Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
William Taylor of Norwich to Walter Scott, 14 December 1796
“I need not tell you, sir” (he writes),
“with how much eagerness I opened your volume—with how much glow I
followed the
Chase—or with how much alarm I came to William and Helen. Of
the latter I will say nothing; praise might seem hypocrisy—criticism envy. The
ghost nowhere makes his appearance so well as with you, or his exit so well as
with Mr Spenser. I like
very much the recurrence of
‘The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, The flashing pebbles flee,’ |
![]()
but of William and Helen
I had resolved to say nothing. Let me return to the Chase, of which the metric stanza style
pleases me entirely—yet I think a few passages written in too elevated a strain
for the general spirit of the poem. This age leans too much to the Darwin style. Mr
Percy’s Lenore owes its coldness to the adoption of this; and it seems
peculiarly incongruous in the ballad where habit has taught us to expect
simplicity. Among the passages too stately and pompous, I should reckon— moirs of his own Life, have been
kindly sent to me by his son,
the well-known physician of Chelsea College; from which it appears that
the reverend doctor, and more particularly still his wife, a lady of
remarkable talent and humour, had formed a high notion of Scott’s future eminence at a very
early period of his life. Dr. S.
survived to a great old age, preserving his faculties quite entire, and
I have spent many pleasant hours under his hospitable roof in company
with Sir Walter Scott. We heard him preach an
excellent circuit sermon when he was upwards of ninety-two, and at the
Judges’ dinner afterwards he was among the gayest of the company.
|
![]()
![]()
![]()
‘The mountain echoes startling wake— And for devotion’s choral swell Exchange the rude discordant noise— Fell famine marks the maddening throng With cold Despair’s averted eye’— |
![]()
and perhaps one or two more. In the twenty-first stanza I prefer
Bürger’s trampling the corn into chaff and
dust, to your more metaphorical, and therefore less picturesque,
“destructive sweep the field along.” In the thirtieth,
“On whirlwind’s pinions swiftly borne,” to me
seems less striking than the still disapparition of the tumult and bustle the
earth has opened, and he is sinking with his evil genius to the nether world as
he approaches, dumpf rauscht es wie ein ferner
meer—it should be rendered, therefore, not by
“Save what a distant torrent gave,” but by some sounds
which shall necessarily excite the idea of being hellsprung—the sound of simmering seas of fire—pinings of goblins
damned—or some analogous noise. The forty-seventh stanza is a very great
improvement of the original. The profanest blasphemous speeches need not have
been softened down, as in proportion to the impiety of the provocation,
increases the poetical probability of the final punishment. I should not have
ventured upon these criticisms, if I did not think it required a microscopic
eye to make any, and if I did not on the whole consider the Chase as a most spirited and beautiful
translation. I remain (to borrow in another sense a concluding phrase from the
Spectator), your constant
admirer,
“Norwich, 14th Dec. 1796.”
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
English physician and philosophical poet, the author of
The Loves of
the Plants (1789); his interests in botany and evolution anticipated those of his
more famous grandson.
Thomas Percy, bishop of Dromore (1729-1811)
Poet, man of letters, and editor of
Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry (1765); he was a member of Samuel Johnson's circle.
Thomas Somerville (1741-1830)
Minister of Jedburgh; he was educated at Edinburgh University and published
The History of Great Britain during the Reign of Queen Anne (1798)
and other works. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott.
William Somerville (1771-1860)
Scottish physician, son of the historian Thomas Somerville and friend of Sir John Barrow
and John Murray, husband of the writer Mary Fairfax Somervillle; he was physician to
Chelsea Hospital (1819-38).
William Taylor of Norwich (1765-1836)
Translator, poet, and essayist; he was a pupil of Anna Letitia Barbauld and correspondent
of Robert Southey who contributed to the
Monthly Magazine, the
Monthly Review, the
Critical Review, and
other periodicals.
The Spectator. (1711-1714). Essays from the
Spectator, conducted by Addison and Steele, were
collected in five volumes and frequently reprinted.
