He smiled, as you would suppose Christopher North would do, with the
twinkle proper of genuine hilarity in his eye, and said, “Yes, they have
been very popular. Many people in Scotland believe them to be
transcripts of real scenes, and wonder how a professor of moral
philosophy can descend to such carousings, and poor Hogg comes in for
his share of abuse, for they never doubt he was there and said
everything that is put down for him.”
“How does the Shepherd take it?”
“Very good humoredly, with the exception of one or two occasions, when
cockney scribblers have visited him in their tours, and tried to flatter
him by convincing him he was treated disrespectfully. But five minutes’
conversation and two words of banter restore his good humor, and he is
convinced, as he ought to be, that he owes half his reputation to the
Noctes.”
“What do you think of his Life of Sir Walter, which Lockhart has so
butchered in Frazer?”
“_Did_ Lockhart write that?”
“I was assured so in London.”
“It was a barbarous and unjustifiable attack; and, oddly enough, I said
so yesterday to Lockhart himself, who was here, and he differed from me
entirely. Now you mention it, I think from his manner he _must_ have
written it.”
“Will Hogg forgive him?”
“Never! never! I do not think he knows yet who has done it, but I hear
that he is dreadfully exasperated. Lockhart is quite wrong. To attack an
old man, with gray hairs, like the Shepherd, and accuse him so flatly
and unnecessarily of lie upon lie—oh, it was not right.”
“Do you think Hogg misrepresented facts willingly?”
“No, oh no! he is perfectly honest, no doubt, and quite revered Sir
Walter. He has an unlucky inaccuracy of mind, however; and his own
vanity, which is something quite ridiculous, has given a coloring to his
conversations with Scott, which puts them in a very false light; and Sir
Walter, who was the best natured of men, may have said the things
ascribed to him in a variety of moods, such as no one can understand who
does not know what a bore Hogg must sometimes have been at Abbottsford.
Do you know Lockhart?”
“No, I do not. He is almost the only literary man in London I have not
met; and I must say, as the editor of the Quarterly, and the most unfair
and unprincipled critic of the day, I have no wish to know him. I never
heard him well spoken of. I probably have met a hundred of his
acquaintances, but I have not seen one who pretended to be his friend.”
“Yet there is a great deal of good in Lockhart. I allow all you say of
his unfairness and severity; but if he were sitting there, opposite you,
you would find him the mildest and most unpresuming of men, and so he
appears in private life always.”
“Not always. A celebrated foreigner, who had been very intimate with
him, called one morning to deprecate his severity upon Baron D’Haussez’s
book in a forthcoming review. He did his errand in a friendly way, and,
on taking his leave, Lockhart, with much ceremony, accompanied him down
to his carriage. ‘Pray don’t give yourself the trouble to come down,’
said the polite Frenchman. ‘I make a point of doing it, sir,’ said
Lockhart, with a very offensive manner, ‘for I understand from your
friend’s book, that we are not considered a polite nation in France.’
Nothing certainly could be more ill-bred and insulting.”
“Still it is not his nature. I do believe that it is merely an unhappy
talent that he has for sarcasm, with which his heart has nothing to do.
When he sits down to review a book, he never thinks of the author or his
feelings. He cuts it up with pleasure, because he does it with skill in
the way of his profession, as a surgeon dissects a dead body. He would
be the first to show the man a real kindness if he stood before him. I
have known Lockhart long. He was in Edinboro’ a great while, and when he
was writing ‘Valerius,’ we were in the habit of walking out together
every morning, and when we reached a quiet spot in the country, he read
to me the chapters as he wrote them. He finished it in _three weeks_. I
heard it all thus by piecemeal as it went on, and had much difficulty in
persuading him that it was worth publishing. He wrote it very rapidly,
and thought nothing of it. We used to sup together with Blackwood, and
that was the real origin of the ‘Noctes.’”
“At Ambrose’s?”
“At Ambrose’s.”
“But is there such a tavern, really?”
“Oh, certainly. Anybody will show it to you. It is a small house, kept
in an out-of-the-way corner of the town, by Ambrose, who is an excellent
fellow in his way, and had a great influx of custom in consequence of
his celebrity in the Noctes. We were there one night very late, and had
all been remarkably gay and agreeable. ‘What a pity,’ said Lockhart,
‘that some short hand writer had not been here to take down the good
things that have been said at this supper.’ The next day he produced a
paper called ‘Noctes _Ambro_sianæ,’ and that was the first. I continued
them afterward.”
“Have you no idea of publishing them separately? I think a volume or two
should be made of the more poetical and and critical parts, certainly.
Leaving out the politics and the merely local topics of the day, no book
could be more agreeable.”
“It was one of the things pending when poor Blackwood was taken ill. But
will you have some breakfast?”
The breakfast had been cooling for an hour, and I most willingly acceded
to his proposition. Without rising, he leaned back, with his chair still
toward the fire, and seizing the tea-pot as if it were a sledge-hammer,
he poured from one cup to the other without interrupting the stream,
overrunning both cup and saucer, and partly overflooding the tea-tray.
He then set the cream toward me with a carelessness which nearly overset
it, and in trying to reach an egg from the centre of the table, broke
two. He took no notice of his own awkwardness, but drank his cup of tea
at a single draught, ate his egg in the same expeditious manner, and
went on talking of the Noctes and Lockhart and Blackwood, as if eating
his breakfast were rather a troublesome parenthesis in his conversation.
