that of myself. He, and Gifford, and Moore, are the only regulars I ever knew who had nothing of the garrison about their manner—no nonsense, nor affectations, look you! As for the rest whom I have known, there was always more or less of the author about them the pen peeping from behind the ear, and the thumbs a little inky or so." Byron acknowledged this to Scott himself. In a letter from Pisa, in 1822, he says," I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way, in 1817, to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness, but courage, to do so. To have been recorded by you in such a manner would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time, when all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my self-esteem. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations." A generous reciprocation of regard between these distinguished men continued until the career of Byron was closed in Greece, when Scott's acknowledgment of affection for his illustrious friend was conspicuously shewn in that touching tribute to his memory which SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. appeared in an Edinburgh paper, immediately after hearing of the fatal event, of which the greater part is republished in the fifteenth volume of Murray's "Life and Works of Lord Byron." It will be remembered from its beginning thus:-" Amidst the general calmness of the political atmosphere, we have been stunned, from another quarter, by one of those death-notes which are pealed at intervals, as from an Archangel's trumpet, to awaken the soul of a whole people at once. Lord Byron, who has so long and so amply filled the highest place in the public eye, has shared the lot of humanity," &c. When this beautiful record of his friend's fate and his own feelings appeared, a writer in a weekly paper asks: "Why did he not publish these opinions of Lord Byron in the lifetime of the latter, when such a character, from such an authority, would have done real service to its living subject, and have silenced all those yelping curs in the kennels of authority who were incessantly barking at the moral and literary reputation of a grossly calumniated genius?" This question is put with something like virtuous indignation; will it be believed that the querist could shortly after publish a work, in which the character of the noble bard is misrepresented by ingratitude, calumny, and vituperation? But the career of the great and the good "Ariosto of the North" has now closed also-he, whom Byron spoke of as "the monarch of Parnassus and most English of bards," has ended his pilgrimage here, and left the immortal emanations of his wondrous mind to make men happier, and wiser, and better; and so universal has been the acknowledgment of his greatness and his worth, that the world has united to give expression to its respect and admiration for the memory of Sir Walter Scott. A fund has been raised to secure to his descendants the domains of Abbotsford: in the list of subscribers are found the names of the good, the learned, and the great—of those who have been gratified by the energies of that mind which still lives among us, and can die only with the destruction of all human record. All have been eager to record their testimony to his virtues and his talents. The following was the resolution offered to the Abbotsford meeting at the Egyptian Hall, May 19, 1833, by the Marquess of Salisbury : "That Sir Walter Scott, from his vast and varied genius as an author-from the pure and blameless course in which that genius was always exerted, and from the high worth and unblemished integrity of his public and private character, has the highest claims to the respect and admiration of his countrymen." |