction. By the end of the eighteenth century the ‘theory of utility’ was an established philosophical concept. (59.12) Scioli Superficial pretenders to knowledge (Latin). (59.29) as Faustus says Faust is a verse tragedy in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the first part published in 1808 and the second in 1832. Since a translation of the first part into English evidently did not appear until 1821 it seems likely that Lockhart gives his own version of the passage cited. The quotation is not from The Tragical History of Dr Faustus (1594) by the dramatist Christopher Marlowe. (59.35-39) Τῶν δε ϖεϖραγμενων […] εργων τελος Once deeds are done, whether in justice or contrary to it, not even Time, the father of all, could undo their outcome. From Pindar, Olympian Odes 2, ll. 15-18. (60.14-15) antediluvian From the time before Noah’s flood (for which see Genesis 6-8): hence antiquated. (60.21) David’s Toryism A reputation founded principally on David Hume’s historical work, particularly The History of Great Britain (1754-61) which offended Whig sensibilities by its expressions of sorrow for the fate of Charles I. Letter IX (61.3) original portrait of David Hume Probably the portrait painted in 1766 by Allan Ramsay (1713-1784, ODNB) showing the sitter wearing a scarlet, gold-laced coat, now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (PG 1057). This was painted as a companion to Ramsay’s portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see Note for 62.32-33), and the two hung together in Hume’s parlour in his house at 8 South St David Street in the New Town until his death in 1776. (61.4) physiognomical and cranioscopical mania Physiognomy is the supposed science of judging a person’s character or personality from the features of their face, and goes back to Classical times, when Aristotle supposedly wrote a treatise on the subject. Cranioscopy is another word for phrenology (see also Note for 37.18, on ‘doctrine of the Spurzheims’). (61.6-7) “the human head divine.” Compare ‘the human face divine’ in Milton, Paradise Lost, III. 44. (61.8) Baconian turn for observation Francis Bacon (1561-1626, ODNB ), Lord Chancellor and philosopher, had argued in his Novum Organum (1620) for a new conception of science as the discovery of the hitherto unknown, based upon observation and experiment.

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(62.8) Gallic system That of the German physician Franz Joseph Gall (17581828), who was the pioneer of phrenology. (62.17-18) German doctor See previous Note. (62.32-33) portrait, by the same hand, of […] Jean Jacques Allan Ramsay’s portrait (National Galleries of Scotland, NG 820) of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): see also Note for 61.3. Hume had helped to secure a refuge in London for Rousseau in 1766 and a pension from George III after Rousseau had suffered from persecution for his political and social views in France. The two portraits of Hume and Rousseau by Ramsay were intended as a monument to their friendship, which soon degenerated into a bitter quarrel with an increasingly paranoid Rousseau believing that Hume was plotting to discredit him. (62.40) Armenian garb Ramsay’s portrait (see previous Note) showed Rousseau in the Armenian dress of a fur cap and fur-trimmed jacket that had intrigued London society on his arrival there in 1766. Armenia is a country in the mountainous Caucasus region between Europe and Asia. Letter X (65.2) Mr —— Originally ‘Mr S——’ in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters, signifying Scott. (65.2-3) Mr Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling See Note for 8.30-31. (65.6) his house In Edinburgh Henry Mackenzie lived at 6 Heriot Row in the New Town. (65.27-28) the Armenian […] deep green curtain A similar situation is found in Letter IV in Book II of Der Geisterseher [The Ghost-Seer ] (1787-89), by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, where a mysterious Armenian performs all sorts of trickery, though the curtains in this case are described as being black rather than green. The novel was first published in English as The Armenian; or, the Ghost-seer in 1800. (66.7) Harley The sentimental hero of Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). (66.7) La Roche The protagonist of Mackenzie’s ‘The Effects of Religion on Minds of Sensibility: The Story of La Roche’, first published in The Mirror of 19, 22, and 26 June 1779. He is supposed to be based on David Hume. (66.7-8) Montauban—Julia de Roubigné The eponymous heroine of Mackenzie’s novel Julia de Roubigné (1777) and her husband. (66.9) “παλαιων όνοματ’ ονειρων!” Names from ancient dreams (Greek). Source unidentified. (66.10) “in the flesh” Embodied, physically present; an expression perhaps deriving from its use in Philippians 1. 22-24.

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(66.10) hoary magician Describing Mackenzie as an undead magician rather like the Sir Michael Scott of Walter Scott’s popular poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). (66.13) Goldsmith, or Sterne, or Addison Leading essayists and fictionwriters of a previous age: Oliver Goldsmith (1728?-1774, ODNB ), Laurence Sterne (1713-1768, ODNB), and Joseph Addison (1672-1719, ODNB ). As a result of longevity Mackenzie is similarly envisaged as belonging to a past literary era. (66.14) “όι νυν ζροτοι εσμεν.” Such characters as those, or such characters as we now are (Greek). (66.24) in almost all the pictures of Pope For instance that painted in 1716 by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723, ODNB), frequently used as the basis for engravings. (66.27-28) Warren Hastings Hastings (1732-1818, ODNB ) was Governor of Bengal, and impeached for corruption in 1787 but acquitted. (66.29-30) installation of Lord Grenville Among the honours he received in the later years of his life Warren Hastings was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Oxford. The politician and former prime-minister William Wyndham Grenville, Baron Grenville (1759-1834, ODNB), became Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1810. (68.9) his wife Penuel Grant, daughter of Sir Ludovick Grant of Grant, married Henry Mackenzie on 6 January 1776 and the couple had eleven children. (68.12) his eldest son Joshua Henry Mackenzie (1777-1851) was a prosperous and wealthy lawyer, who became a senator of the College of Justice as Lord Mackenzie in 1822. (68.17) Mr Roland Adam Rolland of Gask (1734-1819), advocate, was a cofounder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Scotland. In Edinburgh he lived at 15 Queen Street, according to the Post Office Annual Directory for 1818-19 (p. 279). He died on 18 August 1819: see Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (September 1819), 758. Henry Cockburn describes him as a person dressed in ‘old beau’ style, ‘the vicissitudes of fashion being contemptible in the sight of a person who had made up his own mind as to the perfection of a gentleman’s outward covering’, adding that, for all his precision of appearance and manner, ‘with not above two or three old friends, he could be correctly merry, and had no objection whatever to a quiet bottle of good claret’: see Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), pp. 36061. He is sometimes mentioned as the prototype of Paulus Pleydell in Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815): see EEWN 2, ed. by P. D. Garside (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 507. (68.24) queue, his lace-ruffles A queue is a long plait of hair hanging down behind, probably part of a wig; lace ruffles would be worn either at the cuff or front of a shirt, or possibly both.

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(69.24) Muscat-de-Rives-altes A wine from the Roussillon region of France, taking its name from the town of Rivesalt. In a letter to William Blackwood on 24 July 1819, on having received a presentation copy, Mackenzie wrote: ‘He [the unknown author] is a little mistaken about my fondness for Wine not for my love of Spirit’ (NLS MS 4004, fol. 194). (69.26) Château-la-Rose Red wine made in the Bordeaux region of France. (69.31) “High-jinks.” Games played by Edinburgh lawyers in taverns: for an account see Scott’s Guy Mannering, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 204-06 (volume 2, chapter 15). Paulus Pleydell in Scott’s novel presides over these games (see Note for 68.17 above). (69.34-35) not one stone of the New Town Construction in the Edinburgh New Town began in 1767, the first phase of development to a plan by James Craig, the winner of the design competition promoted by the city, being completed in 1820. (70.11) Court of Justiciary The High Court of Justiciary is Scotland’s supreme criminal court. (70.16) mugs of Mieux and Barclay Pots of beer, probably porter. The Horseshoe brewery at the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street in London had been acquired by Henry Meux in 1809. The Anchor brewery in Southwark, counted the largest in the world in the early nineteenth century, was operated by Barclay, Perkins & Co. (70.22) words of the Laureate Robert Southey (1774-1843, ODNB) had been Poet Laureate since 1813. The following quotation is modified from The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo (1816), Part IV,’The Hopes of Man’, stanza 29: ‘For of all ages and all parts of earth, / To choose thy time and place did Fate allow, / Wise choice would be this England and this Now’. (70.29) Noctes Cœnœque Horace, Satires, II. vi. 65: ‘O noctes cenaeque deum!’ (O nights and feasts divine!). Letter XI (71.1-2) a triennial dinner, in honour of Robert Burns The poet Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759, a date still commemorated in Scottish Burns Suppers. This particular Edinburgh dinner was held on 22 February 1819 at the Assembly Rooms in George Street, and was attended by about 320 people: see the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 25 February 1819. (71.6) original plan An advertisement for the dinner in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 17 February 1819 indicates that the original venue was to have been McEwan’s Rooms at the Royal Exchange in Edinburgh.

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(71.9) Assembly-Rooms in George-Street Begun in 1783 by John Henderson and opened in 1787 as a replacement for the venue in the Old Town of Edinburgh. A portico was added to the plain classical front in 1818. (71.11) buy my ticket Those wishing to be present at the dinner, according to an advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 8 February 1819, should ‘leave their names at M‘Ewan’s Rooms, Royal Exchange, before Wednesday the 17th, when tickets of admission, at a Guinea each, will be ready for delivery’. (71.15) stewards According to the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 25 February 1819 these were listed as including ‘Sir George Mackenzie, Mr Walter Scott, Mr John Wilson, Mr Tennant, Mr Hogg, Captain Basil Hall, Mr George Thomson […] besides other gentlemen of the highest respectability’. (71.16) Edinburgh Weekly Journal This newspaper had been acquired by Scott’s printer James Ballantyne in 1817. The larger of two reports, headed ‘Commemoration of Burns’, was in the issue for 3 March 1819. (72.8) Captain Adam of the Navy Charles Adam (1780-1853, ODNB), second son to William Adam of Blair Adam, a naval officer who had been made captain in 1799 and after 1815 was captain of the royal yacht. (72.8) the Judge William Adam of Blair Adam (1751-1839, ODNB), a political manager of Scottish affairs for successive Whig opposition parties. He had been appointed Lord Chief Commissioner of the newly-created Jury Court of Scotland in 1815. (72.9) croupier One who sits as assistant chairman at the bottom of the table at a public dinner. (72.17) traiteur The keeper of an eating-house. In this case the caterer was evidently the landlord of McEwan’s Rooms even though the venue had been changed. As the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 reported, ‘It is doing but justice to Mr M’Ewan to say that the dinner and wines were excellent, and his arrangements most judicious’. (72.19) hock The white wine known as Hochheimer, derived from the name of the town of Hochheim am Main in Germany. (72.20) the sparkler An effervescent white wine, such as champagne. (72.21) filberts Hazelnuts. (72.22) entre nous Between ourselves (French). (72.23) Mr John Murray John Archibald Murray (1778?-1859, ODNB), second son of one of the Lords of Session, Lord Henderland, and a contributor to the Edinburgh Review. He was called to the bar in 1800. (72.27) Jeffrey The Edinburgh Evening Courant report of 25 February 1819 states that the Chairman ‘was supported by Mr Henry Cockburn, and Mr Francis Jeffrey’. For Jeffrey himself, see Note for 8.31.

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(72.28) absence of Mr Scott Walter Scott is named as one of the stewards in advertisements for the dinner and was ‘prevented from attending by indisposition’ according to the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 25 February 1819. This probably relates to the return of Scott’s stomach-cramps from gallstones in the spring of 1819. His place at the dinner was taken by his elder son, Walter Scott. (73.9-10) Swift’s Rhapsody The quotation which follows is from Jonathan Swift’s ‘On Poetry: a Rhapsody’ (1733), ll. 33-42. (73.23) fine verses of Milton Apparently referring to John Milton’s elegiac Lycidas (1637), from which two lines are subsequently quoted. (73.27-28) whose lips “Phœbus tips with fire,” A phrase employed in ‘Lines, written at Athens in 1820’ in A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, and from Living Authors, ed. by Joanna Baillie (London, 1823), p. 98, but which must have an earlier origin. In Greek Phoebus means ‘the shining one’, an attribute given to Apollo, the god of the sun and leader of the muses. (73.30-31) To sport […] hair John Milton, Lycidas, ll. 68-69. (74.10-11) “eventus docuit.” The result showed (Latin). See Livy, History of Rome, VIII. xxix. 5: ‘eventus docuit fortes fortunam iuvare’ (the sequel showed that Fortune favours the brave). (74.17) assailed the character of Burns In his review of Cromek’s Reliques of Robert Burns in Edinburgh Review, 13 (January 1809), 249-76, Jeffrey accuses Burns of a lack of chivalry, a belief that genius absolved him from the demands of morality and common sense, and of vulgarly boasting of his own independence. His simplicity is, however, contrasted favourably with the alleged childishness of Wordsworth. (75.1-2) “been clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day” The rich man at whose gate Lazarus begs is so described in Luke 16. 19. (75.6) drink the water of bitterness Part of a test for a woman accused of adultery was that she should be forced to drink ‘the bitter water that causeth the curse’, and if guilty her belly would swell and her thigh would rot (Numbers 5. 24-27). Jeremiah 8. 14 also mentions that God has given his people ‘water of gall to drink’ as a punishment for sin. (75.6-7) eat his bread in the sweat of his brow Part of God’s curse on Adam after he had eaten the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden was ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread’ (Genesis 3. 19). (75.13) rule of judging as we would be judged Proverbial (see ODEP, p. 415), deriving from Matthew 7. 1-2: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again’. (75.14) sequela That which follows (Latin); medically, a condition occurring as the result of a previous disease or consequence.

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(75.17-18) Compound […] no mind to Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663), ll. 215-16. (75.21) Mozart The Austrian composer and musical prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). (75.31) It is the moon—I ken her horn! From Robert Burns’s song ‘Willie Brewed a Peck o’ Maut’ (Kinsley 268), l. 13. (75.33) timber-tuned Having a harsh, unmusical voice; being unable to sing in tune. (75.36) mother of Burns Agnes Brown (1732-1820). (75.36-76.1) his widow Jean Armour (1765-1834, ODNB). (76.5-6) Mr Maule of Panmure William Ramsay Maule (1771-1852, ODNB), MP for Forfarshire and Foxite Whig politician, had been born William Ramsay but adopted the name Maule on inheriting the estates of his uncle George Maule in 1787. Panmure was an ancient country estate approximately 4 miles northwest of Carnoustie in Forfarshire. Maule’s annuity to Burns’s widow is referred to in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 24 February 1819. (76.6) One of the sons of the poet James Glencairn Burns (1794-1865), described by the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 as ‘having lately received a comfortable appointment in the Commissariat of the Bengal army’. This ‘youngest son’ is referred to in ‘Burns’s Anniversary’ in The Scotsman of 27 February 1819. He rose from military cadet to the rank of Major, perhaps at one point acting Colonel, in the East India Company, later serving as a Judge in India. (76.14) George Thomson The Scottish song editor George Thomson (17571851, ODNB) proposed the health of Mr Maule at the dinner and related the story of the annuity to Mrs Burns and her son’s providing for her. The Edinburgh Evening Courant of 25 February 1819 reported that ‘The audience hailed with delight these characteristic traits of the family of the high-soul’d Burns’. Burns had contributed many songs between 1792 and his death to Thomson’s Select Collection of Scottish Airs, 5 vols (1793-1818) and the two men had a close working relationship. (76.17) The health of Mr Scott In his speech in proposing Scott’s health as recorded in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 the Chairman, John Murray (see Note for 72.23), remarked that had Scott been present he would have given it ‘with all the honours’, and as Scott’s absence prevented this he would accompany no toast with honours that evening. Honours seems to mean the company drinking the toast with ‘Hip hip hurrah!’ (76.18) Mr Mackenzie For the novelist Henry Mackenzie see Letter X and Notes. (76.19) Mr Cockburn Henry Cockburn (1779-1854, ODNB), afterwards Scottish judge and biographer of Francis Jeffrey. His pleading in court is described in Letter XXXV. The Edinburgh Evening Courant of 25 February

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1819 reported that at the dinner he ‘was particularly happy in some of his eulogies on living worth’. (76.21) Burns in the Mirror Henry Mackenzie and his friends published two essay-periodicals, The Mirror (1779-80) and The Lounger (1785-87). One of the earliest appraisals of Burns’s work was published by Mackenzie in no. 97 of The Lounger on 9 December 1786. (76.22-23) Thomas Campbell […] “Specimens.” For Campbell see Note for 43.8-9. Campbell’s essay on Burns was published in Specimens of the British Poets, 7 vols (London, 1819), VII, 230-46. (77.5-6) Wordsworth […] Southey […] Coleridge All Tory poets. Lockhart is mistaken, however, in stating that Wordsworth’s health was not drunk. ‘Mr Robertson, advocate, in proposing the health of Mr Wordsworth the poet, stated, that in many instances he resembled Burns, having described the humble and virtuous scenes of rural life, and that it had been said of him that there was poetry in his very weaknesses’: see ‘Burns’s Anniversary’ in The Scotsman of 27 February 1819. Robertson is probably Patrick or Peter Robertson: see Note for 89.7. (77.9-10) three of the greatest poetical geniuses Compare Francis Jeffrey on ‘Ford’s Dramatic Works’ in the Edinburgh Review, 18 (August 1811), 275-304 (p. 283): ‘Southey, and Wordsworth, and Coleridge […] have all of them copied the manner of our older poets; and, along with this indication of good taste, have given great proofs of original genius. […] there is a fertility and a force, a warmth of feeling and an exaltation of imagination, about them, which classes them, in our estimation, with a much higher order of poets than the followers of Dryden and Addison; and justifies an anxiety for their fame, in all the admirers of Milton and Shakespeare.’ (77.17) Crabbe, Rogers […] Montgomery George Crabbe (1754-1832, ODNB); Samuel Rogers (1763-1855, ODNB); and James Montgomery (17711854, ODNB). None of them are listed among the poets whose health was drunk at the meeting in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, but the list is unlikely to have been comprehensive. (77.25-26) petty discrepancies of political opinion Henry Cockburn concurs with Lockhart’s assertion that the Burns dinner was a focus of Whig sentiment, describing it as ‘long remembered as the first public dinner at which any of the Whigs of Edinburgh had spoken’: see Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), p. 356. In its article ‘Commemoration of Burns’, the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 had attacked The Scotsman for misrepresenting ‘this national assemblage’ as ‘a party meeting, of which the triumph belonged to the Whigs’. (77.33-34) narrows his mind […] mankind Oliver Goldsmith on Edmund Burke in The Retaliation (1774), ll. 31-32.

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(78.7) defender and guardian of the reputation Wordsworth had published A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns in 1816, a response to James Currie’s account of the poet’s character in his standard edition of 1800. Wordsworth’s essay was addressed to James Gray, who had taught Burns’s sons at Dumfries Academy. (78.16-17) treatment of Mr Wordsworth in the Edinburgh Review For instance, Jeffrey’s notorious review of The Excursion beginning ‘This will never do’, in Edinburgh Review, 24 (November 1814), 1-30. (79.2-3) Clifford […] the Shepherd Lord See Wordsworth’s, ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors’ (1807). The following quotation is from ll. 165-68. The Shepherd Lord is Henry Clifford, whose father was killed fighting on the Lancastrian side at the Battle of Towton in 1461. According to legend Henry, who was only a boy, was sheltered from the vengeance of the Yorkists by local people and is said to have lived incognito as a humble shepherd until he was able to reclaim his birthright on the accession of Henry VII in 1485. (79.24-25) walked in glory […] mountain’s side Burns, as depicted by Wordsworth in ‘Resolution and Independence’ (1802, published 1807), ll. 4546. Letter XII (80.5) epos Literally, speech or song (Latin); here specifically, a series of events worthy of epic treatment. (80.7) Mr John Wilson The poet and periodical writer, John Wilson (17851854, ODNB), was closely allied with Lockhart in conducting Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. See also Note for 498.25. (80.8) health of the Ettrick Shepherd James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, poet and fiction-writer (1770-1835, ODNB), was also an important early contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. (80.12) eloquence Details of Wilson’s speech are recorded in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819. This celebrated Hogg as the worthy successor to Burns and concluded: ‘The most acceptable offering to the departed Bard will be, the voice of encouragement and affection with which we hail the living.’ It was received ‘with enthusiastic applause by the company, who seemed perfectly to agree in the sentiments so beautifully expressed’. (80.16-17) his Oxford prize poem Wilson had won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford in 1806 with ‘A Recommendation of the Study of the Remains of ancient Greek and Roman Architecture, Sculpture and Painting’. (80.24) ideal Goth A hint of the current controversy about the origins of the Scottish people. John Pinkerton in his A Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths (1787) asserted that these were Gothic and

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supposed the Celtic peoples to be innately inferior. This was a controversial view in the light of the Ossian poems of James Macpherson. (80.25) Sicambrian See Note for 38.7. (80.27) Jornandes Or Jordanes, a sixth-century eastern Roman of Gothic descent whose De Origine Actibusque Getarum (The Origin and Deeds of the Getae [Goths]), commonly abbreviated as Getica, was completed around 551 CE. (80.28) “Bello gaudentes […] Teutones” The Germans rejoicing in war, laughing in battle (Latin).There is a similar construction in Statius, Thebaid, IX. 724, but no such wording has been located in the writings of Jordanes. The expression occurs again in Lockhart and Wilson’s subsequent annual as ‘Bello gerentes, prælio gaudentes Teutones’: see ‘Saturday Night in the Manse’, Janus; or the Edinburgh Literary Almanack (Edinburgh, 1826), p. 347. (80.28) Attila Ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453 CE; he was the leader of a tribal empire in central and eastern Europe. (81.3) sinus frontalis Frontal sinuses, situated behind the ridges of the brow. See also Note for 44.23-24. (81.37-38) private friendship James Hogg recalled how he had written a note to Wilson after the publication of The Isle of Palms in 1812 asking him to dinner at his lodgings, an invitation which was accepted. ‘I found him so much a man according to my own heart, that for many years we were seldom twentyfour hours asunder, when in town’: see ‘Memoir of the Author’s Life’ in Altrive Tales, ed. by Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), p. 33. (82.2) Manes The souls of dead ancestors, often worshipped as beneficent spirits. (82.8) “sprung from the very bosom of the people,” A quotation from Wilson’s speech: see Edinburgh Weekly Journal, 3 March 1819. (82.27-28) Like hungry Jew […] manna See Robert Burns, ‘Song (Yestreen I had a pint o’ wine)’, ll. 5-6 (Kinsley 320). (82.30) very few words These are reported in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819: ‘Mr Hogg expressed his gratitude for the marked kindness with which his name had been mentioned and received, avowed the honest pride he felt in the distinction of a Scottish Bard, protesting that he would much rather starve with the Muses than live in affluence without them, and that he never was so proud and happy as at the present moment.’ (83.5) “acquæ potores.” Water-drinkers, perhaps an allusion to Horace, Epistles, I. xix. 2-3: ‘Nulla placere diu nec vivere carmina possunt, / Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus’ (No poems can please long, nor live, which are written by water-drinkers). (83.8) whisky toddy A drink composed of whisky, hot water and sugar.

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(83.17) Wit walked the rounds, and music filled the air Not identified. (83.18) “Jolly Beggars” Name for ‘Love and Liberty—A Cantata’ (Kinsley 84), probably written around 1785 but initially thought too licentious for publication. It first appeared as a tract in 1799, entitled The Jolly Beggars: or Tatterdemallions. A Cantata. A cantata is a choral work, a lyric drama set to music but not intended to be acted. (83.20) Messrs Swift, Templeton, and Lees Edinburgh singers mentioned as performing at other Edinburgh functions and concerts. Nicholas Swift (17991864), male alto and glee singer, spent many years in Edinburgh. James Templeton (1784-1868) was a singer and teacher who frequently took part in Edinburgh concerts and was elder brother to the singer John Templeton (18021886, ODNB). Templeton the younger himself first sang in Edinburgh at the age of 14, and ceased two years later when his voice broke, so his appearance at a Burns dinner then seems unlikely. Thomas Lees (?1762-1824), a bass and glee singer, was choir-master at the High Church in Edinburgh for many years; he is listed as living in Advocates Close in the Post-Office Annual Directory for 1818-19 (p. 195). The version of ‘The Jolly Beggars’ sung at the dinner was probably the one published by George Thomson in June 1818 in the fifth volume of the folio edition of A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, set to music by Henry Rowley Bishop. (83.20-21) recitative read […] by Mr B——— Possibly the printer James Ballantyne, who was present at the dinner, the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 recording that he proposed a toast to the health of the Author of Waverley. This paper’s account of the performance of ‘The Jolly Beggars’, however, simply states that the professional musicians were ‘assisted by several amateurs’. (83.25-26) a very old gentleman […] club of which he is president According to the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 the Chairman at the end of the performance of Burns’s cantata The Jolly Beggars gave the toast of ‘“the Beggars’ Benison,” which called up Dr Duncan, senior, who being, he said, a knight of that ancient order, of forty years standing, returned thanks to the Chairman, in name of the order’. Andrew Duncan the elder (1744-1828, ODNB) was a respected Edinburgh physician, who founded a public dispensary and agitated for the establishment of a public lunatic asylum (finally built in 1807) in Edinburgh. He had been President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1790. The Beggars Benison was a gentleman’s club, originally formed in Anstruther in 1732 and surviving until 1836 with branches in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St Petersburg. Members built up a collection of pornography, and exchanged obscene songs and toasts at their dinners, where they were also entertained by ‘posture girls’. No corroborative evidence has been found of Duncan’s membership of the Edinburgh branch, founded in 1766.

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(83.29) Currie’s edition James Currie (1756-1805, ODNB) published his edition of The Works of Robert Burns in four volumes in Liverpool in 1800, this indeed excluding ‘The Jolly Beggars’. Currie’s edition was frequently reprinted in the nineteenth century. (83.36) Highland Widow For the following lines see ‘Love and Liberty—A Cantata’ (Kinsley 84), ll. 84, 89-100. (84.13) Penseroso Thoughtful, meditative (Italian). (84.14-21) But oh! [...] John Highlandman See Kinsley 84, ll. 109-16. (84.22) Little Fiddler See Kinsley 84, ll. 117-28. (84.31) gamut The full range of notes of an instrument, here the violin. (84.32) Arioso A musical passage having the air of a recitative or simple aria. (84.34) allegretto At a fairly brisk speed. (84.35) giga A lively baroque dance, deriving from the English jig. (84.36) Scottish Soldier’s ditty See Kinsley 84, ll. 29-48. (84.37-38) best ballads Campbell has written Thomas Campbell’s patriotic and warlike songs included ‘Hohenlinden’, ‘Ye Mariners of England’ and ‘The Battle of the Baltic’. For Campbell himself, see also Note for 43.8-9. (85.6) heights of Abram British forces under General James Wolfe (17271759, ODNB) scaled the height of Abraham in September 1759 to defeat the French at Quebec, though Wolfe himself was fatally wounded during the battle. (85.8) Moro In 1762 British forces stormed the fort of Moro that defended the harbour of Santiago, Cuba. (85.9-11) Curtis […] Elliot Gibraltar was successfully held for the British by General George Eliott (1717-1790, ODNB) against a siege by French and Spanish forces between 1779 and 1783. Admiral Sir Roger Curtis (1746-1816, ODNB) was generally admired for the bravery of his attempt to destroy the floating battens of the invading forces. (85.18) Crabbe In works such as The Borough (1810), for instance, the poet George Crabbe (1754-1832, ODNB) had given a stern view of life and depicted depraved characters, notable amongst whom is Peter Grimes, an abuser of apprentice-boys who is haunted by visions of the spirits of his deceased father and the dead apprentices. (85.19) hedge alehouse An inferior alehouse, one of mean quality. (85.27) in propriâ personâ In his own person (Latin). (85.27) par cum paribus Equal with equals (Latin). (85.29) the Bard The singer of the song beginning ‘I am a Bard of no regard’. For the quoted description, see ll. 246-49 (Kinsley 84). (85.30) Poosie Nansie’s A tavern in the Cowgate, Mauchline, Ayrshire, named after its landlady and visited by Burns, who set ‘The Jolly Beggars’ there.

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(86.6) “orra duds” Odd or unmatched, poor and ragged clothes. (86.14-15) My name it is Donald Macdonald […] sae grand Opening lines of ‘Donald Macdonald’, a hugely popular song written by James Hogg probably about 1803 or 1804 in response to a threat of invasion by Napoleonic France and first published with his name as a broadside: see The Forest Minstrel, ed. by P. D. Garside and Richard D. Jackson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 348-50. (86.23) a herd on Yarrow In his youth and early manhood Hogg had been employed as a shepherd in the Ettrick and Yarrow valleys of Selkirkshire, following occasional childhood employment herding cows: see Gillian Hughes, James Hogg: A Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 10, 19-23. (86.33) “stick to their vocation.” See Note for 21.16. (87.1) Hogg drinking Hock For hock see Note for 72.19. The ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters has ‘the Ettrick Shepherd drinking Champaigne or Hock’, presumably altered in the ‘third’ edition to be humorously alliterative. (87.5) “a herd on Yarrow.” Referring back to Hogg’s previous speech to Morris (see text at 86.23 and Note). (87.6) sub dio Under the open sky (Latin). (87.8) friseur Hairdresser. (87.11) Chevalier Ruspini The dentist Bartholomew Ruspini (1730-1813, ODNB) published his Treatise on the Teeth in 1767 or 1768, becoming dentist to the Prince of Wales in 1787. He was made a knight of the Papal Order of the Golden Spur in 1789 and thereafter called himself ‘Chevalier’. (87.18-20) an eye […] years of youth See ‘Book First. The Wanderer’ from Wordsworth’s The Excursion, ll. 428-30. Lockhart would appear to be quoting from memory in this and the following quotations. (87.24-29) plain his garb […] intelligence See Book I of The Excursion, ll. 420-25. (87.32-33) On Man […] solitude These lines occur within Wordsworth’s 1814 Preface in prose to The Excursion, as the opening lines of a sample extract from his intended longer poem ‘The Recluse’. (88.4-5) From his sixth year […] hills Book I of The Excursion, ll. 118-19. For Hogg’s own account of herding as a child see his ‘Memoir of the Author’s Life’ in Altrive Tales, ed. by Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 12-13. (88.7-22) From that bleak tenement […] bodily sense See Book I of The Excursion, ll. 125-39. (88.23) the Shepherd’s latest writings Perhaps an allusion to his recentlypublished collection The Brownie of Bodsbeck; and Other Tales, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1818).

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(88.26-36) Thus informed […] to this hour See Book I of The Excursion, ll. 162-66, 172-76. (89.4) King Bacchus Roman god of wine, and therefore the monarch of drinkers. (89.6) one, or even because two presidents According to the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 March 1819 after John Murray resigned his place ‘James Campbell, advocate was then called to the chair’. This is likely to be James Campbell (1784-1860), eldest son of Richard Campbell of Craigie, admitted to the Faculty of Advocates on 19 July 1805: see Francis J. Grant, The Faculty of Advocates, 1532-1943 (Edinburgh, 1944), p. 29. (89.7) Mr Patrick Robertson Often known as Peter Robertson (1794-1855, ODNB), called to the Scottish bar in 1815 along with his friend John Wilson. He became a Lord of Session in 1843. (89.11) famous picture of Rubens Probably the ‘Drunken Silenus’ of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), painted around 1616-17 and now in the Alte Pinakothek (Inventory Number 319) in Munich, although in this picture Silenus is walking forward and stumbling rather than astride his ass. Silenus, an elderly drunken satyr, was supposedly a companion of Dionysius, also called Bacchus. The followers of Bacchus were known collectively as Bacchantes, who danced about him in an intoxicated or possessed state, sometimes tearing animals to pieces. (89.14-15) beginning, middle, nor end In his Poetics the Greek philosopher Aristotle declared that a plot or story is the imitation of a whole action and must therefore have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Letter XIII (90.21) one rather obscure corner The Old College of the University of Edinburgh is situated to the south of the city close to the South Bridge and on the corner of the present Chambers Street. (90.32) seldom below two thousand A paragraph on ‘Edinburgh University’ in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 13 May 1819 gave the number for the winter session as ‘upwards of 2150 students’, pronouncing that this ‘exceeds all parallel in the annals of the Edinburgh University, and is not equalled either by Oxford or Cambridge’. Edinburgh University had prospered during the Napoleonic Wars when the continental universities were not accessible by British students. (91.32) Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Memoirs Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury Written by Himself, the memoir of the diplomat and politician Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1582?-1648, ODNB), was first published by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill in 1764. Herbert there states that his parents sent him to Oxford ‘at twelve years old’ (p. 25), although according to the University Register he was then 14 years old.

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(91.36-37) one particular school in Edinburgh Probably the Royal High School founded in 1128, although Latin seems to have predominated. Scott states that some of his school-fellows had acquired ‘a smattering of Greek’ before coming to the university (Lockhart, Life of Scott, I, 40), and Greek seems to have been taught from 1772. Edinburgh Academy was founded in 1824 partly to emulate the teaching in Greek given at English public schools. (92.2) formal prælections Lectures addressed to the whole body of students in a class. (92.33) hurried out of their hands Arthur Melville Clark outlines the course of study leading to a degree from the University of Edinburgh as follows: ‘The curriculum […] required attendance during four regular sessions, and a course, which might be taken in any order, comprehending Latin, Greek, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Logic and Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Mathematics’: see Sir Walter Scott: The Formative Years (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, 1969), p. 98. (93.8-9) professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Belles-lettres The Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres was created for Hugh Blair (1718-1800, ODNB) in 1762. Blair was succeeded by Andrew Brown (1763-1834), who held the post until his death. (93.9) quasi jam linguaram satis periti As if already sufficiently trained in the languages (Latin). Not identified as a quotation. (94.5) “longs and shorts,” In prosody, a syllable which occupies a longer or shorter time to pronounce, the long having a ratio of two to one to the short. (94.5) “the superiority of things to words,” Rebus, non verbis (things, not words) is a common Latin proverb. (94.15) absente reo In the absence of the defendant (Latin): a legal phrase. (94.31) incredulus odi See Horace, Ars Poetica, I . 188: ‘Quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi’ (Whatever you thus show me, I discredit and abhor). (94.34) mortificatio spiritus Deadening of the spirit (Latin). (95.5) The darkness of it may be felt Like that of the plague of darkness inflicted by Moses at God’s command upon Egypt: see Exodus 10. 21. (95.15) Lexicon A word-book or dictionary, especially one of Greek. These were commonly bulky works set in small type, and therefore hard to read. (95.19) my Lord Byron’s opinion In stanzas 75-76 of Canto IV of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Byron observed the ‘drill’d dull lesson, forced down word by word / In my repugnant youth’ which wore out the freshness of the treasures Classical learning should have imparted before his mind could relish them, this presumably referring to his early education at Harrow School. Canto IV was published in 1818.

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(95.21) curiosa felicitas Studied felicity; a painstaking appropriateness of expression (Latin). The expression was applied to the writings of Horace by Petronius, Satyricon, 118. (95.24) as the noble Childe does The eponymous hero of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18) was frequently identified with its author, Lord Byron. (95.33) Coleridge […] voonders above voonders Coleridge’s pronunciation was evidently peculiar. Thomas Carlyle recollects, ‘His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong […] I still recollect his “object” and “subject” […] “om-m-mject” and “summ-m-mject”, with a kind of solemn shake or quaver’: The Life of John Sterling (London, 1851), p. 48. (96.4) tourists Travel-writers. (96.6) circulating-library Lending library supported by the subscriptions of its readers, in which novels and travels often predominated. (96.37) grappling-place Point where a firm or fast hold can be taken, as in holding a ship with a grapnel. (99.36) Xenophon’s Memorabilia Xenophon was an Athenian, born around 430 BCE, who wrote on various subjects inspired by his own experiences, such as sport and military history. His ‘Memorabilia’ is part of a group of works inspired by his recollections of Socrates. (99.36) the Phaedon A dialogue by Plato (c. 427-348 BCE), in which Phaedo of Elis, a disciple of Socrates, narrates the discussion that took place between Socrates and his friends during the last hour of his life and the manner of his dying. (99.37) Aristotle’s Poetick Treatise by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) on poetry and drama, which survives only in part. (100.2) Otaheite Tahiti, the largest island in French Polynesia, the South Pacific archipelago. (100.4) Dugald Stewart For this Enlightenment philosopher and teacher, see Note for 41.25. (100.8-9) an interleaved copy of Duvall’s Aristotle A complete edition of the works of Aristotle was published by Guillaume Duval in two volumes in 1629. (100.11-12) Cimmerian obscurity The Cimmerians supposedly lived in a land upon which the sun never shone and which was shrouded in cloud and mist. According to Homer, Odysseus had his encounter with the spirits of the dead there. (100.18) “total eclipse.” Compare John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), ll. 81-82: ‘Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse, / Without all hope of day!’ (100.30-31) Mr Christison Alexander Christison (1753-1820) had been a master at Edinburgh High School before becoming Professor of Humanity

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(Latin) at Edinburgh University in 1806, a Chair held until 1820. His First Humanity class was held on Wednesdays at 8 and at 12 o’clock, and the Second Humanity Class on Tuesdays at 11 o’clock, according to the start of the session advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 14 September 1818. (100.37) fluxions Properly the rate or proportion at which a flowing or varying quantity increases its magnitude, but more loosely adopted during the eighteenth century as a term for Newtonian calculus in general. (100.40) labitur […] volubilis aevum [The river] glides, and on it will glide, rolling its flood forever (Latin): from Horace, Epistles, I. ii. 43. (101.1) Mr Dunbar George Dunbar (1777-1851, ODNB) had assisted Professor Andrew Dalzel and on the latter’s death in 1806 succeeded him as Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University. His First Greek class met on Wednesdays at 10 and at 1 o’clock and his Second Greek class on Tuesdays at 8 and at 2 o’clock, according to the start of session advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 14 September 1818. (101.2) the Cambridge Classical Researches Museum Criticum, or, Cambridge Classical Researches was a journal running from 1813 to 1828, edited by James Henry Monk and James Blomfield, and focusing on close linguistic analysis of, primarily, Greek texts. A subsequent editorial responds to this comment in Peter’s Letters by contradicting ‘most positively the assertion that he [Dunbar] has ever been a contributor, small or great, to this periodical’: see Museum Criticum, 2 (1826), 509. (101.4) Latin title-pages […] English initials Indicating perhaps that on a Latin title-page the author’s name should be rendered in Latin, although traditionally the title-page is rather the province of the printer than of the author. Alternatively the ‘English initials’ may indicate his degrees or membership of a learned body (such as Fellow of the Royal Society). Letter XIV (102.9-10) Dr Ritchie Rev. David Ritchie (1763-1844), minister of St Andrew’s Church, Edinburgh, was appointed Professor of Logic at Edinburgh University in 1808 and held the position until his retirement in 1836. He is not named as the Professor of Logic in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters. His Logic class met on Tuesdays at 1 o’clock according to the start of session advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 14 September 1818. He is said to have been more illustrious on the curling pond than in his professorial capacity. (102.12) Reid and Stewart Thomas Reid (1710-1796, ODNB) was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1764 to 1780, and in his retirement published Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). For Dugald Stewart, see Note for 41.25.

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(102.15) Dr Thomas Brown Brown (1778-1820, ODNB) was a foundermember of the Edinburgh Review. When Dugald Stewart became too ill to lecture he was appointed co-holder in 1810 of the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University. His class met on Tuesdays at 12 o’clock according to the start of session advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 14 September 1818. (102.25-26) Berkeley, and Locke George Berkeley (1685-1753, ODNB) and John Locke (1632-1704, ODNB), both English as opposed to Scottish philosophers. (102.26-27) timber […] had any real existence Berkeley argued that the only things that existed were ideas. (102.29) Pyrrhonist Follower of a philosophy of scepticism derived from Phyrrho of Elis (c. 360-c. 272 BCE). (103.1) philabeg A kilt, as part of Highland dress. (103.8) Hume’s Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts Section IV of David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), entitled ‘Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operation of the Understanding’, was a rejection of any reasoning that fails to meet deductive standards, the following section being entitled ‘Sceptical Solution of these Doubts’. (103.9) crack Pre-eminent, first class. (103.12) pot-de-chambre Chamber-pot (French), piss-pot. The French saying is ‘curieux comme un pot de chambre’. (103.19) Leith sands A beach in the vicinity of Edinburgh’s port, used for horse-racing and also duels, which was subsequently lost in the development of Leith harbour. (103.24) Dicta Magistri Words of the master (Latin). (103.26-27) conning over Perusing, examining. (103.31) stenography The art of writing in shorthand. (103.39) Geneva cloak Name for a Calvinist minster’s gown: see Note for 57.19. (104.2) Tomb of the Capulets Proverbial expression usually meaning something forever lost or forgotten, silent as the tomb. The expression ultimately derives from the tomb in which Juliet is laid to rest and in which she and Romeo commit suicide in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. (104.22-23) Harris, whose intimate knowledge of Shakespeare James Harris (1709-1780, ODNB), whose philosophical and literary studies centred on Classical writers. His works include Three Treatises (1744) and Hermes (1751). He also published Philosophical Arrangements (1775) and Philological Inquiries (1781), which latter contains a discussion of Shakespeare and the rules of criticism.

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(104.26-27) the Stagyrite […] Homer Aristotle (see also Note for 52.26) quotes Homer frequently for ornamental effect, to illustrate a mythical worldview, and as a source of familiar and respectable ethical or political views. His citations are sometimes used as a resource for establishing details of the Homeric texts. (104.27-28) Ό Ποιητης The Poet (Greek). (104.30) Dugald Stewart See Note for 41.25. (104.36) the place of his residence Stewart spent much of his retirement at Kinneil House in Linlithgowshire. (105.27) Mr Wordsworth’s small pieces All three poems named were published in Lyrical Ballads, although only ‘The Idiot Boy’ appeared in the first edition of 1798. (105.30) Madge Wildfire Character in Scott’s novel The Heart of MidLothian (1818), seduced by George Staunton and subsequently becoming insane. (106.31-32) Wordsworth’s Excursion A long poem entitled The Excursion: Being a portion of The Recluse had been published by William Wordsworth (1770-1850, ODNB) in 1814, in nine books. It was intended to be the middle part of a three-part philosophical poem, though the only one completed. (106.37-107.14) Urania […] region of my song Lines (25-41) included by Wordsworth in his Preface to The Excursion, part of a sample passage from and prospectus of the longer intended work The Recluse. Letter XV (109.3) Professor Playfair’s lecture Playfair’s Natural Philosophy class met on Mondays at 11 o’clock, according to the start of session advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 14 September 1818. For John Playfair, see Note for 41.14. (109.6) this fine old Archimedes Archimedes (c. 287-212 BCE), born near Syracuse in Greece, one of the greatest mathematicians of antiquity. (109.22-23) illustrations of the Huttonian Theory Playfair’s Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802) was a major factor in the influence exerted by James Hutton (1726-1797, ODNB) on the development of geology. (109.25) New Observatory An Edinburgh observatory on Calton Hill had been left half-built in 1792, and a new one was begun in 1818 with completion in 1831 to the design of William Henry Playfair (1790-1857, ODNB), nephew to John Playfair. (109 footnote) died since my Letters were first published This footnote was added in the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters, following the death of Playfair on 20 July 1819. William Davies, the London publisher of the work, noted the consequent renewed topicality of Peter’s Letters in his letter to William

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Blackwood of 30 July 1819: ‘in the Morning Chronicle, a few days ago, you would doubtless observe a reference to the book, in consequence of the Death of Profr Playfair’ (NLS MS 4004, fol. 86). (110.3) Mr Playfair himself laid the foundation-stone of it last year According to the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 27 April 1818, the foundation stone was laid ‘On Saturday afternoon, between three and four o’clock […] with the usual ceremonies’. ‘A list of the directors, contributors, and members of the society, engraved on a plate of platina, also the gold, silver, and copper coins of the kingdom, were deposited with the stone. The Lord Provost and Magistrates, and a number of the members of the institution were present.’ The article does not name Playfair particularly. (110.7) Doric pillars Columns characteristic of the Doric order of Greek architecture, starting from the floor of a building (i.e. without a base), slightly tapered with wide, shallow flutings, and surmounted by a capital consisting of a basin-shaped circular moulding and plain, square slab. (110.8) Parthenon Meaning ‘Temple of the Maiden’, temple to Athena erected on the Acropolis at Athens under the administration of Pericles between 447 and 438 BCE. (110.12) best days of Grecian art The Calton Hill observatory was reputedly a scaled-down copy of the Temple of the Four Winds in Athens, with a portico in each direction and a central dome. (110.15) original rock of Theseus Theseus was a legendary King of Athens, and his rock is presumably the Acropolis, a rocky platform about 200 feet high and measuring approximately 900 feet long by 450 feet across. (110.18) Plato […] opening of his Republic The Republic of the Greek philosopher Plato (427-348 BCE) is a dialogue concerning justice in which Socrates describes the ideal city-state. At the start of Book I Socrates is returning with Glaucus to Athens from attending a religious festival at Piraeus, its chief port on a peninsula five miles southwest of the city, when they are persuaded to delay their return and make a visit to friends at the house of Polemarchus. (110.25) place where David Hume is laid David Hume was buried in 1776 on the southwest slope of Calton Hill, in the cemetery there, and a classical monument subsequently erected on the spot according to a design of 1777 by the architect Robert Adam. For an account of the structure and differing reactions to it, including Lockhart’s, see Iain Gordon Brown, ‘David Hume’s Tomb: A Roman Mausoleum by Robert Adam’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 121 (1992), 391-422. (110 footnote) architect See Note for 109.25 (‘New Observatory’). (111.1) no inscription Reflecting Hume’s own wish in his will that a ‘Monument be built over my Body […] with an Inscription containing only my

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Name with the Year of my Birth and Death, leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest’ (National Records of Scotland, CC8/8/125/2, pp. 866-67). (111.26-28) These grassy heaps […] mountain’s pool See William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VII, ll. 31-33. (111.29) misery […] strange bed-fellows Proverbial: see ODEP, p. 535. Letter XVI (112.2) Sir Christopher Pegge’s lecture-room Christopher Pegge (1764/51822, ODNB) was physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and reader in Anatomy at Christ Church College there. He was knighted in 1799 and appointed Regius Professor of Physic in Oxford in 1801. He moved to London in 1817. (112.3) primâ facie Impression gained at first sight (Latin). (114.13-14) University of Edinburgh […] institution A charter was granted for the University of Edinburgh in 1582, and it was opened the following year. (114.23) “shews and forms,” Commonplace phrase, with multiple sources during this period, signifying the formal signs and outward appearances of something. (114.37) author of the Scotch novels Walter Scott (1771-1832, ODNB ), then writing anonymously, and at a relatively early stage in the use of this collective term for the novels beginning with Waverley (1814). (115.3) Dominie Sampson For an account of the upbringing and education of Sampson, tutor to the Bertram family, see Scott’s Guy Mannering, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 11-12 (volume 1, chapter 2). (115.4) Reuben Butler […] last Tales of My Landlord For an account of the upbringing and education of Butler, schoolmaster and lover of Jeanie Deans, see Scott’s The Heart of Mid-Lothian, ed. by David Hewitt and Alison Lumsden, EEWN 6 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp. 73-77 (volume 1, chapter 9). The Heart of Mid-Lothian was published as the second in the series of Tales of My Landlord, following The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality published together and representing the first in 1816. (115.5) book of Memoirs Thomas Pococke’s Journal of a Soldier of the 71st, or Glasgow Regiment, Highland Light Infantry, from 1806 to 1815 was listed among the ‘Monthly List of New Publications’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (April 1819), 109. The prefatory ‘Advertisement’ to the work is subscribed ‘Edinburgh, 29th March, 1819’. (116.33) As Mr Macleod says A catch-phrase of Mr M’Leod in Maria Edgeworth’s ‘Ennui’, the first of her Tales of Fashionable Life, 3 vols (London, 1809). He is the prudent Scottish agent of the thoughtless protagonist Lord

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Glenthorn, who declares, ‘I cannot express how much I dreaded Mr. M’Leod’s I doubt—and—It may be doubted’ (I, 106). Letter XVII (118.15) Newton, Bacon, Locke, Milton The scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727, ODNB) was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; the politician and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626, ODNB) also attended Trinity College, Cambridge; the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704, ODNB) attended Christ Church College, Oxford; the poet John Milton (1608-1674, ODNB) attended Christ’s College, Cambridge. (118.18) Alfred Or Aelfred (848/9-899, ODNB), King of the West Saxons and Anglo-Saxons, known as Alfred the Great. (118.25) change in their course of studies In the first half of the nineteenth century the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were in a state of curricular as well as social inertia, almost exclusively focusing on classics and mathematics, but eventually came under pressure from those who looked to the German universities for their example, these having a greater focus on the sciences, history, and archaeology. A limited amount of curricular reform eventually came in 1850. (118.29-30) new doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature The idea of perfectibility has long-standing roots, but Lockhart is probably associating it with the radicalism of thinkers such as William Godwin, who had made it a central pillar of his An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). (119.13) members of our national church Undergraduates had to attend chapel services and on graduation subscribe to the 39 articles of the Church of England, this effectively excluding dissenters and Roman Catholics. (119.25) of a certain class The majority of students at both the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were from aristocratic, gentry, or clerical families. Letter XVIII (121.2) Ystradmeiric Probably Ystrad Meurig, a village about 8 miles northwest of Tregaron, Ceredigion in Wales, on the edge of the Cambrian mountains. Lockhart’s Oxonian and long-standing friend John Williams (17921858, ODNB) was the youngest child of Rev. John Williams, vicar of Ystrad Meurig. Lang, I, 225n, quotes Dr Jenkyns, Master of Balliol, in writing to Lockhart: ‘I could not help recognising the connection between Dr. Morris and our portly friend of Ystraed Meirie.’ Jenkyns may have referred either to the father or to the son, who was teaching in Winchester between 1818 and 1820 rather than resident at Ystrad Meurig. (121.6) beau-monde Fine world (French); fashionable society.

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(121.9) when you are in Rome Proverbial (‘When you are at Rome do as Rome does’): ODEP, p. 683. (121.24-25) Bath, and Cheltenham Popular spa towns in the nineteenth century, in Somerset and Gloucestershire respectively, and where summer visitors could enjoy a thriving social life as well as taking the water cure. (121.30) removal of the residence of the sovereign On the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603 James VI of Scotland became also James I of England, and removed himself and his court to London. (122.1) Premiere Noblesse The first or highest-ranking nobility (French). (122.18) Gordian knot A complex knot fastening the yoke to the pole of the waggon belonging to Gordias, King of Phrygia, of which it was said that whoever should loosen it would gain the empire of Asia. Alexander the Great cut it with his sword. (122.24) Barristers An English term for what in Scotland are members of the Faculty of Advocates. (123.1) births Now obsolete spelling of ‘berth’, a place or appointment. (123.13) Templar-life described by Addison and Steele A Templar is a barrister occupying chambers in the Inner or Middle Temple in London. Will Honeycomb, a member of the Club central to the daily essay-periodical The Spectator (1711-12) of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, is a lawyer and an aficionado of the theatre. (123.14-17) Temple wits […] upper form of the Cockney-school The Temple and Inns of Court are in the old City of London, as opposed to the fashionable West End. In a series of articles (for several of which Lockhart himself was responsible) Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine had attacked London-based writers such as Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Hazlitt under the label of the Cockney School of Poetry. By connecting the two Lockhart implies that by the nineteenth century the Temple and Inns of Court had lost something of their former social and cultural prestige. (123.15) “shorn of their beams,” Alluding to the description of Satan as like the sun obscured by a mist in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, I. 594-96. (123.16) the όι ἐν τελει of Albemarle-street Those in authority, persons in high positions (Greek). Albemarle Street is in Mayfair, off Piccadilly in London’s fashionable West End. The publisher John Murray had his premises at 50 Albemarle Street. (123.24) Writers or Clerks to the Signet An independent body of Scottish solicitors dating back to 1594, and authorised to supervise the use of the Signet (the private seal of the Scottish kings) and to act as clerks to the Courts. They are part of the Scottish College of Justice. Walter Scott’s father was a Writer to the Signet.

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(123.28) otium cum dignitate Leisure with dignity (Latin). A common phrase signifying retirement after a person has worked and saved enough to live upon with comfort. (124.5) minor noblesse Lesser nobility, probably in contrast to premier noblesse (see Note for 122.1), that is those who are armigers, entitled to use a heraldic achievement, but are not members of the peerage. (124.8) going to York York had become a thriving centre for polite culture during the eighteenth century, as an assize town with its races, theatre, and Assembly Rooms, though it was in decline as such by the early nineteenth century. (124.11) from April till Christmas James Hogg paints a portrait of a relatively deserted Edinburgh (in the autumn of 1810) when the lawyers were ‘scattered over the country’ and the ‘beauties have vanished from the public walks’: see The Spy, ed. by Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 118. (124.16) about the falling of the leaf Autumn would be a relatively quiet time of year, since the London social season mostly accorded with when Parliament was sitting, roughly from November until June, although during the Regency period its start was often closer to Christmas. (124.27) squeeze Colloquial term for a crowded assembly or social gathering. Letter XIX (126.2) routs Large evening parties or fashionable assemblies. (126.5) at home A reception where the host or hostess, or both, have announced that they will be ‘at home’ to receive their guests during certain hours in the course of which visitors may arrive and leave at will. A more or less informal reception for which arrangements have been made. (126.8) carpet-dances Informal dances, for which the carpet is not taken up. (126.9) quadrilles Square dances of French origin, usually performed by four couples and consisting of five sections, each complete in itself. (126.9) penseroso See Note for 84.13. This Italian term was commonly used in music. (126.28) per contra On the other hand, on the other side (Latin). (126.32) lords of the creation An ironical expression for men, deriving from Genesis 1. 28, where God gives mankind dominion ‘over every living thing’. (127.12) gauzes Thin transparent fabrics of silk, linen, or cotton. (127.13) Indian fan Normally a folding fan, to be carried in a lady’s hand. Despite the name many of these originated in China, being imported by the East India Company. (127.19) bona fide Good faith (Latin); sincere or honest in intention.

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(127.24) beau-monde Fine world (French); fashionable society. (127.27) short waists Fashionable gowns, commonly associated with the French Empire of Napoleon, were gathered just below the bust and then flowed freely to the ankle. (127.27) tetes Heads either of natural hair or wigs elaborately decorated with flowers, feathers, and so forth. (127.32-33) Spartan exposure of the leg Ancient Sparta, rival to Athens, was a military state where girls as well as boys underwent gymnastic training and women took an active part in state affairs and, when needed, in the defence of the city. (128.1) Diana Roman goddess of hunting and the moon, especially worshipped by women. (128.4) John Suckling’s poem The Cavalier poet Sir John Suckling (bap. 1609, d. 1641?, ODNB). The quotation is from ‘A Ballad upon a Wedding’, ll. 43-45, probably written to celebrate the marriage of John, Lord Lovelace and Lady Anne Wentworth on 11 July 1638. (128.23) Canova The Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822). (128.30) tyro A recruit, a beginner or learner. (128.33) linen rollers Long linen bandages, rolled into a cylinder, for winding around the limbs. (128.34) Apollo Belvidere So called from the Belvedere Gallery in the Vatican in Rome where it stood. It was an ancient statue of Apollo, discovered near Rome in the late fifteenth century and supposedly a copy of a bronze votive statue of Delphi commemorating the repulse of an attack by Gauls on the shrine in 279 BCE. From 1798 it formed part of the collection of the Louvre in Paris, after its requisitioning by Napoleon, but was returned after the latter’s defeat in 1815. (128.35) Fighting Gladiator Probably the Borghese Gladiator, frequently copied since its discovery during excavations carried out south of Rome by Cardinal Borghese in the early seventeenth century, and generally considered a model of male beauty. It is now thought to be a warrior rather than a gladiator, since it is probably a copy of a bronze by the Greek sculptor Lysippus and the Greeks did not hold gladiatorial circus entertainments. The warrior thrusts forward his torso to defend himself behind his shield, while preparing to retaliate upon his opponent. It is now in the Louvre in Paris. (128.35) Farnese Hercules So called because it was once located at the Farnese Palace in Rome. It was a third-century copy of the famous statue of Hercules by Lysippus, a Greek sculptor of the time of Alexander the Great. It shows Hercules at just over 10 feet tall in a wearied pose leaning on his club after having held up the skies in place of Atlas.

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(128.37-38) the Venus Probably the Venus de Medici, once situated at the Medici Palace in Rome but now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Long seen as the standard of female beauty, it was supposedly sculpted in the time of the Emperor Augustus, having been dug up in pieces in the villa of Hadrian in Tivoli. (129.7-130.38) It is a great mistake […] shy of the importation This passage is substantially republished from ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” with extracts from that popular work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52 (pp. 745-46). (129.9) dance-abhorring Presbyterians Presbyterian sects such as the Cameronians certainly objected to the sexes dancing together, viewing it as an incitement to sexual transgression. See for instance David Deans’s remarks in Scott’s The Heart of Mid-Lothian, ed. by David Hewitt and Alison Lumsden, EEWN 6 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp. 88-89 (volume 1, chapter 10). (129.14-15) “sudor immanis,” Brutal sweat (Latin). The poet has not been identified. (129.16) Circus Probably the Circus Maximus, a place in which public spectacles were held in Rome, situated between the Palatine and Aventine hills. (129.16) Campus Martius An open space to the northwest of the ancient city of Rome, dedicated to Mars and used as the exercise ground of the early Roman armies. (129.19) D’Estainville This dancing-master has not been identified. (129 footnote) in statu quo In the state in which things were before the change occurred (Latin). (130.3) half-cut Drunk, or as good as so. Originating apparently from the adding of water to the rum ration in the Navy, usually half water and half rum. (130.5) the reel A lively Scottish dance, usually performed by two couples facing each other and describing a series of figures of eight. (130.14) light and fantastic See John Milton, L’Allegro (written c. 1631, printed 1645), ll. 33-34: ‘Come, and trip it as ye go / On the light fantastic toe.’ (130.14) syllogistic Characteristic of a syllogism, a methodical device in logic in which two premises containing a middle term lead to a conclusion (whether valid or not) resulting from them. (130.16) automaton […] play chess A chess-playing automaton (self-moving mechanical device imitating a living being) in the form of a Turk was built by a Hungarian courtier for Maria-Theresa of Austria in 1769, and exhibited by a showman in London: see ‘Account of an Automaton Chess-Player, now exhibited at No. 4, Spring-Gardens, London’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 579-81. (130.17) Terpsichore One of the nine Muses, devoted to dancing.

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(130.19) Welsh Jumpers Nickname applied to Welsh Methodists, who were supposed to jump for joy during divine service. (130.26) pas seuls Single steps (French); a dance for one person. (130.27-28) chaine Angloise A movement of the quadrille. ‘The chaine Anglaise is performed by two gentlemen and two ladies, opposite; they advance to change places, and, in passing each other, they present the right hand; each gentleman, after giving his right hand to his partner, who faces him, leaving her hand, he turns behind her, then gives his left to that of his partner, who is taking the place of the other lady; and all are again placed beside each other’: C. Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore. The Art of Dancing, trans. by R. Barton (London, 1830), p. 496. (130.28-29) Miss Edgeworth […] lyke wake The third Glossary note in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (London, 1800), pp. xvi-xxii, is headed ‘Whillaluh.—Ullaloo, Gol, or lamentation over the dead’, and describes a chorus of lamentation, first in respectful terms then as a practice that has degenerated from bardic honours to peasant howls. There is nothing there, however, about potatoes, ‘Pat’, or butter-milk. The lyke wake, a more specifically Scottish term than the Irish wake, refers to the vigil over a dead body. (130.36) Andrew Melville The Calvinist theologian Andrew Melville (15451622, ODNB), who reformed university teaching during his tenure of posts at Glasgow and at St Andrews, emphasising humanist values, and also championed the ecclesiastical independence of the Church of Scotland in dispute with James VI. (131.2-3) “Waltz—an Apostrophic Hymn, by Francis Hornem, Esq.;” Published anonymously by Byron in February 1813, using the persona of Horace Hornem, a country gentleman with a wife and daughters. Lockhart omits two passages in his long quotation, both marked by asterisks. In the first instance (p. 131) he omits two lines about David dancing before the ark of Israel, and in the second (p. 133) he omits four lines concerning Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). This extract had been previously published in ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” with extracts from that popular work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52 (pp. 746-47). (131.5) Hyperborean Northern; dwellers beyond Boreas, the north wind. (131.6) Hamburgh […] Mails Perhaps an allusion to the siege of Hamburg, a powerful fortress and port on the Elbe situated in Germany looking northwards to Scandinavia, as this would have interrupted communications. Troops of the French Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout (1770-1823) held the city from May 1813 to May 1814, while besieged by the Allies. Davout was known as the ‘Iron Marshal’ for his strict military discipline. He was subsequently dismissed by the restored Bourbons, because he continued to hold Hamburg even after receiving news of Napoleon’s abdication in 1814.

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(131.8) Gottenburgh Gothenburg is a port on the west coast of Sweden. (131.10) Heligoland A small German archipelago in the North Sea. (131.11) unburnt Moscow In September 1812 Moscow was burnt by retreating Russian forces to deny its resources to the invading French army. (131.15) Austerlitz A decisive French victory fought on 2 December 1805 by Napoleon against combined Austrian and Russian forces. (131.16) Moniteur nor Morning Post Respectively, French and British newspapers. (131.18) Kotzebue’s The prolific German playwright August von Kotzebue (1761-1819) supposedly wrote more than 200 plays, some of which were translated into English and performed in London. (131.20) Frankfort […] Leipsig The two most important book-fairs in Germany were held in Frankfurt and Leipzig, both international centres for the publishing trade. (131.21) Meiner’s four volumes The German historian and philosopher Christoph Meiners (1747-1810) published his History of the Female Sex between 1788 and 1800. An English edition was published in London in four volumes in 1808. (131.22) Lapland witches Finns and Laps were traditionally credited with the possession of second sight and with ability to raise winds at sea. (131.23) Brunck’s heaviest tome The French scholar Richard François Philippe Brunck (1729-1803) published many editions of Greek classics. (131.24) Heynê The German classical scholar and archaeologist, Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812). (131.30) Quixote […] his Sancho The crazed knight of noble birth and his rustic squire from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605, 1615). In Part II, chapter 62, Don Quixote over-exerts himself to dance with two maidens at a ball given by Don Antonio Morena, becomes ill, and is rebuked for his folly by Sancho Panza. (131.32) Herodias In fact the dancer was Salome, daughter of Herodias, wife of Herod Antipas. Her performance pleased Herod so much that he promised to give her whatever she asked, upon which she demanded the head of John the Baptist: see Matthew 14. 1-11. (131.34) Cleopatra on her galley’s deck The Egyptian queen is famously described as such by Shakespeare in his Anthony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 197-224. (131.35) neck An allusion to the low-cut bodices on Regency gowns, as well as a slang word for impudence. (131.37) Saxon tune One deriving from Saxony in Germany. In fact, the waltz is often supposed to have developed rather from the peasant music of the Austrian Tyrol.

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(131.38) brows A husband whose wife was unfaithful to him was traditionally supposed to wear antlers on his head, like those of a stag. (131.43) native brass, or law-awarded gold Bare-faced effrontery; damages for adultery. (132.7) Hymen The Roman god of marriage. (132.12) jig A lively, rapid, springy kind of dance. (132.12) ancient rigadoon A French baroque dance, popular at court during the reign of Louis XIV, but falling out of fashion towards the end of the eighteenth century. (132.18) ‘put out the light.’ Othello, V. ii. 7. (132.27) Romaika’s A modern Greek dance. (132.28) Fandango’s wriggle A Spanish dance in triple time. (132.28) Bolero’s bound A lively Spanish dance. (132.29) Almas Egyptian dancing-girls. (132.30) Columbia’s caperers Dancers belonging to America, here those performing a native American war-dance. (132.31) Kamschatka to Cape Horn Kamschatka is a large peninsula in the Russian far east, with the Pacific ocean and Sea of Okhotsk making up its eastern and western coastlines. Cape Horn is a southern headland of the Tiera del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile. (132.33) Morier’s pages James Justinian Morier (1782-1849, ODNB) had published two travel books about his experiences in the Middle East by this time, A Journey through Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor (1812) and A Second Journey (1818). His novel, The Adventures of Hajji Baba, of Ispahan, was published in 1824. (132.33) Galt’s The novelist John Galt (1779-1839, ODNB) published a book of his Voyages and Travels in 1812. (132.36) George the Third’s The reign of King George III (1738-1820, ODNB) began in 1760. (133.1) hartshorn The antler of a deer was formerly the chief source of ammonia, used to revive from a fainting-fit. (133.4) Genlis […] Staël Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de Saint-Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis (1746-1830) was a French educationalist and a governess of the French royal family. Her writings were popular in England since, while adopting some of the methods of Rousseau, she also attacked his principles with those of other French philosophes and was generally considered decorous. The following critique of waltzing appeared in her Dictionnaire critique et raisonné des étiquettes de la cour, 2 vols (Paris, 1818), II, 355: ‘WALSES. — Une jeune personne , légèrement drapée, se jetant dans les bras d ‘un jeune homme qui la presse contre son sein, et qui l’entraîne avec une telle

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impétuosité, que bientôt elle éprouve un violent battement de coeur, et qu’éperdue la tête lui tourne! Voilà ce que c’est qu’une walse!’ (A young woman, lightly dressed, throws herself into the arms of a young man, who presses her to his chest and conquers her with such impetuosity that she soon feels her heart beat violently as her head giddily swims! That is what they call waltzing!). Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) was a writer and political thinker, who became the centre of French political and literary circles opposed to Napoleon and had a riskier reputation than Genlis. In 1814 she attended a ball held in Breadalbane House, Park Lane, to celebrate the peace, at which waltzing took place. Letter XX (134.7) viva voce Orally, as opposed to in writing (Latin). (134.11) our cousin, Matthew Bramble Elderly Welsh gentleman who is a key letter-writer in Tobias Smollett’s epistolary novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), and an obvious model for Lockhart’s Peter Morris. His party make a Scottish tour from Edinburgh to Glasgow and then up the west coast of Scotland to gather impressions of Highland scenery and manners. (134.20-21) the Jungfrau One of the main summits of the Bernese Alps in Switzerland, rising to a height of 13,640 feet. (134.21) cynosures Centres of attraction. (134.22) ὑπερτατα δωματα Loftiest mansions (Greek). (134.27) some Hannibal Hannibal (247-182 BCE) was the leader of the Carthaginians against the Romans in the Second Punic War. He led his armies across the Alps to reach Italy in 218 BCE. (134.29) Argyle’s bowling-green Range of peaks in the northeast section of the Cowal peninsula in Argyll, rising up to 2580 feet. ‘Bowling-green’ is probably a corruption of the Gaelic baile na Greine (sunny hamlet). (135.1) ab ovo From the egg (Latin); from the very beginning. (135.3-4) “the Cadies of Auld Reekie.” Edinburgh was called ‘Auld Reekie’ (old smoky) because of the visible pall of smoke that generally hung over it. Cadies were a corps mostly consisting of Highlanders in Edinburgh who earned a living by running messages, lighting the way, and so on. (135.5) as the Lake poet sings Possibly Wordsworth is intended. The following quotation has not been identified, and may be from a parody of Wordsworth’s work or even Lockhart’s own composition. (135.11-12) Janissaries and Mamelukes Janissaries were a celebrated militia of the Ottoman empire, originally recruited from the Sultan’s Christian subjects; Mamelukes were the Sultan’s bodyguard, originally slaves but later setting up one of their own body as Sultan.

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(135.12-13) hereditary hammermen […] Ancient Egypt The following list evidently indicates menial servants, mechanics, and minor officials. Hammermen were one of the incorporated trades of Edinburgh. (135.15) By ordinance of matrimonial love A phrase alluding to the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer. (135.17) Genus Iapeti Genus means race or kind (Latin); in Greek mythology Iapetus was one of the Titans, the father of Atlas and Prometheus. (135.19) Lochaber and Braemar Mountainous Highland districts in Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire respectively. (135.23) Mirari novas frondes et non sua poma Admire its new leaves, and fruits not its own (Latin): see Virgil, Georgics, II. 82. (135.30-34) A savage wildness […] dreary moors From Wordsworth, Peter Bell (1819), Part First, 101-05. See also Note for 170.11. (136.2-3) Cairngorm or Ben-Nevis Cairngorm is a mountain in Invernessshire 4084 feet high; Ben-Nevis is the highest mountain of the British Isles, situated near Fort William and 4413 feet high. (136.3) pro tempore For the time being, temporarily (Latin). (136.6) Maccallamore, Glengary, Gordon, Grant All chiefs of Highland clans. In 1819 George William Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll (1768-1839), was chief of the Campbells and had the title of Macallam Mor (son of Colin); Alexander MacDonnell (1773-1828) was chieftain of Glengarry; Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon (1743-1827) was chief of the Gordons; Sir Lewis Alexander Grant-Ogilvie, 5th Earl of Seafield (1767-1840) was chief of the Grants. (136.21) gathered to their fathers A commonplace Old Testament expression signifying death and burial: see, for instance, Genesis 25. 8, where Abraham is ‘gathered to his people’. (136.22) written in […] Humphry Clinker As first mentioned in volume 2 in Smollett’s Humphry Clinker (3 vols, 1771), in a letter of Sir Watkin Phillips, signed Edinburgh Aug. 8, the last letter in that volume: ‘There is at Edinburgh a society or corporation of errand-boys, called cawdies’. See The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, introd. by Thomas R, Preston, ed. by O. M. Brack, Jr (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), p. 218. (136.32) bearers of the chairs Sedan chairs were closed vehicles to seat one person and were borne by poles on each side carried by two men, one in front and one behind. (136.35) backgammon An ancient board game for two players, who each move 15 pieces between 24 triangles on the board according to the roll of two dice.

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(137.9-10) the same language with our own While Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are both Celtic languages, it seems improbable that a native Welsh speaker would understand Scottish Gaelic. (137.17-18) the Gaelic Ossian The Ossian poems of James Macpherson purported to be English translations of ancient Scottish Gaelic originals, but in the present instance Robert Macfarlan’s The Poems of Ossian in the Original Gaelic, with a literal translation into Latin, 3 vols (London, 1807), published with the sanction of the Highland Society of Scotland, seems more likely, even though in reality this represented more a translation of Macpherson’s poems into Gaelic and Latin than a volume of originals upon which Macpherson’s work had been based. (137.24-28) collection of Gaelic songs […] Walter Scott Scott had contributed English lyrics for a number of Gaelic airs to Alexander Campbell’s song collection Albyn’s Anthology, 2 vols (1816, 1818), a work combining Highland and Lowland music into a single ‘national’ collection. (137 footnote) great work on Welsh Poetry and History Presumably fictitious, but reflecting the eighteenth-century revival of interest in Welsh history, literature, language, music, and traditions. (137 footnote) since the death of Llewellyn The death in battle of the Welsh prince Llywelyn ap Gruffud (d. 1282, ODNB) concluded an era in Welsh history by signifying the end of his ancient princely lineage. (138.11) prima facie At first sight (Latin). (138.28) topping First-rate, distinguished. (139.7) Donald M‘Nab No individual figure has been identified, and the name could be one chosen by Lockhart as characteristic of the Highlands. He is named Duncan M‘Nab on p. 389. (139.12) Phylarchus The chief of a tribe (Greek). (139.13) patriarchal sort of life Alluding perhaps to the polygamy of Old Testament fathers such as Jacob, whose twelve sons were the result of his connection with his wives, Leah and Rachel, and their maidservants, Bilhah and Zilpah. Francis Macnab (1734-1816), the 16th Chief of Macnab, though unmarried, purportedly fathered at least thirty-two children on his estates. His portrait was painted by Henry Raeburn (National Portrait Gallery, NPG D38119). Letter XXI (140.2) at Dr Brewster’s The natural philosopher, David Brewster (17811868, ODNB), now probably best-known for his invention of the kaleidoscope. He lived at this time at 1 Melville Street, according to the Post-Office Annual Directory for 1818-19 (p. 75).

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(140.5) Edinburgh Encyclopædia This encyclopædia was edited by Brewster and published by William Blackwood from its inception in 1808 until its completion in 18 volumes in 1830, rivalling the Encyclopædia Britannica which had been purchased by Archibald Constable in 1812. Brewster wrote many articles himself and also organised important contributors, the work being particularly up-to-date on scientific topics. (141.13) Freyberg Freiburg, a city in the Black Forest area of Germany, where in 1457 Archduke Albert VI of Western Austria (in whose territory the city then was) founded a university at the cathedral. (141.19-20) Dresden to Leipsig A journey of around 75 miles, from the capital of Saxony to Leipzig, also in Saxony. (141.20) the Hartz An area of forested hills in North Germany, extending across Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia, which Lockhart subsequently terms ‘the Saxon Switzerland’. (141.21-22) the Elbe, from Magdeburg The major European river of the Elbe rises in today’s Czech republic, passing through Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, north of Hamburg. Magdeburg, an important medieval city and the capital of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, is situated on the river. (141.26) The neat post-waggon trotting in Compare ‘Her neat post-waggon trotting in’, a line from Rogero’s song from ‘The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement’, in Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, 4th edn (London, 1801), pp. 19092. (141.31) gens-d’armes Men-at-arms (French). (141.35) Kœnigsberg Kӧnigsberg, a former Prussian city, now Kaliningrad in Russia. (141 footnote) Dr Millar […] Encyclopædia Edinensis This footnote was added for the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters. The physician and writer James Millar (1762-1827, ODNB) planned and edited Encyclopædia Edinensis, completed in 6 volumes (1827), a popular history of arts, science and literature. The work was initially published in half-volume instalments, an advertisement for the imminent publication of the first part of the third volume appearing in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 1 April 1819. Millar was also editor of the fourth edition of the Encyclopædia Brittanica (1810), and the last 15 volumes of the fifth edition of the same work (1817). (142.18) Hussar Member of a light cavalry regiment, formed in imitation of those of Hungary. (142.20) Amt-house An administrative building, such as a town hall. (142.30) on his way […] to Freyburg Freiburg is about 20 miles SW of Dresden, and Morris’s journey to Leipzig appears to take him NW of Dresden, so possibly Lockhart’s geography is confused here.

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(142.31) the celebrated Werner The German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750-1817) occupied a tenured post as head of the School of Mining at Freiburg University and attracted large numbers of students from all over Europe. His theory of neptunism, that rocks and fossils had once been precipitated from a massive ocean, fell out of favour after his death. He never travelled much, and his theory was based on the examination of rocks from a limited territory. (143.19-20) Jameson […] Professor of Natural History Robert Jameson (1774-1854, ODNB) had studied at Freiburg for two years from 1800 until the breakdown of his father’s health led to his return to Scotland. He succeeded to the Chair of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh in 1804 and held the post to the end of his life. His class met on Mondays at 2 o’clock, according to a start of session advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 14 September 1818. His house was at 45 George Square, according to the PostOffice Annual Directory for 1818-19 (p. 179). (143.20) System of Mineralogy Jameson’s System of Mineralogy (1804-08) was based on Werner’s theory, and he also founded the Wernerian Natural History Society in 1808. (143.28) his museum Jameson became keeper of the University of Edinburgh’s natural history museum in 1804 and energetically enlarged its holdings and obtained larger premises for it. A report in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 1 January 1818 noted that the ‘objects of natural history in the present museum’ were then ‘distributed throughout different parts of the College’, but that the new museum building had just been completed externally and was ready to be fitted up to take ‘such collections as may be added by the liberality of Government, and the patriotism of individuals’. (143.39) celebrated Frenchman Probably the French naturalist and zoologist, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), known as the ‘founding father of palaeontology’, whose most famous work was The Animal Kingdom (1817), which established extinction as a proven scientific principle. He was made a peer as Baron Cuvier in France in 1819 in honour of his scientific achievements. Jameson contributed prefaces and notes to successive editions of Cuvier’s Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813). (144.20-21) winter and summer season Jameson’s Natural History Class at Edinburgh University met at two o’clock on Mondays during the regular 181819 university session from November to May, beginning on 16 November: see the advertisement of classes in the Caledonian Mercury of 17 September 1818. Nothing has been discovered about his teaching in Edinburgh during the summer. (144.32) “familiar as household words,” See King Henry V, IV. iii. 52. (146.5) M. Dufresne of the Jardin des Plantes The Jardin des Plantes is the main Botanical garden in France, located in Paris. Louis Dufresne was a taxidermist in the Museum Royal d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. For Jameson’s

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involvement in the purchase of his collection for the University of Edinburgh see Jessie M. Sweet, ‘The Collection of Louis Dufresne (1752-1832)’, Annals of Science, 26 (1970), 33-71. The Caledonian Mercury of 5 August 1819 reported the arrival of this collection at Leith in 42 packing cases. (146.6) sçavants Men of learning (French), from which the English ‘savants’ is derived. (146.8) the approaching sale of Mr Bullock’s extensive collections William Bullock (bap. 1773, d. 1849, ODNB) opened a museum in Piccadilly in London, including objects of natural history, which was sold by auction in 1819. For details of the University of Edinburgh’s purchase see Jessie M. Sweet, ‘William Bullock’s Collection and the University of Edinburgh, 1819’, Annals of Science, 26 (1970), 23-32. The Edinburgh Evening Courant of 12 June 1819 reported the arrival of the collection at Leith, the stuffed animals including a male giraffe, an Indian elephant, a rhinoceros, and an orang-utan. (147.16-17) brother to the poet The zoologist James Wilson (1795-1856, ODNB), brother to John Wilson, had been admitted to the Wernerian Society in 1812 and given the task of purchasing the Dufresne ornithological collections for the University of Edinburgh museum. Among his many works of natural history was Illustrations of Zoology (1831). (147.37) Ornithology and Entomology The study of birds and of insects respectively. (148.3) published several little pieces Wilson’s early publications included several articles on natural history and travel in France and Germany in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, but no poetry apparently. The list of his publications that concludes James Hamilton’s Memoirs of the Life of James Wilson, Esq. of Woodville (New York, 1859) itemises only his scientific works. (148.5-6) adjourned to this house Most probably Oman’s Tavern Hotel at West Register Street: see Note for 17.1. (148.10-11) brumal retreat of the swallow The disappearance of the swallow during the winter in Britain had long been a subject of controversy, with some earlier naturalists favouring hibernation rather than migration as the explanation. Brumal means appertaining to winter. (148.13-14) Hirundo, Apus, and Rustica Hirundo is the Latin genus name for swallows and martins, hirundo apus the Latin name for a common swift, and hirundo rustica that of the barn swallow. (148.15) a passage from Herodotus The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (c. 480-425 BCE) referred to kites and swallows as living in Africa all the year round. See also next Note. (148.18-19) δί ετεος εοντες ουκ απολείπουσι Live there all the year round (Greek). See Herodotus, The Persian Wars, II. 22.

