The Complete Autobiographical Writings of Sir Walter Scott. Walter Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ I am glad this accidental meeting has escaped her memory — or, perhaps, is not accurately recorded in mine — for, being a sort of French falconer, who hawk at all they see, I might have had a distinction which I am far from desiring.

      Dined at Sir John Hay’s — a large party; Skenes there, the Newenhams and others, strangers. In the morning a meeting of Oil Gas Committee. The concern lingers a little;

      “It may do weel, for ought it’s done yet,

       But only — it’s no just begun yet.”

       December 10. — A stormy and rainy day. Walked from the Court through the rain. I don’t dislike this. Egad, I rather like it; for no man that ever stepped on heather has less dread than I of catch-cold; and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little of the high spirit with which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o’-Shanter ride through darkness, wind, and rain, — the boughs groaning and cracking over my head, the good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and feeling the weather as little as I did.

      “The storm around might roar and rustle,

       We didna mind the storm a whistle.”

      Answered two letters — one, answer to a schoolboy, who writes himself Captain of Giggleswick School (a most imposing title), entreating the youngster not to commence editor of a magazine to be entitled the “Yorkshire Muffin,” I think, at seventeen years old; second, to a soldier of the 79th, showing why I cannot oblige him by getting his discharge, and exhorting him rather to bear with the wickedness and profanity of the service, than take the very precarious step of desertion. This is the old receipt of Durandarte — Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards; and I suppose the correspondents will think I have been too busy in offering my counsel where I was asked for assistance.

      A third rogue writes to tell me — rather of the latest, if the matter was of consequence — that he approves of the first three volumes of the H[eart] of Midlothian, but totally condemns the fourth. Doubtless he thinks his opinion worth the sevenpence sterling which his letter costs. However, authors should be reasonably well pleased when three-fourths of their work are acceptable to the reader. The knave demands of me in a postscript, to get back the sword of Sir W[illiam] Wallace from England, where it was carried from Dumbarton Castle. I am not Master-General of the Ordnance, that I know. It was wrong, however, to take away that and Mons Meg. If I go to town this spring, I will renew my negotiation with the Great Duke for recovery of Mons Meg.

      There is no theme more awful than to attempt to cast a glance among the clouds and mists which hide the broken extremity of the celebrated bridge of Mirza. Yet, when every day brings us nearer that termination, one would almost think that our views should become clearer, as the regions we are approaching are brought nigher. Alas! it is not so: there is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be rent, before we shall see things as they really are. There are few, I trust, who disbelieve the existence of a God; nay, I doubt if at all times, and in all moods, any single individual ever adopted that hideous creed, though some have professed it. With the belief of a Deity, that of the immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited from our attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to bodies endowed with senses; and, at least till the period of the resurrection of the body, the spirits of men, whether entering into the perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, are incorporeal. Neither is it to be supposed that the glorified bodies which shall arise in the last day will be capable of the same gross indulgences with which they are now solaced. That the idea of Mahomet’s paradise is inconsistent with the purity of our heavenly religion will be readily granted; and see Mark xii. 25. Harmony is obviously chosen as the least corporeal of all gratifications of the sense, and as the type of love, unity, and a state of peace and perfect happiness. But they have a poor idea of the Deity, and the rewards which are destined for the just made perfect, who can only adopt the literal sense of an eternal concert — a never-ending Birthday Ode. I rather suppose there should be understood some commission from the Highest, some duty to discharge with the applause of a satisfied conscience. That the Deity, who himself must be supposed to feel love and affection for the beings he has called into existence, should delegate a portion of those powers, I for one cannot conceive altogether so wrong a conjecture. We would then find reality in Milton’s sublime machinery of the guardian saints or genii of kingdoms. Nay, we would approach to the Catholic idea of the employment of saints, though without approaching the absurdity of saint-worship, which degrades their religion. There would be, we must suppose, in these employments difficulties to be overcome, and exertions to be made, for all which the celestial beings employed would have certain appropriate powers. I cannot help thinking that a life of active benevolence is more consistent with my ideas than an eternity of music. But it is all speculation, and it is impossible even to guess what we shall [do], unless we could ascertain the equally difficult previous question, what we are to be. But there is a God, and a just God — a judgment and a future life — and all who own so much let them act according to the faith that is in them. I would [not], of course, limit the range of my genii to this confined earth. There is the universe, with all its endless extent of worlds.

      Company at home — Sir Adam Ferguson and his Lady; Colonel and Miss Russell; Count Davidoff, and Mr. Collyer. By the by, I observe that all men whose names are obviously derived from some mechanical trade, endeavour to disguise and antiquate, as it were, their names, by spelling them after some quaint manner or other. Thus we have Collyer, Smythe, Tailleure; as much as to say, My ancestor was indeed a mechanic, but it was a world of time ago, when the word was spelled very [differently]. Then we had young Whytbank and Will Allan the artist, a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man.

       December 11. — A touch of the morbus eruditorum, to which I am as little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young. It is a tremor of the heart, the pulsation of which becomes painfully sensible — a disposition to causeless alarm — much lassitude — and decay of vigour of mind and activity of intellect. The reins feel weary and painful, and the mind is apt to receive and encourage gloomy apprehensions and causeless fears. Fighting with this fiend is not always the best way to conquer him. I have always found exercise and the open air better than reasoning. But such weather as is now without doors does not encourage la petite guerre, so we must give him battle in form, by letting both mind and body know that, supposing one the House of Commons and the other the House of Peers, my will is sovereign over both. There is a good description of this species of mental weakness in the fine play of Beaumont and Fletcher called The Lover’s Progress, where the man, warned that his death is approaching, works himself into an agony of fear, and calls for assistance, though there is no apparent danger. The apparition of the innkeeper’s ghost, in the same play, hovers between the ludicrous and [the terrible]. To me the touches of the former quality which it contains seem to augment the effect of the latter — they seem to give reality to the supernatural, as being circumstances with which an inventor would hardly have garnished his story.

      Will Clerk says he has a theory on the vitrified forts. I wonder if he and I agree. I think accidental conflagration is the cause.

       December 12. — Hogg came to breakfast this morning, having taken and brought for his companion the Galashiels bard, David Thomson, as to a meeting of “huzz Tividale poets.” The honest grunter opines with a delightful naïveté that Moore’s verses are far owre sweet — answered by Thomson that Moore’s ear or notes, I forget which, were finely strung. “They are far owre finely strung,” replied he of the Forest, “for mine are just reeght.” It reminded me of Queen Bess, when questioning Melville sharply and closely whether Queen [Mary] was taller than her, and, extracting an answer in the affirmative, she replied, “Then your Queen is too tall, for I am just the proper height.”

      Was engaged the whole day with Sheriff СКАЧАТЬ