This period was the zenith of Scott’s apparent prosperity. Five thousand guineas were given, or were to be given, by Constable1 for the remaining copyright of Ivanhoe, The Monastery2, The Abbot, and Kenilworth. “Scott must have reckoned on clearing £30,000 at least in the course of a couple of years, by the novels written within such a period,” says Lockhart. Constable granted bills for four unnamed and unimagined “works of fiction,” and they proved to be Peveril, Quentin Durward, St. Ronan’s Well, and Redgauntlet. Scott’s eldest3 son was now in an expensive cavalry4 regiment5; his second son was preparing for the University, Abbotsford was growing in extent and expense, and Scott was keeping open house. Lockhart, then living in the tiny neighbouring cottage of Chiefswood, was a man who did not suffer bores gladly, and he saw Abbotsford full of bores of all kinds—inquisitive foreigners, University prigs, condescending6 great people, and local lairds with their families. He reckoned that at least a sixth
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of the peerage of England passed through Abbotsford, and all the distinguished7 people of Scotland! With these came obscure citizens of Edinburgh, old college mates and office mates of Scott: “These were welcome guests, let who might be under that roof,” and Scott “contrived8 to make them all equally happy, with him, with themselves, and with each other.”
He was the genius of hospitality: he lavished9 his time on his guests, who had him with them for the whole of the day, except when he rode early to Chiefswood and wrote The Pirate on a bureau which remains11 in the cottage. He seemed the idlest of men, while scores of essays, and letters not to be counted, in addition to the novels, flowed from his pen in the unbroken hours of early morning. Only his extraordinary strength and buoyancy could enable him to be at once the most lavish10 host and the most prolific13 writer of his age, perhaps of any age. Merely to “refresh the machine” he was writing these admirable imitations of the correspondence of the sixteenth century which he called “Private Letters.” They might have deceived the elect of Antiquarians, but they could not have been popular with the public, though one character was a bona roba, an unaccustomed apparition15 in Sir Walter’s work. He threw the Letters aside, in his last days he fancied that he had
Abbotsford.
Photo by Valentine & Sons. Dundee.
“THE BEACON16”
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finished them, and that they were a valuable asset. In fact, he turned from them and began Nigel, a romance of the same period, apparently17 before he had brought The Pirate to a close.
That “splendid romance,” as Lockhart calls it, based on Scott’s visit to the Orcades in 1814, was published in December 1821. Though the fair and dark sisters, Minna and Brenda, were popular, and Cleveland himself had a vogue18, the humours of the Udaler and of the agriculturist were not enjoyed, and Norna of the Fitful Head, a kind of civilized19 Ulrica, was never much appreciated.
It is not necessary here to enter into the details about a luckless Tory newspaper, The Beacon, which had Scott’s support, but was conducted in an amateur and bludgeonly fashion, in spite of his advice. There was nothing but blundering and bad language, and Scott declined to see the paper. Yet he was one of its early supporters, and there is evidence suggesting (I have not seen this evidence) that he was nearly involved in a duel21, while his friend, Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, was unfortunately shot in an affair arising out of a successor to The Beacon. “I have kept Lockhart out of this scrape, in which some of the young men are knee deep,” writes Sir Walter. “I hope,” he wrote to Lockhart, after Auchinleck’s duel, “that this catastrophe23 will end the species of per
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sonal satire24 and abuse which has crept into our political discussions. The lives of brave and good citizens were given them for other purposes than to mingle25 in such unworthy affrays.”
Nigel was published in May 1822, and Constable, who was in London, saw people reading it, in Macaulay’s fashion, as they walked along the streets. The ship which carried the edition arrived on a Sunday, by Monday 7,000 copies had been dispersed27. So Constable asked Scott to write a trifle, like the poem of Halidon Hall (for which he paid £1,000) every quarter: every poem to be on a battle. Lockhart thought that Constable’s brain was “well nigh unsettled.” Quite unsettled, if he expected the public to buy £4,000 worth of battle poetry every year, while the press was producing 30,000 volumes of Peveril of the Peak. Ballantyne’s press was turning out at this date 145,000 volumes of works by Scott, and Constable was about buying an estate called Balniel. Yet, all the while, the old £12,000, the price for a set of copyrights, had not been and never was fully28 paid. There seems to have been the slenderest metallic29 basis for waggon30 loads of bills, which all concerned looked on as being as good as bullion31.
“NIGEL”
The Fortunes of Nigel (May 1822) was the last novel written by Scott before his labours produced an ominous33 change in his health. It is, no
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doubt, as Lockhart says, in the first rank of his romances. The story is vécu: Scott had lived as long among the dramas, pamphlets, histories, and documents of the late Elizabethan and the Jacobean times, as in any part of our history, and his Scottish types of character he knew by heart. All that Jacobean comedy, mainly the play of Ben Jonson, could tell him, he had fresh in his memory, or could “bring out with a wet finger.” Hence the brilliance34 and vivacity35 of the street scenes, the rufflers in Alsatia, the scenes at Court, and at the ordinary. He caught the moment when the heavy-hilted broad sword of the Scottish sire was becoming the long rapier of the Scottish son. In gentle King Jamie he had a model of which the grotesque36 absurdity37 needed pruning38 rather than exaggeration, and of all Scott’s many portraits of Kings, the slobbering trotting39 figure of James is the most truthful40 and the most comic. These moralists who denounce dissimulation41 and incontinence, Baby Charles and Steenie, are delicately touched: Ritchie Moniplies is a worthy26 pendant to Andrew Fairservice: the prentices are as excellent as the bullies42 and the old miser43 with his stern daughter in Alsatia: the whole life of Jacobean London is placed before us as vividly44 as the life of Georgian Edinburgh in The Heart of Midlothian. The “hero,” too, the unheroic hero, is, for once, a living and
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even realistic character. The ancestral Puritanism of Nigel degenerates45 into the cautious gambling46 of “The Sparrow Hawk,” who plays with prentices for small sums, and takes care to leave off a winner. Nobody can deny that this is a natural metamorphosis, though the effect is to make us rather detest47 Nigel. He is supposed to throw off his mean vice20, but he cannot be styled amiable48. George Heriot is a better kind of man, and Ritchie is as superior to his master, morally, as Strap49 to Roderick Random50. The young women of the tale, the pretty daughter of the goldsmith, and the mysterious lady, do not distinguish themselves among Scott’s young women. But the book is certainly in the foremost rank.
VISIT OF GEORGE IV
The visit of George IV to Edinburgh, with the death of Erskine, slain51 by a calumny52 at which most men would have laughed, put a strain upon Scott, in July and August 1822, from which he never recovered. The toil53 of organizing the reception of the first crowned King of England who had visited Scotland since 1650 fell upon Sir Walter. Scott was, in great part, the cause of the Royal visit, and his whole strength was given to organizing success. There was “a grand terryfication” (dramatization in the manner of Terry the actor) “of the Holyrood chapters in Waverley.” The Highlanders were much to the front, “all plaided and
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plumed in their tartan array,” and the fat white legs of George IV appeared under the once forbidden philabeg. His Majesty55, a man of vivid imagination, conceived himself to be a true Stuart, come to his own again; and Scott, himself in the Campbell tartan and trews, appears to have accepted him in that romantic character. He himself was the Baron56 Bradwardine of the hour, and we know how the Baron sat down on a glass which had touched the lips of His Most Sacred Majesty, and cut himself rather badly. In the sultry weather he “had to arrange everything, from the ordering of a procession to the cut of a button,” and he had also to amuse the perplexed57 old poet Crabbe, who seized on this frantic58 moment for a visit to a nation which he did not understand.