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Letter XXII (149.7) vi et armis With force and arms (Latin); violently, by compulsion. (149.9) Terra Firma Firm land (Latin); the ground as distinguished from the sea or the air. (149.26-27) Speculative Society of Edinburgh Founded in 1764, the Speculative Society rapidly became a training ground for lawyers and politicians, and was unusual among Edinburgh’s many debating societies for having chambers within the University complex on the South Bridge. The number of ordinary members was limited to thirty. At each weekly meeting a member read an essay, to which a debate followed. Lockhart himself was admitted as an ordinary member on 26 November 1815, and became an extraordinary member (which freed him from the obligation to attend all meetings and undertake regular duties) on 1 December 1818: see History of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh from its Institution in MDCCLXIV (Edinburgh, 1845), pp. 17, 278. (149 footnote) Didactic This footnote was added for the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters. Edinburgh’s Didactic Society was founded in 1802 ‘with exactly similar objects with the Speculative Society’ and was dissolved about 1827: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 13. The Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 names four Presidents, and a Secretary who was also Treasurer (p. 258). (149 footnote) Polemical The Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 names five Presidents and a Secretary who was also Treasurer (p. 258). (149 footnote) Philomathic The Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 states that this society was founded in 1802 and met ‘once a week during the Session of the University’. It names four Presidents and a Secretary who was also Treasurer (p. 258). (149 footnote) Dialectic This society was founded in 1787 and met ‘every Saturday evening during winter, for the prosecution of literary and philosophical composition, criticism, and debate’: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 10. The Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 names five Presidents and a Secretary who was also Treasurer (p. 258). (149 footnote) Philalethic According to the Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 the Philalethic Society was founded in 1792 and met ‘once a week during the Session of the University’, with four Presidents named and a Secretary (p. 258). Henry Glassford Bell’s membership badge for 1824 is preserved in the National Museums of Scotland, H.1962.1641. (149 footnote) Select Presumably named after the well-known Edinburgh society of that name active between 1754 and 1764, this Select Society

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originated around 1811-12 and became extinct about 1818. Its objects were similar to those of the Speculative Society, but the debates focused more on the political topics of the day: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 14. The Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 records the names of three Presidents, a Secretary and a Treasurer, and mentions that the meetings were held on Tuesdays at 7 o’clock (p. 258). (149 footnote) Select Forensic This Society had similar objects to those of the Speculative Society and was founded in 1813, terminating around 1833: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 14. The Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 names a President, two VicePresidents, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Librarian, and states that the Society met on Friday evenings at 7 o’clock (p. 258). (149 footnote) Pansophical According to the Edinburgh Almanack or Universal Scots and Imperial Register for 1819 this society was formed in 1814 and met ‘once a week during the Winter Season’, each member being President in rotation. A Secretary and a Treasurer are named (p. 258). (150.5) Hierophants Expounders of sacred mysteries, from the name of an official in ancient Greece. (150.6) Adytus The innermost part of a temple, the secret shrine from where oracles were delivered. (150.9) omne ignotum pro magnifico The unknown is ever magnified (Latin), a quotation from Tacitus, Agricola, 30. 3. (150.15) the regular formula of supplication Written petitions for admission to the Society ‘often lay for several weeks on the table, before a vacancy occurred in the list of ordinary and resident members’, but efforts to extend the number of members from 30 to 35 between 1806 and 1808 failed: see History of the Speculative Society, pp. 39-40. (150.16) Mr —— No specific individual has been identified. (150.22) fee of three guineas The entrance money to be paid on admission as a member had been raised to three guineas in 1808: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 40. As the fee was raised to five guineas early in 1819 (also Note for 152.3-4) it seems likely that Lockhart was recalling the fee he paid for his own admission in 1815. (150.24) loo A card-game in which any player who fails to take a trick or breaks any of the laws of the game has to pay a certain sum or ‘loo’ to the pool. (150.27-30) I prize not […] the spirit poor Not identified. (150.32) Tuesday evening Meetings were held every Tuesday evening from November to the first week in April, and from 1791 onwards the hour of meeting was 7 o’clock: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 51. (150.36-37) the Lord Nelson […] kept by one Barclay An obituary notice for John Barclay of the Lord Nelson Hotel in Adam Square, who died on 23

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October 1825, appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 19 (January 1826), 103. Adam Square was in the vicinity of the university buildings, but was demolished during the subsequent building of Chambers Street. The ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters reads ‘kept by an Englishman, one Barclay’ (I, 265). This was probably afterwards deemed unnecessary in view of the proximity of ‘the landlord of the Nelson is an Englishman’ later in the same paragraph. (151.1) an ordinary A public meal regularly provided at a fixed price in an eating-house or tavern. (151.3) bagmen Commercial travellers. (151.4) half-pay officers Those not in active service, or in retirement after a certain time, who would be paid half the usual full salary for their rank. (151.6) en passant In passing (French). (151.8-9) dining-room of a celebrated President of the Court of Session Robert Dundas of Arniston (1713-1787, ODNB), Lord President of the Court of Session between 1760 and 1787 and half-brother of Henry Dundas, 1st Lord Melville. Construction of Adam Square began in 1761 and he was living in his house there by 1768. The ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters does not contain the identifying footnote. (151.19) Mullicatawny Or mulligatawny, a highly spiced Indian soup. (151.21) haricot A ragout, usually a stew of mutton. (151.21-23) half-a-crown a-head […] sixpence more than […] the ordinary An additional charge of sixpence (2.5p) was made for the private dinner over the standard charge of the ordinary (see Note for 151.1), which would therefore cost two shillings (10p). (151.36-37) epilogue […] prologue An address spoken at the end and beginning respectively of a play at the theatre. (151.38) per acclamationem By acclamation (Latin); with loud approval. (152.3-4) chambers within the College The original meeting-hall of the Speculative Society was a single-story building erected on a vacant plot within the university grounds, but this had to be taken down in 1817 to make room for the new College buildings. The Society was promised premises within the new buildings, and the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 23 January 1819 reported their first meeting in the new premises within what is now called Old College on 19 January, ‘crowded with many of the oldest and most distinguished members of the Society’. On the motion of Jeffrey, Rev. George Baird, Principal of the University, ‘delivered a learned and very excellent introductory address’ before the normal business of the Society began. The History of the Speculative Society states that 43 extraordinary and 27 ordinary members attended, and that at this point the entrance-money of the Society was raised to five guineas (pp. 43-44).

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(152.10) hall of the Theological Professor Meetings were held ‘for one Session, and part of another, in the Old Divinity Hall’: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 43. (152.19) President The Society appointed five Presidents annually who took charge of the meetings in rotation. For the 1818-19 Session these were ‘Messrs Donald, Gibson, Dunlop junr., John Aytoun, David Dewar’: see History of the Speculative Society, p. 457. (152.19) primâ facie At first appearance (Latin); based on the first impression. (152.27) “Vultus sedentis tyranni” The look of the sitting tyrant (Latin). (152.32) secretary The secretary was appointed annually, and for the 1818-19 Session the post was held, along with that of Librarian, by David Constable (1795-1867), eldest son of the publisher Archibald Constable : see History of the Speculative Society, p. 459. David Constable qualified as an advocate in 1819. (152.37) humilior caterva Crowd of the humbler members (Latin). (153.18) Mr Waugh […] long been treasurer According to the History of the Speculative Society, from ‘1795 to 1807, the Society had the benefit of the gratuitous services of Mr. John Waugh, afterwards Bookseller, as Secretary and Treasurer’ who ‘maintained his connexion with the Society as its Treasurer until 1835’. In December 1803 the Society agreed to present him with a silver cup to acknowledge his services (pp. 38-39). In 1837 Waugh emigrated to Australia and he died in 1852. (153.29) tribune A raised platform or dais. (153.34) Corn-Bill The Corn Laws were passed in 1815, intending to stabilise the price of wheat at eighty shillings per quarter and prohibiting the import of foreign grain until domestic grain reached that price. The measure hit domestic industry badly and also by giving rise to high food prices caused much distress to the labouring classes, particularly in towns where they were unable to grow their own food. Meetings such as the one in Manchester that resulted in the notorious Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 were held partly to protest against the Corn Laws. They were eventually adjusted by the adoption of a sliding scale of tariffs in 1828. Petitions were made to Parliament against the Corn Laws in 1819 from Rutland and from Nottingham. Although the Subjects of Debate are recorded in the History of the Speculative Society, the titles of the individual essays that preceded the debates are not often mentioned and no record of such an essay during the 1818-19 session occurs there. (153.37-38) treatise on the same subject in the Edinburgh Review ‘Corn Laws’, Edinburgh Review, 24 (February 1815), 491-505. The author is identifiable as David Buchanan. The Corn Laws were also a central concern in J. R. McCulloch’s article on ‘Ricardo's Political Economy’, Edinburgh Review, 30 (June 1818), 59-87.

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(154.9) “Jamque opus exegi!” And now my work is done (Latin): from Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV. 871. (154.25) honourable gentleman Term used in the British Parliament by one member speaking of another, and presumably imitated by the Speculative Society along with other similar expressions. (155.38) farragoed phraseology A farrago is a confused medley, a hotchpotch. (156.36-37) Adam Smith downwards Adam Smith (bap. 1723, d. 1790, ODNB) in The Wealth of Nations (1776) had advocated the principle of free trade as the basis for the development of a nation’s industrial economy, but at the end of the Napoleonic Wars corn prices almost halved, causing a panic among farmers. Among political economists influenced by Smith were David Ricardo and Robert Malthus (see Note for 157.29). (157.7-8) Hamburgh […] Marshal Davoust See Note for 131.6 (‘Hamburgh […] Mails’). Davout’s name was spelled Davoust in his lifetime and appears as such on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Hamburg is presumably referenced here as a major German port from which grain was normally imported into Britain. (157.28) Whole pages from the Parliamentary Debates The radical William Cobbett (1763-1835, ODNB) had begun publishing ‘Parliamentary Debates’ as a supplement to his Political Register in 1802, these being printed for him by Thomas Curson Hansard. When Cobbett’s finances became difficult in 1812 Hansard took control of publication of the debates, which in the early years were cobbled together from various newspaper accounts since no-one was employed by him to take notes of the actual debates. (157.29) Malthus The political economist Thomas Robert Malthus (17661834, ODNB) published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, contributed to the Edinburgh Review, and wrote two pamphlets on the Corn Laws. Letter XXIII (159.9) Dr Spurzheim’s book For the German physician Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) see Note for 37.18. He published a number of books, but the reference is probably to The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim (1813), which was savagely attacked in the Edinburgh Review for June 1815 (25, 227-68). (159.12-13) “there are more things […] philosophy.” See Hamlet, I. v. 16869. (159.17-18) Cranioscopy and Craniology […] Schädellehre Cranioscopy means examination of the size and configuration of the skull; craniology the study of the size, shape, and character of the skulls of various races. Schädellehre is German for skull-learning.

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(159.18) its first doctor and professor Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). (159.25) Athenæus The Greek writer Athenaeus (fl. c. 200 CE), a collector of excerpts and anecdotes, was the author of Deipnosophist (Sophists at Dinner) in 15 books, in which 23 learned men meet at dinner in Rome and converse on food and a wide range of other subjects. (159.26-27) “improper to speak of the physical substances of the head.” Not identified. (159.30-31) the contemplative gardens of Epicurus The school of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) was known as the ‘Gardens’ from the gardens where he taught. Epicurus thought philosophy consisted in the wise conduct of life to be attained by reliance on the evidence of the senses, and the elimination of superstition and belief in supernatural intervention. (160.6) bonâ fide Good faith (Latin); in sincere or honest intention. (160.20-21) hanged (like a dog,) […] given to it Proverbial: see ODEP, pp. 302, 400. (160.24-25) scape-goats […] over the rock In the ancient Jewish ritual for the Day of Atonement (see Leviticus 16) two goats were brought to the altar of the tabernacle, when lots were cast and one named as the scapegoat, which was then deemed to bear the sins of the people and cast into the wilderness. (160.30-31) Dr Roget [...] Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869, ODNB), physician and philologist, was the author of ‘Cranioscopy’, in Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1824), III, 419-37. This work was originally published in half-volumes between 1815 and 1824, with Roget’s article appearing in 1818. (160.32) Jack and Gill An allusion to the nursery rhyme ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’. (160.34) Anthropology The science of the nature of man, embracing physiology and psychology. (160.36) Cephalology and Cephaloscopy Science of the head and examination of the head. (160.38) Organology Another term for phrenology; more generally, the science of the organs as in Thomas Forster, Essay on the Application of the Organology of the Brain to Education (1816). (161.6) Organization The way in which a living being, or part of one, is organised. (161.32) Blue-Stocking See Note for 50.36-37. (162.36) Matres Amabiles Mother most lovable (Latin). A title of the Virgin Mary. (163.14) Hercules Farnese See Note for ‘Farnese Hercules’, 128.35. The statue was much copied.

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(163.19) Alcides An alternative name for Herakles or Hercules. (163.23-24) polluting monsters The 12 Labours of Hercules included his destruction of a number of monsters threatening mankind, such as the Lemaean Hydra, the Stymphalian Birds, the Cretan Bull, and the Mares of Diomedes. (163.25) plunging into Hell […] inconsolable husband Admetus, the king of Pherae in Sicily, was advised by Apollo that he could avoid an early death by persuading another person to consent to die in his place at the hour appointed, which was done by his wife, Alcestis. Hercules confronted Thanatos, the messenger from Hades, took Alcestis from him and restored her to her husband. (163.27) summit of Athos Lockhart appears to be in error in assigning the site of Hercules’ death to Mount Athos in northern Greece rather than to Mount Oeta in central Greece. In terrible pain from the poisoned cloak given to him by his wife Deianira, Hercules decided death was preferable and had his friends build a funeral pyre on the top of Mount Oeta. Unable to find anyone willing to light the pyre Hercules asked for help from the gods, and Jupiter sent his lightning. After death he was taken to live with the gods on Mount Olympus. (163.31) strains of Sophocles, Euripides, and Pindar The Women of Trachiniae of the Greek tragedian Sophocles (496-406 BCE) concerns the poisoning of Hercules by his jealous wife Deianira and his being carried out at the end to be burned alive to put a period to his sufferings; the Herakles of Euripides (c. 480-406 BCE) shows him killing his wife Megara and his children in a bout of god-inflicted madness; the third Olympian ode of Pindar (517-438 BCE) contains a myth of Hercules bringing the wild olive to Greece from the Danube. (163.37) embrace of Jupiter Jupiter fathered Hercules on Alcmene by disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon. Letter XXIV (165.22) “gulf fixed.” Abraham in heaven with Lazarus tells Dives that ‘between us and you there is a great gulf fixed’ (Luke 16. 26). (166.37) conversazione Social gathering, held for discussion of the arts, literature, and so forth. (166.40) Bas-bleus Blue-stockings (French); female intellectuals. See also Note for 50.36-37. (167.20) kerseymere A fine, twilled woollen cloth. (167.22) degagée Unconcerned, relaxed, detached (French). (167.25) Dandy One who dresses ostentatiously and fashionably, a fop or exquisite. For Morris’s own fuller account see Letter LXIII (pp. 428-31). (167.26) Tom Moore The Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852, ODNB). (167.27) Dr Thomas Brown See Note for 102.15.

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(167.31) moss-rose A garden variety of the cabbage rose. (167.31-40) Professor Leslie […] something about heat For John Leslie see Note for 47.24. In 1804 his experiment with radiant heat involved use of a cubical vessel, now known as a Leslie cube. (168.7) organ of Causality For a detailed description see ‘Organ of Causality’, The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), pp. 389-91. (168.8) Earl of Buchan David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan (17421829, ODNB), antiquary and political reformer. See also the account of his landscaping at Dryburgh Abbey on pp. 354-55 and Notes. (168.10-11) Chancellor Erskine One of the Earl of Buchan’s younger brothers, Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine (1750-1823, ODNB), was appointed Lord Chancellor during the Grenville-Fox ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ in 1806, but resigned the following year. (168.18-19) portraits […] by the artists of Edinburgh Portraits of the Earl of Buchan include an etching by John Finlayson of 1765 of an earlier Reynolds portrait, a white glass medallion by James Tassie of 1783, a portrait bust of 1797 by an unknown engraver (Royal Society 13493), a drawing by John Brown of 1781 (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 3596), and a rather sarcastic engraving by John Kay (National Portrait Gallery, NPG D43277). (168.30) Grand National Monument The creation of a National Monument marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars had been under discussion since 1817, the Edinburgh newspapers reporting in the spring of 1819 on plans which differed somewhat from the later scheme begun in 1822. A meeting of 24 February 1819, reported in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 27 February, set a minimum subscription of a guinea for building a church, and gave a list of noblemen and the more substantial amounts they had subscribed. According to a further report in the same newspaper on 8 March, an architectural plan had been shown which placed the prospective building ‘at the south end of the Mound’ although the committee were ‘anxious that it should be distinctly understood, that nothing has as yet been fixed either as to the plan of the building or its situation’. George IV laid the foundation stone for the Grand National Monument, intended to be a replica of the Parthenon of Athens on the Calton Hill, during his visit to Scotland in 1822, but a failure of subscriptions meant that it was never completed. (168.32-33) Duke of Sussex Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843, ODNB), was the sixth son of George III, and distinguished from his brothers for his liberal political views. (168.34) Lady Buchan’s nephew The Earl of Buchan had married his cousin, Margaret, daughter of William Fraser of Fraserfield, in 1771. She died without children in 1819. The nephew has not been identified.

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(169.13) cognoscenti People who know (Italian); those who are especially well-informed on a subject. (169.17) Mr Yaniewicz The violinist Felix Janiewicz (1762-1848, ODNB) appeared at the first Edinburgh music festival in 1815 as concert-master, a position he held at subsequent festivals in 1819 and 1824. Of Polish-British origins, he settled at Edinburgh for the rest of his life. His gravestone, with the name spelled Yaniewicz, is in the Warriston cemetery there. (169.18) the Don Giovanni of Mozart One of the best-known operas of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. (169.29-30) tirailleures Sharp-shooters, skirmishers (French); named from a body of such during the French Revolutionary wars. (169.32) Pococurante Caring little (Italian); indifferent or unconcerned. (169.37) author of the Tales of my Landlord Walter Scott had published the first series of Tales of My Landlord (1816, consisting of The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality) and the second series (1818, consisting of The Heart of MidLothian), both under the palpably false pseudonym of Jedediah Cleishbotham. A third series, consisting of The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose, was published in June 1819. (170.3) the conduct of Lord Byron, in deserting his wife The poet George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824, ODNB), had married Annabella Milbanke (1792-1860) in January 1815, but the couple separated about a year later, amid rumours of Byron’s incestuous relationship with his half-sister, and Byron went abroad. (170.6) Gulnare Gulnare, the chief slave in the Turkish Pacha’s harem is rescued by Conrad, the eponymous hero of Byron’s poem The Corsair (1814). (170.8) without an estate It was common for a man inheriting landed property to adopt the family name of the previous owners if this differed from his own. (170.11) Peter Bell Wordsworth’s poem, Peter Bell, published in 1819 though written in 1798, recounts the reformation of a lawless man who is insensible to the beauties of nature. He encounters an ass on the edge of the River Swale, which is gazing into the water at the body of its dead owner. Peter mounts the ass to seek the cottage of the drowned man and the poem recounts his spiritual experiences on this ride. It was widely ridiculed and the subject of many parodies. (170.13) white sapling—‘as white as cream?’ See William Wordsworth, Peter Bell, A Tale in Verse (London, 1819), p. 31 (Part First): ‘A new-peel’d sapling white as cream’. This wording was replaced in subsequent editions containing the poem. (170.13-14) pathetic incident of the poor ass The first part of Peter Bell (see preceding Notes) opens with Peter beating the ass with his staff, an incident given with further details in ll. 421-55.

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(170.15-17) the boat […] ‘Twin sister to the Crescent-Moon.’ Wordsworth’s ‘Prologue’ to Peter Bell opens with the poet describing his poetic imagination as a voyage in a canoe, ‘A Boat twin-sister of the crescent-moon!’ (l. 80). (170.18-19) Mr Wilson John Wilson: see Note for 498.25. (170.20-22) fishing-flies […] hackle A fishing fly is an artificial insect attached to a hook as a lure to catch fish; a hackle is a long narrow feather from the neck or saddle of a bird. Wilson was well-known as an angler. (170.31) Bank Restriction Bill Presumably a Parliamentary Bill for the annual renewal of the suspension created by the Bank Restriction Act of 1797 of the requirement of the Bank of England to convert bank-notes into gold. Convertibility was not restored until 1821. (170.33) Article in the last Number upon the Corn Laws See Note for 153.37-38. Letter XXV (171.5) Blue-Stockings Female intellectuals. See also Note for 50.36-37. (171.13) Diogenes The principal representative of the Cynic school of philosophy in ancient Greece. His extravagantly simple mode of life and repudiation of civilised customs made him the subject of numerous anecdotes. (171.17) roman Novel (French). (171.21) Resumption of Cash-payments See Note for 170.31. (171.22) Borough Reform A movement to end the over-representation of boroughs in Parliament with few electors, or for which elections were controlled by a single person (pocket boroughs), and to give adequate representation to Britain’s burgeoning industrial towns and cities. (171.23) “Ohe! jam satis est” Now that’s enough (Latin). The phrase ‘iam satis est’ or ‘satis est’ is commonly found in the Roman poet Horace. (171.28) Mrs Grant of Laggan Anne Grant (née MacVicar) (1755-1838, ODNB) married James Grant, who became minister of Laggan near Fort William in 1779. He died in 1801 leaving her in poor financial circumstances with eight children to support. After publishing a volume of verses in 1803 she achieved success with her Letters from the Mountains (1807) and moved to Edinburgh in 1810, where she published her Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders in 1811. Letter XXVI (173.1-2) Kean […] Passion-week in Edinburgh Lockhart’s recollection probably relates to March 1815. The actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833, ODNB) had made a legendary debut as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at Drury Lane in 1814. According to the Caledonian Mercury of 6 March 1815, there

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were negotiations to bring him to the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh during Easter week of 1815: ‘Mr Kean proposed, however, to act in Edinburgh during Passion week, but demanded one hundred guineas each night he performed, and a free benefit—terms which it was impossible to comply with.’ An advertisement in the same paper for 16 March indicates that he was engaged for that week at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow instead, for five performances from 20 March, ‘upon terms never before given to an Actor in any Theatre in the United Kingdom’. Easter Sunday in 1815 fell on 26 March. Alternatively, Lockhart may have confused this with Kean’s actual first appearances in Edinburgh in October 1816, for which see James C. Dibdin, The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 274-75. Lockhart refers to Kean’s Edinburgh appearance then in a letter to his friend J. H. Christie of 18 October 1816: ‘Kean was in Edinburgh, however, and that part of the gaieties I much enjoyed. Of four characters in which I saw him, Othello was my favourite, but neither Macbeth nor Richard were of the number’ (Lang, I, 111). (173.3) Scots newspaper The Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 16 October 1816 in its article on ‘Amusements, &c.’ reported that Kean’s actual first appearances in Edinburgh in autumn 1816 (see previous Note) had ‘been distinguished by the most flattering approbation; and we have no doubt, must have been highly gratifying to his feelings, as proceeding from an audience, more remarkable than any other in the kingdom for the scantiness of vociferous applause. The actor who has been accustomed to the noisy, and very often indiscriminate chearings of a London audience, is often obliged to be content with the silent and respectful attention of an Edinburgh one’. (173.11) sons of Thespis Thespis is a semi-legendary Greek actor, who flourished around 534 BCE and is said to have introduced an actor into stage performances previously given by a chorus alone. (174.2) strutting their hour Compare Macbeth, V. v. 24. (174.2) “Ideal Line.” See Note for 25.7-8. (174.4) bonâ fide Good faith (Latin); in sincere or honest intention. (174.6) Aristophanes Greek comic playwright (c. 448-c.380 BCE). (174.7-8) “σοφωτατοι θεαται.” Sage spectators (Greek). See Aristophanes, Clouds, l. 575. (174.11) the Hay-Market A theatre opposite the Opera House in London’s Haymarket, built in the early eighteenth century. (174.15) lighted up […] with gas As from October 1818: see James C. Dibdin, The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (Edinburgh, 1888), p. 284. (175.13) Dandy For a definition see Note for 167.25. (175.13-14) Green-room A room behind the scenes of a theatre for the use of actors and actresses when not on stage.

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(175.15) rouge or pearl powder Rouge is a red cosmetic to colour the cheeks or lips, while pearl powder is a cosmetic to make the skin look white. (175.18) Partridge Partridge is the simple but lovable schoolmaster who attends on the eponymous hero of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749). In Book XVI, chapter 5, he goes to see Garrick act in Hamlet, and confuses the play with real life. (175.23-24) clap-trap A stage-trick devised or designed to attract applause. (175.29) cap-a-pee Or cap-a-pie, from head to foot (Old French). (175.32) the gods The occupants of the gallery in the theatre, so called because seated on high; more generally, the seating area there. (175.34) drop-scene A painted curtain let down between the acts of a play. (175.38) Olympus The home of the gods of classical Greece, a mountain on the confines of Macedonia and Thessaly. (176.1) pit The part of the auditorium of a theatre that is on the floor of the house. (176.5) Mr W—— Perhaps Wastle, or even Wilson, although these names in the ‘third’ edition are elsewhere given in full. (176.7) fustian-sleeves Working clothes, fustian being a thick twilled cotton fabric usually dyed a dark colour. (176.19) nasi adunci Hooked-nose (Latin). (176.20) Zoili Zoilus of Amphipolis was a rhetorician and critic of the fourth century BCE who criticised Homer, his name being proverbial for a carping critic. (176.22-23) Again I quote, omne ignotum pro magnifico See text at 150.9 and Note. (176.25) new Drama founded upon the novel of Rob Roy Scott’s novel Rob Roy had been published in Edinburgh in December 1817 with an 1818 titlepage. The dramatisation first performed in Edinburgh on 15 February 1819 was by Isaac Pocock and filled the Theatre Royal for 41 consecutive nights, being repeated many times during every subsequent season. (176.28) The scenery A surviving playbill for the performance at the Edinburgh Theatre Royal of 17 February 1819 describes the entirely new scenery for Rob Roy as ‘designed by Mr PYETT, and by MR GRIEVE, of the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden’: see https://digital.nls.uk/playbills/view/?id= 23348. John Henderson Grieve (1770/1-1845, ODNB) was the founder of a dynasty of theatrical scene-painters, associated with the Theatre Royal, in Covent Garden, London, but also having his own independent studio near his home in Lambeth, at a time when most scenery was painted in theatre scenerooms. He was therefore able to accept commissions from other theatres, sending scenes to them by waggon. His broad-brush style and use of a glaze was particularly well-suited to gas illumination. Grieve’s two sons Thomas

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(1799-1882) and William (1800-1844) became his assistants from 1817 and 1818 respectively. Many of the Grieve designs survive in the University of London Library, and although the family were mostly associated with Covent Garden they worked for other theatres in London and elsewhere, especially out of season. (176.32-33) Baillie Jarvie […] Loch Katrine Nicol Jarvie, the Glasgow magistrate, is one of the chief comic characters of the play and is distantly related to the outlaw Rob Roy Macgregor. He goes into the Highlands with Frank Osbaldistone to meet Rob Roy. Loch Katrine, a lake bordering Stirlingshire and southwest Perthshire, had been previously celebrated by Scott in his long narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810). (177.7-8) Mattie, Major Galbraith, Andrew Fairservice and the Dugald Creature Mattie is the servant lass of Baillie Nicol Jarvie of Glasgow; Duncan Galbraith is a Major of the Lennox militiamen and landowner of the estate of Garschattachin; Andrew Fairservice is the gardener at Osbaldistone Hall who accompanies Frank Osbaldistone into Scotland as his servant; and the Dugald Creature is a member of the Macgregor clan first encountered by Frank in the Glasgow Tolbooth. (177.9) kinsmen, Baillie Jarvie and Rob Roy See Note for 176.32-33. (177.13) great Magician Walter Scott, presumably by analogy with Sir Michael Scott, the wizard or magician of his first long narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). (177.15) imprimis In the first place, especially (Latin); also the second-person singular of the verb to print. (177.19) Mr Mackay The Edinburgh theatre’s star comic actor, Charles Mackay (1787-1857). There is a painting of him in the role of Baillie Nicol Jarvie by William Allan at Abbotsford. (177.26) Land of Cakes Scotland, famous for its oatmeal cakes: compare the opening line of Burns’s ‘On the Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations thro’ Scotland, collecting the Antiquities of that Kingdom’ (Kinsley 275). (177.31-32) “a body canna carry the Saut-market upon his back.” Presumably spoken by Mackay as Jarvie in the play. The Salt-market was a commercial street in Glasgow, a continuation of the High Street running from Glasgow Cross towards the River Clyde, and the allusion is presumably to the contrasting life of a pedlar, who would carry his goods upon his back. (177.33) “Dugald Creature” Played by a Mr Duff. (177.36) Rob Roy Played by Mr Hamerton, an actor who had recently joined the Edinburgh Theatre Royal company from Covent Garden: see James C. Dibdin, The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (Edinburgh, 1888), p. 285. (177.37) eagle plume The mark of high rank in a clan, where the chief was entitled to wear three eagle feathers, and his chieftains two.

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(177.38) “black mail” A tribute paid by farmers to freebooters in return for freedom from molestation. (178.1-4) Rents and Factors […] moment’s pains Compare Wordsworth’s poem ‘Rob Roy’s Grave’, part of his ‘Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1803’, ll. 69-72. (178.5) Mr Murray (the manager) William Henry Murray (1790-1852, ODNB), who managed the Theatre Royal on behalf of his sister, Mrs Henry Siddons, played Captain Thornton. (178.11-12) Duke of Cumberland’s statue William, Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765, ODNB) was the second son of George II and a government General. He was known in Scotland as ‘Butcher Cumberland’ for savage reprisals against the Jacobites after the battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746. A statue of him was erected in Cavendish Square in London at the cost of Lieutenant General William Strode as a mark of gratitude for his personal kindness, but taken down and broken up in 1868. (178.15) Marlborough and Bickerstaff The victorious general and politician, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722, ODNB), and the fictional editor, Isaac Bickerstaff, of the thrice-weekly paper The Tatler (170911), produced by Richard Steele. (178.18) glen of Aberfoil A romantic Highland location in terms of the play, although in Scott’s novel it is primarily the setting for a comic battle of Nicol Jarvie and Frank Osbaldistone with some Highlanders at an inn. (178.18) pibroch A pibroch (Piobaireachd, literally piping) is a piece of formal music for the bagpipe, an extended composition in which a melodic theme is reworked in a series of elaborate formal variations. (178.20) Arcadian See Note for 47.8. (178.21) the novel itself, and the Lady of the Lake Scott’s novel Rob Roy (1818) and his narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810) added to the fame of the Trossachs and Loch Lomond as popular tourist sites. (178.28) Mrs Henry Siddons Harriet Siddons (1783-1844, ODNB), formerly Harriet Murray, was the wife of Henry Siddons (1774-1815, ODNB), who with Scott’s support had taken a 21-year lease of Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal in 1809. On his death on 12 April 1815 he left his wife and the theatre in severe financial difficulties. (178.30-31) at Bath Mrs Henry Siddons began her career at Bath, first appearing in the theatre there as a child actress in 1793. (178.38) favourite walk Tragedy, Mrs Siddons’s favourite branch of her professional acting. (179.5) unrivalled mother The tragic actress, Sarah Siddons (1755-1831, ODNB), a member of the Kemble theatrical dynasty and Harriet Siddons’s mother-in-law.

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(179.6-7) ancient Scottish family The Murrays of Broughton in Peeblesshire. William Henry Murray and his sister, Mrs Siddons, were the grandchildren of John Murray of Broughton, who had been secretary to Charles Edward Stuart then turned king’s evidence after the failure of the 1745 Jacobite Rising. Letter XXVII (181.6) track by which Wallace scaled Edinburgh Castle had been under English occupation after the Battle of Dunbar of 1296, but fell to the Scots under William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland (d. 1305, ODNB) following the Battle of Stirling Bridge the next year. Many details of Wallace’s life are taken from the account of the late fifteenth-century poet Blind Harry. There is a possible confusion here with Thomas Randolph, who took the Castle in Robert Bruce’s time. (181.34-35) “grim and sultry hour” Not identified. (181.39-40) “snow and hail, and stormy vapour,” See Psalm 148. 8. (182.2) “cased in the unfeeling armour of old time!” William Wordsworth, ‘Elegiac Stanzas, Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont’, originally published in Poems, 2 vols (1807), II, 14144 (l. 51). (182.2) The Capitol The southwest summit of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, overlooking the Forum, and the site of the great temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the guardian of the city. (182.35-36) Goethe open his Faustus with a scene of moonlight The first part of the dramatic poem Faust of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was published in 1808. It opens with a Prologue set in heaven, after which an opening scene shows Faust in his study where he addresses the moon. (183.1-2) Hermit Student In the opening night-scene of Goethe’s Faust the protagonist sees himself as walled up among his books, and has the impulse to flee into the open. (183.16) Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge was generally known (as by Goethe himself) to be intending to translate Faust into English, though no translation was published under his name during his lifetime. However an anonymous translation published by Boosey and Sons of London in 1821 has now been attributed to him and republished as his work: see Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Faustus from the German of Goethe, ed. by Frederick Burwick and James McKusick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). (183.17-33) Would thou wert […] most healing dew These lines may be Lockhart’s own translation from Goethe, or perhaps that of his Germanist friend R. P. Gillies (see Note for 433.12), with whom he collaborated on the ‘Horae Germanicae’ series for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.

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VOLUME TWO Letter XXVIII (191.7) “minora sidera,” Lesser lights (Latin). (191.21-22) York or Lancaster, for two Assize-weeks Assize courts were held twice a year in the principal towns of each English county, and presided over by visiting judges from higher courts, dealing with both criminal and civil cases. In the eighteenth century social events such as balls and races would be held in a town during its assize-weeks. (191.32) Temple Gardens A site between Fleet Street and the Thames in London, formerly occupied by the Templars (whose church remains), but afterwards occupied by the Inns of Court, inhabited by students and practitioners of the law. (192.13) Gens Togata The people clad in the toga (Latin). The toga was the outer garment of a male Roman citizen and obligatory dress on formal occasions. (192.18) Strephon […] Phyllis Conventional names for a male and a female rustic lover. (192.19) duplies A second answer, the defender’s rejoinder to the pursuer’s reply (Scots Law). (193.15) Mr Walter Scott and Mr Jeffrey See Morris’s account of Walter Scott in Letters LI to LV (pp. 339-70) and of Francis Jeffrey in Letters VI to VII (pp. 41-53). (193.16-17) high office in the Court of Session Walter Scott had been appointed a Principal Clerk to the Court of Session, the supreme civil court of Scotland, in 1806. (193.19-20) extra-professional reputation Chiefly as editor and a major contributor to the quarterly periodical, the Edinburgh Review. (193.28-29) “the Parliament Close.” Parliament House in Edinburgh was built between 1631 and 1640 on the site of the burial ground of nearby St Giles’ church, and housed the Scottish Parliament or Estates until the Treaty of Union with England of 1707. ‘Close’ is used here as an alternative name for [Parliament] Square, an open space between buildings in the same fashion as it relates to the precincts of an English cathedral, and not in the Scottish sense of an entry or passage leading from the street to dwelling-houses. (193.36) Church of St Giles’s Medieval church with a foundation from an earlier church first recorded in 854 CE. Its striking crown steeple was first raised about 1500. It was a focus of John Knox’s struggle to establish Presbyterianism in Scotland, then served as an episcopal cathedral during the early and late Stuart periods between 1633-38 and 1660-89. In the early nineteenth century an ashlar veneer was applied to the outside of the building:

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for an engraving depicting the building before this veneer was added, see William Maitland, The History of Edinburgh, from its Foundation to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1753), facing p. 184. (194.24-27) Not wanting […] sun’s glad beams See Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VI, ll. 20-23. (194.39) dome of St Paul’s Sir Christopher Wren’s seventeenth-century St Paul’s Cathedral was built on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London. Its dome, at 365 feet, is among the highest in the world, and until 1967 it constituted the tallest building in London. (195.6-7) church […] National Monument At a meeting to discuss the creation of a National Monument to commemorate Scotland’s dead of the Napoleonic wars held in Edinburgh on 24 February 1819, a sketch was shown of a church situated at the upper end of the Mound, although the committee was ‘anxious that it should be distinctly understood, that nothing has as yet been fixed either as to the plan of the building or its situation’: see the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 8 March 1819. (195.10) sketch which I have seen Described as the work of an ‘eminent artist’, Mr Elliot, in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 8 March 1819, this almost certainly being Archibald Elliot (bap. 1761, d. 1823, ODNB), a Scottish architect with many aristocratic patrons who had also designed the Regent Bridge and Waterloo Place in Edinburgh. Presumably as seen at the public meeting of 24 February (see previous Note). (195.13) Pantheon A temple erected at Rome to all the gods originally by Augustus’s son-in-law Agrippa. It was a circular building almost 150 feet in diameter and in the centre of its domed roof had a space open to the sky. (195.27) tasteless front-work of modern device Between 1807 and 1810 the architect Robert Reid (1774-1856, ODNB) extended the Parliament Hall to the north, and the old building is now almost fully enclosed behind his facade. For an engraving of the building before this alteration, see William Maitland, The History of Edinburgh, from its Foundation to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1753), facing p. 185. (195.32) “the glory that hath departed.” A commonplace deriving from I Samuel 4. 21. Phinehas’s wife gives her new-born son the name Ichabod, saying ‘The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken’. (196.4-5) fine equestrian statue of Charles II This statue of Charles II (16301685, ODNB) in Roman triumphal trappings was erected in 1685 and is still in place. (196.10-11) impossible to feel […] respect Charles II was resented in Scotland for his attempts to impose episcopacy on the presbyterian Church of Scotland, and was more widely distrusted for the conspicuous consumption and sexual profligacy of his court and for receiving a financial subsidy from France.

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(196.11) his more unfortunate brother James VII and II (1633-1701, ODNB), who was exiled in the Revolution of 1688, which resulted in his daughter and son-in-law becoming joint monarchs of England and Scotland in his place. (196.18) his father Charles I (1600-1649, ODNB), who during the Civil Wars of 1641-46 surrendered himself to the Scots army at Newark, but was afterwards handed over to the English parliamentarians and eventually executed at Whitehall. Letter XXIX (197.7-8) hall of very spacious dimensions The purpose-built Parliament Hall of Sir James Murray (d. 1634) has an outstanding elaborate timber trussed roof. It is 120 feet long and 49 feet broad. (197.12) Christ-Church Hall The finest surviving section of Christ Church College, Oxford, founded by Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s, and in Lockhart’s time the largest hall in Oxford. Its fine hammer-beamed roof was the work of Humphrey Coke, chief carpenter to Henry VIII. (197.17) Writers For Writers or Clerks to the Signet see Note for 123.24. Writers more generally indicates what in England would be termed solicitors. (197.18) Men of Business A man of business is a legal agent, or factor, often known in Scotland as a ‘doer’. (197.21) different Bars Literally a bar indicates the barrier, the place at which all the business of the court is transacted, and so indicates a court. Parliament House contained several courts, including the Court of Session, the Court of Exchequer, and High Court of Justiciary. (197.26) forty-pounders Large artillery guns that can fire forty-pound projectiles. (197.29) great tide of the affairs of men Compare Julius Caesar, IV. ii. 270. (198.2-3) Epicurus’s concourse of atoms The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) adhered to a theory that the eternal atoms of which the universe is composed, similar in quality but differing in volume and form, move about in space and are variously grouped into bodies. (198.5) ut mos est As usual (Latin). (198.7) in esse or in posse Actual or potential (Latin). (198.9-10) Some fell [...] draw me See Ophelia’s account to her father of the supposed madness of Hamlet in Hamlet, II. i. 90-92. (198.20) ellipsis, and parabola Both types of curve: an ellipse (in Latin ellipsis) is a plane closed curve in which the sum of the distances of any point from the two foci is a constant quantity, and a parabola is the plane curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to the side of the cone.

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(198.26-27) Suave mari […] spectare laborem See Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II. 1-2: ‘It is pleasant, when on the great sea the winds trouble the waves, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation.’ The poem was meant to embody the Epicurean philosophy of Lucretius, and thus dispel the superstition and anxiety of his contemporaries. (198.30) Gaffer An old country fellow: corruption of ‘Grandfather’. (198.31) cærulean tincture Of the colour of the cloudless sky; azure, or blue. (198.32) clouted shoon Shoes that are studded with large-headed nails, for travelling on rough ways or working on the land. (198.36) Actæon A huntsman who offended Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting. She changed him into a stag and he was torn to pieces by his own hounds. (199.3-13) Pamphagus […] mora est See Ovid, Metamorphoses, III. 210-25. The passage lists the names and characteristic qualities of the individual dogs of the pack. (199.14) “a poinding” A distraint, the legal seizure of a person’s goods. (199.16-19) Ille fugit […] latratibus æther ‘The pack of them, greedy for the prey follow over cliffs and crags, and inaccessible rocks, where the way is hard or there is no way at all. He runs, over the places where he has often chased, flying, alas, from his own hounds. He longs to shout ‘I am Actaeon! Know your own master’ but words fail him, the air echoes to the baying!’ See Ovid, Metamorphoses, III. 228-31. (199.20-23) Pamphagus […] Hylactor Dogs referred to in the larger passage quoted above. (199.32) lustrums Periods of five years. (200.2) surtouts Greatcoats or overcoats. (200.4) neckcloths à la Waterloo, or à la Belcher Adoption of increasingly complex neck-ties was a feature of young men’s dress in the 1810s and 1820s. The Duke of Wellington is said to have always worn a white neckcloth on the field of battle. A Belcher necktie was named after the bare-knuckle prizefighter Jem Belcher (1781-1811, ODNB), and indicated a sportsman, either a devotee of boxing or of driving four-in-hand. (200.7) bombazeens Twilled fabrics, composed of worsted or a mixture of worsted and silk or cotton. (200.12) pococurante Caring little (Italian); nonchalant, or indifferent. (200.13-14) poor Bunbury The English artist and popular caricaturist Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811, ODNB). His normally cheerful personality deteriorated after the death of his son in 1798 and that of his wife in the following year, when he turned to drink and became increasingly reclusive. (200.15) Your Dandy’s […] London See William Stewart Rose, The Court and Parliament of Beasts (London, 1819), p. 94 (Canto VI, stanza 3).

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(200.22) Dr Spurzheim See Note for 37.18. (200.23) future Voets and Pothiers Johannes Voet (1647-1713) was a celebrated Dutch jurist, and Robert Joseph Pothier (1699-1772) a French one. (200.30) Westminster-Hall The chief law-court in London, where court-dress was obligatory, and regulations demanded a black gown and wig. (200.35) hair à la Berlin, or à la Cossack Styles in which the natural hair was worn; the specifics of these two have not been identified. (200.38-201.1) sine qua non Without which nothing can be done (Latin); an essential condition, something obligatory. (201.3) Judges, like those Mr Fearon saw in Connecticut Henry Bradshaw Fearon did visit New Haven in Connecticut, but it is a judge in New York’s city-hall whom he describes as ‘a young man about 26 […] his dress was a long loose great-coat and trowsers’: see Sketches of America (London, 1818), p. 53. Fearon himself was a London-born surgeon who had been sent to the United States in 1817 by 39 English families to see what part of the country, if any, it would be advisable for them to settle in. On his return he wrote an account of his travels. (201.7) Pro-proctor Assistant or deputy to a proctor, a university official at Oxford or Cambridge charged with the discipline of students and able to punish summarily minor offences. (201.7) cannot away with Cannot tolerate. Letter XXX (202.7-8) peristrephic panorama A circular painted view or scene that revolves or rotates, giving the effect of action. There is an advertisement in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 28 April 1819 for a ‘Grand Peristrephic Panorama of Lord Exmouth’s Splendid Victory over the Algerines’, situated in ‘the large new Pavilion, Prince’s Street, opposite Hanover Street’ and accompanied by ‘a full military Band of Music’ in several public shows each day. The panorama was painted on 6000 square feet of canvas under the direction of naval officers who had been engaged in the bombardment of Algiers of 27 August 1816 (an engagement designed to end the enslavement of European Christians by the Dey of Algiers). (202.11) “Magnanimi Heroes,” Magnanimous heroes (Latin). An allusion to Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 649. (202.13-14) “the proud horse-hair nodding on the crest” Compare the descriptions of the helmets of Turnus and Nisus respectively in Virgil’s Aeneid, VII. 783-90 and IX. 805-10; also Dryden’s translation of IX. 269 (‘That Nisus, and his arms and nodding crest’).

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(202.14-15) ένι προμαχοισι μαχεσθαι To be fighting in the foremost fighters (Greek). Echoes Homer, Iliad, Book XV. 522. Homer has ἐνὶ προμάχοισι δαμῆναι, ‘to be vanquished among the foremost fighters’. (202.17) Μικροι μεν άλλα Μαχηται Small, yet fighters (Greek). (202.20) Sancho Panza Faithful attendant of Cervantes’s mock-heroic knight of chivalry Don Quixote. (202.25) Esquire, burning for his spurs Wanting to show that he deserves to succeed: from the gaining of knighthood by a squire, as gilt spurs were a badge of knighthood. (202.27) Uriah the Hittite See II Samuel 11. 15. King David, wanting possession of Uriah the Hittite’s wife Bathsheba, wrote to Joab ‘Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle’, intending that Uriah should be killed. (203.7) non-chalance Lacking enthusiasm; affected indifference. Lockhart’s use of the hyphen indicates its original formation from the French where non would originally have been a separate prefix. (203.15) some new eccentricity of Lord Hermand For fuller details on George Fergusson, Lord Hermand (1743-1827, ODNB) see text at pp. 250-54 and Note for 250.31. (203.15-16) broad bon-mot of Mr Clerk For fuller details on John Clerk of Eldin (1757-1832, ODNB) see text at pp. 210-15 and Note for 210.2. (203.39-40) “like the voice of a man […] no man heareth.” For the voice of a man in the wilderness see Isaiah 40. 3, though this does not include ‘whom no man heareth’. (204.7-8) Court of Session […] model of the Parliament of Paris The Court of Session, the supreme civil court of Scotland, was established in 1532 by an act of the Scottish parliament in the reign of James V on the model of the Parlement of Paris. Originally the Lord Chancellor was to preside over fifteen lords, a mixture of clergymen, and laymen who were appointed by the King’s Council. (204.11) gowns are very splendid things For an example see the portrait of Lord Braxfield by Henry Raeburn (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1615), an engraving from which is on page 248 of the present edition. In the painting the judge’s flowing judicial robes are a warm red colour with a white spotted cape and cuffs and ornamented with large bows of red. (204.16) Duncan Forbes of Culloden Duncan Forbes of Culloden (16851747, ODNB) was a Scottish politician and supporter of the Hanoverian monarchy, particularly as shown during the 1745 Jacobite Rising. He was made Lord Advocate in 1725 and Lord President of the Court of Session in 1737. (204.17) Kaimes Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782, ODNB) was made a judge in 1752. Besides his legal writings he was the author of Elements of Criticism (1762) and a noted agricultural improver.

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(204.17) Hailes David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (1726-1792, ODNB), known as a compassionate judge, was appointed in 1766. His works include Annals of Scotland (2 vols, 1776 and 1779) and a collection of Ancient Scottish Poems (1770) taken from the Bannatyne manuscript. (204.17) Braxfield Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (1722-1799, ODNB) was appointed a judge in 1776, and known for his savage wit on the bench. See also text at pp. 246-49 and Notes. (204.17) Monboddo James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (bap. 1714, d. 1799, ODNB), appointed a judge in 1767. His best-known work was the multivolume Of the Origins and Progress of Language (1773-92). (204.17-18) Woodhouselee Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813, ODNB), appointed Professor of Civil History at Edinburgh University in 1786, and raised to the bench of the Court of Session in 1802, enjoying throughout a career as a historian alongside his legal one. He was a contributor to The Lounger and author of the popular Elements of General History (1801). (204.18) Blair Robert Blair, Lord Avontoun (1741-1811, ODNB) became Lord President of the Court of Session in 1808. Henry Cockburn in Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856) characterises him as a man who disliked jostling for place and petty intrigue (pp. 150-56). (204.23) Lord Gillies Adam, Lord Gillies (1760-1842, ODNB), appointed a judge in 1811. (204.24) excellent Historian John Gillies (1747-1836, ODNB), a classicist as well as a historian, who succeeded William Robertson as Historiographer for Scotland in 1793. His works included a History of Ancient Greece (2 vols, 1786 and 1807), and translations of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Politics in 1793. His translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric was not actually published until 1823. (204.38) Lord Pitmilly’s David Monypenny, Lord Pitmilly (1769-1850), was appointed a judge in 1813, succeeding Lord Woodhouselee. (204.40-205.1) Chancellor Eldon John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838, ODNB), was Lord Chancellor from 1801-06, and again from 1807-27. (205.12) Emerald Isle Ireland, known as the Emerald Isle for its lush vegetation. (205.16) Drummond-street Drummond Street is just outside the Old Town of Edinburgh opposite to the Old College and linking the South Bridge with the Pleasance. (205.18) “meditatione fugæ warrant.” A warrant for the arrest of a debtor who intends to leave Scotland and escape the jurisdiction of the court. (205.19) Mr Clerk John Clerk of Eldin (1757-1832, ODNB): see also text at pp. 210-15, and Notes.

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(205.21) Mr Jeffrey See the account of Francis Jeffrey in Letters VI to VII, with the relevant Notes. (205.22) son of Erin An Irishman, Erin being an ancient name for Ireland. (205.26) nugæ Trifles (Latin). (205.27) Belles-Lettres Fine writing (French); writing that is well-written, read for pleasure rather than information. (205.34-35) the great Philips The Irish barrister Charles Phillips (1786/7?1859, ODNB), who published some of his forensic speeches as The Speeches of Charles Phillips in 1817 and edited Specimens of Irish Eloquence in 1819. (205.39) ’Tis well that they should sin, so he may shine Not identified. Letter XXXI (206.5) statue of the late Lord Melville Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811, ODNB), was a political manager of Scottish affairs so effective that he was nicknamed ‘Harry the Ninth’. The statue by the sculptor Chantrey (see next Note) was erected in the Parliament House in 1818. According to the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 18 November 1818, during the vacation of the law-courts between July and November ‘some considerable alterations have taken place in the Outer-house’, these including repairs to the roof, the removal of a window, and the transfer of judicial seats from one place to another within the hall. At the same time, the statue of Lord Melville was placed there. ‘It is of white marble, standing on a pedestal six feet high, and the figure is seven feet nine inches in height. Its drapery is that of a Viscount of the United Kingdom, dressed in his Parliamentary robes. It is esteemed a masterpiece of art; the attitude is graceful and commanding, and the likeness excellent’. In Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), however, Henry Cockburn refers to it as ‘perhaps Chantrey’s worst’ (p. 259). (206.6) Chantry The fashionable English portrait sculptor, Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841, ODNB). (206.28) Friend and Brother of William Pitt Melville’s management of Scottish patronage and affairs was undertaken in conjunction with the Tory British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806, ODNB). (206.32-207.2) Melville walked […] twenty years Henry Dundas was called to the bar in 1763, becoming Solicitor-General for Scotland in 1766, and Lord Advocate in 1775. By the early 1780s, however, his career was largely devoted to politics at Westminster, where he was appointed Treasurer of the Navy in January 1784. (207 footnote) habitacula Dwelling-places (Latin). (208.2) Lord Justice Clerk The second most senior Scottish judge, after the Lord President of the Court of Session. He is in charge of the second division of the Inner House of the Court of Session.

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(208.3) statue of Duncan Forbes of Culloden For Forbes see Note for 204.16. His statue by the French sculptor Louis François Roubiliac (1702-1762, ODNB) dates from 1752. According to the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 18 November 1818 (see Note for 206.5) it was during the legal vacation of 1818 that the statue was ‘removed from the east wall of the Outer-house to a niche behind the Lord Justice Clerk’s chair, in the Second Division of the Court’. (208.4-10) Blair […] Chantry For Blair and Chantrey see Notes for 204.18 and 206.6. Chantrey’s statue of Blair was ordered in 1812 for a fee of £4000; and shows him seated informally and wearing contemporary dress and was intended as a counterpart to the Roubiliac statue of Forbes of Culloden. It was installed during the alterations to the Outer-house of the Parliament building during the vacation of 1818 (see Note for 206.5). According to the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 18 November 1818 this statue was set in place ‘in a niche in the wall immediately behind the chair of the First Division; the figure is in a sitting posture, and does not, perhaps, appear, when it is first seen, so shewy and striking as that of the other statue [Melville’s], nor is the likeness thought to be quite so good; but, on a closer examination, we are struck with the general ease and gracefulness of the attitude, and with a certain air of calm dignity which the artist has given to the features, and which is so truly expressive of the great original, whose memory this statue is intended to preserve. Both these statues are executed by Chantry, and they certainly afford an admirable specimen of his talents and skill’. (208.12-13) Venus Anadyomene That is, Venus ‘rising from the Sea’ (Greek). The famous painting by Titian of this subject, however, shows a nude Venus (National Galleries of Scotland, NG 2751). (208.24) bust of the Theseus Perhaps the statue on the east pediment of the Parthenon in Athens, of a young male figure which could be either Theseus or Dionysos. For further details, see also Note for 360.14. (208.30) died […] in the same week The lifelong friendship between Melville and Blair had been formed when both were boys attending the Edinburgh High School. Blair died at his house in George Square in Edinburgh on 20 May 1811, and Melville on 28 May, the day of Blair’s funeral which he had travelled to Edinburgh purposely to attend. James Hogg’s ‘Lament for Lord Melville’ in the Edinburgh Star of 31 May 1811, for instance, alludes to this macabre coincidence. (209.4) Stagyrite […] “a living Equity” Aristotle is known as the Stagyrite, from his birthplace of Stagira in ancient Macedonia. For Aristotle’s view that Equity involves an adjustment or adaptation of a strict law where the rigid application of it would produce injustice see Anton-Hermann Chroust, ‘Aristotle’s Conception of Equity (Epieikeia)’, Notre Dame Law Review, 18: 2 (1942), 119-28.

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(209.7-8) had in reverence In the sense of considered or regarded with reverence. Compare ‘The Athenians had him in so great Esteem’: The Satyrs of Persius, trans. by Thomas Sheridan (Dublin, 1728), 94n-95n. (209.8-9) keenest of his now surviving political opponents John Clerk (1757-1832, ODNB) was a keen Whig who in the 1780s had served on a standing committee which unsuccessfully promoted two parliamentary bills aimed at reforming burgh government and parliamentary representation in Scotland. He had also attempted to reform the Court of Session in 1807. See also Note for 210.2. Letter XXXII (210.2) Mr Clerk John Clerk (see previous Note) became an advocate in 1785. His practice was so extensive that it was said that at one period he had almost half the business of the court in his hands, and he was notorious for his acerbity towards the bench. He was made a judge as Lord Eldin in 1823. The following depiction of him is substantially republished from ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” with Extracts from that Popular Work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52 (pp. 748-49). (210.7) lame in one of his limbs Clerk had one leg shorter than the other. (210.15) Coryphæus of the Bar The Coryphaeus is the leader of the chorus in the theatre of ancient Greece. (210.15-16) Juris consultorum sui seculi facile princeps The acknowledged leader of the legal counsellors of the day (Latin). (211.9-10) Aristotle says […] superiority Not found in Aristotle’s works. But compare Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law (written 1640): ‘I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly’ (Part I, chapter 9, section 13). (211.17) bog-trotter One accustomed to trot over bogs, used as a derogatory name for an Irish peasant. (211.20) spoon Simpleton. (211.23) “with his glittering eye,” See line 13 of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (213.1-2) fibbers, cross-buttockers […] facers—choppers All pugilistic terms. Fibbers are blows delivered in quick succession; cross-buttockers are throws over the hip; facers are blows to the face; and choppers are chopping blows. (213.2-3) “Ars est celare artem,” To conceal art is itself an art (Latin). Proverbial (ODEP, p 19). (213.3) “Usus ipse natura est;” Nature is practice itself, in the sense of skill itself is my nature (Latin).

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(213.18) Doric dialect Scots, from a comparison with a regional dialect of classical Greece, where the standard was Attic. (214.6-8) Like old Voet […] town-hall The Dutch lawyer Johannes Voet (1647-1713) held the chair of Law at the University of Leiden from 1680 until his death. Leiden’s Stadhuis was a sixteenth-century building to designs by Lieven de Key, of which only its present facade is extant following a major fire in 1929. The building was originally embellished with many paintings and tapestries of which the best-known is probably the ‘Last Judgement’ by Lucas van Leyden, now held by Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden. (214.7) Leyden jurisconsults Those learned in the law in Leiden in the Netherlands. Teaching in law began with the founding of the university itself in 1575, and many Scottish lawyers were educated there. (214.9-10) Mr Clerk is a great connoisseur in pictures Clerk himself drew and made models, and he also had a large collection of pictures and prints at his house in Picardy Place in Edinburgh, which was sold by auction after his death in March 1833. The sale lasted fourteen days owing to the size of his collection. See Iain Gordon Brown, ‘“I understood Pictures Better than Became my Purse …”: The Clerks of Penicuick and Eldin as Collectors and Connoisseurs’, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, 8 (2003), 27-36. (214.13) Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh Lockhart was himself a member of this society, the object of which was ‘the diffusion of a love for the Fine Arts, and the cultivation of a friendly intercourse with one another’. The members dined together four times a year, but also held weekly or fortnightly meetings in Young’s Tavern at 209 High Street. Members included a number of both painters and literary men. For further information see the printed ‘Regulations of the Dilettanti Society’ (NLS MS 5406, fol. 18) and five papers printed for the society in NLS APS.3.83.7.1. (214.17) John Ballantyne’s Sale-room After failing as a publisher in Hanover Street in the New Town, John Ballantyne (1774-1821, ODNB) set up business there as a literary and art auctioneer. From 4 January to 12 July 1817 Ballantyne published 28 numbers of a weekly miscellany entitled The Sale-Room at 4 Hanover Street. (214.20) reclaiming petition In Scots law a reclaim is an appeal. (214.24) bijou A jewel or trinket (French from Breton); something small and elegant. (214.25) Bathsheba […] David See II Samuel 11. 2. King David, walking in the evening on the roof of the king’s house, sees Bathsheba bathing herself. (214.29-30) dogs […] Mahometan city in disgust Islam considers the dog an unclean animal. In addition to his collection of art, Clerk’s consulting rooms were apparently over-run by animals. (214.31) genus felinum Cat species (Latin).

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(214.33) black Poodle of Albertus Magnus Albertus Magnus (before 12001280) was a German Dominican friar, later canonised as a saint. His work as a theologian, philosopher and astrologer was transmuted by legend into making him a powerful alchemist and magician, who is supposed to have discovered the philosopher’s stone. Possession of a familiar spirit in the form of a black dog seems more commonly associated with the reputed magician Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) than with Albertus Magnus. In scene iii of Part I of Goethe’s Faust (published in full in German in 1808), set in Faustus’ study, a black poodle who has accompanied him home is transformed into the evil spirit Mephistopheles. (214.36) Spirits, black, white, and grey Compare ‘Black spirits and white, red spirits and grey, / Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may’, in Macbeth, IV, i. 44-45. (214.37) par excellence More or better than all others (French). Letter XXXIII (216.3) Mr Cranstoun George Cranstoun (d. 1850, ODNB), grandson to the 5th Lord Cranstoun, and a personal friend of Walter Scott. He became an advocate in 1793 and Sheriff-Depute of Sutherland in 1806, subsequently Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1823, before being raised to the bench as Lord Corehouse in 1826. The following depiction of him is substantially republished from ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” with Extracts from that Popular Work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52 (pp. 750-51). (216.15) gusto Enjoyment or enthusiasm in something; artistic style or aesthetic perception (Italian). (216.17) Dutch or Flemish school Pictures from the Low Countries (Holland or Flanders) of the sixteenth century were characterised by their use of oils, and their fine realistic detail. The sixteenth century in Holland saw the development of genre painting such as landscapes, domestic interiors, and scenes of peasant life. (216.19) Italian Fresco A fresco painting is where the paint has been applied directly onto newly-laid plaster, as in the case of religious or classical works for the decoration of churches and palaces. Notable Italian examples include the Scrovegni chapel in Padua by Giotto and Michael Angelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican, Rome. (217.4) “melliflua majestas” of Quinctilian Honeyed majesty (Latin). Quintilian (c. 35-c. 96 CE) was a famous teacher of rhetoric at Rome who pleaded in the courts and was tutor to the grand-nephews of Domitian. He is the author of Institutio Oratia (Institutes of Oratory). The source of the phrase has not been identified. See also Note for 295.19.

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(217.39) prevailing rumour Although he had a strong taste for literature and Greek scholarship, Cranstoun did not in fact relinquish his legal career: see Note for 216.3. (218.7-9) Pericles […] “taking away the spring from their year.” Compare Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre, scene 18, ll. 34-35, where Pericles reads the false epitaph for Marina, ‘The fairest, sweetest, best lies here, / Who withered in her spring of year’. (218.23) “chosen a better part,” Compare Luke 10. 42, with Jesus’s comment on Mary’s sitting at his feet to hear his word while her sister Martha was ‘cumbered about much serving’ (10. 40). Letter XXXIV (219.1) Mr Jeffrey’s appearance For Francis Jeffrey see Letters VI to VII and relevant Notes, in particular the descriptions of his informal dress and manner when at home at Craigcrook in Letter VII. His niceness of dress at a conversazione (social gathering) is remarked upon in Letter XXIV (see text at p. 167). (219.6) before the Ordinary A Lord Ordinary is a judge who sits in the Outer House of the Court of Session determining cases at first instance. (219.11) Exquisite-clerk An exquisite is a fop, someone over-nice with regard to matters of dress. (219.18) discordant Babel In reaction to man’s attempt to create a Tower of Babel that should reach up to heaven, instead of all men speaking the same language God sent upon them a confusion of tongues ‘that they may not understand one another’s speech’ (Genesis 11. 1-8). (219.21) told you in a former letter Letter VI (see text at p. 45). The passage from here to the end of Letter XXXIV is substantially republished from ‘A Few Farther Strictures on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” with Extracts from that Popular Work’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 745-52 (p. 752). (219.32) passibus aequis With equal steps (Latin). (221.15) “copia fandi,” Abundance of talk (Latin). (223.6) newly-established Jury-Court for civil cases The trial of civil cases by jury was introduced in law in Scotland against considerable opposition in 1815, when there were large arrears in appeals from the Court of Session to the House of Lords. The new law established a separate Jury Court for the sole purpose of trying questions of fact remitted to it by other courts. It was abolished in 1830, when jury trial was incorporated within the ordinary jurisdiction of the Court of Session.

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(223.7) lord of the ascendant In casting a horoscope the lord of the ascendant is any planet in the degree of the zodiac which is nearest the eastern horizon at the time of birth. (223.8) “one brother near the throne.” From the portrait of Joseph Addison in Alexander Pope’s ‘Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot’ (l. 198), ‘Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne’. Letter XXXV (225.1) Mr Henry Cockburn Now probably best-known for his Memorials of his Time (1856), Henry Cockburn (1779-1854, ODNB) became an advocate in 1800, and was a Whig lawyer of reformist opinions who acted for the defence in sedition trials. Karl Miller in his ODNB article describes him as both a ‘pugnacious and triumphant reformer’ and as ‘an admired advocate’ who could gain the trust of juries by ‘displays of homeliness, and by pleading in Scots and, at times, in tears’. (225.7-8) in spite of antiquity […] wanting hair Baldness was considered ugly in classical Greece. In Book 2 of Homer’s Iliad, for instance, the repulsive Thersites is bandy-legged, lame, round-shouldered, and bald (ll. 211-18). (225.10-11) region of veneration For the ‘Organ of Veneration’ see The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), pp. 340-44: ‘It is situated in the midst of the upper part of the head some way before the crown’ (p. 344). (226.20) Ciceronian and Pindaric Cicero, the Roman orator and statesman lived from 106-43 BCE. Pindar, the Greek lyric poet, was born in either 522 or 518 BCE and is said to have died at the age of eighty. (226.22) Χρὴ θέμεν πρόσωπον τηλαυγές It is necessary to make its front shine from afar (Greek). See Pindar, Olympian Odes 6, ll. 3-4. (226.27) Diogenes himself Diogenes was the fourth-century BCE principal representative of the Cynic school of philosophy. Lockhart is probably recalling the anecdote of his walking about with a lantern and stating that he was looking for an honest man. (228.6-7) Those common thoughts […] simplest tears Compare William Wordsworth, Peter Bell (1819), ‘Prologue’, ll. 133-35: ‘The common growth of mother earth, / Suffices me—her tears, her mirth, / Her humblest mirth and tears.’ (228.8) “Man’s heart is an holy thing,” See Wordsworth’s Peter Bell (1819), Part Third, l. 337. (228.33) clue The image is of a ball of thread, used to guide one’s way out of a labyrinth. (229.3) Chaos and Erebus Chaos is primordial confusion and Erebus the primeval darkness which is the offspring of Chaos.

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(230.5) parachute Any apparatus serving to check a fall through the air or support something in the air, of wider application in the early nineteenth century and here perhaps indicating a hot-air balloon. (230.26) Wake the sacred source of sympathetic tears Compare Thomas Gray, ‘The Progress of Poesy’ (1757), l. 94: ‘Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears’. (230.30) Stagyrite Aristotle: see Note for 52.26. (230.30-31) the πιστις ἠθικη and the πιστις παθετικη The ethical proof and the pathetic proof (Greek). The ‘ethical proof’ in rhetoric refers to a reputable and reasoned idea that makes it believable; the ‘pathetica’ is believing through the fire and passion of the argument rather than simply the ideas. Letter XXXVI (231.3) Mr James Moncrieff James Wellwood Moncreiff of Tulliebole, in Kinross-shire (1776-1851, ODNB), was from a family of lairds long prominent in the Church of Scotland. He became an advocate in 1799 and was himself long an elder of the church. In 1807, during the brief Ministry of All the Talents, he was appointed Sheriff of Clackmannan and Kinross. He mixed in the liberal Whig circles associated with the Edinburgh Review, and took an active part in the agitation for reform in Scottish politics. In 1829 he became a judge as Lord Moncreiff. (231.5) Sir Henry Moncrieff For a fuller account of Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff, Baronet of Tulliebole, in Kinrosshire (1750-1827, ODNB), the leader of the popular party in the Church of Scotland, see text at pp. 396-98. (232.2) tympanum The ear-drum. (232.7-8) as my friend Charles Lamb says of tobacco See ‘A Farewell to Tobacco’ (ll. 73-76) by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834, ODNB ). There is no clear evidence that Lockhart himself knew Lamb personally. On 25 November 1814 he wrote to Jonathan Christie: ‘Can you tell me anything of Lambe [sic]? I never read his specimens of the Old Tragedians till the other day, and have been, I need not say, highly delighted with them’ (Lang, I, 77). (232.14) grand climacteric The multiples of 7 and 9 were supposedly the critical ages in a life, and the age of 63 (7 x 9) was therefore thought of as an age which few succeeded in outliving. (232.22) in writing Written rather than oral pleading played the major role in litigation in the Court of Session. (232.32) Mr Murray John Archibald Murray (1778?-1859, ODNB): see also Note for 72.23. (232.33-34) Burns’s Dinner last month As this was held on 22 February 1819, Morris is now presumably writing in March 1819.

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(233.11) an Icarian flight Icarus was the son of Daedalus, who made wings of wax and feathers, using which Icarus flew too near the sun so that his wings melted and he fell into the sea. (233.12) mox daturus nomina ponto Soon give his name to the ocean (Latin). Compare Horace on the fate of Icarus in Odes, IV. ii. 2-3 (‘vitreo daturus nomina ponto’, leave his name to a glassy sea). (233.21-22) Mr J. P. Grant […] deserted Westminster-Hall John Peter Grant of Rothiemurchus (1774-1848, ODNB) qualified as an advocate in 1796, but afterwards attended Lincoln’s Inn in London and became a barrister there in 1802. He was MP for Grimsby from 1812-18, his election expenses causing him severe financial difficulties. Subsequently he made a renewed attempt to succeed as an advocate in Edinburgh, which was unsuccessful. In 1827 he relocated to India, where he became one of the supreme judges at Calcutta. (233.23-24) new Jury-Court in civil causes See Note for 223.6. (233.27-28) To a re-appearing star, / Or a glory from afar Compare William Wordsworth, ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’ (1807), ll. 15455. (233.35) parabolas See Note for 198.20. (234.10-11) at Mr Jeffrey’s Most probably referring to Francis Jeffrey’s Edinburgh residence at 92 George Street. In the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters the surname here remains uncompleted, probably as a result of its isolated position. (234.12-13) Tom Harris’s Chambers Tom Harris has not been identified and is perhaps fictitious. (234.13) Fig-tree Court A court of the Inner Temple, located at the end of Inner Temple Hall facing Elm Court. It was destroyed by enemy action in 1940. Letter XXXVII (235.15-16) side-bar See Note for 402.18. (235.18) Style-book Perhaps referring specifically to George Dallas of SaintMartins, System of Stiles As now Practicable within the Kingdom of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1697; 2nd edn, 2 vols, 1774), which covers the whole Scottish system of legal procedures, documentation, and authorisations, and was widely used by lawyers and their clerks for composing legal documents. (235.21) Condescendence Specification of particulars; a legal statement of facts. (235.22) con over Peruse, examine. (235.24-27) Bear witness […] by Loch Lomond’s braes See William Wordsworth, ‘Rob Roy’s Grave’ (1803), ll. 113-16. The original poem has ‘Herdsman’ where Lockhart puts a dash.

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(235.29-30) “they and the other slaves of the Lamp.” An allusion to the story of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. A genie of the lamp was obliged to appear when the lamp was rubbed and grant the wishes of the holder of it. (236.4) Mr Forsyth Robert Forsyth (1766-1845, ODNB) was the son of a shoemaker, and educated by his parents for the Church of Scotland. He obtained a licence to preach but was unable to obtain a parish and turned to the law as a profession, meeting Walter Scott while attending civil law classes. After being refused admission previously on the grounds of his humble birth he became a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1792, although his prospects as a lawyer were marred by his having joined the Society of Friends of the People, and his living was partly at least made by writing for the booksellers. His works included The Beauties of Scotland (5 vols, 1805-08) and a book of his essays, Principles of Moral Science (1805). (236.16) signet Seal, for impressing wax on a document or letter; possibly with a pun on the Scottish legal body of Writers to the Signet. (237.3) Argus A herdsman appointed by Juno to watch Io in Greek mythology, Argus having eyes all over his body. (237.5-6) “Nihil inutile […] in naturâ,” There is nothing superfluous, nothing is useless, nothing in the nature of waste (Latin). (237.6-7) Prince of English intellect Probably Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1292?, ODNB), English philosopher and Franciscan friar, noteworthy for commentaries and lectures at Oxford on Aristotle (the ‘Prince of Philosophers’). Bacon himself was known as ‘Doctor Mirabilis’ (wonderful teacher). The quotation attributed to him has not been identified. (237.22) scouted Dismissed scornfully. (237.32-33) in the teeth of So as to face or outfront, in direct opposition to. (238.12) Principles of Moral Science See Note for 236.4. (238.34) cap-a-pee From head to foot (Old French); fully armoured. (238.35) mace A metal spiked club used as a weapon, possibly with a pun on mace as a staff of office borne before certain legal officials. (239.7-15) I shall have […] could mention This passage does not appear in the ‘second’ edition. Among contemporaries at the bar singled out by Lockhart are John Hope (1794-1858, ODNB), the eldest son of Lord President Hope, who became an advocate in 1816, and subsequently a judge in 1841; and Duncan McNeill (1793-1874, ODNB ), who became an advocate in 1816 and a judge in 1851. Skene is perhaps Andrew Skene (1784-1835), son of Dr George Skene of Aberdeen, who became an Advocate in 1806 and was appointed Solicitor-General in 1834. Walker is perhaps James Walker of Dalry (1790-1856), who became an Advocate in 1811, and was Sheriff of Wigtown from 1818 to 1843. For the above two see Francis J. Grant, The Faculty of Advocates, 1532-1943 (Edinburgh, 1944), pp. 193 and 212 respectively.

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Letter XXXVIII (240.10) separation of the Civil Court into two Divisions While originally all the judges of the Court of Session (‘the fifteen’) sat together upon the same bench, from 1808 two divisions were created for the swifter dispatch of business. (240.19) “ta’en before the Fifeteen.” Considered by all 15 judges of the Inner House of the Court of Session, acting together to establish rulings on particular legal issues or as a court of appeal. (241.1) President of the Second Division The Lord Justice Clerk, who in 1819 was David Boyle, Lord Boyle (1772-1853, ODNB). He had become an advocate in 1793, Solicitor-General for Scotland in 1807, and a judge of the Court of Session in 1811, his appointment as Lord Justice Clerk coming later the same year. He held this last post for nearly 30 years. (241.6) Criminal, or Justiciary Court The High Court of Justiciary is Scotland’s supreme criminal court, hearing the most serious cases such as murder or rape, lesser crimes being dealt with by the Sheriff Court. It also deals with all criminal appeal cases. (241.11) assessors An assessor is one who sits beside; a judge acting as an assistant and advisor. (241.12) Lord Robertson William Robertson (1753-1835), the eldest son of the historian of the same name, became an advocate in 1775; he was appointed to the bench as Lord Robertson in 1805, and resigned in 1826: see Francis J. Grant, The Faculty of Advocates, 1532-1943 (Edinburgh, 1944), pp. 181-82. (241.31) Locke, or Clarendon The philosopher John Locke (1632-1704, ODNB), and the politician and historian Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674, ODNB). (242.1-2) common portraits of the Historian That is, of William Robertson senior (1721-1793, ODNB). Lockhart probably has in mind the paintings (or prints based upon them) by Joshua Reynolds of 1772 (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1393) and by Henry Raeburn of 1792 (Edinburgh University, EU0011). (242.16) Lord President Hope Charles Hope of Granton (1763-1851, ODNB) became an advocate in 1784, Lord Advocate in 1801, Lord Justice Clerk in 1804, and was appointed Lord President of the Court of Session in 1811. (243.21) well-known solicitor Not identified, perhaps fictitious. (244.3-4) Dante […] just Man.” Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet. Possibly a reference to Canto I of his Inferno where the protagonist, lost in a forest and seeking a way out, encounters three beasts, one of which is a lion symbolising pride; subsequently he meets the figure of Virgil who proclaims: ‘I was a poet and sang of that just man / Son of Anchises [Aeneas]’ (ll. 73-74).

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(244.19) Mens est id quod facit disertum The mind is that which makes one eloquent/shrewd (Latin). (244.32) Judge […] formerly President of the Criminal Court Charles Hope had become Lord Justice Clerk, the head of Scotland’s supreme criminal court, in 1804, before being appointed President of the Court of Session in 1811 (see also Note for 242.16). (244.36) “terrible graces” Apparently a comment on Homer by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. c. 23 BCE), in popular circulation especially in connection with Shakespeare’s tragedies during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Compare William Hazlitt’s review of ‘Lectures on Dramatic Literature. By W. A. Schlegel’, Edinburgh Review, 26 (February 1816), 79: ‘These images are nowise deficient in the terrible graces, which almost all the writers of antiquity celebrate in Æschylus’. Letter XXXIX (246.7-8) oil is poured […] ocean of life As proverbially in ‘to pour oil upon the waters’, that is to smooth matters over: see ODEP, p. 587. (246.14-15) quantum Amount, quantity (Latin). (246.25) Lord Justice-Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (1722-1799, ODNB), was a notoriously harsh and rough-spoken Edinburgh lawyer and judge. He had built up a lucrative practice as an advocate on cases arising from forfeiture after the 1745 Jacobite Rising, and became a judge of the Court of Session in 1776. In 1780 he moved to the High Court of Justiciary, and in 1788 became Lord Justice Clerk, head of the criminal judiciary of Scotland. Henry Cockburn gives a vivid if biased portrait of him, inevitably coloured by Braxfield’s role in the trials for sedition of the 1790s: see Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), pp. 113-17. (246.30-31) print of this old Judge, in his full robes of office Presumably based on the later of two portraits of Braxfield, painted by Raeburn around 1798, since this forms the basis of the engraving at p. 248 (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1615). (247.5) kickshaws Dainty dishes, food which is elegant but insubstantial. (247.14) pent-house brows Brows relating to his eyes like the projecting eaves of a roof to the building it covers. (247.19-20) Swift’s description […] Gulliver and Glumdalclitch In Book II of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, ODNB), Gulliver arrives in Brobdignag, the land of giants, and is cared for by a farm girl whom he names Glumdalclitch (‘little nurse’). When she looks after him subsequently at court, she and the Maids of Honour strip him naked and put him in their bosoms, and themselves undress in front of him, not regarding him as a man because of his size.

