Dined at Justice-Clerk's--the President--Captain Smollett, etc.,--our new Commander-in-chief, Hon. Sir Robert O'Callaghan, brother to Earl of Lismore, a fine soldierly-looking man, with orders and badges;--his brother, an agreeable man, whom I met at Lowther Castle this season. He composes his own music and sings his own poetry--has much humour, enhanced by a strong touch of national dialect, which is always a rich sauce to an Irishman's good things. Dandyish, but not offensively, and seems to have a warm feeling for the credit of his country--rather inconsistent with the trifling and selfish quietude of a mere man of society.
_November_ 30.--I am come to the time when those who look out of the windows shall be darkened. I must now wear spectacles constantly in reading and writing, though till this winter I have made a shift by using only their occasional assistance. Although my health cannot be better, I feel my lameness becomes sometimes painful, and often inconvenient. Walking on the pavement or causeway gives me trouble, and I am glad when I have accomplished my return on foot from the Parliament House to Castle Street, though I can (taking a competent time, as old Braxie[48] said on another occasion) walk five or six miles in the country with pleasure. Well--such things must come, and be received with cheerful submission. My early lameness considered, it was impossible for a man labouring under a bodily impediment to have been stronger or more active than I have been, and that for twenty or thirty years. Seams will slit, and elbows will out, quoth the tailor; and as I was fifty-four on 15th August last, my mortal vestments are none of the newest. Then Walter, Charles, and Lockhart are as active and handsome young fellows as you can see; and while they enjoy strength and activity I can hardly be said to want it. I have perhaps all my life set an undue value on these gifts. Yet it does appear to me that high and independent feelings are naturally, though not uniformly or inseparably, connected with bodily advantages. Strong men are usually good-humoured, and active men often display the same elasticity of mind as of body. These are superiorities, however, that are often misused. But even for these things God shall call us to judgment.
Some months since I joined with other literary folks in subscribing a petition for a pension to Mrs. G. of L.,[49] which we thought was a tribute merited by her works as an authoress, and, in my opinion, much more by the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had borne a succession of great domestic calamities. Unhappily there was only about £100 open on the pension list, and this the minister assigned in equal portions to Mrs. G---- and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G----, proud as a Highland-woman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a bluestocking, has taken this partition _in malam partem_, and written to Lord Melville about her merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the King. This is not the way to make her _plack_ a _bawbee_, and Lord M., a little _miffed_ in turn, sends the whole correspondence to me to know whether Mrs. G----will accept the £50 or not. Now, hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour, I have got the good-humoured "Man of Feeling" to find out the lady's mind, and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M. There is no great doubt how it will end, for your scornful dog will always eat your dirty pudding.[50] After all, the poor lady is greatly to be pitied;--her sole remaining daughter, deep and far gone in a decline, has been seized with alienation of mind.
Dined with my cousin, R[obert] R[utherford], being the first invitation since my uncle's death, and our cousin Lieutenant-Colonel Russell[51] of Ashestiel, with his sister Anne--the former newly returned from India--a fine gallant fellow, and distinguished as a cavalry officer. He came overland from India and has observed a good deal. General L---- of L----, in Logan's orthography a _fowl_, Sir William Hamilton, Miss Peggie Swinton, William Keith, and others. Knight Marischal not well, so unable to attend the convocation of kith and kin.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _An Essay on Naval Tactics, Systematical and Historical, with explanatory plates_. In four parts. By John Clerk. 4to. Lond. 1790.
[2] William Clerk of Eldin, the prototype of Darsie Latimer in _Redgauntlet_, "admired through life for talents and learning of which he has left no monument," died at Edinburgh in January 1847.
[3] _Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the year_ 1678. 4to. Edin. 1817.
[4] _Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches, and Memoirs_, collected by Lætitia Matilda Hawkins. 8vo. Lond. 1822.
[5] Miss Macdonald Buchanan of Drummakill.--J.G.L.