In one light the visit of George was very well. It reconciled the furious feuds59 which had raged around The Beacon, and it was a proof that Scotland, at last, was content with the Hanoverian in the disguise of the Stuart dynasty. The Highland54 chiefs were anxious about their precedence, which is said to have depended on the station occupied by each clan60 at Bannockburn, a point probably to be decided61 on the extremely diverse traditions of the clan bards62 or sennachies. Scott, aided by General Stewart of Garth, the historian of the Highland regiments64, was the Montrose who brought harmony
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among the clans65, no easy task where Glengarry and Clanranald were at odds66 about the chiefship of the Macdonalds, and Cluny and Mackintosh were not of one mind as to the headship of Clan Chattan. Be it remarked that, when in tartans, Scott wore the trews, not the philabeg. Glengarry, whether in the philabeg or not, rode in the procession, followed by “Tail,” pedestrians67. The King, and Sir William Curtis, a stout68 dignitary of London town, both wore the Royal Stuart tartans, invented, it was said, for Prince Charles. No Stuart king, of course, had ever worn the Highland costume, except in expeditions beyond the Highland line. These amusing pageantries were “making every brain dizzy but his own,” when the death of Erskine, the mild, quiet, timid man who had been his dearest friend, fell upon Scott.
The main results of “the right royal row,” as Scott called it, were that, by his suggestion, the attainders of 1715 and 1745 were redressed69, and that Scott, pursued to Abbotsford by crowds of guests, appears to have suffered from a slight seizure70 of an apoplectic71 kind. “I have not been very well,” he wrote to Terry in November, “a whoreson thickness of blood, and a depression of spirits arising from the loss of friends ... have annoyed me much, and Peveril will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy.” This, says Lockhart, is the first allusion72
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to Sir Walter’s fatal malady73, the malady which had caused the death of his father. Lockhart suspected that he had sustained and concealed74 slight attacks of this nature. The machine was showing signs of overwork, which appear in the straggling Peveril of the Peak with its missed opportunities. Yet Quentin Durward was in progress in company with Peveril, and there is no smell of the apoplexy in that stirring tale, which made Scott’s fortune in France. The pictures of Louis XI, of his strange funereal75 servitors, of the delightful76 Le Balafré, a pendant of Dugald Dalgetty, with the bustling77 events of the story, have won popularity, though the romance, at first, was received with little enthusiasm. Perhaps this coldness, or a relapse into commonsense78, made Constable announce that he would enter into no more bargains for books not only unchristened but unborn. The novels were appearing in uniform collected editions: the market was glutted79. Scott thought of a set of dialogues on “superstitious” beliefs, such as telepathy, clairvoyance80, and witchcraft81, as an alternative to romance. But the public was, by this time, solely82 devoted83 to fiction. Quentin Durward, too, began to sell in the old way, and Scott postponed84 his dealings with things
On the margin85 grey
’Twixt the soul’s life and day.
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Scott had written no novel of contemporary society since The Antiquary, and Laidlaw, on the Eildon hill above Melrose, suggested a romance of the little town, in the actual year, 1823. The hint resulted in St. Ronan’s Well (December 1823); the scene is not Melrose, but the Spa of Innerleithen on the upper Tweed. The plot of St. Ronan’s Well was paralyzed by the prudery of James Ballantyne. A mischance on the part of the heroine was suppressed, to please James, consequently there is no reason in life for Clara’s ruined brain, or for anything else that is essential to the progress and conclusion of the narrative86. There is a similar error, caused by a remonstrance87 from Jeffrey, in Dombey and Son, where the conduct of Edith towards Mr. Carker is inexplicable88, as it is perfectly89 clear, from a passage which Dickens vainly tried to explain away, that Edith had been Mr. Carker’s mistress. The third or fourth rate society of the Spa may be true to nature, but is neither convincing nor amusing, and Meg Dods cannot cover the multitude of sins of confusion in St. Ronan’s Well. Miss Edgeworth wrote that the author of the last thirty pages of the book should be “carbonadoed,” and, practically, James Ballantyne would have been the sufferer, for he was the only begetter90 of the “incredible and unaccountable conclusion.”
“REDGAUNTLET”
Meanwhile a very different romance, the last of
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Scott’s before ruin fell on him, was in progress, Redgauntlet. In Redgauntlet we may surely say that Scott has found himself again, at his best, or very nearly at his best. The form of narrative, partly told in letters, as by Richardson, is no longer popular, and we are not sorry when the author deserts it. The plot of the story is rather baffling, and, as the tale goes on, we almost forget our curiosity as to why Darsie Latimer should not go near the English border. The reason, when we do learn it, is far fetched, Darsie was not worth all that mechanism91 of intrigue92. But the pictures of old Edinburgh life about 1763, of Scott’s own father as the elder Fairford, with his good heart, and his “pernickety” ascetic93 lawyer’s ways, is delightful. Peter Peebles, the litigant94 maddened by law and drink, is pathetic no less than humorous; if the legal business appears dull, it is, none the less, or perhaps the more, Balzacian, supposing Balzac to have had the humour of Dumas. The Quakers are borrowed from what Scott saw, in boyhood, of a Quaker household at Kelso. Excellent is Geddes’s nonresisting courage, and his shamefaced pride in his armorial bearings, the ged, or pike, the freebooter of fresh water. The scene of salmon96 spearing on the Solway flats is a description of a sport dear to Scott as pursued in a boat on Tweed. Things like huge snow-shoes were used in my boy
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hood95, the spearman stood erect97 above the water, one foot in each wooden shoe, he could spear a fish between them, and the exercise demanded much gift of balance, and a cool head, while the torches flared98 above the swift black running waters. Green-Mantle again recalls the Manteau Vert of Scott’s youth. He borrowed the horse-shoe frown of old Redgauntlet from the face of the wicked witch, the sister of the Wizard, Major Weir99, in the legend given by Sinclair, in “Satan’s Invisible World Disclosed,” and he also borrowed thence the name of the jackanapes in “Wandering Willie’s Tale.” The scenes in the mysterious Redgauntlet’s cottage are as good romance as those in the Provost’s house at Dumfries, with the story of “Pate in Peril” are good comedy. The brokenhearted Nanty Ewart is full of an original pathos100 not common in Scott; his story of his own life of miserable101 adventure, with the foreknowledge of his doom102, is a masterpiece, and as a masterpiece “the fallen and faded Ascanius” of the tale, Prince Charles, the battered103 stately wanderer, with the despotic mistress, was universally accepted.
“REDGAUNTLET”
There is evidence that the Prince really did pursue his fleeting104 vision of a crown into England, in 1763, and was actually seen by Murray, the actor, a friend of Scott’s, then a boy. When the Prince was in England, in disguise, there is always a com
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plete break in his correspondence, and I find such a gap at this period. He still had a few adherents105, and would stray across the Channel to see and frighten them, and slip back again to his hermit106 life at Bouillon. Miss Walkinshaw, the original of the lady who accompanies him in the tale, had forsaken107 him at the date of the romance, and she was not a fair but a dark beauty. There is a mournful grace in Charles’ last good-bye to the few Jacobite gentry108 who surround him in the novel when “there was an end of an auld109 song.” The romance “contains perhaps more of the author’s personal experiences than any other, or even than all of them put together.” As for “Wandering Willie’s Tale,” the corrections and admirable additions in the proof sheets show p. 118 that this chef d’oeuvre, unlike “the rest of them,” was written with all the care that it deserved. If it has anything to be called a rival, that rival is Mr. Stevenson’s story of about the same period, in the latest dusk of the day of the Covenant110, Thrawn Janet. But there is no rivalry—Scott’s legend is unapproachable.
There was but this one novel in 1824; if Scott’s advisers111 concealed from him the relative slackness of his sales, they did not hesitate to warn him against “over-cropping.” He wrote his tribute to Byron, on the news of the poet’s death, and he
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worked at a new edition of his Swift. As a Director of the Edinburgh Academy, founded in this year, Scott remarked that he did not love his country better than truth, and that Dr. Johnson was not wholly wrong when he said that, in learning, “every Scot had a mouthful and none had a bellyful.” Boys were now to learn Greek earlier, and to learn more Greek than in his own days at the High School. In fact the new school has produced some Grecians of merit and distinction in its eighty years of existence. Scott did not tell the boys that of Greek he had less than Shakespeare, and he despised the contemptible112 clamour over his own famous brace113 of false quantities in the two elegiac lines for the epitaph of his deerhound Maida. One of the false quantities, after all, was the fault of a transcriber114 who wrote “jaces” in place of “dormis”; that transcriber was James Ballantyne. “We could have written as good longs and shorts as the English, if it had not been for the—Covenant,” an old gentleman used to say, but Porson opened Buchanan on a false quantity, and surely Dr. Pitcairn erred115 when he began his famous epitaph on Dundee (admirably Englished into poetry by Dryden)—“Ultime Scotorum.” Yet he could hardly write Ultime Pictorum, and so save his prosody116 at the expense of his ethnology.
