Chapter XLIV (2)

The _copy_ (as MS. for the press is technically called) which Scott was thus dictating, was that of The Bride of Lammermoor, and his amanuenses were William Laidlaw and John Ballantyne;--of whom he preferred the latter, when he could be at Abbotsford, on account of the superior rapidity of his pen; and also because John kept his pen to the paper without interruption, and, though with many an arch twinkle in his eyes, and now and then an audible smack of his lips, had resolution to work on like a well-trained clerk; whereas good Laidlaw entered with such keen zest into the interest of the story as it flowed from the author's lips, that he could not suppress exclamations of surprise and delight--"Gude keep us a'!--the like o' that!--eh sirs! eh sirs!"--and so forth--which did not promote despatch. I have often, however, in the sequel, heard both these secretaries describe the astonishment with which they were equally affected when Scott began this experiment. The affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his audible suffering filled every pause, "Nay, Willie," he answered, "only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as to giving over work, that can only be when I am in woollen." John Ballantyne told me, that after the first day he always took care to have a dozen of pens made before he seated himself opposite to the sofa on which Scott lay, and that though he often turned himself on his pillow with a groan of torment, he usually continued the sentence in the same breath. But when dialogue of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter--he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and as it were acting the parts. It was in this fashion that Scott produced the far greater portion of The Bride of Lammermoor--the whole of the Legend of Montrose--and almost the whole of Ivanhoe. Yet, when his health was fairly reestablished, he disdained to avail himself of the power of dictation, which he had thus put to the sharpest test, but resumed, and for many years resolutely adhered to, the old plan of writing everything with his own hand. When I once, some time afterwards, expressed my surprise that he did not consult his ease, and spare his eyesight at all events, by occasionally dictating, he answered, "I should as soon think of getting into a sedan chair while I can use my legs."

On one of the envelopes in which a chapter of The Bride of Lammermoor reached the printer in the Canongate about this time (May 2, 1819), there is this note in the author's own handwriting:--

DEAR JAMES,--These matters will need more than your usual
carefulness. Look sharp--double sharp--my trust is constant in
thee:--

"Tarry woo, tarry woo,
Tarry woo is ill to spin;
Card it weel, card it weel,
Card it weel ere ye begin.
When 'tis carded, row'd, and spun,
Then the work is hafflins done;
But when woven, drest, and clean,
It may be cleading for a queen."

So be it,--W. S.

But to return: I rode out to Abbotsford with John Ballantyne towards the end of the spring vacation, and though he had warned me of a sad change in Scott's appearance, it was far beyond what I had been led to anticipate. He had lost a great deal of flesh--his clothes hung loose about him--his countenance was meagre, haggard, and of the deadliest yellow of the jaundice--and his hair, which a few weeks before had been but slightly sprinkled with gray, was now almost literally snow-white. His eye, however, retained its fire unquenched; indeed it seemed to have gained in brilliancy from the new languor of the other features; and he received us with all the usual cordiality, and even with little perceptible diminishment in the sprightliness of his manner. He sat at the table while we dined, but partook only of some rice pudding; and after the cloth was drawn, while sipping his toast and water, pushed round the bottles in his old style, and talked with easy cheerfulness of the stout battle he had fought, and which he now seemed to consider as won.

"One day there was," he said, "when I certainly began to have great doubts whether the mischief was not getting at my mind--and I'll tell you how I tried to reassure myself on that score. I was quite unfit for anything like original composition; but I thought if I could turn an old German ballad I had been reading into decent rhymes, I might dismiss my worst apprehensions--and you shall see what came of the experiment." He then desired his daughter Sophia to fetch the MS. of The Noble Moringer, as it had been taken down from his dictation, partly by her and partly by Mr. Laidlaw, during one long and painful day while he lay in bed. He read it to us as it stood, and seeing that both Ballantyne and I were much pleased with the verses, he said he should copy them over,--make them a little "tighter about the joints,"--and give me them to be printed in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816,--to consult him about which volume had partly been the object of my visit; and this promise he redeemed before I left him.

