Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Sir Walter Scott to John Gibson Lockhart, 26 April 1827
April 26.
“The news you send is certainly the most wonderful
of my time, in a party point of view, especially as I can’t but think all
has turned on personal likings and dislikings. I hope they won’t let in
the Whigs at the breach, for I suppose, if Lansdowne come in, he must be admitted with a tail on, and
Lauderdale will have the weight in
Scotland. How our tough Tories may like that, I wot not; but they will do much
to keep the key of the corn-chest within reach. The
Advocate has not used me extremely kindly, but I shall be sorry
if he suffers in this State tempest. For me, I remain, like the Lilliputian poet—‘In amaze—Lost I
gaze’—or rather as some other bard sings
‘So folks beholding at a distance Seven men flung out of a casement, They never stir to their assistance, But just afford them their amazement.’* |
—You ask why the wheels of Napoleon tarry; not by my fault, I swear; ‘We daily are jogging, While whistling and flogging, While whistling and flogging, The coachman drives on, With a hey hoy, gee up gee ho,’ &c.
&c. &c. |
To use a more classical simile ‘Wilds immeasurably spread Seem lengthening as I go.’* |
I have just got some very curious papers from Sweden. I have wrought
myself blind between writing and collating, and, except about three or four
hours for food and exercise, I have not till to-day devauled from my task. . . . . O, Bony, I’ll owe you a
curse, if Hereafter To my vision your tyrannous spectre shall show, But I doubt you’ll be pinned on old
Nick’s reddest rafter, While the vulgar of Tophet howl back from below. . . . |
I shall, however, displease Ultras such as Croker, on the subject of Bony, who was certainly a great man, though far from a good
man, and still farther from a good king. But the stupidest Roitelet in Europe
has his ambition and selfishness, and where will you find his talents? I own I
think Ultra-writing only disgusts people, unless it is in the way of a
downright invective, and that in history you had much better keep the safe
side, and avoid colouring too highly. After all, I suspect, were
Croker in presence of Bony
to-morrow, he might exclaim, as Captain T. did at one of
the Elba levees, ‘Well, Bony’s a d——d good
fellow after all.’”
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
James Maitland, eighth earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839)
Scottish peer allied with Charles James Fox; he was author of
An
Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and causes of
its Increase (1804) and other works on political economy.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Sir William Rae, third baronet (1769-1842)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was Lord Advocate (1819-30, 1834-35) and MP for
Anstruther (1819-26), Harwich (1827), Buteshire (1830, 1833-42) and Portarlington
(1831-32). He was a close friend of Sir Walter Scott.
John Hall- Stevenson (1718-1785)
English satirist and friend of Laurence Sterne; he published
Crazy
Tales (1762).
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Dean of St Patrick's, Scriblerian satirist, and author of
Battle of the
Books with
Tale of a Tub (1704),
Drapier
Letters (1724),
Gulliver's Travels (1726), and
A Modest Proposal (1729).