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(247.21) Yahoos neighing by the riverside In Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels Gulliver reaches a country governed by rational horses, also inhabited by the ape-like Yahoos, whom Swift describes as howling rather than neighing. The mention of the riverside suggests Lockhart has in mind the episode where Gulliver bathes in the river and is amorously attacked by a female Yahoo. (247.27) Echard Laurence Echard (bap. 1672, d. 1730, ODNB) published translations of Plautus and Terence widely thought to be low and vulgar. He was ordained in 1696, and became prebendary of Louth attached to Lincoln Cathedral and in 1712 archdeacon of Stowe. (247.28) Warburton William Warburton (1698-1779, ODNB), friend of Alexander Pope, was a combative religious controversialist and editor of Shakespeare. From 1760 he was Bishop of Gloucester. In Book III of his The Duellist (1764) the satirical poet Charles Churchill describes him in the following terms: ‘A great Divine, as Lords agree, / Without the least Divinity; / To crown all, in declining age, / Enflam'd with Church and Party-rage, / Behold him, full and perfect quite, / A false Saint, and true Hypocrite.’ (247.31) the Cardinal, for whose edification Poggio compiled his Facetiæ A popular joke-book with scatalogical material, the Facetiæ of Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), was first published in 1470. Poggio served under several high-ranking clerics, including four successive popes from 1404 to 1415. He entered the service of Cardinal Landolfo Maramaldo, Bishop of Bari, in 1404, and was also a guest of Cardinal Beaufort when visiting England in 1423. (247.34) brethren of the coif Fellow-lawyers; coif refers to a white, closefitting cap once worn as a badge of professional rank by sergeants-at-law, members of a superior order of barristers. (249.15-16) chairman of his debauch Probably the temporary director of a role-playing game in which participants must drink forfeits. For a fictional example, ‘High Jinks’, see Note for 252.29. (249.16) One yet living Not identified. (249.17) the late President Dundas, (father to Lord Melville,) Robert Dundas, Lord Arniston (1685-1753, ODNB), became an advocate in 1709, a judge of the Court of Session in 1737, and Lord President of the Court of Session in 1748. For Lord Melville, see Note for 206.5. (249.28) Another Advocate, also yet living Not identified. (249.32-33) in the teeth of So as to face or outfront, in direct opposition to. (249.35) in medio gurgite dicendi In the depths of speaking (Latin). (250.9) authority of Blackstone The legal writer and judge, Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780, ODNB), was the author of the standard legal work Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69). Boswell reported a remark by Dr Scott that ‘Blackstone, a sober man, composed his Commentaries with a bottle of port before him; and found his mind invigorated and supported in the

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fatigue of his great work, by a temperate use of it’: see Life of Johnson, ed. by R. W. Chapman, rev. by J. D. Fleeman (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 1135-36. (250.19) celebrated to a proverb Celebrated to an extent that has become proverbial, though no particular proverb has been identified in this case. (250.31) Hermand […] Fergusons of Kilkerran George Fergusson, Lord Hermand (1743-1827, ODNB), was a younger son of Sir James Fergusson, 2nd Baronet of Kilkerran, the family of which had been established there since at least the fifteenth century. He became an advocate in 1765 and a judge of the Court of Session in 1799. Cockburn stresses his eccentricities and legendary capacity for drink in his own account of Hermand in Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), pp. 130-41. (250.34) “Whistle of Worth,” Robert Burns, ‘The Whistle. A Ballad’ (Kinsley 272), describes a Danish toper in the train of Anne of Denmark who laid an ebony whistle on the table at the start of a drinking-bout and declared that whoever was the last drinker able to blow it should have it. After three days and nights Sir Robert Lowrie of Maxwelton won the whistle. Burns tells the story in his headnote to the poem, mentioning a modern revival of the original contest on 16 October 1789 in which the successful competitor was ‘Alexander Ferguson, Esq. of Craigdarroch, likewise descended of the great Sir Robert’. The other competitors were Sir Robert Lowrie of Maxwelton and Robert Riddel of Glenriddel, both descendants of the original competitors. Lockhart quotes ll. 21-28. Craigdarroch, named by Burns, is near Moniaive and is the home of the chief of the Dumfriesshire branch of the Ferguson clan, whereas Lockhart refers to the winner of the contest as a Ferguson of Kilkerran, which was the home rather of the chief of the Ayrshire branch of the Ferguson clan. (251.6-7) senior Judge of the whole Court The longest-serving judge. (252.3) “prince of good-fellows, and king of old men;” King Harry describes himself to the French princess Catherine as ‘the best king of good fellows’ in Henry V, V. ii. 240. (252.5) bonâ fide Good faith (Latin); in sincere or honest intention. (252.26-27) When Guy Mannering came out Scott’s novel Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer was published anonymously in Edinburgh on 24 February 1815. (252.29) Pleydell, Dandie, and the High Jinks In the part of the narrative set about 1782, Colonel Mannering visits Edinburgh and seeks out the old lawyer Paulus Pleydell, whom he encounters on a Saturday evening at a tavern in the Old Town taking a leading part in a role-playing game with forfeits called ‘High Jinks’. Mannering is accompanied by the Borders farmer Dandie Dinmont: see Guy Mannering, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 203-06 (volume 2, chapter 15).

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(253.1-2) Mr Walter Scott […] in his official capacity Scott was one of the principal Clerks of Session, whose duty it was to make a written record of the cases decided upon by the judges, and so the anonymous author of Guy Mannering was present. (253.22) livery-servants Those wearing a distinctive uniform style of dress determined by their employer, usually men-servants. (253.22) mazarine blue A rich and deep blue colour. (253.22) drummers’ yellow Military corps of drummers, who carried out the function of providing signals on the battlefield, wore distinctive yellow uniforms. (253.35) any session of the Court is over The sitting dates for the Court of Session generally ended in mid-March, mid-July, and immediately before Christmas. Lawyers would then leave Edinburgh for fairly long vacations. (253.38-39) “pulvis, strepitusque Romæ.” The dust and roar of Rome (Latin). Compare Horace, Epistles I. xvii. 7, ‘pulvis strepitusque rotarum’ (dust and noise of wheels). Letter XL (255.5) Dr Parr Presumably Samuel Parr (1747-1825, ODNB), schoolmaster, minister, and Doctor of Law. Known as the Whig Johnson, and a keen supporter of the Whig politician Charles Fox. Walter Scott recalls seeing him with his admiring entourage on the streets of Edinburgh in a facetious account for Mrs Hughes in 1823 (Scott Letters, VIII, 59-60). (255.5) χυιγ-ωτατοι The Greek letters effectively read ‘Highly Whig’, with Lockhart supplying ‘χυιγ’ to represent ‘Whig’, combined with ‘ωτατοι’ meaning ‘highly’ or ‘exalted’. (255.14) Mr Cranstoun For George Cranstoun see Note for 216.3. In responding to his portrayal, in a letter of 23 March 1819 to Lockhart, Walter Scott expressed the opinion that only diffidence and shyness had held him back from publicly ‘embracing the primrose path of poetry’ (Scott Letters, V, 324). (255.18) sprung from one of the greatest of the old Border families The Cranstoun name, which probably had a territorial link originally to Cranstoun in Midlothian, exists in legal records going back to the 12th century. Lord Cranstoun’s marriage to the daughter of a Scott forms the climax of Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). (255.25-27) The Boy […] natural piety See William Wordsworth, ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ (1807), ll. 7-9. (256.3-4) “more in sorrow than in anger.” Hamlet, I. ii. 228-29. (257.28) non-chalance See Note for 203.7. (258.10) more solito As usual, in the customary way (Latin).

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(258.11) blue and yellow panoply The paper covers in which the individual issues of the Edinburgh Review were sold were of these colours. (258.14) quizzing Mocking or making fun of a person or thing (slang). (258.20) bonâ fide Good faith (Latin); in sincere or honest intention. (258.26) sanctum sanctorum Innermost place, holiest of holies (Latin); in allusion to the innermost sanctuary of the Jewish temple. (258.34) Caligula Roman Emperor (12-41 CE), notorious for his narcissism and cruelty. (258.35-36) fine head of hair According to the Roman historian Suetonius in his account of Caligula: ‘Whenever he ran across handsome men with fine heads of hair, he disfigured them by having the backs of their heads shaved’: Lives of the Caesars, IV. 35. 2. (258.36) Circus From the Latin circle, a large open-air venue used for public events in the ancient Roman Empire. The Circus Maximus in Rome was a circus lying between the Palatine and Aventine hills where races and public spectacles were held in republican times and under the early empire. (259.3) to the lanterne Matching the cry à la lanterne, supposedly shouted by the mob during the French Revolution prior to hanging aristocrats and officials on lamp posts. (259.9) Greenlander This may relate to a Greenlander who had recently died in Edinburgh, after having been brought back from Captain John Ross’s 1818 arctic expedition. He danced, played the flute and had drawing lessons from Alexander Nasmyth, who befriended him: see ‘Some account of the late John Sackeouse, the Esquimaux’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (March 1819), 656-58. Nasmyth painted a portrait of Sackeouse, dressed in oil skins and holding a harpoon, in about 1816 (National Galleries Scotland, PG 2488). (260.3) “they that are not with us are against us;” Compare Matthew 12. 30: ‘He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.’ (260.25-26) submit to Buonaparte […] Spain Referring in particular to the article by Henry Brougham concerning ‘Don Pedro Cevallos on the French Usurpation of Spain’, in the October 1808 number of the Edinburgh Review (13, 215-34), which argued that Britain should not deplete her resources by supporting the hopeless cause of the Spanish patriots against invasion by France, but rather negotiate a peaceful settlement with Napoleon. This led to Scott withdrawing as a subscriber and contributor, and was a factor in his support for the foundation of the rival Tory Quarterly Review in 1809. (261.8-9) “A house divided […] stand.” Compare Matthew 12. 26: ‘he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?’ (262.17) Tom Folios In the singular, name used by Joseph Addison in The Tatler of 13 April 1710, regarding the well-known book collector Thomas

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Rawlinson. Since then (as here) used to denote more generally someone who talks voluminously of books that they have not read or understood. Folio itself derives from the format of the largest size and most expensive of books. (262.29-30) “familiar as household words.” See King Henry V, IV. iii. 52. (262.38) my friend, Charles Lamb See Note for 232.7-8. (262.39) John Woodvil Lamb’s John Woodvil (1802), a tragedy in the Elizabethan style, had been reviewed in the Edinburgh Review for April 1803 (2, 90-96). The review itself might be judged as cursory rather than damning. (263.22) Washing-Tub Lockhart is probably thinking here of Jeffrey’s scathing review of Wordsworth’s ‘Poems, in Two Volumes’ in the Edinburgh Review of October 1807 (11, 214-31), which paid special attention to the supposedly pedestrian nature of his subjects and characters. ‘All the world laughs at Elegiac stanzas to a sucking-pig—a Hymn on Washing-day—Sonnets to one’s grandmother—or Pindarics on gooseberry-pye; and yet, we are afraid, it will not be quite easy to convince Mr. Wordsworth, that the same ridicule must infallibly attach to most of the pathetic pieces in these volumes’ (p. 218). Also included in Poems in Two Volumes are ‘Alice Fell’, which describes an orphan’s anxiety over her damaged cloak, and ‘Resolution and Independence’, which describes the poet’s encounter with a leech-gatherer. (263.24-26) Ruth […] Sonnets to Buonaparte Classic poems by Wordsworth. ‘Ruth’, ‘Michael’, ‘The Brothers’, and ‘Hart-Leap Well’ were all published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’, completed in 1804, was published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), where two sonnets to Napoleon Buonaparte written during the short-lived peace of Amiens also appeared. (263.27) description of a Church-yard in the Excursion Book VI of The Excursion is entitled ‘The Churchyard among the Mountains’. (263.39-40) Blackwood’s Magazine See Note for 280.11-12. (264.1-4) “if Mr Coleridge […] who he was.” Equivalent wording can be found in a lead article, attributable to John Wilson, in the October 1817 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (2, 6): ‘were he to drop from the clouds among any given number of well informed and intelligent men north of the Tweed, he would find it impossible to make any intelligible communication respecting himself; for of him and his writings there would prevail only a perplexing dream, or the most untroubled ignorance.’ Letter XLI (265.1-267.38) The Whigs […] to the pine This passage had previously been published in ‘Observations on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk”’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 612-21 (pp. 614-15).

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(265.28) de omnibus […] aliis Concerning all things and certain other matters (Latin). (266.9-10) Brougham […] Parliament Henry Brougham (1778-1868, ODNB), one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, entered the House of Commons in 1810 as a Whig MP and became the leader of the liberal reforming interest there. (266.11-12) Horner is dead Francis Horner (1778-1817, ODNB ), another of the original founders of the Edinburgh Review. (266.12) Walter Scott […] left them For Scott’s departure from the Edinburgh Review, see Note for 260.25-26. (266.14) British Review The British Review and London Critical Journal (1811-25), probably selected here for its staid mediocrity in contrast to the more modern and vibrant Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review. Compare Byron in Canto I of Don Juan (1819): ‘my Grandmother’s review—the British’ (stanza 209, l. 1672). Compare also Odoherty, on providing material for the reviews, in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae. No. VII’: ‘Am I flat—I tip my Grandmother a bit of prose’ (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 13 (March 1823), 377). (267.6) blarney Smooth talk: from the stone in Blarney Castle near Cork, the kissing of which is meant to instil in someone facility in flattery and telling untruth. (267.24) au fond Basically (French). (268.4-269.5) The respectable elder […] λαας άναιδης This passage had previously been published in ‘Observations on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk”’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 612-21 (pp. 615-16). (268.6) gregarii Common ones, those belonging to the herd (Latin); as used of the Roman soldiery. (268.15) puffs Inflated praise, ‘hot air’. (268.28-29) Dutch painter […] clumsy and heavy shape Probably alluding to the work of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painters such as Jan Steen (c. 1626-1679), which included scenes of everyday life and convivial, sometimes disorderly, social gatherings as well as mythological subjects given a down-toearth treatment. (268.30-31) lust-huis at Schedam A lust-huis in Dutch describes a villa or country seat (though to English-speakers with something of the connotations of a brothel). Schedam is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. (269.2-3) Sisyphus In Greek mythology condemned for eternity to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down when it nears the top.

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(269.4) alacrity in sinking An expression also found in The Merry Wives of Windsor, III. v. 11-12. (269.5) Αύτις έπειτα πεδονδε κυλινδετο λαας άναιδης Then down again to the plain would come rolling the shameless stone (Greek). See Homer, Odyssey, XI. 598. Letter XLII (270.8-9) Weimar [...] Grand Duke The small central German town of Weimar was transformed under the patronage of Karl August (1757-1828), Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, from a provincial backwater into a German and European cultural capital. Lockhart had travelled there in the summer of 1817, financially supported by the Edinburgh bookseller William Blackwood. (270.12-13) Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe Christoph Martin Wieland (17331813), German poet, had come to Weimar in 1772 as the tutor of Karl August, the future Grand Duke (see previous Note) , and remained there until his death. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), German philosopher, poet, historian and playwright, settled in Weimar in 1787, and helped to make the theatre there the leading one in Germany. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer and statesman, took up residence in Weimar in 1775, eventually becoming its prime minister, and was a central figure both in German romanticism and what is termed collectively Weimar Classicism. Lockhart met Goethe on his visit to Germany in 1817 (see previous Note). (270.16) Leipsick Leipzig in Saxony, 52 miles northeast of Weimar, home of the largest book fair in Germany from 1632. (270.24) trade Bookselling industry. (270.25) the Row Paternoster Row, close to St Paul’s Cathedral, in the City of London, at the centre of the traditional London book trade. See also Note for 276.39. (271.4) Hume and Robertson The philosopher David Hume (1711-1776, ODNB) and historian William Robertson (1721-1793, ODNB). For an account of their dealings (and those of associated figures) with members of the London book trade, see Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment & the Book (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), passim. (271.12) the Mirrors Alluding to the weekly paper, The Mirror (1779-80), and its successor The Lounger (1785-87), both published in Edinburgh under the aegis of Henry Mackenzie (for whom see Note for 8.30-31). (271.14) Mr Creech William Creech (1745-1815, ODNB), for some 40 years the chief bookseller in Edinburgh. His publications included the Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1787) and Sir John Sinclair’s multi-volume Statistical Account of Scotland (1791-99).

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(271.16) his shop Creech’s shop was in the Luckenbooths, also known as Creech’s Land, next to St Giles’ Cathedral, off the High Street in Edinburgh; the site was finally demolished in 1817. (271.18) “the goods […] provided.” Proverbial (‘take the goods the gods provide’). Compare John Dryden, Alexander’s Feast; or, The Power of Musique. An Ode in Honour of St Cecilia’s Day, ll. 86-87: ‘Lovely Thais sits beside thee, / Take the Good the Gods provide thee’. (271.19) magistracy of the city Creech was a member of the Edinburgh Town Council and served as magistrate in 1788, 1789, 1791, and 1792. (271.31-32) momentum, of which I have spoken In mechanics, the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured by the product of the mass into the velocity, but popularly impetus gained by movement. (271.33) high sweepstakes A competition in which the whole of the stakes contributed by the competitors are taken by the winner. (272.2) grand tour In 1770 Creech accompanied Lord Kilmaurs, afterwards 14th Earl of Glencairn, on a tour of France, Holland, Switzerland, and part of Germany. (272.7-8) “at good men’s feasts,” As You Like It, II. vii. 122. (272.16) print of him Perhaps referring to the engraving showing Creech nearly whole length, seated in a chair, facing the viewer, with legs crossed, holding a book in his right hand, and wearing a wig, with writing implements on a table to the right, as published by W. & D. Lizars in 1815. The pose is similar to, but distinct from, that in the oil painting by Henry Raeburn of 1806 (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1041). (272.37-38) ere he died Creech served as Lord Provost from 1811 to 1813, prior to his death in 1815. (273.6) vi et armis By force and arms (Latin). (273.15-16) Mahratta Nabobs and Rajahs A Nabob or Nawaub is an Indian provincial governor, and a Rajah an Indian prince or king.The Mahratta (or Maratha) Empire or Confederacy was a Hindu power with its capital in Pune (Poona) that dominated a large portion of the Indian subcontinent in the eighteenth century, existing from 1674 onwards and ending the domination of the Mughal empire in India. They were eventually defeated by the British East India Company in 1818. (273.18) first Number The Edinburgh Review first appeared with the issue for October 1802. (273.26) submit to be paid From its inception contributors to the Edinburgh Review received at least twice the normal rate for reviewing, while there was an insistence that all should accept payment; the rate increased from ten to sixteen guineas a sheet (or above) during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey.

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(273.31-32) root of all evil That is, money or riches (proverbial; see ODEP, p. 150). Compare also I Timothy 6. 10: ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’. (274.18) Mr Constable Archibald Constable (1774-1827, ODNB), Edinburgh bookseller, the main publisher of the Edinburgh Review, and of Scott’s original long narrative poems. He offered an unprecedented sum of 1000 guineas (£1050) for the copyright of Marmion (1808), as well as undertaking Waverley (1814) on a half-profits basis. Notwithstanding various breaks in the relationship with Scott, by 1819 Constable’s firm was established as the undisputed primary publishers of the Waverley Novels. (274.31) Memphis or Palmyra City and capital of ancient Egypt, south of the Nile delta; and ruined ancient Semitic city now in Syria. (274.37) videlicet So to say, namely (Latin); often abbreviated to ‘viz.’, an expression introducing an explanation or amplification in a legal document. (275.10) imprimatur The publisher’s imprint on the title-page of a book. Also the sanction deriving from the formula signed by an official licenser of the press and authorising the printing of a book. It is sometimes translated as ‘Let it be printed’ (Latin). (275.15) press of Ballantyne James Ballantyne (1772-1833, ODNB), formerly printer and newspaper proprietor in Kelso, first set up in Edinburgh in 1803, locating himself initially in the precincts of Holyrood House, then in Foulis Close off the High Street, and finally in Paul’s Work at the North Back of the Canongate. He was the printer of almost all Scott’s works, often appearing prominently on the title-pages along with their Edinburgh origin. Scott himself was a secret partner in the firm. See also Note for 8.4. (275.17) Lay of the Last Minstrel Scott’s first large poem, published in Edinburgh on 12 January 1805. (276.2) Marmion […] Waverley […] Old Mortality […] Childe Harold The first two works mentioned, by Walter Scott, were published by Archibald Constable (see Note for 274.18). Scott’s Old Mortality (as part of Tales of My Landlord (1816)) and Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18), on the other hand, involved the rival Edinburgh publisher, William Blackwood, in association with John Murray of London. (276.12) Genus Humanum The human race (Latin). (276.12) Prima Virorum Chieftains of the host, leading men (Latin). See Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, I. 86. (276.21) to the Gentiles That is, to the wider world. As in the sense of the Jewish temple having a ‘court of the gentiles’ and an inner court for Jews only. (276.23) penetralia Inner recesses of a building, inner sanctum (Latin). (276.29) “Noble of a noble stem,” Compare John Milton, Arcades (1633), ll. 82-83 (‘Where ye may all, that are of noble stem, / Approach, and kiss her

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sacred vesture’s hem’). More generally, ‘of a noble stem’ represents a fairly common poetical phrase by Lockhart’s time. (276.32) bibliopoles Dealers in books. The figures below serve to depict the cultural milieu of early Augustan London, characterised by interaction between booksellers and authors. (276.33) Curll—whom Swift tormented Edmund Curll (d. 1747, ODNB), English bookseller and publisher, satirised by contemporaries for printing in a mercenary fashion. Curll infuriated Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, ODNB) by publicly disclosing his authorship of works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704) at a time Swift was seeking ecclesiastical preferment. Swift’s fullest expression of his contempt for Curll is found in his Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1731), speculating on how the world would react to the news of his death. (276.34) Jacob Tonson (1655/6-1736, ODNB), English bookseller, publisher of editions of Milton and John Dryden, and owner of the copyright of Shakespeare’s plays. (276.34-35) “two left legs” Tonson was described in such terms by William Shippen in Faction Display’d (1704): ‘With Leering Looks, Bullfac’d and Freckled fair; / With two left Legs, and Judas colour’d Hair’ (ll. 370-71). (276.35) Lintot Barnaby Bernard Lintot (1675-1736, ODNB), English bookseller, rival of Tonson (see Note for 276.34), and publisher of poetry by Alexander Pope, including Windsor Forest (1713) and The Rape of the Lock (1714). (276.37) Horace’s Odes Alexander Pope wrote a number of imitations of Horace between 1733 and 1738, not so much translations as works taking Horace’s poems as a model to satirise the corruption of life in the reign of George II. (276.38) on the Windsor road Pope relates the story in a letter to the Earl of Burlington of November 1716: ‘When we alighted, “See here, what a mighty pretty Horace I have in my pocket? What if you amus’d your self in turning an Ode, till we mount again?”’ (Letters of Alexander Pope, ed. by John Butt (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 94). (276.39) “Fathers of the Row!” The early booksellers of Paternoster Row, at the heart of the traditional London book trade. Compare Walter Scott, ‘The Search after Happiness’ (1817): ‘The last edition see by Long: and Co., / Rees, Hurst, and Orme, our fathers in the Row’ (ll. 38-39): see The Shorter Poems, ed. by P. D. Garside and Gillian Hughes, EEWSP 7 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), p. 226. (277.1-2) “climbed […] tower,” Not identified. (277.11) sybil Fame […] oracular leaves In ancient Greek legend sibyls were frenzied women who had the power of prophecy and would write their predictions on leaves. The inscribed leaves would then be left by the sibyls at the mouth of the cave where they resided, and if not quickly collected by the

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person who had consulted them the wind would scatter the leaves, and their meaning (already obscure) would be impossible to reconstruct. Such a concept underlies the title of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s collection of poems, Sybilline Leaves (1817). (277.13-14) Umile in tanta […] nembo Compare Francesco Petrarch (13041374), Canzone XIV, Chiare, fresche e dolci acque, where the relevant passage reads ‘Umile in tanta gloria, / Coverta già de l’amoroso nembo’ (Sitting humble in such a glory, already covered with the loving cloud) (ll. 44-45). With his own ‘profetico’ (prophetic) Lockhart apparently adjusts the quotation to suit his own context. (277.19) in futuros In future, that are to come (Latin): referring here to planned, rather than existing works of literature. Letter XLIII (278.6) situated in the High-street Post Office Directories describe Archibald Constable’s shop as at ‘the Cross’, this referring to the old Mercat Cross, which originally stood in the High Street below St Giles’ Cathedral (the site is now marked in the pavement), though ‘the Cross’ was also used more generally to denote the area between St Giles’ and the Tron Church. Later Directories give the address as 255 High Street, once part of a tenement building standing on the north side of the High Street (the present street numbering differs), subsequently demolished shortly after 1900 as part of the extension of the present-day City Chambers eastward. The firm maintained its commitment to the High Street until the early 1820s before moving to 10 Princes Street, close to the Register House, following a more general drift amongst booksellers towards the New Town. For Constable himself see Note for 274.18. (278.8) London brethren Referring to the concentration of the London trade in the traditional area around old St Paul’s in London, notably in Paternoster Row, though a shift to more fashionable areas such as the West End was also perceptible in this case. (278.17) nursery […] Albemarle-Street Referring to the literary salon of the publisher John Murray (1778-1843, ODNB) in his headquarters at 50 Albemarle Street, London: renowned in literary circles in Lockhart’s day, and where famously Scott met Byron. Murray had been the proprietor of the Tory Quarterly Review since its foundation in 1809. (278.23-24) in esse, or […] in posse Actual or potential (Latin). (278.24) contributors to the Supplement Having purchased the current edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1812 Constable decided to publish a Supplement, for which he attracted notable contributors by paying well. The Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 6 vols (Edinburgh, 1824), was originally published in half-volumes between 1815 and 1824. Lockhart himself undertook work of this nature during

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his early period in Edinburgh, though it was more probably for the rival Edinburgh Encyclopædia (see Introduction, p. 6 and note 12). (279.18) Messrs Manners and Miller Alexander Manners and Robert Miller, whose shop in 1819 was at 208 High Street. In the early nineteenth century the firm was foremost in the promotion of polite fiction in Edinburgh, titles including Elizabeth Hamilton’s The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808) and Mary Brunton’s Self-Control (1811). Their publications also included Walter Scott’s The Chase, and William and Helen (1796), from the German of Bürger; the firm also had a share in the Edinburgh sale of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. For Robert Miller, see also Note for 280.30. (279.18-19) blue-stockings See Note for 50.36-37. (279.29) perfect bijou Bijou in the sense of a ‘gem’ among works of art; also used to describe something small and elegant. (279.30-31) Turkey and Russia leather Leather-processing in Turkey goes back to the twelfth century, and was enhanced by the capture of Constantinople in 1453, after which the Sultan actively promoted tanning. The product employed in binding was generally made from goatskin and bright reddish brown in colour. Russian leather, from bark-tanned cow hide, was noted for its flexibility and durability, and was used for upholstery as well as luxury bookbinding. (280.4) Turner—Thomson—or Williams Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851, ODNB), renowned English landscape and history painter; John Thomson (1778-1840, ODNB), landscape painter, minister of Duddingston near Edinburgh; and Hugh William Williams (1773-1829, ODNB), landscape painter, called ‘Grecian Williams’, and a founder member of the Associated Society of Artists established in Edinburgh in 1808. All three artists were known to each other, and engravings based on the designs of each commonly featured in publications of the time, including Walter Scott’s Provincial Antiquities of Scotland (1819-26), to which each contributed at an early stage. For a specific design by Turner in Provincial Antiquities, see Note for 337.20. A fuller account of Williams’s work is provided in the text at pp. 330-34. (280.9-10) blue-stocking See Note for 50.36-37. (280.10) Campbell’s Specimens Thomas Campbell’s Specimens of the British Poets, in seven volumes, published by John Murray in 1819. (280.10-11) Dr Clarke’s Scandinavia Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, published in London by Cadell & Davies from 1811. Part III, including ‘Scandinavia’, appeared in 1819. (280.11-12) Blackwood’s Magazine Edinburgh-published monthly review magazine, beginning as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine in April 1817. The title was then altered to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (after its proprietor) in October that year, from when Lockhart and John Wilson (‘Christopher

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North’) effectively took over the editorship, rapidly increasing circulation. By April 1819 it had reached its 25th number. (280.15) paulo majora (Latin) From the introduction to Virgil’s 4th Eclogue: ‘paulo maiora canamus’ (let us sing of a somewhat loftier strain). (280.25) Cadells The long-established publishing firm, currently run by Thomas Cadell, junior, and William Davies, London publishers of the present volume (see Introduction, pp. 20-21). (280.25) Murrays The house of John Murray, whose first proprietor had originated from Scotland, now succeeded by his son John Murray II (see also Note for 278.17). (280.25) Baldwins Robert Baldwin (d. 1810), a London publisher of historical and other works, succeeded in the firm by Robert Baldwin III, a relation. In 1819 the firm was trading as Baldwin, Cradock & Joy. (280.27) great Hatchard John Hatchard (1768-1849, ODNB), bookseller and publisher, notable for the extensive stock at 190 Piccadilly in London. From 1819 the firm traded as Hatchard & Son. (280.30) Mr Miller Robert Miller, Edinburgh bookseller, whose shop between 1813 and 1824 was at 208 High Street (see also Note for 279.18). According to Walter Scott in 1814, ‘He is a very good soul but […] lazy like all Edinr. Booksellers’ (Scott Letters, III, 446). (280.36) Mr Peter Hill Peter Hill (1754-1837) was a long-established Edinburgh bookseller, whose premises were at 204 High Street between 1816 and 1820. Lockhart’s use of the word ‘juvenile’ however strongly suggests that this refers to his son Peter Hill junior, who went on to trade independently (see Note for 280.39). (280.38-39) selon les regles According to the rules, by the book (French). (280.39) removing to the New Town Peter Hill junior had moved to 60 Princes Street in the New Town by 1823. (280.40) boudoir A room where a lady may retire to be alone or to receive her friends (French); contrasting here with the French word salon, the reception room or drawing-room where a French lady would act as hostess to her social or literary circle. (281.6) “it is good to be merry and wise;” As found in the traditional rhyme: ‘It is good to be merry and wise, / It is good to be honest and true, / It is best to be off with the old love, / Before you are on with the new.’ See The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood, ed. by John S. Farmer (London, 1906), p. 410. (281.7) sweeter pipe Compare Virgil, Eclogue 3, as translated by John Dryden: ‘And should not he, in minstrelsy undone, / Resign the goat my sweeter pipe had won?’ (ll. 27-28). The passage here seems to suggest that Hill sometimes sang at evening parties, ‘pipe’ in this case referring to his voice.

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(281.7-8) Tom Moore Thomas Moore (1779-1852, ODNB), author of Irish Melodies (1808-34), and himself a good singer and musician. (281.9) black-letter A name referring to the type used by early printers, familiarly known as Gothic or Old English, and implying early printed books. (281.13) literateurs Literary persons, often professional writers (French). (281.22) Mr Laing William Laing (1764-1832, ODNB), whose bookshop was at 49 South Bridge, close to the University. His son David (see Note for 281.3940), apprenticed to his father in his 14th year, only became a partner in the business in 1821. (281.39) magazine Store, repository. (281.39-40) his son David Laing (1793-1878, ODNB), notable for his keen antiquarian interests. Lockhart refers to him in Canto II of ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam’, as ‘David, the most sagacious and the best, / As all Old Reekie’s erudites opine, / Of Scottish Bibliopoles’: see Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (July 1818), 402-07 (p. 407). He later went on to become the first secretary of the Bannatyne Club, devoted to the reproduction of old Scottish texts, on its foundation in 1823. (282.3) meeting casually Travelling in Holland, accompanied by James Wilson (brother of ‘Christopher North’), David Laing had evidently made the acquaintance of Lockhart, whose experience is here transferred over to Wastle. (282.5) Treckschuyt From the Dutch trekschuit, a covered boat for passengers and goods used on canals. (282.8) Alduses Aldus Manutius (1449/1452-1515), humanist scholar, was the founder of the Aldine Press. (282.8) Elzevirs Elzevir is the name of a celebrated family of Dutch printers and booksellers in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The series of ‘Elzevirs’ became much sought after by book collectors. (282.9) Wynkin de Wordes […] Caxtons Wynkyn de Worde (d. 1534/35, ODNB) was a German immigrant printer and bookseller in London known for his association with William Caxton (d. 1492, ODNB), himself the first to introduce printing into England. (282.11) bibliomania Contemporary term used to describe an obsessive interest in rare books. See Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s Bibliomania; or, Book Madness (1809). The expression also appears in Lockhart’s Blackwood’s tribute to Laing (see Note for 281.39-40): ‘A famous Bibliomaniac, and a shrewd, / Who turns his madness to no little good’ (3, 407). (282.19) Lunn’s death That of William Henry Lunn (d. 1815), London bookseller and proprietor of the Classical Library. (282.30) Mr Parker’s Probably referring to the Oxford bookseller of that name, with the text offering a reminiscence of Morris’s—and Lockhart’s— undergraduate days. Joseph Parker is recorded in 1817 as occupying a property

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at 27 Broad Street, part of an old bookshop trading under the family name that survived until 1964 before being replaced by the present Blackwell’s Bookshop. Pigot’s Trade Directory for Oxfordshire for 1830 lists under ‘Booksellers’ ‘Joseph Parker, Broad Street’ in Oxford; while J. Parker, Oxford, appears as a publisher on imprints from 1802 to 1830. (282.37) La-Fitte flavour Château Lafite, one of the classic wines from the Bordeaux region in France. (282.39) nectar of Olympus In Greek mythology nectar is the drink of the gods on Mount Olympus, conferring longevity or immortality on those who drink it. (282.40) George Buchanan (1506-1582, ODNB), Scottish historian, poet, and classical scholar. He was a tutor to the young James VI of Scotland. (282.40) Admirable Crichtonius James Crichton (1560-1582, ODNB), called ‘the admirable Crichton’, Scottish rhetorician and soldier, supposedly fluent in ten languages, and equally talented in social, martial and intellectual attributes. The Scottish scholar John Johnston applied the Latin adjective admirabilis to him in Heroes ex omni historia Scotica lectissimi (1603), a collection of eulogies in elegiac couplets of great figures in Scottish history. In English the epithet ‘admirable’ for Crichton evidently first appeared in The Jewel (1652), by the Scottish writer and translator Sir Thomas Urquhart. (283.1) Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum A compilation of Scots poetry in Latin, edited by Arthur Johnston (c.1579-1641, ODNB) and published in two volumes in Amsterdam, 1637. Letter XLIV (284.8) rooms in Prince’s-Street William Blackwood had moved in 1816 from 64 South Bridge, opposite the Edinburgh University Old College building, to new premises at 17 Princes Street in the New Town: see an advertisement in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 16 October 1816 in which he announces his intention to move ‘in the course of a fortnight’ and one in the same newspaper of 30 October 1816 which notes that he had removed to the new premises. (284.15) Albemarle-Street to the Row Contrasting John Murray’s salon in the fashionable West End of London to the more ramshackle quarters in Paternoster Row at the heart of the old book trade. (284.18) Chaldee MS. Supposed translation from an ancient manuscript, in pseudo-Biblical prose, published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in October 1817, satirising the conflict between Whigs and Tories in Edinburgh, including its rival booksellers. Conceived originally by James Hogg, and with an input by Lockhart and John Wilson (‘Christopher North’), its venomous-seeming portraits of individuals caused great offence, for which

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Blackwood as publisher had to pay damages, though at the same time the circulation of the magazine increased. (284.21) variety of poems Notably ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam’, written by Lockhart under this name, which appeared in instalments between July 1818 and January 1820 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. (285.5) Auld Reekie music Probably referring to William Blackwood’s Edinburgh accent. (285.12) Catalani Angelica Catalani (1780-1849), Italian opera singer, renowned for her voice and powers of expression. She performed in London between 1806 and 1813, where her renditions of ‘God save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ were richly rewarded. (286.9) set of wild fellows James Hogg, Lockhart, and John Wilson, were joined by the even ‘wilder’ Irishman William Maginn (1794-1842, ODNB) during 1819. (286.12) perfect Potosi Potosi is a town in Bolivia, rich in its silver deposits, and once the home of the Spanish colonial mint. (286.16) bonâ fide Good faith (Latin); in sincere or honest intention. (287.1) octavo or quarto Formats of books of a larger size, respectively from the folding of the constituent sheets in eight or four; typically employed for non-fictional genres. (287.17) Mr Jeffrey, or Mr Southey For Jeffrey and Southey see notes for 34.24-25 and 56.28. (287.18) Mr Gifford William Gifford (1756-1826, ODNB), satirist and editor of the Tory Quarterly Review since its inception in 1809 until 1824. (287.18) Sir James Macintosh Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832, ODNB), Whig political writer and politician, and frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review from 1812. (287.32) quite the same Vanity and ambition (Eitelkeit, Ruhmsucht) are commonly twinned together as faculties in the phrenological system as propounded by Gall and Spurzheim (for whom see Notes for 37.18 and 62.8). (287.38) antediluvian Referring to the period before Noah’s Flood; antiquated. (287.40) National Bankruptcy Alluding to contemporary anxiety about the National Debt after the Napoleonic Wars and the possibility of the country being bankrupted as a result of it not being paid off. (288.6) cut up Taken to pieces, criticised adversely. (288.9) incognito Italian from the Latin incognitus (‘unknown’): having one’s true identity concealed. See also next Note. (288.9) finest discovery Referring to the then current cult of anonymous or pseudonymous authorship, as frequently practiced in forms such as novels, and

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a basic principle in reviewing for journals such as Blackwood’s and the main quarterly reviews. (288.11) agrémens Agreeable circumstances (French). (288.14) author of Waverley Walter Scott’s fiction from Waverley (1814) onwards all appeared without his name on the title-pages, and even so after 1826 when financial reasons necessitated his claiming authorship. (288.18-21) multo nebulæ […] causas Virgil, Aeneid, I. 412-14 (‘with a veil of mist in case anyone should distinguish them, or touch them, or cause delay, and demand the reasons for their coming’). (288.23) “rosea cervix,” Virgil, Aeneid, I. 402 (‘rosy neck’). (288.23-24) “ambrosiæ […] spirantes.” Compare Virgil, Aeneid, I . 40304 (‘ambrosial locks breathed a divine fragrance’). (288.25) sanctum sanctorum See Note for 258.26. (288.27-28) silver snuff-box A later portrait (c. 1830) of Blackwood by William Allan shows him seated in an armchair, with a copy of Blackwood’s by his side, and a snuffbox in his left hand. The portrait is presently in National Galleries of Scotland, PG 2748. For further information on Allan, see Note for 306.17. (288.30-35) “And he took […] its place.” From ‘Translation from an ancient Chaldee Manuscript’, 1. 34, Blackwood’s Magazine 2 (October 1817), 89-96 (p. 90). This article was removed in subsequent editions of this issue. (289.5) jeu-d’esprit Witticism, game of the mind (French). A light-hearted display of wit and cleverness. (289.5-6) “as thou lookest […] Ambrose,” Compare ‘Translation from an ancient Chaldee Manuscript’, 2. 1, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (October 1817), 90. (289.7) keeper of this tavern The Edinburgh Post Office Directory for 181819 includes ‘John Ambrose, tavern keeper, 1 Gabriels Road’. The tavern, in the vicinity of Blackwood’s premises at 17 Princes Street, was the frequent setting of the series of Noctes Ambrosianae (Nights at Ambrose’s) which began to appear in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine from 1822, many of the early numbers in the series being authored or co-authored by Lockhart. (289.10-11) a discovery Facetiously likening the locating of superior wine to a scientific or similar discovery. (289.12-21) Tay […] Tweed […] Thames […] Severn […] Rhine […] Loire Major rivers of Scotland (Tay, Tweed), England (Thames, Severn), Germany (Rhine), and France (Loire). (289.24) Oman’s An establishment run by Charles Oman (d. 1825): for the inns or hotels occupied by him, see Note for 17.1. (289.24) Al Echam A reference to smoking tobacco, probably an attempt at the Turkish or Arabic for ‘sham’. Compare Lady Hester Stanhope: ‘here [in

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Syria] a species of tobacco grows, known throughout Turkey and the East by the epithet of Gebely (or mountain tobacco), and in England called by the various names of Cham, Sham, or Damascus, all which words have the same meaning, Sham being the Arabic for Damascus’ (Travels, 3 vols (London, 1846), I, 328). (289.27) Gabriel’s Road Once a lane or by-road leading from where the Register House now stands at the eastern end of Prince’s Street northwest in a long slant towards the Water of Leith at Stockbridge; and still serving as the name for the public right-of-way past the Royal Bank in St Andrews Square although mostly subsumed during the building of the New Town. (289.27) from a horrible murder The derivation of the street name given is incorrect, the real murderer in question being Robert Irvine, executed in 1717. (289.30) Muschat’s Cairn Nichol Muschat murdered his wife by cutting her throat in 1720, at a spot near St Anthony’s Chapel on the north slopes of Arthur’s Seat outside Edinburgh. In Scott’s Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818) Jeanie Deans fearfully meets with the outlawed George Staunton, then unknown to her, at this spot. Scott later remarked that a cairn long marked the spot but is now ‘almost totally removed, in consequence of an alteration on the road in that place’: see Introduction and Notes from The Magnum Opus: Waverley to A Legend of the Wars of Montrose, ed. by J. H. Alexander with P. D. Garside and Claire Lamont, EEWN 25a (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), p. 312. (289.33) story of Gabriel A contemporary broadside account of ‘The Last Confession of Mr. Robert Irvine’ survives in NLS Ry.III.c.36(034h). (289.37) Preacher or Licentiate Relating to someone who has been ordained but has no benefice as yet. (289.40) Abigail Waiting-woman, probably derived from Abigail, the handmaid of David; see I Samuel 25. 14-42. (290.38) red-hand Redhanded, in the very act of committing the crime (Scots Law). Someone caught red-hand could be subjected to summary justice, but otherwise had to be tried by due process of law. Letter XLVI (293.4-5) made unto themselves wings and passed away Biblical in tone, and perhaps directly echoing Proverbs 23. 5: ‘make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven’. (293.10) transeat cum aliis May it pass away with the others (Latin). (293.13-14) time of its first appearance In April 1817, as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn. After poor sales it was relaunched in October 1817 as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, with Lockhart and John Wilson playing a major role.

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(294.13) divine right As in ‘divine right of Kings’, a theory that kings reign by divine ordination, claimed on behalf of the Stuart monarchy and others. (294.15) cousin-german Offspring of brothers and sisters; first cousin. Here apparently referring to a kinship between the Emperor in China and the moon. Chang’e, the goddess of the moon, was one of the most popular deities in ancient China and is often mentioned in Chinese poetry and literature. (294.15) court of Mandarins Mandarins were bureaucratic scholars in the government of Imperial China, and served the Emperor in the imperial court and as magistrates and representatives in the hinterlands. (294.39) “hopeth […] believeth all things,” Compare I Corinthians 13. 7 (‘believeth all things, hopeth all things’). (294.40) caloric Name given to a supposed elastic fluid, formerly believed to be the origin of heat. (295.19) Aristotle […] Longinus […] Quinctilian Noted critics from the Classical world. Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BCE) is considered the earliest work of dramatic theory; On The Sublime (1st century CE), attributed to Longinus, is a leading work on aesthetics and the effects of good writing; while Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 35-c.100 CE), normally referred to as Quintilian, was widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric, and in Renaissance writing. In Books 8-11 of his Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory) Quintilian includes a list of authors to be studied with his judgements of them. (295.21) such as Mr Scott’s Jeffrey’s review of Marmion (1808) in the Edinburgh Review, 12 (April 1808), 1-35 was considered by some to be especially harsh, and possibly served as a factor in Scott’s subsequent break with the review. (295.28) a quiz Mockery designed to make fun of an object, in this case to make an author or book look ridiculous. (295.38) soi-disant Self-styled, so-called (French). (296.12) very young, or very inexperienced men At the time of the inception of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Lockhart was in his early twenties, and Wilson just over thirty. James Hogg, in his mid-forties and with a longer literary record, might seem to be the one exception. (296.38) lists of literary warfare Lists here reflecting the practices of medieval jousting; beyond that, possibly echoing Scott as the ‘Bard of Chivalry’. (296.40-297.1) woods and the cloisters […] haunts of active men Compare George Crabbe’s ‘The Borough’ (1810), Letter I, ll. 7-8, 25-26: ‘Cities and towns, the various haunts of men, / Require the pencil; they defy the pen: / […] Can Scenes like these withdraw thee from thy Wood, / Thy upland Forest, or thy Valley’s Flood?’

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(297.32-33) Purgatory of Suspicion […] Paradise of perfect Forgiveness Alluding to the Catholic doctrine of souls after death passing through a period of suffering and purification before progressing to heaven, probably with an allusion to the Divine Comedy (c. 1308-20) of Dante Alighieri (1265-1325), which is divided into three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. (297.35) Molto […] non lece Dante, Paradiso, Canto I, l. 55, reading in translation ‘Much is permitted there, which is not allowed our faculties’. (298.15) Mr Constable’s lawyers Probably alluding to Archibald Constable’s Edinburgh Review contributors as reductionist lawyers and advocates, not men of literary imagination or skill who can value great works of literature. (298.18-19) Essay […] Great Britain Lockhart is referring to his own ‘Remarks on the Periodical Criticism of England—In a Letter to a Friend’, purporting to be ‘Translated from the German of Von Lauerwinkel’, in the March 1818 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (2, 670-79). (299.1) Letter to Dr Chalmers ‘Letters to the Supporters of the Edinburgh Review. No 1.—To the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, D. D.’, published in the May 1818 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (3, 155-62), signed ‘Idoloclastes’ but attributable to Lockhart. (299.11-12) letter […] to Mr Playfair ‘Letter to the Reverend Professor Laugner, occasioned by his Writings in the Kӧningsberg Review. By the Baron Von Lauerwinkel [Lockhart]’, in the September 1818 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (3, 689-95), a thinly-veiled attack on Professor John Playfair (see Note for 41.14) for his contributing to the Edinburgh Review and so allegedly compromising his religious principles. This in turn led to an equally virulent pamphlet response, Hypocrisy Unveiled, and Calumny Detected (1818), which resulted in Lockhart and John Wilson sending challenges to the anonymous author (Macvey Napier). Walter Scott intervened with Lockhart, expressing his disapproval of the personal animus in the original attack on Playfair (see Scott Letters, V, 204, 212-13); Lockhart in a letter of 28 October 1818 warned Scott that Wilson might write to him in a frenzied state of mind (NLS MS 3889, fol. 223v). The account of Playfair in Peter’s Letters, here and more fully in Letter XV, shows Lockhart going to some lengths to make amends, or at least cover his tracks. (299.22-23) Lord Byron […] Beppo ‘Note to the Editor, Enclosing a letter to the Author of Beppo’, in the June 1818 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (3, 323-29), tentatively attributed to Lockhart by Strout, p. 42. Byron’s Beppo: A Venetian Story, a poem in ottava rima, was published in March 1818. (299.35) attack upon Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria ‘Some Observations on the “Biographia Literaria” of S. T. Coleridge, Esq.—1817’, the lead article in the October 1817 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (2, 3-18). In this case the author was John Wilson.

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(300.8) Fitche Johann Gottlieb Fitche (1762-1814), a founding figure in the German idealist movement in philosophy. Lang (I, 119) refers to ‘a sketch, not caricatured, of Fichte lecturing to his class’ in a Notebook of Lockhart’s from his 1817 tour in Germany, though if it existed this cannot have been taken from life since Fichte had died previously. (300.37-38) poem of Genevieve Either the early sonnet ‘Genevieve’; or the longer poem in quatrains, ‘Love’, in which Genevieve is the heroine, first published in The Morning Star (1799) and included in the 2nd edn (1800) of Lyrical Ballads. It seems more likely that the reference here is to ‘Love’. (301.14-16) Her voice […] and weep See ‘The Keep-Sake’, ll. 35-36, in Coleridge’s Sibylline Leaves (London, 1817), p. 147. (301.26-28) Hunt, Hazlitt […] Cockney School Referring to the series of articles ‘On the Cockney School of Poetry’ mostly by Lockhart, commencing in the October 1817 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (2, 38-41). These served to stigmatise a second wave of Romantic poetry, with personal attacks on Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and John Keats, as well as others. Lockhart might be said to have coined the term ‘Cockney School’. (302.11-12) robe of the Satyr Possibly referring to the story of Nessus, a centaur not a satyr, whose blood smeared onto a robe poisoned Heracles. (302.13) coup-de-grace Blow to kill a person or animal already mortally wounded (French). (302.20) printer’s devils The apprentices or errand-boys in a printing-house, so called because they would become stained black with ink. (302.23-24) go down to posterity among the great authors of England! Compare coincidentally Keats’s letter to George Keats of 29 October 1818, in response to attacks on him in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Quarterly Review, ‘I think I shall be among the English poets after my death’: see Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, ed. by Richard Monckton Milnes, 2 vols (London, 1848), I, 227. (303.9) farrago Confused mixture, mishmash. (303.15-16) who the editor is In the ‘Chaldee MS’, 2. 2, the mythical editor is referred to as ‘a man clothed in dark garments, having a veil upon his head’, who goes on to call up various beasts to support ‘Ebony’: Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (October, 1817), 89-96 (p. 92). R. P. Gillies likewise mentions the ‘veiled editor’ in Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, 3 vols (London, 1851), II, 236. (303.30) rival booksellers William Blackwood (1776-1834, ODNB) and Archibald Constable (1774-1827, ODNB). (304.4) Scots Magazine Originating from February 1739, and one of the oldest monthly miscellanies of its kind. Archibald Constable attempted to revive it from August 1817 as the Edinburgh Magazine, and Literary Miscellany, but

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without notable success. Pringle and Cleghorn (see Note for 293.13-14), having defected from Blackwood, were the first editors of the newly-titled magazine. (304.10) by Hazlitt William Hazlitt (1778-1830, ODNB) had recently contributed an article ‘On Fashion’ to the September 1818 number of the Edinburgh Magazine (new series 3, 203-06). (304.11) name of Reynolds John Hamilton Reynolds (1794-1852, ODNB), friend of Leigh Hunt and John Keats. He wrote pieces for a number of contemporary journals. (304.32-33) Jeffrey […] French Revolution See the review of Madame de Staël’s Considérations sur les Principaux Evénémens de la Révolution Françoise in the Edinburgh Review of September 1818 (30, 275-317): ‘we are rather inclined to think, that the best historical compositions […] must be written at a very considerable distance from the times to which they relate’ (p. 277). Letter XLVII (305.3) a clothier’s shop The shop of David Bridges and his son was located at ‘the south-east corner of Bank Street, and entering from the Lawnmarket’: see Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1825), p. 71. The Lawnmarket is an extension westwards of Edinburgh’s High Street. (305.5-6) junior member of the firm Robert Chambers describes David Bridges, junior as ‘a middle-aged and middle-sized person, with sharp, lively features,—large dark blue eyes, of most intelligent brilliancy,—and a mercurial vivacity in all his looks, motions, and sayings’: see Walks in Edinburgh, p. 73. He was nicknamed ‘Director-General of the Fine Arts for Scotland’: see James Nasmyth, An Autobiography, ed. by Samuel Smiles (London, 1883), p. 36n. Bridges also wrote art criticism for the newspapers and magazines, and Chambers noted that artists ‘look up to him as a sort of powerful usher, or doorkeeper, in the court of fame’ (p. 73). (305.16-17) this dilettanti lounge A dilettanti (Italian) is a lover of the fine arts, a person who cultivates the arts as an amateur. Bridges was Secretary of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, the object of which was ‘the diffusion of a love for the Fine Arts, and the cultivation of a friendly intercourse with each other’. Besides dining together four times a year, the members also held weekly or fortnightly meetings in Young’s Tavern at 209 High Street, when the drinks were restricted to the relatively inexpensive Edinburgh ale and whisky toddy. The printed Regulations of the Society of Dilettanti (NLS MS 5406, fol. 18) are supplemented by additional information given from five more printed papers of the Society in NLS APS.3.83.71. Lockhart was himself a member, as were many of the Scottish literary men and painters mentioned in Peter’s Letters.

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(305.20) bombazeens Twilled fabrics, composed of worsted or a mixture of worsted and silk or cotton. (305.22) conning over Perusing, examining. (305.23) mordicus Tenaciously, stubbornly (Latin). (305.23) Burgh Reform Making the local government of the Scottish burghs more representative and less under the control of an oligarchy was a Whig objective: see Note for 209.8-9. (305.25) Φροντιστήριον Tutorial, coaching school (Greek). (305.25) Gusto See Note for 26.3. (306.1) Sanctum Sanctorum See Note for 258.26. (306.2) Farnese Hercules See Note for 128.35. (306.2) the Dancing Faun A bronze Hellenistic sculpture in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which depicts a faun or satyr holding metal cymbals in his hands and with his foot on a device that would have made a noise something like that made by a modern tap-shoe. It was once attributed to the Greek sculptor Praxiteles (born c. 390 BCE) and was restored by Michelangelo (1475-1564). (306.2-3) the Laocoon A Roman group statue in marble, rather under life size, depicting the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons being crushed to death by serpents in punishment for warning the Trojans against the wooden horse of the Greeks. When rediscovered in 1506, it influenced the work of Michelangelo. (306.3) the Hermaphrodite A Hermaphrodite displays both male and female characteristics. The original Hermaphroditus of Greek legend rejected the advances of Salmacis, the nymph in whose fountain he bathed, upon which she begged the gods to unite their two bodies. The marble statue of the Sleeping Hermaphroditus was discovered in Rome early in the seventeenth century and owned by Cardinal Borghese, who commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini (15981680) to sculpt the buttoned mattress on which it now lies. After the marriage of Napoleon’s sister Pauline to a member of the princely Borghese family it was sold to the Louvre in Paris in 1807. (306.4-5) book of Canova’s designs Antonio Canova (1757-1822) was an Italian neoclassical sculptor patronised by the Buonaparte family. His reputation across Europe was bolstered by his publication of engravings of his work. (306.5) Turner’s Liber Studiorum Joseph Mallord William Turner (17751851, ODNB), the most significant landscape painter of the nineteenth century, published the 70 plates of his Liber Studiorum between 1807 and 1819. (306.7) kerseymere A fine, twilled woollen cloth. (306.12-13) technico-Caledonian Scottish terminology of a particular study or science.

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(306.13) wheen bits Bits in the sense of pieces or fragments, in Scots generally indicating fondness and appreciation for something small; wheen means few, a small number. (306.17) William Allan William Allan (1782-1850, ODNB) was born in Edinburgh and educated at the Edinburgh High School. He was apprenticed initially to a coach-painter, then studied at the Trustees Academy, where David Wilkie was a fellow student. After a few years he studied at the Royal Academy in London, where his first exhibited picture was Gipsy Boy with an Ass (1803). In 1805 he travelled to Russia, where he spent several years in the Ukraine, making excursions into Turkey and Tartary and studying the culture of the Cossacks, Circassians and Tartars, as well as collecting artefacts. His journey home was postponed by the French invasion of Russia in 1812, but he was able to return to Edinburgh in 1814 and display a number of pictures inspired by his travels, treated in a vein somewhere between ethnography and eroticism. Although many of these pictures did not find purchasers in Scotland, some of them were bought by Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia (1796-1855) when he visited Edinburgh towards the end of 1816. Allan exhibited a number of his pictures at Mackintosh’s Gallery, 49 Princes Street in the spring of 1819. An advertisement in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 17 March 1819 gives notice that the exhibition would close on the following Saturday, 20 March. Allan was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh: see Note for 305.16-17. (306.17-18) Two Tartar Robbers dividing their Spoil This picture was painted and exhibited in 1817 and is now in the Tate (N00373). (306.20) young Scotch engraver […] Stewart The engraver James Stewart (1791-1863, ODNB) was apprenticed to Robert Scott of Edinburgh, and produced many engravings of works by William Allan and David Wilkie. His engravings of portraits of John Clerk and John Wilson were included in Peter’s Letters, and his engraving of the Two Tartar Robbers was indeed executed in 1819. (306.26) atelier An artist’s workshop or studio (French). Allan lived and had his studio at 19 Parliament Square, close to the law-courts and St Giles’ Cathedral. (306.28) quâ data via fuit As the given way would have it (Latin). (306.38-39) clusters of military accoutrements Jeremy Howard summarises the 84 pieces of Allan’s armour and costume collection described in a catalogue of his exhibition at Marnoch’s Gallery, 32 Princes Street, in January 1817, as including ‘King Jan Sobieski’s Sword; Cheremis, Votyak, Tungus and Mordvinian dresses; an Albanian gun, a Crimean Tatar [sic] battle-axe, a Turkish chibouk, Bashkir coats of mail; a Cossack canteen; Circassian bows, arrows and gauntlets’: see William Allan: Artist Adventurer (Edinburgh: City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, 2001), pp. 49-50. (306.39) Circassian Circassia is a region in the northern Caucasus along the northeast shore of the Black Sea.

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(308.1) Georgian, Armenian, and Tartar Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region bounded to the west by the Black Sea; Armenia is a country to the south of Georgia in the Caucasus region; and a Tartar artefact is one characteristic of the native inhabitants of the region of Central Asia extending eastwards from the Caspian Sea. (308.10) robe-de-chambre Dressing-gown, or informal garment worn at home (French). (308.15) pallet-guard A palette is a thin flat tablet of wood or porcelain used by an artist to lay and mix his colours on. The guard can either be a division to prevent colours running and mixing, or (as seems probable here) an aid to the painter holding his palette easily and without strain to the arm. (309.2-4) Land of the myrtle […] Man is divine Probably a recollection of the opening of Byron’s The Bride of Abydos: A Turkish Tale (1813), ll. 5-6, 15: ‘Know ye the land of the cedar and vine / Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; / […] And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?’ (309.20-21) Far and near […] tremulous atmosphere See Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam (1818), Canto XII, ll. 44-45. (309.26-27) Sale of Circassian Captives to a Turkish Bashaw This oilpainting on panel, measuring 81.5 x 122.5 cm, is dated to 1815: see the Catalogue section of Jeremy Howard, William Allan: Artist Adventurer (2001). Allan’s picture attracted notice at the Royal Academy, though it did not find a purchaser. The unknown author of ‘Notices relating to the fine Arts in Edinburgh’, Scots Magazine, 78 (March 1816), 205-07, had reproved the ‘host of titled and wealthy personages’ who crowded around the picture when it was displayed in Edinburgh for not preventing its ‘seeking an asylum on the other side of the Tweed’ (p. 206). However, Scott, Lockhart, John Wilson and his brother James raised a lottery for it with 100 subscribers at 10 guineas each and the picture was won by Francis Wemyss-Charteris, 9th Earl of Wemyss, as Lockhart reported in his letter to Scott of 3 April 1819 (NLS MS 3890, fols 6566). It was engraved by James Stewart in 1822. Bashaw is an earlier form of ‘Pacha’, a Turkish term for men of high rank such as governors or military commanders. (309.29) in the London Exhibition See the shilling catalogue of The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCCXVI (London, 1816), p. 14. Allan’s picture is item 235, ‘A Circassian Chief selling, to a Turkish Pasha, captives of a neighbouring tribe taken in war’, though mistakenly attributed to a portrait painter, ‘J. Allen’. A catalogue note reads: ‘The practice which forms the subject of this picture, prevails all over Circassia, Georgia, and the countries adjoining the Turkish provinces; many instances of which the Artist witnessed during a residence of several years on the coast of the Black Sea.’ (309.31-32) one of the Numbers of Blackwood’s Magazine See ‘Letters on the Living Artists of Scotland. Letter I.—Allan’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (December 1817), 313-17. The article is signed ‘R. G.’, from

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which Strout, p. 33, tentatively attributes it to Robert Gordon, who used his initials for scientific contributions to the magazine. (309 footnote) For further information see Note for 309.26-27. (310.22-23) bridegrooms […] “rejoicing in their strength” Perhaps a recollection of Psalm 19. 5, which uses the image of ‘a bridegroom coming out of his chamber’, who ‘rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race’. (310.23-24) brides […] “brought out of their palaces,” Possibly echoing Esther 2. 12-13, where maids are described as coming out of ‘the house of the women’ to the king’s palace for concubinage after a period of purification. (311.7-8) drink the waters of bitterness See Note for 75.6. (311.8) covered with sackcloth and ashes Wearing sackcloth and sprinkling ashes on the head was an ancient sign of penitence or mourning. (311.9-10) “is clothed in fine linen, and fareth sumptuously every day.” The rich man at whose gate Lazarus begs is so described in Luke 16. 19. (311.22) Circassian Family seated at the door of their own cottage Possibly a painting entitled Cossack Courtship. A Scene in the Ukraine, which was purchased by Alexander Oswald, founder-director of the Institution for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Scotland, and the present whereabouts of which appears to be unknown: see ‘The Artist-Adventurer’s Life and Work’ in Jeremy Howard, William Allan: Artist Adventurer , p. 47. (311.38) Jewish Family in Poland making merry before a Wedding The present location of this painting is unknown, a photograph only being included by Jeremy Howard as figure 2 in his William Allan: Artist Adventurer. He describes it as partly anthropological, embodying the various distinct stages of a Jewish wedding including ‘the gay dance, the discourse of bearded elders, the bride in her headdress, a glass to be broken, groups of onlookers and “Klezmer” musicians’ (p. 8). It appears to have been painted not in Poland but in Polish Ukraine, which was then part of Russia. Lockhart’s ensuing commentary on this painting is almost identical to an account of it, ‘Mr Allan’s Picture of the Polish Jews’, in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 17 February 1819. It seems probable that Lockhart had published a newspaper article about Allan’s painting which he tailored into Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk subsequently (see Introduction, pp. 7, 25). (312.19-20) Which leaves a glow […] hath kiss’d Not identified. (312.31-32) attempts of a few poets and novelists An attempt to revise the traditional figure of the despicable Jew was characteristic of German plays towards the end of the eighteenth century, such as those of August von Kotzebue (1761-1819), which influenced British culture. Maria Edgeworth’s tale Harrington (1817) features a learned Jewish scholar of Hebrew at Cambridge named Israel Lyons and the Jewish Mr Montenero, who is noble, well-informed, and agreeable. Scott was soon to publish Ivanhoe (1820) with its noble Jewess Rebecca, and as the earliest surviving reference to the novel

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dates from June 1819 it is possible that Lockhart was aware of his intention at this time: see Ivanhoe, ed. by Graham Tulloch, EEWN 8 (Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 1998), p. 407. (312.35) Hunks Miser; close-fisted stingy man. (312.37) rouleaus Cylindrical packets of coins (from French). (312.37) old clothes-man Beverly Lemire argues that the visibility of Ashkenazi Jews in dress, language, and manners probably led to the anti-semitic stereotype of them as dominating the second-hand clothing trade at this time, when second-hand trades in general were subject to increasing official suspicion as agencies of crime and a threat to honest shop-keepers: see Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 16601800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), pp. 92-93. (312.37) pawnbroker A person who lends money at interest on the security of articles of personal property pawned or pledged. Lending money at interest was associated with Jews in medieval England, since before the Reformation Christians were forbidden to lend to one another at interest, as were Jews, but Jews were not forbidden to lend money at interest to non-Jews. By 1800 pawnbroking was seen as a trade giving thieves an opportunity to sell stolen goods and for those planning bankruptcy to buy goods on credit and sell them for cash, thus defrauding their creditors. (313.1) ens meræ rationis Being merely conceptual (Latin). (313.3) horti sicci Dry gardens; collection of preserved plants (Latin). Presumably a pun is intended with the leaves of a novel, as loaned from a circulating (lending) library. (313.4-6) Polish Jews […] tracts of territory by themselves By the sixteenth century as many as 80 per cent of all Jews worldwide lived in Poland, where they enjoyed relative autonomy and tolerance, though this peaceful existence was threatened towards the end of the eighteenth century when Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and Russia imposed geographical and professional restrictions on Jewish life for those who found themselves living under Russian rule. (313.9) their brethren in Germany Jewish emancipation, removing disabilities and fostering integration into mainstream society, was a feature of the French Revolution as exported to other countries, legal equality being achieved in the German Confederation in 1812. After the fall of Napoleon Jewish emancipation suffered serious setbacks in various areas of Germany, although Jewish representatives had petitioned at the Congress of Vienna of 1815 for equality before the law. (313.12) Messiah The anointed one (Hebrew). He is the expected king and deliverer of the Jews who will free them from the rule of aliens and make them a great nation ruling the world. For Christians this role was fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

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(313.32) Cicerone Guide who shows the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers. Letter XLVIII (315.3) Press-Gang ‘A press-gang’ is the title of item 285 in the catalogue of The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCCXVIII (London, 1818), p. 17. For the press-gang itself, see Note for 316.1. (315.24) peasant-plenishing Plenishing is Scots for furniture and household equipment, here referring to that seen in cottages of rural workers. (315.27) fatted calf The main item in a feast prepared by a rejoicing father for his returning son in the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. 11-32. (315 footnote) Mr Horrocks of Tillihewan Castle, Dumbartonshire John Horrocks, a Preston cotton manufacturer, had purchased Tullichewan Castle in the Vale of Leven, near Loch Lomond, in Dunbartonshire in 1817. It was a Gothic mansion designed by the architect Robert Lugar with grounds laid out by the artist Alexander Nasmyth. (316.1) notice to the Press-Gang The Crown claimed a permanent right to seize men of seafaring experience for the Royal Navy, and this was enforced during the naval wars of the eighteenth century by several Acts of Parliament. The men taken were usually, though not invariably, sailors in the merchant fleets, and during the period of the wars with France, from 1793 to 1815, an impress service operated in British coastal towns. Although further laws of 1835 upheld the power to impress, in practice it fell into disuse after 1815. (316.31-32) Ties that around the heart […] be undone Compare ‘But ties around this heart were spun / That could not, would not, be undone!’, in ‘O’Connor’s Child, or, “The Flower of Love-Lies-Bleeding”’, The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, ed. by J. Logie Robertson (Oxford, 1907), p. 141. For Campbell himself, see Note for 43.8-9. (317.17) the story of Crazy Jane ‘Crazy Jane’ is a ballad about a woman whose abandonment by her lover makes her insane, with words by the novelist M. G. Lewis and music by the composer John Davy, first published in pamphlet form in 1799. (317.20) one of the truest of poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, ODNB). The quotation is from his ‘Lines composed in a Concert-Room’, first published in the Morning Post of 24 September 1799. (319.4) Gusto See Note for 26.3. (319.20) atelier See Note for 306.26. (319.21) sketch of the Murder of Archbishop Sharpe The assassination of Archbishop James Sharp (1618-1679, ODNB) on Magus Moor near St Andrews by a band of Covenanters on 3 May 1679 was one of a number of well-known scenes from Scottish history depicted by William Allan, some

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undoubtedly suggested by the novels and poems of Walter Scott. Other such works are Knox Admonishing Mary Queen of Scots (1822) and Death of the Regent Murray (1824), the latter being purchased by the Duke of Bedford for 800 guineas and gaining Allan his election as an associate of the Royal Academy. The Murder of Archbishop Sharp on Magus-Moor, 1679, in particular is informed by Scott’s novel The Tale of Old Mortality of 1816, the assassination being a precipitating cause of the plot of the novel although not depicted in it directly. The painting is listed as Item 33 in the shilling catalogue of The Exhibition of the Royal Academy MDCCCXXI (London, 1821), p. 7. A catalogue note quotes a speech by the Covenanter John Balfour of Kinloch, known as ‘Burley’, included in James Russell’s contemporary narrative account, as edited from manuscript by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe and included in his edition of James Kirkton, The Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1817), p. 417. Scott refers to a ‘superb sketch’ of this in a letter to Lockhart of 23 March 1819 (Scott Letters, V, 323). One of Allan’s preliminary drawings, in brown ink and graphite, survives in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, USA (2009.70.252). (319.25) making designs for the illustration of Waverley A volume of engravings of these designs was published by Archibald Constable as Illustrations of the Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley from Designs by William Allan (Edinburgh, 1820). (319.30) Q. F. F. Q. S. An abbreviation of the Latin prayer ‘Quod bonum, faustem, felix fortunamque sit’, meaning ‘May it be good, auspicious, fruitful and fortunate’. Letter XLIX (320.25-26) subjects like those chosen by Wilkie The Scottish artist David Wilkie (1785-1841, ODNB) whose Distraining for Rent (1815), as a genre painting with implied political comment, was an obvious influence on Allan’s A Press-Gang. (321.30) Entombing of Christ For an account of Christ’s burial, see Luke 23. 50-56. This proved a popular subject in the Netherlands for artists from the fifteenth century onwards, as an interest in religious subjects allowing extensive landscape settings developed. (321.31) Madonna and Child For an account of Christ’s nativity, see Luke 2. 7-20. Since the Virgin and child was a central icon for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches many artists painted this subject. (321.31) Flight into Egypt For an account of the passage of the Holy Family into Egypt, see Matthew 2. 13-15. This was the subject of one of the most admired paintings of Caravaggio, created c. 1597. (321.31) larmoyant Given to tears, lachrymose (French).

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(322.12) centos A cento in Latin means patchwork, hotchpotch; hence works made up of ideas derived from other artists. (322.16) Rembrandt, in painting Scriptural subjects The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) painted a high proportion of religious or allegorical pictures, as opposed to secular depictions of the people, compared with a number of other artists in the Netherlands. This is particularly true of his early period at Leiden, although he continued to depict Biblical and historical subjects throughout his career. (322.24) Paul Veronese Paulo Caliari Veronese (c. 1528-1588) was an Italian painter who became established in Venice from around 1553. (323.27) Raphael Raphael Sanzis (1483-1520), a famous Italian Renaissance painter working in Florence and Rome. Many of his best-known versions of the Virgin and child were painted in Florence in the early 1500s. (323.27) Lionardo Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), the variously accomplished artist and scientist of the Renaissance. (323.28) Perugino Pietro Vannucci Perugino (c. 1445/50-1523), an Italian painter working chiefly in Florence and Rome. (324.14) subject of the Herodias Herodias (c. 15 BCE-after 39 CE) was a princess of the Herodian dynasty of Judaea during the Roman Empire, whose second husband was Herod Antipas. In Mark 6. 17-28 she plays a key role in the execution of John the Baptist, using her daughter’s dance before Herod and his guests to ask for the head of John as a reward. The story was a frequent topic for late medieval and Renaissance artists, who mostly depict the daughter of Herodias presenting the head of John on a platter as Herodias dines with her husband and others. (324.16) the great Durer Albrecht Dürer (1471-1523), from Nuremberg in Germany, was best known for his woodcuts and engravings, especially for a series of woodcuts of 1497-1510 known as The Great Passion, depicting the final sufferings and death of Christ. He also produced landscape watercolours. (324.36-37) would-be-classical school […] the French Seemingly expressing dislike of the neoclassical Revolutionary paintings of artists such as JacquesLouis David (1748-1825), pre-eminent artist of the French Revolution and subsequently a supporter of Napoleon, whose exploits he celebrated in a series of paintings. (324.39) Michael Angelo Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet, one of the outstanding figures of the Renaissance. (325.1) School of Athens of Raphael For Raphael see Note for 323.27. The School of Athens is a fresco painted by him between 1509 and 1511, commissioned to decorate what are now known as the Raphael Rooms in the apostolic palace of the Vatican. It depicts the greatest mathematicians,

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philosophers and scientists of the classical world gathered together, sharing ideas and learning from one another. (325.4) Buonarotti Better known as Michelangelo: see Note for 324.39. (325.5) Julio Romano Guilio Romano (probably born in 1499 and died in 1546) was the chief pupil of Raphael and responsible for completing a number of his unfinished works. (325.6) the Antiope of Correggio Venus, Cupid and a Satyr, now in the Louvre in Paris, was formerly entitled Jupiter and Antiope: for Correggio himself, see Note for 31.10. (325.12) πάρεργον By-product, incident (Greek). (325.18-19) the God Amur of the Provençals […] Eros Amur is the Provençal version of the French word ‘amore’, meaning love. Eros is the Greek god of love. (325.19-20) the Mercury of Mantegna Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506) was an Italian painter known for his experiments with perspective and the leader of a workshop which was an important and innovative producer of prints before 1500. In his Parnassus, painted in 1497 for the cabinet of Isabella d’Este in Mantua, and now in the Louvre in Paris, Mercury is depicted with the traditional winged helmet, caduceus (winged staff with entwined snakes), and messenger shoes. (325.20) true Athenian Hermes Greek messenger or herald of the gods, identified by the Romans with their god Mercury, and usually depicted with wings on his sandals, a broad-brimmed hat, and caduceus. (325.22-23) the Contest of Virtue and Pleasure, by Perugino For Perugino see Note for 323.28. This painting, usually known as The Battle between Love and Chastity, was painted in 1503 for the cabinet of Isabella d’Este, and is still in the Louvre in Paris. (325.23-24) in the Louvre a few years ago According to G. R. Gleig, Lockhart ‘traversed France’ as part of his tour of the Netherlands and Germany (in 1817), so it is not improbable that he visited the Louvre himself at that time: see ‘Life of Lockhart’, Quarterly Review, 116 (October 1864), 439-82 (p. 452). (325.38) the Platos and the Ciceros Types of the ancient Greek philosopher and Roman orator respectively. Plato (c. 427-348 BCE) was an Athenian philosopher and founder of idealism. Cicero (106-43 BCE) was an orator and statesman, best known through his voluminous correspondence. (326.21) Knox […] banish all the most delightful of the arts For the religious reformer John Knox see Notes for 30.21-22 and 57.20. At the Scottish Reformation, when the Scottish church broke with the papacy, shrines, altars and images were viewed as monuments of idolatry, so that much ecclesiastical art was removed from churches. Deuteronomy 12. 3 indicates that monuments of idolatry are to be rooted out and destroyed, which may have presented a scriptural precedent.

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(327.1) Murder of Archbishop Sharpe See Note for 319.21. (327.4-5) whole of the Scottish nation […] same species of emotions Scott’s depiction of the Covenanters responsible for the assassination of Archbishop Sharp in his novel The Tale of Old Mortality (1816) had been fiercely contested by, among others, the distinguished Presbyterian church historian Thomas McCrie in a review published in instalments in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor between January and March 1817. For an account of McCrie as a preacher see text at pp. 424-25 and Note for 423.29-31. Letter L (328.13) her early music Probably referring to Scottish folk-tunes, widely admired, for instance, by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German composers. In the sixteenth century Scotland had notable composers of sacred music in David Peebles (fl. 1530-1576, ODNB) and Robert Carver (b. 1487/8, d. in or after 1568, ODNB), though such music suffered from loss of patronage after James VI moved his court to London after his accession to the English throne in 1603. In the eighteenth century a number of distinguished Italian classical musicians were active in Edinburgh, while Thomas Alexander Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie (1732-1781, ODNB) was arguably Scotland’s greatest native classical composer. (328.23) Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798, ODNB), Scottish painter and picturedealer, who spent most of his working life in Italy where he finally settled in 1756, becoming a leading member of the neoclassical circle of the painter Anton Raphael Mengs—for whom see Note for 329.20—and the art-historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann. (328.23-24) Runciman Alexander Runciman (1736-1785, ODNB), who decorated Penicuik House near Edinburgh with subjects from Ossian and Scottish history, now surviving only in the form of etchings taken from the originals. He had previously worked in Italy between 1767 and 1771. (329.10-11) Scotland […] considerable paternal estate Gavin Hamilton was born at Murdiestone House in Lanarkshire, which he inherited on the death of his elder brother in 1783. (329.17) Duke of Hamilton Gavin Hamilton was distantly related to the ducal family of Hamilton, whose patronage was important to his early career as a portrait-painter in London, and he also had several commissions from his friend, the diplomat and art-collector Sir William Hamilton, who was also related to him. (329.18-19) Rome […] high and brilliant reputation Although Gavin Hamilton was little known in Scotland he achieved considerable recognition in Italy, being elected to the Accademia di San Luca in 1761 and to the Accademia Clementina of Bologna in 1766. He settled in Rome permanently from 1756 until his death.

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(329.20) Mengs The German painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) was active in Dresden, Rome, and Madrid, progressing from an early Rococo style to develop a neoclassical idiom. He was first taken to Rome in 1741, and soon developed a reputation there as a youthful prodigy. His best-known work is Parnassus of 1761, painted for the Villa Albani in Rome, and he also painted frescoes for the Sala dei Papiri in the Vatican. (329.20) cognoscenti See Note for 169.13. (329.22) ciceroni Guides who show the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers, here presumably including paintings. (329.30-33) Behold a wonder! […] Throng numberless See John Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 777-80. (329.34) Voltaire The French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known by his pen-name of Voltaire. No instance of him praising the work of Anton Raphael Mengs and Gavin Hamilton (for whom see Notes for 329.20 and 328.23) has been discovered. (329.37) day-spring Daybreak, in the metaphorical sense of a new dawn, as in Luke 1. 78: ‘the daysping from on high hath visited us’. (330.5) TURNER See Note for 280.4. (330.17) Mr Williams Before embarking on the continental travels of 1816 to 1818 that gave him his name of ‘Grecian’ Williams, Hugh William Williams (1773-1829, ODNB) had published early topographical drawings in the Scots Magazine and also a series of six large engravings of Highland scenes in 1813. During these travels he made a collection of views of Greece that formed the foundation of his subsequent work. Engravings of these sketches were made by W. H. Lizars and included as illustrations of his Travels in Greece, Italy and the Ionian Islands (2 vols, 1820), a series of descriptive letters dedicated to his friend and fellow-painter John Thomson of Duddingston (see Note for 335.5). He tended to exaggerate the scale and weather effects when reworking these sketches into paintings. Williams was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (330.21-22) works in Wales […] in London Williams exhibited his first work at the Royal Academy in London in 1800, and attempted to establish himself as a watercolour painter there. He was a founding member of the short-lived Association of Artists in Water-Colours in 1807. The reference to seeing his works in Wales perhaps stems from a contemporary legend that he was the son of a Welsh sea-captain, although this is apparently without foundation, Williams having been born in Devon. (331.6) Claude The French landscape painter Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) worked mostly in Italy, and his paintings depict the beauty of the Roman countryside together with the richness of its classical associations.