The reading of this long ballad, however (it consists of forty-three stanzas),[35] seemed to have exhausted him: he retired to his bedroom; and an hour or two after, when we were about to follow his example, his family were distressed by the well-known symptoms of another sharp recurrence of his affliction. A large dose of opium and the hot bath were immediately put in requisition. His good neighbor, Dr. Scott of Darnlee, was sent for, and soon attended; and in the course of three or four hours we learned that he was once more at ease. But I can never forget the groans which, during that space, his agony extorted from him. Well knowing the iron strength of his resolution, to find him confessing its extremity, by cries audible not only all over the house, but even to a considerable distance from it (for Ballantyne and I, after he was put into his bath, walked forth to be out of the way, and heard him distinctly at the bowling-green), it may be supposed that this was sufficiently alarming, even to my companion; how much more to me, who had never before listened to that voice, except in the gentle accents of kindness and merriment.

[Footnote 35: See Scott's _Poetical Works_ (Ed. 1834), vol. vi. p. 343 [Cambridge Ed. p. 444].]

I told Ballantyne that I saw this was no time for my visit, and that I should start for Edinburgh again at an early hour--and begged he would make my apologies--in the propriety of which he acquiesced. But as I was dressing, about seven next morning, Scott himself tapped at my door, and entered, looking better I thought than at my arrival the day before. "Don't think of going," said he; "I feel hearty this morning, and if my devil does come back again, it won't be for three days at any rate. For the present, I want nothing to set me up except a good trot in the open air, to drive away the accursed vapors of the laudanum I was obliged to swallow last night. You have never seen Yarrow, and when I have finished a little job I have with Jocund Johnny, we shall all take horse and make a day of it." When I said something about a ride of twenty miles being rather a bold experiment after such a night, he answered that he had ridden more than forty, a week before, under similar circumstances, and felt nothing the worse. He added, that there was an election on foot, in consequence of the death of Sir John Riddell, of Riddell, Member of Parliament for the Selkirk district of Burghs, and that the bad health and absence of the Duke of Buccleuch rendered it quite necessary that he should make exertions on this occasion. "In short," said he, laughing, "I have an errand which I shall perform--and as I must pass Newark, you had better not miss the opportunity of seeing it under so excellent a cicerone as the old minstrel,

'Whose withered cheek and tresses grey
Shall yet see many a better day.'"

About eleven o'clock, accordingly, he was mounted, by the help of Tom Purdie, upon a stanch, active cob, yclept Sibyl Grey,--exactly such a creature as is described in Mr. Dinmont's _Dumple_--while Ballantyne sprang into the saddle of noble _Old Mortality_, and we proceeded to the town of Selkirk, where Scott halted to do business at the Sheriff-Clerk's, and begged us to move onward at a gentle pace until he should overtake us. He came up by and by at a canter, and seemed in high glee with the tidings he had heard about the canvass. And so we rode by Philiphaugh, Carterhaugh, Bowhill, and Newark, he pouring out all the way his picturesque anecdotes of former times--more especially of the fatal field where Montrose was finally overthrown by Leslie. He described the battle as vividly as if he had witnessed it; the passing of the Ettrick at daybreak by the Covenanting General's heavy cuirassiers, many of them old soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, and the wild confusion of the Highland host when exposed to their charge on an extensive _haugh_ as flat as a bowling-green. He drew us aside at _Slain-men's-lee_, to observe the green mound that marks the resting-place of the slaughtered royalists; and pointing to the apparently precipitous mountain, Minchmoor, over which Montrose and his few cavaliers escaped, mentioned that, rough as it seemed, his mother remembered passing it in her early days in a coach and six, on her way to a ball at Peebles--several footmen marching on either side of the carriage to prop it up, or drag it through bogs, as the case might require. He also gave us, with all the dramatic effect of one of his best chapters, the history of a worthy family who, inhabiting at the time of the battle a cottage on his own estate, had treated with particular kindness a young officer of Leslie's army quartered on them for a night or two before. When parting from them to join the troops, he took out a purse of gold, and told the good woman that he had a presentiment he should not see another sun set, and in that case would wish his money to remain in her kind hands; but, if he should survive, he had no doubt she would restore it honestly. The young man returned mortally wounded, but lingered awhile under her roof, and finally bequeathed to her and hers his purse and his blessing. "Such," he said, "was the origin of the respectable lairds of----, now my good neighbors."

