_Scotland._
The globe we inhabit is divisible into two worlds; one hardly less
tangible, and far more known than the other,--the common geographical
world, and the world of books; and the latter may be as geographically
set forth. A man of letters, conversant with poetry and romance, might
draw out a very curious map, in which this world of books should be
delineated and filled up, to the delight of all genuine readers, as
truly as that in Guthrie or Pinkerton. To give a specimen, and begin
with Scotland,--Scotland would not be the mere territory it is, with a
scale of so many miles to a degree, and such and such a population. Who
(except a patriot or cosmopolite) cares for the miles or the men, or
knows that they exist, in any degree of consciousness with which he
cares for the never-dying population of books? How many generations of
men have passed away, and will pass, in Ayrshire or Dumfries, and not
all the myriads be as interesting to us as a single Burns? What have we
known of them, or shall ever know, whether lairds, lords, or ladies, in
comparison with the inspired ploughman? But we know of the bards and the
lasses, and the places which he has recorded in song; we know the scene
of 'Tam o' Shanter's' exploit; we know the pastoral landscapes ... and
the scenes immortalized in Walter Scott and the old ballads; and,
therefore, the book-map of Scotland would present us with the most
prominent of these. We should have the Border, with its banditti, towns,
and woods; Tweedside, Melrose, and Roslin, 'Edina,' otherwise called
Edinburgh and Auld Reekie, or the town of Hume, Robertson, and others;
Woodhouselee, and other classical and haunted places; the bower built by
the fair hands of 'Bessie Bell' and 'Mary Gray'; the farm-houses of
Burns's friends; the scenes of his loves and sorrows; the land of 'Old
Mortality', of the 'Gentle Shepherd', and of 'Ossian'. The Highlands,
and the great blue billowy domains of heather, would be distinctly
marked out, in their most poetical regions; and we should have the
tracks of Ben Jonson to Hawthornden, of 'Rob Roy' to his hiding-places,
and of 'Jeanie Deans' towards England. Abbotsford, be sure, would not
be left out; nor the house of the 'Antiquary'--almost as real a man as
his author. Nor is this all: for we should have older Scotland, the
Scotland of James the First, and of 'Peeblis at the Play', and Gawin
Douglas, and Bruce, and Wallace; we should have older Scotland still,
the Scotland of Ariosto, with his tale of 'Ginevra', and the new
'Andromeda', delivered from the sea-monster at the Isle of Ebuda (the
Hebrides); and there would be the residence of the famous 'Launcelot of
the Lake', at Berwick, called the Joyeuse Garde, and other ancient sites
of chivalry and romance; nor should the nightingale be left out in
'Ginevra's' bower, for Ariosto has put it there, and there, accordingly,
it is and has been heard, let ornithology say what it will; for what
ornithologist knows so much of the nightingale as a poet? We would have
an inscription put on the spot--'Here the nightingale sings, contrary to
what has been affirmed by White and others.' This is the Scotland of
books, and a beautiful place it is. I will venture to affirm, Sir, even
to yourself, that it is a more beautiful place than the other Scotland,
always excepting to an exile or a lover.
_England._
Book-England, on the map, would shine as the Albion of the old Giants;
as the 'Logres' of the Knights of the Round Table; as the scene of
Amadis of Gaul, with its _island_ of Windsor; as the abode of fairies,
of the Druids, of the divine Countess of Coventry, of Guy, Earl of
Warwick, of 'Alfred' (whose reality was a romance), of the Fair
Rosamond, of the _Arcades_ and _Comus_, of Chaucer and Spenser, of the
poets of the Globe and the Mermaid, the wits of Twickenham and Hampton
Court. Fleet Street would be Johnson's Fleet Street; the Tower would
belong to Julius Caesar; and Blackfriars to Suckling, Vandyke, and the
_Dunciad_. Chronology and the mixture of truth and fiction, that is to
say, of one sort of truth and another, would come to nothing in a work
of this kind; for, as it has been before observed, things are real in
proportion as they are impressive. And who has not as 'gross, open, and
palpable' an idea of 'Falstaff' in Eastcheap, as of 'Captain Grose'
himself, beating up his quarters? A map of fictitious, literary, and
historical London, would, of itself, constitute a great curiosity.
_Ireland._