Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824
: Sir Humphrey Davy. 166
Download 1.07 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
byron-and-scott-1809-18241
- Bu sahifa navigatsiya:
- This note is enclosed with the previous item.
165: Sir Humphrey Davy.
166: Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV iii 192-3. 167: Callum Beg is a villain in Scott’s Waverley. 168: Scott, Rob Roy, Chap.29. appear pigmean. After having seen Napoleon begin like Tamerlane and end like Bajazet in our own time, we have not the same interest in what would otherwise have appeared important history. But I must conclude. Believe me ever and most truly yours, Noel Byron. This note is enclosed with the previous item. (Source: Ms. Rosenbach Foundation Philadelphia; this text from BLJ IX 131) [March 28th. 1822] [Note following copy of Taafe’s deposition to the Governor of Pisa] Nota bene—This deposition of Mr. John Taaffe—who began the quarrel—and then tried to back out of it for fear of the Pisans—hath acquired for the said John Taaffe the name & designation of Falstaaffe. He hath since recanted a part of his said statement to the English Minister—and now admits that he did think himself affronted &c. Scott to Byron, from Edinburgh, June 26th 1822: (Source: text from NLS Acc. 12604 / 4036; Grierson 1821-3, pp.196-9) Scott’s last known letter to Byron; he encloses Halidon Hill. My dear Lord The best answer I can send to your enquiries respecting what I have been doing (and in one sense it is an indifferent one) is the inclosed dramatic Sketch. M rs . Joanna Baillie wished me to contribute something to a Pic-nic publication which she means to publish for the benefit of a friend who has been unfortunate in trade. I have no sort of love for these sort of olla podridas but I have a great respect for our sister in the Muses and was most willing to gratify her. I tried therefore a scene or two but soon ran out of bounds and instead of a petty and partial skirmish as I intended I ran scampering and kicking my heels through a whole field of battle and rid my Pegasus hard untill as John Kemble said of his mundane houyhnhnm I yerkd un off and there was an end of the matter. I should have liked much to have put it under your patronage for which there might have been found some cause in the fractional interest which we have respectively in the heroes whom I have inflicted this celebration upon, your Lordship being in lineal descent half a Gordon as I am a fourth part of a Swinton. But I felt that besides its not being worthy of being your god child I ought to offer to M rs . Baillie the sponsorship considering it was undertaken at her request though it overran her limits. And so enough of Halidon Hill, and sending it to you instead of the Dramas is much like the old story of the Brass and Golden armour in the celebrated transaction in which the old Greek diddled the Phrygian. I was favoured with the proces verbal respecting the Sergeant Major and I do not wonder con= 1:2 ducting himself as he did he came by a coltellata from some of your Lordship’s Gillies. I think the same would have been like to have happened in my own case especially if my piper had got a couple of drams in which case he is not unapt to gripe to the Skene dhu – I wonder at Taafe who seems more cold liverd in the matter than I would have expected. I knew him in Edinburgh some years since & I have just now a card from him which I take the liberty to inclose an answer to under this cover. He meditates a work in English upon Dante but I should fear the original is too little known amongst us to make the commentary however valuable to Italian scholars a matter of great interest with the general reader. Did you know poor Boswell whom we have lost in a melancholy manner through too long perseverance in thrumming upon a bad jest. He was a most highspirited joyous fellow with no small share of humour, and a ready composer of songs which he sang himself very well. Very hardy and resolved too, in short a man of a gallant and determined character – his brother James too is gone who in many points strongly resembled his father the biographer of Johnson (though with ten times his talent) he has also been hurried off and in so far my prospects of social pleasure when I go to London are materially lessened. We are still agitated here by the consequences of the transition from a state of war to a state of peace and are very near arriving at the uncomfortable conviction that the latter with all its old adjunct of Plenty is one of the most ruinous matters which can befall us. Meantime the poor have good wages and all the necessaries of life in profusion and I own I am not for one afraid of tumults which are to begin with those who have anything left to lose. I remember once wishing much to be a caricaturist – it was after a celebrated hoax – not the Cochrane hoax but another of earlier date – had just been detected at the Stock Exchange and the fury of outwitted and disappointed 1:3 avarice assumed from its violence all the features of more lofty passion & would have been even magnificent had it not been for buz-wigs & gold headed canes which the old creatures shook at each other in the acme of their wrath. But much to my disappointment they did not come to actual blows which makes me think your stock holder and your landholder will endure a good deal ere they go actually by the ears. Paddy poor soul in his frolics of last year was so busy murthering the tithe proctors and yeomen that he quite forgot potatoes will not grow without being planted and that if he chases away his gentry they must needs go off with the rents in their pocket. He is now I suspect in a piteous condition and crying abbooboo for famine in the very midst of plenty, for what signifies how cheap things are to those who have no money. Matters will all settle by and bye, but as in a crowd and scramble there will be a good deal of individual damage done first. Perhaps I may see you next year that is if you continue an inhabitant of the North of Italy. My son is at Berlin studying the great homicidal art of Mars and shooting wild boars. I intend to go over in spring and having him for my companion shall be tempted to take a ramble on the continent. I shall scarce be within a hundred miles or two of your Lordship without wishing to see you, being with great sincerity Yours affectionately Walter Scott Edinburgh 26 June 1822 Download 1.07 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
Ma'lumotlar bazasi mualliflik huquqi bilan himoyalangan ©fayllar.org 2024
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling