Mr Ellis received this letter where
Scott hoped it would reach him, at the
seat of Lord Effingham; and he answers, on the 3d of
October, “The beauty of this part of the country is such as to indemnify
the traveller for a few miles of very indifferent road, and the tedious process
of creeping up and almost sliding down a succession of high hills; and in the
number of picturesque landscapes by which we are encompassed, the den of the
dragon which you recommended to our attention is the most superlatively
beautiful and romantic. You are, I suppose, aware that this same den is the
very spot from whence Lady Mary Wortley
Montague wrote many of her early letters; and it seems that an
old housekeeper, who lived there till last year, remembered to have seen her,
and dwelt with great pleasure on the various charms of her celebrated mistress;
so that its wild scenes have an equal claim to veneration from the admirers of
wit and gallantry, and the far-famed investigators of remote antiquity. With
regard to the original Dragon, I have met with two different traditions. One of
these (which I think is preserved by Percy) states him to have been a wicked attorney, a relentless
persecutor of the poor, who
| WORTLEY-HALL—OCTOBER 1803. | 397 |
“The present house appears to have grown to its even
now moderate size by successive additions to a very small logge (lodge), built by ‘a gentle knight, Sir Thomas
Wortley,’ in the time of Henry
VIII., for the pleasure, as an old inscription in the present
scullery testifies, of ‘listening to the Hartes bell.’ Its site is
on the side of a very high rocky hill, covered with oaks (the weed of the
country), and overhanging the river Don, which in this place is little more
than a mountain torrent, though it becomes navigable a few miles lower at
Sheffield. A great part of the road from hence (which is seven miles distant)
runs through forest ground, and I have no doubt that the whole was at no
distant period covered with wood, because the modern improvements of the
country, the result of flourishing manufactories, have been carried on almost
within our own time in consequence of the abundance of coal which here breaks
out in many places even on the surface. On the opposite side of the river begin
almost imme-
| 398 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“You are unjust in saying that I flag over the Mabinogion—I have been very constantly employed upon my preface, and was proceeding to the last section when I set off for this place—so you see I am perfectly exculpated, and all over as white as snow. Anne being a true aristocrat, and considering purity of blood as essential to lay the foundation of all the virtues she expects to call out by a laborious education of a true son of Camp—she highly approves the strict and even prudish severity with which you watch over the morals of his bride, and expects you, inasmuch as all the good knights she has read of have been remarkable for their incomparable beauty, not to neglect that important requisite in selecting her future guardian. We possess a vulgar dog (a pointer), to whom it is intended to commit the charge of our house during our absence, and to whom I mean to give orders to repel by force any attempts of our neighbours during the times that I shall be occupied in preparing hare-soup; but Fitz-Camp will be her companion, and she trusts that you will strictly examine him while yet a varlet, and only send him up when you think him likely to become a true knight. Adieu—mille choses,
