Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, Volume 7

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Ticknor and Fields, 1862

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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.

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