Footnote 4: [(return)]
General Preface, p. ii.
Footnote 5: [(return)]
General Preface, &c.
Footnote 6: [(return)]
Many anecdotes are related in illustration of Sir Walter Scott's excellent memory. The Ettrick Shepherd tells of his attempting to sing his ballad of Gilmanscleuch, which had never been printed or penned, but which the Shepherd had sung once over to Sir Walter three years previously. On the second attempt to sing it, says the Shepherd, "in the eighth or ninth verse, I stuck in it, and could not get on with another line; on which he (Sir Walter) began it a second time, and recited it every word from beginning to the end of the eighty-eighth stanza:" and, on the Shepherd expressing his astonishment, Sir Walter related that he had recited that ballad and one of Southey's, but which ballads he had only heard once from their respective authors, and he believed he had recited them both without missing a word. Sir Walter also used to relate that his friend, Mr. Thomas Campbell, called upon him one evening to show him the manuscript of a poem he had written—The Pleasures of Hope. Sir Walter happened to have some fine old whisky in his house, and his friend sat down and had a tumbler or two of punch. Mr. Campbell left him, but Sir Walter thought he would dip into the manuscript before going to bed. He opened it, read, and read again—charmed with the classical grace, purity, and stateliness of that finest of all our modern didactic poems. Next morning Mr. Campbell again called, when to his inexpressible surprise, his friend on returning the manuscript to its owner, said he should guard well against piracy, for that he himself could repeat the poem from beginning to end! The poet dared him to the task, when Sir Walter Scott began and actually repeated the whole, consisting of more than two thousand lines, with the omission of only a few couplets.—Inverness Courier.
Footnote 7: [(return)]
Memoir in the Athenaeum.
Footnote 8: [(return)]
Sir Walter possessed a practical as well as theoretical knowledge of Landscape Gardening, as may be seen in a valuable paper contributed by him to No. 47, of the Quarterly Review. The details of this paper were, however, disputed by some writers on the subject.
Footnote 9: [(return)]
Communicated to No. 199, of The Athenaeum. The mansion was built from designs by Atkinson. Sir Walter may, however, be termed the amateur architect of the pile, and this may somewhat explain its irregularities. We have been told that the earliest design of Abbotsford was furnished by the late Mr. Terry, the comedian, who was an intimate friend of Sir Walter, and originally an architect by profession. His widow, one of the Nasmyths, has painted a clever View of Abbotsford, from the opposite bank of the Tweed; which is engraved in No. 427, of The Mirror.
Footnote 10: [(return)]
Picture of Scotland, by Chambers.
Footnote 11: [(return)]
Abridged from the General Preface, &c.
Footnote 12: [(return)]
Sir Henry Wootton's Elements of Architecture.
Footnote 13: [(return)]
Evelyn's Diary.