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(331.17) Thebes or Corinth Rival cities of ancient Athens. Thebes was the principal city in Boeotia, while Corinth was famous for its ship-building, being located on an isthmus connecting land-routes between central Greece and the Peloponnese. (331.19-21) Delphi […] Parnassus […] Castalian brook Parnassus is a mountain with a summit of 8060 feet, associated with the worship of Apollo and the Muses. The shrine of Apollo at Delphi is situated in a deep rocky cleft on the southwest spur of it, while the sacred Castalian spring of the mountain is fed by subterranean sources. (331.27-29) All this magnificent effect […] night reveals Compare William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV, ll. 971-73. (332.13) Hymettus A mountain overlooking Athens on the east, famous for its honey and its marble. (332.15) the large picture he has already finished of Athens The description of one particular watercolour painting of Athens exhibited by Williams in 1826 would appear to agree with Lockhart’s description here. ‘No 5. VIEW OF ATHENS, from the foot of Mount Anchesmus, looking south’ is described thus in Catalogue of Views in Greece, Italy, Sicily, the Ionian Islands, &c. &c. Painted in Water colours by Hugh William Williams, now exhibiting in the Calton Convenery-Room, Waterloo Place, Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1826): The figures are Greeks. The buildings in the plain are the modern town, lying at the foot of the Acropolis or Citadel, on which are seen the ruins of the Parthenon. The white building to the left of the town is the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and the Ilissus may be traced skirting the foot of the low hills close by this temple to the left, and the shoulder of Mount Hymettus just appearing in view. Immediately behind the Acropolis rises the Hill of the Museum, surmounted by the Monument of Philopappus. On the unequal ground to the right of the Acropolis, is the site of the Areopagus, and of the Pnyx or Forum of Athens, and adjoining the hill of the Lycabettus, near the foot of which, to the right, is the Temple of Theseus. […] A little to the left of the hill Lycabettus, upon the shore of the Ægean sea, is the situation of the Piræeus, the port of Athens, […] To the right of the Piræeus rises the island of Salamis […] Immediately to the left of the Acropolis, is the island of Ægina […] This is the point of view in which the resemblance between Edinburgh and Athens, so often mentioned, is perhaps the most conspicuous (pp. 6-7). (332.16) Religio Loci The sacred aura of place (Latin). (332.21) Temple of Jupiter The Olympieum or sanctuary of Olympian Zeus (with whom the Roman Jupiter corresponds and with whom he is often identified) was located to the southeast of the Acropolis of Athens. Construction began in the sixth century BCE, although it was not completed until the second century CE. During the Roman period the temple included 104 gigantic columns, of which 16 only now survive. These are Corinthian

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columns, which have a capital of an inverted bell shape, adorned with rows of acanthus leaves. The temple was pillaged during an invasion about 100 years after its completion and often used subsequently as a source of building materials. (332.32-33) Pericles […] masterpiece of Phidias The great Athenian statesman Pericles (c. 500-429 BCE) was responsible for the construction of the Parthenon of Athens, for which his friend the sculptor Phidias (born c. 500 BCE) created three statues of Athena, one made of ivory and gold. (332.34) Temple of Theseus The temple of Hephaestus, northwest of the Acropolis, was also known as the Theseum from the belief that the remains of the legendary Greek hero Theseus were buried there. (332.37) long walls of the Piræeus Piræus was the chief port of Athens, situated on a peninsula five miles southwest of the city. Two long walls connected it with Athens. (332.40) Salamis […] Ægina Salamis is an island separated by a narrow channel from the southwest coast of Attica. The adjoining sea was the site of a great naval battle in 480 BCE in which the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet of Xerxes. Ægina is another island, once the home of a strong naval presence inimical to Athens, but which was later defeated by her. (333.2) Marathon A crescent-shaped plain 22 miles northeast of Athens and the scene of the defeat of an invading Persian army by Miltiades of Athens in 490 BCE. (333.6-8) Thy banks, Cephisus […] flowery fields Compare William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV, ll. 749-52. Cephisus is a river in the vicinity of Athens; also a river-god of ancient Greece. (333.11-12) Τας ίερας […] Αθανας So that I could salute sacred Athens (Greek). See Sophocles, Ajax, ll. 1221-22. (333.13) view from Castri Kastri is a medieval village in Greece built above the ancient site of Delphi and partly constructed from its ruins. Williams included a view of Delphi from above in his Select Views in Greece, 2 vols (London, 1829), II: engraving no. 12. (333.19-20) Oracle of Apollo The oracle of Apollo at his temple at Delphi obtained a very wide reputation and became extremely wealthy from the gifts made to it. A priestess known as the Pythia supposedly uttered incoherent words interpreted by a priest in reply to questions put by suppliants. The oracle was particularly concerned with questions of religion, on which it was the supreme authority in Greece. (333.23) The Gaul-King before Delphi lay Quotation not identified, but the ‘Gaul-King’ is probably Brennus, the leader of the Gauls, who in 280-79 BCE invaded Greece and was defeated at Delphi. When he died of his wounds in 279 the Gauls retreated.

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(333.24) streams of Castalie A spring on Mount Parnassus a little to the northeast of Delphi, which was sacred to Apollo and the Muses. (333.30-334.32) In that fair clime […] Shepherd’s awe-inspiring God! Compare William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV, ll. 851-87. (334.21) Oreads Nymphs inhabiting mountains in ancient Greece. (334.22) Zephyrs Light, refreshing western winds. (334.31) Pan The ancient Greek god of the wild, of flocks and of shepherds. He is often depicted as having the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, as a satyr does, and as playing the flute. (335.2) Mr Nasmyth Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840, ODNB), popular landscape artist with a wide circle of friends in Edinburgh. His typical subject was the Scottish landscape seen on a summer evening in a mood of tranquillity. He also painted theatre scenery and designed landscape features for the parks of landowners, besides being a very successful teacher of both professional and amateur artists. Subsequently, in the 1820s, he turned his attention to Edinburgh street scenes. Nasmyth was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (335.2-3) son Peter enjoys a splendid reputation […] in London Nasymth’s eldest son Patrick, also known as Peter (1787-1831, ODNB), painted with his left hand after his right had been injured in an accident and also suffered from deafness. He moved to London in 1810, and exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1811, showing his View of Loch Katrine. He contributed to these exhibitions at intervals for the remainder of his life as well as to those of the Society of British Artists of which he became a founder-member in 1824. (335.5) Mr Thomson, the clergyman of Duddingston Rev. John Thomson (1778-1840, ODNB) was minister of the parish of Duddingston, to the east of Arthur’s Seat near Edinburgh, and an amateur painter, whose friends included the artist Henry Raeburn (see Note for 336.7). He was also a friend of Walter Scott, whom he had known since his student days. Thomson was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (335.8) Turner See Note for 280.4. (335.10-11) Provincial Antiquities of Scotland Walter Scott’s The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland was initially published in ten parts between 1819 and 1826, with the first number being published in Edinburgh on 1 May 1819; and then upon completion a two-volume edition was brought out in December 1826. William Blackwood was the Edinburgh publisher, and the ‘Works Preparing for Publication’ section of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for October 1818 (4, 106) indicates that a printed prospectus was sent out with that month’s issue. William B. Todd and Ann Bowden, Sir Walter Scott A Bibliographical History 1796-1832 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998), in their entries for the work (132Aa/b), give a full

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list of Thomson’s contributions and those of the other artists and engravers employed on it. (335.14) Staff-Surgeon Schetky The watercolour painter John Alexander Schetky (1785-1824, ODNB) had been appointed assistant surgeon in the 3rd dragoon guards regiment in 1804 upon graduation, and in 1809 accompanied his regiment to Portugal to serve in the Peninsular War under the leadership of Wellington as commander-in-chief where he was promoted to the rank of surgeon to the Portuguese forces under Marshall Beresford. He remained there until the end of the war in 1814, when he returned to Edinburgh to study and practise medicine as well as resuming his study of art. He sketched constantly while abroad, sending his work home to his brother and exhibited four works at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1816 and 1817, depicting scenery in the Pyrenees and military action in Portugal. He also portrayed Scottish scenery, and some of his work was subsequently included in Scott’s The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland (for which, see previous Note). He was recalled to active service in 1819 and contributed anatomical drawings to medical works. In August 1823 he took up an appointment on the west coast of Africa, where he died shortly after arrival in 1824. Schetky was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (336.7) Raeburn The prolific and innovative Scottish portrait painter Henry Raeburn (1756-1823, ODNB) had his home and studio on York Place in Edinburgh. He was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (336.10) Sir Thomas Lawrence The English portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830, ODNB) was widely recognised as at the head of his profession in Britain. (336.13) Mr Geddes Andrew Geddes (1783-1844, ODNB) studied as a painter in London and exhibited his first picture, St John in the Wilderness, in 1806 at the Royal Academy. In 1810 he opened a studio in Edinburgh in York Place and soon had a good practice as a portrait painter, besides being an accomplished etcher. He was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (336.13-14) portrait of Mr Wilkie […] engraved in London In his 1816 portrait of fellow-artist David Wilkie (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1443) Geddes depicts Wilkie at full-length, dressed informally in a damask dressinggown and surrounded by some of his studio props. A mezzotint engraving made by the London print-maker William Ward (1762-1826, ODNB) was published on 14 October 1818 (British Museum, 1902, 1011.6292). For Wilkie, see also Note for 320.25-26. (336.14-15) Mr John Watson, a very young artist Later known as John Watson-Gordon (1788-1864, ODNB), a name he had adopted by 1826 to distinguish himself from his uncle, George Watson, and a cousin, William Smellie Watson, who were also both painters. He studied with his uncle and also with Raeburn, and while known now-a-days chiefly as a portrait painter the majority of his portraits were painted from 1821 onwards, his early works

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being mostly genre and historical scenes. In 1808 he exhibited a scene from Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel in Edinburgh, and then in the following year paintings entitled The Battle of Bannockburn and Queen Mary Forced to Abdicate the Crown. For his involvement in the portraits engraved for Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, see ‘The Engravings’, p. 358. (336.17) Mr Nicholson The portrait-painter and etcher William Nicholson (1781-1844, ODNB) settled in Edinburgh in 1814. He had established a career in the North of England as a miniature-painter, but in Edinburgh attempted to increase his reputation and extend his public profile by accumulating larger portraits of the city’s public characters, which he exhibited there. In April 1818 he began to publish a series of etchings, chiefly taken from his own portraits, of the distinguished living characters of Scotland, his subjects including Scott, Hogg, Jeffrey, Playfair, Wilson and others. There is an obvious affinity between Nicholson’s pictorial project and Lockhart’s record in Peter’s Letters. Nicholson was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (336.23) Mr William Thomson American-born William John Thomson (1771-1845) was brought to Britain by his Scottish parents during the American War of Independence and learned to paint in London. In 1812 he moved to Edinburgh and became a prominent figure in the artistic life of Scotland. His miniature portraits include one of the young Elizabeth Gaskell, the novelist, of 1832. He was a member of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh. (336.28) Mr Scott Walter Scott. In the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters the surname here remains uncompleted, most probably as a result of its isolated position. That the intended visit is to Scott at Abbotsford becomes immediately apparent in the following letter. (336.31) “Quid Luce clarius?” What is clearer than light? (Latin), with an obvious pun on the name Lucy. Letter LI (337.7) Dalkeith Town seven miles southeast of Edinburgh. (337.8) Esk […] already described In fact, Lockhart’s description of the River Esk comes later in the narrative as part of his visit to R. P. Gillies at Lasswade (see Letter LXIV, and Note for 433.19). One reason may be that Lockhart originally envisaged the passage concerning Gillies to precede the present sequence. (337.9) Abbotsford Walter Scott’s home on the banks of the Tweed three miles west of Melrose. Having purchased the lands in June 1811, Scott had moved there the following year, occupying at first the old farmhouse. The name had been abbreviated to ‘A——d’ in the ‘second’ edition. (337.15) Castle of Borthwick Twin-towered castle 12 miles southeast of Edinburgh. Built by Sir William Borthwick around 1430, it is noted for its exceptionally strong walls. Damaged by the forces of Oliver Cromwell in the

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mid-seventeenth century, it was shortly afterward abandoned, but in more recent years has been fully restored. (337.20) Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851, ODNB), English artist, sketched and painted scenic views of Borthwick Castle in autumn 1818, as part of a commission to provide designs for Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland (1819-26), for which Scott was to write the commentaries (see also Note for 335.10-11). Turner’s design, which appears to show travellers with horses in the fast-flowing stream below, tends to accentuate the colossal nature of the castle’s walls. (337 footnote) first Number The engraving based on Turner’s composition appeared in the first number of Provincial Antiquities (see Note for 335.10-11), facing p. 29, as published in Edinburgh on 1 May 1819. The plate itself, engraved by H. LeKeux, is dated 2 April 1819. (338.4) Gala Water Rises in the Moorfoot Hills south of Gorebridge, flowing 20 miles southeast towards Galashiels, and joining the River Tweed two miles west of Melrose. (338.11) once mighty Forest Ettrick Forest, the name for a large part of Selkirkshire, although in Lockhart’s day the ancient forest to which it originally applied had long since disappeared. (338.14-15) The grace […] melancholy William Wordsworth, ‘Yarrow Revisited’ (1814), ll. 47-48. (338.18) thriving village of Galashiels On the right bank of the Gala water shortly before it joins the Tweed. Mainly consisting of a long street with some bye-lanes, it developed as a leading centre for the manufacture of woollen cloth and spinning of yarn. (338.20-21) usual road […] bridge Evidently referring to the 250-year old Lowood Bridge, linking Galashiels and Melrose. The shortcut described, made possible by being able to ford the river Tweed just below Abbotsford, would have saved around two miles, as well as enabling a more picturesque approach along the river banks. (338.22) far-famed river The Tweed, flowing towards Melrose, beneath Abbotsford to the rear of the house. (338.23) great poet’s Walter Scott’s literary fame to date in personal terms was mainly dependent on his large poems, such as Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810), these unlike his fiction bearing their author’s name on the title-page. (338.24) young larches Scott had begun planting trees on his estate almost immediately after his purchase of it in 1811. He refers to planting ‘a patch or two of larches, of a quarter of an acre each’ in a letter to William Laidlaw in February 1818 (Scott Letters, V, 73). (338.30) The ford Beneath Abbotsford, close to the modern bridge connecting Galashiels and Melrose, and according to Scott once used by the monks at

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Melrose Abbey, hence the name adopted for his own house. Remains of a landing-place are still visible, and this was evidently used until fairly recent times by occupants of the house as a shortcut to Galashiels and beyond. (338.33-34) uniformity […] modern architects Referring to the neoclassical or Palladian style favoured by architects in the eighteenth century, and applying to most country houses built in Scotland (including the Tweed valley) until Abbotsford. Prior to deciding to extend from the original farmhouse, Scott himself had contemplated a modern villa nearer the river to be designed by the architect, William Stark: see Michael Buck and Peter Garside, ‘Early Planning at Abbotsford, 1811-12: Walter Scott, William Stark and the Cottage that Never Was’, Architectural Heritage, 24 (2013), 41-65. (338.35-339.3) one large tower […] coats-of-arms Describing features of the first phase of rebuilding at Abbotsford 1817-19, extending from the original farmhouse, and following designs by William Atkinson and Edward Blore, though with a considerable input from Scott himself. The completion of this phase is observed in a letter of Scott’s to Matthew Weld Hartstonge of 21 July 1819: ‘The addition to my house is completed with battlement and bartisan’ (Scott Letters, V, 421). In his later account of his own visit to Abbotsford in October 1818, Lockhart describes Scott’s invitation to his guests to ‘ascend his western turret’ (Life of Scott, IV, 190). For another reference, see Scott on ‘the square tower containing (with reverence be it spoken) the water closets’ (Scott Letters, IV, 436-37). (338.36) fine gray granite Scott took especial care in choosing quarries for the stone work of the house, noting on several occasions the soft grey colour of the freestone used (see Scott Letters, IV, 398, 433, 437, 526). (339.3-4) old English manor-houses Reflecting to some extent earlier plans for ‘an ornamental cottage in the style of the old English vicarage-house’ (Life of Scott, II, 378). With the present phase of building, however, Scott was more in pursuit of an ‘old fashioned Scotch stile’ (Scott Letters, IV, 333), with features such as notched gable ends and bartisans, as described lovingly in his account of Baron Bradwardine’s Tully-Veolan in Waverley (1814). (339.10) “metal more attractive.” Hamlet, III. ii. 105. (339.12) Abbey of Melrose Cistercian abbey founded by David I of Scotland in 1136, close to the town of Melrose. Scott had celebrated the ruins in Canto II of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and frequently took visitors there when at Abbotsford. (339.12-13) Count von Bulow Hans, Graf von Bülow (1774-1825), Westphalian and Prussian statesman; alternatively, Heinrich von Bülow (17921846), who was a Prussian embassy secretary in London in 1817, moving to Berlin in 1819, and later Prussian ambassador to England from 1827. No evidence of either being at Abbotsford has been discovered.

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(339.17) adonization Self-adornment; deriving from Adonis, in Classical mythology a youth loved by Venus for his beauty. (339.18) his library Not the present library which was competed in the second phase of building at Abbotsford, mainly completed in 1822-25, but Scott’s first study as part of the early extension. (339.32) new Irish Baron Irish baronetcies had existed since 1619, but were replaced by the Baronetage of the United Kingdom in 1800 as a consequence of the Act of Union with Ireland. (339.33) Apollo Roman god of music and poetry, here used ironically. (339.33-34) Cockney coterie London cultural clique; used in a way reminiscent of Lockhart’s scathing assaults in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (beginning with the number of October 1817) on ‘the Cockney school of poetry’, including Keats and Shelley, as supposedly presided over by Leigh Hunt. See also Note for 301.26-28. (340.9) uncranioscopical observer For cranioscopy, and the supposed science of determining character from the shape of the skull, see Notes for 37.18 and 61.4. (340.22-25) And tarry […] Wizard […] only he Not identified. The term Wizard echoes Scott’s popular cognomen ‘Wizard of the North’, and beyond that Michael Scott, the wizard who features in Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), details from which are frequently echoed in this account. The Chaldee MS in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine likewise refers to Scott as a ‘magician’. (340.36) Shakespearian pile of forehead Probably derived from the receding hairline in the best-known portrait of Shakespeare, engraved by Martin Droeshout and first published on the title-page of the first folio of 1623. Parallels between Scott and Shakespeare were becoming increasingly common in criticism of the period. (340.37-38) Poet of Marmion Referring to Scott’s long narrative poem Marmion (1808). (341.6-9) It was about the Lammas tide […] prey Version of the opening of the Border ballad ‘The Battle of Otterbourne’ (compare Minstrelsy, I, 34), describing an engagement in 1388 between the Scots under James Earl of Douglas and English under Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur). (341.16) White Lion of the Percies Henry de Percy (1273-1314) adopted as his paternal coat of arms a lion rampant azure, later quartered by the Percys Earls of Northumberland. Although the heraldic lion of the Percies is blue, Robert Chambers refers to a relic of the battle of Otterbourne probably worn as a love pledge by Percy consisting of a pair of lady’s gauntlet gloves bearing the ‘white lion of the Percies in pearls’. He also gives an outline sketch of a personal banner known as the ‘Douglas banner’ and which depicts a lion, but was formerly believed to have been a Percy banner captured and taken into

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Scotland by Douglas: see The Book of Days, 2 vols (London and Edinburgh, 1869), II, 219-20. (341.17) Otterbourne Otterburn in Northumberland, 28 miles southeast of Jedburgh: site of the engagement which gave rise to the famous ballad of that name (see Note for 341.6-9). (341.19-20) portion of Scottish blood See text at 19.13, where Morris says his mother was a Scotchwoman. (341.23-24) Lochaber pibrochs For pibroch see Note for 178.18. Lochaber refers to a large area of the Highlands southwest of Inverness, the place name being commonly found in the term ‘Lochaber axe(s)’. (341.25-26) noble Highland piper John Bruce (d. 1847) Scott’s piper, known as John o’ Skye. His presence at Abbotsford in 1818-19 is noted on several occasions in Scott’s correspondence (see Scott Letters, IV, 435; V, 145, 281). (342.3) Roderick Dhu Outlawed chief of Clan Alpine in Scott’s The Lady of the Lake (1810), probably his most successful major poem. (342.3) under favour With all submission, subject to correction. Alluding here to the as yet ostensibly anonymous nature of Scott’s fiction. (342.3-4) Fergus Mac-Ivor Clan leader and Jacobite supporter in Scott’s first novel Waverley (1814). (342.7-10) Nor lacked […] quaighs of ale See ‘Thomas the Rhymer. Part Third’ [by Scott], stanza 5 (Minstrelsy, II, 312). (342.13) more militari In military fashion (Latin). (342.14) tass of aquavitæ Tumbler of spirits (in this case almost certainly whisky). (342.21) Roderick of Skye Actually John of Skye (see Note for 341.25-26). Either Lockhart is misremembering or more deliberately associating Scott’s piper with a familiar Highland name, such as that of Rhoderick Dhu earlier in the same paragraph. Lockhart calls him John of Skye in his later account of his visit to Abbotsford in October 1818 in Life of Scott, IV, 189. (342.27-28) some late ill health Evidently referring to Scott’s suffering attacks of stomach cramps, probably from gallstones, which reached such a level of severity in spring and early summer of 1819 that it was feared he was dying. (342.37-38) discourse excellent music See Hamlet, III. ii. 347. (343.10) youth spent in wandering among the hills Probably referring to Scott’s ‘raids’ in search of ballads and ballad-singers in Liddesdale in the extreme South of Scotland over seven years from 1792 onwards. (343.35-36) Nil admirari Let nothing astonish you, wonder at nothing (Latin); expressive of an attitude of imperturbability. (344.6-7) great Poet of the Lakes William Wordsworth.

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(344.13) the author of “The Excursion” The Excursion, a poem of nine books by Wordsworth, was published in 1814. In giving Wordsworth this title Lockhart is equating him with Scott as ‘the author of Waverley’; though in Wordsworth’s case the poem appeared under his name. (344.38-39) Of man and Nature […] song See Wordsworth, The Excursion, ‘Prospectus’, ll. 15 and 55. (345.12) Ettrick Shepherd James Hogg: see Note for 80.8. (345.13-14) Great Nature’s hum […] dumb Compare Dedication to Lady Anne Scott, in James Hogg, The Brownie of Bodsbeck; and Other Tales, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1818), I, iv: ‘That undefined and mingled hum— / Voice of the desart, never dumb!—’. (345.17) glass of a magician As employed in Fitztraver’s song in Canto VI of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), stanzas 16-20. (345.24) gramourie Occult learning or necromancy. (345.25) drying up the Nile The river Nile is the longest river in Africa and the world, terminating in Egypt, and creating a fertile valley in what otherwise would be desert. (345.26-27) “shineth upon the evil […] good.” See Matthew 5. 45. (345.33) “drink the red wine […] barred” See The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto I, stanza 4. (345.35-36) Shred their foeman’s […] spray Compare Marmion, ed. by Ainsley McIntosh, EEWSP 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), p. 183 (Canto VI, ll. 577-78). (346.4) Valhalla of Odin In Scandinavian mythology Valhalla is the ‘hall of the slain’, a place of feasting and drinking for the souls of heroes killed in battle; and Odin is the name of the supreme Norse god. Horses and dogs were sacrificed as part of Viking burials so that they could accompany their masters there. (346.5) Bruce—Douglas Robert the Bruce (1274-1329, ODNB), King of Scots, and Sir James Douglas (d. 1330, ODNB), heroes of the first War of Scottish Independence. (346.6-7) eye was set […] Plantagenet The Lord of the Isles (1815), Canto VI, stanza 14, referring to Edward II of England. (346.8) James […] Dundee Monarchs and nobility of Scotland, as depicted in Scott’s body of imaginative work. (346.12) wizard lamp One which burns perpetually, as in the one exhumed with the wizard Michael Scott in Canto II of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (Edinburgh, 1805). Walter Scott provides a note there on perpetual lamps (pp. 240-43). (346.14-15) Tizona […] Cardena Tizona is the name of the sword of Spanish hero El Cid. In Southey’s translation of Chronicle of the Cid (London, 1808) a

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Jew, seeing the Cid’s dead body in the cathedral of San Pedro de Cardena, puts out his hand to pull at the hero’s beard; but God witnessing the affront ‘sent his spirit into the body’, causing the Cid to half draw his sword, with the Jew falling into a swoon (p. 348). The story is also told by Scott in a Note relating to Canto II, stanza 21 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), which gives as its ultimate source Heywood’s Hierarchie, p. 480. Letter LII (347.18) à la fourchette Eaten with a fork (French); here indicating a meal of substance containing meat etc. and requiring cutlery. (347.19) celebrated Novelist Tacitly referring to Scott, whose works of fiction were then published anonymously. (347.24) Dandie Dinmont Border stock farmer in Scott’s second novel Guy Mannering (1815). For his hunting salmon by spear at night, see Guy Mannering, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 136-37 (volume 2, chapter 5), and Note there for 136.18. (347.26-28) in his library […] Edinburgh At this point Scott’s library at Abbotsford would have been in the study built as part of the first stage of development as begun in 1817. His other personal library would have been on the ground floor at the rear of his Edinburgh residence at 39 Castle Street. For a description of the latter in 1818, see Lockhart’s Life of Scott, IV, 148-49. (347.30) Chief Magistrate of the county Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, a position Scott had held since 1799. (348.7) Volksmärchen and Volkslieder Folk-tales and folk-songs (German). Scott’s enthusiasm for German literature had begun in the 1790s, his collection of books in the original language aided by a number of personal acquaintances, such as James Skene of Rubislaw and Harriet Scott of Harden. It was also an interest that Scott shared with Lockhart. (348.10) Eildon Hill South of Melrose, overlooking the town; often called the Eildon Hills because of the three summits, the highest of which rises to 1385 feet. (348.17) classical ground The use of the term ‘classical’ here is characteristic of Scott’s writing and influence in attributing this status to a Scottish topography also considered to be ‘romantic’. (348.17) Huntly Burn Running from high ground towards the Tweed to the southeast of Abbotsford House, the upper reaches of which were associated with Thomas the Rhymer (see next Note). Scott had acquired the lands at Huntlyburn (formerly Toftfield) in 1817. (348.20) Bogle or Goblin Burn Similar names feature in Washington Irving’s account of a later guided tour in Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey (Philadelphia, 1835): ‘We are now, said Scott, treading classic, or rather fairy, ground. This

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is the haunted glen of Thomas the Rhymer, where he met with the queen of fairy land; and this is the bogle burn, or goblin brook, along which she rode on her dapple grey palfrey, with silver bells ringing at the bridle’ (p. 54). (348.21) Prophesia Thomæ de Ercildoune As given in ‘Notes and Appendix to Thomas the Rhymer. Part First’, in Minstrelsy, II, 275. The following quotation matches ll. 1-12 and 17-20 there, with minor variations. (348.40) “True Thomas,” Thomas the Rhymer (Thomas of Ercildoune), the thirteenth-century seer and poet. This title is used for him at the start of (and throughout) Scott’s version of ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ (Minstrelsy, II, 269), and presumably signals the alleged truth of Thomas’s prophecies. (349.6-7) Deloraines or Lochinvars Sir William Deloraine, the border knight in The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805); and ‘Young Lochinvar’ from the ballad in Canto V of Marmion (1808): prominent knightly figures in Scott’s work. (349.9-10) “Wats of Harden,” Scott’s ancestors through the Harden branch of the Scott clan: notably Walter Scott, 3rd Laird of Harden (c. 1550-1629?, ODNB), known as ‘Auld Wat’; and Sir William Scott, 4th Laird of Harden (d. 1655). Wat of Harden is depicted in Canto IV, stanza 9 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). (349.10) “Bauld Rutherfuirds […] fow stout.” Alluding to Scott’s maternal ancestors, with ‘fow stout’ used in the sense of ‘fully valiant, forward in courage’. For the quotation, see the snippet of verse in Scott’s Notes to ‘The Raid of the Reidswire’: ‘Bauld Rutherfurd, he was fow stout’ (Minstrelsy, I, 124). (349.11-12) Epping sportsmen Referring to the annual ‘common hunt’ held in Epping Forest on Easter Monday, during which a loosed deer was hunted by large crowds of Londoners; possibly instituted in 1226, it lasted until about 1882. (349.16) Trimontium Name of a Roman fort at Newstead, near Melrose, close to the three Eildon hills (hence trium montium (Latin), three mountains). (349.24) Melrose Town in Roxburghshire at the foot of the Eildon Hills and above the Tweed, four miles southeast of Galashiels. (349.24-25) Abbots-Law, or Court-Mount Not located, but apparently referring to the land lying between the Eildon Hills and the town of Melrose. Possibly relating to the ancient sites of justice, and similar to ‘Moat-hill’s mound’ (near Hawick) as in Canto I, stanza 25 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). (349.26) gray arches […] magnificent Abbey Melrose Abbey adjoining the town of the same name, founded by Cistercian monks in 1136. Its ‘ruins grey’ and ‘broken arches’ feature in the famous passage advising a visitation by moonlight in The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto II, stanza 1.

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(349.28) towers of Dryburgh Dryburgh Abbey, founded 1150, about five miles further down the Tweed from Melrose Abbey, and conducted along similar lines by the Premonstratensian order of monks. (349.30-31) Dryborough […] in chorus William Wordsworth, ‘Yarrow Revisited’ (1814), ll. 19-20. (349.33) Colding Knowes Presumably Coldingknowes, as in the traditional Scottish love ballad ‘Broom of the Cowdenknowes’ (Child 217). Coldingknowes Mains is located three miles northeast of Melrose, south of the settlement of Earlston. (349.34) Ruberslaw Or Rubers Law, isolated conical hill reaching 1390 feet, between Hawick and Jedburgh and south of the village of Denholm. The narrative is now looking in a southerly direction from the Eildons. See also Note for ‘Dunyon’, below. (349.34) Carter Carter Fell, a ridge reaching a height of 1900 feet, 12 miles south of Jedburgh. (349.34) Dunyon Compare ‘Thomas the Rhymer. Part Third’, l. 3: ‘And Ruberslaw shew’d high Dunyon’; annotated by Scott ‘Ruberslaw and Dunyon are two hills above Jedburgh’ (Minstrelsy, II, 311, 320). Dunion Hill, to the west of Jedburgh, is 1092 feet high. (349.34-35) Cheviots Range of hills dividing Scotland from England, the Cheviot (2674 feet) being the highest point. (349.35) Teviot The river Teviot rises on the border of Dumfriesshire, running in a northeast direction through Hawick and Ancrum before joining the River Tweed at Kelso. (349.37-38) Smaylholm Tower Smailholm Tower, a peel tower about five miles west of Kelso, built in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century, and coming into the hands of the Scotts of Harden during the 1640s. (349.38) Eve of St John Poem in the ballad style by Scott first published in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Tales of Wonder, 2 vols (London, 1801), I, 137-47. (350.1) early youth of the Poet Scott was familiar with Smailholm Tower from his extended stays as a child at his grandfather’s farmhouse at Sandyknowe, close to the ruined tower, and it was the locus of many of his earliest memories. (350.4) ancient female relations Referring to Scott’s grandmother, Barbara Scott, and Aunt Janet (his father’s sister), who respectively would have been aged about 65 and 40 at the time of Scott’s earliest stay at Smailholm around 1773. In his Ashestiel ‘Memoirs’ Scott describes their influence on him in promoting an imaginative association with Border lore: see Scott on Himself, ed. by David Hewitt (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1981), pp. 12-14. (350.10-17) He passed […] Teviotdale Walter Scott, ‘The Eve of Saint John’ (1801), ll. 125-32.

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(350.19) Leader Leader Water runs south through Lauderdale and the settlements of Lauder and Earlston, before joining the Tweed two miles east of Melrose. (350.20) Rhymer’s old castle Rhymer’s Tower stands in Earlston, four miles northeast of Melrose, and is the traditional home of Thomas of Ercildoune, commonly known as ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ from the ballad. (350.24) one of his finest ballads ‘Thomas the Rhymer. Part Third’, an original ballad by Scott (compared with its two predecessors which claim traditional sources). The four stanzas quoted are at the beginning of the ballad (Minstrelsy, II, 311-12). (350.30) pallions Large and stately tents, pavilions. (350.34) ensenzie Gathering-word, war-cry. (350 footnote) The hare […] again Quoted by Scott in his Introduction to ‘Thomas the Rhymer. Part Second’, Minstrelsy, II, 285. (351.4) pall A robe or vestment. (351.12) Swinging low […] roar John Milton, Il Penseroso (written 1630; published 1645), l. 76. Letter LIII (352.1-2) best of all Cicerones A Cicerone is a guide skilled at explaining antiquities, after the Roman politician and orator Cicero; here Scott is intended. (352.6) Mr Blore Edward Blore (1787-1879, ODNB), one of the two architects who had worked on the first phase of building at Abbotsford, 1817-19. He also managed and provided designs for Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland (1819-26). Two sketches of Melrose Abbey based on designs by Blore can be found in the collection of ‘Hutton Drawings’ at NLS (Adv.MS.340.5.23). (352.7) Oriel Window The east window at Melrose, noted for its skilful construction. It features in Canto II, stanza 11 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel: ‘The moon on the east oriel shone, / Through slender shafts of shapely stone, / By foliaged tracery combined.’ (352.7-8) moon […] Last Minstrel ‘When the broken arches are black in night, / And each shafted oriel glimmers white’: The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto II, stanza 1. (352.17) one cloister Possibly referring to the Monks’ Choir where the top of the columns are beautifully carved with leaf ornaments; alternatively, the East Cloister Walk, where the arches have similar decorations. Compare Canto II, stanza 8 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805): ‘Nor herb, nor flowret glistened there, / But was carved in the cloister arches as fair.’ (352.25) hortus siccus Dry garden (Latin); collection of preserved plants.

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(352.30-31) human hand […] holding a garland loosely in the fingers Possibly now visible in the South Transept, over the door presently leading to roof access. (352.32) Elgin Marbles A collection of Classical Greek sculptures originally decorating the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis in Athens, transported to Britain between 1801 and 1812 under the orders of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (1766-1841, ODNB), and subsequently acquired by the British Museum. (352.32) cognoscenti See Note for 169.13. (353.3) gallery of the Boisserées Referring to the brothers Sulpiz and Melchior Boisserée, who began preserving German medieval ecclesiastical art early in the nineteenth century, an exhibition of their collection in Heidelberg in 1810 attracting widespread attention in romantic circles. (353.8-9) patch-work repairs In about 1610 part of the former Monks’ Choir in the ruined Melrose Abbey was converted into a parish church, a plain vault being inserted, obscuring the original ribbed vaulting, and with a belfry erected on the South Transept gable. (353.9) disciples of the Covenant Scottish Presbyterians, supporters of the National Covenant (1638) and of the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), and who in the later seventeenth century resisted efforts by the later Stuart kings to impose episcopacy on Scotland. (353.19) bones of John Knox John Knox (c. 1514-1572, ODNB), the principal figure in the Scottish Reformation, and popularly held to have been responsible for the destruction of Catholic ecclesiastical buildings. The suppositious idea of his ‘bones’ lying here contrasts ironically with the belief that remains of Alexander II, Robert the Bruce (his heart), and Michael Scott ‘the Wizard’ are to be found in Melrose Abbey. (353.21) miserable little kirk A new kirk was erected in Melrose between 1808 and 1810, dedicated to St Cuthbert, on a hillock between the town and the Tweed. A fire destroyed much of this in 1908, the present kirk incorporating the tower and spire of its predecessor. The main parts of the building were and are in a classical style. (353.23-24) Duke of Buccleuch The estates of the Dukes of Buccleuch covered large amounts of ground in the Borders. The 4th Duke, Charles William Henry Scott, Scott’s friend, died in April 1819, and was succeeded by Walter Francis Montagu Douglas Scott (1806-1884, ODNB). In 1822 Scott undertook supervision of extensive repairs at Melrose Abbey financed by the Buccleuch family. More recently the 8th and 9th Dukes of Buccleuch have been buried in the grounds of the Abbey. (353.28) Tintern Tintern Abbey, Cistercian monastery founded in 1131, adjacent to the village of Tintern, Monmouthshire, Wales. Celebrated in

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William Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798). (353.38) the Forest Ettrick Forest: see Note for 338.11. (353.39-40) Kers, Scotts, Pringles, Elliots Names of leading (and once feuding) clans on the Scottish Borders. The ‘Pringle Aisle’ at Melrose Abbey is the burial place of the Pringles of Smailholm and Whytbank. Thomas Ker was the monastery’s Abbot in 1524, and William Ker its Commendator before 1566. The connection with the Elliot family is perhaps more stretched. (354.1) carved or molten Indicating stone or brass memorial tablets. (354.4) Dryburgh Settlement in Berwickshire, and home of Dryburgh Abbey (see Note for 349.28). (354.11) bridge of chain-work The first chain suspension bridge in Scotland, connecting St Boswells and Dryburgh, funded by the proprietor of the former ferry the Earl of Buchan (see next Note) and designed and built by John and Thomas Smith of Darnick near Melrose. It was begun on 13 April 1817 and opened on 1 August 1817. On 15 January 1818 the bridge was destroyed in a gale but, its usefulness in comparison with that of the ferry having been proven, it was re-erected by the firm to an improved design by mid-April 1818. (354.13) Earl of Buchan David Steuart Erskine (1742-1829, ODNB), 11th Earl of Buchan, founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1780, and somewhat notorious in his time for eccentric-seeming pursuits in the sciences and arts. For an earlier treatment of Buchan at an Edinburgh gathering, see Letter XXIV (and Notes). (354.14-15) colossal statue […] red free-stone The William Wallace statue, sculpted by John Smith of Darnick, stands on a hill-top in the Tweed Valley about a mile north of Dryburgh Abbey. It was placed on its pedestal on 22 September 1814. In stark red sandstone, it comprises a large helmeted figure with a huge sword standing on a high plinth, rising in all to some 31 feet. The saltire on the figure’s shield is expressive of the Earl of Buchan’s nationalist leanings. Scott himself reportedly detested the statue, confessing a desire to blow it up with gunpowder ‘in such stile that there shall not be one member left attached to another, the horrible monster!’ (see James Hogg, Anecdotes of Scott, ed. by Jill Rubenstein (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 15). (354.19) Cockney visitants Tourists from London, and more generally England. (354.20-21) base of the statue There is no sign presently of the base of the statue having served such a purpose. W. S. Crockett in Minstrelsy of the Merse (Paisley, 1893) describes Barrie (see next Note) as living in ‘a small “foghouse” […] erected near the statue of Wallace’ (pp. 97-98). A fog-house is a small house or shelter built from or lined with mossy turf. A pot-house is an ale-house, a small, unpretentious or low public house.

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(354.21) rhyming cobler James Barrie (1753-1829), author of A New Collection of Poems (Kelso, 1819). This publication has a frontispiece illustration of the statue, with two visitors dwarfed beneath its base, and several of the poems included concern topics such as Wallace, the Statue, Dryburgh Abbey and the Iron Bridge. Barrie by his own account had previously been involved in various labouring tasks, but there is no evidence of his having been a cobbler. (354.23-24) charming collection The Anonymous and Fugitive Essays of the Earl of Buchan Collected from Various Periodical Works, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1812), decorated with a title-page vignette of the Temple of the Muses (see Note for 355.26), does indeed exist, no further volumes apparently being published. Its Preface offers the following rather tortuous argument in selfjustification: ‘The Earl of Buchan, considering his advanced age, has thought proper to publish this volume, and to meditate the publication of others, containing his anonymous writings; that no person may hereafter ascribe to him any others than are by him, in this manner, avowed, described, or enumerated’. (354.28) virtuoso In the now largely obsolete senses of a lover of the fine arts, collector of antiquities, connoisseur. (354.32-33) flower-garden Having purchased the Abbey site in 1786, the Earl of Buchan made extensive alterations in the grounds, which adjoined his own house. ‘[Y]ou open a door and pass into a flower-garden, which formerly was the quadrangle of the Cloisters […] In the centre of this little flower-garden, which is 100 feet square, is a statue of Inigo Jones lamenting the destruction of this noble edifice’: Sir David Erskine, Annals and Antiquities of Dryburgh, and Other Places on the Tweed (Kelso, 1828), 59. No such statue apparently remains in the grounds. (354.34) jargonelle pear-trees Pear-trees of an early ripening variety. (354.38) Man-traps and spring-guns Booby traps used in country estates to deter poachers and trespassers, considered by many to be inhumane and made illegal in 1827. Such devices were sometimes advertised as a deterrent without actually being present. (354.38) large bust Apparently no longer in place in the abbey grounds. (354.40) Faunus, or Pomona, or Priapus Roman deities, associated with nature and fertility and common as statues in gardens. Faunus, with the legs and horns of a goat, was a protector of herds and crops; Pomona was a goddess of fruitful abundance, said to be a wood nymph; and Priapus was a fertility god, protector of beehives, flocks, and vineyards. (355.2) village Phidias Phidias was one of the greatest of Greek sculptors, among whose principal works were the statue of Athene in ivory and gold on the Acropolis, and of Zeus at Olympia (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). Possibly here, through the addition of ‘village’, referring bathetically to John Smith of Darnick (1783-1864), who occasionally worked as a sculptor (see also Note for 354.14-15), and who with his brother Thomas

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was much employed by the local gentry in designing and enlarging country houses, rural churches, schools and manses. (355.8-9) ipsissima verba The very words themselves (Latin). (355.10) immense vault Possibly the Sacristy, which became a burial aisle for the Earl of Buchan and his family after 1786; or the more extensive Chapter House, also in the East Range of the Abbey. (355.11) true Dilettanti taste Compare Lockhart’s own membership of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, membership of which did not prohibit him from mockery: for further details see Note for 305.16-17. (355.11-12) plaster-of-Paris casts No such arrangement can be found presently at the Abbey, though the Sacristy contains a Classical helmeted figure faced by a modern equivalent, possibly once part of a larger assortment. (355.16) sub dio Under the open sky (Latin). (355.16) DAVID BUCHANIÆ COMES David Earl of Buchan (Latin): signature similar to that found on a number of sepulchral and other monuments, including the Orchard Gate on the Dryburgh estate and the tablet in the Abbey signalling the right of the family of Walter Scott to be buried there. (355.18-19) temple […] the nations Compare Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), stanza 10. (355.20-28) Homer […] Ettrick Shepherd The juxtaposition of modern with Classical figures here is reminiscent of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, each section comparing a Greek and a Roman worthy, which itself might have provided a model either for Buchan’s scheme or Lockhart’s facetious jumbling of the names (or both). Annotation of individual figures below is mainly limited to the less recognisable names. (355.21) Mæonides Alternative name for Homer. (355.23) Count Rumford Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (17531814, ODNB), American-born British scientist, a pioneer in the field of thermodynamics. (355.23) Dr Matthew Baillie (1761-1823, ODNB ) distinguished Scottish physician and anatomist. (355.23) Charles James Fox Politician and Whig party leader Charles James Fox (1749-1806, ODNB), whose many close friendships and indulgent kindly nature made him a Whig icon, while his profligate lifestyle rendered him a gift to caricaturists. (355.24) Provost Creech Scottish bookseller (see text at pp. 271-73 and Notes). He served as Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1811 to 1813. (355.25) series Heroum Series of heroes (Latin). (355.26) Author of the Seasons James Thomson (1700-1748, ODNB ), born at nearby Ednam in Roxburghshire (two miles north of Kelso), author of the hugely popular sequence of poems The Seasons (1726-30). The Earl of Buchan

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in 1812 constructed a Temple of the Muses, in the style of a Greek pavilion, as a tribute to Thomson. (355.28) rueful caricature of the Ettrick Shepherd At least two life-casts of the features of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770-1835, ODNB) have survived, though neither is dated or has a provenance preceding their originally being among the artefacts of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, founded in 1820 by George Combe. This collection passed into the care of the William Ramsey Henderson Trust and now forms part of the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh. Of the two casts (Reference 6842 and 6848) the first, now on permanent loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, certainly depicts Hogg with a somewhat rueful expression, although nothing is known of any link to the supposed display at Dryburgh Abbey. (355.30-31) Savoyard cast-maker In the nineteenth century Italian castmakers established themselves in Chambery, capital of the French department of Savoy, distributing rapidly moulded figures made from locally sourced materials. (356.18) Kelso, Jedburgh Kelso Abbey, founded in the twelfth century, overlooking the confluence of the Tweed and Teviot; and Jedburgh Abbey, an Augustinian monastery, also founded in the twelfth century, in the town of Jedburgh, ten miles north of the border with England. The idea that the Scottish kings promoted the development of monasteries on the Borders as a safeguard, as enunciated here, is a well-established one. (356.24) on the Wye Medieval religious establishments on or near the river Wye, close to the southern marches of Wales and England, include Abergavenny Priory, Chepstow Priory, Llanthony Priory, and Tintern Abbey (see also Note for 353.28). (356 footnote) Mr Surtees of Mainsforth Robert Surtees (1779-1834, ODNB), antiquary and long-standing associate of Walter Scott, author of The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (1816-40), only the first volume of which had by then been published. Surtees paid a visit to Scott at Abbotsford in summer 1819 (see Letters of Scott, V, 414n). (356 footnote) tenants of the bishoprick This appears to relate to a section in volume 1 of The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (London, 1816) concerning Bishop Bek or Beke, who ruled from 1283-1310, and the invasion of Scotland by Edward I of England in 1296: ‘Beke had also it seems, required more than the accustomed military services from the tenants of St. Cuthbert, who pleaded the privilege of Halywerfolc, not to march beyond the Tees or the Tyne’ (p. xxxiii). The term here is footnoted: ‘Halywerfolc, or holy-work-people, whose business, to wit, was to defend the holy body of St. Cuthbert, in lieu of all other service.’

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Letter LIV (357.8) double postage Postage of letters sent by mail varied by distance and weight, the standard charge being for a letter consisting of a single sheet of paper. The inclusion of a second sheet incurred double the charge. (357.19) Corneille Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), French tragedian. Marble busts of Corneille include that by Jean-Jacques Caffieri (1725-1792), showing the dramatist with curling hair beneath a skull-cap. (357.22) “Earth’s giant sons” John Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 778. (357.26-27) organ of imitation See ‘Organ of Imitation’, The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1815), pp. 392-93. (357.27) organ of pleasantry Probably the same as the ‘Organ of Wit’, The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1815), pp. 391-92. (357.28-358.1) that of imagination See Note for 506.29. (358.16) self-love See ‘Organ of Self-Esteem’, The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1815), pp. 332-33. (358.17) Tom Moore Thomas Moore (1779-1852, ODNB), Irish poet and songwriter. No contemporary bust of Moore has been discovered, though the National Gallery of Ireland holds portraits by Martin Archer Shee (c. 1817: NGI 775) and the English artist John Jackson (1818: NGI 257). (358.19) sinciput The front part of the head or skull. (358.30) Canova’s Presumably that of Antonio Canova (1757-1822), Italian neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble busts, including those of Napoleon and his family. His self-portrait of 1812 was much copied. (358.35) Jupiter King of the gods in ancient Roman mythology. (359.1) Thomas Campbell (1777-1844, ODNB), Scottish poet, author of The Pleasures of Hope (1799) and a number of patriotic songs such as ‘Ye Mariners of England’. There is a bust of him by Edward Hedges Baily (1788-1867), in the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, though this probably dates to 1828. A portrait in oils by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG 198), gifted by the Duke of Buccleuch, is dateable to about 1820. (359.14-15) Mid the festal […] light See Thomas Campbell, ‘The Battle of the Baltic’ (1801), ll. 57-58. (359.16-17) Hohenlinden Thomas Campbell, ‘On the Battle of Hohenlinden’ (1801/03). For the two other patriotic songs by him listed, see preceding notes. (359.18) British Jack The Union flag, or Union Jack, adopted in 1801 as the national flag of the United Kingdom and combining the crosses of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

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(359.19-20) author of the Isle of Palms John Wilson: see Note for 498.25. His first collection of poetry, The Isle of Palms and other Poems, was published in Glasgow in 1812. (359.20) Ettrick Shepherd James Hogg. (359.22) love of localities See ‘Organ of Locality’, The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1815), pp. 364-69. (359.25) Joliba Meaning ‘great river’ in the Manding language, and indicating the River Niger, which is a river of West Africa, rising in Guinea and flowing about 2600 miles to the Gulf of Guinea. Different African peoples living along its length gave the river different names. John Wilson’s objective presumably would have been to emulate the travels of Scottish explorers such as James Bruce and Mungo Park in tracing the course of African rivers. No supportive evidence of Wilson planning such an expedition has been discovered. (359.32) when Spurzheim was here Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) visited the city of Edinburgh in 1816, in order to confront his detractors and defend the principle of phrenology. No evidence of Spurzheim having actually met or examined James Hogg has been discovered. (359.35) Mathews Charles Mathews (1776-1835, ODNB), comic actor. His one-man show, initiated in 1808 and from 1817 called At Home, mixed ventriloquism, recitations, songs, and mimicry. Mathews appeared in Edinburgh many times from 1812, and was playing there in January 1818 (see Letters of Scott, V, 62). A letter of James Hogg’s of 1 March 1820 implies that he had been invited to supply material for Mathews’s show: ‘there is nothing I would not try for such an ingenious original as Mr. Mathews but truly and honestly I have little prospect of success. If I can produce ought that pleases me I will send it’ (The Collected Letters of James Hogg, ed. by Gillian Hughes and others, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004-08), II, 9). (359.37-38) Northern Reviewers […] Dousterswivel A highly critical and calumnious-seeming review of ‘The Doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim’, by Dr John Gordon, appeared in the Edinburgh Review, 25 (June 1815), 227-68. Dousterswivel is the name of a Germanic fraudster in Walter Scott’s novel, The Antiquary, first published in Edinburgh on 4 May 1816. There is no suggestion that the character was based on Spurzheim, though the connection could well have been made subsequently by anti-phrenological critics in Edinburgh. (360.5) saft chield Slow-witted person. (360.5-6) swapping organization […] Selkirk tryst Organization is a term used for the ‘bumps’ on the skull in phrenology (see text at p. 161 and Note for 161.6), while swapping means striking resounding blows. Hogg’s claim is that it is easy enough to get some fine bumps on the head in fights at Selkirk fair. (360.9) Farnese Hercules See Note for 128.35. (360.14) The Theseus Apparently referring to a sculpture originally forming part of a grouping on the east pediment of the Parthenon in Athens, showing

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the figure of a man reclining on a rock, now chiefly identified as representing the god Dionysus. As part of the Elgin Marbles the statue was transported to Britain early in the nineteenth century (see Note for 352.32). It is the only such pediment statue to survive with its head intact. (360.17-18) Drawing Academy […] Elgin Marble A separate Drawing Academy was founded in Edinburgh in 1798, building up a collection of casts for copying by its students, including a set of plasters from the Elgin Marbles in 1816 (see previous Note). (360.34) Apollo Belvidere See Note for 128.34. (361.5) Lilliputian On a small scale, minute. From the country of diminutive beings that Lemuel Gulliver visits in Book I of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). (361.5-7) late hotel-keeper […] Macculloch James Macculloch (d. 1819), proprietor of the Royal Hotel, Princes Street, Edinburgh. The ‘Death’ notices of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 20 January 1819 include ‘At Edinburgh, on the 12th inst. Mr James M’Culloch, of the Royal Hotel’. His demise is mentioned by Scott in a postscript to a letter to Adam Ferguson (son of the philosopher) of 15 January 1819: ‘the goodly hulk of conceit and tallow which was called Macculloch of the Royal Hotel Princes Street was put to bed dead drunk on Wednesday night and taken out the next morning dead-by-itself-dead’ (Scott Letters, V, 293). (361.15) Epicureanism Philosophy propounding hedonism, on the basis that pleasure represents the greatest good. Its founder, the fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher Epicurus, owned a garden outside Athens which served as a centre for his followers. See also Note for 159.30-31. (361.17) purfled Bordered or edged ornamentally; in the case of a violin this might be with inlaid work, for instance, or of a building one ridged with crockets or other raised ornamental edging. (361.21-22) toping satyrs […] on antique vases Satyrs were attendants of Dionysus (also called Bacchus) who was the god of wine, and are often shown as human with some animal features, often the legs of a goat, on Greek pottery, particularly wine-coolers and wine-jugs. (361.28) treading fast on the kibes Compare Hamlet, V. i. 137. A kibe is an ulcerated chilblain on the heel. (361.31-32) celebrated Negro A common sign of a tobacconist in the eighteenth century was a large wooden figure—suggestive of an exotic hybrid of an African prince and a Native American—wearing a crown of tobacco leaves and a kilt of the same material. For a commentary with illustrations, see Catherine Molineux, ‘Pleasures of the Smoke: “Black Virginians” in Georgian London’s Tobacco Shops’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 64: 2 (April 2007), 327-76.

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Letter LV (362.14) Auld Reekie Old Smokey: nickname for Edinburgh, particularly the Old Town, over which a pall of smoke used to hang. (364.20) commotions throughout all Europe Referring to the European upheavals stemming from the French Revolution of 1789 to the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, during which period Britain had been in an almost continuous state of warfare with France. Scott’s works up to his last major poem The Lord of the Isles (1815) and his second novel Guy Mannering (1815) were covered by this period. (365.25-26) Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion As published under Scott’s name in 1805 and 1808 respectively. (365.36) Waverley and Old Mortality Anonymous novels by Scott published in 1814 and 1816. (366.5) Clarendon Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674, ODNB), author of The History of the Rebellion (1702-04), the most influential historical account of the English Civil War, notable for its immediate day-by-day account of events. (366.23-24) his detractors Such as Thomas McCrie (1772-1835, ODNB), dissenting minister and ecclesiastical historian, who contributed a series of articles to the Edinburgh Christian Instructor (January-March 1817) severely criticising Scott’s treatment of the Covenanters in The Tale of Old Mortality (1816). See also Note for 327.4-5. (366.28) “Cachinno monstrarier.” Pointing out with loud laughter (Latin). Compare Persius, Satires, I. 12, 28. The expression ‘monstrari digito’ (to be pointed out with the finger) from Persius features in the first chapter of Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, published in June 1819: see EEWN 7a, ed. by J. H. Alexander (Edinburgh University Press, 1995), pp. 3, 340. In the Magnum Opus version of 1830 this appears as ‘digito monstrarier’: see Walter Scott, Waverley Novels, 48 vols (1829-33), XIII, 257. (366.35) Thomson See Note for 355.26. (367.2) Hume—Smith The philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith: see Notes for 57.28, 59.7 and others. (367.11) quoad With respect to, as far as (Latin). (367.27-28) ne pars sincera trahatur That the sounder parts be not tainted (Latin). Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 191. (367.37) in Coriolanus Compare Coriolanus, IV. v. 234-37, where one of Aufidius’s servingmen says that peace ‘makes men hate one another’, to which his fellow responds ‘Reason: because they then less need one another’. (368.9) Colonel Harrison Thomas Harrison (bap.1616, d. 1660, ODNB), a lawyer who rose high in the parliamentary armies in the English Civil War, and was a strong supporter of the trial of Charles I; later executed as a regicide.

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(368.11-12) early Romish legends of saints Probably alluding to the immense popularity in medieval Europe of collections of hagiographies of Roman Catholic saints such as the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Varagine (c. 12301298), which was one of the first books to be printed by Caxton in the English language and an international best-seller. (368.36) “mightiness for good or ill” Not identified. (370.8) Facillime Princeps The undoubted chief (Latin). (370.9-10) “Brother near the throne.” Alexander Pope, ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’ (1735), l. 198. (370.12) armoury at Abbotsford As often used by Scott as his sitting-room or ‘boudoir’, completed in September 1819 (see Scott Letters, V, 501). Scott’s collection of historical weaponry and similar artefacts had been accumulated over a long period, but reached new heights with the purchase of Abbotsford. (370.16) decorations of Melrose In a letter to Daniel Terry of 12 November 1816, Scott describes his acquisition of ‘ornaments from Melrose Abbey’: ‘[George] Bullock made several casts with his own hands—masks, and so forth, delightful for cornices, &c.’ (Scott Letters, IV, 290). (370.16) windows glow An important feature of the Armoury is the painted stained glass in its windows, containing armorial bearings, as provided by Mrs Daniel Terry, daughter of the Scottish artist Alexander Nasmyth (see Scott Letters, IV, 290). (370.18-19) hauberks […] targets Weapons as familiarly described in Scott’s poetry, and examples of which are still displayed in the Armoury at Abbotsford. (370.24) Podagra Gout of the foot or big toe. (370.27-28) conning over Perusing, examining. (370.28) Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy Medical treatise by Robert Burton (1577-1640, ODNB), first published in 1621, embracing a range of forms of mental illness of a melancholic nature, and encyclopaedic in its range of reference. (370.28-29) “A stout heart … brae,” Proverbial: see ODEP, p. 353. A ‘stiff brae’ is a steep slope. (370.31) Tu ne cede […] ito Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them (Latin). From Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 95. VOLUME THREE List of Contents (373.26) Fama Clamosa Noisy report (Latin). In Scotland referring to any notorious rumour ascribing immoral conduct to a minister or office-bearer in a church.

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(374.31) P. P. C. As used on visiting cards, abbreviating ‘pour prendre congé’ (French), meaning ‘to take leave’. Letter LVI (377.9-10) Mr Jeffrey, in his way home For Francis Jeffrey see Letters VI, VII, XXXIV and Notes. Jeffrey would have been returning from the Parliament House in the Old Town to his home at 92 George Street in the New Town. (377.10-11) Mr Playfair […] after delivering his lecture For John Playfair see Letters VII, XV, XLVI and Notes. Playfair would have been returning from the Old College to the south of the Old Town to his home at 10 Albany Street in the Broughton district of Edinburgh. (377.11) Professor Leslie For John Leslie see Letter VII and Notes. His home was at 62 Queen Street in the New Town. (377.11-12) Ettrick Shepherd For James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, see Letter XII and Notes. Before his marriage in April 1820 Hogg spent part of every year in Edinburgh, staying with literary friends such as John Grieve and R. P. Gillies. (377.19-20) in propriâ personâ In his or her own person (Latin). (377.26) short street St Andrew’s Street connects Princes Street and St Andrew’s Square, the easternmost square of Edinburgh’s original New Town. Morris is envisaged as staying at Oman’s Tavern Hotel in West Register Street, also in the immediate vicinity of St Andrews Square. (378.6) black coats A clergyman would commonly wear a black, rather than a coloured coat, though this was not part of his formal liturgical clothing. (378.8-9) by the newspapers The Edinburgh newspapers generally gave daily reports on the sittings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (see next Note), and also gave notice of it as forthcoming. In 1819 the Assembly sat from 20 May to 2 June: see The Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Commenced at Edinburgh, the 20th Day of May, 1819 (Edinburgh, 1819), p. 3; hereafter Acts of the General Assembly 1819. (378.9) General Assembly A national representative meeting of the Church of Scotland dating back to the Reformation, and whose proceedings were refined by the Second Book of Discipline of 1578, which specified that the Assembly had a right to meet once a year or oftener in the presence of the king or of his commissioner who would appoint the date of the next meeting: see J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 200, 204. (378.17) spencer A short double-breasted overcoat without tails. (378.20) cit A shortened form of ‘citizen’, usually indicating contempt for shopkeepers and townsmen.

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(378.21) Auchtertirloch Manse Apparently a fictional place-name, resembling other real place names prefixed by ‘Auchter’ (upland in Gaelic) such as Auchtermuchty and Auchtertyre. A manse is the dwelling-house provided for a parish minister. (378.27) cachinnation Loud or immoderate laughter. (378.29) Macalpine A common Scottish name, associated with Kenneth Macalpine, King in Scotland, known as Kenneth I (d. 858, ODNB), who had his capital at Dunstaffnage in Argyll. (378.31) rencounters Chance meetings. (378.33) idyllia Episodes suitable to a short poem descriptive of incidents in rustic life (Greek). (378.40) yill Ale. (379.2) pappit aff Popped or dropped off; that is, died. (379.8) Mr John Watson For Watson’s portrait of Morris, see the frontispiece to Peter’s Letters, and for further information on Watson himself see Note for 336.14-15. (379.10) Mr Blackwood For the Edinburgh bookseller William Blackwood see text at pp. 284-86, 288-89 and Notes. (379.11-12) his country-house Blackwood’s family home was at 2 Salisbury Road in Newington, to the south of Edinburgh, which then had an outlook over fields to the south. The extensive villa development of Newington dates from slightly later, in the mid-1820s. Letter LVII (380.5) Earl of Morton George Douglas (1761-1827), 16th Earl of Morton, succeeded to the title in 1774 on the death of his father. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a freemason, appointed Grand Master Mason of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1790. Morton was also a member of the Royal Company of Archers, and interested in horse-breeding. (380.5-6) King’s Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly A largely symbolic role, the Commissioner representing the monarch and officially having the power to set the date of the next annual Assembly. (380.15) true representative It may be that Wastle here, feeling uncertainty about the true descent of Archibald James Edward Douglas (1748-1827, ODNB), prefers to think of the Earl of Morton as the indisputable representative of the family, being descended from the second son of Archibald, Lord of Douglas (fl. c. 1195-1238). In 1761, Archibald Douglas, 1st Duke of Douglas (bap. 1694, d. 1761, ODNB), in the direct line of inheritance of the Douglas family, had died without heirs, and the dukedom became extinct while the title of Marquis of Douglas passed to his cousin, James Hamilton, 7th Duke of Hamilton. The inheritance of his vast estates and personal property, however,

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were claimed by both Hamilton and Archibald Douglas, as the reputed son of the Duke’s sister, Lady Jane, who had made a runaway marriage and, on the Hamilton reckoning, purchased twin baby boys at an advanced age rather than given birth to them. The ensuing Douglas cause split Scottish opinion and was the longest-ever pleading in the Court of Session. The Scottish court decided in favour of Hamilton in 1767, but on appeal the House of Lords decided in favour of Archibald Douglas in 1769. Archibald Douglas became Baron Douglas in 1790. (380.19) Royal Hotel Located at 53 Princes Street. James Salisbury, who died before 1800, was the architect responsible: see www.scottisharchitects.org.uk. (380.19) more avito In ancestral custom (Latin). (380.21) present the ancient silver keys ‘Yesterday, about seven o’clock, the LORD PROVOST and Magistrates waited upon his Grace the Earl of MORTON, his Majesty’s High Commissioner, at his levee room, Merchants’ Hall, when the ancient silver keys of the city were presented to his Grace by the LORD PROVOST, in the customary form’: ‘General Assembly’, Edinburgh Evening Courant, 20 May 1819. (380.22) long-vanished gates of the Gude Town The Gude Town is a sobriquet of Edinburgh. Its fortifying Flodden Wall (c. 1513-60), which never entirely encircled Edinburgh, had six gates: the West Port; Bristo Port; Potterrow Port; Cowgate Port; Netherbow Port; and New Port. The prominent Netherbow Port had been demolished in 1764, and the West and Potterrow Ports in the 1780s. (381.5) the bridge The North Bridge, opened in 1772, was an important point of passage from the New to the Old Town of Edinburgh. (381.5) sedan chair A closed vehicle to seat a single person, borne on two poles, and carried by two bearers, one in front and one behind. (381.6) Merchant’s Hall Located on the west side of Hunter Square, near the Tron Church. The first meeting the Merchant Company held there was in 1790, and it was later enlarged and provisions made for the Lord High Commissioner of the General Assembly to use the Hall for receptions. In 1879 the Company purchased new premises in Hanover Street in the New Town. See Alexander Heron, The Rise and Progress of the Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh, 1681-1902 (Edinburgh, 1903). (381.8) reading-room A room devoted to reading, particularly one in public use. No particular information in this case has been discovered. (381.14) court suit Formal dress worn by those who attend at court or on other state occasions. (381.15) kerseymere A fine, twilled woollen cloth. (381.16-17) King George and Queen Charlotte at St James’s The court of George III (reigned 1760-1820) and his consort Queen Charlotte at the official residence of the British monarch, the Tudor palace of St James’s in

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Westminster. In 1810 George III’s son and successor, subsequently George IV, had become Prince Regent due to his father’s mental incapacity as a result of illness. (381.17) Napoleon and Louis le désiré Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of the French as Napoleon I between 1804 and 1814, moved to the palace of the Tuileries, the usual Paris residence of the French monarchy, in 1800. King Louis XVIII of France (1755-1824), known as ‘le désiré’ (the desired) also held his court at the Tuileries after his restoration in 1814. (381.18) Pius the Seventh Pius VII, Barnaba Niccolo Maria Luigi Chiaramonti (1742-1823), who became Pope in 1800. The ‘second’ and ‘third’ editions of 1819 both read ‘Pius the Sixth’, which would refer to his predecessor Pius VI, Giovanni Angelo Braschi (1717-1799), who was elected pope in 1775, and who consequently seems less appropriate in context. (381.18-19) Francis at the Schloss of Vienna Francis II, Emperor of Austria (1768-1835), who succeeded in 1804. Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna originated as a hunting-lodge built for the son of Leopold I at the end of the seventeenth century, and had been expanded into an imperial residence and palace in the course of the eighteenth century. (381.19) Frederick William at Berlin Frederick William III, King of Prussia (1770-1840), succeeded in 1797. Berlin Schloss was the principal residence of the Hohenzollern dynasty of Kings of Prussia up to 1918, and was built in the style of a cube surrounding a magnificently ornamented central court-yard. (381.20) Augustus at Dresden Frederick Augustus of Saxony (1750-1827) succeeded his father as Elector of Saxony in 1763, and in 1806 became Frederick Augustus I, King of Saxony; his palace was at Dresden Castle, rebuilt in Baroque style in the early eighteenth century. (381.20-21) late enormous Hector of Wirtemberg Frederick II of Württemberg (1754-1816) was Duke of Württemberg from 1797 and King from 1806. He was reportedly 6 feet 11 inches tall, weighing about 440 lb. Compared here to Hector, leader of the Trojan forces, presumably because of his heroic stature. (381.21-22) Grand Duke of Weimar and Eisenach Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1757-1828), succeeded when less than a year old. He invited Goethe to settle at Weimar and made him a Privy Councillor, his court becoming the literary focus of Germany. Morris compares Weimar to Edinburgh as a cultural capital in Letter XLII (p. 270). (381.27-28) queue […] bag A queue is a long plait of hair worn dangling down behind, as made up of a sailor’s natural hair or, as here, as part of a wig; while a bag is a silken pouch to hold the back-hair of a wig when worn. (381.29) cap-a-pee From head to foot (Old French); fully armed or prepared. (381.29-30) rendezvous in the Lawn-Market For Wastle residing there, see also Notes for 8.16 and 25.4-5. The Lawnmarket is the westerly continuation

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of Edinburgh’s High Street towards Castle Hill, so-called because of a market once held on its southern side for linen and woollen cloth. (381.31) deputy-lieutenant’s uniform A deputy-lieutenant is a crownappointed deputy to assist the Lord Lieutenant of a county, who is the crown’s representative in that district. His uniform on formal occasions is military in style, resembling that of a senior army officer. (381.32-33) cross of Dannebrog The insignia of the Danish chivalric Order of the Dannebrog is a white enamelled cross with a red border. (382.2) Queen Anne’s sixpences Silver coins, worth six pennies (2½p), struck between 1703-11 and bearing the head of Queen Anne; now extremely scarce. (382.8-9) green ribbon and star of the Thistle The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle is a chivalric order associated with Scotland, the current version being founded in 1687 by King James VII and II as a revival from a supposed earlier order. It consists of the King of Scots and, in 1819, twelve knights chosen personally by the sovereign. The dark green ribbon of the order is a broad one worn as a sash across the body from the left shoulder to the right hip, and the badge of the order depicts St Andrew’s saltire, a thistle, and the motto of the order ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (No one provokes me with impunity). (382.18-19) peninsular medals Almost certainly British regimental medals, which sprung up during the Spanish Peninsular War against Napoleon of 180714 as a result of the dearth of general campaign medals for any rank below that of field officers, who might be awarded an Army Gold Medal. The Military General Service Medal for other ranks was only instituted retrospectively in 1847 and awarded from the following year to surviving soldiers or their nextof-kin. Lockhart’s designation may thus carry the implication of lower military standing on the part of the holders. (382.20) ad libitum At one’s pleasure, as much as desired (Latin). (382.24) bamboo Staff or walking stick made of bamboo cane. (382.25-26) Lords of the Covenant Lords of the Congregation; Protestant noblemen who signed a bond in 1557 to maintain the Protestant Church in Scotland against Roman Catholicism. (382.27) “Elders in Israel.” A recollection of the common Old Testament references to ‘elders of Israel’, the leaders and representatives of a national faith. (382.28) scrivener A professional pen-man; a copyist or notary. (382.28) pro scelus! Oh! it’s abominable: Martial, Epigrams, II. 46. 8. (382.31) Procurator of the Kirk As indicated, the Procurator to the General Assembly is the Church of Scotland’s principal legal adviser. In 1819 the position was held by John Connell, Esq., Advocate: see Acts of the General Assembly 1819, p. 25.

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(382.32) advocate’s wig of three tails In court an advocate would wear a tiewig, with short curls at the side and tails at the back, contrasting with the fuller wigs of judges. (382.33) Moderator A minister or elder (generally a minister) chosen to chair or preside over the supreme ecclesiastical court of the Church of Scotland, the General Assembly. The Moderator was chosen after the start of the General Assembly, so that the opening sermon was given by the outgoing Moderator, on this occasion Dr John Campbell (1758-1828), minister of the Tolbooth Kirk of Edinburgh since 1805. The Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 26 May 1819 described it as ‘an excellent discourse’ taken from Romans 10. 1. (382.40) Earl of Errol […] Commissioner William Hay, 17th Earl of Erroll (1772-1819), had been the King’s Commissioner in 1818. (383.1-2) University of Glasgow […] address of congratulation A similar account of the ‘sad blunder’ of the University’s Principal in delivering this address is given in The Scotsman of 30 May 1818, p. 173. (383.3) their Principal The Very Rev. William Taylor (1744-1823) was Principal of the University of Glasgow between 1803 and 1823. He had himself been Moderator of the General Assembly in 1798. In Northern Sketches, or, Characters of G****** (London, [1810?]), by John Finlay, he appears as Dr Grovel, a ‘staunch and successful place-hunter’ (p. 61). (383.11) Baillie Anderson The Edinburgh Almanack (1818), p. 224, lists under ‘Bailies and Deputy Lieutenants’ John Anderson, Esq. and Robert Anderson, Esq., either of whom might have officiated as a welcomer at this event. (383.20-21) in the wrong box An expression for being placed in a difficulty or at a disadvantage, unsuitably or awkwardly. (383.30) old Duke of Gordon Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon (17431827, ODNB). (383.32) Earl of Hopetoun John Hope, 4th Earl of Hopetoun (1765-1823, ODNB), succeeded to the title in 1816. He took command at Corunna after the death of Sir John Moore in 1808, and served under Wellington in the Peninsular War (see next Note). His presence in the Commissioner’s procession was noted by the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 20 May 1819. (383.33) Achates of Wellington Achates was the faithful friend of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852, ODNB), 1st Duke of Wellington, was the victorious British military commander of the battle of Waterloo of June 1815, which had ended the Napoleonic Wars against France. (383.35) Colonel David Steuart of Garth David Stewart of Garth (17721829, ODNB) was a prominent Scottish soldier, appointed Major-General in 1825. His presence in the Commissioner’s procession was noted by the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 20 May 1819.

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(383.35-36) Lord Combermere’s Probably Combermere Abbey in Cheshire. Cotton Stapleton, 1st Viscount Combermere (1773-1865, ODNB), was an army officer and politician who had commanded Wellington’s cavalry in the later stages of the Peninsular War and was granted his peerage in May 1814. (384.2) Knights of the Bath Chivalric order originating in the reign of King Henry IV of England, and refounded in 1718 in the reign of George I. (384.7) Doctors of Divinity and Esquires Esquire is a title of respect traditionally accorded to a member of the landed gentry below the rank of knight, often to the eldest son of a knight or to those holding office under the Crown, such as Justices of the Peace or commissioned army officers of the rank of captain or above. In the article on ‘Heraldry’, Edinburgh Encyclopædia, 18 vols (Edinburgh, 1830), X, 711-38, which may have been written by Lockhart, an English Table of Precedence is given on the authority of the English jurist William Blackstone according to which ‘Doctors (of Divinity, Law, Medicine)’ immediately precede ‘Esquires’, although the author acknowledges that the rules governing precedence are ‘more fixed and determinate in England, than with us of Scotland’ (p. 736). (384.22) mere bagatelle A bagatelle is a trifle, a thing of no moment or importance. (384.24) Geneva cloak Name for a Calvinist minister’s gown. See also Note for 57.19. (384.25-26 ) statute on the subject […] England Possibly referring to the House of Lords Precedence Act of 1539, which because of the date applied to England but not Scotland. It was the reference point for the order of precedence until 1948 and while technically only applying to the House of Lords was used in practice in other contexts too. (384.27) ex facie On the face of it (Latin). (384.37) in capite Holding land directly from the crown (legal Latin). (385.2) soi-disant So-called, self-styled (French). (385.4) fustian-sleeved Wearing working clothes: see also Note for 176.7. (385.5) under-graduated clergy Probably referring to clergy licensed by the Church of Scotland who do not have the degree of Doctor of Divinity. (385.8) Covenant The National Covenant of 1638, a religious bond for the mutual support of Presbyterianism as the national religion of Scotland. The final section opens, ‘We Noblemen, Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses, Ministers, and Commons under subscribing’. There is a text in John Rushworth, Historical Collections: The Second Part (London, 1680), pp. 734-41 (p. 739 for the relevant passage). (385.9) tempestas in matulâ Tempest in a chamber-pot (Latin). (385.11) crop ears A nickname for Puritans or the Roundheads of the seventeenth century, from their short hair-cuts which rendered the ears prominent.

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(385.15) allons! Let’s go! (French). (385.17-18) Heavy Dragoons and Connaught Rangers ‘The streets were lined from the Merchants’ Hall to the Church by the 6th, or Inniskillen Dragoons, and the 88th, or Connaught Rangers’: see Edinburgh Evening Courant of 20 May 1819. They were both Irish regiments: the cavalry regiment of the 6th or Inniskilling Dragoons had given notable service at the Battle of Boyne of 1690 and more recently at Waterloo, while the 88th Regiment or Connaught Rangers was a foot regiment that had been raised in the West of Ireland in 1793 and served in the Peninsular War of 1807-14. For the Inniskillings, see also text at p. 490 and Note for 490.9. (385.20) triumph of Pompey A triumph was a festal procession of ancient Rome celebrating the success of a Roman general in an important campaign. The Roman consul and general Pompey the Great (106-48 BCE) was son-inlaw to Julius Caesar. His triumph of 61 BCE took up the space of two days because of its extent and magnificence, according to Plutarch’s life of Pompey. (385.23) “stinking breath” Casca’s description of the acclaim of the crowd for Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar, I. ii. 246. (385.27-29) quos trahet […] Sygambros When decorated with a well-earned wreath of bay, he drags the fierce Sygambri up the sacred hill (Latin). From Horace, Odes, IV. ii. 34-36. (385.32-33) Milton ascribes For the following lines see Paradise Lost, I. 56062; this anticipates a series of quotations in the following Letter making an analogy between the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and John Milton’s depiction of the counsel held by the fallen angels with Satan after their descent from Heaven. (385.37) meridian Mid-day. (386.10) “patient in my strong desire,” Not identified. (386.15) hostelleria A hosteleria (Spanish) is a country inn. (386.21-22) annual Feast of their Temple So-called by analogy with the ancient Jewish Temple, where three annual pilgrimage feasts were held: Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. (386.28) Seceders Those who have withdrawn or veered away from the Established Church, here from the established presbyterian Church of Scotland. (386.38) έυκνημιδες Well-greaved (Greek). See Homer, Iliad, I. 17. Greave is armour for the lower leg. Lockhart likens the ‘well-gaitered’ clergy to the ‘well-greaved’ Greek soldiers, with the implication of better got up than combative. (386.39) motions of a pointer A gun-dog, trained to indicate the whereabouts of a bird it has scented to a gunman by standing rigidly with muzzle stretched towards it and generally with one foot raised.

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(386.40) Hebrew bible The original language of the Old Testament was Hebrew, the New Testament being originally in Greek. (387.1) “pabula læta” Lush meadows, rich pastures (Latin). (387.2-3) wheaten sheaves Either in the form of the crop of the minister’s glebe (a portion of land assigned to him as part of his benefice) or as tithes (a tenth of agricultural produce paid by parish landowners to the minister for his support). (387.10) ante-diluvian Antiquated; dating from the time before the deluge, or Noah’s flood. (387.11-12) horny buttons of black paper Although now commonly made of plastic, buttons were formerly made of paper as well as of animal bone or horn. (387.12-13) coats, shaped from […] pulpit hangings Presumably black cloth was provided on the death of the local landowner with which to decorate the parish church as a place of mourning, and after use this would become the perquisite of the minister. (387.13) umwhile Former, late. (387.14-15) Queen Elizabeth taperings Male fashion in the reign of Elizabeth I of England dictated coats that tapered from padded shoulders to a narrow and tight waist. (387.17) dirk-like As sharply pointed as a Highlander’s dagger. (387.18) neat’s-hide Leather made from the hide of an ox or bullock. (387.18) Day and Martin In 1801 Charles Day and Benjamin Martin started up as blacking-makers (manufacturers of black boot-polish) at High Holburn in London, the concern becoming one of the pioneers of advertising. (387.21) Salvator shadows The Italian painter and print-maker Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) painted rugged landscapes containing figures of witches, brigands and the like. The lighting of his portraits often casts deep shadows on the face, as for instance in his self-portrait in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (21.105). He was a popular artist during the Romantic period. (387.25-26) “streaming like meteors to the troubled air.” Compare Thomas Gray, ‘The Bard. A Pindaric Ode’ (1757), ll. 19-20: ‘Loose his beard, and hoary hair / Stream’d, like a meteor, to the troubled air’. (387.29) “waste their sweetness on the desert air.” Compare Thomas Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (1751), l. 56: ‘And waste its sweetness on the desert air’. (388.5-6) stand upon his P’s and Q’s Be careful as to the detail (especially of conduct or manners); perhaps from children or printer’s apprentices learning to distinguish the two letters. (388.13) Madeira Fortified wine from the Portuguese Madeira Islands off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic ocean. See also Note for 459.21.

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(388.18) ‘gayest, happiest attitudes of things.’ Book I, l. 30 of Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London, 1744), p. 2. (388.21-22) Convocation A synod constituted by statute and called together to deliberate upon ecclesiastical matters, in the present instance the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Letter LVIII (389.3) macers Officials whose office is to keep order in an assembly and who bear maces. (389.19) Assembly aisle In the early nineteenth century St Giles’ Cathedral was divided to form four churches and a meeting-house for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, with the latter situated in the Preston aisle in the south transept. (389.22) profanum vulgus The common crowd (Latin); see also Horace, Odes, III. i. 1, ‘Odi profanum vulgus et arceo’ (I shun the uninstructed crowd and keep it at a distance). (389.26) “high on a throne of royal state,” Like that of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, II. 1. (389.32) Duncan M‘Nab Called Donald M‘Nab at 139.7: see Note. (390.3) beef-eaters Name for the Yeomen of the Guard, created as a royal bodyguard for the coronation of Henry VII of England in 1485. They still wear Tudor-fashioned red uniforms. (390.12) cheese-toasters Derogatory expression for swords (slang). (390.14-15) “όι άμφι τον Βασιληα.” Those around the king (Greek). Source unidentified. (390.18) Geneva cloaks and bands Referring to the clerical gowns with two strips of white cloth depending from the throat, as worn by Calvinist clergymen. The bands are also known as ‘preaching bands’. (390.19) “in close recess and secret conclave sitting.” Compare the description of the more powerful of Satan’s forces in Milton’s Paradise Lost, I. 795-97. (390.21) stipendiarii Those in receipt of pay or a salary (Latin). (390.25) Moderates Adherents of a movement dominant in the Scottish church in the second half of the eighteenth century, rooted in the spirit of enquiry and criticism that characterised the Enlightenment. They were often felt to be closer to landowners and gentry than to ordinary parishioners and were more likely to favour patronage in the appointment of ministers. (390.27) Wildmen Also known as High-Flyers or Zealots, members of an evangelical and more strict Calvinist party who emphasised the inheritance of their Covenanting forebears and often enjoyed wider support among common

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parishioners. They were likely to be hostile to patronage. The term ‘wild man’ was more broadly applied to an intransigent or extremist person. (390.30) “great consult” John Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 798, where it is used of the counsel in Pandemonium, the palace of Satan. (390.34-35) A thousand demi-gods […] Frequent and full” John Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 796-97. (390.37) gods […] goddesses By analogy with a theatre, where the gods is a seating area in the gallery. (391.1-2) whose eyes […] prize Compare John Milton, ‘L’Allegro’ (written c. 1631, printed 1645), ll. 121-22. (391.4) Bas-bleus of Auld Reekie Blue-stockings (French) of Edinburgh. See also Notes for 50.36-37 and 166.40. (391.6) prima facie At first sight (Latin). (391.7-8) Muretus […] “Mulieres Doctæ,” Muretus is the Latin name of the French humanist Marc-Antoine Muret (1526-1585). Such an allusion to learned women by him has not been discovered. (391.10) noms de guerre Names of war (French); assumed names under which persons fight or otherwise operate. (391.17) our XXXIX Articles Articles of religion in the Book of Common Prayer (revised in 1571), to which clergymen of the Church of England must subscribe. (391.18-19) Paley […] peace-promoting ambiguity In Book 3, Part I, chapter XXII, ‘Subscription to Articles of Religion’ of The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), the English theologian William Paley (1743-1805, ODNB ) argued that the framers of the 39 Articles chiefly intended to exclude abettors of popery, Anabaptists, and Puritans hostile to episcopacy, implying that others might subscribe without this involving actual belief in every separate proposition. (391.18-19) “Confession of Faith,” From 1690 onwards assent to the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) was the doctrinal test for ministers and elders of the Church of Scotland, as constituting a firm and detailed exposition of Calvinism. (391.21) burning of Servetus The Spanish theologian Michael Servetus (1511?-1553) was condemned for heresy in denying the Trinity and the efficacy of infant baptism and burned just outside Geneva on 27 October 1553 at the instigation of the religious reformer and theologian Jean Calvin (15091564). (391.31) holding the candle Assisting and abetting, holding an inferior position in accomplishing an operation or travelling at night (ODEP, p. 377).