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THE FIRST AND LAST BALL
“Surely if Sir Walter Scott be not a happy man, which he seems truly to be, he deserves to be so,” wrote Basil Hall at Abbotsford in the Christmas of 1824. January 7, 1825, saw “the first regular ball given at Abbotsford—and the last.” As in Marmion,
It was his blithest and his last.
The occasion of the festivity was the wedding of Scott’s eldest son, a young cavalry officer “of strict and even severe principles,” to a Miss Jobson, of Lochore, “with a fortune of £50,000 in land.” The name of Jobson is neither suggestive of wealth nor of heraldic additions to the quarterings of the Scotts. Sir Walter speaks of his daughter-in-law with unconcealed affection; she was a pretty, shy, candid117, innocent girl, in the manner of Rose Bradwardine. The lovers lately wed12 crossed to Ireland, where the Regiment was quartered, and whither Scott himself went for a holiday later in 1825. Scott now backed the credit of his friend, the actor manager Terry, for £1,250, plus £500 guaranteed by James Ballantyne. Whoever lends a friend money for the purposes of his business is absolutely certain to see no more of the coins, and to lend Terry money, Terry being a manager and lessee118 of a theatre, was laying the longest possible odds on a hopeless horse. Like Steenie denouncing incon
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tinence, and Baby Charles reproving dissimulation, Scott read Terry a lecture against raising money by bills and discounts, a ruinous system, he declared, very wisely, which was assiduously practised by Constable, and Ballantyne & Co.
“NAPOLEON”
Constable now had a new project, which Lockhart describes with infinite humour. We have mentioned evidence given before a Parliamentary Commission, to the effect that libraries ceased to be formed about the time when Waverley appeared (1814). The same evidence showed that real books had never prospered119 since cheap little volumes of boiled down information, the tinned meats of the intellectual life, were introduced. It was Constable who now introduced them. He came out to Abbotsford enormously big with a project. He unloaded himself of a packet, the annual schedule of assessed taxes. From the items of taxes paid on many things which profit not, such as hair powder, he inferred, justly, that the British public spent money on every thing conceivable, except books. Hundreds of thousands of people had obviously plenty of money, and in the article of books alone did they economize121. Scott remarked that all down Tweed were the houses of lairds of whom none spent £10 yearly on literature. Of course they did not, and of course they do not, and never will. One extravagance our countrymen and country
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-women avoid, as they would the devil, and that is buying a book. They are like the Highland crofter who was implored122 to give at least five shillings to the “Sustentation Fund,” and for the salvation123 of his immortal124 part. “Me give five shillings to save my soul! I haena five shillings to buy mysel’ tobacco!”
Constable admitted that the gentry were content with a magazine, and, at most, a subscription125 to a circulating library. But he would produce books so cheap and good that even the gentry would buy them. To the sanguine126 soul of the projector127 this seemed a splendid speculation128, though even he did not think of sinking to a sixpenny price. Monthly volumes at half-a-crown or three-and-sixpence were in his eye, as if the public could afford to give nearly forty shillings annually129 for books. The public “has not time,” setting the pecuniary130 extravagance aside, to read twelve volumes yearly. However Scott accepted the golden dream, and proposed a short Life of Napoleon. It grew into ten tomes of Constable’s Miscellany, and was mainly written after Sir Walter’s ruin, in eighteen months. A critic mentions a dozen people then alive in England, including Carlyle, who could have done a better Life of Napoleon. Perhaps they could have done it, “if they had the mind,” but certainly they could not have done it better
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than Scott, in eighteen months. Constable provided about a hundred volumes of Le Moniteur, and quantities of printed works, as materials, while MSS. were collected. But no Life written at that time could be satisfactory; most documents were inaccessible131, and Scott made great use of second-hand132 authorities. Though the book won £18,000 for Sir Walter’s creditors133, and though it is very readable, the task work (and few forms of drudgery135 are so tedious as history writing in a hurry) did not suit Scott, and adds nothing to his reputation.
RUIN
THE BALLANTYNE FIRM
Meanwhile he wrote The Betrothed136, which Ballantyne discouraged, and The Talisman137, a work as pleasing to boyhood as Ivanhoe. We all have been fond of Coeur de Lion, and hated Conrad de Montserrat, and adored Saladin. The book was amazingly popular, and Woodstock was undertaken next, and finished when the evil days began. Scott now made a pleasant tour in Ireland, and visited Wordsworth on his homeward way. The two poets eternally quoted the Bard63 of Rydal, but not the most distant allusion was made by either, says Lockhart, to the verses of the Minstrel of the Forest. On returning to Abbotsford it was a sad sight for Lockhart to see Sir Walter “read, note, and index with the pertinacity138 of some pale compiler in the British Museum,” for the Napoleon,
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and rising from his toil, “not radiant and buoyant,” but with an aching brow and weary eyes. Lockhart himself was leaving Scotland for London, and the editorial chair of The Quarterly Review. The shadows were thickening in the prison house, and the health of Scott’s grandson, Lockhart’s son, was of all the shadows the deepest. There were to be no more happy summers in the cottage of Chiefswood—the scene, many years later, of happiness cujus pars139 fui. In November 1825, Lockhart, in London, wrote a long letter to Scott on rumours140 unfavourable to Constable’s solvency141. He anticipated nothing worse for Scott than the loss of the price of Woodstock. Returning to Chiefswood, he received a letter of warning, and showed it to Scott, who made a night journey to see Constable, who reassured142 him. Lockhart now suspected that Scott was deeply concerned in his publisher’s affairs. On November 20 Scott began his famous Journal, now published in full. On December 22 he wrote Bonny Dundee, new words to an old tune32, accompanying ribald words, in which the town, not the Viscount of Dundee, is “bonny.” “I wonder if the verses are good,” Scott notes, and laments143 poor Will Erskine—“thou couldst and wouldst have told me.” The song is his latest and not least splendid tribute to Claverhouse, and rings across the Empire with its
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“cavalry canter.” On Christmas Day Scott wrote, “I have a particular call for gratitude145.” “Thus does Fortune banter146 us.” The earliest notes of 1826 show Scott already anxious about the money affairs of Ballantyne and Constable. They also (January 5) show him “much alarmed” by a sudden attack of agraphia, impotence to write the words he would. He explained this as the result of an anodyne147, for his old complaint had returned with its cruel agonies. On January 11 there is “anxious botheration about the money market.” On January 14 there comes a mysterious letter from Constable, then in London, where he made to Lockhart wild proposals for advances of huge sums by Scott. On January 16, in Edinburgh, the blow fell. “Hurst and Robinson let a bill come back upon Constable.” Nevertheless Scott dined with Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, whose little daughter, recently dead at a great age, regretted by all who knew her, was a child friend and consoler of Sir Walter. Next day came James Ballantyne “with a face as black as the crook”: Ballantyne & Co. must suspend payment. Scott at once consulted Mr. John Gibson, W.S., and, as he would not consent to be made bankrupt, his affairs were put under trustees, acting148 for the creditors. If bankrupt, his financial position would improve, his future gains would be his own. But he at once braced149 himself
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to pay off everybody, pledging brain and life to that colossal150 task. He did not as yet know the full extent of his losses.