[6] Mr. Sharpe, whose _Letters_ and _Memoir_ were published in two volumes 8vo, Edin. 1888, survived Sir Walter till the year 1851. In the Sir Mungo Malagrowther of _The Fortunes of Nigel_ some of Sharpe's peculiarities are not unfaithfully mirrored.
[7] One of the numerous joint-stock adventures which were so common in Edinburgh at this time. There had already been formed a Gas-light Company in 1818, for the manufacture of gas from coal, but the projectors of this new venture believed they could produce a purer and more powerful light by the use of oil. It was not successful commercially, and, as is told in the Journal, the rival company acquired the stock and plant a few years after the formation of this "Oil Gas Co.," of which Sir Walter had been Chairman from 1823.
See _Life_, vol. vii. pp. 141, 144, 197, 251, 374; and viii. p. 113; Cockburn's _Memorials_ (for 1825).
[8] Sir Robert Dundas of Beechwood, one of Scott's colleagues at the "Clerks' Table,"--son of the parish minister of Humbie, and kinsman of Lord and Lady Melville; he died in 1835. Some of the other gentlemen with whom the duties of his office brought Scott into close daily connection were David Hume, Hector Macdonald Buchanan, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore. With these families, says Mr. Lockhart, "he and his lived in such constant familiarity of kindness, that the children all called their father's colleagues _uncles_, and the mothers of their little friends _aunts_; and in truth the establishment was a brotherhood."
[9] Mrs. Thomas Scott's brother.
[10] George L. Sanders, born at Kinghorn, 1774; died in London, 1846.
[11] Sir Walter told Moore that Lewis was the person who first set him upon trying his talent at poetry, adding that "he had passed the early part of his life with a set of clever, rattling, drinking fellows, whose thoughts and talents lay wholly out of the region of poetry." Thirty years after having met Lewis in Edinburgh for the first time in 1798, he said to Allan Cunningham, "that he thought he had never felt such elation as when 'the monk' invited him to dine with him at his hotel." Lewis died in 1818, and Scott says of him, "He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature--fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man of talent or as a man of fashion. He had always ladies and duchesses in his mouth, and was pathetically fond of any one that had a title. Mat had queerish eyes--they projected like those of some insects, and were flattish on the orbit."
[12] Moore's friends seem to have recognised his thorough manliness and independence of character. Lord John Russell testifies: "Never did he make wife or family a pretext for political shabbiness--never did he imagine that to leave a disgraced name as an inheritance to his children was a duty as a father" (_Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. xiii and xiv), and when Rogers urged this plea of family as a reason why he should accept the money, Moore said, "More mean things have been done in this world under the shelter of 'wife and children' than under any pretext worldly-mindedness can resort to." To which S.R. only said, "Well, your life may be a good poem, but it is a ---- bad matter of fact."--Clayden, _Rogers and his Contemporaries_, vol. i. p. 378.
[13] Moore's _Life of Byron_ was published in two vols. 4to in 1830, and dedicated to Sir Walter Scott by "his affectionate friend, T.M." See this Journal under March 4 1828.
[14] "I parted from Scott," says Moore, "with the feeling that all the world might admire him in his works, but that those only could learn to love him as he deserved who had seen him at Abbotsford." Moore died February 26, 1852; see Moore's _Life_, vol. iv. pp. 329-42, and vol. v. pp. 13-14.
[15] Hurst and Robinson, Booksellers, London.
[16] _Woodstock_ was at this time nearly completed.
[17] Probably Sir Walter's dog-Italian for "great donkey."
[18] _Cymbeline_, Act II. Sc. 5.
[19] "My Jo Janet," _Tea-Table Miscellany_.
[20] The Right Hon. David Boyle, who was at the time residing at 28 Charlotte Square.
[21] A quarterly journal edited by Leigh Hunt, "_The Liberal--Verse and Prose from the South_," of which four numbers only were published. 1822-1823.