The prime object of this expedition was to talk over the politics of Selkirk with one of the Duke of Buccleuch's great store-farmers, who, as the Sheriff had learned, possessed private influence with a doubtful bailie or deacon among the Souters. I forget the result, if ever I heard it. But next morning, having, as he assured us, enjoyed a good night in consequence of this ride, he invited us to accompany him on a similar errand across Bowden Moor, and up the Valley of the Ayle; and when we reached a particularly bleak and dreary point of that journey, he informed us that he perceived in the waste below a wreath of smoke, which was the appointed signal that a _wavering_ Souter of some consequence had agreed to give him a personal interview where no Whiggish eyes were likely to observe them;--and so, leaving us on the road, he proceeded to thread his way westward, across moor and bog, until we lost view of him. I think a couple of hours might have passed before he joined us again, which was, as had been arranged, not far from the village of Lilliesleaf. In that place, too, he had some negotiation of the same sort to look after; and when he had finished it, he rode with us all round the ancient woods of Riddell, but would not go near the house; I suppose lest any of the afflicted family might still be there. Many were his lamentations over the catastrophe which had just befallen them. "They are," he said, "one of the most venerable races in the south of Scotland--they were here long before these glens had ever heard the name of Soulis or of Douglas--to say nothing of Buccleuch: they can show a Pope's bull of the tenth century, authorizing the then Riddell to marry a relation within the forbidden degrees. Here they have been for a thousand years at least; and now all the inheritance is to pass away, merely because one good worthy gentleman would not be contented to enjoy his horses, his hounds, and his bottle of claret, like thirty or forty predecessors, but must needs turn scientific agriculturist, take almost all his fair estate into his own hand, superintend for himself perhaps a hundred ploughs, and try every new nostrum that has been tabled by the quackish _improvers_ of the time. And what makes the thing ten times more wonderful is, that he kept day-book and ledger, and all the rest of it, as accurately as if he had been a cheesemonger in the Grassmarket." Some of the most remarkable circumstances in Scott's own subsequent life have made me often recall this conversation--with more wonder than he expressed about the ruin of the Riddells.

I remember he told us a world of stories, some tragical, some comical, about the old lairds of this time-honored lineage; and among others, that of the seven Bibles and the seven bottles of ale, which he afterwards inserted in a note to The Bride of Lammermoor.[36] He was also full of anecdotes about a friend of his father's, a minister of Lilliesleaf, who reigned for two generations the most popular preacher in Teviotdale; but I forget the orator's name. When the original of Saunders Fairford congratulated him in his latter days on the undiminished authority he still maintained--every kirk in the neighborhood being left empty when it was known he was to mount the _tent_ at any country sacrament--the shrewd divine answered: "Indeed, Mr. Walter, I sometimes think it's vera surprising. There's aye a talk of this or that wonderfully gifted young man frae the college; but whenever I'm to be at the same _occasion_ with ony o' them, I e'en mount the white horse in the Revelations, and he dings them a'."

[Footnote 36: "It was once the universal custom to place ale, wine, or some strong liquor, in the chamber of an honored guest, to assuage his thirst should he feel any on awakening in the night, which, considering that the hospitality of that period often reached excess, was by no means unlikely. The author has met some instances of it in former days, and in old-fashioned families. It was, perhaps, no poetic fiction that records how

'My cummer and I lay down to sleep
With two pint stoups at our bed feet;
And aye when we waken'd we drank them dry;
What think you o' my cummer and I?'

"It is a current story in Teviotdale, that in the house of an ancient family of distinction, much addicted to the Presbyterian cause, a Bible was always put into the sleeping apartment of the guests, along with a bottle of strong ale. On some occasion there was a meeting of clergymen in the vicinity of the castle, all of whom were invited to dinner by the worthy Baronet, and several abode all night. According to the fashion of the times, seven of the reverend guests were allotted to one large barrack-room, which was used on such occasions of extended hospitality. The butler took care that the divines were presented, according to custom, each with a Bible and a bottle of ale. But after a little consultation among themselves, they are said to have recalled the domestic as he was leaving the apartment. 'My friend,' said one of the venerable guests, 'you must know, when we meet together as brethren, the youngest minister reads aloud a portion of Scripture to the rest;--only one Bible, therefore, is necessary; take away the other six, and in their place bring six more bottles of ale.'