By the admission of one of Ballantyne’s trustees, the books of the firm, eleven years later, were still unbalanced. Into the affair of the bills and counter bills between Ballantyne and Constable, whereby, according to Lockhart, Scott’s business debts were doubled, it is not possible to go in this place. Ballantyne’s representatives regarded the whole story as the result of a confusion in the mind of Lockhart. But Lockhart’s source was Mr. Cadell, the partner of Constable, and Mr. Cadell, in 1837, stood by his guns, and sent confirmatory documents. “John Ballantyne suggested the double bills!”[7] Scott never blamed James Ballantyne, who owed to him, he said, his difficulties in the present as well as his prosperity in the past. But the books of the firm were never balanced! Without balance-sheets, and there were none, how could Scott know the amount of his liabilities? But, again, why did he not extort151 accounts from the lazy James? Lockhart himself meted152 out the blame to all concerned, as far as his knowledge, instructed by Mr. Cadell, enabled him to do. He was blamed by the Press for making precisely153 the statements which he never made. Scott, to his
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own loss, insisted on employing James Ballantyne alone as his printer after 1826. But he transferred his publishing business from Constable to Cadell, with good reason. Constable “was all spectral154 together.” As late as 1851 Lockhart wrote that “the details of Scott’s commercial perplexities remain in great measure inexplicable.” Scott himself (January 29) writes: “Constable’s business seems unintelligible155 ... neither stock nor debt to show. No doubt trading almost entirely156 on accommodation is dreadfully expensive.” So Scott had just warned Terry!
“WOODSTOCK”
From his old rival, Sir William Forbes, from the Royal Bank, from an unknown person, offering £30,000, Scott had many proffers157 of assistance. But he took the whole debt, £117,000, on his own shoulders, he borrowed from no man, he lived retired158, and worked at Woodstock steadily159 throughout the days which brought Job’s messengers of ruin. “I experience a sort of determined160 pleasure,” he said to Skene, “in confronting the very worst aspect of this sudden reverse....” His mind was free from the awful apprehension161 caused by his attack of agraphia. “Few have more reason to feel grateful to the Disposer of all than I have.” Any spleen which Scott may have felt, he worked off in Malachi Malagrowther’s Letters, a criticism of an effort made by his own party to
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dethrone the Scot’s one pound note, the Palladium of the ancient kingdom.
On March 15 Scott left his house in Castle Street for the last time. Ha til mi tulidh—“I return no more!” The words are those of the lament144 of Macleod’s second-sighted piper, foreseeing his own fall in The Rout162 of Moy (1746). At Abbotsford he finished Woodstock on March 26. The book sold for £8,228, a first instalment of the Sisyphean task of payment.
Tastes differ, but to myself Woodstock seems to possess great merits. Considering the circumstances in which it was written, it is a wonderful book. Cromwell is not the conventional hypocrite of the then current estimate: he is a religious man, something of a mystic, involved in politics, and displaying the habitual163 “jesuitry” of political religious men. Wildrake is a tipsy cavalier of the best, and of the best in his song for King Charles. The various Puritan officers, and their various conduct in face of the poltergeist, or noisy devil of Woodstock, are excellently discriminated164. Scott never could remember where he read that “Funny Joe of Oxford” confessed to being the poltergeist, nor have I been able to discover his source. My earliest trace of the explanation is in Joseph Taylor’s Apparitions165 (1815, Second Edition). Taylor gives us Funny Joe Collins, his pulvis fulminans,
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and all the rest of it, almost in the same words as Scott’s, who must have possessed166 Taylor’s book. But who goes bail167 for Funny Joe? If he did make a confession168, how did it escape Dr. Plot, whose Natural History of Oxfordshire is one of Scott’s authorities? What Joe Collins may or may not have said is not evidence, but what does common sense care for evidence, when an explanation is wanted?
HEALTH OF LADY SCOTT
The plot of Woodstock was unconsciously annexed169 by Thackeray in Esmond. His charming but historically absurd James III is Charles II, laughing and running after every girl, and making love to the sister and mistress of the two good Royalists who protect him. Lockwood and his sweetheart, in Esmond, are Jocelyn and his sweetheart in Woodstock. James III is a more favoured lover than his uncle, and Beatrix outshines all the women of Scott, but Scott’s is the invention of the situation, down to the King’s offer of a duel. It is an astonishing case of unconscious appropriation—and improvement at the expense of the character of James, “the best of kings and men,” but the least humorous. I profess170 myself an admirer of Trusty Tompkins, that unworthy Independent; of Corporal Humgudgeon; of the noble Sir Henry Lee; and of his hound Bevis; of Wildrake, of the mise en scène, of Cromwell, in short of Woodstock
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in general. But these opinions are the accidents of personal likings, beyond which criticism, however it may disguise them, never finds it easy to go.
Scott now began The Chronicles of the Canongate, with Cadell for publisher. Constable was “spectral”: he had tried to borrow large sums from Scott, “after all chance of recovery was over,” says Lockhart. But to the sanguine Constable it could not seem that all chance was over. Long ago he had bought Hunter out of his business at a vast over-estimate, from which he never recovered. To act thus was in his nature; we must not suppose him to have been in any degree dishonest. The Chronicles and Napoleon now went on together, while (May 2) Scott “almost despaired” of his wife’s recovery from illness. “Still she welcomes me with a smile, and insists she is better.” She could not take leave of him, when he was obliged to leave Abbotsford for dingy171 lodgings172 in Edinburgh. On May 15 he heard of the death of Lady Scott. “I am deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels.... She is sentient173 and conscious of my emotions somewhere—somehow; where, we cannot tell, how, we cannot tell; yet I would not at this moment resign the mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in a better world, for all that this world can give me.
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” He writes of his lonely study: “Poor Charlotte would have been in the room half a score of times to see if the fire burned, and ask a hundred kind questions.” Such were the relations of husband and wife. He turned to his story of The Highland Widow: there was “no rest for Sir Walter.” “I will not be dethroned by any rebellious174 passion that raises its standard against me.”
Scott visited London and Paris, partly in the interests of his Napoleon. In February 1827, at a dinner to William Murray, the actor, he acknowledged what could no longer be concealed, his authorship of the novels. By June 10, 1827, the “millstone” of Napoleon was off his back. He and his amanuensis had been used to work from six in the morning to six in the evening, without interruption except for meals. No doubt there might have been better historians of the world’s greatest genius, but who else would have worked a twelve hours’ day—and all for the sake of duty and honour? Lockhart computes175 that twelve months were occupied in the writing. Between the end of 1825 and the June of 1827, Scott had written off £28,000 of his debts. To wipe them out, not to produce an impeccable biography, was his aim, it must be admitted, but we must remember that his general health was now very bad, with insomnia176 and severe headaches.
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GOURGAUD
August 1827 brought news that General Gourgaud was indignant about Scott’s remarks on him in his Napoleon. Scott had told what he found in our State Papers: “I should have been a shameful177 coward if I had shunned178 using them.” Gourgaud had already fought Ségur, the brilliant historian of the Moscow expedition. It may be that Gourgaud’s information given to the English Government, about Napoleon in St. Helena, was a “blind,” not a betrayal: one does not suspect his loyalty179. Scott rejected this excuse, as convicting Gourgaud of falsehood, “when giving evidence upon his word of honour.” Scott was ready to give him a meeting: chose his old friend, Clerk, as his second, and saw that Napoleon’s own pistols, which he possessed, were in order. “I will not baulk him, Jackie! He shall not dishonour180 the country through my sides, I can assure him.” “The courage of bards,” according to a Gaelic proverb, is a minus quantity. Scott was not to justify181 the proverb: if he did not fight, he said, he would “die the death of a poisoned rat in a hole, out of mere14 sense of my own degradation182.”
Mr. Hutton is severe on Scott for this unchristian conduct. Probably, at the same date, and in similar circumstances, Mr. Hutton would have been found “on the sod.” The ideas of the age made fighting unavoidable, and, as for the sin,
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Scott would rather trust his soul with God than his honour to men, as Jeanne d’Arc said, after leaping from her prison tower, that she would rather commit her soul to God than her honour to the English. Gourgaud made “a fiery183 rejoinder” to Scott’s plain and invincible184 statement of his case. Scott did not reply in any way, he did not challenge Gourgaud, who himself had chivalry185 enough, or good sense enough, to send no cartel. In fact one does not see how he could escape from his dilemma186. He had betrayed his master, or he had been guilty of a dubious187 stratagem188.
“THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH”
Scott thought of taking sanctuary189 in Holyrood precincts from, not Gourgaud, but a Hebrew creditor134 named Abud, who insisted on receiving at once the full measure of his due. Sir William Forbes settled the affair privately190, and Scott did not need to dwell where his hero, Croftangry, abides191, in The Chronicles of the Canongate, now published. The autobiographical part, in Croftangry, is as excellent as it is melancholy192. The book was well received, and The Fair Maid of Perth, the last of his good novels, was begun. The pictures of burgess life, and of the distracted Court, are excellent. Poor Oliver Proudfute is a good comic character with a tragic193 end. The fighting Smith, with his love of poetry and romance, is a most original and sympathetic person, and Simon the Glover is as
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good as a father, citizen, and friend, as Sir Patrick Charteris is in the quality of knightly194 Provost. The Fair Maid, when she deigns195 to be natural, is very natural indeed; the Clan fight is one of the best in fiction, and in Conachar, who “has drunk the milk of the white doe,” his foster mother, Scott expiates196 his extreme harshness to a ne’er-do-well brother, who had shown the white feather in the West Indies. This harshness he bitterly repented197. With the terrible true story of the Duke of Rothesay’s doom, with Ramorny and Bonthron and Dwining for villains198, with the studies of the good helpless Roi Fainéant, Albany, Douglas, and poor Louise, and with the scene of the chief’s funeral, The Fair Maid of Perth abounds199 in merits, pressed down and running over. Even Father Clement200 (whom Scott does not quite like), with the fanaticism201 that attended the Reformation from the first, and with a touch of “Jesuitry,” is well drawn202, and how excellent is the Glover’s account of what he liked in the Father’s sermons, his denunciations of the rabble203 and the nobles, and his appreciation204 of the Scottish middle class—absurdly said to have been a creation of John Knox. Commerce, not religion, made the burghs and the burghers, who liked to listen to Father Clement, “proving, as it seemed to me, that the sole virtue205 of our commonweal, its strength, and its estimation, lay among
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the burgher craft of the better class, which I received as comfortable doctrine206, and creditable to the town.”
Scott ends with commendations of Father Clement, but he liked the man no more than he says that Simon Glover did. As a politician, he was even unscrupulously opposed to Catholics, as being under priestly dominion207 no less than the Covenanters were under preachers’ dominion. He would have no imperium in imperio. But, in his novels, the old faith is spoken of so tenderly that George Borrow frequently and intemperately209 accuses him of betraying souls to the
Lady in Babylon bred,
Addicted210 to flirting211 and dressing212 in red.
He regarded our victory at Navarino as very well, but our policy as on the level of what that of the Turks would have been, had they sent a plenipotentiary to regulate our behaviour towards the Irish Catholics.
The December of 1827 saw the publication of the tiny square volumes of The Tales of a Grandfather, addressed to Lockhart’s son, “Master Hugh Littlejohn.” They had an appropriate result: the small boy dirked his brother (not seriously) with a pair of scissors, and requested Scott
Sir Walter Scott.
After a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
“TALES OF A GRANDFATHER”
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to write no more about Civilization, “he dislikes it extremely.” One remembers how tiresome213 were the chapters on Civilization, except that on the Feudal214 System. Of the little that the world used to know about Scottish history, three-quarters were learned from The Tales of a Grandfather. Necessarily much more “scientific” information has since been acquired, and Mr. Fraser Tytler’s History is a monument of impartial215 industry. But Scott, as impartial as Tytler, gives us the cream of the anecdotes217 and semi-historical legends, which are what everybody ought to know. He does not disdain218 the garrulous219 Pitscottie, and the lively memoirs220 of Sir James Melville, these pillars of “history, as she is wrote,” and ought not, scientifically speaking, to be written any longer.
Yet there are senses in which The Tales of a Grandfather are scientifically composed. There is little science in writing books so dull that no mortal can read them, and this reef ahead of the modern pedant221 Scott successfully avoids. He lets “the violet of a legend blow” in periods of the utmost aridity222, he “loads every reef,” however granitic223, with the gold of every anecdote216 that reveals the character of individuals or of the time. If a scrap22 of ballad224 illustrates225 his topic, he has that scrap in his wallet. Thus the great Montrose fought for a sacred cause, the wretched Lord Lewis Gordon,
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an unworthy leader of a clan of soldiers, fought from caprice. The ballad verse runs,
If you with Lord Lewis go,
You’ll get reif and prey226 enough,
If you with Montrose go,
You’ll get grief and wae enough—
hard won victories and forced marches. Scott’s treatment of that battlefield of rival sentimentalists, Kirk and Cavalier—the time of the Civil War and the Restoration—is marked by lucidity227, conciseness228, and impartiality229. Any boy of ten can understand it if he pleases, and the writer flatters neither Presbyterian nor King’s man.
“TRAITOR230 SCOT”
I quote what he says about the surrender of the King to the English by the Scots at Newcastle. The position of the Scots Commissioners231 was perplexing, whether they deliberately233 lured234 Charles to come to them or not. They could not keep him in Scotland: they would have had to fight England, and to defy the preachers who rode them. They could not safely let Charles embark235 secretly at Tynemouth, as Sir Walter suggests: the prospect236 of a King over the water was agreeable neither to the English nor to the Covenanters. But, says Scott, “Even if the Scots had determined that the exigencies237 of the times, and the necessity of pre
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serving the peace betwixt England and Scotland, together with their engagements with the Parliament of England, demanded that they should surrender the person of their King to that body, the honour of Scotland was intimately concerned in so conducting the transaction that there should be no room for alleging238 that any selfish advantage was stipulated239 by the Scots as a consequence of giving him up. I am almost ashamed to write that this honourable240 consideration had no weight.
“The Scottish army had a long arrear241 of pay due to them from the English Parliament, which the latter had refused, or at least delayed to make forthcoming. A treaty for the settlement of these arrears242 had been set on foot; and it had been agreed that the Scottish forces should retreat into their own country, upon payment of two hundred thousand pounds, which was one half of the debt finally admitted. Now, it is true that these two treaties, concerning the delivery of the King’s person to England and the payment by Parliament of their pecuniary arrears to Scotland, were kept separate, for the sake of decency243; but it is certain that they not only coincided in point of time, but bore upon and influenced each other. No man of candour will pretend to believe that the Parliament of England would ever have paid this considerable sum, unless to facilitate their obtaining possession of the
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King’s person; and this sordid245 and base transaction, though the work exclusively of a mercenary army, stamped the whole nation of Scotland with infamy246. In foreign countries they were upbraided247 with the shame of having made their unfortunate and confiding248 Sovereign a hostage, whose liberty or surrender was to depend on their obtaining payment of a paltry249 sum of arrears; and the English nation reproached them with their greed and treachery, in the popular rhyme,—
Traitor Scot
Sold his king for a groat.
“The Scottish army surrendered the person of Charles to the Commissioners for the English Parliament, on receiving security for their arrears of pay, and immediately evacuated250 Newcastle, and marched for their own country. I am sorry to conclude the volume with this mercenary and dishonourable transaction; but the limits of the work require me to bring it thus to a close.”
“TALES OF A GRANDFATHER”
By their Covenant, as interpreted by their preachers, the Scots had brought themselves to this pass, and the only course open to them which was not conspicuously251 base they did not take. A nation is judged by the rulers whom it accepts, and though not a man in a hundred, north of Tweed,
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approved the course (so a contemporary tells us), “the whole nation of Scotland was stamped with infamy.” Scott does not prefer Scotland to truth, but he does misrepresent, by defect of information, the effectual cause of Argyll’s death. He did not die merely because he expressed, in letters to Monk252, “a zeal253 for the English interest.” He gave information as to the movements of the forces that stood for his King, and were commanded by his own son. Writing for the instruction of the young Scott laid aside all Cavalier sentiment and prejudice; in the opinion of M. Amédée Pichot, he wrote as a Whig. But the Whigamores have never welcomed him as an ally. Even to-day a student who “has no time” cannot gain so rapid and so correct a view of Scottish history from any book as he will find in The Tales of a Grandfather.
