These extracts[80] contain the substance of Sir Walter Scott’s speeches on this memorable occasion. His allusions to actors and the drama are, of themselves, important; but his avowal of himself as the author of the “Waverley Novels,” is a fact of peculiar interest in literary history. Particular circumstances, however, had made known the “Great Unknown” to several persons in London some months previously, though the fact had not by any means been generally circulated.
[80] From the report of the “Edinburgh Evening Courant” of Saturday, 24th Feb. 1827; in “The Times” of the Tuesday following.
Hot Meals.
POWELL, THE FIRE-EATER.
“Oh! for a muse of fire!”
One fire burns out another burning. The jack-puddings who swallow flame at “the only booth” in every fair, have extinguished remembrance of Powell the fire-eater—a man so famous in his own day, that his name still lives. Though no journal records the time of his death, no line eulogizes his memory, no stone marks his burial-place, there are two articles written during his lifetime, which, being noticed here, may “help his fame along” a little further. Of the first, by a correspondent of Sylvanus Urban, the following is a sufficient abstract.
Ashbourn, Derbyshire, Jan. 20, 1755.
Last spring, Mr. Powell, the famous fire-eater, did us the honour of a visit at this town; and, as he set forth in his printed bills, that he had shown away not only before most of the crowned heads in Europe, but even before the Royal Society of London, and was dignified with a curious and very ample silver medal, which, he said, was bestowed on him by that learned body, as a testimony of their approbation, for eating what nobody else could eat, I was prevailed upon, at the importunity of some friends, to go and see a sight, that so many great kings and philosophers had not thought below their notice. And, I confess, though neither a superstitious nor an incurious man, I was not a little astonished at his wonderful performances in the fire-eating way.