"This synod would have suited the 'hermit sage' of Johnson, who answered a pupil who inquired for the real road to happiness with the celebrated line,

'Come, my lad, and drink some beer!'"

--See _The Bride of Lammermoor_, note to chap. xiv.]

Thus Scott amused himself and us as we jogged homewards: and it was the same the following day, when (no election matters pressing) he rode with us to the western peak of the Eildon hills, that he might show me the whole panorama of his Teviotdale, and expound the direction of the various passes by which the ancient forayers made their way into England, and tell the names and the histories of many a monastic chapel and baronial peel, now mouldering in glens and dingles that escape the eye of the traveller on the highways. Among other objects on which he descanted with particular interest, were the ruins of the earliest residence of the Kerrs of Cessford, so often opposed in arms to his own 'chieftains of Branksome, and a desolate little kirk on the adjoining moor, where the Dukes of Roxburghe are still buried in the same vault with the hero who fell at Turn-again. Turning to the northward, he showed us the crags and tower of Smailholm, and behind it the shattered fragment of Ercildoune--and repeated some pretty stanzas ascribed to the last of the real wandering minstrels of this district, by name _Burn_:--

"Sing Erceldoune, and Cowdenknowes,
Where Homes had ance commanding,
And Drygrange, wi' the milk-white ewes,
'Twixt Tweed and Leader standing.
The bird that flees through Redpath trees
And Gledswood banks each morrow,
May chaunt and sing--_sweet Leader's haughs_
And _Bonny howms of Yarrow_.

"But Minstrel Burn cannot assuage
His grief while life endureth,
To see the changes of this age
Which fleeting time procureth;
For mony a place stands in hard case,
Where blythe folks kent nae sorrow,
With Homes that dwelt on Leader side,
And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow."[37]

[Footnote 37: [See _ante_, vol. ii. p. 114, note.]]

That night he had again an attack of his cramp, but not so serious as the former. Next morning he was again at work with Ballantyne at an early hour; and when I parted from him after breakfast, he spoke cheerfully of being soon in Edinburgh for the usual business of his Court. I left him, however, with dark prognostications; and the circumstances of this little visit to Abbotsford have no doubt dwelt on my mind the more distinctly, from my having observed and listened to him throughout under the painful feeling that it might very probably be my last.

On the 5th of May he received the intelligence of the death of the Duke of Buccleuch, which had occurred at Lisbon on the 20th April; and next morning he wrote as follows to his Grace's brother:--

TO THE LORD MONTAGU, DITTON PARK.

ABBOTSFORD, 6th May, 1819.

MY DEAR LORD,--I heard from Lord Melville, by yesterday's post,
the calamitous news which your Lordship's very kind letter this
moment confirmed, had it required confirmation. For this
fortnight past, my hopes have been very faint indeed, and on
Wednesday, when I had occasion to go to Yarrow, and my horse
turned from habit to go up the avenue at Bowhill, I felt deeply
impressed that it was a road I should seldom travel for a long
time at least. To your Lordship--let me add, to myself--this is
an irreparable loss; for such a fund of excellent sense, high
principle, and perfect honor have been rarely combined in the
same individual. To the country the inestimable loss will be soon
felt, even by those who were insensible to his merits, or wished
to detract from them, when he was amongst us. In my opinion he
never recovered from his domestic calamity. He wrote to me, a few
days after that cruel event, a most affectionate and remarkable
letter, explaining his own feelings, and while he begged that I
would come to him, assuring me that I should find him the same he
would be for the future years of his life. He kept his word; but
I could see a grief of that calm and concentrated kind which
claims the hours of solitude and of night for its empire, and
gradually wastes the springs of life.

