Footnote 32: Now Lord Abercromby.—(1826.)[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 33: The late Alexander Campbell, a warm-hearted man, and an enthusiast in Scottish music, which he sang most beautifully, had this ungrateful task imposed on him. He was a man of many accomplishments, but dashed with a bizarrerie of temper which made them useless to their proprietor. He wrote several books—as a Tour in Scotland, etc.;—and he made an advantageous marriage, but fell nevertheless into distressed circumstances, which I had the pleasure of relieving, if I could not remove. His sense of gratitude was very strong, and showed itself oddly in one respect. He would never allow that I had a bad ear; but contended, that if I did not understand music, it was because I did not choose to learn it. But when he attended us in George's Square, our neighbor, Lady Cumming, sent to beg the boys might not be all flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had no doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord was really dreadful. Robert was the only one of our family who could sing, though my father was musical, and a performer on the violoncello at the gentlemen's concerts.—(1826.)[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 34: Now Lord Justice-Clerk.—(1826.)[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 35: On Sir Walter's copy of Recreations with the Muses, by William, Earl of Stirling, 1637, there is the following MS. note:—"Sir William Alexander, sixth Baron of Menstrie, and first Earl of Stirling, the friend of Drummond of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, died in 1640. His eldest son, William, Viscount Canada, died before his father, leaving one son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Margaret, the second of these daughters, married Sir Robert Sinclair of Longformacus in the Merse, to whom she bore two daughters, Anne and Jean. Jean Sinclair, the younger daughter, married Sir John Swinton of Swinton; and Jean Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmother of the proprietor of this volume."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 36: His family well remember the delight which he expressed on receiving, in 1818, a copy of this first edition, a small dark quarto of 1688, from his friend Constable. He was breakfasting when the present was delivered, and said, "This is indeed the resurrection of an old ally—I mind spelling these lines." He read aloud the jingling epistle to his own great-great-grandfather, which, like the rest, concludes with a broad hint, that as the author had neither lands nor flocks—"no estate left except his designation"—the more fortunate kinsman who enjoyed, like Jason of old, a fair share of fleeces, might do worse than bestow on him some of King James's broad pieces. On rising from table, Sir Walter immediately wrote as follows on the blank leaf opposite to poor Satchells' honest title-page—
"I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier, but a soldier's lover,
In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover,
That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million times over;
And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces
As ever were hairs in Jason's and Medea's golden fleeces."
The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that the copy now at Abbotsford was the only one Mr. Constable had ever seen—and no wonder, for the author's envoy is in these words:—
"Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly
Amongst the nobles and gentility;
Thou'rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns,
But given to worthy persons of renown.
The number's few I've printed, in regard
My charges have been great, and I hope reward;
I caus'd not print many above twelve score,
And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 37: Leyden, the author of these beautiful lines, has borrowed, as The Lay of the Last Minstrel did also, from one of Satchells's primitive couplets—
"If heather-tops had been corn of the best,
Then Buccleugh mill had gotten a noble grist."[Back to Main Text]