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(391.35) disciples of their Institute Adherents of the system or establishment, with a possible pun on the title of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). (391 footnote) Muretus. Opuscula, tom. XIII p. 374 Possibly alluding to Marc-Antoine Muret, Opera Omnia, 4 vols (Leyden, 1789), the contents of which include opuscula varia (various smaller works), though the reference otherwise appears to be fanciful: see also Note for 391.7-8. (392.3-4) the whole of the Presbyterian ministers were Whigs Because at the time of the Revolution of 1688-89 the Scottish Convention of Estates rejected the Stuart monarch James VII and II, who was a Roman Catholic and enforced episcopacy on his subjects, and selected William and Mary as monarchs, who re-established the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. (392.8) odious to the holders of the executive power James VI and I was impressed by the English church which supported bishops and maintained the king’s position as head of the national church, and he and successive Stuart monarchs tried to impose it upon Scotland. (392.27) High-flyers Pejorative name given by their opponents to the Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland; see also Note for 390.27. (393.2) law of Patronage The Patronage Act of 1712 vested the right to appoint parish ministers in the heritors or landowners of a parish rather than the congregation. Moderates were inclined to support the Act whereas their opponents favoured appointment by the congregation. (393.3-4) Sir Henry Moncrieff’s Life of the late Dr Erskine Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff (1750-1827, ODNB) published Account of the Life and Writings of John Erskine, a biography of his predecessor as leader of the Evangelical party of the Church of Scotland, in 1818. In an Appendix Moncreiff gives an outline of the ecclesiastical government of the Church of Scotland, including an extensive discussion of the patronage dispute and its leading to secession, as well as the various attempts to resolve differences arising between patrons and congregations on the subject, with particular praise for the policy of William Robertson up to 1781, when he ceased to function as head of the Moderate party in the church. For further information on Moncreiff himself, see Note for 396.37-38. (393.4) dispute about Mr Leslie’s professorship In 1805 the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh became vacant, the appointment lying in the hands of the city’s town council. There were two candidates for the post: John Leslie (1766-1832, ODNB) and Thomas Macknight (1762-1836), minister of Edinburgh’s Old Kirk, the latter having the support of the Moderate party in the presbytery of Edinburgh, who sought to disqualify Leslie by bringing a charge of heresy against him, the matter then coming before the General Assembly. Paradoxically, the evangelical party took the liberal side and supported Leslie’s candidature. The charge, which was dismissed, undermined the credibility of the Moderate party. See also Note for 47.24.

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(393.14) wappenshaw […] popinjays Alluding to the ancient mustering of local armed forces, with marksmen shooting at a figure representing a parrot, probably with reference to the scene in Walter Scott’s The Tale of Old Mortality: see EEWN 4b, ed. by Douglas Mack (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), pp. 14-26 (volume 1, chapters 2-3). (393.15) “trifles light as air” Othello, III. iii. 326. (393.16) επεα πτεροεντα Winged words (Greek). See Homeric Hymns 2, ‘To Demeter’, l. 112. (393.19-20) “in stern divan,” Divan in the sense of a counsel or tribunal, often in association with Oriental courts. Compare here John Milton’s ‘Rais’d from their dark Divan’, Paradise Lost, X. 457 (of Satan’s Council). (393.21) pleno impetu Full force (Latin). (393.21) Manes Spirits or ghosts of the dead in classical Rome, who were thought never to sleep quietly while survivors left the dead person’s wishes unfulfilled. (393.22) David Hume The historian and philosopher David Hume (17111776, ODNB ) had a reputation as a prominent atheist. Before John Leslie’s election to the Chair of Mathematics (see Note for 393.4) his opponents in the Moderate party had insinuated that he too was an atheist, because he had written favourably about Hume’s doctrine that causation was nothing more than an observed constant and invariable sequence of events. (393.25) “ces sont des choses passés,” These are past things (French). (393.25-26) French infidels say French Enlightenment philosophers sought to abandon tradition and appeal to the past in favour of rational examination. (393.27-28) spears […] pruning-hooks See Isaiah 2. 4, envisaging an era of peace when nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks’. (393.36) Robertson and Erskine The historian and Principal of Edinburgh University William Robertson (1721-1793, ODNB: see also Note for 271.4) and John Erskine (1721-1803, ODNB). Erskine was a defender of evangelical orthodoxy, who published more than 20 separate religious works and also arranged for the publication of works by a number of American ministers. (394.22) colleague ministers in the same Kirk Robertson was appointed to Old Greyfriars in Edinburgh in 1761 and Erskine in 1767, and they shared this pulpit for 26 years, setting an example of harmony to their parties. Erskine preached Robertson’s funeral sermon. (394.32-33) Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies A hierarchy of church courts, the presbytery being local, the synod provincial, and the General Assembly national. The decisions of each court were subject to revision by the higher ones.

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(395.19) near descendant […] house of Buchan The connection between Erskine’s family and the earls of Buchan is outlined by Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff in the first chapter of his Account of the Life and Writings of John Erskine (Edinburgh, 1818), where he explains that Erskine’s paternal grandfather was of the family of the Earls of Cardross (pp. 1-9), this being one of the titles of the Buchan family. (395.24) plentiful estate Erskine was the eldest son of John Erskine of Carnock, whose estate at Cardross near Port of Menteith in Perthshire he inherited. (395.33) his Sermons Erskine published some eight of his sermons separately and also a collection, Discourses Preached on Several Occasions (1798). A volume, containing another 22 sermons, was also published posthumously, by Sir Henry Moncreiff, in 1804. (396.3) Warburton The theologian, literary editor, and friend of Pope and Richardson, William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester (1698-1779, ODNB). (396.3) Hurd Richard Hurd, Bishop of Worcester (1720-1808, ODNB), a friend of Warburton with whom he collaborated on Remarks on Mr David Hume’s Essay on the Natural History of Religion (1757). (396.4-5) “deepest divine he ever knew after the Bishop of Gloucester.” For William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, see Note for 396.3 above. Erskine corresponded with both Warburton (who had encouraged him at an early time in his career) and Bishop Hurd, as evidenced in Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff’s Account of the Life and Writings of John Erskine (Edinburgh, 1818). In a letter cited there to Hurd, Warburton himself refers to Erskine as ‘a deep divine’ (p. 510). (396.19) Mendelssohn The German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was known as ‘the Jewish Luther’ for his role in the German and Jewish Enlightenment, and is supposedly the model for the title character in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (1779), a plea for religious toleration. (396.21-22) acquired the language of that country Moncreiff relates in his Account of the Life and Writings of John Erskine (Edinburgh, 1818) that Erskine at the age of almost 60 taught himself German in six weeks with the help of a grammar and dictionary (pp. 316-19). (396.26-27) picture of him […] by Raeburn Almost certainly the portrait of Erskine in National Galleries of Scotland, PG 2382, once attributed to Henry Raeburn: an engraving based upon it forms the frontispiece to Moncreiff’s biography of Erskine of 1818 (see Note for 393.3-4). (396.28) Barrow Probably the mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow (1630-1677, ODNB). (396.28) Hooker The theologian and philosopher Richard Hooker (15541600, ODNB).

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(396.28) Butler The moral philosopher and theologian Joseph Butler (16921752, ODNB). (396.28) Warburton See Note for 396.3. (396.29) Horsley Samuel Horsley, Bishop of St Asaph (1733-1806, ODNB). (396.32) turn to Guy Mannering See Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, ed. by P. D. Garside, EEWN 2 (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 212-13 (volume 2, chapter 16). Scott’s parents had been members of Erskine’s congregation. (396.37-38) Sir Henry Moncrieff Born Henry Moncreiff (1750-1827, ODNB) he became 8th Baronet in succession to his father and added Wellwood to his name when his great-uncle Henry Wellwood settled on him the estate of Tulliebole in Kinross-shire. He was active in the Edinburgh Enlightenment and after the death of Erskine (whose biography he wrote) became leader of the Evangelical party of the Church of Scotland, which upheld Calvinist orthodoxy and opposed patronage. He became minister of St Cuthbert’s church in Edinburgh from 1775. (397.4) democrats of Westminster The constituency of Westminster was the biggest and one of the most socially mixed urban electorates before 1832, with 12,000 voters by the end of the eighteenth century, including not just those possessing substantial property but all males who contributed to the parish financially, for instance, by paying the poor rates. It was a hotbed of political radicalism and therefore a byword for political radicalism in general. (397.6) Gale Joneses John Gale Jones (1769-1838, ODNB) was a surgeon and apothecary by profession, a member of the London Corresponding Society, and an active radical politician, speaking at political gatherings in Westminster. (397.6) Bristol Hunts Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt (1773-1835, ODNB) came from farming stock and was a flamboyant figure with his stentorian voice and white hat. He had invested in a brewery at Bristol, where he first became prominent in radical circles. (397.8) Burdett The radical politician Sir Francis Burdett, Bart. (1770-1844, ODNB) was a member of the landed gentry and married to the co-heiress of Coutts’ bank. (397.8) Kinnaird Douglas James William Kinnaird (1788-1830, ODNB), friend of Byron and a candidate for Westminster in 1818 before standing down in favour of Sir Francis Burdett (see previous Note). (397.8) Hobhouse John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869, ODNB ), another friend of Byron and a candidate for Westminster, which he contested unsuccessfully in 1819 and successfully at the general election of 1820. In his later career he served in the government of Lord John Russell and was created Baron Broughton in 1851. (397.11-12) orange-tawney ribbon and Nova Scotia badge The badge of Baronets of Nova Scotia, an order dating back to 1624, shows a Scottish saltire

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with the Royal Arms, and was worn around the neck on an orange ribbon. The baronetcy of Moncrieff of Moncrieff dates to 1626. (397.17-18) Lord Bishop [...] at a visitation In the Church of England a visit made by a bishop to look into the religious state of a diocese or parish and to inspect that all is in order. (397.23) Hercules Hero of superhuman strength in Greek legend, the son of Zeus (known to the Romans as Jupiter) and Alcmene. (397.36) his son The future 9th Baronet, Sir James Wellwood Moncreiff (1776-1851), a prominent advocate described in Letter XXXVI; see also Note for 231.3. (397.40-398.1) cuts the knots […] Macedonian Resolving difficult situations by decisive action. Alexander the Great of Macedon cut with his sword the complex knot with which Gordius, King of Phrygia, fastened the yoke of his waggon, thus fulfilling the prophecy that whoever undid the knot would rule over the east. (398.13-14) Dr Inglis John Inglis (1762-1834, ODNB) became minister of Tibbermore in Perthshire in 1786, then of Old Greyfriars in Edinburgh in 1799. An effective leader of the Moderate party of the Church of Scotland, he was made a Doctor of Divinity by Edinburgh University in 1804, and served as moderator of the General Assembly in the same year. He had a strong influence on the establishment of foreign missionary efforts by the Church of Scotland. (398.15) college of cardinals By analogy with the College of Cardinals, or Sacred College of the see of Rome, from whom the Pope of the Roman Catholic church is selected. Letter LIX (399.8-9) long pious epistle […] from the Prince Regent From 1810 the Prince Regent, and future George IV, acted as monarch because of the mental incapacity of his father. Presumably the letter presented to the General Assembly was only nominally written by him, in the same manner as the monarch’s annual opening address to the British Parliament. (399.13) minor Prophets and Epistles The smaller prophetic books of the Old Testament, and the letters to the early Christian churches contained in the New Testament. (399.16-17) “the nursing father of our Zion,” A commonplace reference to the ruling monarch in official prayers. Zion indicates the church of God, or the chosen people, the reference being to the Old Testament City of David, which stood on Mount Zion. (399.23) glees and catches Convivial songs, often associated with male social gatherings. A glee is an unaccompanied song for three or more voices with one

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voice to each part, and a catch a round in which one singer catches at the words of another to ludicrous effect. (399.24-25) Clarendon gives of […] the Rump The Rump is a contemptuous term for the remaining parliament left after 6 December 1648 when a body of soldiers under Colonel Pride arrested 45 MPs and debarred another 78 from entering the chamber, leaving behind a body prepared to serve the purposes of the army. It was dissolved in 1660 upon the Restoration. The History of the Rebellion of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674, ODNB) was published posthumously in 1702-04: the period of the Rump parliament is covered there by Book XI. (399.26) Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658, ODNB), Lord Protector of England, Ireland, and Scotland. He is subsequently referred to as ‘old Noll’, Noll being a familiar form of the name Oliver. (399.29-30) Sir Harry Vane Probably Sir Henry Vane the younger (16131662, ODNB), main opponent of the court party in England, a religious radical, and supporter of the Commonwealth. (400.3) invocation and glorification A supplication to God for aid or protection, followed by a short expression of praise. (400.24) too-excursive eye Morris admits to the impropriety of looking around at the General Assembly during prayers, when his eyes should be lowered or closed. (400.30) Royal Hotel The Edinburgh Evening Courant of 3 June 1819 noted that ‘The Lord High Commissioner resided in the Royal Hotel, Prince’s Street, and the entertainments given there in the course of the Assembly gave the greatest satisfaction. The wines, dinners, desserts, &c. were of the best kinds, and every early production of the season was to be seen at his Grace’s table, as peas, French beans, new potatoes, strawberries, cherries, &c.’ See also Note for 380.19. (400.35) peerless Macculloch James Macculloch, proprietor of the Royal Hotel, Princes Street, who died in Edinburgh on 12 January 1819 (Caledonian Mercury of 21 January 1819): See also Note for 361.5-7. (400.39) Grace’s purse-bearer The head of the Household of the Lord High Commissioner of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. (400.39) croupier One who sits as assistant chairman at the bottom of the table at a public dinner. (401.2) orissoles More usually rissoles; fried cakes of chopped meat or fish mixed with egg and breadcrumbs and fried. (401.2) crocats Croquettes; balls of finely minced meat, fish or potato, seasoned and fried crisp. (401.2) fricandeaus Slices of meat fried or stewed and served with sauce. (401.4) Fat What: represented as if pronounced by an Aberdonian.

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(401.7) reets Roots, as pronounced by an Aberdonian; root vegetables such as carrots, turnip, or swede. (401.7) Moushers Monsieurs, Frenchmen, as pronounced by an Aberdonian. (401.8-9) an binna a bit fite fish If it was not for a bit of white fish, as pronounced by an Aberdonian. (401.13) hock German white wine, whose name is derived from the name of the town of Hochheim am Main. (401.16) “pooshening” Poisoning, in an Aberdonian accent. (401.24-25) equivocator Something with ambiguous effects. Letter LX (402.11) “day of prayers.” The second session of the General Assembly held on Friday, 21 May 1819, is described as ‘A Diet spent in Prayer’, at which the Commission was produced and the minsters named who were to preach before the Commissioner: see Acts of the General Assembly 1819, p. 42. Possibly Lockhart conflates this with the opening session described in Letter LIX (pp. 399-400). (402.18) side-bars A side-bar in the Outer Parliament House in Edinburgh was evidently a position next to or in front of the judge’s bench, particularly one where counsel could speak confidentially with the judge. It would seem that the accused could also descend from the dock on occasion to be beside his legal counsel there. (402.22) juvenile advocates Lockhart himself was among these young advocates in 1818, appointed as a ruling elder for the Presbytery of Glasgow: see The Principal Acts of the General Assembly […] 1818 (Edinburgh, 1818), p. 23. (402.29-30) Knox […] chancel of St Giles’s The Scottish reformer John Knox (c. 1514-1572, ODNB) was actually buried in the graveyard of St Giles’, not within the church itself. This had been built over before the early nineteenth century. The spot is now marked by a brass plate in the car park behind the church. (402.30-31) “grim visage of verjuice […] otter’s tail,” Not traced, although the same quotation is made in Robert Law’s Memorialls, ed. by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (Edinburgh, 1819), p. xxvii. Verjuice is the acid juice from sour fruit such as unripe grapes or crab-apples, formerly used as a common ingredient in cooking. (402.32) George Buchanan The poet, historian and administrator, George Buchanan (1506-1582, ODNB) had been Moderator of the General Assembly in 1567, and was tutor to the young James VI. (403.2) τειχεσιπλητας Stormer of walls (Greek). An epithet applied to Ares in Homer’s Iliad, V. 455.

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(403.2) Scottish Zion Zion indicates the church of God, or the chosen people, the reference being to the Old Testament City of David, which stood on Mount Zion. See also Note for 399.16-17. (403.3) Stove-School Young, mostly unemployed, advocates as gathered in the Parliament House: for a fuller account, see text at p. 203. (403.6) Northern Minister […] Hebrides No case against a minister from the Hebrides is referred to in Acts of the General Assembly 1819. Lockhart may possibly have in mind a case from the previous year’s General Assembly (when he himself was appointed a ruling elder) involving an appeal by Hebridean minister Mr James Russell, minister of Gairloch, against a sentence of the Presbytery of Lochcarron. However since Russell’s appeal was successful the Assembly ordered all records of the charges against him to be expunged from the records of the Presbytery and Synod and the nature of these charges is therefore unknown: see The Principal Acts of the General Assembly […] 1818 (Edinburgh, 1818), pp. 45-46. (403.7) criminal conversation Adultery, often shortened in legal cases as crim con. Lockhart subsequently based his novel Adam Blair (1822) on such an incident. (403.10-11) fiat […] infallible Assembly Fiat means ‘Let it be done’ (Latin), and indicates an authoritative pronouncement or decree. Infallible is perhaps an ironic reference to papal infallibility, which was probably the majority belief in medieval theology although not defined dogmatically until the First Vatican Council of 1869-70. By virtue of Jesus’s promise to Peter in Matthew 16. 18 the Pope was supposed incapable of error in matters of doctrine. (403.13) ipsissima verba The very words themselves (Latin). The precise words used by a writer or speaker. (403.14) peccant parson’s dittay The offending clergyman’s indictment. (403.19-20) Dr Macknight, the principal secretary Probably Thomas Macknight (1762-1836), minister of Edinburgh’s Old Kirk (part of St Giles’), who had been assistant junior clerk of the General Assembly in 1802 and junior clerk of Assembly in 1808. Subsequently he was the Moderator to the General Assembly of 1820: see Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1915-61), I, 77. (403.30-31) Dr Inglis and Sir Harry Moncrieff The leaders of the two parties in the Church of Scotland: see text at pp. 396-98 and Notes. (403.34) minorum gentium Dei The lesser people of God (Latin). ‘Minorum gentium’ is a phrase used by Cicero, Tacitus, and Livy, and other Roman writers, variously translatable as ‘lesser families/houses/clans’. (403.35-36) Dr Skene Keith George Skene Keith (1752-1823, ODNB) was minister of Keith-Hall, Caskieben, Aberdeenshire, and had been made a Doctor of Divinity by Marischal College, Aberdeen in 1803. His best-known work was A General View of the Agriculture of Aberdeenshire (1811).

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(403.37) Mr Lapslie James Lapslie (1754-1824) was minister of Campsie and Antermony, then in South Stirlingshire though now in East Dunbartonshire, and which was under the Presbytery of Glasgow and Synod of Glasgow and Ayr. He was a keen supporter of the government. In 1793 he had exerted himself to procure the conviction of the radical Thomas Muir, and his manse offices were maliciously set on fire in 1797. ‘Possessing great muscular strength, he feared no man, and was popular as a preacher. Tall in stature, with a face full of fire and a bush of hoary locks, he spoke in the Assembly with an ardour and enthusiasm which commanded attention’: Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1915-61), III, 377. (403.40-404.1) thyrsus of a Bacchanal A thyrsus was a rod encircled with vines or ivy, and associated with the Greek god Dionysus, who as god of wine was treated by the Romans as equivalent to Bacchus. His followers danced in an ecstatic state, sometimes tearing animals to pieces in their frenzy. (404.3-4) exhausted Pythoness The oracle at Delphi was a centre for the worship of Dionysus as of Apollo. A priestess called the Pythia seated on a tripod over a fissure in the earth entered a state of trance during which she gave replies to questioners. (404.5) Stagyrite Aristotle: see Note for 52.26. (404.6-7) “οὐ μανικου πινος αλλα εμφρονος.” Not of abounding madness but of rational (Greek). (404.17-18) present state of discipline in the Church of England The Church of England was considered by some to be in a state of crisis in the early nineteenth century, with weak diocesan organisation and poor clerical discipline. Massive disparities of income and wealth among clergymen meant that many lived in poverty, while pluralism (holding two or more offices simultaneously) and non-residence were rife. Tithes were also generally unpopular as was the number of clerical magistrates at a time of radical unrest. (404.25-26) “their enemies themselves being witnesses.” See Homily XV in The Homilies of S. John Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols (Oxford, 1851-52), I, 212. (404.34-35) “whate’er is best administered is best.” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle III, l. 305. (405.6-7) Ecclesiastical Convocation in England The ecclesiastical convocations of Canterbury and York (with Canterbury as the senior partner) date back to the eighth century, their purpose being to take counsel for the wellbeing of the church and approve ecclesiastical legislation. However, much of their time was spent discussing the amount of tax to be paid by the church to the Crown, since as a separate estate of the realm the clergy refused to be taxed by Parliament. Henry VIII brought the convocations under the control of the Crown in 1534, and after the Restoration they abandoned the right to tax themselves. After 1717 meetings were limited to the formal sessions at the start

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of a new Parliament. Pressure to restore the convocations as a national body speaking for the Church of England mounted in the 1840s, and in 1919 a National Assembly of the Church of England was established. (407.3) Episcopalian Chapel By the late eighteenth century the Episcopal Church of Scotland consisted of congregations, broadly Jacobite in sympathy, who were under the jurisdiction of bishops who traced their orders back to the Scottish episcopate which had refused to accept the Revolution settlement of 1689. There were also ‘qualified’ congregations, generally with clergy from England or Ireland, who accepted the Hanoverian monarchy but not the jurisdiction of the Scottish bishops. The first group were legally proscribed, while the second could worship freely and built substantial chapels in Scottish towns and cities. However in 1792, after the death of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Scottish bishops formally accepted George III as king and the penal laws against the Scottish Episcopal Church were repealed. From the early nineteenth century the ‘qualified’ congregations accepted the jurisdiction of Scottish bishops and recognised the Scottish Episcopal Church as one in communion with the Church of England, but autonomous. It would seem likely that Lockhart envisages the traditionalist Wastle as attending Old St Paul’s in Carruber’s Close near his Old Town home, whose congregation had been a breakaway group of 1689 from St Giles’ Cathedral and was distinctly Jacobite. Letter LXI (409.2-3) “It is not in wide-spreading […] Men are our defence.” For the Greek original, see next Note. (409.4) ουτοι εισιν […] ήμων ή πολις These men are the city walls and the fenced walls by which indeed our city is protected (Greek). (409.13) tabernacles From tabernaculum (Latin), a tent. A portable shrine was instituted by Moses during the wanderings of the Jews in the wilderness: Exodus 25-31 contains detailed instructions for the creation of this tabernacle. There is an obvious analogy with the field-preaching of the Covenanters in seventeenth-century Scotland. (409.17) “bare and desolated bosoms” This and the following quotation describe fir trees (Tannenbaum in German) in the Swiss Alps, as in Canto IV of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, stanzas 20-21, first published at the end of April 1818. (409.29) Tales of my Landlord […] wanton attacks The most notable criticism from a Presbyterian viewpoint of Scott’s The Tale of Old Mortality, forming part of the first series of his Tales of My Landlord (1816), was published by Thomas McCrie in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor for January, February and March 1817, this being subsequently reprinted as a separate publication. For McCrie as a preacher, see text at pp. 424-25; and for

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biographical information, Note for 423.29-31. Lockhart’s previous comments on the general issue are found in Letter LV. (409.34) in the cottages of Scotland Lockhart’s claim seems unlikely, given that early editions of the four-volume Tales of My Landlord (1816) were priced at £1. 8s (£1.40). (409.35) “big ha’ Bible,” Robert Burns, ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, l. 103 (Kinsley 72). A hall Bible is a large family Bible, designed for communal use and often regarded as an heirloom. (409.35-36) original rude histories of the seventeenth century Many of the primary sources on the persecutions and history of the Presbyterian church were manuscripts passed down in families, some known best from the work of Robert Wodrow (1679-1734, ODNB), whose The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, 2 vols (1721-22) relies on such original first-hand accounts alongside public records, within the context of a strong denunciation of the Covenanting persecution. For further details see A. M. Starkey, ‘Robert Wodrow and the History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland’, Church History, 43: 4 (December 1974), 488-98. (410.1-2) Mr Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s Edition of Kirkton’s History The Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland, published from the manuscript of the Rev. James Kirkton (d. 1699, ODNB) by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851, ODNB) in 1817. Sharpe’s editorial material formed a savage and sarcastic Tory rebuttal of the narrative upon which it commented, and was criticised as such by James Hogg, for instance, in his review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (December 1817), 305-09. (410.3) descendant of the murdered archbishop Archbishop James Sharp (1618-1679, ODNB) was assassinated on Magus Moor near St Andrews by a band of Covenanters on 3 May 1679. There is no evidence that Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was among his descendants. Walter Scott in his review of the edition of Kirkton’s History describes the archbishop as Sharpe’s ‘celebrated namesake’ but denies any relationship: see ‘Kirkton’s Church History’, Quarterly Review, 18 (January 1818), 502-41 (p. 503). (410.5) per se By or in itself, intrinsically (Latin). (410.6) Quarterly Review Scott’s review there focused on the importance of Kirkton’s contemporary account and praised Sharpe’s erudition, gliding over his antagonistic attitude to his text: see ‘Kirkton’s Church History’, Quarterly Review, 18 (January 1818), 502-41. (410.19) mechanical followers Alluding to the support for Methodism among artisans, with a possible derisory allusion to the ‘rude mechanicals’ of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III. ii. 9. (410.21) Moncrieffs, Inglises, and Chalmerses In addition to the account of the leadership of Sir Henry Moncreiff (1750-1827, ODNB) and John Inglis (1762-1834, ODNB) in the General Assembly (see Letter LVIII and Notes),

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Lockhart subsequently offers a description of them preaching in this letter. An account of the minister and social reformer Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847, ODNB) is given in Letter LXXII. (410.23) proem Preliminary discourse, preface or introduction. (410.25) the same Reverend Baronet Sir Henry Moncreiff (1750-1827, ODNB): see Note for 396.37-38. (411.6) some sense of coarseness Preachers in the Covenanting tradition often made use of homely analogies and colloquial Scots. (411.13-14) technical expositions of the Calvinistic minutiæ Characteristic of an Evangelical sermon. In contrast to the Moderate party, with roots in the spirit of inquiry that characterised the Enlightenment, Evangelicals placed more emphasis on the avoidance of doctrinal deviations. (411.32) white handkerchiefed whiners A criticism of ministers who combined sentimentalism with an affectation of refinement in dress. (411.35) meretricious moonlight burdens Alluding to the fashionable and successful Irish Melodies (1808-34) of the poet Thomas Moore, widely criticised for their eroticism. (412.4) Dr Inglis John Inglis (1762-1834, ODNB), leader of the Moderate party in the General Assembly (see Note for 398.13-14). (412.28) at the western side of the Castle Sir Henry Moncreiff (see also Note for 396.37-38) was minister in the Edinburgh parish of St Cuthbert from 1775 until his death in 1827, the church being situated off the modern Lothian Road in the hollow of Princes Street gardens in the West End, then outside the city limits. (412.28-29) Greyfriars Church Situated near Candlemaker Row, on the site of the garden of the former Greyfriars monastery on the southern side of the Old Town. Inglis became minister of Old Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh in 1799. (412.30-31) new and magnificent place of worship St George’s Church, built in 1814 to a classical design by the Scottish architect Robert Reid (1774-1856, ODNB) and situated at the centre of one side of Charlotte Square in the New Town, facing the length and vista of George Street. The building is now West Register House. (412.32) Mr Andrew Thomson Andrew Mitchell Thomson (1779-1831, ODNB) was in many ways a surprising appointment to the church in Edinburgh’s most fashionable part of the New Town, since he was a minister with strong Evangelical convictions. He was an important contributor to the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, for which he wrote 43 articles, and founder of the Edinburgh Christian Instructor. He was a cultivated man, emphasising practical Christian virtues in refined language in his sermons, and his musical talents led him to insist on a high standard of singing in services.

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(413.1-2) church he formerly held in the Old-Town Thomson was the son of John Thomson, minister of New Greyfriars church, and in 1810 succeeded his father there. He moved to St George’s in 1814. (414.16) “the great vulgar and the small” From the opening lines of a version of Ode III. i of Horace by the poet Abraham Cowley (1618-1667, ODNB): ‘Hence, ye profane! I hate you all; / Both the great vulgar, and the small’. (415.18) Rowland Hill’s chapel Rowland Hill (1744-1833, ODNB) opened his Surrey Chapel in Blackfriars, London, in 1783, this being capable of holding up to 3000 people. He used the Anglican liturgy but permitted evangelical preachers access to the pulpit there. Although made a deacon in the Church of England in 1773 he was never ordained a priest; as a fashionable preacher he attracted large crowds. (415.19) the Foundling A London hospital founded in 1739 to care for babies at risk of abandonment, with premises, including a chapel, at Lamb’s Conduit Fields in Bloomsbury. It quickly became a fashionable charity, and the chapel services were noted for their music. (415.32) Dr Thomas Macknight Thomas Macknight (1762-1836) was the son of the minister of Old Kirk parish in Edinburgh, and became minister there himself in 1810. He had been junior clerk to the General Assembly and was made a Doctor of Divinity by Edinburgh University in 1808. See also Notes for 393.4 and 403.19-20. (415.32-33) author of The Harmony of the Gospels, and Translation of the Epistles James Macknight (1721-1800, ODNB), appointed minister of Edinburgh’s Old Kirk in 1778, author of A Harmony of the Four Gospels, with a paraphrase and notes (1756) and A New Literal Translation from the Original Greek of All the Apostolic Epistles, with a Life of the Apostle Paul (1795). (415.38) Dr Brunton Alexander Brunton (1772-1854, ODNB) became minister of the Tron church of Edinburgh in 1809 and in 1813 was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages at Edinburgh University and also made a Doctor of Divinity. He had married Mary Balfour (see next Note) in 1798, who died as a result of childbirth on 19 December 1818. (415.40) Discipline, and the other novels Mary Brunton (1778-1818, ODNB) was the anonymous author of Self-Control (1811) and Discipline (1814). Emmeline. With Some Other Pieces was published posthumously in the spring of 1819, with a memoir by her husband. Letter LXII (417.8) tyrannical aversion of the Stuart kings After succeeding to the English crown in 1603 as James I, James VI of Scotland came to favour episcopacy, appointing bishops for Scotland and preferring Anglican worship

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as a model for the Scottish church. His son Charles I published a Scottish version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in 1637 and attempted to impose it upon the Scottish church, thus sparking a revolt in the form of the National Covenant of 1638 which was widely subscribed throughout Scotland. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Charles II re-imposed episcopacy, which was maintained by his successor James VII and II, who nevertheless, being a Roman Catholic, wished to put Catholicism on a similar footing to the Anglican church and offered a measure of Indulgence to Presbyterians as dissenters. (417.12-13) Scottish Episcopalians […] Jacobites The English bishops accepted the Revolution settlement of 1688, by which James VII and II was replaced by the Protestant monarchy of his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. The Scottish bishops, however, refused to do so, thus compelling William and Mary to turn to the Presbyterians. (418.14) Bishop Primus The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, elected by the members of the episcopal synod among themselves and with no metropolitan jurisdiction. (418.14-15) Dr Gleig of Stirling There is no diocese of Stirling within the Scottish Episcopal church. George Gleig (1753-1840, ODNB) was ordained in 1773 and became incumbent of Stirling in 1787, retaining this position after he became Bishop of Brechin in 1808 and Bishop Primus in 1816. His early attempts to form closer ties with the Church of England and to get the penal laws against the Scottish Episcopal church relaxed were frustrated by the refusal of the Scottish bishops to pray for George III by name prior to the death of Charles Edward Stuart, the Stuart claimant to the throne. Gleig was a contributor to periodicals such as the Monthly Review, Gentleman’s Magazine, British Critic, and Anti-Jacobin Review. His son, George Robert Gleig (17961888, ODNB), was among Lockhart’s closest friends at the University of Oxford, and subsequently wrote a biographical account of Lockhart published in the Quarterly Review of October 1864. The sentence concerning Dr Gleig did not appear in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters. (418.17) two very handsome new chapels St John the Evangelist at the west end of Princes Street was built in 1818 to the design of the architect William Burn (1789-1870, ODNB), and St Paul’s, York Place, between 1816 and 1818 to the design of the architect Archibald Elliot (bap. 1761, d. 1823, ODNB). (418.20) Dr Sandford, the Bishop of the Diocese Daniel Sandford (17661830, ODNB) accepted an invitation from English Anglicans in Edinburgh to open an episcopal chapel there in 1792, his congregation first worshipping in West Register Street, then Rose Street, and from 1818 at St John the Evangelist at the west end of Princes Street, a final move which signalled the rising fortunes of Episcopalians in Edinburgh. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Oxford in 1802 and became a leading advocate of the union of the ‘English chapels’ with the Scottish Episcopal Church, which was agreed

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upon in 1804. In 1806 Sandford was elected Bishop of Edinburgh, later residing in his diocese as incumbent of St John’s, and proved an energetic bishop, holding regular visitations and annual confirmations and establishing a mechanism for diocesan administration. (418.21-23) Mr Alison […] Essays on Taste […] Sermons Archibald Alison (1757-1839, ODNB), author of Essays on Nature and Principles of Taste (1790), had been incumbent of St Paul’s Chapel in the Cowgate from 1800 to 1818, when he and the congregation transferred to the newly-built St Paul’s in York Place, where he remained until his retirement from the ministry in 1830. He published two volumes of Sermons, Chiefly on Particular Occasions in 1814, from which his Sermons on the Seasons (1819) was extracted. (418.39) Geneva cloak of Calvin Calvinist minster’s gown: see also Note for 57.19. (419.2) Oxford, where he was educated Alison (like Lockhart himself) had initially attended Glasgow University before winning a Snell Exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1784. (419.14) which Rembrandt used to draw The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) received many portrait commissions from important families and organisations in Amsterdam, where he settled, as well as making a series of self-portraits. The dramatic lighting used in these included shadows around the eyes, making their expression difficult to read. (419.19-20) Squilla di lontano […] che si muore Far off the bell that seems to mourn the dying of the day (Italian): from Dante, Purgatorio, Canto VIII, ll. 5-6. (419.22) read the service of our church From the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which includes the complete form of services for daily and Sunday worship, whereas prayers and sermons in the Presbyterian church were supposed to be extempore. (421.19-20) For you […] its golden sun William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book V, ll. 836-37. (421.26) ancient Scottish Wanderer In the first Book of Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814) the poet travels to a ruined cottage where he meets his old friend the Wanderer, whose life and character are described there in detail. This man is a Scot of humble birth and devout upbringing, who had lived as a pedlar before saving enough to support himself in excursions around the countryside. (421.27-28) The Scottish Church […] her purity Compare William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book I, ll. 397-99. (421.31-422.14) Ye have turned […] overstepped the grave See William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV, ll. 919-40. (422.16) four on the Seasons Alison had published two volumes of Sermons, Chiefly on Particular Occasions in 1814, from which his Sermons on the Seasons (1819) was extracted.

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(422.29-30) fund has been raised by subscription Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739-1806) with help from his son-in-law Colin Mackenzie (17701830) established a Scottish Episcopal Fund in 1806 in aid of the Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church and such of the clergy as required pecuniary assistance. Forbes himself subscribed £400 and a London Committee was established: see John Parker Lawson, History of the Scottish Episcopal Church from the Revolution to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1843), pp. 366-67. (423.9) Tabernaclites, and Haldanites Effectively the same thing. James Alexander Haldane (1768-1851, ODNB) undertook evangelistic journeys throughout Scotland, subsequently building preaching ‘tabernacles’ in some of the larger towns with the financial support of his brother, Robert Haldane (1764-1842, ODNB), proprietor of the estate of Airthrey in Stirlingshire. The brothers also founded a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home in 1798 and a training college for evangelists, spreading a non-confessional Calvinism linked to congregational church government and a lay ministry. A new tabernacle had been opened at the head of Leith Walk in Edinburgh in 1801. (423.9-10) Wesleyan Methodists John Wesley (1703-1791, ODNB) had visited Scotland more than twenty times between 1751 and 1790, but was less successful than in England, although he did organise some small Methodist societies there. An Edinburgh chapel was first established in 1765, and in 181516 a new chapel was built by the architect Thomas Brown (1781-1850) in Nicholson Square to the south of the Old Town. (423.10) other Independents Congregational churches, in which all legislative, disciplinary and judicial functions are vested in the local congregation of believers. (423.11) Unitarians Members of a religious body denying the Trinity of God and affirming He is one person. The sect had its roots in the radical Anabaptists of the English Civil Wars, but became a formal denomination in 1774 when the first Unitarian congregation was established under the aegis of Joseph Priestley. An Edinburgh Unitarian congregation was formed in 1776, meeting in a series of rented places of worship until the building of a chapel in Young Street in 1823. (423.11) Catholics Until the provisions of the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1791 were extended to Scotland in 1793 to allow freedom of worship to Catholics who took the oath of allegiance, Roman Catholic worship was prohibited and there was also strong anti-Catholic feeling in Scotland. In 1779, for instance, rioters set fire to a Roman Catholic chapel in Chalmers’s Close off the High Street in Edinburgh. However, in 1814 a purpose-built Roman Catholic Chapel, St Mary’s, was opened in Broughton Street, designed by the architect James Gillespie Graham (1776-1855, ODNB). (423.16) Burghers and the Anti-Burghers A major secession from the Church of Scotland had occurred in 1733 over patronage issues, and in 1747

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this movement itself divided over the question of whether or not it was lawful or sinful for a Seceder to take the oath required of burgesses of certain cities whereby they acknowledged the true religion publicly preached throughout the realm and authorised by the laws. Two ecclesiastical bodies were formed, popularly known as the Burghers (Associate Synod) and Anti-Burghers (General Associate Synod). Around the end of the eighteenth century both bodies developed scruples about the section of the Confession of Faith which dealt with the duties of the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical affairs. When the ‘New Light’ prevailed (in 1799 among the Burghers, in 1806 among the AntiBurghers) sections of both churches maintaining traditional views separated from their main bodies, the ‘Old Light’ Burghers gravitating towards the established Church of Scotland and the ‘Old Light’ Anti-Burghers continuing as the Original Secession Church. The two ‘New Light’ bodies drew closer together, and in 1820 united to form the United Secession Synod. For further details see J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 323-24. (423.29-31) Old Light Anti-burghers […] Dr M‘Crie Thomas McCrie (1772-1835, ODNB) withdrew from the General Associate Synod in 1806 and was obliged to leave his church on the Potterrow as a result. After a period when he and his adherents met in premises in Carrubber’s Close, they erected a place of worship for themselves on West Richmond Street in Edinburgh in 1813. McCrie was made a Doctor of Divinity by Edinburgh University in 1813. He was the author of a popular biography of John Knox (1811) and subsequently of one of Andrew Melville (1819). In the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters Lockhart had mistakenly stated that McCrie was minister to the New Light Anti-Burghers (III, 99). (423.33) ignorance […] Edinburgh Reviewers Although he had published some earlier writings on Church history, McCrie’s Life of John Knox (1811) was his first major work. An enthusiastic review in Edinburgh Review, 20 (July 1812), 1-29, described him as ‘hitherto unknown, we believe, to the literary world either of this or the neighbouring country;—of whom, or of whose existence at least, though residing in the same city with ourselves, it never was our fortune to have heard till his volume was put into our hands’ (p. 4). (423.35-36) New Light […] in spiritualibus by Dr Jamieson John Jamieson (1759-1838, ODNB) became minister of the Nicolson Street Anti-Burgher congregation in Edinburgh in 1797, and was made a Doctor of Divinity by the college of New Jersey in 1788. His best-known work was his two-volume Etymological Dictionary of the Scots Language (1808), of which he made a useful abridgement in 1818. His other publications included A Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees of Iona (1811) and Hermes Scythicus (1814), which expounded affinities between Scots and Germanic languages. In the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters Lockhart had mistakenly stated that Jamieson was minister to the Old Light Anti-burghers (III, 100). In spiritualibus (Latin) means in spirituals, or in spiritual matters.

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(424.5) Cimmerian obscurity The Cimmerians were a fabulous people whose land on the limits of the world, according to Homer in his Odyssey, was shrouded in mist and cloud, the sun never shining on it. (424.5) “night palpable” A phrase alluding ultimately to the ‘darkness which may be felt’ imposed by Moses on Egypt at God’s command (Exodus 10. 21) and described in Milton’s Paradise Lost as ‘Palpable darkness’ (XII. 188). (424.10-11) great Scriptural denunciations against the errors of schism Probably a reference to I Corinthians 12, which argues that differing spiritual qualities are analogous to the varied functions of different parts of the body and that ‘there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another’ (verse 25) since all the members of Christ’s church suffer or rejoice with one another. (424.19) vice versa The position being reversed (Latin); the other way around. (424.20) Lilliputian controversies In the first part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) a faction in Lilliput named the Big-Endians break their eggs at the large end, rebelling against the King who requires his subjects to be Little-Endians, breaking their eggs at the small end. The controversy satirises religious and political divisions between British Tories and Whigs. (424.21) into America by Scottish emigrants Lockhart’s comments may reflect contemporary newspaper reports of a union between Burgher and AntiBurgher congregations in North America. See, for instance, a report in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of 20 March 1819 that the two congregations in Selkirkshire, namely Newtown and Midlem, had met on 4 March ‘for the purpose of giving a public expression of their feelings respecting the union that has taken place in America and Ireland, between these two bodies, and the opening prospect now exhibited of a similar union in Scotland and England’. (424 footnote) a coalition New Light congregations of Burghers and AntiBurghers united with one another to form the United Secession Synod in 1820: see also Note for 423.16 (‘Burghers and the Anti-Burghers’). (424 footnote) bonâ fide In good faith (Latin). (425.23) Old Potts Ferdinand Augustus Potts, the fictional addressee of Letters LXIII and LXIX, a family connection of Morris who resides in London. (425.26) the £500 Presumably a loan asked for by Potts from Rev. David Williams. (425.29) Dandy A late eighteenth-century term, perhaps a shortened form of ‘Jack-a-dandy’, meaning a conceited fellow. In Regency usage in England and France it implies an aristocratic superiority of mind as shown in clothing, manners and habits, in line with Morris’s personal definition at pp. 428-29. Outstanding instances are the French general Joachim Murat (1767-1815), known as ‘The Dandy King’, and George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummel (see Note for 430.3).

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(425.29) worthy to hold the candle Fit to assist or abet; holding an inferior position in accomplishing an operation or travelling at night (ODEP, p. 377). See also Note for 391.31. Letter LXIII (426 heading) Clarendon Hotel, Bond-Street Bond Street in London’s Mayfair district, linking Oxford Street and Piccadilly, was a prosperous and fashionable residential as well as luxury shopping street in the early nineteenth century, shop-keepers letting the upper floors of their premises as lodgings. Bond Street Loungers were an upper-class group of men, expensively-dressed, who paraded the street. The Clarendon Hotel on Bond Street was demolished in 1870 to make way for the present-day Royal Arcade. (426.2) Royal Hotel For Edinburgh’s Royal Hotel, see Note for 380.19. (426.4-5) blowsy Welshwomen Countrywomen of Wales, viewed as slatternly with red and coarse complexions. (426.5-6) St James’s An aristocratic district in London’s West End, where gentlemen’s clubs were developed. The royal palace of St James’s where ambassadors were received by the British court is situated on Pall Mall. (426.6) White-Horse Cellar Hatchett’s White Horse Cellar at 155 Piccadilly was one of the best-known coaching-inns, the terminus for west-bound coaches. It was demolished in 1884. (426.6-7) tilbury and dun gelding A fashionable light, open two-wheeled carriage, pulled by a dark-brown or nut-brown coloured horse that has been castrated. (426.7) Lord Mayor’s coach A state coach built in 1757 and used regularly for the Lord Mayor’s show in his procession from the Guildhall to Westminster to take his oath of allegiance to the ruling monarch. (426.8) Stulze George Stultz (d. 1832) was a premier tailor during the Regency period, whose shop was established in 1809 at 10 Clifford Street near Savile Row. (426.8) surtouts Referring to men’s greatcoats or overcoats. (426.9) club-coats Presumably referring to coats worn by the members of an exclusive club or society. The Four-in-hand club for driving carriages, for instance, had a uniform that recollected the dress of a coachman. (426.10) Cossacks Loose cossack-style trousers drawn in at the ankle, and sometimes called Petershams after Lord Petersham (see Note for 430.3). (426.11) Blake Not identified: presumably a fashionable hair-dresser or barber. (426.11-12) cut of the Fox, the Bear, or the Lion All presumably fashionable hairstyles for men, though they have not been identified. At this time the fashion was for shorter, natural hair, in cuts which often took classical Greek

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or Roman statuary as a model. Hair was often cropped or brushed forward, favouring an artfully dishevelled look. (426.14) quizzing-glass A fashionable accessory in the form of a monocle, often worn on a ribbon around the neck. (426.27) Scrub and the shandrydan Morris’s own horse and travelling vehicle. (426.28) Hyde-Park One of the largest of central London’s Royal Parks, covering an area of 350 acres and used by the wealthy for riding and as a fashionable parade. (426.29) upper Benjamin A top-coat or greatcoat, normally ankle-length and made of drab, a thick durable cloth, in a dull colour such as light olive or grey. (426.30) Drawcansir A bustling braggart from the character in Buckingham’s play The Rehearsal (1671). (426.30) Jehu A coachman or driver from II Kings 9. 20, where the watchman says of an approaching figure ‘the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously’. (427.1) dog-cart An open vehicle with two transverse seats back-to-back, the hinder one originally made to shut up so as to form a box for dogs. (427.3) Mr ——, the Lambert of the Law This corpulent Edinburgh lawyer has not been identified. Daniel Lambert (1770-1809, ODNB) weighed 32 stone in 1793 and more than 52 stone at the time of his death. He had been a keeper at Leicester Bridewell but from 1806 came to London and began to exhibit himself to the public. (427.4) buggy A light one-horse or two-horse vehicle to seat one or two persons, generally having two wheels. (427.5) Newcastle waggon Described by William Pitt Lennox as ‘a ponderous machine with six broad wheels, and drawn by eight horses’. ‘In addition to passengers, it generally carried a great portion of the Glasgow linen and cotton manufactures to the London market. It travelled at the rate of twenty-five miles a day, and was three weeks upon the road between Glasgow and London’: Coaching, with Anecdotes of the Road (London, 1876), p. 22. The Glasgow Post Office Directory for 1789 lists ‘Watson William, where the Newcastle waggon puts up, Gallowgate, No. 33’. Compare Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (August 1818), 518: ‘but now very few commoners in Scotland drive more than a pair of horses, and the poor animals are so loaded with dickies before, and barouche-seats behind the vehicle, that it looks more like a first rate Newcastle waggon than a gentleman’s equipage’. (427.8) whip A driver of horses; a coachman, or an amateur in the art of horsedriving. (427.10) perpetuum mobile Perpetual motion (Latin), especially that of a hypothetical machine that will run forever.

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(427.10-11) four spanking tits in real bang-up style Four smart and vigorous horses in real up-to-the-mark, smart style (Regency slang). (427.22) Bon-ton Good style, good breeding (French); the fashionable world. (427.22-23) patula fagus […] Tityri An allusion to the first line of Virgil’s first Eclogue, ‘Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi’ (You, Tityrus, lie under the canopy of a spreading beech). (427.25-26) Potts, like the Sun […] reflect his rays Not identified; perhaps by Lockhart himself. (427.37) India handkerchiefs Indian textiles were notable for their use of mordant dyes, giving them intense colours that do not fade, this making them immensely popular in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Handkerchiefs of cotton, silk, or a mixture of the two were imported in their thousands by the East India Company, often as piece goods, to be cut up into individual units and hemmed by the purchaser. (427.38) St James’s Street The principal street in the St James’s district of London, running from Piccadilly downhill to St James’s Palace and Pall Mall. (428.1) Dame Street in Dublin One of the wide Georgian boulevards in Dublin that replaced the former warren-like maze of medieval streets in the city centre. (428.1) Oxford Road More generally termed Oxford Street, a Westminster street over a mile in length which had been gradually built up in the course of the eighteenth century. At this time it was a mixed residential and entertainment district including public houses and theatres, and only became a shopping district later in the nineteenth century. (428.8-9) “night’s candles are burned out,” Romeo and Juliet, III. v .9. (428.9-10) Albyn Club An Edinburgh club with premises at 54 Princes Street. It was founded on 27 May 1817 with a membership initially restricted to 200 and soon included Scottish landowners, lawyers, scientists and literary men, such as Scott. It was legally dissolved on 11 January 1830. Scott had intended to take lodgings at the Albyn Club after the sale of his Castle Street house when he needed to be in Edinburgh: see The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed. W. E. K. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 95 (entry for 20 February 1826). (428.11-12) Jocund day […] mountain’s top See Romeo and Juliet, III. v. 910. (428.13) Arthur’s Seat Volcanic hill within Holyrood Park with a craggy profile that from the southwest looks like a crouching lion. (428.15-16) Leigh Hunt […] Hampstead The poet and journalist James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859, ODNB), who edited the Examiner, was a prominent target as a member of the supposed ‘Cockney School’ of poetry as vilified by Lockhart and others in the pages of Blackwood’s Edinburgh

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Magazine. Hunt lived in a cottage at the Vale of Health, Hampstead from 1815 to 1819, and again for a brief period in 1820-21. He was an early champion of the work of John Keats, who also lived at Hampstead, then a pleasant rural district to the north of London. (428.17) Champs Elisées A wide and fashionable avenue in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, whose name translates as Elysian Fields. The Arc de Triomphe in honour of Napoleon’s victories had been begun there, though not finished by the time of his downfall. (428.17) Vauxhall Vauxhall is in Lambeth, in south London. Probably Vauxhall Gardens is intended, a popular pleasure resort for Londoners on the southern bank of the Thames, first laid out in 1661 as Spring Gardens and finally closed in 1859. (428.20-21) the busy hum of men A probable allusion to Milton, ‘L’Allegro’ (written c. 1631, printed 1645), l. 118. (428.29) “the land of the mountain and flood,” Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (Edinburgh, 1805), p. 162 (Canto VI, stanza 2). (428.31) an earnest In the sense of a foretaste or pledge of what is to come; an initial instalment. (429.18) Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house Thomas Slaughter opened his coffeehouse in St Martin’s Lane in 1692, this proving popular with artists, chessplayers, and overseas visitors. It was demolished in 1843. (429.20) porter A dark beer, made from malt that has been charred or browned by drying it at a high temperature, often served in pewter mugs; apparently so called because it was originally made for porters and other labourers. (429.22) Arbitri Elegantiarum Judges of elegance (Latin); authorities on matters of artistic taste or etiquette. Compare text at 449.36 and Note. (429.23) Dilletanti Society See text at 214.13 and Note. The Society met at Young’s Tavern at 209 High Street, presumably a building with a side-entrance within one of the numerous closes of the Old Town. (429.26) Michael Angelo Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet, one of the outstanding figures of the Renaissance. (429.26) Raphael Raphael Sanzis (1483-1520), famous Italian Renaissance painter working in Florence and Rome. (429.27) Phidias One of the greatest of Greek sculptors (born c. 500 BCE), among whose principal works were the statue of Athene in ivory and gold on the Acropolis, and of Zeus at Olympia (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). (429.27) Milton The English poet John Milton (1608-1674, ODNB). (429.27) libations Originally pourings out of wine or other liquid in honour of a god, but jocularly liquid to be drunk as toasts or potations.

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(429.34) spooneys Slang for a simpleton, a fool, an effeminate or sentimental youth. (429.40) non-chalant See Note for 203.7 (non-chalance). (430.3) Petershams Charles Stanhope, 4th Earl of Harrington (1780-1851, ODNB), known as Viscount Petersham before the death of his father in 1829, was an army officer and friend of the Prince Regent. He was a leader of fashion and supposedly the inventor of the Petersham greatcoat. (430.3) Brummells George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778-1840, ODNB), a leading member of London society and a friend of the Prince Regent until they quarrelled in 1811; he set the standard in exquisite male dress and etiquette. (430.4) Skeffingtons Sir Lumley St George Skeffington, Bart. (1771-1850, ODNB), playwright, leader of fashion and intimate of the Prince Regent. He is said to have invented a colour called ‘Skeffington brown’. (430.4) Cottons Possibly Sir St Vincent Cotton (1801-1863, ODNB), a sportsman and gambler, the son of Admiral Sir Charles Cotton. (430.4) Nugents Not identified. (430.4) Churchills Not identified. (430.4) Cooks Not identified. (430.5) M‘Kinnons Daniel Mackinnon (1791-1836, ODNB), an army officer, well-known man-about-town, and friend of Byron. (430.5) Websters Sir Godfrey Vassall Webster, Bart. (1789-1836, ODNB). He was a gambler and race-horse owner, associated with the extravagances of the Prince Regent, and supposedly the model for the arrogant and selfish Buchanan in Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon (1816). (430.5) Foxes Possibly relating to the Whig leader Charles James Fox (17491806, ODNB), who reportedly stunned parliament as a young MP in the 1770s with his stylish clothes. He was also a member of the Macaroni Club, and as such might be counted as a predecessor of ‘Beau’ Brummell. (430.13) India nabobs Europeans returning from India with a large fortune acquired there; from the Urdu word ‘Nawaub’, a deputy governor. (430.15-16) three-tailed wig Part of the formal dress worn in court by an Advocate. (430.16) mittimus A legal warrant, issued by an attorney or Writer, committing a person to prison, from the meaning ‘we send’ in Latin. (430.18) reef top-sails […] salt junk […] cockpit A sailor’s drawing up the highest sails aboard ship, his diet there of salted meat, and the after-part of the orlop (or lowest) deck of a man-of-war. (430.19) shag-tobacco A strong tobacco. Shag cut tobacco is the finest shred in which the leaves are cut into long but extremely thin pieces, giving a fiery

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burn. Most shag blends contain a high percentage of Virginia tobacco, as the longer leaves allow this cut. (430.20) indigo A plant, indigofera tinctoria, from which a deep blue-violet dye is obtained. Its cultivation in India was encouraged by the East India Company, through the private investments of its servants and by means of grants and advances on crops to private planters. By 1815 Bengal supplied almost all the indigo consumed world-wide. For further details see Asiaticus, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Indigo Industry in India’, Economic Journal, 22 (June 1912), 237-47. (430.24) centumvir One of a body of 100 men, elected annually in classical Rome to serve as juries in trials relating to property and inheritance. (430.25-26) Ingleby […] Emperor of all Conjurors Showman whose title was presumably self-awarded, and the presumed author of Ingleby’s Whole Art of Legerdemain: Containing all the Tricks and Deceptions […] Performed by the Emperor of Conjurers, at the Minor Theatre (1815). In an advertisement in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 14 April 1819, ‘MR INGLEBY, senior, the Emperor of all Conjurors, respectfully informs the Nobility and Gentry, and the Public in general, that he will have the honour of performing two nights in the Assembly Rooms in George Street, being positively his last two nights in Edinburgh this season, on Tuesday, the 20th of April […] and, on Friday the 23d of April’. The Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 31 March 1819 reported that he had given a performance during the preceding week ‘at New Lanark to upwards of SIX THOUSAND persons, by a treat that Mr Owen gave to his work people and all the village’. (430.27) Great Mogul Name given to the ruler of the Mohammedan-Tartar Empire in India, lasting roughly from 1526 to 1707. (430.35) quite the go All the fashion (Regency slang). (430.36) inexpressibles Skin-tight jersey pantaloons, usually of a pale colour such as buff, biscuit, or yellow; a term possibly derived from ‘delicate’ females so describing them. (430.37) beaux of Cheapside Cheapside was the principal market in the city of London, so here indicating the lower social class of the pretenders to fashion in the City as opposed to those of the fashionable or aristocratic West End. (430.40) à posteriori From what comes after (Latin); a term in logic, but here used as a pun to indicate posteriors or backsides. (430.40-431.1) Christie the breeches-maker John Christie’s shop was located at 23 St Andrews Street, in the vicinity of Oman’s hotel, where Morris is staying. (431.4) Schneiders Tailors (from the German). (431.12) leather-breeches and jockey-boots Country dress for riding. Breeches made of leather or buckskin (the latter being most comfortable as having no inside seam), and worn with riding-boots.

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(431.13) shooting-jackets and long gaiters Country dress for shooting. A short coat or jacket made of strong, heavy fabric, and a covering for the ankle and lower leg, designed to protect them when walking over rough ground. (431.14) nankeen trowsers and double-channelled pumps Smart indoor dress for parties. Trousers were long like pantaloons but cut wide at the ankle, and nankeen is a pale or yellow cotton cloth. Pumps are light, low-heeled shoes, often made of patent leather, usually without a fastening and intended for dancing or wearing with evening dress. Ones with a channelled sole would have a smoother outline, since the stitching is hidden in a groove. (431.23) Dictionary of Decisions A succession of volumes of Decisions of the Court of Session […] Collected and Digested in the Form of a Dictionary were published in Edinburgh from time to time. (431.24) upper Benjamin See Note for 426.29. (431.24-25) dress-boxes of the Theatre Where evening-dress was customary. For men this meant a long-tailed coat, white waistcoat and neck-cloth and black or white satin knee-breeches, silk stockings and pumps, as well as a flat hat, generally carried under the arm. (431.30) pavé A paved street for pedestrians (French). (431.40) fiat Let it be done (Latin); an authoritative pronouncement or decree. (432.1) coup-de-main Stroke of hand (French); a sudden surprise attack. Letter LXIV (433.12) Mr Gillies Robert Pearse Gillies (1789-1858, ODNB), poet, novelist, and periodical writer. Gillies had become a contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1818, and was a leading participant in the ‘Horae Germanicae’ and ‘Horae Danicae’ series there, consisting of translations from German and Scandinavian literature with commentaries, sometimes in association with his fellow-Germanist Lockhart. (433.13-14) Sir Egerton Brydges Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (1762-1837, ODNB), English bibliographer, poet, novelist, and genealogist. According to R. P. Gillies he had begun subscribing to Brydges’s periodical compilation Censura Literaria in 1806, valuing it ‘infinitely more than the far-famed “Edinburgh Review”’, and had written an anonymous letter to Brydges, which was printed in the Censura and its successor The Ruminator (Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, 3 vols (London, 1851), I, 251, 335; II, 4). Gillies’s position as the inheritor of a substantial estate in northeast Scotland placed him on a suitable social footing for Brydges, himself created a baronet in 1814, the two subsequently becoming literary associates and friends. (433.14-15) name […] writings In the Preface to The Ruminator (1813), Egerton Brydges notes how the bulk of original articles there were ‘by the author’s friend, R. P. Gillies, Esq.’. In all Gillies contributed some 25 identi-

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fiable pieces to Brydges’s various compilations, between 1809 and 1815, though never directly under his own name. For further details, see Peter Garside, ‘Shadow and Substance: Restoring the Literary Output of Robert Pearse Gillies (1789-1858)’, Romantic Textualities, issue 24 (Winter 2021). (433.15) His residence Holycot or Hollycot, in Lasswade, 6 miles southeast of Edinburgh, on the east side of the village. Gillies resided there in the summer period between 1818 and 1822, and later described this as an unusually happy period in his life. It was there that many of his translations for Blackwood’s were carried out. Walter Scott and his wife had rented a cottage at Lasswade as a summer residence between 1799 and 1803, meeting there James Hogg and the Wordsworths among others. In the Midlothian Ordnance Survey Name Books for 1852-53 (OS1/11/20/37) Hollycot is described as ‘A dwelling house with offices and ornamental grounds attached pleasantly situated a little South of Lasswade’. (433.19) banks of the Eske The rivers North Esk and South Esk merge one mile north of Dalkeith, flowing from there into the Firth of Forth. Here the North Esk which skirts Lasswade is presumably meant. The River Esk is previously mentioned near the start of the trip to Abbotsford (see Note for 337.8). (433.22) Holycot See Note for 433.15. (433.23) Ettrick Shepherd Gillies had become close friends with James Hogg from 1814, when the two resided in Edinburgh, later referring to him as ‘my almost daily associate’ (Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, II, 144). For James Hogg, and this well-known literary sobriquet, see Note for 80.8. (433.27) Lawnmarket For Wastle’s home there see Notes for 8.16 and 381.29-30. (433.27) Roslin Castle Partially ruined castle on the north bank of the North Esk, dating back to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, about 8 miles south of Edinburgh. (433.31) mazarine A rich and deep blue colour. (433.31) nankeen A kind of pale yellowish cloth, originally made at Nanking from a yellow variety of cotton, but subsequently manufactured from ordinary cotton which is then dyed. See also Note for 431.14. (433.32) nervous shapes Nervous in the older sense of sinewy or muscular: see also Note for 521.20. (433.32) chip hat A hat made of thin strips of wood. (434.11) Gaspar Poussin Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), called Gaspard Poussin, French painter born in Rome, celebrated for his landscapes and especially popular among British collectors. Gaspard Dughet took the name of his more famous brother-in-law, Nicolas Poussin (1593/4-1665): see also Note for 483.19.

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(434.11) Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851, ODNB), renowned English landscape and history painter: see also Note for 280.4. (434.12) Calcott Augustus Wall Callcott (1779-1844, ODNB), English painter, who began his career as a portrait painter, but from 1804 exhibited primarily landscape and marine subjects, emphasising light and atmosphere in a way comparable to Turner’s. (434.12) Schetky For watercolour painter, John Alexander Schetky (17851824, ODNB), see Note for 335.14. (434.32) Mr Wilson For the the poet and periodical writer, John Wilson, a close associate of Lockhart, see Note for 498.25. (434.32) his brother James Wilson: See Notes for 147.16-17 and 148.3. (434.33) Mr Sym Robert Sym (1752-1844), Scottish lawyer, and maternal uncle of John and James Wilson (see preceding notes). He was the original upon whom the character of Timothy Tickler in the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine series of ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ was based: see Elsie Swann, Christopher North (John Wilson) (Edinburgh and London, 1934), pp. 1, 102, 161. (434.35) Mr McNair Robert McNair (d. 1832), Collector of His Majesty’s Customs at the Port of Leith. This represents one of the few names not to be completed in full by the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters, possibly as a result of being overlooked. The subject’s public position can hardly have warranted secrecy. (434.37) Roslyn Roslin, an ancient burgh and village, 7 miles south of Edinburgh. (435.2) little chapel […] earlier poems Rosslyn Chapel, close to the village of Roslin, fifteenth-century collegiate church with remarkable internal carvings. Roslin and its surrounds feature notably in Scott’s poem ‘The Gray Brother’, first published in Minstrelsy, III, 402-14. (435.7) Melrose Melrose Abbey: see Letter LIII and Notes. (435.18-19) There are twenty […] chapelle Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto VI, stanza 23. (435.22) St Clair […] Orkney Rosslyn Chapel has been in the possession of the St Clair family since its foundation in 1446; Sir Henry St Clair, 9th baron of Rosslyn (c. 1345-1400), was also 1st Earl of Orkney, a title assumed by his successors. (436.4-7) airy bridge […] the river Roslin Castle is accessed by a high bridge and features a richly-carved door dated 1622 and initialled ‘SWS’. The structure is built into the cliffs of Roslin Glen, and directly faces the North Esk river.

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(436.14) Tempe Name of a valley in Thessaly, in Greece, between Mounts Olympus and Ossa, used by Roman writers as a general name for a beautiful valley; hence for any delightful rural spot. (436.16-23) which well […] tyranny For the potential authorship of these lines see Note for 436 footnote. (436.23) day-star’s A poetical expression for the sun as the orb of day. (436.25) caverned rocks of Hawthornden On the north bank of the North Esk river, downstream from Roslin Castle, where there are numerous caves and passages carved out of solid rock. ‘Roslin’s castled rock’ and ‘cavern’d Hawthornden’ feature alongside one another in Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto VI, stanza 23. (436.31-33) house of Hawthornden […] Jonson Hawthornden Castle, dramatically overlooking the North Esk river, about a mile east from Roslin and approached here along the narrow Roslin Glen. It was once the home of the poet William Drummond (1585-1649, ODNB). The English poet and dramatist Ben Jonson (1572-1637, ODNB) visited him there for almost three weeks in the winter of 1618-19 and Drummond recorded their conversations. (436.33-34) modern mansion […] fortress William Drummond (see previous Note) built a new house (completed 1638) alongside a ruined fifteenth-century tower. (436.35) lineal descendants Hawthornden Castle was owned by the Drummond family until the early 1970s. The proprietor in Lockhart’s day was Captain John Forbes-Drummond (1746-1829), a distinguished naval officer subsequently created 1st Baronet of Hawthornden in 1826. As Captain Forbes he had married Mary Ogilvie, a descendant of the Drummonds of Hawthornden, in 1785 and afterwards assumed the original name and arms of Drummond as a result of his marriage. (436 footnote) Stanihurst It is unlikely that the inset verses are by the Irish poet and translator Richard Stanihurst (1547-1618, ODNB). Snatches of verse supposedly by a Sir Stephen Stanihurst however feature intermittently in the numbers of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine between February 1818 and May 1819, and there is a strong likelihood that these are by Lockhart himself. (437.8) patriots of Scotland The caves beneath Hawthornden Castle are traditionally associated with the Scottish Wars of Independence, and include one called Wallace’s Cave, commemorating the Scottish victory of the Battle of Rosslyn on 24 February 1303. The reference here to the caves as retreats ‘long after they had been sanctified by the footsteps of the poet and his friend’, however, perhaps indicates that Lockhart is thinking of the patriots as Covenanters hiding there during the persecutions of the seventeenth century. (437.10) original portrait of Drummond There is a portrait of Drummond by an unknown artist that was purchased from Hawthornden by M. A. Muirhead around 1873 (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 810), and this may

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be the one Lockhart had in mind. Otherwise he could perhaps intend the oil painting by the Netherlandish artist Abraham van Blijenberch (1575-1624), a version of which is now in the National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1096. There is an engraving in the same manner by John Finlayson (1730-1776), dedicated to Lord Cardross, later 11th Earl of Buchan, which may possibly have helped inform Lockhart’s description. It seems unlikely, however, that the Blijenberch portrait was ever at Hawthornden. (437.21) Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (1490-1576), known in English as Titian, most celebrated painter of the sixteenth-century Venetian school of painting, and whose portraits include members of the Spanish imperial court. (437.22) Antinous Greek youth, a favourite of the Roman emperor Hadrian, worshipped after his death as a god and hero. Sculptures of Antinous, apparently after a basic model approved by Hadrian, were produced in large quantities between the years 130 and 138 CE. (437.27-28) lineaments of Ben Jonson Probably the best-known portrait of Jonson is that by Abraham van Blijenberch (see Note for 437.10), c. 1617, National Portrait Gallery, NPG 2752. This depicts the poet as a stout man with uneven eyes, blemished skin, and a wart on the side of his nose. However, the provenance of this painting is uncertain: it may be the work listed in the collection of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham in 1635 as ‘Blyenberke—A Picture of Ben Johnson’, and is said to have come from Odstock House in Wiltshire, the base of the Webb family. In 1915 it was sold by Henry Bates of Salisbury and in 1935 purchased by the National Portrait Gallery. On balance it seems unlikely that the Blijenberch portrait was ever at Hawthornden. Any alternative portrait that Lockhart might have had in mind here has not been identified. (437.29-35) Nature had framed […] shade See William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book V, ll. 453-56, 458, 460-61. (438.7) Melancthon Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), born Philip Schwartzerdt, German religious reformer, and collaborator with the now better-known Martin Luther (1483-1546), together seen as twin pillars of the Protestant Reformation. Melanchthon’s reserved, scholarly nature is sometimes contrasted with Luther’s more bombastic, passionate manner, though this tends to belie Luther’s own stature as a scholar and theologian. (438.8) Chillingworth […] Hales William Chillingworth (1602-1644, ODNB), controversial theologian and temporary convert to Roman Catholicism; and John Hales (1584-1656, ODNB), scholar and theologian. The two formed part of an intellectual group arguing for Christian union, Chillingworth’s influence on Hales, for example, being apparent in the latter’s Tract Concerning Schism and Schismaticks (c. 1636, printed 1642). See also Note for 43.13. (438.11) When Jonson […] shade William Collins, ‘Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland’ (published posthumously in 1788), stanza 13.

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(438.14-15) Sonnet to Mr Gillies See Poems by William Wordsworth, 2 vols (London, 1815), II, 194. Wordsworth indicates that he is sending ‘a sonnet addressed to yourself’ in a letter to Gillies of 12 November 1814, and Gillies later reproduced the poem in his Memoirs of a Literary Veteran (see II, 148, 173). The text as given in Lockhart’s footnote is an accurate representation. (438 footnote) Bellerophon […] fell headlong The Greek hero Bellerophon attempted to fly on the winged horse Pegasus to join the gods on Mount Olympus, when Zeus, angered by his presumption, sent a gadfly to sting the horse and unseat Bellerophon, who fell to earth. (439.7) green silk Green is a colour particularly associated with the paradise of the prophet Muhammed, the Quran describing its occupants as reclining on adorned couches wearing green garments of fine silk with flowing rivers beneath. (439.9-10) Valhalla […] Odin See Note for 346.4. (439.22-23) great Laker’s advice […] “cheerful life” That is, Wordsworth’s, the phrase in quotation marks appearing in the penultimate line of the sonnet previously quoted. (439.31) having a violin At the age of fourteen Hogg had bought himself a fiddle with the savings from his wages as a farm-servant and subsequently taught himself to play it, at first with amusing consequences: see Gillian Hughes, James Hogg: A Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 15-19. In later life he was clearly much in demand as a performer at weddings: see, for instance, his letter to his wife of 17 June 1835 in The Collected Letters of James Hogg, ed. by Gillian Hughes and others, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004-08), III, 274-75. (439.35) penny-weddings Weddings at which the guests contributed payment to cover the cost of the event and benefit the new-married couple. (440.3-4) attacks on the Edinburgh Review See the commentary on these, as launched by Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, in Letter XLVI. (440.14) face In the sense of command of facial expression, effrontery. The bulk of articles in Blackwood’s were anonymous, involving a complexity of signatures and pseudonyms. (440.17) Mr Lockhart […] Mr Wilson Lockhart and John Wilson (as ‘Christopher North’) had effectively taken over control of the Magazine with the issue of October 1817. (441.7-15) study of languages […] Oxonian In 1809 Lockhart was awarded a Snell exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1813 gained a first-class degree in classics. He mastered Greek and Latin and also learned German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. (441.16) the Stagyrite Aristotle: See Note for 52.26.

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(441.17) Platonic side The Greek philosopher Plato (427-348 BCE) varied from Aristotle in propounding that eternal truths exist in the realm of ideas rather than what might be called the physical world. (441.26) atrabilious Splenetic, melancholy; that is, affected by black bile, in the old medical terminology of the four elements. (441.27) like that of Swift The satirical author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, ODNB), whose indignation at oppression and unfairness was often expressed with great ferocity as well as wit, and whose Latin inscription written for his own tombstone was ‘ubi sæva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit’ (where bitter indignation cannot lacerate my heart anymore). (441.37-442.2) Mr William Howison […] “Fragments and Fictions.” William Howison (b. 1796?, ODNB), a native of Edinburgh, was author of Fragments and Fictions, translated from the French of Jean Pococurante de Peudemots (Edinburgh, 1817). Two puns are implanted here: ‘Pococurante’ as ‘indifferent or nonchalant’ (Italian), and ‘Peu de Mots’ as ‘few words’ (French). Howison also initiated the ‘Times’ Magic Lanthern’ series with the March 1818 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and continued as a contributor until 1822, writing on music, literature, and art. His last review for the Magazine, of June 1822 (11,734-35), on Scott’s Fortunes of Nigel (1822), signed ‘Peu-de-Mots’, complains about the limitations of space allowed. R. P. Gillies in his Memoirs of a Literary Veteran (1851) recalls ‘Mr. W. Howison, afterwards well known as “M. de Peu de Mots”’ as ‘a man of real genius […] but whose excessive fastidiousness prevented him from ever attaining that literary rank to which his talents would otherwise have been entitled’ (II, 50). He was also known to Scott who met him in 1811, later describing him as ‘a thin hectic youth with an eye of dark fire’: see Scott Letters, II, 526, VIII, 54. (441.39) nom-de-guerre Name of war (French); assumed name under which a person engages in combat or another activity. (442.2) Lady Johnes Morris’s aunt and the addressee of Letters V, XVIII, and XIX on the society of Edinburgh. (442.4) perfect bijou Bijou in the sense of a ‘gem’ among works of art; also used to describe something small and elegant. (442.6) Rogers Samuel Rogers (1763-1855, ODNB), English poet, author of The Pleasures of Memory (1792), and especially celebrated in his own lifetime. (442.31) Captain Hamilton Thomas Hamilton (1789-1842, ODNB), novelist and travel writer, and like Lockhart an alumnus of the University of Glasgow. He served two spells as an officer in the Peninsular War, eventually retiring on half pay in 1818, and settling in Edinburgh, where he joined Lockhart and the circle of writers associated with Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. He remained close to Lockhart, spending several summers with his wife at the Lockharts’ home at Chiefswood on the Abbotsford estate. He was also the brother of Lockhart’s early friend and mentor Sir William Hamilton (1788-

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1856, ODNB). His novel The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton was published in 1827. (442.33) Lord Wellington Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852, ODNB), 1st Duke of Wellington, Hamilton’s commander-in-chief during his campaigns in Spain (see previous Note). (442.40) jeux-d’esprit Light-hearted displays of cleverness (French). Up to July 1819 Hamilton had published at least 12 identifiable items in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, including poems. (443.2-3) Chateau-Margout Celebrated Bordeaux estate wine: see also Note for 53.24-25. (443.10) bear the bell Be the first or leader of a group. (443.11) runners and leapers of Ettrick-dale For Hogg’s athleticism and subsequent participation in the Eskdalemuir Border Games, see Gillian Hughes, James Hogg: A Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 46. For his promotion of games, see also David Groves, James Hogg and the St Ronan’s Border Club (Dollar: Douglas S. Mack, 1987). (443.26) Lasswade The location of Gillies’s villa: see Note for 433.15. (445.6) solus cum solo Lone man with lone man (Latin). (445.9) Buck’s-Head Hotel See Note for 446.1. (445.14) “One Night in Rome” This prose story features in Howison’s Fragments and Fictions (see Note for 441.37-442.2), pp. 79-104. Letter LXV (446.1) BUCK’s HEAD, GLASGOW The Buck’s Head Hotel building had been erected on the corner of Argyle Street and Dunlop Street around 1750 as the private residence of a tobacco merchant named Murdoch. It was converted into a hotel in 1790 with the sign of a gilt stag’s head, and closed in 1863. Glasgow Post Office Directories between 1815 and 1820 list ‘Jardine, Peter, Buck’s head Inn, 30, Argyll-street’. (446.6) Oman’s Charles Oman’s hotel at West Register Street in Edinburgh, where Morris had been staying: see Note for 17.1. (446.18) “like the baseless fabric of a vision.” See The Tempest, IV. i. 151. (446.20) Judas Red, after the medieval belief that this was the colour of Judas’s hair. (446.26) ranges of mountains Morris appears to be travelling along the postroad that follows roughly the line of the old A8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and would have the Pentland Hills to the south. On a fine, clear day the Ochil Hills to the north, across the Firth of Forth, would probably be visible at a greater distance.

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(447.1) stage Regular stopping-place on a stage-coach route, where horses were changed and travellers taken up and set down; the distance between two such places of rest. (447.3-4) Kirk of Shotts Shotts in Lanarkshire was the highest point and halfway stage on the road between Edinburgh and Glasgow, with 20-30 coaches passing through each day. The old Kirk of Shotts was located on a hillock in Salsburgh village and was a long narrow building about 70 feet long and 25 feet wide, replaced by the present church in 1821. When the contributors to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine go on a convivial autumn shooting excursion to Braemar, their rivals of Constable’s Edinburgh Magazine supposedly go off to the duller venue of the Kirk of Shotts: see ‘Pilgrimage to the Kirk of Shotts’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (September 1819), 67179. (447.5-6) Melrose and Dryburgh See Letter LIII for Morris’s visit to the ruins of these two Border abbeys. (447.8) dove-cote belfrey The belfry (bell-tower) for the old Kirk of Shotts, replaced in 1821, must have had louvre openings like those which in a dovecote allow the birds to fly in and out. (447.20) Cathedral Glasgow Cathedral is the oldest large building in Glasgow, being largely completed by the end of the thirteenth century and substantially repaired and reconstructed in the fifteenth century. It is situated at the top of the High Street on an elevated situation on the west bank of the Molendinar Burn and in 1819 would be seen at a great distance in every direction. (447.27-28) to the west Glasgow originally lay entirely on the north side of the river Clyde, having four principal streets: the High Street, the Trongate, Gallowgate and the Saltmarket. The Merchant City developed from the 1750s in the district west of the High Street, and aspirational westward development continued throughout the nineteenth century to Blythswood Hill, Hillhead, and the West End of Glasgow. (447.28) Trongate One of the oldest streets in Glasgow, running westwards from Glasgow Cross and named for the site of the old public weighing machine, or Tron. An engraving of the Trongate forms the frontispiece to a tourist guide, Glasgow Delineated; in its Institutions, Manufactures, and Commerce, 2nd edn (Glasgow, 1826): hereafter cited as Glasgow Delineated. (447.38) Cheapside An historic street in the commercial centre of the City of London. (448.1) horns of a genuine Buck Either a reference to a painted inn-sign or possibly an actual set of deer antlers: for the Inn itself see Note for 446.1. (448.16) Lionizer Someone who shows the notable sights or celebrities of a place. See also Note for 27.14.