Among the thousand painful feelings which this melancholy event
had excited, I have sometimes thought of his distance from home.
Yet this was done with the best intention, and upon the best
advice, and was perhaps the sole chance which remained for
reestablishment. It has pleased God that it has failed; but the
best means were used under the best direction, and mere mortality
can do no more. I am very anxious about the dear young ladies,
whose lives were so much devoted to their father, and shall be
extremely desirous of knowing how they are. The Duchess has so
much firmness of mind, and Lady M. so much affectionate prudence,
that they will want no support that example and kindness can
afford. To me the world seems a sort of waste without him. We had
many joint objects, constant intercourse, and unreserved
communication, so that through him and by him I took interest in
many things altogether out of my own sphere, and it seems to me
as if the horizon were narrowed and lowered around me. But God's
will be done; it is all that brother or friend can or dare
say.--I have reluctance to mention the trash which is going on
here. Indeed, I think little is altered since I wrote to your
Lordship fully, excepting that last night late, Chisholm[38]
arrived at Abbotsford from Lithgow, recalled by the news which
had somehow reached Edinburgh,--as I suspect by some
officiousness of ****. He left Lithgow in such a state that there
is no doubt he will carry that burgh, unless Pringle[39] gets
Selkirk. He is gone off this morning to try the possible and
impossible to get the single vote which he wants, or to prevail
on one person to stand neuter. It is possible he may succeed,
though this event, when it becomes generally known, will be
greatly against his efforts. I should care little more about the
matter, were it not for young Walter,[40] and for the despite I
feel at the success of speculations which were formed on the
probability of the event which has happened. Two sons of *******
came here yesterday, and with their father's philosophical spirit
of self-accommodation, established themselves for the night.
Betwixt them and Chisholm's noise, my head and my stomach
suffered so much (under the necessity of drowning feelings which
I could not express), that I had a return of the spasms, and I
felt as if a phantasmagoria was going on around me. Quiet, and
some indulgence of natural and solitary sorrow, have made me
well. To-day I will ride up to Selkirk and see the magistrates,
or the chief of them. It is necessary they should not think the
cause deserted. If it is thought proper to suspend the works at
Bowhill, perhaps the measure may be delayed till the decision of
this matter.

I am sure, my dear Lord, you will command me in all I can do. I
have only to regret it is so little. But to show that my
gratitude has survived my benefactor, would be the pride and
delight of my life. I never thought it possible that a man could
have loved another so much, where the distance of rank was so
very great. But why recur to things so painful? I pity poor Adam
Ferguson, whose affections were so much engaged by the Duke's
kindness, and who has with his gay temper a generous and feeling
heart. The election we may lose, but not our own credit, and that
of the family--that you may rest assured of. My best respects and
warmest sympathy attend the dear young ladies, and Lady Montagu.
I shall be anxious to know how the Duchess-Dowager does under
this great calamity. The poor boy--what a slippery world is
before him, and how early a dangerous, because a splendid, lot is
presented to him! But he has your personal protection. Believe
me, with a deep participation in your present distress, your
Lordship's most faithfully,

WALTER SCOTT.

[Footnote 38: Mr. Chisholm was the Tory candidate for the Selkirk burghs.]

[Footnote 39: Mr. Pringle of Clifton, the Whig candidate.]

[Footnote 40: Walter Francis, the present Duke of Buccleuch.]

Scott drew up for Ballantyne's newspaper of that week the brief character of Charles, Duke of Buccleuch, which has since been included in his Prose Miscellanies (vol. iv.); and the following letter accompanied a copy of it to Ditton Park:--

TO THE LORD MONTAGU, ETC., ETC., ETC.

MY DEAR LORD,--I send you the newspaper article under a different
cover. I have studied so much to suppress my own feelings, and
so to give a just, calm, and temperate view of the excellent
subject of our present sorrow, such as I conceive might be drawn
by one less partially devoted to him, that it has to my own eye a
cold and lifeless resemblance of an original so dear to me. But I
was writing to the public, and to a public less acquainted with
him than a few years' experience would have made them. Even his
own tenantry were but just arrived at the true estimation of his
character. I wrote, therefore, to insure credit and belief, in a
tone greatly under my own feelings. I have ordered twenty-five
copies to be put in a different shape, of which I will send your
Lordship twenty. It has been a painful task, but I feel it was
due from me. I am just favored with your letter. I beg your
Lordship will not write more frequently than you find quite
convenient, for you must have now more than enough upon you. The
arrangement respecting Boughton[41] is what I expected--the
lifeless remains will be laid where the living thoughts had long
been. I grieve that I shall not see the last honors, yet I hardly
know how I could have gone through the scene.