Sir Walter’s next task was the Magnum Opus, the preparation of a literary history of the work of his life, especially of the novels and poems. That history took the shape, not wholly fortunate, of new Introductions and new notes. They are of the most genial254 interest, but perhaps it would have been wiser to write the literary history in separate volumes, than to clog255 the Authors’ Favourite Edition with so much prefatory matter that the modern reader is frightened away, believing that he will never survive to read the romance in each case.
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The format120 and typography of the volumes were excellent, the plates were not better than most illustrations and rather worse than some. Cadell had bought in the copyright at £8,500 on the luckiest of days for Sir Walter’s creditors. Now it was that Scott, having no money to give to a Reverend Mr. Gordon, gave him the copyright of two sermons which he had already written for him, at a moment when he feared that Gordon was too ill and nervous to write sermons for himself. Gordon sold the copyright for £250. Scott disliked appearing as a lay preacher, but good nature carried the day. He would not, however, again oblige James Ballantyne, who pleaded for the life of Oliver Proudfute, in The Fair Maid of Perth. To please James he had ruined St. Ronan’s Well, he had brought back Athelstane in Ivanhoe from the dead, and that was enough, and more than enough.
THE “JOURNAL”
The year 1829 saw the completion of Anne of Geierstein, but as the author of Anne’s being frankly256 damned her, I am not inclined to plead in her favour, leaving her advocacy to Mr. Saintsbury, who places Anne “on a level with anything and above most things later than The Pirate.” To deem Anne on a level with Redgauntlet, or even with Woodstock, and The Fair Maid of Perth, seems, in Lethington’s words, “a devout257 imagination.” My friend, Mr. Saintsbury, in
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deed speaks here of Anne “as a mere romance,” not counting “the personal touches which exalt258 Redgauntlet and the Introduction to the Chronicles.” But what is there in Anne that comes home to us like Nanty Ewart, Wandering Willie, and Peter Peebles? No Scot can doubt that Sir Walter is at his best in the bounds of “his ain countrie,” this was an inevitable259 limitation of his genius.
The Journal of the early months of 1829 shows Scott in good spirits, pleased with solitude260, when he is alone, but only if solitude does not mean lack of access to human company. In a little sportive dialogue with a Geni, or Djinn, he confesses to all his old delight in building castles in the air. “You need not repent,” says the Djinn, “most of your novels have previously261 been subjects for airy castles.” This means that, rapidly as the novels were written, they, or many of them, had long simmered in the author’s imagination: he had lived, he remarks, in the scenes and adventures which he describes. Among other things, he now wrote, for Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson, notes on the great Doctor’s Scottish tour. Busy as Sir Walter was, his time and work were still at the disposal of others. But some of these invaluable262 notes went astray in the post, and never were recovered. He wrote a short History of Scotland,
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for the Encyclopaedia263 of Thackeray’s victim, Dr. Lardner, and a review article to raise a sum of money for the ever unlucky Gillies, who visited Abbotsford in autumn, and noted264 one convenience “very rare,” he says, in country houses. In every room was abundance of pen, ink, and paper.
PARALYSIS265
In Edinburgh, at the levee of the Commissioner232 to the General Assembly, Scott met Edward Irving. “I could hardly keep my eyes off him while we were at table. He put me in mind of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill did that horrible obliquity266 of vision harmonize with the dark tranquil267 features of his face, resembling that of our Saviour268 in Italian pictures, with the hair carefully arranged in the same manner.... He spoke208 with that kind of unction which is nearly allied269 to cajolerie....” In fact Scott liked Irving no more than he liked Father Clement. He had a great distrust of “enthusiasm” in religion, but Irving was not the quack270 whom Scott clearly suspected him of being. Other quacks271, in his opinion, were the two brothers, then calling themselves “Hay Allan,” but later, “John and Charles Stuart,” sons of a son of Prince Charles by his wife. These gentlemen possessed a MS. called Vestiarium Scoticum, giving an account of the tartans of the Border as well as of the Highland clans, tartans otherwise unknown. There
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were two MSS., one, never seen of men, of the sixteenth century, another, still extant, of the eighteenth century. This MS. remains a mystery. I believe that neither in ink nor paper is there any trace of falsity, while the style is certainly beyond the powers of imitation possessed by the two brothers, in whose antiquarian probity272 Scott had no belief.
Scott’s friends were dying around him, Shortreed of the Liddesdale rambles273, and Tom Purdie. Haec poena diu viventibus! His Diary flags in July, and is not reopened till May 1830. Scott read and reviewed that thrilling book, Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials. It was published by the Bannatyne Club, of which Scott was the animating274 spirit; for the Roxburghe Club he edited and presented the story of the Master of Sinclair, and his slaying275 of the Shaws of Greenock (1708). He dramatized the tale, from Pitcairn, of the Auchendrane Tragedy, the series of murders by the two Mures. There is much of spirit, fancy, and vigorous verse in The Ayrshire Tragedy, but the topic inevitably276 lacked dramatic interest.
It was on February 15, 1831, that the long threatened blow of paralysis fell on Sir Walter. He was alone, with a lady, examining her father’s manuscripts, when his face altered, he fell into a chair, but with the instinct of courtesy, contrived
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to stagger from the room and fell in the drawing-room, where his daughter Anne and Lockhart’s sister, Violet, happened to be.[8] He presently recovered speech, and, when he went abroad again, people observed no change. But he knew his own case. None the less, he toiled277 on at his Letters on Demonology, a work well worth reading, though marked by failing powers. That astonishing person, Professor Wilson, instantly attacked Scott, making the Shepherd in Noctes Ambrosianae speak of “Sir Walter wi’ his everlasting278 anecdotes, nine out o’ ten meaning naething, and the tenth itsel’ as auld as Eildon Hill.” Wilson also assailed279 the Letters: there was a great deal of Mr. Hyde in his composition, an element which broke out in furious attacks on old friends. Yet he never estranged280 Lockhart.
Scott declared that he felt no mental feebleness, and hoped that by 1835 he might clear off his debts; he had just paid £15,000 towards that end. He received a kind of proposal of marriage from a woman of rank, through her brother: he was told that he might hope! But he confided281 to his Journal that he did not hope to wed “a grim grenadier.” His creditors restored to him his
EVIL DAYS
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books, plate, furniture, and collection of works of art and curios, which he valued at £10,000. He resigned his Clerkship in November 1830, receiving a pension of £840. The change was unfortunate, as it gave him more time for overwork. Meanwhile, every letter from Ballantyne about his new novels betrayed its effect in nervous twitchings at the mouth. Cadell, to give him rest, suggested the composition of an anecdotic catalogue of his curiosities, “The Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck.” A glance at the opening of the MS., with its paralytic282 writing and examples of agraphia, shows how desperate was his mental and bodily condition for a short while.
Yet he was now thinking of Castle Dangerous, and he wrote a Tory pamphlet which, his advisers saw, showed ignorance of the political situation. The pamphlet was dropped, but his advisers had a struggle before they carried their point. “Sir Walter never recovered it,” says Mr. Cadell. I have no heart to speak of his political apprehensions283 and sufferings. What he feared was the overthrow284 of Society; what he endured from popular insult and even violence is too familiarly known. Certain excited and rude artisans had no more respect than Wilson for an old friend, the glory of the Border. Scott never forgot the scene, it
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haunted his dying hours. He acknowledged to a distinct stroke of paralysis in April 1831, and Cadell and Ballantyne remonstrated285 against the conclusion of Count Robert of Paris.
How amazing was the humour that supported his unconquerable courage! His letters—for example one of October 31, to Lady Louisa Stuart, on “Animal Magnetism,” show him in full force of intellect. He had an attack in November, and Laidlaw, his amanuensis for Count Robert of Paris, observed unmistakable signs of the end. He was bidden to drink water only, and to abandon writing. So he notes, in a parody286 of Burns:—
Dour244, dour, and eident was he,
Dour and eident, but and ben,
Dour against their barley287 water,
And eident on the Bramah pen.[9]
In July Scott began Castle Dangerous, and paid his last visit to the tombs of the Douglases. The country people received him gladly, following him in a procession. I must quote what Lockhart says about the close of this day, spent beside the graves of that stern and haughty288 race who had been, now the savers, now the betrayers, of their country.
