Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, Volume 7Ticknor and Fields, 1862 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Abbotsford Adam Fergusson affectionate amuse Anne Ballantyne beautiful believe Bonnie Dundee bookselling Byron called calomel Castle Constable Constable's course Court of Session Coutts dare say dear delight Diary Dined dinner doubt Dublin Duke Edgeworthstown Edinburgh eyes fear feelings fortune give hand happy heard Hogmanay honour hope hour Ireland James James Ballantyne Jane January John John Ballantyne Killarney kind labour Lady Scott late letter literary Lochore Lockhart London look Lord Lord Byron matter Melrose ment mind Miss Edgeworth Moore morning never night novel occasion party perhaps person pleasure poet poor present Redgauntlet scene Scotch Scotland seems Sir Adam Sir Walter Scott Skene Sophia sort spirit suppose sure talent taste Terry things thought tion to-day told Tom Purdie walk Waverley Waverley Novels whole wish wood Woodstock write young
Popular passages
Page 141 - Of all the palaces so fair, Built for the royal dwelling In Scotland, far beyond compare Linlithgow is excelling; And in its park in jovial June, How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay ! The wild buck bells from ferny brake, The coot dives merry on the lake, The saddest heart might pleasure take To see all nature gay.
Page 271 - What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the state of people's real minds ! ' No eyes the rocks discover Which lurk beneath the deep.
Page 93 - I never very much liked it. I was never quite at ease when I had knocked down my blackcock, and going to pick him up, he cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I don't affect to be more squeamish than my neighbors, — but I am not ashamed to say, that no practice ever reconciled me fully to the cruelty of the affair.
Page 311 - This was the man, quaint, capricious, and playful, with all his immense genius. He wrote from impulse, never from effort; and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetical geniuses of my time, and half a century before me. We have, however, many men of high poetical talent, but none, I think, of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural water.
Page 240 - Ugo Foscolo by name, a haunter of Murray's shop and of literary parties. Ugly as a baboon, and intolerably conceited, he spluttered, blustered, and disputed, without even knowing the principles upon which men of sense render a reason, and screamed all the while like a pig...
Page 235 - I do not know and cannot utter a note of music ; and complicated harmonies seem to me a babble of confused though pleasing sounds. Yet songs and simple melodies, especially if connected with words and ideas, have as much effect on me as on most people.
Page 175 - O'Kelly; and he had produced on the spur of the occasion this modest parody of Dryden's famous epigram : — ' Three poets of three different nations born, The United Kingdom in this age adorn ; Byron of England, Scott of Scotia's blood, And Erin's pride — O'Kelly, great and good.
Page 82 - I had written it or not— where I had got it. Old Sophy kept my counsel, and I kept my own, in spite of the gratification of seeing a reward of twenty guineas offered in the newspapers to the person who should ascertain the point past a doubt, and the still more flattering circumstance of a visit from Mr. Jerningham, secretary to the Antiquarian Society, who endeavored to entrap the truth from me in a manner I took amiss.
Page 237 - Constable's great agents. Should they go, it is not likely that Constable can stand, and such an event would lead to great distress and perplexity on the part of JB and myself.
Page 201 - I parted from Scott with the feeling that all the world might admire him in his works, but that those only could learn to love him as he deserved who had seen him at Abbotsford.