Robert Chambers

“ When his party were drawn back, the Duke’s army slowly, and with their cannon in front, defiled along the bridge, and formed in line of battle as they came over the river. The Duke commanded the foot, and Claverhouse the cavalry. It would seem that these movements could not have been performed without at least some loss, had the enemy been serious in opposing them. But the insurgents were otherwise employed. With the strangest delusion that ever fell upon devoted beings, they chose these precious moments to cashier their officers, and elect others in their room. ”

“ This personage seems to be quite familiar to his mind, present to his eye, domesticated in the chambers of his fancy. The minutest motions of the farmer’s body, and the most trivial workings of his mind, are alike bright in his eye; and so faithful a representation has been produced, that one might almost think the author had taken his sketch by some species of mental camera obscura, which brought the figure beneath his pencil in all its native colours and proportions.
It is impossible to point out any individual of real life as the original of this happy production. ”

“ High mountainous ridges, the castles of nature, tower on every side, whose bosoms sometimes display the naked grey rock encircled with fern and heath, and, at other times, excellent verdure. But no cultivated field greets the eye, and the solemn stillness which reigns around is only broken by the gentle murmuring of the rivulet. The situation of the old tower is well chosen, as, from the direction in which the hills run, a sort of circle is formed, which not only screens it from the north and east winds, but could easily debar all intercourse with the neighbouring country. ”

“ In the year 1714, one of Jean’s sons, named Alexander Faa, was murdered by another Gipsy, named Robert Johnston, who escaped the pursuit of justice for nearly ten years, but was then taken and indicted by his Majesty’s Advocate for the crime. He was sentenced to be executed, but escaped from prison. It was easier, however, to escape the grasp of justice than to elude the wide spread talons of Gipsy vengeance. Jean Gordon traced the murderer like a blood-hound, followed him to Holland, and from thence to Ireland, where she had him seized, and brought him back to Jedburgh. ”

“ There are few of our originals in whom we can exhibit such precise points of coincident resemblance between the real and fictitious character, as in him whom we now assign as the prototype of Dominie Sampson. The person of real existence also possesses the singular recommendation of presenting more dignified and admirable characteristics, in their plain unvarnished detail, than the ridiculous caricature produced in “Guy Mannering,” though it be drawn by an author whose elegant imagination has often exalted, but seldom debased, the materials to which he has condescended to be indebted. ”

“ He has made himself master of all the twangs, soughs, wheezes, coughs, snirtles, and bleatings, peculiar to the various parish ministers twenty miles round; and being himself of no particular sect, he feels not the least delicacy or compunction for any single class of divines—all are indiscriminately familiar to the powers of the universal Jock!
It is remarkable, that though the Scottish peasantry are almost without exception pious, they never express, so far as we have been able to discover, the least demur respecting the profanity and irreverence of this exhibition. ”

“ When the soldiers came in a line with the party in ambush, the Highlanders, with one leap, darted down upon them, uttering such yells and shouts as, along with their frightful appearance, so confounded the soldiers, that they were overpowered and disarmed without a man being hurt on either side. Rob Roy kept the arms and ammunition, released the soldiers, and marched away in triumph with his men. ”

“ Like Davie Gellatley, Jock “is in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appears to be, and incapable of any steady exertion. He has just so much wild wit as saves him from the imputation of insanity, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and an ear for music.” This latter quality is a point of resemblance which puts all question of their identity past the possibility of doubt. ”

“ They chiefly roost about little towns in remote parts of the country, where society is not expensive, and where half-pay procures the necessaries of life in the best possible style. Here there always exist one or two of these individuals, rendering the place respectable by their presence, and receiving a sort of spontaneous homage from the people, in virtue of their independence, their gentility, and their scars. Like the fading relics of the City Guard, they change the most warlike of their habiliments for others more consonant with the costumes of peace ”