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(448.26) the Major Originally ‘Mr H——’ in both the ‘second’ and ‘third’ editions of Peter’s Letters. For an explanation for the change in nomenclature, see Introduction, pp. 55-56, and for individual occurrences see Emendation List, entries for 448.26, 449.37, 450.9, 450.33, 451.2, 457.33, and 457.35. A personage called ‘The Major’ previously featured as one of the five fictitious addressees in Scott’s Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (1816). If Lockhart himself had a specific historical person in mind, he has not been identified. (449.6) my landlady, Mrs Jardine Margaret Jardine, wife of the landlord Peter Jardine, who had married her in 1804 when she was a widow, Mrs Currie, with a family including a daughter named Margaret Currie. Before taking over the Buck’s Head Inn the couple had formerly run the Black Boy Inn in the Gallowgate. She died sometime before January 1835 when her two children went to law about the property she had left and which was secured to her personally by both a pre-nuptial and a post-nuptial contract: see Cases Decided in the Court of Session: Volume XIII (Edinburgh, 1835), 290-95 (case 98). (449.7) a place of merchandise After the Treaty of Union of 1707 Glasgow developed an important transatlantic trade in sugar and tobacco, which faltered after the American War of Independence. By the 1780s cotton had become the principal American import and the cotton industry predominated in and around Glasgow. (449.16-17) novi homines New men (Latin), the term used in classical Rome for those who were the first in their family to serve in the senate or be elected as consul. (449.36) arbiter elegantiarum The recognised authority on matters of social behaviour and taste (Latin). Compare text at 429.22 and Note. (449.37) Merchant’s house A guildhall, built in 1659 on Bridgegate or Briggate, a road leading from the Saltmarket to Glasgow Bridge. It was one of Glasgow’s chief social and commercial meeting-places. (449.38) Exchange An exchange is a building in which the merchants of a town meet to transact business. In Glasgow the Exchange Coffee-Room on the ground floor of the Tontine Hotel on Argyle Street had been added to the hotel in 1781. It was an oval room, roughly 70 feet long and entered from the piazza of the Exchange itself. It was supplied with newspapers and, while strangers were admitted for a limited period without charge, the annual subscription was £1.12s (£1.60). (449.39) Where most our merchants use to congregate Compare The Merchant of Venice, I. iii. 47. (450.4) degagée Easy, unconstrained (French). (450.8) bourgeoise Female member of the mercantile or shop-keeping class (French).

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(450.11) imprimatur Sanction, deriving from the formula signed by an official licenser of the press and authorising the printing of a book. It is sometimes translated as ‘Let it be printed’ (Latin). See also Note for 275.10. (450.13-14) non-chalance See Note for 203.7. (450.15) Drawcansirs Bustling braggarts, from the character of that name in Buckingham’s play The Rehearsal (1671). (450.24) hobbies Favourite occupations or topics, the name deriving from a child’s hobby-horse. (450.26) Wastle’s minor love-poems Lockhart’s own poems, comic and satirical rather than love-poems, were published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine using the pseudonym of William Wastle: see, for instance, ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam’ of which instalments were published between July 1818 and January 1820. (450.28) sherry-negus Sherry and hot water, sweetened and flavoured with lemon and spice. (450.28) chansons-a-boire Drinking songs (French). (450.36) ball and supper […] flag-ship at Leith This took place on 2 April 1819: see ‘Grand Naval Fete’ in the Caledonian Mercury of 3 April 1819. Also, under the heading ‘Grand Naval Fete’, the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 7 April 1819 reported: ‘Friday night a grand supper, ball, &c. was given by Captain Maitland, and the officers of the Vengeur flag-ship, on board that vessel, in Leith Roads, to a number of the nobility and gentry of Edinburgh and its vicinity. The company amounted to about 600 ladies and gentlemen, who assembled at Newhaven at six o’clock in the evening, where boats were in waiting to convey them to the vessel’. The term flag-ship derives from a flag being flown from a Royal Navy ship to show that an admiral or other flagofficer is on board; Leith serves as the port of Edinburgh. (451.1-2) Toe-ocracy Humorous formulation signifying the aristocracy of dance. (451.8) cicerone Guide who shows the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers. Letter LXVI (452.2) described in Rob Roy In volume 2, chapter 6: see Rob Roy, ed. by David Hewitt, EEWN 5 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 156-57. (452.6) miserabile dictu Most miserable to relate (Latin). (452.6) auri sacra fames Accursed hunger for gold (Latin). As in Virgil, Aeneid, III. 57. (452.16) brawling rivulet The Molendinar Burn.

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(452.20-21) dead […] choked up the one end of the church Glasgow Delineated notes that at the west end of the cathedral ‘the earth has been accumulated to such a degree as to subject the outer church to repeated attacks of the dry rot’ (p. 67). (453.34-35) Latin Psalms are chaunted Plainsong, or Gregorian chant, which circles around or touches frequently upon one note. It consists only of melody and needs no accompaniment. (453.36-37) Origens […] Augustines […] Gregories The first name derives from the early scholar and theologian Origen of Alexandria (c. 184-c. 253), a recognised father of the Church. Augustine probably signifies Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604, ODNB) who was the emissary of Pope Gregory (540-604) to convert the then pagan Anglo-Saxons of Britain to Christianity. The name of Gregory, who reformed church liturgy, is associated with plainchant, also known as Gregorian chant, which it seems likely Augustine brought to England. (453.38-39) Greek music […] only in Melody Probably referring to the ancient plainsong of the Greek or Byzantine Church. (454.14-15) all backward driven […] forgiven From Canto IV (1818), stanza 47 of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. (454.20-21) anecdote of the mode of its preservation Andrew Fairservice relates in volume 2, chapter 6 of Scott’s Rob Roy that when a radical reforming mob came to Glasgow in 1578 in order to attack the Cathedral it was defended by the trades and armed citizen bands of Glasgow, an agreement being made to purge the building of statues without otherwise injuring it: see Rob Roy, ed. by David Hewitt, EEWN 5 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 157-58 and Notes. (454.27-28) spaces […] partitioned off from the nave The Cathedral had housed three Presbyterian congregations: the Inner Church occupied the choir; the Outer High Kirk was created by partitioning off the west end of the nave; and the Barony Kirk used the crypt. But by 1798 the Barony Kirk had ceased to occupy the crypt, which was converted to a burial place. (454.34-35) transept […] never to have been finished The transepts (or two arms of the transverse part of a cruciform church) of Glasgow Cathedral were originally very short, barely projecting from the outside of the nave. Around the close of the fifteenth century a large addition had been made to the south transept, though lower than the rest of the building. (454.38-455.2) garden […] dripping aisle,” According to Glasgow Delineated the ‘spandrils, and upper lead of the arches of this transept, were filled with earth, which, for many years, was used as a flower garden. This being found to injure the arches and walls, was removed in 1812, and a stone pavement, concealed by a parapet, was substituted in its place’ (p. 67). It was

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the lower portion of the unfinished transept that was known as the ‘dripping aisle’. (455.4) Mrs Radcliffe The Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823, ODNB), such as The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), portrayed a heroine of modern sensibility threatened by more primitive forces. They roused the reader’s terror and curiosity by relating events that were apparently supernatural, though eventually receiving rational explanation. (455.6) sepulchre of some particular family The south transept was used as a burying place for the city clergy and their families, while the north transept (formerly used as a vestry) was a private burying-place: see Glasgow Delineated, p. 67. (455.13) a little abominable would-be Gothic church The Barony Kirk congregation which formerly met in the cathedral crypt opened its new building (known as Old Barony Church) close up to the Cathedral in 1798 to a design by the architect James Adam (1732-1794, ODNB): for an engraving of this building (which was replaced in 1889) see Glasgow Delineated (plate following page 74), which work describes it as ‘a mean counterpart to the adjoining edifice [the Cathedral] as its exterior is done chiefly in rubble work’ (p. 74). (455.23) Royal Infirmary […] in the Grecian style This was built in 1792 to the west of the cathedral to a design by Robert and James Adam and opened at Christmas 1794. According to Glasgow Delineated (which contains an engraving following page 88): ‘Its form is that of an octagonal centre and wings, with bold projections at each end; and the principal entrance is surmounted by a pediment, on four elegant Corinthian columns. The building consists of four stories, terminating in a balustrade with the Royal Arms in front; and a magnificent dome with vertical lights, under which is the operation hall, crowns the whole building’ (p. 83). The Royal Infirmary was completely rebuilt early in the twentieth century on the same site, and the Adams’ building does not survive. (455.26-27) pulled down […] ruins of the ancient Archiepiscopal Palace or Castle The Bishop’s Palace or Castle was a fifteenth and sixteenth century building, attacked by the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1570 and falling gradually into decay afterwards. Permission was granted for some of the materials to be used to build the Saracen’s Head in the Gallowgate, and part was taken down in 1778 to widen the street, before the rest was removed in 1789 to clear the site for the new Royal Infirmary. The bishopric of Glasgow became the archbishopric of Glasgow during the tenure of Robert Blackadder, as a reward for his support of the future James IV against his father at the Battle of Sauchieburn in 1488. (456.4) Coliseum at Rome A huge circular theatre in which the seats of the spectators entirely surrounded the arena, built by the emperor Vespasian and his successors east of the Forum in the centre of Rome to house gladiatorial

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shows and displays of wild beasts. All the orders of architecture are represented in the building, the columns of the ground floor being Tuscan (a variant of Doric), those of the first floor being Ionic, and those of the second floor Corinthian. (456.21-22) the episcopal city ‘In the Rottenrow, Drygate, and Castle Street, were situated the mansions of the Rectors, Prebendaries, and other Dignitaries of the Church. Many of these are still to be seen’: see Glasgow Delineated, pp. 232-33. (456.32-33) House of Hamilton […] Stewarts, Lords of Minto The coats of arms of members of the Hamilton family, which had its power-base at Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, would probably include three cinquefoils, a lymphad galley and the Douglas heart and stars. The Stewarts of Minto were an important Glasgow family that had included two sixteenth-century Provosts of the city. More specifically the arms of Sir Matthew Stewart of Minto were sculpted on the wall of what had been the prebendal house of the Rector of Peebles in the Drygate, a street in the vicinity of the Cathedral. (456.37) Montrose-lodge A house with crow-stepped gables, built after the Reformation on the site of a former prebendal house at the west end of Drygate, and acquired by James Graham, 1st Duke of Montrose (1682-1742, ODNB) at the beginning of the eighteenth century. According to Glasgow Delineated by the nineteenth century it had been ‘converted into small dwelling houses, and weavers’ shops’ (p. 17). (456.37-38) Darnley occupied The Earl of Darnley reputedly contracted smallpox while staying with his father in Drygate early in 1567, and was fetched from there to Edinburgh by his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots, only to be murdered a few days later on 10 February. The actual location of the Drygate house is unclear. (456.39-40) Kirk-in-the-field Named from the collegiate church of St Mary in the Field, and occupying roughly the site on which the Old College of the University of Edinburgh now stands. Darnley was murdered in the Old Provost’s House there in 1567. (457.3) Rotten-row The origins of this street name are debateable. One theory is that it derives from Rat-an-righ or Route du Roi (both signifying the Road of Kings), and another that it is a common description used in Scotland for places with tumbledown houses infested by rats. Lockhart’s derivation is repeated in several Glasgow guidebooks that post-date Peter’s Letters. (457.4) cicerone Guide who shows the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers. (457.11) Ratisbonne Medieval city, more commonly known as Regensburg, in southeast Germany at the confluence of the Danube, Naab and Regen rivers. (457.11) Rotten-gasse Not identified, though there is a Rote-Hahnen-Gasse (Red Cocks Lane) near the Cathedral.

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(457.12-14) Domherr […] Rott-meister Lockhart’s translation of ‘Domherr’ as ‘canon’ is correct, the word coming from ‘der Dom’, German for Cathedral; but Rottmeister more usually signifies a military leader. (457.17-18) Blind Harry’s History of Sir William Wallace Blind Hary (b. c. 1440, d. in or after 1492, ODNB), author of The Actis and Deidis of the Illuster and Vailzeand Campioun Schir William Wallace (abbreviated as William Wallace), a long poem concerning the life of the Scottish patriotic hero Sir William Wallace (d. 1305, ODNB). Book VII, ll. 515-622 recounts the capture of the Bishop’s Palace by Wallace in 1297. Hary places the conflict at the top of the High Street, though Rotten Row is not actually mentioned in his account, and while he relates that Wallace divided his forces Sir John the Grahame is not mentioned as being present. (457.18) the barns of Ayr According to Blind Hary (Book VII, ll. 425-514) a site at Ayr used as an English military barracks, where a number of Scottish barons of the district were hanged. Wallace was supposed to have burned the barracks with the English inside as an act of revenge. The incident is now generally regarded as not historical. (457.19) Pembroke Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1324, ODNB), who served Edward I of England in Scotland and took part in the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. Lockhart was therefore mistaken in stating that he was killed at the barns of Ayr the previous year. (457.23) Sir John the Grahame, his Achates Sir John Graham (d. 1298, ODNB) was a Scottish noble who supposedly fought alongside Wallace during the Scottish Wars of Independence, and was killed at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. Blind Hary’s poem includes a moving lament for him by Wallace. Achates is the faithful friend and follower of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. (457.27) where the College of Glasgow now stands On the High Street about half-way between the Cathedral and the town cross: see Note for 462.5-6. (457.28) English bishop of Edward’s making—Beck Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham (c. 1245-1311, ODNB), served Edward I of England as an arbitrator in the dispute about the succession to the Scottish crown, and supplied soldiers in March 1296 to Edward I for the invasion of Scotland; he was also present during the subsequent campaign, and according to Blind Harry’s William Wallace led his forces in person against Wallace in the encounter described in Book VII, ll. 515-622. (457.29) adhuc sub judice Short for adhuc sub judice lis est, the case is still before the court (legal Latin); in effect, indicating that the case has not yet been decided. (457.34) Mr P—— If Lockhart has a specific historical person in mind, he has not been identified. The following passage to the end of Letter LXVI is substantially republished from ‘Observations on “Peter’s Letters to his

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Kinsfolk”’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 612-21 (pp. 618-20). (457.40-458.1) Coffee-room, or Exchange See Note for 449.38. (458.5) paved piazza This had been the arcade of the Town Hall, but was formed into a piazza when the Tontine Buildings, containing the Exchange Coffee-Room, were erected in 1781: see Glasgow Delineated, p. 81 (with an engraving of the Town Hall and Tontine Buildings preceding p. 81). (458.13) blood A ‘fast’ young man, who is a trend-setter and sets the fashion in taste or dress. (458.13) box-coat A heavy overcoat for driving. (458.14) Belcher handkerchief A necktie named after the bare-knuckle prizefighter Jem Belcher (1781-1811, ODNB), and indicating a sportsman, either a devotee of boxing or of driving four-in-hand. (458.14) top-boots Fashionable high boots, often worn by huntsmen, jockeys, grooms and coachmen. (458.15) Ædepol! Indeed, certainly; a Latin affirmation, often thought to be an abbreviation of ‘per templem Pollux’ (by the temple of Pollux). (458.15) genseng Or ginseng, the root of a plant found in Northern China and elsewhere, considered to have medicinal properties. (458.16) whalebone stays Corsets for men to improve the figure would be reinforced (as were women’s corsets) with whalebone, a material made in fact of the baleen or sieve-like teeth of a whale. (458.16) surtout A greatcoat or overcoat. (458.17) Cossacks Loose cossack-style trousers drawn in at the ankle. (458.17-18) a Kent on his head Presumably a hat made by a hatter named Kent, of a particular style, possibly shaped like a trilby. (458.19) pullicat handkerchiefs A coloured and patterned handkerchief of a kind originally made at Pulicat on the coast of Madras in India. Glasgow was thought a centre of excellence in their manufacture (see Glasgow Delineated, p. 196). (458.19) bear Rough, unmannerly, or uncouth person. (458.20) voice like a glass-blower Presumably a loud one, since the work of blowing glass probably increased the workman’s lung capacity. (458.21) literateur A literary person, often a professional writer (French). (458.23) the Chronicle The Glasgow Chronicle newspaper, started in 1811, and published thrice-weekly on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. (458.23-24) Dr Chalmers The Church of Scotland minister and social reformer Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847, ODNB), who had been minister of Glasgow’s Tron parish since 1815. See also text at pp. 505-11 and Notes.

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(458.34) raræ aves Rare birds (Latin), people of a kind rarely encountered. (458.35-36) day’s work […] just on the chap Familiar expressions characteristic of mercantile Glasgow: the amount of work (or in this case, social pleasure) appropriate to a single day, and on the stroke of the hour as recorded by the clock. (458.38-39) blue-stocking See Note for 50.36-37. (459.4) make a silk purse of a sow’s ear To make something fine out of coarse materials: see ODEP, p. 733. (459.7-8) seemed to be no chicken Was no longer young: see ODEP, p. 118. (459.10) lick-spittle A parasite and sycophant. (459.10) toad-eater A humble female companion or domestic. (459.21) West India Madeira Fortified wine produced in Madeira, the chief island of an archipelago situated in the north Atlantic ocean, southwest of Portugal. It was often shipped on a round trip to India or another colony, since the intense heat in the ship’s hold improved the flavour and such wines were called ‘vinho da roda’ (round trip wines). They were particularly popular in the Americas since they did not deteriorate in high temperatures. (459.22) elixir vitæ Elixir of life (Latin); a potion associated with the philosopher’s stone and supposed to grant the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. (459.23) hock The white wine known as Hochheimer in Germany, derived from the name of the town of Hochheim am Main. (459.24) white hermitage A white wine produced in the Rhone district of France, which is, however, mostly known for its red wines. (459.25) perry or cider Alcoholic drinks made from pears and apples respectively. (459.27) real stuff An informal and colloquial expression indicating authenticity, and presumably characteristic of mercantile Glasgow. (459.32) a fat Falstaff Sir John Falstaff is the obese, elderly but convivial companion of Prince Harry in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. (459.39) “Elders” […] The Holy Fair See Robert Burns’s poetic description of a sacramental occasion in ‘The Holy Fair’ (Kinsley 70), in which ‘The auld Guidmen, about the grace, / Frae side to side they bother [fuss]’ (ll. 212-13). The goodman there is the head of a household, but not necessarily a church elder. (460.1) “the china” China or China-ware is a fine, semi-transparent earthenware only brought to Europe in quantities from the sixteenth century onwards after trade routes to China were established by the Portuguese and Dutch. Here a punch-bowl of this material is implied.

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(460.5) double bowl An expensive item of top-quality porcelain, more properly termed a double-walled bowl. The outer and inner bowls would be fired and decorated separately and then skilfully mounted together. (460.11) name of Sherbet Originally a name given in Persia and the East to a cooling drink made of fruit juice and water and cooled with snow. (460.19) tour-de-maitre Master’s tour (French); a complete explication of the subject by an expert. (460.31) up to trap Knowing their own interest: see ODEP, p. 836. (461.4) “Fronti nulla fides;” No reliance can be placed on appearance (Latin); appearances are deceptive. Letter LXVII (462.5-6) buildings […] more academical The University of Glasgow buildings, then situated on the High Street about half-way between the Cathedral and the town cross, dated predominantly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and consisted of several quadrangular stone courts and substantial gardens. The front on the High Street was three storeys high with three gates, the central one having the royal arms on it in relief and a balcony. The Faculty and Divinity Halls fronted the High Street. There was a chapel where services were held on Sundays during the university session, and matriculated students wore scarlet gowns. In 1863 the Old College site was sold, and the university moved to a new site at Gilmorehill. (462.11-13) Professors […] lodged […] handsome oblong court The earliest buildings in what was known as Professor’s Court were erected in 1722 and added to as the number of professors increased. (462.19-20) Faculty-Hall, or Senate-House The Faculty Hall, along with the Divinity Hall, fronted the High Street. (462.21-22) large new building in the Grecian style A classical-style addition, paid for by the Canton merchant John Hamilton and named after him, replaced the east range of the east quadrangle in 1811. It contained the Common Hall, the Anatomical Theatre, and halls for the Humanity, Greek, Chemical, Medical, and Mathematical Classes, with an archway giving access to the Hunterian Museum building (see following Notes). (462.23) curtains Walls connecting two gates or towers. (462.30) University Library The new Library was situated to the south of the Hunterian Museum (see next Note) and had been completed in 1782. (462.30-31) Hunterian Museum The building was erected in 1804 and designed by the architect William Stark (1770-1813, ODNB), and was much admired, particularly for its Roman Doric portico of six columns, then the grandest built in Scotland. The Stark Hunterian Museum building was demolished when the University of Glasgow sold its High Street campus, the

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modern Hunterian Museum being built as part of the replacement campus at Gilmorehill. (462.31) the collector’s will William Hunter (1718-1783, ODNB) was a physician, anatomist, and midwife with an aristocratic clientele that included Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. He had been educated at Glasgow University, which subsequently awarded him a doctorate, and at his death Hunter left the university his collections, his library, and a sum of £8000 to erect a suitable building in which to store his collections. (463.5) College gardens Glasgow Delineated describes them as ‘enclosed by a high stone wall, and […] laid out in gravel walks and shrubberies, for the use of the professors and students’ (p. 79). (463.11-12) duel between Frank and Rashleigh Osbaldistone See volume 2, chapter 12 of Scott’s Rob Roy, ed. by David Hewitt, EEWN 5 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 197-203. (463.12-14) Dr Reid […] Inquiry into the Human Mind Thomas Reid (1710-1796, ODNB) became Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow in 1764, when he published his Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense, much reprinted. (463.15-16) Adam Smith […] Wealth of Nations The moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith (bap. 1723, d. 1790, ODNB) was educated at Glasgow then at Oxford, and became Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow in 1752, resigning his chair in 1764. His An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776. (463.17) Dr Moore James Moor (bap. 1712, d. 1779, ODNB) was a graduate of Glasgow University and Professor of Greek there from 1746 to 1774. He was the author of a standard and popular text book on Greek grammar, Elementa linguae Graecae (1766). (463.18) pangs parturient Pains of delivery or bringing forth, usually with reference to childbirth. (463.18) famous Essay on the Greek Particles A work with this exact title has not been found, but Lockhart is probably referring to Moor’s On the Praepositions of the Greek language: An Introductory Essay, Read to a Literary Society in Glasgow, at their Weekly Meetings within the College, published by Foulis of Glasgow in 1766. (463.19-21) Mr John Young […] Church-yard.” John Young (1746/7-1820, ODNB) was a native of Glasgow and educated at its university, where he became Professor of Greek in 1774. His A Criticism on the Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard. Being a Continuation of Dr. J—n’s Criticism on the Poems of Gray was published in London in 1783, and reissued in Edinburgh by John Ballantyne & Co. in 1810. (463.27) prælections Public lectures or discourses.

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(463.28) Alumnus of this Alma Mater Literally, pupil [of this] bountiful mother (Latin); here former student of the University of Glasgow. (463.37) Porson, Burney, and Routh English classical scholars of high reputation in their lifetimes: Richard Porson (1759-1808, ODNB), Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, established principles of textual scholarship; Charles Burney (1757-1817, ODNB) was a schoolmaster and book collector, whose books are now in the British Library; Martin Joseph Routh (1755-1854, ODNB) was President of Magdalen College, Oxford. (464.1-2) Old Wyttenbach […] Leyden The German Swiss classical scholar Daniel Albert Wyttenbach (1746-1820), whose Bibliotheca Critica was published in instalments over 30 years from around 1775 and earned him a European reputation. He settled permanently in Leiden from 1799. For references to Morris’s European travels, particularly in Germany, in the early years of the nineteenth century (and partly reflecting Lockhart’s own in 1817), see text at p. 381. (464.4) “eximius ille apud Scotos philologus.” The great philologist among the Scots (Latin). (464.5) cicerone Guide who shows the antiquities or curiosities of a place to strangers. (464.24-25) “Quid agas tu, in isto angulo, pedibus strepitans et garriens?” ‘What are you doing over in that corner, shuffling your feet and chattering?’ (Latin). (464.25-26) “Cave tu tibi, Dugalde M’Quhirter, et tuas res agas!” ‘Look out for yourself, Dougal M’Whirter, and mind your own affairs!’ (Latin). (464.26-27) “Notetur, Phelimius O’Shaughnesy, sero ingrediens, ut solvat duas asses sterlinenses!” ‘Let it be noted, Phelim O’Shaughnessy, arriving late, and he shall pay two bawbees’ (Latin). Classical Roman coinage included a small-value bronze coin known as an as, for which the Scots bawbee seems a reasonable equivalent given that the usual sum a student would be fined for late attendance in 1819 is unknown. (464.27-28) “Iterumne admonendus es, Nicolæe Jarvie?” ‘Must I rebuke you yet again, Nicol Jarvie?’ (Latin). Nicol Jarvie is the name of a Glasgow merchant in Scott’s novel Rob Roy (1818). (464.28) “Quid hoc rei, Francisce Warper?” ‘What on earth is that, Francis Warper?’ (Latin). (464.33) “Magnanimi Heroes” Great heroes (Latin). Compare Virgil, Aeneid, VI. 649. (464.34) Old Parr Samuel Parr (1747-1825, ODNB), classicist and schoolmaster. The term ‘Old Parr’ was more usually applied to the centenarian Thomas Parr (d. 1635, ODNB). (464.39) primâ facie At first sight (Latin).

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(464.40) Hermann’s face That of German classical scholar and philologist Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann (1772-1848) of the University of Leipzig. (465.2) De Metris On Metres (Latin), and evidently referring here to Hermann’s early work De Metris Poetarum Graecorum et Romanorum (Leipzig, 1796). Later publications by the author included Elementa doctrinae metricae (1816). (465.2) Tom Gaisford’s The classical scholar Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855, ODNB) was dean of Christ Church, Oxford. (465.6) Parnassus Mountain near Delphi in Greece, associated with the worship of Apollo and the Muses. (465.11) Spurzheim Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) was one of the chief exponents of phrenology: see Note for 37.18. (465.11-13) “A man may be known [...] meetest him.” Not from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes (commonly abbreviated as ‘Eccles.’, as mistakenly footnoted in both ‘second’ and ‘third’ editions), which has only 12 chapters, but rather from the apocryphal Ecclesiasticus (commonly abbreviated as ‘Ecclus.’) 19. 29. This is a work of ethical teachings dating from roughly 200175 BCE by Ben Sira of Jerusalem, and accepted as canonical by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, but not by the Anglican churches or others (such as the Church of Scotland) originating from the Reformation. (465.17) sinus frontalis Frontal sinuses, situated behind the ridges of the brow. See also Note for 44.23-24. (465.21) differentia Distinguishing mark or characteristic (Latin). (465.22) Gall says Lockhart follows closely the wording of the section ‘Organ of Language’ in The Physiognomical System of Dr Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), pp. 375-76, which tells this anecdote of the youth of the founding father of phrenology, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), and the conclusions he drew from his early experience. (466.32-34) Horne Took […] Wimbledon The radical politician and philologist John Horne Tooke (1736-1812, ODNB) moved to Wimbledon in 1792, holding weekly Sunday dinners at his house, Chester Lodge, situated on the west side of Wimbledon Common. His conversation is described by Michael T. Davis in the ODNB entry as ranging freely ‘between humorous wit and caustic criticism’. Although most of his publications concerned politics, the three-part Diversions of Purley (1786-1805) was a well-regarded attempt to democratise language. (466.35) Nimrod A ‘mighty hunter before the Lord’ in Genesis 10. 9. (466.36) “επεα πτεροεντα.” Winged words (Greek). See also Note for 393.16. (466.40) the particle ἀῤα An illative, or inferential, particle meaning ‘it follows that’ and variously translated as ‘then’, ‘therefore’, ‘so’, ‘so then’, among other terms (Greek).

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(467.22) Scottish method of pronouncing Greek This conformed more to European norms than the English pronunciation, which derived from the work of John Cheke (1514-1557, ODNB) and Thomas Smith (1513-1577, ODNB), who proposed a reconstructed pronunciation of both Greek and Latin based on the scheme of the humanist scholar Erasmus, which was widely adopted in schools. This was then altered further soon afterwards by the Great Vowel Shift which changed the phonetic values assigned to the English long vowels. Further changes deriving from the work of Isaac Vossius (1618-1689) and Heinrich Christian Henninius (fl. 1700) added other peculiarities to English pronunciation of ancient Greek, so that by the early nineteenth century English pronunciation became further removed from both Ancient Greek and from Greek as pronounced in other western countries. (467.27) young men […] fervent Grecians Lockhart himself was one of Young’s pupils at the University of Glasgow. Another admiring sketch by an old pupil is given in Thomas Hamilton’s 1827 novel The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, ed. by Maurice Lindsay (Aberdeen: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1990), p. 39 (chapter 7). For further information on Hamilton himself, see Note for 442.31. (467.29) as I have mentioned before See Letter XIII (pp. 92-93). The usual course of study at Glasgow was in five parts: Latin; Greek; Logic; Moral Philosophy; and Natural Philosophy. (468.9-10) Shakspeare has said of Royal Beauty Probably a recollection of Viola’s speech to Olivia in Twelfth Night, I. v. 231-32, although Olivia is not a royal personage (‘If you will lead those graces to the grave / And leave the world no copy’). The italicisation of the last word in the line directly quoted suggests a pun on ‘copy’ in the sense of written material delivered to the printer for typesetting. (468.16) Mr Jardine, the Professor of Logic George Jardine (1742-1827, ODNB), Professor of Logic at Glasgow University from 1787, was a firm advocate of the general Scottish system of education. His alterations to the curriculum of his own subject included lecturing in English rather than Latin and holding daily catechisms or examinations of his students. (468.20-21) his former disciples These included other Blackwood writers, besides Lockhart himself, such as Thomas Hamilton who gave a warmly favourable portrayal of Jardine as a teacher in chapter VII of his 1827 novel The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, ed. by Maurice Lindsay (Aberdeen: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1990), pp. 39-40. (468.30) the commemoration of Rugby The school at Rugby in Warwickshire had been founded in 1567, and began to develop from an almost moribund local grammar school in the eighteenth century under capable headmasters such as Henry Holyoake—who drew boys from as far afield as Cheshire, Kent and Somerset—and Thomas James, who administered a new constitution secured by Act of Parliament in 1777. The school moved from the middle of

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town to occupy a manor house site in 1750. Commemorations in such schools in praise of the Founder usually took place annually, and could involve a sermon or oration by senior pupils; in the case of Rugby School the founder was Lawrence Sheriff. (468.34) prælection A public lecture or discourse. (469.27-28) good such men do […] cannot “die with them.” Probably an allusion to Julius Caesar, III. ii. 76-77 (‘The evil that men do lives after them, / The good is oft interred with their bones’). (469.36-37) fine collection of anatomical preparations For the Hunterian Museum see Notes for 462.30-31 and 462.31. The anatomy room there contained ‘Dr. Hunter’s extensive and splendid collection of Anatomical preparations, preserved in spirits, arranged in presses, and in a fine state of preservation. In the drawers of a large table, of the form of a cross, in the middle of this room, a number of Anatomical preparations in spirits. Also Skeletons and detached bones, natural, diseased, and deformed, with a number of dry preparations, and other articles connected with Anatomy, Surgery, &c.—Upon this table are placed under glass jars, corroded preparations of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and diseased Skulls’ (Glasgow Delineated, p. 159). (470.3) De Muliere About women (Latin): a humorous reference to a supposed publication of the fictitious Morris: see also the list of works allegedly by Morris on p. 559. The museum’s founder, Dr William Hunter, had been a celebrated midwife: see Note for 462.31. (470.3-4) collection of medals Dr Hunter’s collection of medals was ‘surpassed by very few Cabinets in the world. The Greek and Roman coins are remarkable for their number, rarity, and high state of preservation. This rich Medallic treasure has been valued at Forty Thousand Pounds’ (Glasgow Delineated, p. 156). (470.7) stuffed animals Fish and reptiles in spirits and preserved dry were displayed at the foot of the stair-case, while in the Lower Hall were exhibited various animals, including ‘a young Elephant stuffed,—a large and a small Mummy,—Skeletons, parts of Skeletons, and horns of various foreign and rare Animals’ (Glasgow Delineated, p. 160). (470.10) an Egyptian mummy Glasgow Delineated notes the presence of ‘a large and a small Mummy’ among the exhibits in the Lower Hall of the Museum (p. 160). (470.16-17) Spurzheim […] large in most mummies No reference to mummies in the writings of Spurzheim (for whom see Note for 37.18) has as yet been located. (470.18-19) elegant […] both in shape and furniture The picture gallery was situated partly within the dome of the Hunterian Museum. ‘In the middle of this gallery stands a very handsome octagonal table, corresponding to the figure of the room, containing an arranged collection of fine specimens selected from

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the extensive mineralogical collection […] There is also exhibited in this Room a very splendid collection of shells’ (Glasgow Delineated, p. 161). (470.19-20) collection is not extensive Glasgow Delineated states that it consisted of about 60 pictures, which it listed in a catalogue in their order of arrangement, beginning with the pictures on the left-hand side of the gallery and moving progressively around it (pp. 161-62). (470.21) Guido The Italian painter and draftsman Guido Reni (1575-1642). (470.21-22) Virgin watching the infant Christ asleep Catalogued as no. 59 and by Guido in Glasgow Delineated and footnoted as having been valued ‘by an eminent Artist at 1,000 Guineas’ (p. 162). The painting in the Hunterian Museum (GLAHA 43789) is now considered to be an eighteenth-century copy of Guido’s Virgin and Sleeping Child of 1627 in the Galleria Doria Pamphili in Rome. (470.22) St Catherine, by Domenichino Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), known as Domenichino, was an important artist of the Bolognese School. The St Catherine in the Hunterian Museum (GLAHA 43787) is listed as no. 50 in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated (p. 162). Although purchased as by Domenichino, it is now thought to have been painted by Guido Reni (15751642) between 1605 and 1608. (470.23) head of St Peter, by Rubens The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) probably painted this picture (GLAHA 43808) around 1609-10. It is listed as no. 20 in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated and footnoted, ‘This picture has been valued at L. 1500’ (p. 162). It is presently described as ‘Study of the Head of an Old Man with White Curly Beard’, as it seems to be a preparatory image for the head of Melchior, the oldest of the three kings, in Rubens’s Adoration of the Magi, commissioned by the city of Antwerp in 1609-10 and now in the Prado in Madrid. (470.25) Correggio Antonio Allegri Correggio (c. 1489-1534) an Italian painter who took his name from the small town of his birth. (470.25) Virgin and Child, and St Joseph Lockhart’s description indicates that this is the picture listed as no. 4 in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated as ‘Virgin and Child’ and footnoted ‘A painting on the same subject and by the same Artist was lately purchased by the National Gallery at L. 3500’ (p. 162). However, there is no figure of St Joseph in this painting, though the Madonna does have a basket at her feet containing cloth and shears and the infant is wearing a shirt. The picture in the Hunterian Museum purchased by Dr Hunter as a Correggio is now entitled Madonna of the Basket (GLAHA 43520) and thought to be a copy made between 1650 and 1700 of the original Correggio of c.1524 in the National Gallery (NG23). (470.29) Salvator The Italian painter Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) was regarded at this time as the exemplar of the Romantic artist for his depictions of wild and savage scenes, boldly handled. See also Note for 387.21.

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(470.30) Laomedon, detected by Apollo and Neptune In Greek mythology Laomedon was a King of Troy who employed Apollo and Poseidon (Neptune in Roman mythology) to build the walls of the city, but when they had finished refused to pay them. The painting is listed as by Salvator Rosa as no. 53 in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated (p. 162). Although Dr Hunter purchased Laomedon Refusing Payment to Poseidon and Apollo (GLAHA 44383) as by Rosa it is no longer thought to be his work but that of an unknown artist and is dated to between 1640 and 1660. (470.31-32) Danae and the Golden Shower Danae in Greek mythology was the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos, to whom an oracle foretold that he would be killed by his daughter’s son. He therefore confined Danae in a brazen tower so that no man could approach her, but she was visited by Zeus who took the form of a shower of gold, and subsequently bore a son called Perseus. (470.32) Luca Giordano Giordano (1634-1705) was an Italian decorative painter whose work was characterised by its light luminous colours. Danae and the Golden Shower (GLAHA 43533) is the first item in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated (p. 161). Although once thought to be by Giordano, it is now dated to between 1720 and 1780 and attributed to Andrea Casali (17051784), an Italian painter and art-dealer active in England and from whose sale Dr Hunter may have purchased it. (470.34) Murillo The Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (16171682) was known for an idealistic treatment of favourite devotional subjects. (470.34) the Good Shepherd Listed as no. 31 in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated (p. 162) and footnoted ‘L.2000 was offered for this picture’. The Infant Christ as the Good Shepherd (GLAHA 43771) is now thought to date between 1630 and 1680 and to be the work of an unknown pupil of Murillo, working in the master’s style. (470.35) landscape by Rembrandt Such a landscape by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) is listed as no. 44 in the catalogue in Glasgow Delineated (p. 162). Although Dr Hunter bought Landscape in Holland (GLAHA 43744) as a Rembrandt it was painted by Philip de Koninck (16191688), a Dutch artist specialising in extensive panoramic views of Holland seen from an elevated position, probably between 1650 and 1688. (471.8-9) what Homer calls the immeasurable earth In The Iliad (XXIV. 342), in contrasting the boundlessness of the earth with the speed of Mercury traversing it to aid Priam to reach the tent of Achilles unobserved. (471.12) αναριθμον γελασμα Countless twinkling (Greek). See Æschylus, Prometheus Bound, l. 90. (471.18) the porter’s lodge […] ( Archy Cameron’s,) The ‘Letter from Mr Odoherty, Enclosing the third Part of Christabel’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (June 1819), 286-91, is end-dated ‘Archie Cameron’s College,

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Glasgow’ (p. 286). No details have been found relating to Archie Cameron himself. (471.23) quantum sufficit A sufficient quantity, as much as suffices (Latin). Letter LXVIII (472.11-12) Mr Kirkman Finlay Leading Glasgow cotton merchant (17731842, ODNB), founder of Finlay & Co. the largest textile concern in Scotland. Lord Provost of Glasgow (1812-14, 1818), he was MP for the Glasgow burghs 1812-18 and for Malmesbury 1818-20, his opinions on mercantile issues being widely respected in parliament. He was in fact a hard taskmaster in the cotton mills, justifying the lower wages paid to mill workers in Scotland, compared with those in Lancashire, on the grounds that Scotland was healthier and the living cheaper, and putting down strikes of textile workers in 1816-17 and 1819-20. He was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1819, but subsequently defeated after a student campaign leading to the election of Francis Jeffrey. For an account of Finlay’s interventions in Parliament from his maiden speech on 20 May 1813 see https://www.historyofparliamentonline. org/volume/1790-1820/member/finlay-kirkman-1773-1842. (472.14) the Courier The Glasgow Courier, as published between 1 September 1791 and 1866. Nothing making fun of Kirkman Finlay in early 1819 has been found there. (472.17) words of the Wanderer The passage quoted in the footnote is from William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VIII, ll. 156-85. (472-73 footnote) Newby-bridge Once in Lancashire, now part of Cumbria, village at the southern end of Lake Windermere. It is likely that Lockhart is referring to Backbarrow Cotton Mill, at the southern tip of Windermere, 1½ miles southwest of Newby-bridge, which a parliamentary commission set up in 1816 criticised for its use of child labour and poor living conditions for adult workers: see ‘Minutes of Evidence before Select Committee on State of Children employed in Manufactories’, Parliamentary Papers (1816), III, 17885. (472-73 footnote) curfew knoll A bell rung to indicate a curfew, a regulation indicating when fires should be covered or put out. The popular belief that William I introduced the curfew into England appears to be without historical foundation. (473.3) eyes fretted and inflamed Alluding to opthalmic conditions caused by cotton fluff in carding rooms. (473.7-9) The gentle visitations […] taint Compare Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VIII, ll. 330, 339-40. (473.19) fine park Glasgow Green, on the southeast side of Glasgow, on the north bank of the River Clyde. Established in the fifteenth century, it is the oldest park in the city. According to Glasgow Delineated (p. 98), ‘It is

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surrounded and intersected by gravel walks, which are in some parts overshadowed by lofty trees’. It was a centre for radical activity in the early nineteenth century. In 1816 as many 40,000 people attended a meeting on the Green to support demands for more representative government and an end to the Corn Laws which kept food prices high. It was also one of the meeting places for activists in what became the ‘radical war’ of 1820. According to Glasgow Post Office Directories for 1815-17 and 1818, Lockhart’s father, the Rev. Dr John Lockhart, resided at 40 Charlotte Street, consisting then of a row of Georgian houses, and running down directly towards the Green. (473.23) Trongate See Note for 447.28. (474.8) tall Monument Nelson’s Monument, built on a little eminence on the western side of Glasgow Green by public subscription in 1806, a year after the death of Admiral Nelson (1758-1805, ODNB), and the first civic monument in Britain to celebrate his victories, predating Nelson’s Column in London by three decades. Built in the style of Cleopatra’s Needle, it stood 144 feet high before being struck by lightning in 1810 and thus reduced by about 20 feet. Nelson’s naval victories are recorded on panels around the base: Aboukir (1798); Copenhagen (1801); and Trafalgar (1805), where he was killed; the fourth panel being inscribed with his name as ‘Horatio Viscount Nelson’. There is an engraving in Glasgow Delineated, following page 82. (474.19) old Scots game of golf Glasgow Golf Club, founded in 1787, was first established on Glasgow Green. It claims to be the earliest golf club in the west of Scotland, and the ninth oldest in the world. The game of golf is generally understood to have originated in Scotland. (474.28) washing-green The washing (usually by foot) and bleaching of linen was one of several functions carried out on Glasgow Green. A fold-out prefatory map in James Cleland’s A Description of the Manner of Improving The Green of Glasgow, of Raising Water for the Supply of the Public Buildings of that City, &c. &c. (Glasgow, 1813) shows specific areas set aside as bleaching greens near the river and at the Salt-market end of Glasgow Green, as well as a wash-house. (474.31) corporal Glasgow Green was used as an exercise ground for soldiers. According to Glasgow Delineated (p. 98), ‘The military belonging to the garrison are here occasionally drawn out and exercised’. (474.32) Waterloo medal Issued in 1816-17 to every officer, noncommissioned officer, and soldier, who had taken part in the Battle of Waterloo and associated battles in 1815. The recipients were known as ‘Waterloo Men’. (474.35-36) Cork […] Manchester […] Hull […] Dundee All four places were garrison towns. (474.37) watering-pan Probably Lockhart has in mind here a washing tub: though rough-dried linen would be later sprinkled with water (normally at

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home) to facilitate ironing, it seems unlikely that a smaller utensil of this kind would be taken to Glasgow Green when the washing was being done. (474.39) philabeg Kilt, as worn by Highland regiments in the Napoleonic wars. (474.39-40) rattan A walking cane or switch, of a kind made from the thinly jointed stems of a palm: sixpenny indicates the cost of six old pence (2.5p). (475.3-5) Non sola comptos […] cultus Horace, Odes, IV. ix. 13-15 (‘not the only one to be set in fire as she gazed at her lover’s neat hair, his goldembroidered clothes, his royal finery’: of Spartan Helen). (475.11) regales cultus Regal dress (Latin: see preceding Note). (475.16-17) glorious 18th of June Date of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. (475.29) kilted Tucked up. Compare Allan Ramsay, ‘The Toast’ (1724): ‘If ye bare-headed saw her, / Kilted to the knee’ (ll. 15-16). (476.29-477.1) Ghost in Hamlet—the “sable silvered.” Horatio describes the beard of the ghost of Hamlet’s father as ‘sable silvered’ in Hamlet, I. ii. 241. (476 footnote) Πάππα φίλ᾿, οὐκ ἂν δή μοι […] πάντα μέμηλεν ‘Papa dear, will you not make ready for me a wagon, high and with strong wheels, so that I may take my fine clothes, which are lying here soiled, to the river for washing? For you yourself, too, it is proper, when you are at council with the princes, that you should have clean clothes upon you; and you have five sons living in your halls—two are wedded, but three are sturdy bachelors—and these always wish to put on freshly washed clothes and go to the dance. All this I have to think about.’ (Greek) See Homer, The Odyssey, VI. 57-65. The speech occurs during an incident where Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous of Phaecia, prompted by a dream from Athena, goes to a river near the shore with her maidens to wash linen and where she encounters the ship-wrecked Odysseus. (477.2) non-chalance See Note for 203.7. (477.20) dings baith Beats both. (477.22) Broomielaw Stretch of land running along the north side of the River Clyde; site of Glasgow’s first quay, built in 1688. The first commercial steamship service departed from there in 1812. (477.22) gabbarts Barges or small one-masted vessels designed for inland navigation. (477.23) up to Hamilton The town of Hamilton lies some 12 miles southeast of Glasgow on the south side of the River Clyde. It expanded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through manufacture of textiles, mining, and engineering. (477.29) Monkland Canal Some 12 miles long and designed to bring coal into Glasgow from the mines of North Lanarkshire. Constructed in sections

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from 1771 it reached its terminus at the Monkland basin close to Glasgow Cathedral in 1794. Maintaining an adequate water supply was an ongoing problem. (478.7) Horner, he’s gane Francis Horner (1778-1817, ODNB) died in Pisa in Italy on 8 February 1817: see also Note for 266.11-12. (478.8) report on the bullion Horner was an MP from 1806, and in 1810 he chaired the Bullion Committee, which investigated the high price of gold, inconvertible paper money, and the gold standard. Its Report is one of the classic documents of monetary theory. He also provided the bulk of the economic articles in the Edinburgh Review, including several on the question of gold bullion and paper credit, such as ‘Thornton on the Paper Credit of Great Britain’ in the issue for October 1802. See The Economic Writings of Francis Horner in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ 1802-1806, ed. by Frank Whitson Fetter (London: London School of Economics, 1957). (478.9) Harry Brougham Henry Brougham (1778-1868, ODNB), one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, perhaps here over-familiarly called Harry: see also Note for 266.9-10. (478.9-10) under correction Subject to correction, admitting the possibility of error; often a purely formal expression of deference. (478.10) Sir Francis Burdett Sir Francis Burdett, Bart. (1770-1844, ODNB), radical Whig politician, and agitator for parliamentary reform: see also Note for 397.8. There is no evidence that Burdett contributed to the Edinburgh Review, though his name features there on numerous occasions. (478.11) puir man’s friend Evidently a common expression in Radical circles. The reformer William Cobbett (1763-1835, ODNB) subsequently published The Poor Man’s Friend; or, Companion for the Working Classes (1826). (478.15) dooncome Fall in status, collapse. (478.21) Paisley Large town on the River Clyde in Renfrewshire, some 11 miles west of the centre of Glasgow, and one of the largest manufacturing centres in Scotland. From the early nineteenth century it became famous for the production of Paisley shawls, made from intricately woven wool, following a pattern originating from Persia and India. Paisley was a main centre of radical activity in the west of Scotland in the autumn of 1819. (478.21) before the House of Commons No specific occasion has been found, though on 8 May 1811 a Petition from Paisley and Lanark respecting the Cotton Manufactures was presented to Parliament by Lord Archibald Hamilton (Parliamentary Debates, vol. XIX (1811), 1017); while the wages paid to weavers as opposed to spinners in Paisley was mentioned in a debate on the State of the Manufacturing Districts on 9 December 1819 (vol. XLI (1820), 922). (478.23) maist feck The greater part.

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(478.26-27) Luddite gowks hereawa Luddite fools in these parts, gowk in Scots also signifying a cuckoo. The Luddites were a secret organization of English textile workers in the nineteenth century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery as a form of protest. (478.27) braw lesson in the ninety-three The Scottish Society of the Friends of the People had held a series of Conventions in 1792 and 1793, to which the government reacted harshly, sentencing the leaders to penal transportation. (478.29) the burnt bairn […] fire Proverbial (see ODEP, p. 92). (478.29) Dauvid Hume David Hume, philosopher and historian (1711-1776, ODNB), here with a Scots intonation to the first name, and perhaps somewhat simplistically invoked as a disciple of progress. (478.31) march of intellect A term associated with the advance of knowledge through the education of working people, and increasingly common in the following two decades. It was also used satirically, as in the series of prints under that name by William Heath published between 1825 and 1829, one of which shows a dustman reading by his fireside. (479.1-2) M‘Taffie and Company, in Manchester Not identified as such. But the slang use of ‘Taffie’ to denote a Welshman perhaps suggests the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen (1771-1858, ODNB), who first went into business as a textile manufacturer in Manchester, then a leading centre for the production of cotton goods. Owen moved to New Lanark in Scotland in 1800, developing the industrial site there along relatively humanitarian lines. On the other hand, the ‘Mc’ in the surname might indicate the involvement of Scotsmen in the Manchester cotton trade: for instance, the firms of McConnell and Kennedy and Adam and George Murray, whose cotton spinning factories by 1815 were the two largest there, each employing more than 1000 workers. (479.6) Parochial Schools Widespread education was pioneered by the Church of Scotland following the Reformation; the First Book of Discipline (1560) has a substantial section outlining a national scheme of education organised around the Protestant church in which every parish should have its own school under kirk supervision, and every notable town a schoolmaster able to teach Latin and Greek. (479.8) Seceders Referring to the breaking away from the established Church of Scotland by various seceding groups during the eighteenth century, none of which presumably appeal to the speaker as he sees one of the true functions of education as being to release people from the bonds of religion. ‘Dissenters’ as previously mentioned by Morris more usually refers to congregations in England operating outside the established Church of England, such groups often holding liberal political views. (479.12) perfectibility of the species The belief in a necessary advance to a state of human mental perfection, as advanced in works such as William Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).

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(479.20-21) Thomas Paine English radical thinker (1737-1809, ODNB), author of The Rights of Man (1791), who subsequently fled to France and then America. His Age of Reason (1794-1807) argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. (479.32-33) women […] Hume […] superstition See Hume’s ‘The Natural History of Religion’ (1757): ‘The leaders and examples of every kind of superstition, says Strabo, are the women. They excite the men to devotion and supplications, and the observance of religious days’ (Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (London, 1758), p. 498). (479.35) Sandy Spreull […] Jamie Jamieson Apparently fictitious names (for fellow weavers). (479.38) bergin Contending. (479.39) Martinmas was a year Martinmas is 11 November, one of the Scottish quarter-days; so presumably the equivalent of ‘last November’. (480.1) in a low In flames. (480.1) before […] Jack Robinson Proverbial expression indicating quickness (ODEP, p. 40). (480.5) public library A subscription library, funded by payments from its members or sometimes an employer. There are several examples of such libraries serving working-class readers in Scotland, such as the Leadhills miners’ library founded in 1741. See K. A. Manley, Books, Borrowers, and Shareholders: Scottish Circulating and Subscription Libraries before 1825 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 2012). (480.8) warst times of a’ Probably referring to periods of falling wages when weavers working independently were particularly hard hit by increasing industrialisation in textile production. (480.9) our books Works indicated include: David Hume, Essays, Moral and Political (1741-42) and History of Great Britain (1754-61); the English philosopher John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690); the satirical novel Candide (1759) by the French philosopher Voltaire; An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (1804), by James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale; Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope (1799); Robert Tannahill, Poems and Songs (1815); and James Hogg, The Queen’s Wake (1813). It is worth noting the presence of labouring-class poets here, especially Tannahill who was a Paisley weaver. (480.13) Struthers John Struthers (1776-1853, ODNB), Scottish poet, author of The Poor Man’s Sabbath (Glasgow, 1804) and other works: son of a shoemaker, Struthers himself specialised in making fine shoes. (480.14) Robin Burns Familiarly naming Robert Burns (1759-1796, ODNB), the most celebrated of all Scottish ‘peasant’ poets.

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(480.16) Encyclopædia The Encyclopædia Britannica, a Scottish enterprise, first issued in numbers 1768-71, followed by a series of expanded editions, a fourth in 20 volumes appearing in 1801-10. The undertaking was taken over by Archibald Constable in 1812, and Supplements in six volumes published between 1815 and 1824. (480.18) Age of Reason Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, published in English in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. The sinking of the weaver’s voice at this point stems from this having been a proscribed book in Britain, the authorities prosecuting printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it. See also Note for 479.20-21. (480.19) gay wheen Fair number, considerable amount. (480.25) Ruglen Scots name for Rutherglen, ancient burgh in South Lanarkshire, some 4 miles south of the centre of Glasgow, and becoming administratively a component of the city in 1975. It had a long history of coal mining, and was a centre of heavy industry in the nineteenth century. During the ‘radical war’ of 1820 a meeting at Glasgow Green (see also Note for 473.19) on 23 March moved on to Rutherglen, where plans were revealed to establish a Provisional Government. (480.27) Jock Blair’s Not identified: possibly a fictitious name. (480.27) Thomas Muir (1765-1799, ODNB), political reformer, born in Glasgow; prosecuted for seditious activities in 1793, including distribution of the Rights of Man (see Note for 479.20-21). He was transported to Botany Bay, in Australia, before finally finding refuge in France. (480.28) public Public house, inn. (480.31) huge clock of the Cathedral Glasgow Cathedral had two towers, now no longer existing: the northernmost one, which contained the clock, was demolished in 1846. Letter LXIX (482 heading) Clarendon-Hotel, Bond-Street See Note for 426 heading. (482.8) Mr Cline Henry Cline (1750-1827, ODNB) was master of the College of Surgeons from 1815, and at the peak of his career earned approximately £10,000 a year from his medical practice. His house was at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in Holburn, London. (482.10) Experto crede Roberto Proverbial expression in Latin, ‘experto crede’ meaning ‘trust in one experienced’, literally ‘trust the/an expert’. It is found in variant form as ‘experto credite’ in Virgil, Aeneid, XI. 283. The fuller ‘Experto crede Roberto’ (effectively, ‘Believe Robert who has tried it’) is used by Robert Burton in the Introduction (‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’) to his Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1621), p. 7.

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(482.15) Vauxhall punch An arrack punch that was a notable feature of refreshments at the Vauxhall pleasure gardens in Lambeth in London. It was a heady liquor made from mixing grains of the benjamin flower with rum, the name arrack (sweat or juice in Arabic) indicating the presence of a distillation or fermentation of plant material in a drink. (482.15) the Cyder Cellar A tavern on Maiden Lane in the Covent Garden district of London, frequented by men of wit and fashion and also by notable actors after the theatres had closed at the end of the evening. (482.16) Burton ale A strong ale, dark and sweet, named after the brewing town of Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire. (482.16) Henrietta Street London street near the Covent Garden piazza, whose occupants were mostly tradesmen. (482.17) flip A mixture of beer and spirit, sweetened with sugar and heated with a hot iron. (482.17-18) the Shades Name of a London Tavern at 28 Charing Cross Road in Whitehall: it was completely rebuilt in 1898. ‘Shades’ is a generic name for cellars. (482.18) the Cheshire Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is a tavern at 145 Fleet Street, rebuilt after the Great Fire of London of 1666 and frequented by literary men, such as Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson. (482.19) gin twist A twist is a drink consisting of a mixture of two chief ingredients, here gin and lemon juice, duly sweetened. (482.19) the Blue Posts A popular London pub sign, either referring to the posts of a sedan chair or the traditional markers of the boundary of a hunting forest. No specific inn has been identified. (482.19) the One Tun Not identified. There is an inn of that name on Saffron Hill, which has apparently been in existence since 1759, but this slum district seems an unlikely haunt for the fashionable Potts. (482.20-21) alley […] between King Street and Pall Mall Probably Crown Passage, once the main route between King Street and Pall Mall, and the site of the Red Lion Inn, one of the oldest public houses in London. (482.21) Roubel’s French-style gaming house, founded by Paul Roubel in 1815, with a reputation for fine cookery, located at 40 Pall Mall. For further information see ‘Gaming, Gaming-Houses, and Gamesters’, Bentley’s Miscellany, 18 (1845), 489-97 (pp. 492-93). (483.4) Almack’s Assembly rooms on King Street, St James’s, presided over by a committee of ladies of high social rank. (483.5) female Sawneys Sawney is a derisive name for a Scotsman, and an abbreviation of the common male Scottish forename Alexander. (483.5-6) George Street Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh These were first opened on George Street in Edinburgh’s New Town in 1787, built in a plain

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classical style, though a Roman portico was added in 1818. The ball room is 92 feet long, and there is also a Music Hall. (483.9) Gallery of the Louvre (then in its glory) Napoleon pillaged art treasures from Italy in particular and had them transported to the Louvre in Paris: many of them were eventually repatriated following his final defeat in 1815. Scott comments on the state of the picture gallery at the Louvre in 1815 in his Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (Edinburgh, 1816), pp. 321-40. For previous mention of the Louvre (and the underlying possibility of Lockhart’s having been there) see text at 325.23-24 and Note. (483.13) Raphael The celebrated Renaissance painter Raphael, or Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520). (483.13) Rubens The best-known Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens (15771640). (483.13) Domenichino The painter Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641) of the Bolognese School. (483.14) Michael Angelo Or Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), the Renaissance painter, architect and sculptor. (483.18) Guidos Works by the Italian painter and draftsman Guido Reni (1575-1642). (483.19) Correggios Works by the Italian painter Antonio Allegri Correggio (1489-1534), who took his name from the small town of his birth. (483.19) Claudes Works by the French landscape painter Claude Lorraine (1600-1682). (483.19) Poussins Works by the founder of classical French Baroque painting, Nicolas Poussin (1593/4-1665). (483.20) Blue Boar in Fleet Street There were several Blue Boar inns in London, though none apparently in Fleet Street. There was an historic Blue Boar Inn with Cromwellian associations in Holburn. (483.21) Swan with Two Necks in Fetter-lane Not identified, though there was a famous Swan with Two Necks coaching-inn in Lad Lane, off Aldgate in the City of London, a principal point of departure for coaches travelling to northern England. The inn is recorded in London directories from 1839 onwards: see Thomas Hamilton, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, ed. by Maurice Lindsay (Aberdeen: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1990), p. 152 and Note. (483.29) necklace of Mrs Long Wellesley Catherine Tylney-Long, the sister and co-heiress of Sir James Tylney-Long of Draycot in Wiltshire, owned estates in Essex and Hampshire said to be worth around £40,000 per annum, making her perhaps the richest commoner in England. She had married Lord Mornington’s son and heir, William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley in 1812. In reporting their marriage, newspapers (see the Caledonian Mercury of 19 March

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1812) stated that Catherine Tylney-Long wore a necklace worth 25,000 guineas. (483.29-30) the Opera At His Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket operas were the main offering of the evening entertainments, occasionally interspersed with dances and sometimes a short farce or play as an afterpiece. The second theatre building on the site (there between 1791 and 1867) hosted the first London performances of several of Mozart’s operas, notably Don Giovanni in April 1817. (483.30) Almack’s See Note for 483.4. (483.32) poneys A poney is a slang expression for £25. (483.40) single blessedness State of being unmarried, probably from Shakespeare’s description of a rose withering on the virgin thorn by Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I. i. 78. (484.5) sugar plantation in Trinidad Trinidad in the Caribbean had been taken from French into British ownership in 1797. Its large sugar fields were dependent on the labour of slaves from Africa for their successful cultivation. (484.8) “dear defunct.” For a similar use of ‘dear defunct’ to refer to a deceased person, see Walter Scott, The Fortunes of Nigel, ed. by Frank Jordan, EEWN 13 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), p. 42. (484.28) run for the plate Enter for the prize, an expression taken from horseracing, where the winner’s trophy of a gold or silver cup might be referred to as the plate. (484.29) Verbum sapienti A word to the wise (Latin). (485.1) Durham Ox An early example of the Shorthorn breed of cattle, setting the standard for the breed, this steer was toured around England and Scotland between 1801 and its death in 1807 by its owner John Day, and prints and china depicting it were sold commercially. Its weight at death was estimated at 189 stone. (485.1-2) size and rotundity of her person For Mrs Jardine see Note for 449.6. Thomas Hamilton also comments on the ‘portly and capacious figure’ of the landlady of the Buck’s Head Inn, though without giving her name. See The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, ed. by Maurice Lindsay (Aberdeen: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1990), p. 405. (485.4) Mensuration of Solids Mensuration is the mathematical name for calculating the areas, volumes, length of sides, and other geometric parts of standard geometric shapes such as circles, spheres, polygons, prisms, cylinders, cones, etc., through the use of mathematical equations or formulas. The individual formula employed will vary according to the shape concerned. (485.9) red herring A herring that is both smoked and salted to ensure its preservation, turning reddish-brown in the process. James Hogg refers to a recent gift of a barrel of ‘red herrings’ in his letter to John Aitken of 25 October

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1820: The Collected Letters of James Hogg, ed. by Gillian Hughes and others, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004-08), II, 54: from this reference the fare seems to have been a quite ordinary, though tasty, component of a breakfast or supper in Scotland at the time. The figurative use of the term in the sense of a false clue or distraction, while it does not seem immediately to apply here, was current by Lockhart’s time. (485.12) chop en papillote A chop, or cutlet, of meat; en papillotte is a culinary term, derived from French cookery, where meat or fish is baked in a greased paper envelope, thus cooking it in the steam of its own juices. (485.19) Glasgow punch For an account of the making of Glasgow punch, see text at pp. 459-60. (485.23) Oh, I did quaff not wisely, but too well Alluding to Othello’s selfdescription as ‘one that loved not wisely but too well’ in Othello, V. ii. 353. (485.27-28) of brass Brass is a metal used as a type of hardness, imperishableness, or insensibility. (485.29) Esculapius Æsculapius is the Roman form of Asklepios, Greek god of medicine and healing. (485.37) Deipnosophism Mastery of the art of dining, taken from the title of the early third-century Greek work (Deipnosophistae) by Athenæus, in which a number of learned men discuss dinners, literature and miscellaneous topics. (486.3) Eau de Garusse A medicinal elixir deriving its name from Joseph Garus (1648-1722), a French doctor, apparently used successfully on notable patients such as the Duchesse de Berry. It contained myrrh, saffron, aloes, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. (486.3) Regent’s punch A punch served to the future George IV at his home of Carlton Palace and containing champagne, green tea, rum and cognac, together with orange, lemon, lime, and pineapple juices, and sweetened with sugar. (486.5) Mynheer Dutch addressive, equivalent to ‘Mr’ or ‘Sir’; hence a Dutchman. (486.8-9) ecce signum! Behold the proof! (Latin). (486.30) Bon-ton Literally, good tone (French); polite society, the fashionable world. (486.35) Blake Not identified, but presumably a fashionable barber or hairdresser: see also text at 426.11 and Note. (486.36) Stulze Stultz was a premier tailor during the Regency period, with a shop at 10 Clifford Street near Savile Row: see also Note for 426.8. (486.36) Binckley Not identified. (486.36) Hoby George Hoby (1759-1832) was London’s most fashionable boot-maker, with a shop at the top end of St James’s Street and clients who included several royal Dukes and also the Duke of Wellington.

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(486.38) pavé A pavement for pedestrians (French). (486.39) tilbury See Note for 426.6-7. (487.6) Northern Manchester By the early nineteenth century both Glasgow and Manchester (later nicknamed ‘Cottonopolis’) were centres of the cotton trade and in a process of rapid industrialisation and population growth. (487.11) spooney-pretenders Foolish aspirants. (487.17-18) lith and limb A common phrase indicating the joints and limbs of the body. (487.21) pendulum of an eight-day clock An eight-day clock is one that will go for eight days without rewinding, its pendulum, or regulatory mechanism, oscillating regularly from side to side. (487.30) tally-ho inscriptions Ones characteristic of hunting: ‘tally-ho’ is the cry given by the huntsman on catching sight of the fox. (487.31) buckskin breeches Breeches made of buckskin, comfortable for riding as having no inside seam. (487.31-32) glazed hats with narrow rims A hat would be glazed for protection from the weather, while one with a narrow brim would be less likely to be blown off by the wind. (487.33-34) men-milliners of the Palais Royal The Palais Royal is a former royal palace in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, sections of which were converted into fashionable shopping arcades towards the end of the eighteenth century. Shops selling women’s hats and haberdashery often employed male sales assistants: the heroine of Fanny Burney’s Evelina (1778) describes them as ‘such men! so finical, so affected! […] they recommended caps and ribbands with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them!’—see Evelina, ed. by Edward A. Bloom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 27. (487.34) Polish surtouts Probably referring to an overcoat in the style of those worn by Polish military officers. (487.34) chasseur pantalons Hunting trousers (French). (487.35) moustaches à la Joachim Probably as worn by Marshal Joachim Murat (1767-1815), one of the most flamboyant and dashing of Napoleon’s Marshals and known as ‘The Dandy King’. (487.36) the Mall Evidently alluding to the road so-called situated in Westminster and running between St James’s Palace and Trafalgar Square. The name ‘mall’ originally signified a place where pall-mall (a game similar to croquet) was played, but in the eighteenth century more generally referred to a tree-lined park where fashionable people went to walk and socialise. (487.38) minuet at St James’s A slow stately dance in triple measure, as danced at the court of the British monarch in the Tudor palace of St James’s in Westminster.

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(487.38-39) harvest-home bumkin A bumpkin is an awkward country fellow, a lout, and the word is also used for a type of country dance. A harvest-home is a celebration for farm-workers held by their employer to mark the successful harvesting of the year’s cereal crop. (487.39) Hafod Seat of Thomas Johnes (1748-1816, ODNB), situated in a celebrated picturesque landscape, and located about 12 miles southeast of Aberystwyth. (488.4) Salle des presentations Presentation room (French). The space where guests would make their bow or curtsy to their hostess after entering the house where they were to be entertained at a rout or ball. (488.8) counting-house bows The bows of a clerk deferring to a customer rather than that of an aristocrat or member of the gentry practising politeness to an equal. (488.8-9) ne plus ultra The ultimate, the most perfect instance of something (Latin). (488.11) Monmouth Street A London street once noted for its second-hand clothing shops. (488.12) breeches […] trowsers Formal evening dress for men in the early nineteenth century specified the wearing of knee-breeches and silk stockings rather than the trousers appropriate for day-wear. (488.14) chevelures Heads of hair (French). (488.35) porter See Note for 429.20. (488.40) cannonade of swipes A succession, like the continuous discharge of a cannon, of hastily-gulped drinks of weak or poor-quality beer. (489.1) Old Babel Alluding to the confusion of tongues sent as a deterrent and punishment to the builders of the Tower of Babel, which had been intended to reach to heaven: see Genesis 11. 1-9. (489.9) shying Quick, jerky throwing. (489.10) ululation Howling or wailing. (489.10) “here’s to jolly Bacchus!” From a drinking song entitled ‘Bacchus’s Health’: see Thomas D’Urfey, Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy, 6 vols (London, 1719-20), III, 274-75. (489.10-11) “variety is charming.” The refrain of a slightly risqué song beginning ‘I’m in love with twenty’: see Song CCXLII in Calliope; or, The Musical Miscellany (London, 1788), p. 447. (489.12) quadrille Square dances of French origin, usually performed by four couples and consisting of five sections, each complete in itself. For an account of a performance of this dance in Edinburgh see text at p. 130. (489.17) serried phalanx A compact body standing pressed close together, or shoulder to shoulder.

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(489.22-23) figurantes Ballet-dancers, those who dance in a group (from the French). (489.28) Lord Mayor’s ball The Lord Mayor of London gave the grandest dinner of his year on Easter Monday at his official home the Mansion House, to around 400 people, often including members of the royal family. This was succeeded by a ball. (489.30) Egyptian Hall A large banqueting-room at the farther end of the Mansion House, originally designed to imitate an Egyptian chamber, and where the Lord Mayor’s Easter Monday dinner is held. (489.31) “at home” A reception where the host or hostess, or both, have announced that they will be ‘at home’ to receive their guests during certain hours in the course of which visitors may arrive and leave at will. (489.31) Mrs —— —— If Lockhart has a specific person in mind, she has not been identified. (489.39-40) drop the handkerchief A widespread western myth held that a Sultan toured his harem and dropped his handkerchief at the feet of the woman he wished to share his bed with that night. (490.1-2) lower cushion of the tilbury A tilbury (see Note for 426.6-7) had a spring system over a single axle and large wheels, being designed for a fast ride. The driver must therefore have been seated alongside his female passenger, but perhaps with a higher-cushioned seat to raise his arms and allow them greater freedom of movement in driving. (490.5) heavy dragoons Dragoon regiments originally fought on foot as infantry while using horses for mobility; but by the early nineteenth century the term ‘heavy dragoon’ in the British army indicated a conventional cavalry regiment. Light dragoons were more lightly armed and equipped and specially trained for reconnaissance and skirmishing. (490.5) Hamilton Barracks Originally designed to house cavalry and built in 1794-95, at Hamilton, a town about 12 miles southeast of Glasgow. (490.8) cits Cit is a shortened version of ‘citizen’, usually indicating contempt for shopkeepers and townsmen. (490.9) Enniskillings The 6th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Dragoons (see Note for 385.17-18), an Irish regiment formed in 1689 and which fought in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. (490.12) “— Cupidinis arma” The arms (i.e. weapons) of Cupid. Compare Ovid, Amores, I. xv. 27. (490.13) quae tuto fæmina nulla videt See Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 7th edn (London, 1660), p. 463 (Part III, Section 2 ‘Other Causes of Love-Melancholy’), this representing the first of three quotations from that source. In Burton it is preceded by the observation that ‘It was Aeneas countenance ravished Queen Dido […] hee had an Angelical face’, and the two

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lines of inset verse there are translated ‘O sacred looks befitting Majesty, / Which never mortal wight could safely see!’ Lockhart’s quotation matches the second of the two original lines in Burton, who annotates the passage as from ‘Petronius Catell’. (490.17-19) Nulla est quæ lumina […] palpitansque, &c. See Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 7th edn (London, 1660), p. 466 (Part III, Section 2 ‘Other Causes of Love-Melancholy’). This quotation in Burton is preceded by the observation ‘Let this bee the Corollary then, The strongest beams of beauty, are still darted from the eyes’. Four lines of Latin verse are then quoted, of which the present text matches the first three, these being followed by ‘For who such eyes with his can see / And not forthwith enamoured bee!’ The relevant Latin lines in Burton are translatable as ‘There are no such eyes, of such a sort, / That one would be able to see with their own eyes / Without immediately both trembling and throbbing, etc.’. They are annotated as by ‘Laecheus Panthea’. (490.20) veniunt a veste sagittæ Compare Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 7th edn (London, 1660), p. 473 (Part III, Section 3 ‘Artificial Allurements to Love’): ‘When you have all done, veniunt à veste sagittæ, the greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel’. These Latin words are translatable as ‘The arrows come from the outfit’. (490.22) pas-seul A solo dance or dance figure for one person (French). (490.22) Glasgow Assembly-rooms An Adam building erected in 1796 on the north side of Ingram street, to which wings were added in 1807. The main room was 85 feet long by 35 feet wide. Letter LXX (491.23) quizzing Mocking or making fun of a person or thing (slang). (491.26-27) while the cloth remains on the table At the end of a dinner the tablecloth would be removed and the after-dinner wine and accompanying nuts or dried fruit would be served on the polished surface of the table. (491.30) side-dish A dish which is accessory to the principal one in a course of a meal. (492.2) sine qua non An essential element, a thing absolutely necessary (Latin). (492.4) calembourgs Puns (French). (492.11) Gagging In normal usage, thrusting something into the mouth to keep it open, usually in order to prevent speech or an outcry. (492.27) “the Gagg College,” Probably what is usually referred to as the Gegg College, deriving its name from the Scots word gegg, meaning a trick, hoax, or deception. This was a precursor of Glasgow’s Gegg Club, the ‘College’ of its original title deriving from the affixing titles of professorial chairs to prominent

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citizens relating to personal qualities the opposite of those by which they were characterised. Meetings were limited to no particular club-room or place of rendezvous and occurred in private houses as often as in taverns: see John Strang, Glasgow and Its Clubs, 2nd edn (London and Glasgow, 1857), pp. 33435. According to his letter to Jonathan Christie of 3 January 1815, Lockhart had himself once attended what he termed a ‘Gag club’ meeting as a visitor: see Lang, I, 83. (492.28-29) —— —— I am told is one No specific individual has been identified, though just possibly Lockhart might have had Kirkman Finlay in mind (for whom see Note for 472.11-12). However, though Finlay is mentioned in connection with other clubs, there is no evidence of him belonging to the Gegg Club. (492.29) matriculated […] paltry Album Paralleling those admitted into a University having their names entered in a written record or list of its members. It is not known whether the Gegg Club actually kept such a list of members. (492.33) secret conclave According to Strang, Glasgow and Its Clubs (p. 335), there were both ordinary and extraordinary meetings of the Gegg Club. A conclave is a close assembly, such as the one of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church which meets in private for the election of a new pope. (492.34) sparring […] in their gloves A reference to boxing contests, which in the early nineteenth century were often bare-knuckle fights, with padded gloves being worn only for friendly practice. (492.37) Trotting Gait of a horse, between walking and running, where the legs move in diagonal pairs almost together. (492.40) Banditti A club formed in 1808 and meeting twice-weekly at Gardner’s tavern in Gibson’s Wynd. Banditti refers normally to outlawed men, and the well-to-do members of this club engaged in activities such as ‘boxing a Charlie’, that is, overturning night-watchmen’s booths trapping the man inside them: see John Strang, Glasgow and Its Clubs, 2nd edn (London and Glasgow, 1857), pp. 343-51. (492.40) Dirty-Shirt Strang assumes that the title of this club did indeed derive from the grubbiness of members’ linen, but otherwise supplies no information about it: see Glasgow and Its Clubs, p. 464. (493.1) What-you-please A dining-club founded in 1798 and lasting for around 25-30 years, with meetings held during that time at various taverns in the Saltmarket, King Street, and Candleriggs. Its tone was generally patriotic and Tory, and it welcomed military men and also leading actors: see Strang, Glasgow and Its Clubs, p. 252ff. (493.5) Mews-lane An open-ended alley around which sets of stabling were grouped. (493.7) black-legs Sharpers, swindlers on the turf.

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(493.9) Houyhnmn Horse endowed with reason, an inhabitant of the country visited by Lemuel Gulliver in the fourth part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). (493.9) martingale A strap or straps fastened at one end to the horse’s noseband or reins and at the other to the girth, to prevent it from rearing or throwing back its head. (493.17) invita Minerva Minerva being unwilling (Latin); when a person is not in the mood or without inspiration. The Roman goddess Minerva was the goddess of handicrafts as well as of war. (493.19) Argus-like Acutely watchful; according to Greek mythology Argus had a hundred eyes and the goddess Hera set him to watch Io (one of the mortal lovers of her husband Zeus), of whom she was jealous. (493.38) Lycurgus The legendary legislator of ancient Sparta, referred to by Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch. (494.10) cachinnation Loud or immoderate laughter. (494.13-14) instigante plane Diabolo Clearly inspired by the devil (Latin). (494.17-18) the subject of the shandrydan Morris’s somewhat comical pride in his carriage is shown in various passages of his letters: see, for instance, text at p. 543. (494.20) bit The mouthpiece of a horse’s bridle. (494.23-24) fill the roll Play the part: deriving from the roll (hence role) containing the lines for the part given to an actor. (494.26) data Things given or granted; facts used as the basis of reasoning (Latin). (494.31) nigro simillimi cygno Much like a black swan (Latin). Compare Juvenal: ‘rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno’ (a rare bird on this earth, exactly like a black swan), Satires, VI. 165. Also proverbial, expressing rarity: see ODEP, p. 65. Letter LXXI (495.28) NUMBER ONE Oneself; to look after number one is to be selfish, to seek one’s own interest: see ODEP, p. 583. (496.12) Astronomical Observatory Built for the Glasgow Society for Promoting Astronomical Science (founded in 1809), this was an ornate Egyptianstyle building erected on Garnethill (an area within the city limits, now on the eastern side of the M8). The society ran out of funds and was disbanded in 1822, when some of the instruments were sold off, and the building itself was demolished between 1830 and 1832 as it had by that time become surrounded by new buildings and was unsuitable for purpose.

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(496.14) New Botanic Garden The city’s Royal Botanic Gardens were instituted in 1817 with a site of almost eight acres at Sandyford near Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow. Glasgow’s university contributed £2000 to the cost of £8000, a grant was made by central government, and transferable shares of ten guineas each were also purchased by private individuals. According to Glasgow Delineated it owed its origin ‘in a great degree to the exertions of a few scientific gentlemen, and chiefly to those of Mr. Hopkirk, junior, of Dalbeth, by whom it was enriched at its commencement with the Dalbeth collection, consisting of above 7,000 plants, many of them rare and valuable. It owes much also to the deep interest which many gentlemen, natives of Glasgow, resident in foreign countries, have taken in its prosperity’ (p. 164). There is an advertisement in the Glasgow Courier of 13 April 1819 for A Companion to the Glasgow Botanic Garden published at 3s 6d by the Glasgow firm of John Smith and Son. The Botanic Gardens moved to their present West End site in 1842. (497.2-4) beautiful villas […] country round about Glasgow According to Glasgow Delineated to the west and north of Glasgow Green ‘the eye is cheered with the view of numerous villas, gardens, and cultivated fields’ (p. 99). (497.21-22) purchase land […] British gentry The acquirement of land brought social status to men such as Kirkman Finlay (see Note for 472.11-12), who bought the large estate of Auchwhillan and built Castle Toward on the shores of the Clyde near Dunoon. (497.32) fustian-sleeved writers Legal staff in their working clothes, fustian being a thick twilled cotton fabric usually dyed a dark colour. (497.33) side-bar jurisconsults For side-bar see Note for 402.18. Lockhart ironically refers to these commonplace legal advisers and advocates as jurisconsults, men learned in the law. (498.5-6) James Grahame, the author of the Sabbath The poet James Graham (1765-1811, ODNB) was the son of a prominent Glasgow lawyer and educated at Glasgow University. His most popular work was The Sabbath (1804). (498.6-7) died […] in the midst of his family here Graham (see previous Note), after serving as a curate in the Durham diocese of the Church of England, returned to Scotland where his health failed and he died at his brother’s home (see next Note). (498.8) inscription […] in the choir of the Cathedral A plain memorial plaque for Graham is currently found in the nave of Glasgow Cathedral on the opposite side from the main entrance. This reads: ‘In Memory of the Reverend James Grahame Author of “The Sabbath” and Other Poems, born 22nd. April 1765, died at Whitehill House Glasgow 14th. September 1811.’