Sir Walter Scott.
From the painting by Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A.
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AT THE DOUGLAS GRAVES
“It was again a darkish, cloudy day, with some occasional mutterings of distant thunder, and perhaps the state of the atmosphere told upon Sir Walter’s nerves; but I had never before seen him so sensitive as he was all the morning after this inspection289 of Douglas. As we drove over the high tableland of Lesmahago he repeated I know not how many verses from Winton, Barbour, and Blind Harry290, with, I believe, almost every stanza291 of Dunbar’s elegy292 on the deaths of the Makers293 (poets). It was now that I saw him, such as he paints himself in one or two passages of his Diary, but such as his companions in the meridian294 vigour295 of his life never saw him—‘the rushing of a brook296, or the sighing of the summer breeze, bringing the tears into his eyes not unpleasantly.’ Bodily weakness laid the delicacy297 of the organization bare, over which he had prided himself in wearing a sort of half-stoical mask. High and exalted298 feelings, indeed, he had never been able to keep concealed, but he had shrunk from exhibiting to human eye the softer and gentler emotions which now trembled to the surface. He strove against it even now, and presently came back from the Lament of the Makers to his Douglases, and chanted, rather than repeated, in a sort of deep and glowing, though not dis
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tinct recitative, his first favourite among all the ballads—
“It was about the Lammas tide,
When husbandmen do win their hay,
That the doughty299 Douglas bownde him to ride
To England to drive a prey,
down to the closing stanzas300, which again left him in tears—
“My wound is deep—I fain would sleep—
Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And hide me beneath the bracken-bush
That grows on yonder lily lee ...
This deed was done at the Otterburne,
About the dawning of the day.
Earl Douglas was buried by the bracken-bush,
And the Percy led captive away.”
VOYAGE TO ITALY
The new Whig Government put a ship of war at the service of their great antagonist301. He was to visit Italy, and Cadell kept the type of his two last tales set up; they were revised and altered in Scott’s absence abroad. One incident in Count Robert of Paris, an incident terribly expressive302 of the author’s condition, was expunged303. Sir Walter felt the consolatory304 delusion305 that he had succeeded in his task, that his debts were paid. The last autumn at Abbotsford was full of the charm of
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sunset. Turner came, and painted Abbotsford on a tea tray, at a picnic. Young Walter Scott came, a joy to his father’s eyes, “a handsomer fellow never put foot into stirrup.” Wordsworth, too, was there, as his verses on Yarrow testify, and his noble sonnet—
A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain.
On the voyage to Italy Scott still was writing, the Journal, letters, the tale of Il Bizarro, the novel of The Knights306 of Malta; the manuscript is still the old closely serried307 manuscript, but the handwriting is wofully altered. I am informed that many passages are full of the old spirit, but care has been taken that this work shall never appear as a “literary curiosity.”
At Naples Scott heard of Goethe’s death. “At least he died at home. Let us to Abbotsford!” The party, with Mr. Charles Scott, passed on to Rome. At Lake Avernus, which, says Lockhart, is like a Highland loch, Scott repeated—
We daurna go a’ milking
For Charlie and his men.
The classic scene reminded him of his dear hills. At Rome, with great difficulty, he visited the tomb
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of James III. (so his epitaph proclaims him,) and of Prince Charles and the Cardinal308 Duke of York; the latest minstrel stood by the dust of the last of the royal line. The rest “can hardly be told too briefly,” says Lockhart.
In passing through Germany, Scott wrote what his son Charles endorses309 as “The last letter written by my dear father.” It is a brief note of courtesy to Arthur Schopenhauer, the famous philosopher, regretting that he was too unwell to receive Schopenhauer’s visit. The note is clearly written and well expressed. It is in the Laing MSS. in Edinburgh University Library. Once again Scott wrote, or tried to write, in the packet boat crossing the Channel. Pen and ink were borrowed for him from Mrs. Sherwood, the author of The Fairchild Family.
THE END
The sufferer reached London on June 13, 1832. On July 7 he took ship for Leith. On July 11 he travelled by carriage to Abbotsford, waking from his torpor310 as they drove down Gala water, past Torwoodlee. Arrived, his dogs welcomed him, and “he alternately sobbed311 and smiled over them till sleep oppressed him.” In his last days he was heard to murmur312 passages from the Bible, the Litany, the Scottish metrical psalms313, and the Stabat Mater Dolorosa. It was on September 17
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that he bade Lockhart “be a good man, my dear, be virtuous314, be religious, be a good man.” On the twenty-first “he breathed his last in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day—so warm that every window was wide open—and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple315 of the Tweed over its pebbles316, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”
He sleeps, with Lockhart at his feet, where the sound of the Border water fills the roofless aisles317 of the abbey of Dryburgh.
* * * *
“Good-night, Sir Walter!”
Scott had given his life to pay his debts. Of these he actually repaid about £70,000 between 1826 and 1832. The rest was wiped away by his copyrights, through the spirited and judicious318 management of Mr. Cadell, by the exertions319 of Lockhart as editor, and by the profits of Lockhart’s Life of Scott. As to the later fortunes of Sir Walter’s family, but one of his grandchildren survived; she married Mr. Hope Scott, the eminent320 barrister, and was the mother of the Honourable Mrs. Maxwell-Scott, an only child, spes exigua et extrema. This lady has evinced the an
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cestral love of history in her works, The Tragedy of Fotheringhay, in her essays, entitled The Making of Abbotsford, and in her recent brief book on Jeanne d’Arc. One of her sons has done honour to the houses of Maxwell and Scott by his distinguished services in the war in South Africa. Thus the long descended321 name of the great cadet of Harden has not vanished from the Border.
