Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Walter Scott to Lord Montagu of Boughton, 4 March 1819
“Edinburgh, 4th March, 1819.
“My dear Lord,
“The Lord
President tells me he has a letter from his son, Captain Charles Hope, R.N., who had just ![]()
| 232 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
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taken leave of our High
Chief, upon the deck of the Liffey. He had not seen the Duke for
a fortnight, and was pleasingly surprised to find his health and general
appearance so very much improved. For my part, having watched him with such
unremitting attention, I feel very confident in the effect of a change of air
and of climate. It is with great pleasure that I find the Duke has received an
answer from me respecting a matter about which he was anxious, and on which I
could make his mind quite easy. His Grace wished Adam Ferguson to assist him as his confidential secretary; and
with all the scrupulous delicacy that belongs to his character, he did not like
to propose this, except through my medium as a common friend. Now, I can answer
for Adam, as I can for myself, that he will have the
highest pleasure in giving assistance in every possible way the Duke can
desire; and if forty years’ intimacy can entitle one man to speak for
another, I believe the Duke can find no where a person so highly qualified for
such a confidential situation. He was educated for business, understands it
well, and was long a military secretary his temper and manners your Lordship
can judge as well as I can, and his worth and honour are of the very first
water. I confess I should not be surprised if the Duke should wish to continue
the connexion even afterwards, for I have often thought that two hours’
letter-writing, which is his Grace’s daily allowance, is rather worse
than the duty of a Clerk of Session, because there is no vacation. Much of this
might surely be saved by an intelligent friend on whose style of expression,
prudence, and secrecy his Grace could put perfect reliance. Two words marked on
any letter by his own hand, would enable such a person to refuse more or less
positively—to grant directly or conditionally—or, in short, to main-![]()
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tain the exterior forms of the very
troublesome and extensive correspondence which his Grace’s high situation
entails upon him. I think it is Mons. Le Duc de
Saint Simon who tells us of one of Louis
XIV.’s ministers qui’l
avoit la plume—which he explains, by saying, it was his
duty to imitate the King’s handwriting so closely, as to be almost
undistinguishable, and make him on all occasions parler très noblement. I wonder how the Duke gets
on without such a friend. In the mean time, however, I am glad I can assure him
of Ferguson’s willing and ready assistance while
abroad; and I am happy to find still farther that he had got that assurance
before they sailed, for tedious hours occur on board of ship, when it will
serve as a relief to talk over any of the private affairs which the Duke wishes
to intrust to him.
“I have been very unwell from a visitation of my old
enemy the cramp in my stomach, which much resembles, as I conceive, the process
by which the diel would make one’s king’s-hood into a spleuchan,* according t’o the anathema of Burns. Unfortunately, the opiates which the
medical people think indispensable to relieve spasms, bring on a habit of body
which has to be counteracted by medicines of a different tendency, so as to
produce a most disagreeable see-saw—a kind of pull-devil, pull-baker
contention, the field of battle being my unfortunate præcordia. Or, to say truth, it reminds me of a certain Indian
king I have read of in an old voyage, to whom the captain of an European ship
generously presented a lock and key, with which the sable potentate was so much
delighted, that to the great neglect, both of his household duties and his
affairs of state, he spent a whole month in the re-
* Kings-hood—“The
second of the four stomachs of ruminating animals.” Jamieson.—Spleuchan—The
Gaelic name of the Highlander’s tobacco-pouch. |
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| 234 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
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peated operation of locking and unlocking his back-door. I
am better to-day, and I trust shall be able to dispense with these
alternations, which are much less agreeable in my case than in that of the
Sachem aforesaid; and I still hope to be in London in April.
“I will write to the Duke regularly, for distance of place acts in a contrary ratio
on the mind and on the eye: trifles, instead of being diminished, as in
prospect, become important and interesting, and therefore he shall have a
budget of them. Hogg is here busy with
his Jacobite songs. I wish
he may get handsomely through, for he is profoundly ignorant of history, and it
is an awkward thing to read in order that you may write.* I give him all the
help I can, but he sometimes poses me. For instance he came yesterday, open
mouth, enquiring what great dignified clergyman had distinguished himself at
Killiecrankie—not exactly the scene where one would have expected a churchman
to shine—and I found with some difficulty, that he had mistaken Major-General Canon, called, in
Kennedy’s Latin song, Canonicus Gallovidiensis, for the canon of a
cathedral. Ex ungue leonem. Ever, my
dear Lord, your truly obliged and faithful
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scottish poet and song collector; author of
Poems, chiefly in the
Scottish Dialect (1786).
Alexander Cannon (1689 fl.)
He was second in command under John Graham of Claverhouse at the Battle of
Killicrankie.
Sir Adam Ferguson (1771-1855)
Son of the philosopher and classmate and friend of Sir Walter Scott; he served in the
Peninsular Campaign under Wellington, afterwards living on his estate in
Dumfriesshire.
James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835)
Scottish autodidact, poet, and novelist; author of
The Queen's
Wake (1813) and
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner (1824).
Charles Hope, Lord Granton (1763-1851)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was Tory MP for Edinburgh (1803-05) and Lord
President of Court of Session (1811-41).
Charles Hope (1798-1854)
Naval officer, son of Rt. Hon. Charles Hope, Lord Granton and brother of John Hope, Lord
Justice Clerk.
John Jamieson (1759-1838)
Scottish clergyman and antiquary educated at Glasgow University; he published
Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 2 vols
(1808).