Nothing in the circumstances could have given me the satisfaction
which I receive from your Lordship's purpose of visiting
Scotland, and bringing down the dear young ladies, who unite so
many and such affecting ties upon the regard and affection of
every friend of the family. It will be a measure of the highest
necessity for the political interest of the family, and your
Lordship will have an opportunity of hearing much information of
importance, which really could not be made the subject of
writing. The extinction of fire on the hearths of this great
house would be putting out a public light and a public beacon in
the time of darkness and storms. Ever your most faithful

W. S.

[Footnote 41: Boughton, in Northamptonshire. This seat came into the possession of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, by his marriage with the daughter and heiress of John, the last Duke of Montagu, who survived for many years her son, Duke Charles. At Boughton, as the reader will see, Scott's early friend, the Duchess Harriet of Buccleuch, had been buried in 1814.]

On the 11th of May, Scott returned to Edinburgh, and was present next day at the opening of the Court of Session; when all who saw him were as much struck as I had been at Abbotsford with the lamentable change his illness had produced in his appearance. He was unable to persist in attendance at the Clerks' Table--for several weeks afterwards I think he seldom if ever attempted it;--and I well remember that, when the Third Series of the Tales of my Landlord at length came out (which was on the 10th of June), he was known to be confined to bed, and the book was received amidst the deep general impression that we should see no more of that parentage. On the 13th he wrote thus to Captain Ferguson, who had arrived in London with the remains of the Duke of Buccleuch:--

TO CAPTAIN ADAM FERGUSON, ETC., ETC., MONTAGU HOUSE, WHITEHALL.

MY DEAR ADAM,--I am sorry to say I have had another eight days'
visit of my disorder, which has confined me chiefly to my bed. It
is not attended with so much acute pain as in spring, but with
much sickness and weakness. It will perhaps shade off into a mild
chronic complaint--if it returns frequently with the same
violence, I shall break up by degrees, and follow my dear Chief.
I do not mean that there is the least cause for immediate
apprehension, but only that the constitution must be injured at
last, as well by the modes of cure, or rather of relief, as by
the pain. My digestion as well as my appetite are for the present
quite gone--a change from former days of Leith and Newhaven
parties. I thank God I can look at this possibility without much
anxiety, and without a shadow of fear.

Will you, if your time serves, undertake two little commissions
for me? One respects a kind promise of Lord Montagu to put George
Thomson's name on a list for kirk preferment. I don't like to
trouble him with letters--he must be overwhelmed with business,
and has his dear brother's punctuality in replying even to those
which require none. I would fain have that Scottish Abraham Adams
provided for if possible. My other request is, that you will, if
you can, see Terry, and ask him what is doing about my
dining-room chairs, and especially about the carpet, for I shall
not without them have the use of what Slender calls "mine own
great parlor" this season. I should write to him, but am really
unable. I hope you will soon come down--a sight of you would do
me good at the worst turn I have yet had. The Baronet[42] is very
kind, and comes and sits by me. Everybody likes the Regalia, and
I have heard of no one grudging their _hog_[43]--but you must get
something better. I have been writing to the Commie[44] about
this. He has been inexpressibly kind in Walter's matter, and the
Duke of York has promised an early commission. When you see our
friend, you can talk over this, and may perhaps save him the
trouble of writing particular directions what further is to be
done. Iago's rule, I suppose--"put money in thy purse." I wish in
passing you would ask how the ladies are in Piccadilly. Yours
ever,

W. SCOTT.

[Footnote 42: Mr. William Clerk.]

[Footnote 43: A shilling.]

[Footnote 44: The Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam.]