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(498.22-24) trust […] the silent heart Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VI, ll. 610-12. (498.25) author of the Isle of Palms, and the City of the Plague John Wilson (1785-1854, ODNB), then still known chiefly as a poet. He was the son of a Paisley manufacturer, educated at the University of Glasgow and Magdalen College, Oxford, and called to the bar in Edinburgh in 1815, where, along with Lockhart himself, he was a chief prop of Blackwood’s from October 1817 onwards. Wilson’s The Isle of Palms, and Other Poems and The City of the Plague and Other Poems had been published in 1812 and 1816 respectively. (498.26) Lines on the Death of James Grahame ‘Lines Sacred to the Memory of the Rev. James Grahame, Author of “The Sabbath”, &c.’, The Isle of Palms and Other Poems (Edinburgh, 1812), pp. 397-415. A headnote there states that ‘Two Editions of this little Poem have been already published’. A copy as a separate publication by John Smith and Son of Glasgow in 1811 in the collections of the University of Oxford may be viewed at https://archive. org/details/linessacredtome00wilsgoog. (498.29-30) mentioned […] in my letters from Edinburgh As, for instance, in the account of the Burns Dinner (pp. 80-81), and as a craniological subject (p. 359). (499.4) Coleridge Respectful appreciation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge appears throughout Peter’s Letters, as a Germanist (p. 183), and as a wellknown poet undeservedly attacked by periodical writers (pp. 263-64, 299-301, 317). After reading the work Coleridge wrote several letters to its unknown author, and Lockhart responded in his postscript to the ‘third’ edition, which takes the form of the concluding letter ‘To Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Esq’ (see also Introduction, pp. 40-43). (499.4) Lamb Charles Lamb is mentioned approvingly elsewhere as a poet and dramatist and as a friend of Morris: see text at pp. 232 and 262. (499.4) Wilson See Note for 498.25. (501.17-18) time of life Wilson had been born on 18 May 1785, so was then some 34 years old. (501.23) “imagination all compact,” Midsummer Night’s Dream, V. i. 8. (501.36) the Children’s Dance ‘The Children’s Dance’ is a sentimental description of a rural Christmas party for local children near Grasmere in the Lake District, much influenced by Wordsworth: see The City of the Plague, and Other Poems (Edinburgh, 1816), pp. 171-87. (501.36-37) Address to the Wild Deer ‘Address to a Wild Deer in the Forest of Dalness, Glen-Etive, Argyllshire’ depicts a royal deer-hunt in a rural Highland landscape, echoing the opening scene of Scott’s The Lady of the Lake of 1810: see The City of the Plague and Other Poems (Edinburgh, 1816), pp. 188-96.

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(501.38) the Scholar’s Funeral ‘The Scholar’s Funeral’, in Spenserian stanzas, recounts the death of a young scholar at the University of Oxford named Vernon, an aristocrat and the last of his family: see The City of the Plague and Other Poems (Edinburgh, 1816), pp. 223-40. (502.4) tears of Naiads Those of the nymphs of springs, rivers and lakes. Letter LXXII (503.1-2) this part of Scotland […] struggles When in 1662 the Scottish Privy Council required Scottish ministers to take the oath of allegiance or supremacy, bringing the Scottish church into line with the episcopal Church of England, most of the 270 who refused to conform were from the west of Scotland and these ejected ministers retained the loyalty of a substantial proportion of their congregations. Tension in the west of Scotland erupted in the brief Pentland Rising of 1667 and persecution of such presbyterian adherents intensified until the matter was resolved in 1689 by the recognition of the national Church of Scotland as Presbyterian. (503.4) Philosophical Weaver See text at pp. 476-81 and Notes. (503.6) sceptical school Term relating to the Scottish Enlightenment school of philosophy, notably David Hume, who was reputedly an atheist. (503.21-24) All Scotia’s weary days […] after years Not identified. (504.1-2) observance of the Sabbath Puritan sects interpret strictly the injunction in Exodus 20. 10: ‘But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work’. On Sunday all amusements and labour that was not strictly necessary were prohibited. (504.6) City of the Dead A cemetery, or necropolis (which means city of the dead in Greek). (504.19) Bible and Psalm-book While the Authorised Version of the Bible included the psalms, members of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland would also require a book of the Metrical Psalms to be used for worship in church. (504.25) kirk-skailing Skail in Scots means to disperse or scatter. (504.26-27) in the teeth of So as to face or outfront, in direct opposition to. (504.28) skull it More usually spelled ‘scull it’: to propel a boat by an oar, working it from side to side over the stern of the boat, reversing the blade at each turn. (504.33) main street of Glasgow Possibly the Trongate, which Morris describes as the main street on his arrival in Glasgow (p. 447), and where Thomas Chalmers’s Trongate church was located. Alternatively the High Street, the most important medieval street in the city, running between Glasgow Cross and the Cathedral. In 1819 two congregations met within the Cathedral, and another at the Barony Church in its immediate vicinity. Additionally the congregation of the Blackfriars Church, known as the College Church, was

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close to the University buildings on the High Street and would also presumably add to the number of pedestrians returning from church along the High Street. (504.40) prejudices of the Quarterly Reviewer The London publisher John Murray had founded the Quarterly Review in 1809 as a Tory rival to the Whig Edinburgh Review of Archibald Constable. The periodical was supported by Scottish Tories such as Walter Scott, and its first editor, up to 1824, was William Gifford, his most notable successor being Lockhart himself. The Quarterly was known for its High Church Tory leanings. In a letter to its publisher John Murray of 18 June 1809 Gifford noticeably refers to the ‘flippant impiety’ of the Edinburgh Review: see Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and his Friends, 2 vols (London, 1891), I, 158. Lockhart subsequently provides a humorous account of these prejudices on p. 512, stating that in English Tory and High Church eyes Scotsmen are all either infidels or fanatical Covenanters. (505.1) English High-Churchman One emphasising aspects of Anglicanism, such as the authority of the priesthood and the importance of church ritual, which most distinguish it from Calvinism and other protestant denominations. (505.5-7) church of […] Dr Chalmers Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847, ODNB) was minister of Glasgow’s Tron Church between 1815 and 1819, until his transfer to St John’s on 3 June 1819: see the report on a meeting of the Presbytery of Glasgow in the Glasgow Courier of 8 May 1819. St John’s was situated in a working-class district of Glasgow, and was the focus of a social experiment there that aimed at replicating in the city the community of worship and social care of the best of Scotland’s rural parishes. The Tron Church, also known as St Mary’s, was a modern building replacing an older church destroyed by fire in 1793, though its steeple of 1637 survived and can be seen projecting onto the street in the frontispiece engraving of the Trongate in Glasgow Delineated. The church was situated on the eastern side of the Trongate, a little to the east of King Street. (505.12-13) Critic and he are great friends Lockhart himself had criticised Chalmers as a clergyman for contributing to the Edinburgh Review and thus indirectly promoting deism in his ‘Letters to the Supporters of the Edinburgh Review. No 1.—To the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, D. D.’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (May 1818), 155-62. No details of an early personal friendship between Chalmers and Jeffrey, if such existed, have been discovered, though the two were certainly acquainted by 1821. (505.13) his house The Glasgow Post Office Directory for 1818 gives Chalmers’s house as in Kensington Place, Sauchiehall Road. (505.14-15) parish […] formerly minister Chalmers was appointed minister of Kilmany in Fife in 1802, and was transferred from there to the Tron parish of Glasgow in 1815. (505.16) My landlady For Mrs Jardine, landlady of the Buck’s Head Inn, see text at pp. 449 and 484-85 and Notes.

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(505.21) Miss Currie Peter Mackenzie in his Reminiscences of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, 3 vols (Glasgow, 1865) remembers her as ‘a most dashing young lady […] with whom we are not ashamed to say we have often danced in early life […] so sprightly, but correct in all her deportment’ (II, 48). See also Note for 449.6. (505.36-38) words of the psalm […] clergyman himself In his subsequent account of a rural sacrament Lockhart has the clergyman reading the psalm aloud before the opening line was sung by a precentor, as an indication of the pitch and tune to be followed in the subsequent singing of it by the congregation: see text at p. 530. (505.38) At first sight […] his face is a coarse one Stewart J. Brown in his ODNB entry describes Chalmers as ‘a heavy-set man with a sleepy dishevelled appearance’, who delivered his sermons ‘with a broad Fife accent’. (506.19) mathematical forehead Chalmers had lectured on mathematics and astronomy at the University of St Andrews during the early portion of his incumbency of Kilmany parish in Fife. (506.20-21) Mr Playfair’s […] Mr Leslie’s For John Playfair, see text at pp. 48 and 109-10 and Notes; and for John Leslie pp. 48-50 and Notes. (506.22-23) Spurzheim had remarked ‘In such individuals the arch of the eye-brows is much pressed downward or elevated at the external angle of the orbit’: see The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), p. 372. (506.25) Newton […] Kaestener—Euler All three mathematicians are mentioned in The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), p. 372. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727, ODNB) was English, Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was Swiss, and Abraham Gotthelf Kästner (17191800) was German. (506.29) arch of Imagination Probably a reference to the Organ of Ideality, since Gall and Spurzheim considered imagination a general feature of perception. In his discussion of Ideality Spurzheim notes ‘the heads of great poets […] are enlarged above the temples in an arched direction’: see The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), p. 345. (506.32) apex of […] Veneration and Love For the Organ of Veneration see Note for 225.10-11. While this organ refers to love of God, Lockhart in mentioning Love here may additionally intend to refer to the Organ of Benevolence, which is associated with Christian charity: see The Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, 2nd edn (London, 1815), pp. 337-38. (506.33) Plato The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-348 BCE).

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(506.34) head of Canova The Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822); many copies were made of his self-portrait bust of 1812, as for instance one at Attingham Park in Shropshire (National Trust, NT 610116). (506.39) his Sermons Chalmers’s A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, viewed in connection with the Modern Astronomy (Glasgow, 1817), generally referred to as Astronomical Discourses, had sold more than 20,000 copies in nine months. More recently Chalmers had published Sermons, Preached in the Tron Church, Glasgow (Glasgow, 1819). (508.35-38) Φαιης κε ζακοτον […] βροτος αλλος But when he projected his great voice from his chest, and words like snowflakes on a winter’s day, then could no other mortal man rival Odysseus (Greek). See Homer, The Iliad, III. 220-23. (510.13) apostolic kindness Kindness resembling that of the disciples of Christ, especially of those who plant Christianity in a particular region. (510.15) “robbed the Hybla bees” See Julius Caesar, V. i. 34. Hybla is a district in Sicily, famous for its honey. (510.19) charity sermon Chalmers’s status as a celebrity preacher is indicated by his giving a short series of charity sermons in London for Scottish charities in May 1817: see ‘Rev. Dr. Chalmers’ in the Morning Chronicle of 26 May 1817. Nothing has been discovered about his giving charity sermons in Edinburgh. (510.31) tares […] wheat From Matthew 13. 24-30, a parable in which a man sows his field with wheat but his enemy sows tares among it. Tares is the weed darnel, which looks like wheat until shortly before harvest-time. (510.32) beadle An inferior parish officer appointed to keep order in church: presumably here in receipt of tips for finding people seats. (510.35) David Hume The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume (1711-1776, ODNB), vilified by some as an atheist. (511.6-9) In his allotted home […] Father of his People See William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book V, ll. 100-04. (511.30-31) “Truly the lines […] pleasant places.” Compare Psalm 16. 6: ‘The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage’. (512.1-514.7) the ideas entertained […] enemies to each other This passage is substantially republished from ‘Observations on “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk”’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 612-21 (pp. 616-17). (512.3) external appearance of that country Alluding to the popular English myth that Scotland was devoid of trees: Boswell notes that Samuel Johnson supported the notion only as a result of his ‘having travelled two hundred miles along the eastern coast, where certainly trees are not to be found near the road’:

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see James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. by R. W. Chapman, rev. by J. D. Fleeman (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 581. (512.4) bench of bishops Those Church of England bishops who sit as Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords in the British parliament. (512.5-6) Oxford and Cambridge Heads of Houses The Masters or Principals of the various colleges that make up these universities. (512.6) Regius Professors Holders of professorial university Chairs of royal foundation and (mostly) appointed by Royal mandate. (512.15) Janus Roman god often represented with two faces, as looking before and behind. (512.15-16) suit of customary blue The Covenanters wore blue in opposition to the scarlet of the Royalist party. (512.16-17) fille-de-joie Girl of pleasure (French); a prostitute. (512.17) John Knox The Scottish religious reformer John Knox (c. 15141572, ODNB), a founder of the Calvinistic Church of Scotland. (512.32-33) sit […] in the chair of the scoffer Echoing Psalm 1. 1, ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly […] nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful’. The Scottish metrical Psalms has ‘nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair’. (512.35) Blair […] Erskine Moderate Church of Scotland minister and man of letters, Hugh Blair (1718-1800, ODNB); and John Erskine, the former head of the Evangelical party of the Church of Scotland. For Lockhart’s portrait of Erskine see text at pp. 395-96 and Notes. (512.35-36) Moncrieff, Alison For Lockhart’s portraits of the current leader of the Evangelical party of the Church of Scotland, Sir Henry Wellwood Moncreiff, and the episcopalian minster Archibald Alison, see text at pp. 396-98 and 419-22 with Notes respectively. (513.10) productive of better fruit Alluding to the distinguishing mark of true and false prophets in Matthew 7. 20: ‘Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them’. (513.19) Cherokee A member of a tribe of natives of North America. Their language was part of the Iroquoian language group, and prior to the eighteenth century they were concentrated in parts of Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and Alabama. (513.19) South-sea-islander Pagan inhabitant of the islands of the South Pacific Ocean. (513.20-21) Anti-christ A deceiver, whose appearance supposedly signals the end of the world is imminent: see I John 2. 18: ‘as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.’

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(513.21) Babylon of the Revelations Revelation 17. 3-6 depicts a woman sitting on a beast with one of the names written on her forehead being ‘Babylon the Great’. (513.24-25) benefit from the establishment of the new In allusion to the Counter-Reformation, a period of renewal in the Catholic church in response to the Protestant Reformation, and lasting from the Council of Trent of 154563 to the conclusion of the European wars of religion in 1648; or, more generally, a renovation of the Roman Catholic Church to respond to the challenges of the Reformation. (513.38-39) Quarterly Review […] among the Scotch Particularly before the advent of the revitalised Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in October 1817, the Quarterly Review, founded in 1809, was the main Tory periodical organ opposing the Whig Edinburgh Review. Initially its publisher John Murray tended to underestimate the probable extent of sales in Scotland, but by 1816 he was proposing to Blackwood that he should get 1000 copies printed in Edinburgh: see Mrs Oliphant, William Blackwood and His Sons, 2 vols (London, 1897), II, 3. Letter LXXIII (515.9-10) I had […] calculated upon See Letter LXIV, p. 445, where Morris reveals that he had intended to spend ‘a week in and about’ Glasgow. (515.12) my tour to its conclusion See Introduction, pp. 17-18, for Lockhart’s original plan for Peter’s Letters, following the itinerary in Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, and with a Highland section possibly to be written by John Wilson. (515.15) steam-boat […] Isle of Bute Morris’s plan is to go by steam-boat down the river Clyde to the Isle of Bute, where the principal town and port is Rothesay. The prefatory list of illustrations to Peter’s Letters in its description of the engraved vignette at the end of volume 3 names the steam-boat on which he eventually leaves Glasgow as the Rob Roy. This was a state-of-the-art steamship launched at Dumbarton in May 1818, but mostly used for sailings to Belfast according to advertisements in the Glasgow Courier. The Britannia steamboat however (as advertised in the Courier of 11 March 1819) left on Saturdays for Greenock, Gourock, Rothesay, and Campbeltown, and returned on Monday. See also Note for 546.26-27. (515.16) Inverary Settlement and seat of the Dukes of Argyll on the western shore of Loch Fyne in Argyllshire, some 50 miles north of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, and reachable from Bute by water though the passage would be longer. In the Glasgow Courier of 12 June 1819 there is an advert for the Sir William Wallace steamboat as heading for Rothesay and Inverary on Monday, 14 June, and for the Neptune steamboat as heading for Rothesay and Inverary on Tuesday, 15 June.

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(515.18) John Evans Morris’s servant, previously mentioned simply as ‘John’ at p. 17 and elsewhere. (515.25) Paisley Manufacturing town on the River Clyde; see also Note for 478.21. The ‘curious manufactures’ mentioned would have included Paisley (imitation Indian) shawls. (515.28) old Abbey Paisley Abbey was set up as a priory in 1163 and raised to the status of an abbey in 1245. A centre of learning and commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it became a parish kirk of the Church of Scotland after the Reformation. (515.29-30) Abbot Lord Claud Hamilton Claud Hamilton (1546?-1621, ODNB), 1st Lord Paisley, held the office of Commendator of the Abbey of Paisley between 1586 and 1592. He was the youngest son of James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran in Scotland and 1st Duke of Chatelherault in France. His elder brother John (1539/40-1604, ODNB) became the 1st Marquess of Hamilton in 1599. Claud’s own eldest surviving son James (1575-1618, ODNB) was made Earl of Abercorn in 1606, and is the ancestor of the marquesses (later dukes) of Abercorn. (515.31) old French title The ancient Dukedom of Châtellerault was revived in 1548 for James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran (see previous Note), who as Regent of Scotland had negotiated the marriage of Mary Stuart with the French Dauphin, though his French title and estates were later confiscated. In 1818 James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn (1811-1885, ODNB), who succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Abercorn that year, was recognised in France as Duke of Chatelherault; then the following year the Duke of Hamilton simply assumed the title illegally, the start of a quarrel between the two families: see Brian Masters, The Dukes: The Origin, Ennoblement and History of Twenty-six Families, rev. edn (London: Pimlico, 2001), p. 267. (516.1-2) female ancestor On the death of William, 2nd Duke of Hamilton (1616-1651, ODNB), with no heirs in the male line, the Dukedom passed to his niece, Anne (1632-1716, ODNB), Duchess of Hamilton. (516.2) by blood, a Douglas In 1660, William Douglas (1634-1694, ODNB), a son of the 1st Marquess of Douglas, became 3rd Duke of Hamilton on petition of his wife Anne (see previous Note), the titles of Marquess of Douglas and Earl of Angus thence devolving to the Dukes of Hamilton. See also Note for 380.15 for a near-contemporary dispute concerning the Douglas inheritance. (516.3-4) House of Douglas One of the most powerful Scottish families in medieval times, the heads of the house holding the titles of Earls of Douglas and later Earls of Angus. (516.6) Hamilton itself For the town of Hamilton, some 12 miles southeast of Glasgow, see Note for 477.23. (516.9-10) Mr John Smith John Smith (known as John Smith the Youngest) (1784-1849, ODNB), the third of that name belonging to the Glasgow

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bookselling concern of John Smith and Son. He formed a close friendship with minister Thomas Chalmers (see Note for 505.5-7), the firm serving as publishers of Chalmers’s best-selling Astronomical Discourses (1817), and then Sermons, Preached in the Tron Church, Glasgow (1819). A dispute, partly fuelled by the relatively poor sales of the latter, poisoned the relationship between Chalmers and the firm and eventually went to arbitration. John Smith and Son appeared on the imprint of the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters as its Glasgow publishers. (516.11) Dr Chalmers For a fuller account of Thomas Chalmers, mainly in his capacity as a minister of religion, see text at pp. 505-11 and Notes. (516.13) accompany us When Thomas Chalmers went to London in 1817 in response to an invitation to preach from the Missionary Society, John Smith had accompanied him and planned their journey to take in places of interest, providing letters of introduction and arranging for places to rest: see Stephen Hall, ‘John Smith, Youngest (1784-1849), and the Book Trade of Glasgow’ (University of Glasgow, Ph.D. dissertation, 2017), p. 158. (516.24) master of Mathematics For Chalmers’s earlier lecturing on mathematics, see Note for 506.19. Chalmers had studied Mathematics at St Andrews, and in 1805 unsuccessfully applied for the Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. (516.37) Bothwell […] Lord Douglas The modern Bothwell Castle, close to the ruined medieval building (see next Note), was the seat of Archibald James Edward Douglas (1748-1827, ODNB), 1st Baron Douglas, for whom also see Note for 380.15. (516.38-517.1) old Castle […] kinds of wood Bothwell Castle, one of Scotland’s most spectacular medieval buildings, is located about 10 miles southeast of Glasgow by a bend in the river Clyde. The cylindrical keep was built in the thirteenth century, the castle then being rebuilt and enlarged in the fifteenth century. The present ruin consists of a courtyard surrounded by curtain walls, with its ancient keep surviving along with towers at the southeast and southwest corners. The Castle is situated on a high bank overlooking the River Clyde in a gorge below, with extensive woods on the opposite bank. (517.9) Warwick Warwick Castle situated on the River Avon in central England, originally a Norman fortress, and significantly enhanced in the fourteenth century, when towers were added at either side of the reconstructed curtain wall. Parts of the Castle were developed as a modern residence during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the grounds landscaped. (517.12-13) armouries of the Morays The present ruined Bothwell Castle was probably begun by Walter of Moray, lord of Bothwell from 1242, and continued by his son William, who succeeded him in 1278. A gravestone in St Bride’s Church, Bothwell, bearing a sword and coat-of-arms, is thought to be the monument of Walter of Moray.

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(517.17-18) the Bloody Heart […] name See Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto V, stanza 4. (517.21) Bridge of Bothwell One mile south of Bothwell, site of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, fought in 1679, in which government forces defeated an army of militant Presbyterian Covenanters. For the textual variations involving the date, see Introduction, p. 38. (517.23) high gate-way Early engravings show such an arched gateway near the centre of the bridge. The gateway was removed in 1826 when the width of the bridge was increased, according to Angus Macpherson, Handbook of Hamilton, Bothwell, Blantyre, and Haddington (Hamilton, 1862), p. 68. (517.26) opposite side The Covenanting army was encamped on the southern bank of the river Clyde. (517.28) Monmouth James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and 1st Duke of Buccleuch (1649-1685, ODNB), illegitimate son of Charles II, and commander-in-chief of the government forces at Bothwell Bridge. (517.31) Old Mortality The Battle of Bothwell Bridge forms the centrepiece of Scott’s novel The Tale of Old Mortality (1816). Dissension between different factions among the Covenanters, fuelled by extreme preachers, is portrayed as a major factor in the defeat of their army. (517.37) Muscovite, General Dalzell Thomas Dalyell, of Binns (bap. 1615, d. 1685, ODNB), second-in-command of the government forces at Bothwell Bridge. Previously Dalyell had served in the forces of the Tsar of Russia, being promoted to general in 1660, and returning from there in 1665. (518.1) butcheries The number of those killed varies widely with estimates of up to 700; some 1200 however were taken prisoner. Accounts of Dalyell’s actions were no doubt coloured by his reputation for extreme cruelty towards the Covenanters, who referred to him as a Muscovite beast. (518.1-2) gentler and wiser In the aftermath of the battle Monmouth (see Note for 517.28) apparently urged his father to adopt a policy of leniency towards the insurgents. (518.3) hanged at the end of the bridge This noticeably differs from Captain John Creichton’s Memoirs as cited by Walter Scott in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (III, 216n-217n), regarding a gallows having been built prior to the battle by the Covenanters, which the government forces subsequently desisted from using for their own prisoners. (518.8) chased Embossed or engraved. (518.11-13) “a man […] upon nothing” Proverbial (see ODEP, p. 703). (518.15) martyrs The Covenanters assiduously kept and preserved records of those assassinated or executed by Royalist authorities during the religious wars of the later Stuart period, both in the form of martyr graves and printed pamphlets. Robert Wodrow’s The History of the Sufferings of the Church of

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Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution, published in 1721-22, provided a detailed record and denounced the persecution of the Covenanters. Wodrow also kept MSS materials for Analecta: or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences, mostly relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians, published in 1842-43 by the Maitland Club. Another key text is A Cloud of Witnesses (1714), containing speeches by Covenanters delivered on the scaffold. In a letter to Jonathan Christie of 3 August 1815 Lockhart alludes to the latter as containing ‘the speeches and last words of all the Presbyterian saints, burnt, hanged, and drowned for the glory of God’ (Lang, I, 86). (518.19) ducal mansion Hamilton Palace, former seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, located northeast of the town of Hamilton. It was built in 1695 and subsequently developed, notably by the 10th Duke, who succeeded in 1819 and began a wave of refurbishments, using the wealth derived from the family’s ownership of Lanarkshire coalfields. The palace was demolished in 1927. (518.30) long green lawns Hamilton Palace stood at the centre of extensive parklands which included a tree-lined avenue over three miles in length. (518.39-40) not less than a dozen […] Vandykes The Hamilton Palace Collection: Illustrated Priced Catalogue (Paris and London 1882), produced at the time of a great sale of the Palace’s contents, itemises some twelve paintings directly attributed to Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641, ODNB). See also Note for 31.13-14. (518.40) King Charles on his white horse Listed as ‘An Equestrian Portrait of Charles I’ in The Hamilton Palace Collection (item 32, p. 12). See also next Note. (519.2) Prince […] at Carlton-House Referring to the extensive collection of the Prince Regent at his London mansion, facing the south side of Pall Mall in the St James’s district. The painting in question is probably that of 1633 now in the Royal Collection (RCIN 405322), showing the King passing through an archway, staff in hand, on a white horse. In the case of ‘Charles I on Horseback’, c. 1637-38, now in the National Gallery (NG1172), with a landscape background, the horse is more of a yellowish brown colour. For an account of three portraits of Charles I on horseback see Susan J. Barnes, Nora de Poorter, Oliver Millar, and Horst Vey, Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), items IV.47, 51-52. A number of copies were made of each of these portraits. See also Note for 31.13-14. (519.3) creamy yellow The Hamilton Palace Collection, item 32, refers to ‘the beautiful grey charger’. (519.5) Marquisses of Hamilton James Hamilton (1606-1649, ODNB), 3rd Marquess of Hamilton and 1st Duke; succeeded by his brother William Hamilton (1616-1651, ODNB), 2nd Duke. Both were proactive in the Royalist cause in the English Civil War, and suffered accordingly, James being beheaded in 1649, and William dying from wounds received at the Battle of

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Worcester in 1651. For details of Van Dyck’s portrait of James, see Susan J. Barnes, et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 517 (Item IV.110). It is now in the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, Vaduz Castle (GE64). No portrait of William by Van Dyck has been discovered, though there is a portrait of 1650 by Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671), its design based on a portrait of Charles I by van Dyck, now in the Royal Collection (RCIN 401251). (519.7) Lord Danby Van Dyck’s portrait of William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh (c. 1587-1643, ODNB), was owned by the Dukes of Hamilton until sold by the trustees of the 12th Duke in 1919, and is now in the National Gallery (NG5633). The subject, who had travelled in both India and Persia, is holding a gun and wearing an exotic costume of striped fabric with pyjama trousers of a kind worn by Europeans in India and he is accompanied by an Indian boy. For further details and a reproduction see Susan J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, p. 496 (Item IV.86). (519.13) Rubens of Daniel ‘Daniel in the Den of Lions’ features as item 80 in The Hamilton Palace Collection (p. 21). It is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1965.13.1). (519.20) Spagnolettos The Hamilton Palace Collection contains one item (no. 703) by Jusepe de Ribera, known as Lo Spagnoletto (1591-1652), titled ‘St Bartholomew’ (p. 92). This possibly matches that of 1644 depicting ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew’ now in National Art Museum of Catalonia. (519.20-21) Poussin […] Abraham The Hamilton Palace Collection lists an item (no. 1120) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665 ) titled ‘The Entombment’, but as the description there makes clear this concerns Jesus (p. 147). No painting matching the ensuing account has been discovered. (519.21) Dying Magdalen […] Ludovico Caracci The Hamilton Palace Collection lists one item by ‘Caracci’, titled ‘St Francis’ (no. 390, p. 55). The picture as described in the text however possibly relates to that of Mary Magdalene in a Landscape (c. 1599) by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where the penitent Magdalene holds a death’s-head, though she is not in a reclining position. Another possibility is ‘The Penitent Magdalen’ by Agostino Carracci (1557-1602), featuring blonde hair, cherub, and a break in the clouds, now in a private collection. Ludovico Carracio (1555-1619), a cousin of Annibale and Agostino, was an Italian earlyBaroque painter and printmaker born in Bologna. (520.6) Evan An older name for the Avon, a river 24 miles in length running from the boundary of East Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire until it joins the Clyde between Hamilton and Motherwell. It flows through a gorge in the pleasure-grounds of Hamilton Palace. (520.8) Cadyow Castle (More commonly spelt Cadzow, though pronounced Cadyow). This was built for James, 2nd Earl of Arran (c. 1519-1575, ODNB) between 1500 and 1550, on the site of an earlier royal castle, about a mile southeast of Hamilton on a gorge overlooking the Avon.

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(520.9) in the Border Minstrelsy Walter Scott’s original ballad ‘Cadyow Castle’ was first published in Minstrelsy, III, 380-401. (520.16) royal seat The original Cadzow Castle is believed to have been built in the twelfth century as an occasional royal residence for King David I (c. 1085-c. 1153, ODNB), his successors, Alexander II, Alexander III and others down to Robert the Bruce, also using the castle, often as a hunting lodge. (520.17) conferred [...] Hamiltons The Cadzow estate was granted by Robert the Bruce to Walter FitzGilbert de Hambeldon in the early fourteenth century. FitzGilbert was ennobled as the first Baron of Cadzow, and is the ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton. (520.21-22) new house Cadzow Castle had been partly rebuilt as a folly in the eighteenth century within the Duke’s Park. From 1822 Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton considerably enlarged Hamilton Palace as a repository for his art collection, though no information about plans for building a new house at Cadzow has been discovered. (520.27-28) Thrilled to the music […] roar See Scott, ‘Cadyow Castle’, ll. 11-12. (520.37-38) the huge oaks […] worn Scott, ‘Cadyow Castle’, ll. 53-54. (521.2) wild cattle Wild cattle used to roam freely in the Hamilton parkland, recognisable by their white coats and black muzzles, ears, feet, and horn tips. The breed is more generally known as Chillingham wild cattle, since the largest genetically pure herd is kept at Chillingham Castle, about 12 miles inland from Bamburgh on the coast of Northumberland. In the late 1960s the Cadzow cattle were removed to the Dukes of Hamilton’s new residence at Lennoxlove House in East Lothian, but in 1987 a small number of bullocks were returned to Chatelherault Country Park close to their original home. (521.4-11) Mightiest of all […] snow Scott, ‘Cadyow Castle’, ll. 57-64. (521.20) nervous original In the sense of ‘the sinewy or muscular progenitor’: see also Note for 433.32. (521.23-24) Lord Tankerville Charles Bennett, 4th Earl of Tankerville (17431822, ODNB), whose estate was at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, home of the Chillingham herd of wild cattle (see also Note for 521.2). (521.27) “heritage of the woods.” Not discovered as an established phrase. (521.28) strath Scots for a river valley, especially as it broadens out with meadows and arable land. (521.30) Herefordshire of Scotland Herefordshire is a county in England bordering Wales, notable for its rich pasture and breeding of cattle, and also for its cultivation of apples, including those used for making cider. (522.1) Land of Cakes Name for Scotland, from one of its staple foods, unleavened oat or barley meal cakes. Compare the opening line of Robert Burns’s poem ‘On the Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations thro’ Scotland

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collecting the Antiquities of that Kingdom’ (1789): ‘Hear, Land o’ Cakes, and brither Scots’ (Kinsley 275). Letter LXXIV (523.1) —— Hill Not identified, perhaps fictitious. (523.15) Holy Fair of Burns In Robert Burns’s ‘The Holy Fair’ (Kinsley 70) the poet, accompanied by Fun, attends a country sacrament and, as well as commenting on the preaching, emphasises the drinking and making of assignations that take place. (523.19) overstepped the modesty of nature Compare Hamlet’s instruction to the players in Hamlet, III. ii. 19. (523.23-24) “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ (Kinsley 72) concludes its account of a cottage gathering and supper with a devout act of family worship led by the father of the family. (523.27) Dr Hodgson of Blantyre Blantyre village is about 3 miles northwest of Hamilton in Lanarkshire and 8 miles southeast of Glasgow. John Hodgson (1781-1832) had been minister there since 1809: see Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1915-61), III, 229. Lockhart had written to Jonathan Christie on 18 October 1816 from Burnbank near Hamilton, ‘I have a friend in this neighbourhood, by name Hodgson, an extremely accomplished man, and a great dabbler in writing some years ago, though now the quiet minister of a very small parish’ (Lang, I, 112-13). Hodgson is not named in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters (III, 302), which refers instead to ‘a young clergyman, a Mr P—, a very agreeable and modest person’. (523.30) a parish some ten miles off No actual parish has been identified. (524.2) propriety of deferring his march Strict Presbyterians objected to Sunday travelling as a breach of the Sabbath. (524.9) Eucharist Communion, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. (524.10) only once The annual communion service was widely known as ‘The Occasion’, and derived its popularity partly from its association with the work of field preachers during Covenanting times when opportunities to take communion were rare. A rural parish would tend to have its communion on the same recurring Sunday each year. (524.16) examination touching all the doctrines of the Church The efficacy of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was thought to depend upon true faith, and therefore it was necessary for the minister and the participants to understand its purpose and to fulfil the moral conditions of worthy participation: see J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 158-59. (524.26-27) Praetexta […] Toga Virilis The toga praetexta, bordered with a purple strip, was worn in classical Rome by boys until they reached manhood,

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when they would adopt the entirely white toga virilis worn by ordinary adult citizens. (524.36) day of fasting and humiliation James Hogg, for instance, dated one of his letters to his publisher, William Blackwood, ‘The Fast Day 1835’: see The Collected Letters of James Hogg, ed. by Gillian Hughes and others, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004-08), III, 277. In this context humiliation signifies self-abasement, a realisation of personal unworthiness in the face of the Christian redemption. (525.21) greatness of this religious conflux The protagonist of James Hogg’s ‘Love Adventures of Mr George Cochrane’ falls in love with a girl he sees at a Cameronian sacrament but cannot discover who she is, as ‘On such occasions, persons often meet whose places of abode are a hundred miles distant from each other; from such a distance round do they assemble to this striking and original exhibition’: see Winter Evening Tales, ed. by Ian Duncan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), p. 195. Kinsley records that in Mauchline parish in 1786 there were only 400 communicant parishioners, but that 1400 received the sacrament (III, 1094). (525.32-33) Poet of Ayrshire […] malicious nick-name The title of Burns’s ‘The Holy Fair’ might be interpreted as ‘malicious’ since it directly equates a country sacramental occasion to a country fair at which goods were traded and drinking and socialising occurred. (526.9) 1mo […] 2do […] 3tio Abbreviations for primo, secundo, tertio (Latin): first, second, third. (526.10) a certain profound lawyer Possibly referring to the lawyer and legal writer Edward Coke (1552-1634, ODNB), who discusses ‘peregrinatio simplex’ (see next Note) in chapter 44 of The Second Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (London, 1797), p. 251. (526.11) peregrinatio simplex Simple or natural travelling (Latin): here signifying walking. (526.14) duffle A coarse woollen cloth having a thick nap or frieze. (526.16) emblematical of their sins Compare Isaiah 1. 18: ‘though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’. (526.21-22) top-knots Knots or bows of ribbon worn on the top of the head. (526.29) lint-haired As pale as lint, or fibres from the flax plant used to make linen, that is, fair-haired or white-headed. See, for instance, Burns’s ‘Lassie wi’ the lintwhite locks’ (Kinsley 466). (526.30) Shorter Catechism The Church of Scotland had adopted the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1646-47) for the use of those of ‘weaker capacity’ (as, for instance, children). It consisted of a series of questions and answers used in the oral instruction of the principles of the presbyterian faith.

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(526.32) liberty of conscience Freedom to follow one’s own religious or ethical beliefs. More seriously, in 1811 Earl Stanhope had presented a Liberty of Conscience bill in the House of Lords attempting to prohibit discrimination against religious dissenters. (527.7) eclat Radiance (French): that is, social distinction. (527.8) faithful John John is one of the commonest of male Christian names. Lockhart may perhaps be thinking of the faithful servant of this name in ‘Der treues Johannes’ (Faithful John), a tale first published by the German folk-tale collectors Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the second edition of their Kinder und Hausmarchen (1819). (527.17-18) whistle […] on a Sabbath-day Whistling on Sunday was commonly interpreted as a breach of the fourth commandment (Exodus 20.8 ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy’), as well as a sign of inappropriate light-heartedness, and as non-religious music. For an instance of public disapproval at whistling see James Hogg, Highland Journeys, ed. by H. B. de Groot (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 27. (527.19) tympanum Ear-drum. (527.25) Tent A moveable wooden pulpit, with steps and a canopy. (528.1-2) our first mother […] in Paradise Eve, as depicted viewing her own form reflected in a stream in Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 460-69. (528.2) well-favoured Handsome, good-looking, often with overtones in Scots of decency or seemliness. (528.4-5) Dorothea exhibited […] Don Quixote See the description of Dorothea, disguised as a man, in Lockhart’s edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, 5 vols (Edinburgh, 1822), II, 64: ‘his legs were as white as alabaster, and so taper, so curiously proportioned, and so fine, that nothing of the kind could appear more beautiful’. The encounter, however, involved not Don Quixote himself but his associates the barber and the curate. (528.5) Arcadian See Note for 47.8. (528.16) lay-Elders Representatives of the congregation, chosen from those who lead godly lives and have good knowledge of scripture, and who are responsible for the moral and spiritual discipline of the rest of the parish. (528.21) reception of the alms Poor relief in Scottish parishes traditionally took the form of church-door collections. (528.33-34) old flat blue bonnet A blue flat-topped round cap was considered to be a peculiarly Scottish article of dress: as for instance in Scott’s well-known song ‘Blue Bonnets o’er the Border’. See Marmion, ed. by Ainsley McIntosh, EEWSP 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 430 (Note for 5.698). (529.12) not hiding their candlestick under a bushel See Matthew 5. 15.

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(529.16-17) Geneva cloak […] bands The minister of the parish is wearing his black gown, the other ministers wearing as a token of ecclesiastical dress two strips of white cloth hanging from their fronts, also known as ‘preaching bands’. (529.17-18) beadle of the kirk A parish officer, who keeps order in church. (529.19) folio Bible One printed so that a sheet of paper was folded once, forming two leaves of the book, and which was therefore normally of a very large size. (530.5) precentor Leader of congregational singing in churches which have no choir or instrumental accompaniment. (530.11) concords Combination of notes satisfactory to the ear, harmonies rather than discords. (530.13-14) organs […] Scottish churches An objection to instrumental accompaniments to psalm-singing distinguished the Church of Scotland from the Lutheran as well as Roman Catholic Church, and was probably based on a concern that artistic enhancements of the service were a distraction from the act of worship. A short-lived Sacred Music Institution was formed in Glasgow in 1809 and during that time an organ was temporarily introduced into a gallery in the choir of the Cathedral: see Glasgow Delineated, p. 67. (530.31) lapsus Short for lapsus linguae, a slip of the tongue (Latin). The Reformation Church of Scotland wished to emphasise communion not as a spectacle performed by priests and watched by the congregation, but as participatory; consequently it was served to seated participants in the body of the church rather than taking place at a decorated altar at the east end of the church. (530.34) Archbishop Laud William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (15731645, ODNB), High-Church Anglican. He wished to move the Church of England closer to the Roman Catholic Church and further from Calvinist practice, and also to bring the Church of Scotland into line with the Church of England. He favoured east-end altars, railed off from the congregation. (530.40-531.1) several chapters of the Bible […] Directory of the Scottish Church The Church of Scotland adhered to the Westminster ‘Directory for the Public Worship of God’, approved by the Scottish parliament in 1645. In its section on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper it directs that the words of institution or consecration (echoing those of Jesus himself at the Last Supper) be read from the Evangelists or from I Corinthians 11. 23-27. (531.5) large loaves, cut into slices The Roman rite dictates that the host should be of unleavened bread, whereas the Church of Scotland harked back to the practice of the early Christian church in connecting the Eucharist with the bread of common life. (531.7) cup […] sent round Whereas the Roman Catholic church administered the bread only to the congregation, Protestant churches had ‘communion in

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both kinds’ with wine as well as bread served to the members of the congregation, as commanded by Jesus at the Last Supper. (531.21-22) serving the tables In the Church of Scotland the large body of communicants was served and admonished by the minister in batches, seated around a table in the body of the church. In the Church of England the priest would address the whole body of communicants simultaneously, who then took communion moving in a line past the altar at the east end of the church. (531.37) what Burns has described Alluding to the drinking and forming of assignations in ‘The Holy Fair’: see Note for 523.15. (532.1) refresh Find fresh strength or energy, here implying food and drink as well as rest. (532.5) toon Settlement, thus used for a village as much as for the English town. (532.7-8) walk where naebody will see you Echoing the advice given to Charles II during his stay in Scotland after the execution of his father in 1649, by a minister sent to rebuke him for some ‘frivolous amusement’, that he should on such occasions first ‘take the precaution of shutting the windows’: see Walter Scott, Tales of a Grandfather [Second Series], 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1829), II, 54-55. Letter LXXV (533.17) rustic amphitheatre Outdoor settings were reminiscent of the congregations that attended at great risk to hear field preachers of the Church of Scotland during the ‘Killing Times’ of the 1680s. Such scenes of communal outdoor psalm-singing became a staple of the Scottish fiction published by William Blackwood in the 1820s: compare, for instance, John Galt, The Entail, ed. by Ian A. Gordon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 151-52 (volume 2, chapter 8). (534.10) shepherd’s cloak More usually termed his plaid, a rectangular length of checked black and white woollen cloth, long enough to be worn wrapped around the body and over one shoulder. (534.12-13) Each in his narrow […] hamlet sleep See Thomas Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (1751), ll.15-16. (534.26-27) simple love […] feelings of devotion Another staple of the depiction of rural Scottish life advocated by William Blackwood’s writers during the 1820s and early 1830s: see, for instance, James Hogg’s ‘A Sunday Pastoral’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 28 (November 1830), 737-41. (535.17-18) mind and intellect of their nation Reflecting Friedrich Schlegel’s argument in his Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern (see Introduction, pp. 8-9), but here envisaged in terms of Scotland.

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(535.28) Otway or Rowe English playwrights Thomas Otway (1652-1685, ODNB) and Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718, ODNB). (535.30) the Ploughman Robert Burns was known as the Ploughman Poet because of his upbringing as the son of a poor tenant farmer, a life frequently depicted in his poems. (535.33-34) David Hume […] earlier years in France The Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711-1776, ODNB), though born and receiving his early education in Edinburgh, resided in Paris for three years from 1734 to 1737 and later revisited the city between 1763 and 1765. He also accompanied General James St Clair to Canada in 1746 and to the Continent of Europe in 1748. (536.30) Ramsay and Burns Scottish poets Allan Ramsay (1684-1758, ODNB) and Robert Burns (1759-1796, ODNB). (536.31) rustic flute of old Allan Allan Ramsay published his Tea-Table Miscellany: a Collection of Scots Song between 1723 and 1727, and a popular pastoral drama with a Scottish landscape setting and peasant characters, The Gentle Shepherd, in 1725. (536.34) bard of Coila Burns’s muse Coila, the embodiment of the lands of Kyle, Ayrshire, features in his poem ‘The Vision’ (Kinsley 62). (536.37) deep-toned Mantuan The Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE), born at Andes near Mantua, whose Eclogues depict an ideal version of the peaceful lives of Italian shepherds and whose Georgics describe various forms of rural industry and farming. (537.3-7) Quos rami fructus […] limina Regum, &c. From Virgil, Georgics, II. 500-04. ‘He gathered what fruits the boughs and the willing fields spontaneously yielded, he neither saw the iron laws, the litigious bar, or the public archives. Some brave with oars seas unknown, some rush to arms, some press their way into the courts and palaces of kings.’ (537.14-15) Don Quixote over the Acorns and the Golden Age When Don Quixote and Sancho dine with goatherds the second course consists of acorns and hard cheese, the acorns prompting Don Quixote to give a long, enthusiastic, and exaggerated harangue about the blessedness of the golden age when both food and personal adornments were natural and therefore available for everyone to gather freely: see Lockhart’s edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, 5 vols (Edinburgh, 1822), I, 110-13. (538.3-4) “The plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name” A quotation from Robert Burns, ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ (Kinsley 72), l. 112; see Note for 538 footnote below for information on the tune itself. (538.28-29) Porter, Ale […] twa trees From the anti-drink poem of Hector Macneill (1746-1818, ODNB), Scotland’s Skaith; or, The History o’ Will and Jean (Edinburgh, 1795), p. 7. The poem was so popular that some 14 editions were published in chapbook form within a year of its initial publication.

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(538 footnote) This is the tune […] God to glorify The tune Martyrs was probably composed around 1615, no specific author being known, and has been published in as many as 27 hymnals since, including the Scottish Psalter of 1635. For musical notation and a brief history see https://hymnary.org/ tune/martyrs. Similar words to Lockhart’s are given as an example of those used during choir practices to fit this tune in Millar Patrick, Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 173. (539.1) Sir —— —— If Lockhart has a specific historical person in mind, he has not been identified. (539.38-40) “It would take a long line […] peasant’s heart.” Compare John Wilson, ‘Some Observations on the Poetry of the Agricultural and that of the Pastoral Districts of Scotland, Illustrated by a Comparative View of the Genius of Burns and the Ettrick Shepherd’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (February 1819), 521-29: ‘It would require a long line of thought to fathom the depth of a gray-haired Scottish peasant’s heart, who may have buried in the churchyard of his native village the partner of a long life, and the children she had brought to bless it’ (p. 522). (540.4) goodman The male head of a farmworker’s or farmer’s household. (540.16) Priest of his House Reflecting various places in the Old Testament, such as Job 1. 5, which indicate that the father of a family undertook a priestly role with regard to his own household. (540.21-28) Detached from pleasure […] human cares See William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VI, ll. 45-52. Letter LXXVI (541.11) Devil’s Bridge Close to Hafod in Wales, the village named Devil’s Bridge was a popular tourist spot, named for the road bridge across the River Mynarch and over a picturesque gorge. Now a series of three bridges one over another, it consisted in Lockhart’s day of two, the original medieval bridge with a stone one built over it in 1753 and recently upgraded in 1814. (541.18) resort of Diana and all her nymphs Bathing place fit for the goddess Diana and her nymphs. In Greek legend she was surprised while bathing by the hunter Actaeon, whom she turned into a stag as a punishment and allowed to be torn to pieces by his own hounds. (541.25) déjeune Breakfast (French). Samuel Johnson wrote that breakfast was a meal in which the Scots excel: ‘The tea and coffee are accompanied not only with butter, but with honey, conserves, and marmalades’ (A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1775), p. 124). In old-fashioned and rural homes it was a substantial meal at which to manifest hospitality. James Hogg recalled that when Scott came to breakfast with him he provided ‘abundance of broiled salmon broiled ham and egg and mutton ham’: see

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Anecdotes of Scott, ed. by Jill Rubenstein (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 15. (542.14) our style of keeping Easter-Monday In medieval England and Wales people would not work on Easter Monday and it is still a public holiday in England and Wales, though not in Scotland. (542.22) one of the preachers The running headlines of the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters refer at this point to the ‘The Rev. Mr —— ——’. No particular person, however, has been identified. (542.26) saturnity Gloom, as affected by the influence of the planet Saturn. (542.30) joking school of Puritans As practiced, for example, by the independent preacher Hugh Peter[s] (bap. 1598, d. 1660, ODNB), who was highly regarded by Cromwell and known for his ability to laugh and jest with the Parliamentary soldiers while seizing the opportunity to slip in a word of religious counsel. He was a firm advocate of the execution of Charles I, and after the Restoration portrayed as a buffoon, particularly in Tales and Jests of Hugh Peter (1660). (543.28) hotch-potch Dish consisting of many ingredients; a thick broth made with plenty of vegetables. (543.30) Almanach des Gourmands A restaurant and food guide published in eight volumes between 1803 and 1812 by the celebrated gastronome of Napoleonic France, Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimond de la Reyniére (1758-1837). (543.33) herrings from Loch Fine Loch Fyne is a large sea loch off the Firth of Clyde on the Cowal peninsula, celebrated for its oysters and herrings, especially the noted Loch Fyne kipper. (543.36) Harvey A thin anchovy-based sauce invented by Peter Harvey (17491812), once chef to the Duke of Bolton and then proprietor of large postinginns. The sauce was widely marketed by 1807 by Harvey’s sister’s family, and popular with the aristocracy and the Prince of Wales. (543.39-40) Alderman Curtis Sir William Curtis (1752-1829, ODNB), inheritor of his father’s sea-biscuit factory and establisher of his own bank, Lord Mayor of London for 1795-96 and MP for the City of London from 1790 to 1818. His stoutness made him a general object of ridicule, and he was much lampooned. (544.1) Duke of Clarence’s choice George, Duke of Clarence (1449-1478, ODNB), brother of Edward IV and Richard III, was executed for treason in the Tower of London on 18 February 1478, supposedly being drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. (544.3) Like a dish […] in cream As describing the red cheeks and lips of a beautiful woman in the popular Irish song ‘The Boys of Kilkenny’: see Thomas Crofton Croker, The Popular Songs of Ireland (London, 1839), pp. 206-09.

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(544.11) croupier One who sits as assistant chairman at the bottom of the table at a public dinner. (544.11-12) whisky toddy A drink composed of whisky, hot water and sugar. (544.12) genuine Glasgow mixture For Glasgow punch see text at pp. 45960. (544.18) penetralia Inner recesses of a building, inner sanctum (Latin); innermost parts. (544.32) budget A bundle, or collection, from the pouch in which such a thing was originally contained. (544.32) Mathews or Bannister English comic actors. Charles Mathews (1776-1835, ODNB) was famous for his At Home solo entertainments, monologues linking anecdotes, poems and songs with quick changes of costume and ventriloquism. John Bannister (1760-1836, ODNB) was a star comic actor of the theatre, who from 1809 put on his own monologue entertainment called ‘Bannister’s Budget’. Both toured extensively outside London. (545.3) great Bucolic Jamie of Ettrick Bucolic means pastoral, relating to shepherds or herdsmen, here in allusion to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who was a noted song-writer. Besides singing his own songs on social occasions such as public dinners, Hogg published them both in periodicals and musical collections, culminating in his own selection, Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd (1831). (545.4) THE SHOOTING MINISTER Song not identified, though presumably by Lockhart himself. (545.5) Aurora Roman goddess of dawn. (545.6) buskings Adornments, attire. (545.8) Juno Queen of the Roman gods, the goddess of women. (545.25) cakes Oatcakes, the usual form of bread in Scotland. (545.38) έαν μετριως ελθει If it comes in moderation (Greek). Source unidentified. (546.7) Old Mortality Named after the original title of Scott’s novel concerning the Covenanters, published as part of Tales of my Landlord in 1816. (546.9-10) John Ballantyne, in Edinburgh Scott’s friend and literary agent John Ballantyne (1774-1821, ODNB), younger brother of the printer James Ballantyne. He did indeed have a horse named Old Mortality: see Scott Letters, V, 489. Ballantyne evidently accompanied Lockhart on his May 1819 visit to Scott, which may have influenced Lockhart’s account: ‘I rode out to Abbotsford with John Ballantyne towards the end of the spring vacation’ (Life of Scott, IV, 259). (546.14) stirrup-cup Cup of wine or other drink taken on horseback before setting out upon a journey.

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(546.18) king’s highway Public road or right of way for the use of the sovereign and all his subjects. (546.21) “Post equitem sedet atra cura.” Black care sits behind the horseman (Latin), a jocular quotation from Horace, Odes, III. 40. The minister here jests that his wife is the black care who sits behind him. (546.24) Miss Currie Margaret Currie, the daughter of the landlady of the Buck’s Head Inn in Glasgow: see also Note for 505.21. (546.26-27) Rothesay […] steam-boat Rothesay is the principal town of the Isle of Bute, which steam-boat traffic from Glasgow was to turn into a popular Victorian holiday resort. Morris’s plan was to go by steam-boat down the river Clyde to the Isle of Bute initially and from there to Inverary, where he would be met by his servant and the shandrydan, although the boat he travelled on was unlikely to have been the ‘Rob Roy’ as illustrated. By midsummer 1819 Morris would have a choice of steam-boats on this route, including the ‘Britannia’, the ‘Argyll’ and the ‘Neptune’ (see also text at p. 515 and Notes). POSTSCRIPT TO THE THIRD EDITION (547) Ch’agli nemici […] ogni cagione See Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. William Stewart Rose, 8 vols (London, 1823-31), I, 145 (Canto V, stanza 6), translated there as: All times have shown that man has still pursued With hate, in every clime, his natural foe; But to deal death to those who seek our good Does from too ill and foul a nature flow. Now, that the truth be better understood, I shall from first to last the occasion show, Why in my tender years, against all right, Those caitiffs would have done me foul despite. (547) The truth […] find the plaster See The Tempest, II. i. 142-44. (549 heading) SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE The poet, critic and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, ODNB), already mentioned with high praise in Peter’s Letters (see Letters XI, XXVII, XL, XLVI, XLVIII). (549.6-7) two very interesting letters of last month In fact Coleridge addressed three letters to the author of Peter’s Letters. The original of an undated letter from Coleridge addressed not to Lockhart by name but to ‘The Author of Peter’s Letters &c’ survives in NLS MS 4937, fols 26-29. A title, ‘Letter to Peter Morris, M. D. on the Sorts and Uses of Literary Praise’, has been added subsequently for its printing in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 7 (September 1820), 629-31. For this and two subsequent letters, accompanying inscribed copies of Coleridge’s Zapolya and the second of his Lay Sermons, see The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by

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Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71), IV, 966-74 (Letters 1212, 1213, and 1214). (549.11) bagatelle A trifle, a thing of no value or importance. (549.14) “reading public” Phrase which in Lockhart’s time might signal anxieties about the expansion in the number of readers, especially labouringclass readers, leading to political radicalism and a loss of literary standards: see the portrait of the Philosophical Weaver in Letter LXVIII. Coleridge expressed his own anxieties about the phenomenon in chapter 3 of his Biographia Literaria, 2 vols (London, 1817), I, 60: ‘all men being supposed able to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous PUBLIC, shaped into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism’. It is possible that the phrase was particularly associated with Coleridge since it is repeated several times by Mr Flosky, the satirical portrait of him in Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey (1818). (550.6-7) objections […] as to matters of minor moment Coleridge’s first letter, while supporting Lockhart’s strictures against the Edinburgh Reviewers, seeks to clear up misunderstandings about his life and work expressed in various periodicals. His second letter concerns critical reaction to his dramas, while his final letter focuses on injustices in Hazlitt’s review of Christabel: Kubla Khan; The Pains of Sleep in the Edinburgh Review, 27 (September 1816), 58-67. (550.36) salt of the earth The best of mankind, the elect; Jesus told his disciples they were the salt of the earth (Matthew 5. 13). (550.37) six thousand years The creation of the world was traditionally supposed to have occurred around 4000 BCE, a thesis based upon various dates provided by the Bible and accepted by scholars such as the theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) and the astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). A precise date of 4004 BCE was given by Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656, ODNB) in his popular chronologies in Annales veteris testamenti (1650) and this was often printed in copies of the Authorised Version of the Bible. This dating was currently being challenged by the discoveries of geologists. (551.6) corporeal […] giants Compare Genesis 6. 4: ‘There were giants in the earth in those days’. (551.17) faultless monster to which the world never saw Compare John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721, ODNB), ‘An Essay upon Poetry’ (1682), ll. 235-36: ‘There’s no such thing in Nature, and you’ll draw / A faultless Monster which the world ne’re saw’. (551.18) compendium An embodiment in miniature, an abridgement. (551.19) spirit extract A liquid of the nature of an essence or extract of a substance, especially one obtained by distillation. (551.27) “Μακαριοι ύψωτατοι” Blessed highly, or highly exalted (Greek). Source unidentified.

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(551.32) Olympian region The summit of Mount Olympus in Greece was supposedly the residence of the gods. (551.33) demi-gods Minor or inferior deities; men raised to divine rank, or beings partly of divine nature such as the offspring of a god and a mortal. (551.39) Epicurean Demon From the concept of Eudaimonia as advocated by the ancient Greek philosophers, the term deriving etymologically from the words ‘eu’ (good) and ‘daimon’ (spirit). The philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) developed the idea that happiness consists in the condition of living well in arguing that a life of pleasure is also one of virtue. (552.1) Nec bene promeritis capitur nec tangitur irâ Neither propitiated with services nor touched by wrath (Latin): from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, I. 49, in expounding the philosophical system of Epicureanism. (552.4) through the ivory gate According to Homer’s Odyssey, XIX. 564-66, there were two gates of dreams, false dreams coming through the gate of ivory and true dreams coming through the gate of horn. (552.6) SUPERI Those above (Latin); superior beings, or deities. (552.23) in an evil hour An allusion to Eve’s plucking of the forbidden fruit in Milton’s Paradise Lost, IX. 780. (552.35) profanum vulgus The common crowd (Latin): see also Note for 389.22. (552.35-36) intima penetralia Innermost recesses (Latin); the innermost part of a Roman temple, to which only the priest had access. (552.37) Pythoness and Python The Python was a dragon or serpent originally guarding Delphi, but slain by Apollo, who then established his own cult there. The priestess of Apollo at the oracle at Delphi, who prophesied in an ecstatic state in answer to suppliants’ questions, was known as the Pythia. (553.1) Gentile Non-Jew, who would not be allowed into the inner court of the Temple at Jerusalem. (553.2) Animæ Cœlestes Heavenly spirits or minds (Latin). (553.2) Lordly Brahmin Brahmins are the priestly order, the highest of the Hindu castes. (553.4) linen thread of Vishnu A ceremony of an upper-caste boy adopting the wearing of a sacred thread, which marks the start of his formal religious education. The thread has three strands signifying purity of thoughts, words and deeds. Vishnu is worshipped by many Hindus as the supreme deity. (553.10) hyperborean In Greek mythology the Hyperboreans were a legendary race who lived beyond the North wind; used here hyperbolically to indicate northern. (553.11) horrescent Expressing or showing horror.

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(553.11) salaam Indian gesture of greeting or respect, typically a low bow of the head and body with the hand or fingers touching the forehead. (553.12) Paria Pariah (Tamil). A member of a despised or low caste, an outcast. (553.15-16) touch the hem of their garments Gesture of abasement, perhaps recollecting Matthew 9. 20-22, where a diseased woman touches the hem of Jesus’s garment and he heals her. (553.17) lustrations Purifications. (553.20) umbilicus The navel (Latin). (554.23) ex facie On the face of it (Latin). (554.29-30) the American Simond Lockhart, like other Tories, was inclined to dispute the self-description of the painter and traveller Louis Simond (17671831) as a Frenchman in his Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain, during the years 1810 and 1811, by a French Traveller, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1815). Simond had been resident in the United States of America for twenty years, and wrote his travel book in English. He also had an English wife, and was a connection by marriage of Francis Jeffrey. In his work he identifies strongly with Whig cultural and political interests. (554.32) all the praises it received For example, in periodicals such as the Scots Magazine, 77 (July 1815), 527-35, and the Monthly Review, 79 (April 1816), 410-18. (554.36) notices of Scottish Tories As, for instance, of Walter Scott, with remarks on his appointment as a Principal Clerk of Session as a political one and for which he was indebted to the Whigs (Journal of a Tour, I, 371-72). (555.12-13) St Stephen’s Chapel The home of the House of Commons within the palace of Westminster up to the burning of the Houses of Parliament in 1834. (555.13) Drury-Lane One of the two London patent theatres. The current building had been opened in 1812 after the destruction of an earlier theatre by fire in 1809. (555.14) Mr Kean Star actor of the Drury Lane Theatre Edmund Kean (17871833, ODNB), who had made a legendary debut there as Shylock in 1814. (555.16) table d’hôte Host’s table (French); a meal offered by a hotel or restaurant at a fixed price and with limited if any choice of dishes. (555.17) chimæra A grotesque fire-breathing monster in Greek mythology, which had a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a dragon’s tail: it was killed by Bellerophon. In modern usage, a wild fancy. (555.37) contrectation Wanton or sexual handling or touching. The word also has a specific legal usage, where it indicates the ability to be removed and is part of the definition of larceny. Where property, such as real estate, is not capable of contrectation, there can be no charge of larceny.

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(555.39) doers Legal agents or men of business. (556.6-9) enslaved genii […] Golden Ring In the story of Aladdin in the Thousand and One Nights the sorcerer traps Aladdin in a cave during his quest for the magic lamp. Aladdin, however, is still wearing a magic ring that the sorcerer lent him and, rubbing it inadvertently, summons a genii, who helps him to escape. (556.11-12) noiseless tenour […] calm sequestered lives The first of a series of running allusions in this paragraph to Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (1751). Compare here ‘Along the cool sequester’d vale of life / They kept the noiseless tenor of their way’ (ll. 75-76). (556.12) “purest ray serene” Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country ChurchYard’, l. 53. (556.14) breathe their pomatum on the barren air Compare Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’, ll. 55-56 (‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, /And waste its sweetness on the desert air’). Pomatum is a scented ointment for the hair. (556.15) delicate unsunned souls Possibly echoing Cymbeline, II . v. 13 (‘chaste as unsunned snow’). (556.19-20) duris genuit […] ubera tigres Compare Dido’s reproach to Aeneas when he resolves to leave Carthage in Virgil, Aeneid, IV. 366-67, reading there ‘rugged Caucasus on his flinty rocks begot you, and Hyrcanian tigresses suckled you’. Lockhart alters the Latin ‘te’ (you) to ‘ME’ (me). (556.33) Hall of Rufus Westminster Hall, seat of the English law-courts, had been founded in 1097 by William II (c. 1060-1100, ODNB), known as William Rufus. (556.34-35) Sir Samuel Shepherd The English lawyer Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760-1840, ODNB) had been appointed attorney-general in 1817, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer of Scotland in June 1819, and in July 1819 became a privy councillor. (556.36) stricken deer Compare William Cowper, The Task, Book III, ll. 10809 (‘I was a stricken deer, that left the herd / Long since’). (556.37) Charley Bush Charles Kendal Bushe (1767-1843, ODNB), SolicitorGeneral for Ireland from 1805 and from 1822 Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in Ireland. (557.1) Ellis […] the Beef-steak The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks was an exclusive social club which met weekly to dine on beef-steaks and porter in London, the membership being limited to twenty-four. It was asserted that the Prince Regent when Prince of Wales had to wait his turn before becoming a member. The only Ellis listed among the members is a William Ellis who was admitted on 19 November 1774: see Walter Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks (London, 1871), p. xx. Lockhart may refer to

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Scott’s friend, the scholar George Ellis (1753-1815, ODNB), though as he had died on 10 April 1815 Morris could not feasibly address him in 1819. (557.3) fighting with shadows Imagining enemies where there are none: see ODEP, p. 256. (557.6-7) beard the lion in his den Proverbial (ODEP, p. 35), beard meaning ‘to defy’. Compare Scott, Marmion, ed. by Ainsley McIntosh, EEWSP 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), p. 185 (Canto Sixth, l. 666: ‘To beard the lion in his den’). (557.8) myrmidons Followers or attendants. (557.15) Dardan Trojan, Dardanus being the ancestor of the Kings of Troy. (557.16-17) timeo […] ferentem See Virgil, Aeneid, II. 49, ‘timeo Danaos et dona ferentis’ (I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts). Lockhart substitutes ‘Odi’ (I hate) for ‘timeo’ (I fear). (557.19) fixed stars of the north Perhaps in contrast to the shifting northern lights of the aurora borealis, the usual comparison for Edinburgh’s literary men. (557.35) luxury In the older negative sense of lust or lasciviousness. (558.6) palladium Something on which the safety of a nation is believed to depend, from the image of the goddess Pallas in the citadel of Troy, reputed to have been transferred to Rome. (558.11) gall and wormwood Something extremely bitter and mortifying: see Lamentations 3. 19 (‘Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall’). Gall is bile and wormwood a bitter plant. (558.12) our national triumphs The ultimately successful campaigns against France during the Peninsular War (1807-14), followed by the defeat of the Emperor Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. (558.12-13) series of confusion and disappointment Reflecting the Whig point of view as expressed by Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh Review article ‘Don Pedro Cevallos on the French Usurpation of Spain’, for which see Note for 260.25-26. (558.14-15) afflictions, beyond the reach of human aid A reference to the serious industrial unrest of 1816-18, which was exacerbated by poor harvests following the conclusion of the Napoleonic War. During the cold wet summer of 1816, in particular, crops had rotted in the fields. (558.17) fancied oppression After a riot following a mass meeting at Spa Fields in London held on 2 December 1816, the government became convinced that a political revolution was imminent and passed the so-called ‘Gagging Acts’ of 1817 to prevent large public assemblies. Protests such as the hungerinspired ‘March of the Blanketeers’ followed. Government repression of public demonstrations included the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester on 16 August

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1819, and the use of cavalry also in Scotland’s Radical War in the spring of 1820. (558.20) pour oil upon the kindling embers of disaffection To pour oil on the fire is to encourage that fire to burn: see ODEP, p. 587. Lockhart implies that his political opponents, by advocating freedom of the press and moderate political reform, have in effect incited popular protests against the government. (558.27) chief of sinners A confession imitating that of Paul in I Timothy 1. 15. (558.28) sup full upon their horrors Compare Macbeth, V. v. 13. (558.29) black arts Magic, necromancy. WORKS OF THE SAME AUTHOR (559.1) DE MULIERE About Women (Latin). The title of a medical textbook supposedly published by Morris, with a second edition published in Paris in 1812. It is referred to in the course of his visit to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow: see p. 470 and footnote. (559.2) LIBRI TRES Three volumes (Latin). (559.2) Lutetiæ Parisior Variant imprint name for Paris. (559.3) DE MOTU PERISTALTICO About the peristaltic motion (Latin): that is, concerning muscular motions of the intestines and other digestive organs. (559.4-7) DISSERTATIO […] SOCIO This translates as ‘Inaugural dissertation of Leiden, undertaken to secure the degree of doctor of philosophy by Peter Morris, Welshman, lately of Jesus College, Oxford University’ (Latin). Morris refers to himself as having passed the spring of 1802 at Leiden under the roof of Professor Wyttenbach in the main text at p. 464. (559.9) COLONEL JOHNES OF HAFOD The agricultural improver and landscaper Thomas Johnes (1748-1816, ODNB) of Hafod in Cardiganshire, about 12 miles southeast of Aberystwyth: Hafod is referred to in the main text at p. 487. Johnes was a Colonel of the Cardiganshire militia. (559.10) TALIESSIN The Welsh poet Taliesin supposedly flourished in the sixth century (ODNB). A famous fourteenth-century manuscript called the Book of Taliesin, now in the National Library of Wales (Peniarth MS 2), contains poems reputedly by him. (559.11) Hafod Press Thomas Johnes of Hafod (see above) set up a private printing-press in 1802, chiefly used for the printing of translations of medieval French chronicles.

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(559.15) MEDICINE IN SCOTLAND As contemporary reviewers noted (see Introduction, p. 33), in view of Morris’s profession of doctor it was odd that Peter’s Letters itself gives no account of the state of medicine in Scotland. (559.17) SIR EVERARD HOME, BARONET The British surgeon, Sir Everard Home (1756-1832, ODNB) was brother-in-law to the famous surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793, ODNB), and brother to Hunter’s wife the poetess Anne Hunter (1742/3-1821, ODNB).

The Engravings An imaginative leap is required for a modern reader to appreciate what engravings meant for a reader in the early nineteenth century, before the widespread creation of the great institutional art galleries of Britain’s capital and provincial cities enabled access to original paintings and before the internet and other media bombarded each one of us with a plethora of photographic images. The young Charlotte Brontë, for example, struck her school-fellows as knowing a good deal about celebrated pictures and painters, and by the age of thirteen had already drawn up a list of painters whose work she wished to see, but her information came mostly from printed descriptions and from woodcuts or engravings. Whenever ‘an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind, she went over it piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper’, and she and her sisters ‘would take and analyse any print or drawing which came in their way, and find out how much thought had gone to its composition, what ideas it was intended to suggest, and what it did suggest’.1 A similar dependence on prints as an initial source of information on paintings is evident in various passages of Lockhart’s Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. After seeing William Allan’s Two Tartar Robbers dividing their Spoil,2 Dr Peter Morris learns that James Stewart (1791-1863, ODNB) is preparing an engraving of the picture and orders a copy for his home of Pensharpe-Hall, both as a souvenir for himself and as an opportunity for his correspondent Rev. David Williams (who has not seen the original) to judge for himself of the composition (p. 306). It must also have been common for someone viewing a wellknown painting for the first time to have had its outline previously fixed upon his or her mind by a more easily accessible engraving. Morris, in stating to his correspondent that at Hamilton Palace he has seen Rubens’s Daniel in the Lions’ Den,3 adds that he need not say anything about it ‘as you are quite familiar with the prints’ (p. 519). In an age that preceded even the earliest experiments in photography, engravings rather than original paintings would be the most usual pictorial embellishments of middle-class and modest gentry households, framed and hung on the walls, to be leafed through in volume form, or viewed as loose sheets organised into portfolios. Often when Morris mentions a painting he immediately relates it to a corresponding print.

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The ‘fine portrait of Mr Wilkie’ by Andrew Geddes (1783-1844, ODNB), for instance, ‘has lately been engraved in London’ (p. 336), while the ‘prints of David Hume are, most of them, I believe, taken from the very portrait I have seen’ (p. 61). Wastle has an engraving of the portrait of Lord Braxfield wearing his judicial robes by Henry Raeburn (1756-1823, ODNB) over the mantle-piece of his study in Edinburgh (p. 246), while Morris’s study at Pensharpe-Hall displays engraved portraits of the theologians ‘Barrow, Hooker, Butler, Warburton, and Horsley’ (p. 396). During his stay in Edinburgh Morris purchases prints intended for his country home, notably one of Allan’s Two Tartar Robbers dividing their Spoil (referred to above) and another based upon a portrait of John Erskine (p. 396) attributed to Raeburn. Lockhart himself, as a university graduate and the son of a wellknown Glasgow clergyman, was in a better position than the teenage Charlotte Brontë to gain access to original paintings. As a former student at Glasgow University he had been able to view the collection of the Hunterian Museum attached to that institution, and at Oxford had access to paintings in the picture gallery of the university’s Bodleian Library (p. 30), while it would not have been difficult for him to obtain permission to tour local country houses that were also show-places and examine the pictures on display there. Dr Morris’s account of the paintings at Hamilton Palace in Peter’s Letters certainly implies that Lockhart had made the twelve-mile journey from Glasgow and seen them himself. In Edinburgh there were occasional public exhibitions of the paintings of particular artists or groups of artists, open to anyone able to afford the entry fee, while membership of the Society of Dilettanti would bring Lockhart into association with both intermediaries such as David Bridges and artists themselves, opening up the possibility of his becoming an acceptable visitor to their studios. Nevertheless, the opportunity to view original paintings would have been comparatively rare. It is noticeable that when describing in Peter’s Letters paintings in collections that he must have seen, Lockhart plainly worked from memory and often without access to images that would have refreshed his recollection of them, since he evidently made occasional errors in his descriptions. For instance, in describing the painting now known as Madonna of the Basket in the Hunterian Museum Lockhart mistakenly states that the figure of St Joseph is included in the composition (see p. 470 and Note for 470.25).4 Engravings, where these were available, could sometimes act as a reference point for original paintings, a reminder of the experience of viewing them, even though

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such would give little idea of the original colouring, the engravings themselves normally being in black and white. Books of engravings seem to have been a popular attraction of the lounges of fashionable booksellers. Morris describes John Murray’s salon in Albemarle Street in London as containing ‘all those luxurious attractions of sofas and sofa-tables, and books of prints, &c. &c.’ (p. 278), while in Edinburgh the shop of Manners and Miller is rendered attractive to its polite clientele by innumerable books of scenery—those beautiful books which transport one’s eye in a moment into the heart of Savoy or Italy—or that still more beautiful one, which presents us with exquisite representations of the old castles and romantic skies of Scotland, over whose forms and hues of native majesty, a new atmosphere of magical interest has just been diffused by the poetical pencil of Turner—Thomson—or Williams. (pp. 279-80) The last reference is one of several in Peter’s Letters to the first instalment, published in May 1819, of The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland, essentially a picture-book of engravings of pictures by well-known artists, including those named above, with accompanying letter-press by Walter Scott.5 William Blackwood was its Edinburgh publisher, and a two-page prospectus for the work was issued with Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for October 1818, and attention drawn to it in that issue’s ‘Works Preparing for Publication’: The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland. We refer our readers to the Prospectus which accompanies this Number, for the details and conditions of this very splendid and spirited undertaking.6 According to this prospectus the work allows ‘the Traveller’ to ‘possess accurate, and at the same time graceful representations, of the scenes which he has viewed with interest’, while ‘those who cannot visit them in person may have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with their beauties through the medium of the Pencil’. In such topographical works, it is declared, ‘Art is brought into alliance with History’.7 This was an objective dear to Lockhart’s own heart, as shown by his warm approval in Peter’s Letters of William Allan’s recent turn towards

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subjects taken from Scottish history, particularly those featuring in the writings of Walter Scott. Allan’s preparatory sketch, as seen by Morris, for The Murder of Archbishop Sharp on Magus-Moor, 1679 clearly relates to Scott’s The Tale of Old Mortality (1816), and Allan is also specifically mentioned as presently engaged in ‘making designs for the illustration of Waverley, and the other novels of the same author’ (pp. 319, 327). The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland—described as ‘Mr Scott’s great work’ (p. 335)—is a project that forwards Lockhart’s own agenda of the creation of a truly Scottish national culture, embracing the visual arts as well as literature, in which Scott as primary author is supported by Scottish artists such as William Allan, John Thomson, Hugh William Williams, John Alexander Schetky, and Alexander Nasmyth. The inclusion of engravings in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk sent various signals to the reader and prospective purchaser, the plainest of which was that this was a luxury item, a feature also indicated by its price. While in his original outline for the work Lockhart gives no hint of illustrations, they are mentioned in an early advertisement for the work of 1 April 1819 in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, which stated that it was to be ‘illustrated with numerous Portraits, etched and engraved by amateurs’.8 William Davies, of the publishing firm Cadell & Davies (Blackwood’s London partners in the publication of Peter’s Letters) warned him on 27 April that many people would understand this literally, himself not quite crediting that Peter’s Letters was truly intended to be an illustrated publication. More than a month later he was still asking Blackwood to ‘tell us how the Etchings and Engravings by Amateurs are to be understood by the million’.9 Ironically, in the ‘Epistle Liminary’ the choice of portrait illustrations for the work is supposedly that of Davies himself, to whom the letter is addressed: Morris simply sends him the contents of his ‘rich portfolio of the chief worthies I met with […] leaving you to select for the engraver such as seem most likely to improve the appearance and popularity of the work’, though he does advise Davies not to omit ‘the sketches of the Man of Feeling [Henry Mackenzie], Mr Scott, Mr Jeffrey, Mr Alison, and Dr Chalmers’ (p. 8) The advertisement that appeared shortly before the actual publication date, in the Caledonian Mercury of 10 July 1819, also declared that it was indeed to be an illustrated work, ‘embellished with a Head of the Author and other Twelve Portraits, and Four Vignettes, in three volumes 8vo price L. 1 11s. 6d.’.

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A prefatory author portrait was a general signal of respectability and established authorship. It featured in books of poetry, the work of classic British novelists, and in extended biographical articles in monthly magazines. By its inclusion of a Head of the Author Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk demonstrated its affinities to the novel as well as to books of travel and tourism. Other kinds of illustration could signal genre, as when Henry Tilney in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey defines the Gothic novel as ‘three duodecimo volumes, two hundred and seventysix pages in each, with a frontispiece to the first, of two tombstones and a lantern’.10 The satirical or comic novel could also be signalised by its illustrations and typographical eccentricities. An early nineteenthcentury instance of the illustrated comic novel is Isaac D’Israeli’s FlimFlams! or, The Life and Errors of my Uncle, and the Amours of my Aunt! (1805), with its title-page declaration that it contained ‘Nine Plates’. Flim-Flams satirised contemporary literary men, scientists, and inventors and included a mock-phrenological dissertation on skulls, as well as ‘A Scene in Low Life, or The Reviewers!, being a Narrative of an Arch Constable joining a Crew of Jovial Beggars!’.11 Peter’s Letters plainly covers some of the same ground as Flim-Flams though in more sober style, being openly appreciative of a number of the individuals who were targets of its more general disapproval, such as prominent contributors to the Edinburgh Review, with only certain sections, such as the account of the Speculative Society, being overtly satirical. At first sight the illustrations to Peter’s Letters divide into two distinct categories, the serious and commemorative portraits of celebrated men, and the more light-hearted vignettes that depict the bonhomous Dr Morris at key points of his tour. The four vignettes show Morris in the shandrydan approaching Edinburgh, his riding to Melrose Abbey in company with Scott, his approaching St Giles’ Cathedral in the procession of the Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and his farewell to Glasgow friends as he leaves that city by steam-boat. These are all in much the same style, lightly drawn mostly in outline, and specific to the text of the work itself since each shows the protagonist as well as some feature of his tour—a significant building, a famous man, or (in the case of the Rob Roy steamboat) a relatively new means of transport. To a degree they anticipate the strategy of the illustrations in such subsequent works as Pierce Egan’s Life in London […] Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis (1821) or the illustrations by George Cruikshank of London street-life and typical Londoners for Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (1836).

