The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 576, November 17, 1832Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 576, November 17, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
[In one of the recent prize essays of the Highland Society of
Scotland, the Ettrick Shepherd writes thus of his distinguished
contemporary. The general subject of the Essay is the statistics of
Selkirkshire: after referring to Sir Walter as sheriff of Ettrick
Forest for thirty years, Mr. Hogg observes:]
To speak of Sir Walter Scott as a literary man, would be the height of
absurdity in a statistical writer. In that light he is known and duly
appreciated over the whole world, wherever letters have found their
way. But I shall say, that those who know him only by the few hundreds
of volumes that he has published, know only the one half of the man,
and that not the best half neither. As a friend, he is steady, candid,
and sincere, expressing his sentiments freely, whether favourable or
the reverse. He is no man's enemy, though he may be to his principles;
and I believe that he never in his life tried to do an individual
hurt. His impartiality as a judge is so well known, that no man,
either rich or poor, ever attempts to move him from the right onward
path. If he have a feeling of partiality in his whole disposition, it
is for the poachers and fishers, at least I know that they all think
that he has a fellow-feeling with them,--that he has a little of the
old outlaw blood in him, and, if he had been able, would have been a
desperate poacher and black-fisher. Indeed, it has been reported that
when he was young he sometimes "leistered a kipper, and made a shift
to shoot a moorfowl i' the drift." He was uncommonly well made. I
never saw a limb, loins, and shoulders so framed for immoderate
strength. And, as Tom Purdie observed, "Faith, an he hadna' been
crippled he _wud_ ha'e been an unlucky chap."
* * * * *
*** "An Old Friend of the late Mr. Terry" has requested us to insert
the following correction: "In our notices respecting Sir Walter Scott,
(see _Mirror_, No. 571, p. 254,) we stated that Mrs. Terry had in her
possession a tragedy written by Sir Walter for her son W.S. Terry, and
intended by the author as a legacy for Walter's first appearance on
the stage. We have been since assured that it never was intended by
his parents, nor was it ever in the contemplation of his godfather,
that Walter Scott Terry should appear at all upon the stage. The youth
is in fact at this time a cadet at the Military College, Addiscombe,
to which establishment he obtained an appointment through the kind
exertions of Sir Walter, who has thus placed young Terry in a
situation to distinguish himself in a line of life perfectly according
with his own talents and inclinations."
* * * * *
_Islington Stages_--The stage-coaches to Islington, sixty years ago,
were drawn by three horses, on account of the badness of the roads.
The inside fare was at that time sixpence each person. H.B. ANDREWS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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