The Bride of Lammermoor, and A Legend of Montrose, would have been read with indulgence had they needed it; for the painful circumstances under which they must have been produced were known wherever an English newspaper made its way; but I believe that, except in numerous typical errors, which sprung of necessity from the author's inability to correct any proof sheets, no one ever affected to perceive in either tale the slightest symptom of his malady. Dugald Dalgetty was placed by acclamation in the same rank with Bailie Jarvie--a conception equally new, just, and humorous, and worked out in all the details, as if it had formed the luxurious entertainment of a chair as easy as was ever shaken by Rabelais; and though the character of Montrose himself seemed hardly to have been treated so fully as the subject merited, the accustomed rapidity of the novelist's execution would have been enough to account for any such defect. Of Caleb Balderstone--(the hero of one of the many ludicrous delineations which he owed to the late Lord Haddington, a man of rare pleasantry, and one of the best tellers of old Scotch stories that I ever heard)--I cannot say that the general opinion was then, nor do I believe it ever since has been, very favorable. It was pronounced at the time, by more than one critic, a mere caricature; and though Scott himself would never in after-days admit this censure to be just, he allowed that "he might have sprinkled rather too much parsley over his chicken." But even that blemish, for I grant that I think it a serious one, could not disturb the profound interest and pathos of The Bride of Lammermoor--to my fancy the most pure and powerful of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned. The reader will be well pleased, however, to have, in place of any critical observations on this work, the following particulars of its composition from the notes which its printer dictated when stretched on the bed from which he well knew he was never to rise.

"The book" (says James Ballantyne) "was not only written, but
published, before Mr. Scott was able to rise from his bed; and he
assured me, that when it was first put into his hands in a
complete shape, he did not recollect one single incident,
character, or conversation it contained! He did not desire me to
understand, nor did I understand, that his illness had erased
from his memory the original incidents of the story, with which
he had been acquainted from his boyhood. These remained rooted
where they had ever been; or, to speak more explicitly, he
remembered the general facts of the existence of the father and
mother, of the son and daughter, of the rival lovers, of the
compulsory marriage, and the attack made by the bride upon the
hapless bridegroom,[45] with the general catastrophe of the
whole. All these things he recollected just as he did before he
took to his bed: but he literally recollected nothing else--not a
single character woven by the romancer, not one of the many
scenes and points of humor, nor anything with which he was
connected as the writer of the work. 'For a long time,' he said,
'I felt myself very uneasy in the course of my reading, lest I
should be startled by meeting something altogether glaring and
fantastic. However, I recollected that you had been the printer,
and I felt sure that you would not have permitted anything of
this sort to pass.' 'Well,' I said, 'upon the whole, how did you
like it?' 'Why,' he said, 'as a whole, I felt it monstrous gross
and grotesque; but still the worst of it made me laugh, and I
trusted the good-natured public would not be less indulgent.' I
do not think I ever ventured to lead to the discussion of this
singular phenomenon again; but you may depend upon it, that what
I have now said is as distinctly reported as if it had been taken
down in short-hand at the moment; I should not otherwise have
ventured to allude to the matter at all. I believe you will agree
with me in thinking that the history of the human mind contains
nothing more wonderful."

[Footnote 45: There appeared in the _Edinburgh Evening Post_ of October 10, 1840, a letter dated September 5, 1823, addressed by Sir J. Horne Dalrymple Elphinstone, Bart., to the late Sir James Stewart Denham of Coltness, Bart., both descendants of the Lord President Stair, whose daughter was the original of the Bride of Lammermoor, from which it appears that, according to the traditional creed of the Dalrymple family, the lady's unhappy lover, Lord Rutherford, had found means to be secreted in the nuptial chamber, and that the wound of the bridegroom, Sir David Dunbar of Baldoon, was inflicted by his Lordship's hand. The letter in question will be appended to future editions of the novel.--(1841.)]

Soon after Scott reappeared in the Parliament House, he came down one Saturday to the vaulted chambers below, where the Advocates' Library was then kept, to attend a meeting of the Faculty, and as the assembly was breaking up, he asked me to walk home with him, taking Ballantyne's printing-office in our way. He moved languidly, and said, if he were to stay in town many days, he must send for Sibyl Grey; but his conversation was heart-whole; and, in particular, he laughed till, despite his weakness, the stick was flourishing in his hand, over the following almost incredible specimen of that most absurd personage the late Earl of Buchan.