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The vogue for novels illustrated by the quizzical sketches of Cruikshank, however, was largely a feature of the 1820s as was the craze begun by Egan’s work for picaresque adventures set in famous cities and exemplified by works such as David Carey’s Life in Paris (1822), also illustrated by Cruikshank. Egan’s strategy was to allow the reader to accompany a small group of affectionately-described if rather stereotypical comic characters around the principal features of the city in question and into the various societies of the place. Cruikshank’s illustrations show the buildings and scenery of those places as well as the members of the group who act as surrogates for the reader in experiencing them. In the same way the vignettes of Peter’s Letters allow the reader to glimpse places such as St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh or the quay at Glasgow. Dickens’s later Sketches by Boz is intimately connected with the London periodical scene of the 1830s, the individual sketches in it being originally published in various periodical works. Similarly, Peter’s Letters had also originated in and was closely identified with periodical publication, having close links to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and this link probably extends to the illustrations as well as the text. In between the publication of the ‘second’ and ‘third’ editions of Lockhart’s work, the magazine itself published a special issue in September 1819 called ‘The Tent’ which subsumed individual articles into an overall framework of a sporting holiday of the actual and fictional contributors to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine near Braemar. This was illustrated by three full-page engravings.12 The first of them, ‘The Tent’, showed a sociable group of Blackwood’s contributors relaxing in and around their tent, and was inscribed to James Hogg by ‘Morgan Odoherty’, one of the fictional contributors. The second, ‘Pilgrimage to the Kirk of Shotts’ is a comical portrayal of a group of contributors to Constable’s rival Edinburgh Magazine in a disorganised procession en route to their less prestigious contributors’ gathering at Kirk of Shotts, a staging-post between Edinburgh and Glasgow. This was inscribed to David Bridges, Secretary of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, by ‘Hugh Mullion’, another fictional Blackwood’s contributor. The third was inscribed by the magazine’s publisher William Blackwood to James Duff, 4th Earl of Fife (1776-1857), the owner of the Braemar estate, and is entitled ‘Arrival of Prince Leopold’, a reference to the visit to Edinburgh in the summer of 1819 of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (1790-1865), widower of the only legitimate daughter of the Prince Regent. The dedications to the three prints by three figures associated

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with the magazine may be intended to signify that the contributors themselves have artistic aspirations, perhaps even personal responsibility for the drawings on which the engravings were based. No artist’s or engraver’s name is detailed at the foot of the prints themselves, but stylistically they closely resemble the vignettes in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk as produced only a few months earlier and it seems likely that members of the same group may have been involved in their production. The April advertisement for Peter’s Letters describes the promised illustrations as ‘etched and engraved by amateurs’ rather than by professional artists, and it seems quite possible that Lockhart himself had a hand in at least the vignettes eventually included in the published volumes and which were specific to the work. As a highly-skilled professional operation book engraving was usually learned through apprenticeship to an established engraver. An artist would create an original drawing or translate an oil painting into a line drawing that could be used as the basis for the engraver to transfer onto the flat surface of a copper plate for printing. It seems unlikely that Lockhart would have had the skills of a competent engraver, but more probable that some of his own drawings were used as the basis of the vignette engravings for the work. From his teenage years Lockhart had been an inveterate drawer of caricatures. His early friend Jonathan Christie remarked of Lockhart at Oxford that In those days he was an incessant caricaturist: his papers, his books, and the walls of his rooms were covered with portraitures of his friends and himself—so like as to be unmistakeable, with an exaggeration of any peculiarity so droll and so provoking as to make the picture anything but flattering to the self-love of its subject.13 These were sufficiently remarkable to have been preserved by his friends. Andrew Lang in The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart refers, for instance, to a collection of Lockhart’s drawings given by Thomas Hamilton to Lady Brewster and to another such collection at Abbotsford ‘made on wet days, to amuse the family’ (both now in the National Library of Scotland). Lang includes a number of these drawings and paintings in his biography and others were published in Mrs Gordon’s life of her father, John Wilson. Another friend of Lockhart, John Cay (1790-1865), appears to have owned a third collection.14 Although Lang compares Lockhart to Thackeray for the relationship between his drawings and his main work as a writer, he admits that

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Thackeray ‘had tried far harder than Lockhart to learn to draw’, and notes that at the time of his German tour in 1817 Lockhart ‘either could not draw hands, or did not take the trouble’ (Lang, I, 339-41). One of Lockhart’s surviving water-colour drawings, reproduced by Lang under the title ‘Lockhart and Sir Walter Scott (?) Riding’, bears a distinct relationship to a vignette engraving in Peter’s Letters, that given on the title-page of the second volume and described in the List of Embellishments as ‘The Author and Mr Scott riding towards Melrose Abbey’. Both include a mounted group, one of whom is pointing with arm outstretched, and a nearby sign-post to the left, though they are not identical: Lockhart’s own figure, for instance, is naturally not included in the illustration for the anonymously-published Peter’s Letters.15 As it happens, the imperfect draughtsmanship of this vignette in Peter’s Letters was criticised by the Philadelphia magazine The Port-Folio, whose reviewer reported, ‘The doctor’s horse is represented as moving the two legs on a side at the same time, like a camel. If this had happened here it would have been said that our engravers did not know a horse’s head from his tail’.16 None of the four vignette engravings in Peter’s Letters bears an artist’s or an engraver’s name. In contrast to these, the majority of the portrait engravings in the work are clearly attributed, with the names of both artist and engraver at the foot of each, though some of the names given are obviously of fictional persons. Most of the drawings upon which the engravings are based are marked as being by ‘P. M.’, that is Peter Morris himself, and this is in keeping with Lockhart’s having given Morris his own habit of constant sketching. In the ‘Epistle Liminary’ Morris reports to William Davies on the subject of including portraits in the publication that ‘my pencil was in request while I was in Scotland, almost as much as my pen, and […] I have now a very rich portfolio of the chief worthies I met with in that northern region’ (p. 8). The reader is also reminded of Morris’s drawing in several subsequent places in the text. Writing to his aunt Lady Johnes, for instance, Morris assures her ‘I am […] making drawings in crayon of the northern beauties, which, I flatter myself, will be enough to amuse your ladyship half the autumn, after I return to you’ (p. 121). He also describes various attempts at taking Scott’s likeness while on a visit to Abbotsford, in terms which make it plain how closely his portraits are related to his interest in phrenology. Incorporating the best of them in one of his letters to his friend the Rev. David Williams as that in which he thinks ‘the expression […] comes nearest to the habitual character of his face’, Morris instructs Williams, ‘Study it well

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for a few minutes, and then listen to a few of my remarks on the organization of this remarkable man’ (p. 357), so that the portrait becomes a visual aid to his friend in understanding Morris’s phrenological deductions as to Scott’s character. The attribution of so many portrait drawings in Peter’s Letters to Peter Morris was plainly nothing more than part of the fiction concerning the authorship of the work, and Lockhart could hardly have supposed that this second-hand claim to be the originator of them would have been understood in any other light than that of a joke. Many of the portraits are obviously derived from well-known paintings by reputed artists. The original of the portrait of Walter Scott alluded to above, for instance, is manifestly that painted in 1808 by Raeburn for Scott’s publisher, Archibald Constable. This was the best-known and most frequently-reproduced image of Scott at this time.17 The Raeburn portrait of Henry Mackenzie of 1810, which forms the basis of Morris’s supposed portrait of him, was displayed in Raeburn’s own studio and must therefore have been frequently seen by the artist’s many students, friends, and casual visitors.18 Raeburn’s portrait of Lord Braxfield of around 1798 was also well-known, though in this case its representation in Peter’s Letters is straightforwardly and accurately attributed to him as painter and to ‘W. & D. Lizars’ as the engraver.19 Although Morris is the reputed author of Peter’s Letters there is little reason therefore to suppose that in attaching his name to many of the portraits of notable men in the book Lockhart was in any way claiming that they represented his own drawings. The same is true of attributions to Morris’s old friend, the Scottish Tory William Wastle, another authorial avatar, to whom Lockhart’s poems in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine such as ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam’ were attributed.20 Wastle’s name is attached to three of the portraits of Peter’s Letters. Under John Leslie’s portrait in the first volume is written ‘W. Wastle Fect.’, the last word abbreviating the Latin ‘fecit’ (made) and being commonly used to signify in engravings that the person named may have both drawn the image and engraved it. Despite this claim the engraving appears to be taken from the etching of 1817 by the Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay (1742-1826, ODNB), since the face and pose are the same although the top hat of the Kay portrait has been omitted and the figure truncated from full length to show head and shoulders only.21 Wastle is also named as the engraver of the two portraits of Francis Jeffrey that appear in the ‘third’ edition of the work.

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In general the full-page engravings of Edinburgh notables in Peter’s Letters are intended, unlike the vignettes, as serious representations or likenesses of those described in the text and are not specific to the work itself. William Davies, the work’s London publisher, commented in his letter to Blackwood of 30 July 1819 that ‘the Plates are very spirited and clever, and I dare say that the portraits of those men whom I never saw are equally correct in point of likeness as Mr Mackenzie, Profr Playfair, &c. whom I well remember’.22 The Edinburgh engravers who produced them, William Home Lizars (1788-1859, ODNB) and James Stewart (1791-1863, ODNB), were both members of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, as indeed was Lockhart himself, and a collaboration between the three of them seems not unlikely. An obvious exception to this straightforward re-use of existing portraits for the engravings of Peter’s Letters is the frontispiece portrait of the fictitious Peter Morris. It is attributed to the young artist John Watson, later known as John Watson-Gordon (1788-1864, ODNB), and may have been a commission from William Blackwood, the work’s Edinburgh publisher. Morris reports his sitting for the portrait at Blackwood’s request, while convalescing from a fit of gout immediately after his return to Edinburgh from visiting Scott at Abbotsford, and complains that his state of health ‘has made the painter give me a face at least ten years too old’ (p. 379). It is the first known example of a new process of printing engravings for book illustration invented by William Lizars and called in the inscription ‘alto relievo’ (high relief), a term normally used to describe a sculpture where carved figures or other objects protrude from the background. Lizars’s new engraving process involved drawing a design onto a copper plate with turpentine varnish: once dry, acid poured onto the plate would eat away the unvarnished areas, giving an effect similar to that of wood engraving and adding to the number of impressions that could successfully be printed from a copper plate before re-engraving became necessary.23 It received some negative appraisal by early reviewers of the work. The London Literary Gazette, for instance, after remarking on this new invention of ‘Mr Lizars, a clever Edinburgh artist, and capable of being struck off by the common printing press’, added ‘we trust it is susceptible of improvement, for the specimen is very black and blotchy’. The New British Lady’s Magazine also hoped that ‘it will be found capable of considerable improvement’.24 At this period of his life Lockhart evidently enjoyed a close friendship with the artist William Allan, an account of whose work dominates the

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discussion of contemporary Scottish artists in the second volume of Peter’s Letters. It seems probable that the two men first became acquainted after Lockhart’s removal to Edinburgh from Glasgow to study law in 1815, Allan having returned to the city from his travels in the Russian empire only the previous year. Perhaps, as in Peter’s Letters itself, David Bridges, Secretary to the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, may have facilitated the introduction. In February 1818 Allan had been one of four artists commissioned to make drawings of the Honours of Scotland, following the Scott-orchestrated rediscovery of the Scottish regalia in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle, and by early autumn that year he had become a visitor to Abbotsford.25 Lockhart helped to organise a lottery held in the spring of 1819 designed to secure a purchase price for two of Allan’s paintings, and he had also written newspaper articles about two more Allan paintings in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 and 17 February that year.26 Although there is little external evidence of Allan’s involvement in the illustrations to Peter’s Letters, two engravings in particular suggest that he had some hand in them. The portrait of Allan himself in Circassian dress is noted as ‘Ipse pinxit’, in other words as a self-portrait, and was almost certainly based upon a now-missing self-portrait painted by him in 1813 at Tulczyn, the Ukrainian estate of the wealthy Potocki family, and presumably then on display in the artist’s studio in Parliament Square.27 The engraved portrait of James Hogg, ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’, in the third volume of Peter’s Letters is attributed to Peter Morris, but it bears a close resemblance to the portrait of Hogg in Allan’s ‘The Celebration of the Birthday of James Hogg’, recently completed and on public display in the early months of 1819 in Allan’s exhibition of his work at Mackintosh’s Gallery, 49 Princes Street. The Scotsman suggested it ‘might have been called, with as much propriety, The Edinburgh Dilettanti Society, or the grouping of the conductors and supporters of Blackwood’s Magazine’, and Lockhart himself had written a eulogistic criticism of this painting in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 February 1819.28 Allan’s depiction of Hogg has a strong element of caricature, Hogg leaning back laughing in his chair, his left arm raised at the elbow and hand bent to that side of the back of his head, while his right arm dangles over the shepherd’s plaid draped over the back of the chair on which he sits. Lockhart, though he commented in his review that the attitude was ‘most characteristic and most happy’, added ‘we should be inclined to doubt whether its selection may have been exactly agreeable to Mr Hogg’s amour-propre’.

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The engravings of Hogg and of Francis Jeffrey in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters, as those that approached most closely to caricature, were probably the ones responsible for the condemnation of the portraits as a whole by some contemporary reviewers. Advising the author to give over ‘the vile trick he has got, of caricaturing’, the Literary Chronicle notes that ‘it is impossible to give to the scratches of heads with which he has been pleased to interleave his volumes’ any other name than caricatures, singling out those of Jeffrey and the Ettrick Shepherd as ‘especially hideous’. The reviewer suggests a possible origin for the pose in the Hogg portrait in ‘the yawning man so common in our printshops’.29 This is probably a reference to the yawning selfportrait of around 1783 by Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802).30 The French painter and engraver was interested in physiognomy, and accordingly sought to expand the range of expressions used in conventional portraiture. This is especially so in the series of self-portraits he produced in the 1780s and 1790s, of which the yawning man is the best known. In this, as in the Hogg portrait in Peter’s Letters, the sitter’s left arm is bent back at the elbow towards the head, although the right arm is fully extended above the head rather than hanging loosely down and back as in the engraving of Hogg in Allan’s depiction reworked for Peter’s Letters. In both cases, however, the sitter’s facial expression is distorted by its extreme animation, the result of laughing in Hogg’s case and yawning in that of Ducreux. The engraved portrait of Francis Jeffrey in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters was more frequently commented upon in reviews as a caricature than that of James Hogg. This too is one of those attributed to the fictitious Peter Morris, although the sitter’s pose suggests that its ultimate origin was probably the etching of Jeffrey of around 1817 by William Nicholson,31 the same portrait more straightforwardly reproduced in the second Jeffrey portrait added for the ‘third’ edition. The bristling hair and somewhat hatchet-faced expression in this first engraving of Jeffrey were presumably intended to give satirical point to Morris’s remarks on the ‘glowing velocity’ and ‘dazzling rapidity’ of Jeffrey’s eloquence in court (pp. 219, 221) and to Jeffrey’s severity towards the publications he had criticised in the Edinburgh Review. William Davies made an exception of this portrait in his general praise of the engravings in Peter’s Letters as good likenesses in his letter to William Blackwood of 30 July 1819. ‘Yet how very unlike to Mr Jeffrey,’ he added, ‘must have been the Portrait which we published in our Gallery’.32 Davies alludes in his comment to an engraving of the

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Raeburn portrait of Jeffrey by Samuel Freeman (1773/4-1857, ODNB) included in a serial publication of Cadell & Davies, The British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits, Being a Series of Engravings of the More Eminent Persons now Living or lately Deceased in Great Britain and Ireland. The plates were issued in instalments from March 1809 onwards, each accompanied by brief biographical texts.33 Davies’s surprise that an engraving by the prominent and much-respected Freeman was not preferred to an obvious caricature as a source for the Jeffrey portrait in Peter’s Letters (albeit a caricature based on a serious portrait by another artist) was perhaps reinforced by the fact that the portrait of Thomas Chalmers in Peter’s Letters was based on another Freeman engraving, made ‘From an Original Drawing’ and engraved for the New Evangelical Magazine, and Theological Review.34 The depiction of Jeffrey that did appear in the ‘second’ edition of Peter’s Letters was termed by the Kaleidoscope ‘as ridiculous a caricature of a scintillating countenance as ever came from the hand of an engraver’.35 This reviewer was reminded, indeed, ‘of a picture, in the novel of Flim-flams, of a woman whose hair is all on end by the application of electricity’, which seems to be a reference to Plate VII of that novel, ‘An Electrified Lover’, showing a male subject who has had electricity passed through his body by machine, so that his hair is erect and his eyebrows lifted in surprise. The prefatory ‘Explanation of the Plates’ in Flim-Flams notes humorously ‘There is nothing uncommon in this plate, if we except the subject and the execution!’36 Together the Hogg and Jeffrey engravings serve to complicate the apparent division in the illustrations for Peter’s Letters between the playful and humorous vignettes and the more straightforwardly representational full-page portraits of distinguished Scotsmen. In addition to attracting unfavourable comment from reviewers, it seems likely that the portrait of Jeffrey was more widely objected to in Edinburgh. The additional engraving of Jeffrey in the ‘third’ edition of Peter’s Letters bears the legend ‘Alter et idem’ (another of the same), and thus purports to be a second attempt by William Wastle to engrave the drawing in his friend Peter Morris’s Edinburgh portfolio. In this Jeffrey’s face is fuller and less sharp-looking, his hair has only a slight suggestion of unruliness and his eye-brows are much less thick and pronounced. Jeffrey’s mouth is also relaxed with a hint of a smile rather than held tense, so that the great Whig critic looks more reflective and less aggressive than in the earlier plate. Yet, as the inscription makes clear, the new plate was meant to be viewed after looking at the first one in the new edition

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and not as a replacement for the original engraving published in the ‘second’ edition. No such corrective second look, it should be noted, was provided for the reader considering the physical appearance of James Hogg. According to Morris in the ‘Epistle Liminary’ the inclusion of his portrait sketches in the forthcoming edition of Peter’s Letters was intended to ‘improve the appearance and popularity of the work’ (p. 8). Yet both early American editions omit the illustrations altogether, and at least one American reviewer felt that ‘this circumstance is not to be regretted’.37 Nor do either of the two twentieth-century edited selections from Peter’s Letters include a single one of them. Lockhart’s career demonstrates, however, that he was unusually interested in visual as well as verbal representation and drew frequently and indeed obsessively himself, as Thackeray was to do subsequently. This personality trait may partly account for Lockhart’s interest in the pseudo-sciences of phrenology and physiognomy in Peter’s Letters, both representing attempts to establish and systematise the obscure relationship between what a man says and does and his physical appearance. Lockhart’s strong interest in the visual arts is shown in many places in Morris’s account, from his descriptions of the topography of Edinburgh, his detailed and lengthy account of Scottish artists, his mentions of other illustrated books such as Scott’s Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, and his description of specific paintings at Holyrood Palace, the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum, and Hamilton Palace. It should therefore not be surprising that the illustrations form a vital component of the work. Their individual function and meaning, however, is not uniform. The vignettes in particular reinforce the connection between Peter’s Letters and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and help to create an illusion of reality to the fictional person of Dr Peter Morris by linking him to the historical people and places he describes. They also place Lockhart at the forefront of a fashion for illustrated comical accounts of a fictional group exploring the specificities of a particular city, as developed by Pierce Egan in the 1820s or Charles Dickens in the 1830s. The function of the full-page portrait engravings is perhaps less clear-cut, since the first of them, the frontispiece depiction of Peter Morris, is of a purely fictional person. As a frontispiece portrait of the author contained in one of his works it is entirely conventional and traditional, but it also advertises a newly-invented method of reproduction intended for future book illustration. The other portrait engravings veer from caricature

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(Hogg, Jeffrey) to quietly jocular allusions to well-known paintings by leading Scottish artists as the work of the fictitious Peter Morris during his Scottish tour (Scott, Mackenzie), to a simple reproduction of a wellknown engraving of Lord Braxfield, a man who had died long prior to Morris’s arrival in Edinburgh. Although the illustrations to Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk prove to be a very mixed assemblage in terms of both intention and effect, their heterogeneity reflects that of Lockhart’s text as well as demonstrating the artistic proclivities of the author, and they undoubtedly serve, as suggested in the ‘Epistle Liminary’, to improve and strengthen the work’s effect.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

See Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, ed. by Alan Shelston (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), pp. 117-18, 130-31, 154. Now in the Tate Gallery, London, N00373. Wherever the present location of a painting is known to the editors this is stated, since in most cases it is possible to see an image of it through the relevant gallery’s website. References to Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk are to the text in Volume 1. Now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965.13.1. This is still in the Hunterian Museum of the University of Glasgow, GLAHA 43520. Lockhart also refers to the work in his brief account of the painter John Thomson of Duddingston (p. 335), and mentions Turner’s depiction of Borthwick Castle in it when Morris passes the castle on his way to visit Scott at Abbotsford (p. 337). See Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 4 (October 1818), 106. The present editors have been unable to locate a copy of the prospectus itself, but the first page is included by William B. Todd and Ann Bowden in Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History 17961832 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998) as an illustration of Item 111A. Todd and Bowden misdate the mention of the prospectus, however, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine to the issue for October 1817, and provide no corroborative evidence of Scott’s authorship. It seems at least possible that a writer connected with the magazine itself and with close connections to the Blackwood firm was responsible for writing this prospectus, particularly as its wording

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8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

shares the concern of Lockhart and others for the creation and assertion of a truly national culture for Scotland. This early advertisement may have been the Edinburgh publisher’s attempt to stake a claim to Peter’s Letters in the course of negotiations with the author. Lockhart had communicated the original plan for the work to Blackwood in an undated letter in National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS) MS 4003, fols 131-32, and Blackwood’s note offering final terms for the publication is dated subsequently, to 5 April 1819 (see Introduction, p. 19). See Davies’s letters to Blackwood of 27 April and 29 May respectively, in NLS MS 4004, fols 69v and 73v. See chapter 14 in Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, ed. by R. W. Chapman, 3rd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1933 repr. 1975), p. 113. See ‘A Scene in Low Life, or The Reviewers!, being a Narrative of an Arch Constable joining a Crew of Jovial Beggars!’ and ‘A Dissertation on Skulls! Lavater, Camper, Blumenbach, and Gall’ in the anonymously-published Flim-Flams! or, The Life and Errors of My Uncle, and the Amours of My Aunt, 3 vols (London, 1805), III, 1-25 and I, 41-53 respectively. The engravings to ‘The Tent’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (September 1819) appear as a frontispiece to the September issue, and facing pages 673 and 727. For Christie’s reminiscences of his friendship with Lockhart see George Robert Gleig, ‘Life of Lockhart’, Quarterly Review, 116 (October 1864), 439-82 (pp. 447-49). Andrew Lang lists all the drawings by Lockhart reproduced by him in The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, 2 vols (London, 1897) at I, xxiii-xxiv, referring to these as coming from two collections, the first once in the possession of Thomas Hamilton and Lady Brewster and the second as an Abbotsford grouping (I, 340-41). The first collection survives as an album in NLS Acc. 11480, while the Abbotsford grouping is clearly the scrap-book now in NLS MS 1626. Images from both these manuscript collections are also reproduced in Mrs Gordon’s biography of her father, John Wilson: see ‘Christopher North’: A Memoir of John Wilson, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1862), listed there at I, xiii. Mrs Gordon also apparently had access to a third collection, which Lang says he did not, once ‘the property of Lockhart’s life-long friend, Mr Cay’ (I, 339), the present location of which has not been found. Furthermore there is a single picture of a male subject holding a book and headed ‘On his being requested by Miss Wilson to send her an article’ in NLS Acc. 10010.

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15. Compare Lockhart’s water-colour drawing, dated ‘August 16 1823’ in NLS MS 1626, fol. 80 (reproduced in Lang, I, facing 224), with the earlier title-page vignette to the second volume of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. 16. See The Port-Folio, 9 (January 1820), 9-22 (p. 22). 17. Constable may well have commissioned this portrait of Scott with its subsequent use for book illustration in mind. An engraving based on it by Abraham Raimbach (1776-1843, ODNB), for instance, was published in 1811 and used as the frontispiece of the first volume of the 1812 Works of Walter Scott, Esq. 18. Raeburn’s 1810 portrait of Henry Mackenzie (NPG 455) was used by him as a studio model according to the extended description given by the National Portrait Gallery. 19. Now in National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1615. There is also an earlier portrait of Braxfield by Raeburn, of around 1770 in which the sitter is wearing dark clothing. 20. ‘The Mad Banker of Amsterdam; or, The Fate of the Brauns […] By William Wastle, Esquire’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (July and August 1818), 402-07 and 530-33; 4 (February and March 1819), 563-67 and 729-34; 6 (January 1820), 390-93. 21. See National Portrait Gallery, NPG D18674. 22. Davies to Blackwood, 30 July 1819, NLS MS 4004, fol. 86v. 23. For an explanation see C. F. Partington, The Engravers’ Complete Guide (London, 1825), pp. 124-26. 24. London Literary Gazette, 31 July 1819, pp. 481-84 (p. 481); New British Lady’s Magazine, 3 (November 1819), 228-30 (p. 230). 25. ‘The Artist-Adventurer’s Life and Work’ in Jeremy Howard, William Allan: Artist Adventurer (Edinburgh: City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, 2001), pp. 43-60 (p. 50). Scott refers to Allan’s visits to Abbotsford in his letter to Sir James Stuart of Allanbank of 5 October 1818 in Scott Letters, V, 183. 26. Howard, William Allan: Artist Adventurer, p. 51. See also Introduction, p. 7. The lottery apparently took place on 3 April 1819, for Scott wrote to Lockhart on 1 April (Scott Letters, V, 331) that David Bridges had told him that he or a person representing him should be at his shop ‘on the next Saturday’, which would have been then. Lockhart wrote to Scott on the evening of 3 April to report the outcome of the lottery: see NLS MS 3890, fols 65-66 (cited in Scott Letters, V, 322-23n). For details of Lockhart’s articles see note 28 below.

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27. For details of Allan’s self-portrait see the Catalogue section in Howard, William Allan: Artist Adventurer, p. 66, though the painting does not appear to have survived and is represented there by the engraving in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk. 28. Allan’s picture is now in National Galleries of Scotland, PG 3136. See also ‘Mr Allan’s Pictures’ The Scotsman, 6 February 1819, pp. 45-46 (p. 45). Lockhart’s own article, also entitled ‘Mr Allan’s Pictures’, appeared in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal of 3 February 1819, p. 38. His authorship is proved by the incorporation of the following part of this two-part article in Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (see Introduction, p. 25). 29. Literary Chronicle, 21 August 1819, pp. 215-18 (p. 218). 30. Now in the Getty Center, Los Angeles, 71.PA.56. 31. See National Galleries of Scotland, SP V 141.17. 32. NLS MS 4004, fol. 86v. 33. For details and an explanatory note concerning The British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits see the Royal Academy website at https:// www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/book/the-british-gallery-ofcontemporary-portraits-being-a-series-of-engravings. 34. For an image of this stipple engraving by Samuel Freeman see National Galleries of Scotland (UP C 204), at https://www.national galleries.org/art-and-artists/54569/rev-thomas-chalmers-1780-1847preacher-and-social-reformer. Described as ‘Engraved by Freeman, from an Original Drawing’ the engraving does not name the original artist, though it does note that it was ‘Engraved for the New Evangelical Mag.’ The New Evangelical Magazine, and Theological Review, published in ten volumes between 1815 and 1824, occasionally featured engraved portraits of well-known Evangelical clergymen. This engraving describes Chalmers as ‘Minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow’ suggesting that it is likely to date from 1819 or earlier, Chalmers being transferred from the Tron Church to that of St John’s, also in Glasgow, in early June 1819 (see Note for 505.5-7). 35. Kaleidoscope, 28 September 1819, p. 47. 36. [D’Israeli], Flim-Flams, III, facing 103, and the unpaginated prefatory ‘Explanation of the Plates’ in the first volume. 37. The Port-Folio, 9 (January 1820), 9-22 (p. 22).

Index to the Text of Peter’s Letters This index covers all people and places mentioned in the text, but excludes the Contents Lists given for each Letter as themselves providing a form of contemporary index to the work, nor does it include an account of the addressees to whom each letter is directed. Engraved portrait illustrations are also excluded, since these are given in the ‘List of Embellishments’ to the work. Latin authors are listed under their common English names (e.g. ‘Horace’ not ‘Quintus Horatius Flaccus’). Persons with a title are listed in the form predominantly used in the text, whether this is a title, surname, or territorial designation. Titles of paintings have been indexed chiefly as they appear in the text, since the modern alternative titles are described in the Explanatory Notes. Individual literary works are generally subsumed under the relevant author’s name (e.g. Faust appears within the entry for Goethe), apart from Walter Scott, whose output is considered especially central for Lockhart, and for which reason titles are listed alphabetically under the main name entry. Italicised numbers are used to denote quotations from (and other allusions to) works where the author or title concerned is not directly named or otherwise made apparent; ‘see’ generally denotes cases where connections are problematic or not immediately visible, and reference to the relevant Note is advisable. Abbotsford: 41, 337, 338-42, 34748, 351, 362, 370 Abercorn, James Hamilton, 2nd Marquess of: 515 Aberystwyth: 5, 9, 129 Abraham, height of: 85 Achates: 383, 457 Actaeon: 198-99 Adam, Captain Charles: 72 Adam, William: 72 Addison, Joseph: 66, 123 Ægina: 332 Æschylus: 263, 471 Æsculapius: 485 Africa: 148, 359 Akenside, Mark: 388 Albertus Magnus: 214 Aldus Manutius: 282 Alexander (of Macedon): see 122,

397-98 Alfred the Great: 118 Alison, Archibald: 8, 47, 418, 419-22, 512 Allan, William: 9, 306-19, 320, 326-27, 328, 330 Almanach des Gourmands: 543 America: 50, 201, 424, 554 Anderson, Baillie: 383 Angling: 69, 170 Angus (Earls of): 346, 516 Apollo: 333, 339 Archimedes: 109 Argus: 35, 237, 493 Argyll, Archibald, 9th Earl of: 346 Argyll (Dukes of): 29 Ariosto, Ludovico: 547 Aristophanes: 174

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Aristotle (Stagyrite): 52, 99, 100, 104, 204, 209, 211, 230, 295, 355, 404, 441 Athenaeus: 159 Athens: 110, 174, 325, 331, 33234 Attila: 80 Augustine (of Canterbury): 453 Augustus IV (of Saxony): 381 Aurora: 545 Austerlitz: 131 Ayr: 457 Bacchus: 89, 404, 489 Bacon, Francis: 61, 118 Bacon, Roger: see 237 Baillie, Joanna: see 73 Baillie, Matthew: 355 Baldwin, Robert: 280 Balfour, John (of Kinloch): see 37 Ballads: 340-41 Ballantyne, James: 8, 275; see also 83 Ballantyne, John: 214, 546 Balliol College, Oxford: 47 Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone, 6th Lord: 18 Banks, Sir Joseph: 9 Bannister, John: 544 Barclay, John (tavern-keeper): 150-51 Barclay, Mrs: 151, 153, 158 Barclay, Perkins & Co (brewers): 70 Barrie, James: see 354 Barrow, Isaac: 396 Bass Rock: 20 Batavi (Germanic tribe): 38 Bath: 121, 178 Bayard, Pierre Terail, Seignor de: 37 Beauvilliers, Antoine: 26 Beck, Antony (Bishop of Durham): 457 Belcher (necktie): 200, 458

Bellerophon: 438 Ben-Nevis: 136 Berkeley, George: 102 Berlin: 381 Berwickshire: 24 Bevan, Barbara (fictitious): 38788 Bible: 21, 32, 52, 63, 66, 75, 95, 136, 165, 181, 195, 202, 203, 214, 218, 219, 260, 261, 273, 293, 294, 310, 311, 315, 324, 325, 326, 345, 386, 393, 399, 409, 411, 424, 426, 465, 489, 504, 510, 511, 513, 524, 529, 530, 540, 558 Binckley (unidentified men’s costumier): 486 Blackstone, Sir William: 250 Blackwood, William: 7, 8, 9, 280, 284-86, 288-89, 303-04, 379 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine: 7, 263-64, 280, 284-88, 292, 293-304, 309, 440-43 Blair, Hugh: 512 Blair, John (fictitious?): 480 Blair, Robert, Lord Aventoun: 204, 208-09, 210 Blake (unidentified hairdresser): 426, 486 Blore, Edward: 352 Blue-stocking: 50, 161, 165-70, 171-72, 279, 280, 458; see also 391 Bodleian Library, Oxford: 30 Boisseré, Sulpiz and Melchior: 353 Booksellers: 51, 270-71, 274-77, 282 Borthwick Castle: 337 Bothwell Bridge, Battle of: 51718 Bothwell Castle: 516-17 Bourbon (family): 31 Boyle, David, Lord: see 241 Bradshaw, John: 31

INDEX

Braemar: 135 Brahmin: 553 Braxfield, Robert Macqueen, Lord: 204, 246-49 Brewster, David: 140-41, 143, 146 Bridges, David (junior): 305-06 Bridges, David (senior): 305 British Review: 266 Brougham, Henry: 266, 478 Brown, Thomas: 102, 103-04, 115, 167-68 Bruce, John (piper): 341-42 Brummel, George Bryan (‘Beau’): 430 Brunck, Richard François Philippe: 131 Brunton, Alexander: 415-16 Brunton, Mary: 415-16 Brydges, Sir Egerton: 433 Buccleuch, Charles William Henry Scott, 4th Duke of: 353 Buchan, David Erskine, 11th Earl of: 168-69, 354-55 Buchan, Lady (Margaret): 168 Buchanan, George: 282, 402-03 Buckingham, John Sheffield, 1st Duke of: 426, 450, 551 Bullock, William: 146 Bülow, Count von: 339 Bunbury, Henry William: 200 Buonaparte, Napoleon (Napoleon I of France): 43, 260, 263, 358, 381 Burdett, Sir Francis: 397, 478 Burgess, Thomas, Bishop of St Davids: 5 Burgess sauce: 25 Burleigh, John Balfour, 3rd Lord Balfour of: see 37 Burney, Charles: 463 Burns, Agnes: 75 Burns, James Glencairn: see 76 Burns, Jean: 76

369

Burns, Robert: 71-79, 80-86, 232, 250, 409, 459, 480, 523, 525, 531, 535, 536, 537, 538 Burton, Robert: 370, 482, 490 Bushe, Charles Kendal: 556 Bute, Isle of: 515 Butler, Miss (fictitious?): 22 Butler, Joseph: 396 Butler, Samuel: 75 Byron, George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron: 95, 131-33, 170, 276, 299, 301, 309, 343, 355, 358, 365, 409, 454 Cadell, Thomas: 9, 280 Cadies: 135-39, 253, 389-90 Cadyow Castle: 520 Cairngorm: 136 Caligula: 258 Callcott, Augustus Wall: 434 Calvin, Jean: 391, 418 Cambridge Classical Researches (Museum Criticum): 101 Cameron, Archy: 471 Campbell (clan chieftain): see 136 Campbell, Thomas: 43, 76, 84, 280, 316, 359, 480 Canning, George: 56 Canova, Antonio: 39, 42, 128, 306, 358, 506 Cape Horn: 132 Caracci, Ludovico: 519 Cardigan: 26, 127, 129, 277, 388, 426, 443, 486 Carr, Sir John: 21 Casali, Andrea: see 470 Catalani, Angelica: 285 Cattle, Wild: 521 Caxton, William: 282 Cervantes: 45, 131, 202, 528, 537 Chaldee MS: 284, 288, 289 Chalmers, Thomas: 8, 299, 410, 458, 505-11, 512, 516, 523 Chantrey, Francis: 206, 208

370

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Chaos: 229 Charles I: 30, 31, 196, 518-19; see also 18 Charles II: 196 Charles, Comte d’Artois (later Charles X of France): see 31 Charlotte, Queen: 381 Chaucer, Geoffrey: 302 Cheltenham: 121 Cherokee: 513 Cherwell (river): 22 Cheviot hills: 349 Chillingworth, William: 43, 438 China: 294 Christ Church College, Oxford: 22, 197 Christie, John (breeches-maker): 430-31 Christison, Alexander: 100, 102 Church of England: 56, 119, 391, 397, 404, 405-06, 408-09, 412, 452, 512 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND: 191, 237, 378, 380, 388, 391-93, 404-06, 408-10, 412, 417, 423, 479 [Individual clergymen are indexed separately under their own names] Directory of the Church of Scotland: 531 Elders: 402-03, 528-29, 531 General Assembly: 378, 380407, 410, 412 Patronage (law of): 393 Presbyteries: 394, 402-03 Sacrament: 523-43 Day of Fasting and Humiliation: 524-25 Saturday: 525 Sunday: 525-38 Monday: 541-43 Shorter Catechism: 526 Synods: 394, 403

Churchill (unidentified dandy): 430 Churchill, Charles: 38 Cicero: 29, 226, 325, 355 Cid, Chronicle of the: 346 Clarence, George, Duke of: 544 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of: 43, 241, 366, 399 Clarke, Edward Daniel: 280 Claude Lorraine: 331, 483 Claverhouse, John Graham of: 37 Cleopatra: 131 Clerk, John: 203, 205, 209, 21015, 216, 224, 225, 232, 233 Cline, Henry: 482 Clyde (river): 447, 457, 473, 474, 476, 516, 517, 520, 521 Cockburn, Henry: 76, 224-30, 231, 232, 233 Cockney: 123, 133, 301-02, 304, 339, 354, 512 Coke, Edward: see 526 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: 43, 50, 56, 77, 80, 95, 183, 211, 264, 299-301, 317, 358-59, 499, 547-58 Collins, William: 438 Columbia: 132 Combermere, Cotton Stapleton, 1st Viscount: see 383 Connecticut, USA: 201 Constable, Archibald: 274, 27879, 280, 298, 303-04 Cook (unidentified dandy): 430 Corinth: 331 Cork: 474 Corneille, Pierre: 357 Corpus Christi College, Oxford: 22 Correggio, Antonio Allegri: 31, 325, 470, 483 Cotton, Sir Vincent: see 430 Covenanters: 55, 353, 382, 385, 409, 421, 425, 503, 512, 51718, 538

INDEX

Cowley, Abraham: 414 Cowper, William: 556 Crabbe, George: 77, 85-86, 29697 Craigcrook: 45, 46-53, 167 Craigdaroch (Alexander Ferguson, of): 250 Craniology: 61, 159-64, 175, 200, 340 Cranstoun, George: 216-18, 221, 224, 232, 233, 235, 255 Creech, William: 271-73, 274, 280, 355 Crichton, James: 282 Croker, Thomas Crofton: 544 Cromwell, Oliver: 31, 399 Cumberland, William, Duke of: 178 Cupid: 325 Curll, Edmund: 51, 276 Currie, James: 83 Currie, Margaret: 505, 546 Curtis, Sir Roger: 85 Curtis, Sir William: 543 Curwen, John Christian: 47 Cuvier, Georges: see 143 Cuyp, Aelbert: 46 Dalkeith: 337 Dalyell, General Thomas (of The Binns): 517 Dancing: 126, 129-33, 171, 443, 450, 487, 489 Dandy(ism): 167, 175, 200, 425, 426-32, 458, 487, 490 Dante Alighieri: 244, 263, 297, 419 Darnley, Henry Stewart, Lord: 30, 456 Davies, Jessy: 8 Davies, William: 7 Davout, Louis-Nicolas: 157 Day and Martin (blacking makers): 387

371

Debating Societies (see also Speculative Society): 103, 149, 267 Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum: 283 Delphi: 331, 333 Denmark: 381 De Staël, Germaine: 133 D’Estainville (dancing-teacher): 129 Devil’s Bridge: 541 De Worde, Wynkyn: 282 Diana: 128, 541 Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh: 214, 429 Diogenes: 171, 226 DISSENT: 384, 386, 406, 479 Anti-Burghers: 423-25 Burghers: 423, 424 Episcopalian Church of Scotland: 47, 193, 407, 417-23 Haldanites: 423 Independents: 423 Methodists: 130, 410, 423 Tabernaclites: 423 Unitarians: 423 Welsh Jumpers: 130 Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri): 470, 483 Douglas (family): 29, 380, 382, 516 Douglas, Archibald, 5th Earl of Angus: see 37 Douglas, Archibald James Edward, 1st Baron: 516 Douglas, Sir James: 346 Dresden: 141, 142, 381 DRINK Ale: 378, 482 Bishop: 22 Black-strap: 50 Brandy: 247 Burgundy: 50, 485 Champagne: 50, 51, 439, 482, 486, 488

372

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Chateau-la-fitte: 26, 282 Chateau-la-Rose: 69 Chateau-Margout: 53, 443 Chian: 52 Cider: 459 Claret: 9, 25, 27, 41, 51, 70, 72, 75, 86, 167, 234, 247, 249, 251, 282-83, 370, 401, 459 Curaçoa: 26 Flip: 482 Gin-twist: 482, 486 Glasgow Punch: 459-60, 48586, 488, 544 Hermitage: 459 Hock: 72, 87, 401, 459 Johannisberg: 26 Madeira: 151, 388, 459 Marasquin: 26 Muscat-de-rives-altes: 69 Perry: 459 Port: 21, 72, 83, 86, 151, 207, 250, 289, 459, 485, 544; see also 50 Porter: 151, 429, 488 Punch: 148, 428, 429, 450, 460, 482, 485, 486, 488, 491, 544 Regent’s Punch: 486 Rum: 460 Rum-punch: 471 Sherry: 26, 72, 283, 544 Sherry-negus: 450 Usquebaugh/Whisky: 26, 541; see also 342 Vauxhall Punch: 482 Whisky-toddy: 83, 86, 439, 544 Drummond, William: 436-38 Dryburgh Abbey: 349, 352, 35455, 356, 447 Dryden, John: 271 Dublin: 9, 428, 473 Duddingston: 335 Dufresne, Louis: 146 Duguesclin, Bertrand de: 37 Dunbar, George: 101, 102 Duncan, Andrew: see 83

Dundas (family): 29 Dundas, Robert (1685-1753): 249 Dundas, Robert (1713-1787): 151 Dundee: 474 Dundee, John Graham, 1st Viscount (see also Claverhouse): 346 Dürer, Albrecht: 9, 324 Durham: 356, 485 Du Thou, Jacques August: 37 Duvall, Guillaume: 100 Echard, Laurence: 247 Edgeworth, Maria: 116, 130 EDINBURGH Albyn Club: 428 Ambrose’s Tavern: 289 Arthur’s Seat: 20, 32, 428 Assembly Rooms: 71-72, 483 Ballantyne’s Sale Room: 214 Black Bull Inn: 17, 21 Calton Hill: 20, 23, 109-11 Canongate: 29, 33 Castle: 20, 180-82, 194, 412, 446, 447 Drummond Street: 205 Gabriel’s Road: 289-91 George Street: 71, 483 High School: see 91 High Street: 28, 278, 284, 305, 385 Holyrood: 20, 31-32 Holyrood Palace: 29-32, 380 Kirk-in-the-Field: 456 Lawnmarket: 381, 433; see also 25 Lord Nelson Tavern: 150-51, 158 Merchants’ Hall: 381, 382 Mound: 20 New Greyfriars Church: see 413 New Observatory: 109-10 New Town: 20-21, 25, 69, 280, 284, 290, 412-13

INDEX

North Bridge: 20, 21, 381 North Loch: 20 Old College: 102-04, 143, 152, 281 Old Greyfriars Church: 394, 412 Old Town: 20, 25, 28, 69-70, 134, 278, 284, 290, 412 Oman’s Hotel: 17, 21, 23, 27, 148, 284, 289, 351, 377, 401, 445, 446, 484 Parliament Close: 193-96, 253, 306 Parliament House: 196, 197209, 235, 236, 246, 249, 252, 253, 272, 377, 378, 402 Princes Street: 21, 143, 182, 284, 377, 426, 427, 428, 431, 446 Royal Hotel: 380-81, 400-01, 426 St Andrews Square: 377 St Cuthbert’s Church: see 412 St George’s Church: see 41213 St Giles’ Cathedral: 193-94, 195, 381, 383, 386, 388, 389-91, 402 St John the Evangelist Episcopal Church: see 418 St Paul’s Episcopal Church: see 418-19 Theatre Royal: 174-79, 431, 483 Young’s Tavern: see 429 Edinburgh Encyclopædia: 140-41 Edinburgh Review: 34, 50, 77-78, 94, 153, 170, 173, 221, 256-64, 265-67, 273-74, 275, 278, 280, 286, 287, 293-300, 304, 423, 440, 477-78, 479-80, 512, 514 Edinburgh Weekly Journal: 71 Edward I (of England): 457

373

Edward II (of England): see 346 Egypt: 24, 132, 135, 148, 274 Eildon Hills: 348, 352 Elbe (river): 141 Eldon, John Scott, 1st Earl of: 204-05; see also 56 Elgin Marbles: 352, 360 Eliott, George: 85 Elizabeth I (of England): 30, 38, 387 Elliot (clan): 353 Ellis, George: see 557 Elysium: 52 Elzevir (family of printers): 282 Encyclopædia Britannica: 160, 278, 480 Encyclopædia Edinensis: 141 ENTERTAINMENTS Assemblies: 450, 483, 490 Balls: 41, 71, 126-27, 129-30, 136, 266, 431, 450, 486, 487-89, 490 Breakfast: 347, 433, 541 Dinners: 25-26, 47, 50-53, 6970, 71-89, 141-43, 147-48, 150-51, 282-83, 289, 339-43, 351, 361, 400-01, 439-43, 458-61, 471, 485, 491-92, 543-44 Routs: 38-39, 41, 124-25, 126, 127, 136, 166-70, 171-72, 431 Supper: 158, 443, 450, 471, 486 Epicurus: 159, 198, 361, 551 Epping: 349 Erasmus: 38 Erebus: 229 Eros: 325 Errol, William Hay, 17th Earl of: 382-83 Erskine, John: 393-96, 512 Erskine, Thomas, 1st Baron Erskine: 168

374

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Esk (river): 337, 433, 434-38 Ettrick: 439, 443, 545 Ettrick Forest: 338 Euler, Leonhard: 506 Euripides: 163 Evan (river and glen): 520 Evans, John (servant: fictitious): 17, 381, 446, 515, 539, 542 Falkland, Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount: 43 Falstaff, Sir John: 26, 459 Faunus: 354 Fearon, Henry Bradshaw: 201 Fergus I (of Scotland): 30 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb: 300 Fielding, Henry: 175 Fife: 505 Finlay, Kirkman: 472; see also 492 Forbes, Duncan (of Culloden): 204, 208 Forsyth, Robert: 236-39 Forth, Firth of: 20 Fox, Charles James: 355; see also 430 France: 23, 31, 37, 171, 204, 324, 332, 535 Francis I (Emperor of Austria): 381 Frankfurt: 131 Franklin, Benjamin: 355 Frederick II (of Württemberg): 381 Frederick William III (of Prussia): 381 Freiburg: 141, 142, 143, 144 French Revolution: 258-59, 304 Frere, John Hookham: 56 Gaelic: 137 Gaisford, Thomas: 465 Galashiels: 338 Gala Water: 338 Gall, Franz Joseph: 62, 162, 287,

465-66; see also 159 Galt, John: 132 Gas-lighting: 174-76, 221 Geddes, Andrew: 336 Genlis, Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de Saint-Aubin, Comtesse de: 133 George III: 132, 381 German (language and literature): 142, 144, 270, 348, 396, 441 Germany: 9, 23, 37, 313, 324, 396, 441, 452, 457 Gifford, William: 287 Gillies, Adam, Lord: 204 Gillies, John: 204 Gillies, Robert Pearse: 433, 434, 437-39, 443 Giordano, Luca: 470 GLASGOW Assembly Rooms: 490 Astronomical Observatory: 496 Barony Church: see 455 Bishop’s Castle: 455 Botanic Garden: 496 Broomielaw: 477 Buck’s Head Hotel: 445, 446, 448, 462, 472, 484, 489, 546 Cathedral: 447, 448, 452-56, 480, 498 Clubs: 492-93 Exchange: 449, 457-58 Gag College: 492 Glasgow Green: 473-76 Glasgow Merchants: 449, 49598 Glasgow Wit: 491-94 Gagging: 492 Side-dish: 491-92 Trotting: 492-94 High Street: see 504 Hunterian Museum: 462-63, 469-71 Merchants’ House: 449 Monkland Canal: 477 Montrose-Lodge: 456

INDEX

Nelson Monument: 474 Rotten-Row: 457 Royal Infirmary: 455 Saltmarket: 176, 177 Tron Church: 505, 511 Trongate: 447, 448, 473, 486; see also 504 University of Glasgow: 383, 457, 462-71 Glasgow Chronicle: 458 Glasgow Courier: 472 Gleig, George, Bishop of Brechin: 418 Glenriddel (Robert Riddel of): 250-51 Gloucestershire: 35 Godolphin, Sidney (poet): 43 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: 42, 59, 182-83, 270, 358 Goldsmith, Oliver: 66, 77 Golf: 474 Gordon (clan chieftain): 136 Gordon, Alexander, 4th Duke of: 383 Gothenburg: 131 Gothic arcitecture: 194, 195, 352, 452-56 Graham, James: 498 Grahame, Sir John: 457 Grant (clan chieftain): 136 Grant, Anne (of Laggan): 171-72 Grant, John Peter: 233-34 Gray, Thomas: 230, 387, 463, 534, 556 Greece: 50, 204, 321, 324-25, 330-34, 436, 453, 462 Greek (language and literature): 91-96, 266, 467 Greenlander: 259 Green-room: 51, 175 Gregory the Great (Pope): 453 Grenville, William Wyndham Grenville, Baron: 66 Grub Street: 50

375

Hackston, David (of Rathillet): 34 Haddingtonshire: 103 Hafod: 487, 559 Hailes, David Dalrymple, Lord: 204 Hales, John: 43, 438 Hall, Mother (fictitious?): 22 Hamburgh: 131, 157 Hamilton: 477, 490, 516-18, 521 Hamilton (family): 29, 30, 329, 456, 515, 516, 518, 519, 520 Hamilton, Alexander, 10th Duke of: 521 Hamilton, Claud, 1st Lord Paisley: 515 Hamilton, Gavin: 328-29 Hamilton Palace: 518-21 Hamilton, Thomas: 442-43 Hannibal: 134 Harlay, Nicolas de, Lord of Sancy: 37 Harris, James: 104 Harris, Tom (fictitious?): 234 Harrison, Colonel Thomas: 368 Harrow school: 22 Harry, Blind: 457 Hartz mountains: 141 Harvey’s sauce: 543 Hastings, Warren: 66 Hatchard, John: 280 Hawthornden: 436-37 Hazlitt, William: 301, 304 Hebrides: 403 Heligoland: 131 Henrietta Maria, Queen: 30 Henry VIII (of England): 38 Hentzner, Paul: 38 Herbert, Edward, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury: 91 Hercules: 163, 238, 397; see also Farnese Hercules under ‘Sculpture’ Herefordshire: 521

376

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Hermand, George Ferguson, Lord: 203, 250-54 Hermann, Johann Gottfried Jakob: 464-65 Hermes: 325 Herodias: 131, 324 Herodotus: 148 Heyne, Christian Gottlob: 131 High-Jinks: 69, 252 Highlands: 135-36, 172, 176, 178, 341, 515 Hill, Peter (junior): 280-81 Hill, Rowland: 415 History: 96-99 Hobhouse, John Cam: 397 Hoby, George (boot-maker): 486 Hodgson, John (of Blantyre): 523-24, 526, 527, 529, 532 Hogg, James (the Ettrick Shepherd): 80, 81-83, 8688, 345, 355, 359-60, 377, 43334, 436, 439-40, 443, 480, 545 Holland: 282 Holycot: 433, 434, 439 Home, Sir Everard: 559 Home, John: 38 Homer: 42, 104, 202, 263, 269, 355, 390, 403, 467, 471, 47576, 508 Homeric Hymns: 393, 466 Hooker, Richard: 396 Hope, Charles (of Granton): 242-45 Hope, John: 239 Hopetoun, John Hope, 4th Earl of: 383 Horace: 34, 47, 70, 83, 94, 100, 171, 253, 276, 385, 414, 475, 546 Horner, Francis: 266, 478 Horrocks, John: 315 Horsley, Samuel: 396 Howison, William: 441-42, 445 Hull: 474 Hume, David: 57-60, 61-62, 63-64,

94, 100, 102, 103, 110-11, 271, 367, 369, 393, 478, 479, 480, 510, 512, 535 Hunt, Henry: 397 Hunt, Leigh: 301, 428 Hunter, William: see 462 Huntly Burn: 348 Hurd, Richard: 396 Hutton, James: see 109 Hymen: 132 Hymettus: 332 Hyperion: 42 Iffley: 22 India: 273, 430, 553 Ingleby, Thomas (conjuror): 430 Inglis, John: 398, 403, 410, 412, 413 Inverary: 515 Invernesshire: 102 Ireland: 205 Isis (river): 22 Italy: 9, 279, 321, 324, 329, 330, 331, 332, 419, 536-37 James IV (of Scotland): 346 James VI (of Scotland): 29 James VII (of Scotland; II of England): 196 Jameson, Robert: 143-48 Jamieson, John: 423, 425 Janiewicz, Felix: 169 Janus: 512 Jardine, George: 468-69 Jardine, Margaret: 449, 484-85, 505 Jedburgh Abbey: 356 Jeffrey, Miss Charlotte: 50 Jeffrey, Mrs Charlotte: 50 Jeffrey, Francis: 8, 34, 41-45, 46-53, 72, 74, 76, 77-78, 167-68, 169-70, 193, 205, 219-23, 224, 228-29, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 25559, 266, 287, 293-94, 304, 358, 377, 478, 505 Jesus College, Oxford: 22, 27

INDEX

Jewry: 141-43, 312-13 Johnes, Thomas: 559 Johnson, Samuel: 28 Joliba (river): 359 Jones, John Gale: 397 Jonson, Ben: 436, 437, 438 Jordanes: 80 Jubber, George (confectioner): 22 Julius Caesar: 355 Juno: 545 Jupiter: 163, 332, 358 Juvenal: 43, 494 Kames, Henry Homes, Lord: 204 Kamschatka: 132 Kästner, Abraham Gotthelf: 506 Kastri: 333 Kean, Edmund: 173, 555 Keith, George Skene: 403 Kelso Abbey: 356 Kemble (family): 43 Kent (hat): 458 Ker (clan): 353 Kinnaird, Douglas James William: 397 Kirk of Shotts: 447 Kirkpatrick, Roger de: 37 Kirkton, James; 410 Knox, John: 30, 57, 130, 326, 353, 355, 391, 402, 423, 425, 454, 512 Königsberg: 141 Koninck, Philip de: see 470-71 Kotzebue, August von: 131 Laing, David: 281-82 Laing, William: 281 Lamb, Charles: 232, 262-63, 499 Lambert, Daniel: 427 Lancaster: 191 Lapland: 131 Lapslie, James: 403-04 Lasswade: 443 Latin: 91-93, 95, 100-01, 102,

377

266, 355, 396, 453 Laud, William (Archbishop of Canterbury): 31, 530 Lauderdale, James Maitland, 8th Earl of: 480 Lawrence, Sir Thomas: 336 Leader Water: 350 Leaping: 47-50 Lees, Thomas: 83 Leiden: 214, 464 Leipzig: 131, 141, 143, 270 Leith: 20, 103, 434, 450 Leonardo (da Vinci): 323, 324 Leslie, John: 47, 48-50, 109, 16768, 169, 377, 393, 506 Letters of introduction: 18, 22, 41, 445, 448, 462, 469 Lewis, Matthew (‘Monk’): 43, 317 Lintot, Bernard: 51, 276 Liverpool: 17 Livy: 74 Lizars, William Home: 9 Llewellyn, Prince (of Wales): 137 Lochaber: 26, 135, 341 Loch Fyne: 543 Loch Katrine: 176 Locke, John: 102, 118, 241, 480 Lockhart, John Gibson: 298, 299, 440-41 Loire (river): 289 LONDON Albemarle Street: 123, 278, 284 Almack’s: 483 Beef-Steaks, Sublime Society of: 557 Bond Street: 426, 427, 482, 490 Carlton House: 519 Charing Cross: 18 Cheapside: 430, 447 Cheshire Cheese, Ye Olde: 482 Clarendon Hotel: 426, 482, 486

378

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Crown Passage: see 482 Cyder Cellar: 482 Drury Lane Theatre: 555 Fetter Lane: 18, 483 Fig-tree Court: 234 Fleet Street: 18, 483 Foundling Hospital: 415 Hampstead: 428 Haymarket Theatre (Opera): 174, 483 Henrietta Street: 482 Hyde Park: 426 King Street: 482 Mansion House: see 489 Mincing Lane: 33 Monmouth Street: 488 Old Slaughter’s Coffee-House: 429 Oxford Road: 428 Pall Mall: 482 Parliament (Westminster): 9, 121, 191, 233, 234, 398, 472, 478; see also 399, 555 Paternoster Row: 270, 276, 284 Roubel’s Gaming House: 482 Royal Academy (Exhibitions): 309, 336 St James (Court of): 381, 487 St James’s (district): 426 St James’s Street: 427 St Paul’s Cathedral: 194-95 Shades Tavern: 482 Strand: 7, 18 Surrey Chapel: see 415 Temple: 123, 191, 234 Temple Bar: 18 Vauxhall: 428, 482 Westminster (borough): 397 Westminster Abbey: 18 Westminster Hall: 200, 233; see also 556 Whitehall: 18, 31 White Horse, Fetter Lane: 18 White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly: 426

Wimbledon: 466 Longinus: 295 Louis XVIII (of France): 31, 381 Lowrie, Sir Robert (of Maxwelton): 250 Lucretius: 39, 46, 198, 276, 55152 Luddites: 478 Lunn, William Henry: 282 Luther, Martin: 438 Lycurgus: 493 McCrie, Thomas: 423, 424-25 Macculloch, James: 361, 400 McDonnell (clan chieftain): see 136 Mackay, Charles: 177 Mackenzie, Henry: 30, 41, 65-70, 71, 76, 170; see also 8 Mackenzie, Joshua Henry: 68 Mackenzie, Penuel: 68 Mackinnon, Daniel: 430 Mackintosh, Sir James: 287 Macknight, James: 415 Macknight, Thomas: 403, 415 M‘Nab, Donald/Duncan (fictitious?): 139, 389-90 McNair, Robert: 434 McNeill, Duncan: 239 Macneill, Hector: 538 Magdeberg: 141 Mahomet: 439 Mahratta: 273 Major, the (of Glasgow: fictititious?): 448-51, 456, 457, 459, 472-74, 476 Malthus, Robert: 157 Manchester: 474, 477, 479, 487 Manners and Miller: 279-80 Mantegna, Andrea: 325 Marathon: 333 Marlborough, John Churchill, 1st Duke of: 178 Mars: 85 Martial: 382

INDEX

Mary, Queen of Scots: 25, 30-31, 346, 456 Mathematics: 100, 516 Mathews, Charles: 359, 544 Maule, William Ramsay (of Panmure): 76 Medicine: 146-47, 191, 205, 38788, 504, 541, 559 Meiners, Christoph: 131 Melanchthon, Philip: 438 Melrose (town): 349 Melrose Abbey: 339, 349, 352-54, 356, 370, 435, 447 Melville, Andrew: 130 Melville, Henry Dundas, 1st Lord: 206-07, 208, 249 Mendelssohn, Moses: 396 Mengs, Anton Raphael: 329 Mercury: 325 Messalina: 38 Methusaleh: 25 Metternich, Count von: 26 Meux, Henry (brewer): 70 Michelangelo: 324-25, 355, 429, 483 Millar, James: 141 Miller, Robert: 280 Milton, John: 44, 55, 61, 73, 100, 118, 123, 130, 148, 241, 263, 329, 351, 357, 385, 389, 390, 391, 393, 428, 429, 528; see also 276, 424 Mirror, The: 76, 271 Monboddo, James Burnett, Lord: 204 Moncreiff, Sir Henry: 231, 393, 396-98, 403, 410-12, 413, 512 Moncreiff, James: 231-32, 397 Moniteur: 131 Monmouth, James Scott, Duke of: 517, 518 Montgomery, James: 77 Montrose (family): 456

379

Montrose, James Graham, 1st Marquess: 346 Moor, James: 463 Moore, Thomas: 43, 167, 281, 358; see also 411 Moral Philosophy: 102-07 Moray (family): 517 Morehead, Robert: 47 Morier, James Justinian: 132 Morning Post: 131 Moro (Cuba): 85 Morris, Samuel (fictitious): 9, 22 Morton, George Douglas, 16th Earl of: 380-82, 389, 399, 40001 Moscow: 131 Mozart,Wolfgang Amadeus: 75, 169, 355 Muir, Thomas: 480 Muretus (Marc-Antoine Muret): 391 Murillo, Bartolomè Esteban: 470 Murray, John Archibald (advocate): 72-74, 76, 77, 232-33 Murray, John II (bookseller): 280, 284 Murray, William Henry: 178-79 Music: 169, 178, 328, 341-42, 351, 385, 399, 439-40, 443, 453-54, 529-30, 533, 537-38, 544-45 Musselburgh: 17 Nasmyth, Alexander: 335 Nasmyth, Patrick (‘Peter’): 335 National Bankruptcy: 287 National Covenant (see also Covenanters): 385, 409 National Monument: 168, 195 Natural History: 143-48 Nelson, Horatio, Viscount: 355, 474

380

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Newspapers: 272, 302, 305, 309, 378, 430, 475 Newton, Isaac: 118, 506 Nicholson, William: 336 Nile: 345 Normandy: 352 Northumberland: 356 Nugent (unidentified dandy): 430 Odin: 346, 439 Olympus: 175, 282, 551 Oman, Charles: 148, 351, 446 Opium: 51 Origen (of Alexandria): 453 Orkney: 435 Ossian: 137 Otaheite (Tahiti): 100 Otterburn: 341 Otway, Thomas: 535 Ovid: 154, 199, 367, 490 Oxford (see also University of Oxford): 22, 23, 24, 27, 47, 48, 80, 282 P—, Mr (fictitious?): 457-59 Paine, Thomas: 479, 480 PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND ENGRAVINGS Anon. [Bodleian], Mary, Queen of Scots: 30-31 Anon. [Hawthornden], William Drummond: see 437 Anon. [tavern], Horatio, Lord Nelson: 151 Allan, William, Circassian Family: 311 Allan, William, Illustrations of Waverley Novels: 319 Allan, William, Jewish Family […] Wedding: 311-13, 318 Allan, William, Murder of Archbishop Sharp: 319, 327 Allan, William, Press-Gang, The: 315-17, 318 Allan, William, Sale of

Circassian Captives: 309-11, 315, 318 Allan, William, Two Tartar Robbers Dividing their Spoil: 9, 306 Blijenberch, Abraham van, Ben Jonson: see 437 Blijenberch, Abraham van, William Drummond: see 437 Carracci, Ludovico, Dying Magdalene: see 519-20 Clerk, John, David and Bathsheba: 214 Clouet, François, Mary, Queen of Scots: 30 Correggio, Antonio Allegri, Jupiter and Antiope: 325 Corregio, Antonio Allegri, Virgin and Child (Madonna of the Basket): 470 de Wet, Jacob, Scottish Monarchs (series): 30 Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), St Catherine (now attrib. to Guido Reni): 470 Geddes, Andrew, David Wilkie: 336 Giordano, Lucca, Danae and the Golden Shower (now attrib. to Andrea Casali): 470 Mantegna, Andrea, Parnassus: 325 Morris, Peter (fictitious), Scottish portraits: 8, 138, 357 Morris, Peter (fictitious), Scottish scenery: 8, 339 Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban, The Infant Christ as the Good Shepherd: 470 Perugino, Pietro Vannucci, Contest of Virtue and Pleasure: 325-26

INDEX

Poussin, Nicolas, Burial of Abraham (The Entombment): 519 Raeburn, Henry [attrib.], John Erskine: 396 Raeburn, Henry, Lord Braxfield: 246-47 Ramsay, Allan, David Hume: 61-62 Ramsay, Allan, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: 62-63 Raphael Sanzis, The School of Athens: 325 Rembrandt van Rijn, Landscape (now attrib. to Koninck, Philip de): 470-71 Reni, Guido, Virgin and Sleeping Child): 470 Rubens, Peter Paul, Daniel in the Lions’ Den: 519 Rubens, Peter Paul, Drunken Silenus: 89 Rubens, Peter Paul, Head of St Peter (study for Adoration of the Magi): 470 Salvator Rosa [attrib.], Laocoon Refusing Payment to Neptune and Apollo: 470 Stage-scenery: 176-77 Titian, Venus Anadyomene: see 208 Van Dyck, Anthony, Charles I (Carlton House): 31 Van Dyck, Anthony, Charles I (Hamilton Palace): 518-19 Van Dyck, Anthony, Charles I (Holyrood Palace): 519 Van Dyck, Anthony, James, 3rd Marquess and 1st Duke of Hamilton: 519 Van Dyck, Anthony, William, 2nd Duke of Hamilton: see 519

381

Van Dyck, Anthony, William Feilding, Lord Denbigh: 519 Williams, Hugh William, View of Athens: 332-34 Paisley: 478, 515 Paley, William: 391 Palmyra: 274 Panorama: 202 Paradise: 132, 297, 439, 528 PARIS: 29, 124, 127, 130, 133, 143, 146, 204, 428, 470, 483, 512 Champs Elisées: 428 Jardin des Plantes: 146 Louvre: 325, 483 Palais Royal: 487 Thuilleries: 381 Parker, Joseph: 282 Parnassus: 331, 465 Parr, Samuel: 255, 464 Parthenon: 110, 332 Pays de Vaud: 26 Pegge, Sir Christopher: 112 Pembroke, Aymer de Valence, Earl of: 457 Pennant, Thomas: 21 Percy (family): 341 Pericles: 218, 332 Perugino, Pietro Vannucci: 323, 325-26 Petersham, Charles Stanhope, Viscount: 430 Petrarch, Franceso: 277 Petronius: 95 Phidias: 332, 355, 429 Phillips, Charles: 205 Philosophical Weaver: 476-81, 503 Pindar: 48, 59, 163, 226 Piper (John or Roderick of Skye): 341-42 Piræus: 332

382

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Pitmilly, David Monypenny, Lord: 204-05 Pitt, William: 206 Pius VII (Pope): 381 Plato: 99, 110, 325, 441, 506 Playfair, John: 41, 47, 47-48, 50, 53, 109-10, 115, 299, 377, 506 Playfair, William Henry: 110 Pliny the Elder: 40 Pococke, Thomas: see 115 Poggio Bracciolini: 247 Poland: 311-12, 313 Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, Catherine: 483 Pomona: 354 Pompey: 385 Pope, Alexander: 66, 223, 276, 370, 404 Poppæa (consort): 38 Porson, Richard: 463, 464-65 Pothier, Robert Joseph: 200 Potosi (Bolivia): 286 Poussin, Gaspard: 434 Poussin, Nicolas: 483, 519 Priapus: 354 Prince Regent (subsequently George IV): 381, 399, 519 Pringle (clan): 353 Psalm-book: 504, 505, 526, 529 Puritan(ism): 127, 152, 289, 36768, 425, 542 Pythoness: 404, 552 Quaker: 26 Quarterly Review: 278, 287, 298, 301, 410, 504, 512, 513-14 Quintilian: 217, 295 Radcliffe, Ann: 455 Raeburn, Henry: 336, 396; see also 246-47 Ramsay, Allan: 536 Raphael Sanzis: 323, 324, 325, 429, 483 Rattisbon (Regensberg): 457

Reformation: 367, 513, 515 Reid, Thomas: 102, 463 Rembrandt van Rijn: 322, 419, 470-71 Reni, Guido: 470, 483 Reynolds, John Hamilton: 304 Rhine (river): 289 Riccio (or Rizzio), David: 30 Ritchie, David: 102 Robert I (of Scotland, ‘The Bruce’): 346 Robertson, Patrick: 89 Robertson, William: 241-42, 271, 393-95 Robertson, William, Lord: 241-42 Rob Roy (drama): 176-78 Rogers, Samuel: 77, 442 Roget, Peter Mark: 160 Rolland, Adam: 68-69, 70 Roman Catholicism: 31, 408, 423, 452-53, 457, 513 Romano, Guilio: 325 ROME: 37, 121, 258, 329, 331, 524, 536 Campus Martius: 129 Capitol: 182 Circus: 129, 258 Coliseum: 456 Pantheon: 195 Vatican: 381 Rose, William Stewart: 200 Roslin: 434-38 Roslin Castle: 433, 434, 436 Rosslyn Chapel: 435 Rothes, John Leslie, 6th Earl of: 31 Rothesay: 546 Rotterdam: 282 Roubiliac, Louis François: 208 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: 62-63 Routh, Martin Joseph: 463 Rowe, Nicholas: 535 Rubens, Peter Paul: 89, 470, 483, 519 Rugby school: 468

INDEX

Rumford, Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count: 355 Runciman, Alexander: 328 Ruspini, Bartholomew, Chevalier: 87 Russia: 279 Rutherglen (or Ruglen): 480 Sachtleeven, Herman (or Saftleven): 46 St Clair (family): 435 St Cuthbert: 356 St John Crysostom: 404 Salamis: 332 Salvator Rosa: 387, 470 Sandford: 22 Sandford, Daniel (Bishop of Edinburgh): 418-19 Savoy: 279, 355 Schedam: 268 Schetky, John Alexander: 335-36, 434 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von: 65, 270 Scots (language): 213-14, 219, 225-26, 367, 423, 477-78 SCOTS LAW [Individual lawyers are indexed separately under their own names] Advocates (barristers): 122-23, 124, 153, 191-93, 200-01, 202-03, 206, 218, 235, 237, 239, 242, 247-50, 253, 268, 385, 402-03, 555-56 Civil Law: 208, 240, 241 Clerk to the Court of Session: 193, 253 Court of Session: 193, 197, 204, 240-41 Criminal (Justiciary) Court: 70, 230, 240, 241, 244 Criminal Law: 290 Judges: 25, 201, 203-05, 240-

383

41, 243-45, 246-50, 253 Jury-Court (civil cases): 223, 228, 230, 233 Law-clerks: 176, 199-200, 219, 555 Lawyers (type unspecified): 122, 176, 253, 265-66, 272, 298, 497 Men of Business (or ‘doers’): 123, 197-99, 205, 219, 555 Sheriff-Depute: 347 Writers (solicitors in general): 123, 197, 219, 243-44, 385, 427, 497 Writers to the Signet: 123-25, 147 Written pleading: 232, 238 Scots Magazine: 304 Scott (clan): 353 SCOTT, WALTER: 8, 41, 72, 76, 114, 137, 169, 177, 193, 253, 266, 274, 288, 295, 319, 336, 338, 339-46, 347-48, 355, 35758, 362-66, 369-70, 396, 435, 535 Antiquary, The: 359 ‘Eve of Saint John, The’: 34950 Guy Mannering: 51, 69, 115, 252-53, 347, 396 Heart of Mid-Lothian, The: 105, 115, 289 ‘Inferno of Altisidora, The’: 45 Lady of the Lake, The: 178, 342 Lay of the Last Minstrel, The: 275, 345, 349, 352, 365, 428, 435, 517 Lord of the Isles, The: 346 Marmion: 276, 340, 345, 349, 358, 365 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: 341, 342, 348, 349, 350-51, 435, 520-21

384

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, The: 280, 335, 337 Rob Roy: 452, 454, 463, 464; see also 176-78 Tale of Old Mortality, The: 276, 365, 393, 409-10, 517, 546 Waverley: 276, 288, 319, 342, 365 Scrub (Morris’s horse): 17, 23, 426, 446, 447 SCULPTURE Antinous: 437 Apollo Belvidere: 128, 360-61 Charles II: 196 Dancing Faun: 306 Duke of Cumberland: 178 Duncan Forbes of Culloden: 208 Elgin marbles: 352, 360 Farnese Hercules: 128, 163-64, 306, 360 Fighting Gladiator: 128 Helen of Troy: 39 Hermaphrodite: 306 Laocoon: 306 Lord Melville: 206-07, 208 President Blair: 208 Theseus: 208, 360 Venus de Medici: see 128 William Wallace: 354 Selkirk: 360 Servetus, Michael: 391 Seton (family): 29 Severn (river): 289 Shakespeare, William: 21, 26, 42, 86, 104, 131, 132, 144, 159, 174, 197, 198, 214, 218, 241, 252, 256, 262, 269, 272, 301, 302, 339, 340, 342, 355, 357, 365, 366, 367, 385, 393, 428, 446, 449, 468, 469, 476-77, 485, 501, 510, 523, 547, 556, 558 Shandrydan: 17, 46, 53, 141, 339,

362, 393, 426, 433, 434, 446, 494, 515, 518, 524, 526, 539, 542, 543, 545, 546 Sharp, James (Archbishop): 33, 319, 327, 410 Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick: 40910 Shelley, Percy Bysshe: 309 Shepherd, Sir Samuel: 56, 556 Shooting: 69, 386, 545 Sicambri (Germanic tribe): 38, 80 Siddons, Harriet: 178-79 Siddons, Henry: 178 Siddons, Sarah: see 179 Sidney, Sir Phillip: 355 Silenus: 89 Simond, Louis: 554 Sisyphus: 269 Skeffington, Sir Lumley St George: 430 Skene, Andrew: see 239 Smailholm Tower: 349 Smith, Adam: 59, 156, 367, 369, 463, 480 Smith, John (the Youngest): 516 Smollett, Tobias: 134, 136 Socrates: 355 SOLDIERS Connaught Rangers (88th Regiment): 385 Dragoons (in general): 426, 427, 490, 517 Inniskilling Dragoons: 490; see also 385 Sophocles: 163, 333 Southey, Robert: 56, 70, 77, 287 South-Sea-Islanders: 513 Spagnoletto (Jusipe de Ribera): 519 Spain: 24, 37, 260, 386, 387, 452; see also 26 Spanish ballads: 348 Sparta: 127 Spectator, The (Female?): 40

INDEX

Speculative Society: 149-50, 15257 Spenser, Edmund: 302 Spurzheim, Johann Gaspar: 37, 48, 159, 162, 200, 287, 359-60, 465, 470, 506 Stage-coach: 17 Stanihurst (Lockhart pseudonym?): 436 Steam-boat: 515, 546 Steele, Richard: 123, 178 Sterne, Laurence: 44, 66 Stewart (family, of Minto): 456 Stewart, David (of Garth): 383 Stewart, Dugald: 41, 100, 102, 104-06 Stewart, James: 9, 306 Stirrup-cup: 546 Struthers, John: 480 Stultz, George (tailor): 426, 486 Suckling, Sir John: 26, 128 Sunday (Sabbath): 32, 407, 479, 504-05, 524, 527, 532 Surtees, Robert: 356 Sussex, Augustus Frederick, Duke of: 168-69 Swallow (bird): 148 Swift, Jonathan: 73, 247, 276, 361, 424, 441, 493 Swift, Nicholas: 83 Switzerland: 141 Sym, Robert: 434 Tacitus: 150, 176 Taliesin: 559 Tankerville, Charles Bennett, 4th Earl of: 521 Tannahill, Robert: 480 Tatler, The: 178, 262 Tay (river): 289 Taylor, William: see 383 Templeton, James: 83 Terpsichore: 130 Teviot (river): 349

385

Thames (river): 194, 289; see also 22 THEATRE: 173-79, 431, 504, 535 Continental theatres: 175 Drury Lane, London: 555 Edinburgh Theatre Royal (see under Edinburgh) Haymarket Theatre, London: 174, 483 Thebes: 331 Theseus: 110, 208, 332, 360 Thespis: 173 Thomson, Andrew: 412-15 Thomson, George: 76 Thomson, James: 355, 366 Thomson, John: 280, 335 Thomson, William John: 336 Tintern Abbey: 353 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio): 437 Tonson, Jacob: 51, 276 Tooke, Horne: 466 Trinidad: 484 Trinity College, Oxford: 22, 25, 27 Turkey: 279, 306, 308, 309-11, 333 Turner, Joseph William Mallord: 280, 306, 330, 335, 337, 434 Tweed (river): 41, 55, 178, 262, 264, 289, 338, 341, 347, 349, 350, 354, 356, 362, 370, 391, 414, 521 UNIVERSITIES: 112-16, 117-20 University of Cambridge: 90, 113, 114, 117-20, 384, 462, 512 University of Edinburgh: 9094, 100-01, 102-07, 112, 114, 144-47, 152, 261-62, 406 University of Glasgow: 383, 406, 457, 462-71

386

PETER’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK

University of Oxford (individual Colleges entered separately): 22, 24, 27, 47, 66, 80, 86, 90, 91, 112, 113, 114, 117-20, 197, 201, 384, 419, 441, 462, 511, 512 Valhalla: 346, 439 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony: 31, 51819 Vane, Sir Harry: 399 Venus: 268 Vere, Tom (fictitious?): 22 Veronese, Paulo Caliari: 322 Viard, André: 51 Vienna: 381 Virgil: 135, 202, 280, 288, 370, 383, 427, 452, 464, 482, 53637, 556, 557; see also 281 Vishnu: 553 Voet, Johannes: 200, 214 Voltaire (François Marie Arouet): 329, 480 Wales: 121, 137, 286, 330, 381, 404, 426, 543 Walker, James: see 239 Wallace, William: 181, 354, 457 Waltz: 130-33 Warburton, William (Bishop of Gloucester): 247, 396 Warwick Castle: 517 Washing-green: 474-76 Washington, George: 355 Wastle, William (fictitious): 8, 9, 19, 22-27, 28-30, 31, 33-34, 41, 51, 54-55, 65, 69, 71, 72, 80, 82, 88, 89, 112, 167, 192, 195, 207, 236, 237, 246, 252, 25557, 272, 282, 284, 285, 288, 293, 298, 303, 305, 330, 361, 362, 377, 379, 380, 381-82, 383, 384, 400, 401, 404, 407, 419, 422, 433, 441, 443-44,

445, 448, 450, 456, 457, 463, 484; see also 176 Waterloo: 200, 474-75 Watson, John (subsequently Watson-Gordon): 336, 379 Watt, James: 355 Waugh, John: 153 Webster, Sir Godfrey Vassall: 430 Weimar: 270, 381 Weimar, Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-WeimarEisenach: 270, 381 Wellesley, Mrs Long (see PoleTylney-Long-Wellesley, Catherine) Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of: 335, 383, 442 Welsh language: 137 Wemyss, Francis WemysCharteris, 9th Earl: 309 Werner, Abraham Gottlob: 142, 143 Westminster Confession: 391 Wieland, Christoph Martin: 270 Wilkie, David: 320-21, 328, 336 Williams, Hugh William: 280, 330-34 Wilson, James: 147-48, 434 Wilson, John: 80-83, 147, 170, 264, 299-300, 359, 434, 440, 498-502, 539 Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord: 204 Wordsworth, William: 19, 26, 56, 77, 78-79, 87-88, 105, 106-07, 111, 135, 148, 170, 178, 182, 194, 228, 233, 235, 255, 263, 300, 331, 333-34, 338, 344, 349, 358, 42122, 437, 438, 439, 472-73, 498, 511, 540; see also 135 Württemberg: 381 Wye (river): 356 Wyttenbach, Daniel Albert: 464 Xenophon: 99

INDEX

York: 124, 191 Yorkshire: 35 Young, John: 463-68 Zoilus (of Amphipolis): 176

387