“ Jock, by means of his singing powers, was one of the first who circulated the rising fame of his countryman, the Ettrick Shepherd, many of whose early songs he committed to memory, and sung publicly over all the country round. One beginning, “Oh Shepherd, the weather is misty and changing,” and the well known lyric of “Love is like a dizziness,” besides being the first poetical efforts of their ingenious and wonderful author, were the earliest of Jock Gray’s favourite songs, and perhaps became the chief means of setting him up in the trade of a wandering minstrel. ”

“ Crosbie’s death presents the more trite moral of the two—for in it we see little more than the world forsaking an unfortunate man, as crowds fly from the falling temple, to avoid being crushed in the ruins. ”

“ The present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to describe have either altogether disappeared or are greatly modified. Without losing their rural simplicity of manners, they now cultivate arts unknown to the former generation, not only in the progressive improvement of their possessions, but in all the comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits of life better regulated, so as better to keep pace with those of the civilized world ”

“ We entered into a discussion of the various merits and demerits of different sorts of work; and found that Glasgow was blessed with no share of the goodwill of our friend the weaver. Jaconets, blunks, ginghams, and cambrics were alternately brought up, and each successively declared stale, flat, and unprofitable, in comparison with the coarse stuff upon which he was now employed. Customer-wark was superior to every other work; and customer-wark was, indeed, the very god of his divinity. ”

“ Kenilworth Castle was in former times one of the most magnificent piles in England. In the days of its prosperity it took a military part, and it still retains traces of a warlike character,—though the foliage which overspreads its remains, has softened down the ruins into the appearance of a peaceful mansion. It was first destroyed by Cromwell, in revenge of its possessor having favoured the royal cause. Since then it has been gradually decaying, and another century will probably bring it to the ground. ”

“ The dignity which he contrives to maintain in his native town is scarcely wonderful, when we consider how few are ever independent in such a community, and to what a degree the respect of the illiterate is calculated to be excited by the possession of a very little knowledge,—such as Captain O. would easily acquire in the course of his unoccupied life, and which the opportunities of ease did not fail to confer upon even David Ritchie. ”

“ He excelled in the stratagems of war; but his talents were rather those of an active, enterprising partisan, than of a great commander,—better fitted to excite and manage a desultory war, than to direct the complicated operations of a regular campaign. He may be admired for his genius, but he cannot be praised for his wisdom. Though he excelled in the performance of rapid movements, and had the quick eye of a serpent approaching its prey, he had not the firmness, perseverance, and vigilance which form the necessary qualifications of a great general. ”

“ The rustic idiots of Scotland are also in general blessed with a few peculiarities, which seldom fail to make them objects of popular esteem and affection. Many of them exhibit a degree of sagacity or cunning, bearing the same relation to the rest of their intellectual faculties which, in the ruins of a Grecian temple, the coarse and entire foundations bear to the few and scattered but beautiful fragments of the superstructure. ”

“ On it alone he could employ that faculty of affection with which every heart, even that of the cynic, is endowed. Shut out from the correspondence and sympathy of his own fellow-creatures by the insurmountable pale of his own ugliness, there existed, in the whole circle of nature, no other object that could receive his affections, or reply to the feelings he had to impart. In flowers alone, those lineal and undegenerate descendants of Paradise, the Solitary found an object of attachment that could do equal honour to his feelings and to his taste. ”

“ It was absolutely true that he could write his papers as well drunk as sober, asleep as awake; and the anecdote which the facetious Pleydell narrated to Colonel Mannering, in confirmation of this miraculous faculty, is also, we are able to inform the reader, strictly consistent in truth with an incident of real occurrence.
Poor H—— was one of those happy, thoughtless, and imprudent mortals, whose idea of existence lies all in to-day, or to-morrow at farthest,—whose whole life is only a series of random exertions and chance efforts at subsistence—a sort of constant Maroon war with starvation. ”

“ She lived in the neighbourhood of Dumfries, on the romantic banks of the immortalized Clouden, a little way above the bridge by which the road{118} from Dumfries to Sanquhar crosses that beautiful stream. She lived by the humblest means of subsistence,—working stockings, teaching a few children, and rearing now and then a small brood of chickens. Her countenance was remarkably lively and intelligent, her eyes were dark and expressive, and her conversation was marked by a naïveté and good sense that seemed to fit her for a higher sphere in life. ”