Hearing one morning shortly before this time, that Scott was actually _in extremis_, the Earl proceeded to Castle Street, and found the knocker tied up. He then descended to the door in the area, and was there received by honest Peter Mathieson, whose face seemed to confirm the woeful tidings, for in truth his master was ill enough. Peter told his Lordship that he had the strictest orders to admit no visitor; but the Earl would take no denial, pushed the bashful coachman aside, and elbowed his way upstairs to the door of Scott's bedchamber. He had his fingers upon the handle before Peter could give warning to Miss Scott; and when she appeared to remonstrate against such an intrusion, he patted her on the head like a child, and persisted in his purpose of entering the sickroom so strenuously, that the young lady found it necessary to bid Peter see the Earl downstairs again, at whatever damage to his dignity. Peter accordingly, after trying all his eloquence in vain, gave the tottering, bustling, old, meddlesome coxcomb a single shove,--as respectful, doubt not, as a shove can ever be,--and he accepted that hint, and made a rapid exit. Scott, meanwhile, had heard the confusion, and at length it was explained to him; when, fearing that Peter's gripe might have injured Lord Buchan's feeble person, he desired James Ballantyne, who had been sitting by his bed, to follow the old man home--make him comprehend, if he could, that the family were in such bewilderment of alarm, that the ordinary rules of civility were out of the question--and, in fine, inquire what had been the object of his Lordship's intended visit. James proceeded forthwith to the Earl's house in George Street and found him strutting about his library in a towering indignation. Ballantyne's elaborate demonstrations of respect, however, by degrees softened him, and he condescended to explain himself. "I wished," said he, "to embrace Walter Scott before he died, and inform him that I had long considered it as a satisfactory circumstance that he and I were destined to rest together in the same place of sepulture. The principal thing, however, was to relieve his mind as to the arrangements of his funeral--to show him a plan which I had prepared for the procession--and, in a word, to assure him that I took upon myself the whole conduct of the ceremonial at Dryburgh." He then exhibited to Ballantyne a formal programme, in which, as may be supposed, the predominant feature was not Walter Scott, but David, Earl of Buchan. It had been settled, _inter alia_, that the said Earl was to pronounce an eulogium over the grave, after the fashion of French Academicians in the _Pere la Chaise_.

And this silliest and vainest of busybodies was the elder brother of Thomas and Henry Erskine! But the story is well known of his boasting one day to the late Duchess of Gordon of the extraordinary talents of his family--when her unscrupulous Grace asked him, very coolly, whether the wit had not come by the mother, and been all settled on the younger branches?

Scott, as his letters to be quoted presently will show, had several more attacks of his disorder, and some very severe ones, during the autumn of 1819; nor, indeed, had it quite disappeared until about Christmas. But from the time of his return to Abbotsford in July, when he adopted the system of treatment recommended by a skilful physician (Dr. Dick), who had had large experience in maladies of this kind during his Indian life, the seizures gradually became less violent, and his confidence that he was ultimately to baffle the enemy remained unshaken.[46]

[Footnote 46: ["For nearly two years he had to struggle for his life with that severe illness, which the natural strength of his constitution at length proved sufficient to throw off. With its disappearance, although restored to health, disappeared also much of his former vigor of body, activity, and power of undergoing fatigue, while in personal appearance he had advanced twenty years in the downward course of life; his hair had become bleached to pure white and scanty locks; the fire of his eye quenched; and his step, more uncertain, had lost the vigorous swinging gait with which he was used to proceed; in fact, old age had by many years anticipated its usual progress and marked how severely he had suffered."--James Skene's _Reminiscences_,--See _Journal_, vol. ii. p. 97, note.]]

As I had no opportunity of seeing him again until he was almost entirely reestablished, I shall leave the progress of his restoration to be collected from his correspondence. But I must not forget to set down what his daughter Sophia afterwards told me of his conduct upon one night in June, when he really did despair of himself. He then called his children about his bed, and took leave of them with solemn tenderness. After giving them, one by one, such advice as suited their years and characters, he added: "For myself, my dears, I am unconscious of ever having done any man an injury, or omitted any fair opportunity of doing any man a benefit. I well know that no human life can appear otherwise than weak and filthy in the eyes of God: but I rely on the merits and intercession of our Redeemer." He then laid his hand on their heads, and said, "God bless you! Live so that you may all hope to meet each other in a better place hereafter. And now leave me, that I may turn my face to the wall." They obeyed him; but he presently fell into a deep sleep; and when he awoke from it after many hours, the crisis of extreme danger was felt by himself, and pronounced by his physician, to have been overcome.