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: Shakespeare, Henry IV I, I i 16 (“… acquaintance, kindred, and allies”). 158
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157: Shakespeare, Henry IV I, I i 16 (“… acquaintance, kindred, and allies”).
158: Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, Chap.35. 159: Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, Chap.49. 160: Scott, Rob Roy, Chap.10. his country. I have been too long an advocate for fair play to like to see twenty dogs upon one were that one their equal – much less to see all the curs of the village set upon one noble staghound who is worth the whole troop. If you will add to this the sincere pleasure I have received from the hours we have occasionally spent together and a warm wish that we may one day meet together again you will find any trifling share I took in the last unhappy matters was at once natural and withal a little selfish. As for rows I have had my share of them in my time but they are now the work of younger men. A grandfather like myself may plead the privilege of an Emeritus in love or war and indeed will probably find that without going out of his own domestic society “he has as much floor as he has flail for.” Cupid is out of the question with me now and if Mars comes my way – for I will not go into his – why I will fight when I cannot help it. Our violent party disputes here have just occasioned a melancholy catastrophe in the fate of Sir Alex. Boswell (the son of Johnson’s Bozzy) a high tory who is as I learn by this day’s post mortally wounded by a Mr. Stewart a high Whig in consequence of some newspaper lampoons. Boswell was, I fear I must use the past tense, a fine bold dashing fellow with a considerable turn both for music and poetry – he wrote some excellent songs and sang them with much humour. This fatal duel will probably be followed by others, for the rump of either faction endeavour to distinguish themselves by personal inveteracy and violence whilst Lord Liverpool and Lord Holland are quietly drinking their coffee together and going to the opera in the same carriage. We have of literature here Lord Orford’s political memoirs or Memoires as he had gallicized the word. I expected them with great impatience and am I must needs say considerably disappointed. The fuss in locking them up for so many years, they containing only the history of the little factions of his time told with his own natural vivacity, is exactly as if he should have ordered a hogshead of brisk cyder, a very sufficient single ale as Christopher Sly has it, 161 to be bricked up in his cellar with an injunction on his representatives to drink it out at the end of half a century when it was sure to have lost all the vivacity which might have rendered it even tolerable. The Baron of Otranto 162 is pompous beside and has doffed the gaiety of his letters, which I think capital, to become grave and gentleman- like like to Mr. Stephen, 163 and yet is every now and then craving pardon for being jocular like the steward in the Drummer of Addison. 164 I think you would like my son-in-law Lockhart who is bold very clever and a little inconsiderate but with the kindest and warmest feelings so that I could scold him and laugh at him and am delighted with him ten times a day. He and Sophia have a delightful little cottage on this property within two miles of my house which is very delightful. I have another blackeyed lass – at present the only one of my family who resides with me. My eldest son is a soldier Lieut. in the 15 Hussars but now on half pay. I have sent him to Berlin for a year or 18 months to clear him from the pedantry acquired by 2 years of a regimental mess and make him a little acquainted with the world besides seeing society on a large scale. He is said to be a very active officer of his time “large of limb and bane” a fine horseman and great master of his weapons. I saw him shoot a black cock with a single ball at upwards of eighty yards. He is besides a true hearted honest fellow that never gives me any vexation – the younger brother whose character is literary is to go to Oxford soon and I think will do well – at least he has ambition and quickness of talents. I ought to go on to tell you of the precocious talents of my grandchild but I magnanimously resist the temptation – enough that he brays for the ass – barks for the dog – smokes for grandpapa – and thrusts out his tongue for the large wolf hound which licks his face, and all this – hear it ye Gods – though only twelve months old. As for our Mermaids – I know not haw the Harden people my stock of gentry came by theirs – the crescents are more appropriate to the habits of the borderers. At whose glare the Cumbrian oft (learning his perilous tenure) blew his horn Giving loud sign of rapine waste and inroad. As for your Mermaid my dear Lord it quite explains a passage in your ancestor’s Narrative which used to make my blood curdle when a boy. I have an idea Campbell has noticed it in his Pleasures of Hope – the circumstance which you cannot but remember mentions the shipwrecked crew having been awakened one evening by an extraordinary and wild cry unlike that of any animal they had ever heard and when they ran to the doors of their tents and huts they saw a figure something like a human being half out of the water uttering the same sort of cries which they had heard. Now this must certainly have been your own mermaid playing the Banshee a prophetess of woe. Download 1.07 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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