“ Among the illustrative vignettes prefixed to a late edition of the author of “Waverley’s” works, a view of Craig Crook Castle, near Edinburgh, is given for Tully-Veolan; and, to complete the vraisemblance, several bears have been added to the scene. It is only necessary to assert, in general, that these bears only exist in the imagination of the artist, and that no place has less resemblance to the Tully-Veolan of “Waverley” than Craig Crook, which is a small single house, in a bare situation, more like the mansion of poor Laird Dumbiedykes than the castle of a powerful feudal baron. ”

“ We feel no little pleasure in presenting the original of a character so important as the facetious Pleydell. He is understood to be the representative of Mr. Andrew Crosbie, who flourished at the head of the Scottish bar about the period referred to in the novel. Many circumstances conspire to identify him with the lawyer of the novel. Their eminence in their profession was equally respectable; their habits of frequenting taverns and High Jinks parties on Saturday nights was the same, and both were remarkable for that antique politeness of manner so characteristic of old Scottish gentlemen. ”

“ By the peculiarities of his person, as well as by the other abject circumstances of his condition, it may be easily supposed that the Hermit of Manor was entirely excluded from that great solace of the miseries of man, the sympathy to be derived from the tenderness and affections of woman. He was irredeemably condemned, as it were, to a dreary bachelorhood of the heart, which knew that there was for it no hope, no possibility of enjoyment. Perhaps the constant sense of loathsomeness in the eyes of the fair part of creation might help to increase the natural wretchedness of his existence. ”

“ Strange that one, whose conduct through life was every way so worthy of the esteem and gratitude of mankind—whose death would not have disgraced the devotion of a primitive martyr—should by means of a few less dignified peculiarities, have eventually conferred the character of perfection on a work of humour, and, in a caricatured exhibition, supplied attractions, nearly unparalleled, to innumerable theatres! ”

“ Customer-wark is the species of employment which we have described, and he says that he can make eighteen-pence a day by it, which seems to him to constitute a superlative degree of prosperity. We visited his loom, which we found half embedded in the damp earth in a low-roofed part of the cottage, and separated from the domestic establishment by two large wooden beds. Here he seemed engaged upon a piece of woollen cloth at least half an inch thick, the surface of which appeared fully as rough and unequal as the map of Selkirkshire in our good friend Mr. John Thomson’s Scottish Atlas. ”

“ The person who held the situation in the rebel army which in the novel has been assigned to the Baron, namely, the command of their few cavalry, was Alexander, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo. This nobleman, who possessed but a moderate fortune, was so much esteemed for his excellent qualities of temper and understanding, that when, after the battle of Prestonpans, he declared his purpose of joining Prince Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer example than the conduct of Lord Pitsligo. ”

“ To the author whose duty leads him so low in the scale of nature, that the manners and the miseries of a vicious and insubordinate race, prominent in hideous circumstances of unvarnished reality, are all he is permitted to record, it must ever be gratifying to find traits of such fine enthusiasm, such devoted fidelity, as the conduct of Jean Gordon exhibits in the foregoing incidents. ”

“ There is one species of employment in which Jock always displays the utmost willingness to be engaged. It must be understood, that, like many sounder men, he is a great admirer of the fair sex. He exhibits an almost chivalrous devotion to their cause, and takes great pleasure in serving them. Any little commission with which they may please to honour him, he executes with alacrity, and his own expression is that he would “jump Tweed, or dive the Wheel (a deep eddy in Tweed) , for their sakes.” ”

“ He possesses as much property in the neighbourhood of Melrose as would entitle him to the honourable appellation, Laird; but in his case that enviable title is merged in the more romantic and splendid one of Captain, of which he is, perhaps, ambitious. He has his property in his own hands, and by its means contrives to keep himself independent. He thus wavers between the species of the half-pay officer and the cock-laird, and has no particular claims upon a distinct classification with either. ”