[136] See Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_, Act I. Sc. 3.
[137] See Boswell's _Johnson_, Croker's ed. imp. 8vo, p. 318.
[138] Sir Reginald Steuart Seton of Staffa, for many years Secretary to
the Highland and Agricultural Society; died at Edinburgh in 1838.
[139] On reading the savage article on Hunt's Byron published in
Blackwood, for March 1828, Sir Walter's thoughts must have gone back not
only to Gourgaud's affair of the previous year, and to the more serious
matter of the _Beacon_ newspaper in 1821,--when, to use Lord Cockburn's
words, "it was dreadful to think that a life like Scott's was for a
moment in peril in such a cause"--but he must also have had very sad
recollections of the bloody results of the two melancholy duels arising
from the same party rancour in February 1821 (Scott and Christie) and in
March 1822 (Stuart and Boswell), with all the untold domestic miseries
accompanying them. It is satisfactory to think that this was about the
last of these uncalled for literary onslaughts, as one finds, in turning
over the pages of _Blackwood_, that in 1834 Professor Wilson in the
_Noctes_ rebukes some one for reviving "forgotten falsehoods," praises
Leigh Hunt's _London Journal_, and adds the ecstatic words, which he
also addressed later on to Lord Jeffrey, "The animosities are mortal,
but the humanities live for ever."
[140] Act III. Sc. 1.
[141] Sholto Douglas, eighteenth Earl of Morton.