_Unpublished Epigram by Sir Walter Scott_ (Vol. vii., pp. 498. 576.).--The
following extract is from the _Gentleman's Magazine_, March, 1824, p. 194.:
"Mr. J. Lawrence of Somers Town observes: 'In the summer of the year
1770 I was on a visit at Beaumont Hall on the coast of Essex, a few
miles distant from Harwich. It was then the residence of Mr. Canham....
I was invited to ascend the attics in order to read some lines,
imprinted by a cowboy of precocious intellect. I found these in
handsome, neatly executed letters, printed and burnished with
leaf-gold, on the wall of his sleeping-room. They were really golden
verses, and may well be styled Pythagorean from their point, to wit:
'Earth goes upon the earth, glittering like gold;
Earth goes to the earth sooner than 'twould;
Earth built upon the earth castles and towers;
Earth said to the Earth, All shall be ours.'
The curiosity of these lines so forcibly impressed them on my memory,
that time has not been able to efface a tittle of them. _But from what
source did the boy obtain them?_"
Permit me to repeat this Query?