“January 9.—This morning
received the long-expected news of the Duke of
York’s death. I am sorry both on public and private
accounts. His R. H. was, while he occupied the situation of next in succession,
a Break-water behind the throne. I fear his brother of Clarence’s opinions may be different, and that he may
hoist a standard under which men of desperate hopes and evil designs will
rendezvous. I am sorry, too, on my own account. The Duke of
York was uniformly kind to me, and though I never tasked his
friendship, yet I find a powerful friend is gone. His virtues were
| 22 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“January 17.—I observe in the papers my old friend Gifford’s funeral. He was a man of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. His Juvenal is one of the best versions ever made of a classical author, and his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad squabashed at one blow a set of coxcombs, who might have humbugged the world long enough. As a commentator he was capital, could he but have suppressed his rancours against those who had preceded him in the task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma was, in Gifford’s eyes, a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labours, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal’s guilt in dislike of the savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health, for he was very valetudinary, and realized two verses, wherein he says Fortune assigned him—
——‘One eye not over good, Two sides that to their cost have stood A ten years’ hectic cough, Aches, stitches, all the various ills That swell the devilish doctor’s bills, And sweep poor mortals off.’ |
| WILLIAM GIFFORD. | 23 |
————————‘A soul That spurns the crowd’s malign control, A firm contempt of wrong; Spirits above affliction’s power, And skill to soothe the lingering hour With no inglorious song.’ |
“This is another vile day of darkness and rain, with a heavy yellow mist that might become Charing Cross—one of the benefits of our extended city; for that in our atmosphere was unknown till the extent of the buildings below Queen Street.
“January 28.—Hear of Miss White’s death. Poor Lydia! she gave a dinner on the Friday before, and had written with her own hand invitations for another party.
* See Epistle to Peter Pindar, Gifford’s Baviad and Mæviad, pp. 181-191, ed. 1812. |
| 24 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
‘The view o’t gave them little
fright.’ |
“February 10.—I got a present of Lord Francis Gower’s printed but unpublished Tale of the Mill. It is a fine tale of terror in itself, and very happily brought out. He has certainly a true taste for poetry. I do not know why, but from my childhood I have seen something fearful, or melancholy at least, about a mill. Whether I had been frightened at the machinery when very young, of which, I think, I have some shadowy remembrance—whether I had heard the stories of the Miller of Thirlestane, and similar molendinar tragedies, I cannot tell; but not even recollections of the Lass of Patie’s Mill, or the Miller of Mansfield, or ‘he who dwelt on the river Dee,’ have ever got over my inclination to connect gloom with a mill, especially when the sun is setting. So I entered into the spirit of the terror with which Lord Francis has invested his haunted spot.
“February 14.—‘Death’s gi’en the art an unco devel.’* Sir George Beaumont’s dead; by far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew, kind, too, in his nature, and generous—gentle in society, and of those mild manners which tend to soften the causticity of the general London tone of persiflage and personal satire. As an amateur painter, he was of the very highest dis-
|
| SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT. | 25 |
“A woman of rather the better class, a farmer’s wife, was tried a few days ago for poisoning her maid-servant. There seems to have been little doubt of her guilt, but the motive was peculiar. The unfortunate girl had an intrigue with her son, which this Mrs Smith (I think that is the name) was desirous to conceal, from some ill-advised Puritanic notions, and also for fear of her husband. She could find no better way of hiding the shame than giving the girl (with her own knowledge and consent, I believe) potions to cause abortion, which she afterwards changed for arsenic, as the more effectual silencing medicine. In the course of the trial one of the jury fell down in an epileptic fit, and on his recovery was far too much disordered to permit the trial to proceed. With only fourteen jurymen, it was impossible to go on. The Advocate says she shall be tried anew, since she has not tholed ane assize. Sic Paulus ait—et recte quidem. But, having been half-tried, I think she should have some benefit of it, as far as saving her life, if convicted on the second indictment. Lord Advocate declares, however, that she shall be hanged, as certainly she deserves. Yet it looks something like hanging up a man who has been recovered by the surgeons, which has always been accounted harsh justice.
“February 20.—At Court, and
waited to see the poi-
| 26 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“I have a letter from Baron Von Goethe, which I must have read to me; for though I know German, I have forgot their written hand. I make it a rule seldom to read, and never to answer foreign letters from literary folks. It leads to nothing but the battledore and shuttle-cock intercourse of compliments, as light as cork and feathers. But Goethe is different, and a wonderful fellow, the Ariosto at once, and almost the Voltaire of Germany. Who could have told me thirty years ago I should correspond and be on something like an equal footing with the author of the Goetz? Ay, and who could have told me fifty things else that have befallen me?”
