1
His friend Shortreed's well-known expression for the results of the later Liddesdale 'raids.'
2
See General Preface to the Novels, or Lockhart, i. 136.
3
He attributes to Lady Balcarres the credit of being his earliest patroness,
1
His friend Shortreed's well-known expression for the results of the later Liddesdale 'raids.'
2
See General Preface to the Novels, or Lockhart, i. 136.
3
He attributes to Lady Balcarres the credit of being his earliest patroness, and of giving him, when a mere shy boy, the run of her drawing-room and of her box at the theatre.
4
He himself, in his entries of his children's births, always gives the order of the names as Margaret Charlotte.
5
The Boar of the Forest seems, not unnaturally, to have had a rather less warm 'cradle' in Lady Scott's feelings. She thought he took liberties; and though he meant no harm, he certainly did.
6
Lockhart, i. 270. I quote, as is usual, the second or ten-volume edition. But, for reading, some may prefer the first, in which the number of the volumes coincides with their real division, which has the memories of the death of Sophia Scott and others connected with its course, and to which the second made fewer positive additions than may be thought. – [It has been pointed out to me in reference to the word 'whomle' on the opposite page that Fergusson has 'whumble' in 'The Rising of the Session.' But if Scott had quoted, would he have altered the spelling? The Grassmarket story, moreover, exactly corresponds to his words, 'as a gudewife would whomle a bowie.']
7
Not many years before, Johnson had denied that it was possible for a working man of letters to earn even
8
For an interesting passage showing how slow contemporary ears were to admit this, see Southey's excellent defence of his own practice to Wynn (
9
His attempts at the kind may best be despatched in a note here. Their want of merit contrasts strangely with the admirable quality of the 'Old Play' fragments scattered about the novels.
10
It is quite possible that Mrs. Brown's illiterate authority, or one of his predecessors in title, took 'fee' in the
11
He wrote for his corps the 'War Song of the Edinburgh Light Dragoons,' which appeared in the
12
It is fair to him to say that he made no public complaints, and that when some gutter-scribbler in 1810 made charges of plagiarism from him against Scott, he furnished Southey with the means of clearing him from all share in the matter (
