‘London, January 19, 1837.
‘My dear Laidlaw—I received yesterday your letter and a very munificent donation of ptarmigan, for both which accept my best thanks. They were both welcome as remembrancers of Scotland, of old days, and of your kindness and affection, of which last, though I am the worst of correspondents, neither I nor my wife are ever forgetful. The account you give of your situation at present is, considering how the world wags, not unsatisfactory. Would it were possible to find myself placed in something of a similar locality, and with the means of enjoying the country by day and my books at night, without the necessity of dividing most of my time between the labours of the desk—mere drudge-labours mostly—and the harassing turmoil of worldly society, for which I never had much, and now-a-days have rarely indeed any, relish! But my wife and children bind me to the bit, and I am well pleased with the fetters. Walter is now a tall and very handsome boy of near eleven years; Charlotte, a very winsome gipsy of eight—both intelligent in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all possible spoiling, as simple, natural, and unselfish as if they had been bred on a hillside and in a family of twelve. Sophia is your old friend—fat, fair, and by-and-by to be forty, which I now am, and over, God bless the mark! but though I think I am wiser, at least more sober, neither richer nor more likely to be rich than I was in the days of Chiefswood and Kaeside—after all, our best days, I still believe.
‘Politics, over which we used sometimes to dispute, I have quite forsworn. I have satisfied myself that the age of Toryism is by for ever; and the business of a party which can in reason propose to itself nothing but a defensive attitude, without hope either of plunder or honour, seems to me to have few claims on those who, when it was in power, never were permitted to share any of the advantages it so lavishly bestowed on fools and knaves. So I am a very tranquil and indifferent observer.
‘Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to passing affairs has arisen from the call which has been made on me to live in the past, bestowing for so many months all the time I could command, and all the care I have had really any heart in, upon the manuscript remains of our dear friend. I am glad that Cadell and the few others who have seen what I have done with these are pleased, but I assure you none of them can think more lightly of my own part in the matter than I do myself. My sole object is to do him justice, or rather to let him do himself justice, by so contriving it that he shall be as far as possible, from first to last, his own historiographer; and I have therefore willingly expended the time that would have sufficed for writing a dozen books on what will be no more than the compilation of one. A stern sense of duty—that kind of sense of it which is combined with the feeling of his actual presence in a serene state of elevation above all terrestrial and temporary views—will induce me to touch the few darker points in his life and character as freely as the others which were so predominant; and my chief anxiety on the appearance of the book will be, not to hear what is said by the world, but what is thought by you and the few others who can really compare the representation as a whole with the facts of the case. I shall, therefore, desire Cadell to send you the volumes as they are printed, though long before publication, in the confidence that they will be kept sacred, while unpublished, to yourself and your own household; and if you can give me encouragement on seeing the first and second, now I think nearly out of the printer’s hands, it will be very serviceable to me in the completion of the others. I have waived all my own notions as to the manner of publication, &c., in deference to the bookseller,[15] who is still so largely our creditor, and, I am grieved to add, will probably continue to be so for many years to come.
‘Your letters of the closing period I wish you would send to me; and of these I am sure some use, and some good use, may be made, as of those addressed to myself at the same time, which all, however melancholy to compare with those of the better day, have traces of the man. Out of these confused and painful scraps I think I can contrive to put together a picture that will be highly touching of a great mind shattered, but never degraded, and always to the last noble, as his heart continued pure and warm as long as it could beat.—Ever affectionately yours,
J. G. Lockhart.’
We are tempted to add a short extract from another letter of Lockhart’s, because it mentions a pleasing incident in the life of the second Sir Walter Scott. He writes, 25th May 1843, that Major Scott and his wife enjoyed perfect health in India, and he adds: ‘He (Sir W. S.) tells me that hearing a Highland battalion was to pass about fifty miles off from his station (Bangalore), he rode that distance one day, and back the next, merely to hear the skirl of the pipes! No doubt there would be a jolly mess for his reception besides; but I could not but be pleased with the touch of the “auld man.”’
LUCY’S FLITTIN’.
‘’Twas when the wan leaf frae the birk-tree was fa’in,
And Martinmas dowie had wound up the year,