W. S. Crockett

“ Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was marshalling the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish belles-lettres, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our battue. ”

“ Robert Burns is said to have gazed in wondrous and even prayerful rapture on the vision of Kelso Bridge and the Tweed, forming an almost perfect picture. And this, with the Abbey, 'like some antique Titan predominating over the dwarfs of a later world'; ruined Roxburgh, between Tweed's and Teviot's flow; and the near neighbourhood of other memory-moving spots, were just the scenes which made the best appeal to Scott, which influenced him most, and the fruits of whose inspiration we still daily reap. Jedburgh has some claim on the Scott student and for the lover of old romance. ”

“ A descendant of Wat of Harden, linked to the best blood of the Border, and with every phase of his life redolent of the Border feeling, history has had no difficulty in claiming Sir Walter Scott as the most representative Border man the world has seen. He was not born in the Border Country, but practically all his life was spent there. He came to the Border a sickly, delicate child, between his third and fourth year, and for threescore years and one he seldom left it for any lengthened interval. Edinburgh was the arena of much of his professional career. ”

“ From at least 1820, and irrespective of his London life, Lockhart was Scott's companion and confidant at Abbotsford. Seldom has the fellowship of letters shown a friendship so strong and true. It was sympathy other than that of a son-in-law which Lockhart brought to the writing of his great Biography, and which has made it one of the masterpieces of literature. Never, surely, was a great man more fortunate in his life-story than Scott at the hands of Lockhart, one of the most maligned and misunderstood men of his day, indeed, but a kindly, lovable soul withal. ”

“ Even the remote uplands, long untouched by outside influences, have not escaped the modern spirit. The river must needs remain in statu quo, but the contrast between Sir Walter's Tweedside and ours is considerable. A century of commerce and agriculture has wrought marvels on the once bare and featureless and uncultivated banks of the Tweed. And none would have rejoiced at its present picturesque and prosperous condition more than Scott himself. ”

“ There, too, is the traditional grave of 'the wondrous Wizard,' Michael Scot, from whose cold dead hand Deloraine snatched the Book of Might. And many another—monarch and monk, priest and warrior, Border laird and lady—are at rest under these time-worn canopies. How interesting and touching to follow the inscriptions around the walls, and the numerous chaste carvings on 'pillar and arch and lintel high.' Two epitaphs outside call for attention, both connected with Scott. ”

“ The dead face is so tired that nobody can look upon it without a gush of pity, and a feeling of thankfulness that at last the man is in his grave. We are not moved by the grandeur of its modelling; the appeal it makes is to a larger humanity [181] than that. It is the face of a brother man, stretched out too long upon the rack of this tough world. The majesty of the forehead, and the dour earnestness of the features, tell of Walter Scott, the genius ”

“ Bruce's heart he laid by the high altar at Melrose, the Douglas with his own dear dust in the Kirk of St. Bride, among the Lanarkshire uplands. It was this Symon who brought to Scotland the famous Lee Penny—Scott's 'Talisman,' the most celebrated charm in the country—a heart-shaped, dark-red stone now set in a groat of Edward IV., with a silver chain and ring attached, and long sought after by the superstitious as a positive cure for the worst ailments of man and beast. ”

“ Everybody must admit the ideally happy life spent by Scott himself at Abbotsford—prior to 1826, at any rate. Few men enjoyed life more. His happiness, in the main, sprang from the physical side of things—the out-of-doors sports and exercises in which he revelled, and which were among the chief attractions of his Abbotsford. Scott was never happier than when he was making others happy. No man sacrificed himself more on that side. And surely that was religion at its reallest. Scott did not say much about religion. He had, like Lockhart, all a Scotsman's reticence on the subject. ”

“ Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted, but goes on from day to day and from year to year with a perpetually augmenting interest. Farming I hate; what have I to do with fattening and killing beasts, or raising corn only to cut it down, and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in planting trees.'
Scott left Ashestiel at Whitsunday, 1812—a rather comical 'flitting,' according to his own account of it. ”

“ Scott's desk is seldom seen open. The present writer counts it one of the memories of his life to have had that pleasure, and to have sat in Sir Walter's 'own huge elbow-chair,' and to have handled—an act almost too sacred after all those years—relics so touching and pathetic in their associations. The little locks of hair are still there, with the quills used by Scott, and his spectacles, pocket-knife, paper-knife, and a large number of account-books and other private documents. ”

“ Outside, the grounds and gardens were completely overhauled, the overgrown plantations thinned, and the old favourite walks cleaned and kept as Scott himself would have wished. In the lifetime of the Great Magician the ground on which he fixed his abode was nearly on a level with the highway running along the south front, and wayfarers could survey the whole domain by looking over the hedge. ”