down to the closing stanzas, which again left him in tears—
“My wound is deep—I fain would sleep—
Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And hide me beneath the bracken-bush
That grows on yonder lily lee ...
This deed was done at the Otterburne,
About the dawning of the day.
Earl Douglas was buried by the bracken-bush,
And the Percy led captive away.”
VOYAGE TO ITALY
The new Whig Government put a ship of war at the service of their great antagonist. He was to visit Italy, and Cadell kept the type of his two last tales set up; they were revised and altered in Scott’s absence abroad. One incident in Count Robert of Paris, an incident terribly expressive of the author’s condition, was expunged. Sir Walter felt the consolatory delusion that he had succeeded in his task, that his debts were paid. The last autumn at Abbotsford was full of the charm of sunset. Turner came, and painted Abbotsford on a tea tray, at a picnic. Young Walter Scott came, a joy to his father’s eyes, “a handsomer fellow never put foot into stirrup.” Wordsworth, too, was there, as his verses on Yarrow testify, and his noble sonnet—
A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain.
On the voyage to Italy Scott still was writing, the Journal, letters, the tale of Il Bizarro, the novel of The Knights of Malta; the manuscript is still the old closely serried manuscript, but the handwriting is wofully altered. I am informed that many passages are full of the old spirit, but care has been taken that this work shall never appear as a “literary curiosity.”
At Naples Scott heard of Goethe’s death. “At least he died at home. Let us to Abbotsford!” The party, with Mr. Charles Scott, passed on to Rome. At Lake Avernus, which, says Lockhart, is like a Highland loch, Scott repeated—
We daurna go a’ milking
For Charlie and his men.
The classic scene reminded him of his dear hills. At Rome, with great difficulty, he visited the tomb of James III. (so his epitaph proclaims him,) and of Prince Charles and the Cardinal Duke of York; the latest minstrel stood by the dust of the last of the royal line. The rest “can hardly be told too briefly,” says Lockhart.
In passing through Germany, Scott wrote what his son Charles endorses as “The last letter written by my dear father.” It is a brief note of courtesy to Arthur Schopenhauer, the famous philosopher, regretting that he was too unwell to receive Schopenhauer’s visit. The note is clearly written and well expressed. It is in the Laing MSS. in Edinburgh University Library. Once again Scott wrote, or tried to write, in the packet boat crossing the Channel. Pen and ink were borrowed for him from Mrs. Sherwood, the author of The Fairchild Family.