Looking back from the year 1868, I feel that C. K. S. has himself become, as it were, a tradition of Edinburgh. His thin effeminate figure, his voice pitched in alt—his attire, as he took his daily walks on Princes Street, a long blue frock-coat, black trousers, rather wide below, and sweeping over white stockings and neat shoes—something like a web of white cambric round his neck, and a brown wig coming down to his eyebrows—had long established him as what is called a character. He had recently edited a book containing many stories of diablerie, and another in which the original narrative of ultra-presbyterian church history had to bear a series of cavalier notes of the most mocking character. He had a quaint biting wit, which people bore as they would a scratch from a provoked cat. Essentially, he was good-natured, and fond of merriment. He had considerable gifts of drawing, and one caricature portrait by him, of Queen Elizabeth dancing, ‘high and disposedly,’ before the Scotch ambassadors, is the delight of everybody who has seen it. In jest upon his own peculiarity of voice, he formed an address-card for himself consisting simply of the following anagram:
quasi dicitur C sharp. He was intensely aristocratic, and cared nothing for the interests of the great multitude. He complained that one never heard of any gentlefolks committing crimes nowadays, as if that were a disadvantage to them or the public. Any case of a Lady Jane stabbing a perjured lover would have delighted him. While the child of whim, Mr Sharpe was generally believed to possess respectable talents by which, with a need for exerting them, he might have achieved distinction. His ballad of the ‘Murder of Caerlaverock,’ in the Minstrelsy, is a masterly production; and the concluding verses haunt one like a beautiful strain of music:
‘To sweet Lincluden’s haly cells
Fu’ dowie I’ll repair;
There Peace wi’ gentle Patience dwells,
Nae deadly feuds are there.
In tears I’ll wither ilka charm,
Like draps o’ balefu’ yew;
And wail the beauty that cou’d harm