Deem not that time's oblivious hand From memory's page has raz'd the days, By Lee's green verge we wont to stand, And on his crystal current gaze. Our author was now to experience the most severe ftroke he had ever met with: after having loft his father, who died in February 1768, in the 84th year of his age, he was deprived of his wife, who died in child-bed, in the fame year, leaving behind her a child of which she had been delivered, that died the following Auguft. The reader will imagine what muft have been the feelings of fuch a mind as Scott's on the trying occafion of such complicated affliction. Till the death of his mother, his life feems to have run. in one even tenor, calm and unruffled; but he was now called to an exertion of that philosophy which made no inconfiderable part of his character. For fome time after the death of his wife, he he retired to the houfe of his friend Cockfield, at Upton, that, removed from those scenes which perpetually awakened every tender idea, his mind might, by degrees, recover its tranquillity: of this circumftance he speaks in his Ode addreffed to that gentleman. 'Twas when Misfortune's ftroke fevere, Ode XII. Poetical Works, page 198. When the first violence of his grief began to fettle into a fedate and gentle forrow, he folaced his lonely hours by compofing an Elegy to the memory of one who had been fo dear to him; and perhaps the genuine ftate of his mind. cannot be fo well painted as in that pa In 1769 Mr. Scott met with another lofs in the death of his friend Turner, the companion and affociate of his early ftudies with Frogley. This ingenious man died, univerfally lamented, on the 30th of June, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, at Colliton, in Devonshire, at which place he was buried. He poffeffed confiderable natural abilities, and much acquired knowledge, with a candid difpofition and elegant tafte; and by the general tenor of his correfpondence with Scott, appears to have been always a young man of a religious and ftudious turn. A pathetic tribute is paid to his memory by our author, in his Poem of Amwell, fpeaking of the several loffes which he had experienced in the death of friends. -From general fate To private woes then oft has memory pass'd; Of Of thee, De Horne,* kind, generous, wife and good; Here oft in converse free, or studious fearch From Ware's green bowers to Devon's myrtle vales Of useful life, and honour in his view; As falls the vernal bloom before the breath The tidings reach'd my ear, and in my breaft On the ift day of November, 1770, he was married at the meeting-house at Ratcliff, to his fecond wife, Mary De Horne, daughter of the late Abraham De Horne, a lady whofe amiable qualities promised him many years of uninterrupted happiness. * Mr. John De Horne, brother to Mrs. Scott, Mr. Scott's fecond wife. See Elegy written at Amwell. About About the year 1771, he commenced an acquaintance with the ingenious Dr. Beattie, who paid him two vifits at his houfe at Amwell, one in 1773, and the other in 1781. Dr. Beattie has informed me, that their converfation was commonly on literary fubjects, chiefly poetry and criticism, and that the letters which he occafionally received from him, confifted for the most part of literary news. He laments his death as depriving him of a most valuable friend, whofe memory he shall ever cherish with gratitude and veneration. Mr. Scott's fettled refidence was at Amwell, in the fame houfe where his father refided when he first retired from London, and which the fon afterwards greatly enlarged; but he every year spent some time occafionally at a house which he had at Radcliff-Crofs. By |