Famous Persons and Places

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

The tea was made, and the breakfast smoked upon the table, but the professor showed no signs of being aware of the fact, and talked away famously, getting up and sitting down, walking to the window and standing before the fire, and apparently carried quite away with his own too rapid process of thought. He talked of the American poets, praised Percival and Pierpont more particularly; expressed great pleasure at the criticisms of his own works that had appeared in the American papers and magazines—and still the toast was getting cold, and with every move he seemed less and less aware of the presence of breakfast. There were plates and cups but for two, so that he was not waiting for another guest,—and after half an hour had thus elapsed, I began to fear he thought he had already breakfasted. If I had wished to have reminded him of it, however, I should have had no opportunity, for the stream of his eloquence ran on without a break; and eloquence it certainly was. His accent is very broadly Scotch, but his words are singularly well chosen, and his illustrations more novel and poetical than those of any man I ever conversed with. He spoke of Blackwood, returning to the subject repeatedly, and always with a softened tone of voice and a more impressive manner, as if his feelings were entirely engrossed by the circumstances of his illness. “Poor Blackwood,” he said, setting his hands together and fixing his eyes on the wall, as if he were soliloquising with the picture of the sick man vividly before him, “there never was a more honest creature, or a better friend. I have known him intimately for years, and owe him much; and I could lose no friend that would affect me more nearly. There is something quite awful in the striking down thus of a familiar companion by your side—the passing away—the death—the end forever of a man you have been accustomed to meet as surely as the morning or evening, and have grown to consider a part of your existence almost. To have the share he took in your thoughts thrown back upon you—and his aid and counsel and company with you no more. His own mind is in a very singular state. He knows he is to die, and he has made every preparation in the most composed and sensible manner, and if the subject is alluded to directly, does not even express a hope of recovery; yet, the moment the theme is changed, he talks as if death were as far from him as ever, and looks forward, and mingles himself up in his remarks on the future, as if he were here to see this and the other thing completed, and share with you the advantages for years to come. What a strange thing it is—this balancing between death and life—standing on the edge of the grave, and turning, first to look into its approaching darkness, and then back on the familiar and pleasant world, yet with a certain downward progress, and no hope of life, beyond the day over your head!”

I asked if Blackwood was a man of refined literary taste.

“Yes,” he said. “I would trust his opinion of a book sooner than that of any man I know. He might not publish everything he approved, for it was his business to print only things that would sell; and, therefore, there are perhaps many authors who would complain of him; but, if his opinion had been against my own, and it had been my own book, I should believe he was right and give up my own judgment. He was a patron of literature, and it owes him much. He is a loss to the world.”

I spoke of the “Noctes.”

He smiled, as you would suppose Christopher North would do, with the twinkle proper of genuine hilarity in his eye, and said, “Yes, they have been very popular. Many people in Scotland believe them to be transcripts of real scenes, and wonder how a professor of moral philosophy can descend to such carousings, and poor Hogg comes in for his share of abuse, for they never doubt he was there and said everything that is put down for him.”

“How does the Shepherd take it?”

“Very good humoredly, with the exception of one or two occasions, when cockney scribblers have visited him in their tours, and tried to flatter him by convincing him he was treated disrespectfully. But five minutes’ conversation and two words of banter restore his good humor, and he is convinced, as he ought to be, that he owes half his reputation to the Noctes.”

“What do you think of his Life of Sir Walter, which Lockhart has so butchered in Frazer?”

“Did Lockhart write that?”

“I was assured so in London.”