After a while he digressed to Wordsworth and Southey, and asked me if I
was going to return by the Lakes. I proposed doing so.
“I will give you letters to both, if you haven’t them. I lived a long
time in that neighborhood, and know Wordsworth perhaps as well as any
one. Many a day I have walked over the hills with him, and listened to
his repetition of his own poetry, which of course filled my mind
completely at the time, and perhaps started the poetical vein in me,
though I cannot agree with the critics that my poetry is an imitation of
Wordsworth’s.”
“Did Wordsworth repeat any other poetry than his own?”
“Never in a single instance, to my knowledge. He is remarkable for the
manner in which he is wrapped up in his own poetical life. He thinks of
nothing else. Everything is done with reference to it. He is all and
only a poet.”
“Was the story true that was told in the papers of his seeing, for the
first time, in a large company some new novel of Scott’s, in which there
was a motto taken from his works; and that he went immediately to the
shelf and took down one of his own volumes and read the whole poem to
the party, who were waiting for a reading of the new book?”
“Perfectly true. It happened in this very house. Wordsworth was very
angry at the paragraph, and I believe accused me of giving it to the
world. I was as much surprised as himself, however, to see it in print.”
“What is Southey’s manner of life?”
“Walter Scott said of him that he lived too much with women. He is
secluded in the country, and surrounded by a circle of admiring friends
who glorify every literary project he undertakes, and persuade him in
spite of his natural modesty, that he can do nothing wrong or
imperfectly. He has great genius and is a most estimable man.”
“Hamilton lives on the Lakes too—does he not?”
“Yes. How terribly he was annoyed by the review of his book in the North
American. Who wrote it?”
“I have not heard positively, but I presume it was Everett. I know
nobody else in the country who holds such a pen. He is the American
Junius.”
“It was excessively clever but dreadfully severe, and Hamilton was
frantic about it. I sent it to him myself, and could scarce have done
him a more ungracious office. But what a strange thing it is that nobody
can write a good book on America! The ridiculous part of it seems to me
that men of common sense go there as travellers, and fill their books
with scenes such as they may see every day within five minutes’ walk of
their own doors, and call them American. Vulgar people are to be found
all over the world, and I will match any scene in Hamilton or Mrs.
Trollope, any day or night here in Edinburgh. I have always had an idea
that I should be the best traveller in America myself. I have been so in
the habit of associating with people of every class in my own country,
that I am better fitted to draw the proper distinctions, I think,
between what is universal over the world or peculiar to America.”
“I promise you a hearty welcome, if you should be inclined to try.”
“I have thought seriously of it. It is, after all, not more than a
journey to Switzerland or Italy, of which we think nothing, and my
vacation of five months would give me ample time, I suppose, to run
through the principal cities. I shall do it, I think.”
I asked if he had written a poem of any length within the last few
years.
“No, though I am always wishing to do it. Many things interfere with my
poetry. In the first place I am obliged to give a lecture once a day for
six months, and in the summer it is such a delight to be released, and
get away into the country with my girls and boys, that I never put pen
to paper till I am driven. Then Blackwood is a great care; and, greater
objection still, I have been discouraged in various ways by criticism.
It used to gall me to have my poems called imitations of Wordsworth and
his school; a thing I could not see myself, but which was asserted even
by those who praised me, and which modesty forbade I should disavow. I
really can see no resemblance between the Isle of Palms and anything of
Wordsworth’s. I _think_ I have a style of my own, and as my _ain barn_,
I think better of it than other people, and so pride prevents my
writing. Until late years, too, I have been the subject of much
political abuse, and for that I should not have cared if it were not
disagreeable to have children and servants reading it in the morning
papers, and a fear of giving them another handle in my poetry, was
another inducement for not writing.”
I expressed my surprise at what he said, for, as far as I knew the
periodicals, Wilson had been a singularly continued favorite.
“Yes, out of this immediate sphere, perhaps—but it requires a strong
mind to suffer annoyance at one’s lips, and comfort oneself with the
praise of a distant and outer circle of public opinion. I had a family
growing up, of sons and daughters, who felt for me more than I should
have felt for myself, and I was annoyed perpetually. Now, these very
papers praise me, and I really can hardly believe my eyes when I open
them and find the same type and imprint expressing such different
opinions. It is absurd to mind such weathercocks; and, in truth, the
only people worth heeding or writing for are the quiet readers in the
country, who read for pleasure, and form sober opinions apart from
political or personal prejudice. I would give more for the praise of one
country clergyman and his family than I would for the admiration of a
whole city. People in towns require a constant phantasmagoria, to keep
up even the remembrance of your name. What books and authors, what
battles and heroes, are forgotten in a day!”
My letter is getting too long, and I must make it shorter, as it is
vastly less agreeable than the visit itself. Wilson went on to speak of
his family, and his eyes kindled with pleasure in talking of his
children. He invited me to stop and visit him at his place near Selkirk,
in my way south, and promised me that I should see Hogg, who lived not
far off. Such inducement was scarce necessary, and I made a half promise
to do it and left him, after having passed several hours of the highest
pleasure in his fascinating society.