“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 honour, 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 his domestic calamity.
He wrote to me a few days after that
cruel event, a most affectionate and re-
| 268 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“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 re-establishment. 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* arrived at Abbotsford from Lithgow, recalled by the news which had somehow reached Edinburgh—as I suspect by some officiousness of . . . . . . He
* Mr Chisholm was the Tory Candidate for the Selkirk burghs. |
| LETTER TO LORD MONTAGU. | 269 |
“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
* Mr Pringle of Clifton, the Whig candidate. † Walter Francis, the present Duke of Buccleuch. |
| 270 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