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constable
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monastery
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eldest
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cavalry
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regiment
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condescending
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distinguished
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lavish
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wed
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14
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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15
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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16
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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17
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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18
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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19
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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20
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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21
duel
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| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
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22
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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23
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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24
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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25
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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26
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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27
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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28
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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29
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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30
waggon
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| n.运货马车，运货车；敞篷车箱 | |
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31
bullion
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| n.金条，银条 | |
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32
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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33
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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34
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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35
vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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36
grotesque
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|
| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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37
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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38
pruning
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|
| n.修枝，剪枝，修剪v.修剪（树木等）( prune的现在分词 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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39
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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40
truthful
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|
| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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41
dissimulation
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|
| n.掩饰，虚伪，装糊涂 | |
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42
bullies
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| n.欺凌弱小者, 开球 vt.恐吓, 威胁, 欺负 | |
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43
miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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44
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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45
degenerates
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| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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46
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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47
detest
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| vt.痛恨，憎恶 | |
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48
amiable
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|
| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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49
strap
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| n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎 | |
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50
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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51
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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52
calumny
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| n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤 | |
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53
toil
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|
| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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54
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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55
majesty
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|
| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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56
baron
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|
| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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57
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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58
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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59
feuds
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| n.长期不和，世仇( feud的名词复数 ) | |
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60
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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61
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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62
bards
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| n.诗人( bard的名词复数 ) | |
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63
bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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64
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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65
clans
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| 宗族( clan的名词复数 )； 氏族； 庞大的家族； 宗派 | |
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66
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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67
pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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69
redressed
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| v.改正( redress的过去式和过去分词 )；重加权衡；恢复平衡 | |
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70
seizure
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|
| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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71
apoplectic
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|
| adj.中风的；愤怒的；n.中风患者 | |
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72
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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73
malady
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|
| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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74
concealed
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|
| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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75
funereal
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|
| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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76
delightful
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|
| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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77
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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78
commonsense
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|
| adj.有常识的；明白事理的；注重实际的 | |
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79
glutted
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|
| v.吃得过多( glut的过去式和过去分词 )；（对胃口、欲望等）纵情满足；使厌腻；塞满 | |
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80
clairvoyance
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|
| n.超人的洞察力 | |
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81
witchcraft
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|
| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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82
solely
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|
| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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83
devoted
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|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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84
postponed
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|
| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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85
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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86
narrative
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|
| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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87
remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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88
inexplicable
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|
| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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89
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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90
begetter
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| n.生产者，父 | |
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91
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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92
intrigue
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|
| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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93
ascetic
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|
| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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94
litigant
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|
| n.诉讼当事人；adj.进行诉讼的 | |
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95
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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96
salmon
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|
| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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97
erect
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|
| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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98
Flared
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|
| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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99
weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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100
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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101
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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102
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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103
battered
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|
| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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104
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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105
adherents
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|
| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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106
hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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107
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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108
gentry
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|
| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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109
auld
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| adj.老的，旧的 | |
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110
covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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111
advisers
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| 顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授 | |
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112
contemptible
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|
| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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113
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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114
transcriber
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| 抄写者 | |
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115
erred
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| 犯错误，做错事( err的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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116
prosody
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| n.诗体论，作诗法 | |
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117
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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118
lessee
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| n.（房地产的）租户 | |
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119
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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120
format
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| n.设计，版式；[计算机]格式，DOS命令:格式化(磁盘)，用于空盘或使用过的磁盘建立新空盘来存储数据；v.使格式化，设计，安排 | |
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121
economize
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| v.节约，节省 | |
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122
implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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123
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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124
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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125
subscription
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| n.预订，预订费，亲笔签名，调配法，下标（处方） | |
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126
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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127
projector
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| n.投影机，放映机，幻灯机 | |
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128
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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129
annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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130
pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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131
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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132
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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133
creditors
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| n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
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134
creditor
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| n.债仅人，债主，贷方 | |
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135
drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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136
betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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137
talisman
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| n.避邪物，护身符 | |
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138
pertinacity
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| n.执拗，顽固 | |
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139
pars
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| n.部，部分；平均( par的名词复数 )；平价；同等；（高尔夫球中的）标准杆数 | |
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140
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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141
solvency
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| n.偿付能力，溶解力 | |
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142
reassured
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|
| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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143
laments
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| n.悲恸，哀歌，挽歌( lament的名词复数 )v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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144
lament
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| n.悲叹，悔恨，恸哭；v.哀悼，悔恨，悲叹 | |
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145
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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146
banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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147
anodyne
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| n.解除痛苦的东西，止痛剂 | |
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148
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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149
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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150
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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151
extort
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| v.勒索，敲诈，强要 | |
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152
meted
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| v.（对某人）施以，给予（处罚等）( mete的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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153
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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154
spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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155
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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156
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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157
proffers
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| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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158
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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159
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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160
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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161
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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162
rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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163
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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164
discriminated
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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165
apparitions
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| n.特异景象( apparition的名词复数 )；幽灵；鬼；（特异景象等的）出现 | |
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166
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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167
bail
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| v.舀（水），保释；n.保证金，保释，保释人 | |
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168
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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169
annexed
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| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
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170
profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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171
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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172
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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173
sentient
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| adj.有知觉的，知悉的；adv.有感觉能力地 | |
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174
rebellious
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|
| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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175
computes
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| v.计算，估算( compute的第三人称单数 ) | |
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176
insomnia
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| n.失眠，失眠症 | |
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177
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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178
shunned
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| v.避开，回避，避免( shun的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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179
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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180
dishonour
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|
| n./vt.拒付（支票、汇票、票据等）；vt.凌辱，使丢脸；n.不名誉，耻辱，不光彩 | |
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181
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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182
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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183
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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184
invincible
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| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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185
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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186
dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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187
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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188
stratagem
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| n.诡计，计谋 | |
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189
sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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190
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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191
abides
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| 容忍( abide的第三人称单数 )； 等候； 逗留； 停留 | |
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192
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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193
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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194
knightly
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| adj. 骑士般的 adv. 骑士般地 | |
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195
deigns
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的第三人称单数 ) | |
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196
expiates
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| v.为（所犯罪过）接受惩罚，赎（罪）( expiate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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197
repented
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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198
villains
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| n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 )；罪犯；（小说、戏剧等中的）反面人物；淘气鬼 | |
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199
abounds
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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200
clement
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| adj.仁慈的；温和的 | |
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201
fanaticism
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| n.狂热，盲信 | |
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202
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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203
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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204
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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205
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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206
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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207
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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208
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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209
intemperately
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| adv.过度地，无节制地，放纵地 | |
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210
addicted
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|
| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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211
flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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212
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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213
tiresome
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|
| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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214
feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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215
impartial
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|
| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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216
anecdote
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|
| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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217
anecdotes
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|
| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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218
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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219
garrulous
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| adj.唠叨的，多话的 | |
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220
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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221
pedant
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| n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人 | |
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222
aridity
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| n.干旱，乏味；干燥性；荒芜 | |
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223
granitic
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| 花岗石的，由花岗岩形成的 | |
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224
ballad
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| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
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225
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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226
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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227
lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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228
conciseness
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| n.简洁，简短 | |
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229
impartiality
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| n. 公平, 无私, 不偏 | |
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230
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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231
commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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232
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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233
deliberately
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|
| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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234
lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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235
embark
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| vi.乘船，着手，从事，上飞机 | |
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236
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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237
exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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238
alleging
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| 断言，宣称，辩解( allege的现在分词 ) | |
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239
stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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240
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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241
arrear
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| n.欠款 | |
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242
arrears
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| n.到期未付之债，拖欠的款项；待做的工作 | |
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243
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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244
dour
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| adj.冷酷的，严厉的；（岩石）嶙峋的；顽强不屈 | |
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245
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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246
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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247
upbraided
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| v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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248
confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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249
paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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250
evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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251
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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252
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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253
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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254
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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255
clog
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| vt.塞满，阻塞；n.[常pl.]木屐 | |
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256
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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257
devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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258
exalt
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| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
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259
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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260
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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261
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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262
invaluable
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| adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的 | |
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263
encyclopaedia
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| n.百科全书 | |
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264
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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265
paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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266
obliquity
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| n.倾斜度 | |
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267
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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268
saviour
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| n.拯救者，救星 | |
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269
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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270
quack
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| n.庸医；江湖医生；冒充内行的人；骗子 | |
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271
quacks
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| abbr.quacksalvers 庸医，骗子(16世纪习惯用水银或汞治疗梅毒的人)n.江湖医生( quack的名词复数 )；江湖郎中；（鸭子的）呱呱声v.（鸭子）发出嘎嘎声( quack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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272
probity
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| n.刚直；廉洁，正直 | |
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273
rambles
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的第三人称单数 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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274
animating
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| v.使有生气( animate的现在分词 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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275
slaying
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| 杀戮。 | |
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276
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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277
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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278
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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279
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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280
estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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281
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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282
paralytic
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| adj. 瘫痪的 n. 瘫痪病人 | |
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283
apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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284
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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285
remonstrated
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| v.抗议( remonstrate的过去式和过去分词 )；告诫 | |
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286
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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287
barley
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| n.大麦，大麦粒 | |
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288
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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289
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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290
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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291
stanza
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| n.（诗）节，段 | |
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292
elegy
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| n.哀歌，挽歌 | |
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293
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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294
meridian
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| adj.子午线的；全盛期的 | |
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295
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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296
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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297
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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298
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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299
doughty
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| adj.勇猛的，坚强的 | |
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300
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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301
antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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302
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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303
expunged
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| v.擦掉( expunge的过去式和过去分词 )；除去；删去；消除 | |
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304
consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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305
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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306
knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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307
serried
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| adj.拥挤的；密集的 | |
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308
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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309
endorses
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| v.赞同( endorse的第三人称单数 )；在（尤指支票的）背面签字；在（文件的）背面写评论；在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品 | |
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310
torpor
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| n.迟钝；麻木；（动物的）冬眠 | |
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311
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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312
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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313
psalms
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| n.赞美诗( psalm的名词复数 )；圣诗；圣歌；(中的) | |
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314
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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315
ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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316
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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317
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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318
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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319
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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320
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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321
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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