“Here comes to let you know you had nearly seen the
last sight of me, unless I had come to visit you on my red beam, like one of
Fingal’s heroes, which, Ossianic
as you are, I trow you would readily dispense with. The cause was a cramp in my
stomach, which, after various painful visits, as if it had been sent by
Prospero, and had mistaken me for
Caliban, at length chose to conclude by
setting fire to its lodging, like the Frenchmen as they retreated through
Russia, and placed me in as proper a state of inflammation as if I had had the
whole Spafields’ committee in my unfortunate stomach. Then bleeding and
blistering was the word; and they bled and blistered till they left me neither
skin nor blood. However, they beat off the foul fiend, and I am bound to praise
the bridge which carried me over. I am still very totterish, and very giddy,
kept to panada, or rather to porridge, for I spurned at all foreign slops, and
adhered to our ancient oatmeal manufacture. But I have no apprehension of any
return of the serious
| 60 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“I much approve of your going to Italy by sea; indeed it is the only way you ought to think of it. I am only sorry you are going to leave us for a while; but indeed the isle of Mull might be Florence to me in respect of separation, and cannot be quite Florence to you, since Lady Compton is not there. I lately heard her mentioned in a company where my interest in her was not known, as one of the very few English ladies now in Italy whom their acquirements, conduct, and mode of managing time, induce that part of foreign society, whose approbation is valuable, to consider with high respect and esteem. This I think is very likely; for, whatever folks say of foreigners, those of good education and high rank among them, must have a supreme contempt for the frivolous, dissatisfied, empty, gad-about manners of many of our modern belles. And we may say among ourselves, that there are few upon whom high accomplishments and information sit more gracefully.
“John Kemble
is here to take leave, acting over all his great characters, and with all the
spirit of his best years. He played Coriolanus last night (the first time I have ventured out),
fully as well as I ever saw him; and you know what a complete model he is of
the Roman. He has made a great reformation in his habits; given up wine, which
he used to swallow by pailfulls,—and renewed his youth like the eagles. He
seems to me always to play best those characters in which there is a
predominating tinge of some over-mastering passion, or acquired habit of acting
and speaking, colouring the whole man. The patrician pride of Coriolanus, the stoicism of Brutus and Cato, the rapid and hurried ve-
| JOHN KEMBLE—1817. | 61 |
