On the same evening the Rev. Mr. Harris wrote from London to the mother of the future first Earl of Malmesbury, just born: ‘You cannot imagine the prodigious rejoicings that have been made this evening in every part of the town; and indeed it is a proper time for people to express their joy when the enemies of their country are thus cut off.’
CARLYLE AND SMOLLETT.
On that evening Alexander Carlyle was with Smollett in the Golden Ball coffee-house, Cockspur Street. ‘London,’ he says, ‘was in a perfect uproar of joy. About nine o’clock I asked Smollett if he was ready to go, as he lived at May Fair’ (Carlyle was bound for New Bond Street on a supper engagement). ‘He said he was, and would conduct me. The mob were so riotous and the squibs so numerous and incessant that we were glad to go into a narrow entry to put our wigs into our pockets, and to take our swords from our belts and walk with them in our hands, as everybody then wore swords; and after cautioning me against speaking a word lest the mob should discover my country and become insolent, “John Bull,” says he, “is as haughty and valiant to-night, as he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday (Friday?) when the Highlanders were at Derby.” After we got to the head of the Haymarket through incessant fire, the doctor led me by narrow lanes where we met nobody but a few boys at a pitiful bonfire, who very civilly asked us for sixpence, which I gave them. I saw not Smollett again for some time after, when he showed Smith and me the manuscript of his “Tears of Scotland,” which was published not long after, and had such a run of approbation.’
‘TEARS OF SCOTLAND.’
Smollett was one of those Tories who, like many of the Nonjurors, were not necessarily or consequently Jacobites. They were more willing to make the best of a foreign king than to risk their liberties under an incapable bigot like James Stuart, who, save for the accident of birth, was less of an Englishman and knew less of England (in which, throughout his life, he had only spent a few months) than either of the Georges. But Smollett felt keenly the sufferings of his country, and out of the feeling sprung his verses so full of a tenderly expressed grief,—‘The Tears of Scotland!’ How that mournful ode was written in London in this year of mournful memories for the Jacobites, no one can tell better than Walter Scott. ‘Some gentlemen having met at a tavern, were amusing themselves before supper with a game of cards, while Smollett, not choosing to play, sat down to write. One of the company (Graham of Gartmoor), observing his earnestness and supposing he was writing verses, asked him if it was not so. He accordingly read them the first sketch of the “Tears of Scotland,” consisting only of six stanzas, and on their remarking that the termination of the poem being too strongly expressed might give offence to persons whose political opinions were different, he sat down without reply and, with an air of great indignation, subjoined the concluding stanza:—
INDIGNATION VERSES.
While the warm blood bedews my veins
And unimpair’d remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country’s fate
Within my filial breast shall beat.