GLIMPSE OF EDINBURGH SOCIETY.

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tions picture him to ourselves trying to ride, but falling off incessantly; but obliged to leave off riding for the good of his family, and the peace of his parish' (he had christened his horse, Calamity). See him suddenly prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, to the great joy of Dissenters,' he declares: another time flung, as if he had been a shuttlecock, into a neighbouring parish, very glad that it was not a neighbouring planet, for somehow or other his horse and he had a 'trick of parting company.' 'I used,' he wrote, 'to think a fall from a horse dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the contrary. I have had six falls in two years, and just behaved like the Three per Cents., when they fell-I got up again, and am not a bit the worse for it, any more than the stock in question.'

His country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went to visit Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey. Travelling by the coach, a gentleman, with whom he had been talking, said, 'There is a very clever fellow lives near here, Sydney Smith, I believe; a devilish odd fellow.'-' He may be an odd fellow,' cried Sydney, taking off his hat, but here he is, odd as he is, at your service.'

Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh, changes, however, in many respects for the better. The society of Edinburgh was then in its greatest perfection. Its brilliancy,' Lord Cockburn remarks, was owing to a variety of peculiar circumstances, which only operated during this period.' The principal of these were the survivance of several of the eminent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits, which the modern flood had not yet obliterated; the rise of a powerful community of young men of ability; the exclusion of the British from the Continent, which made this place, both for education and for residence, a favourite resort of strangers; the war, which maintained a constant excitement of military preparation and of military idleness; the blaze of that popular literature which made

260

MRS. GRANT, OF LAGGAN.

this the second city in the empire for learning and science; and the extent, and the ease, with which literature and society embellished each other, without rivalry, and without pedantry.'

Among the best young' as his lordship styles them, were Lord Webb Seymour and Francis Horner; whilst those of the interesting old' most noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had unfolded herself,' to borrow Lord Cockburn's words, in the Letters from the Mountains,' 'an interesting treasury of good solitary thoughts.' Of these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, "They were excellent women, and not too blue. Their sense covered the colour.' It was to Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, 'That there was no objection to the blue stocking, provided the petticoat came low enough to cover it.' Neither of these ladies possessed personal attractions. Mrs. Hamilton had the plain face proper to literary women; Mrs. Grant was a tall dark woman, with much dignity of manner: in spite of her life of misfortune, she had a great flow of spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cockburn render justice to her character: She was always under the influence of an affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, unquenched by time and sorrow, survived the wreck of many domestic attachments, and shed a glow over the close of a very protracted life.'

Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their conversazioni, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of the highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. Society in Edinburgh took the form of Parisian soirées, and although much divided into parties, was sufficiently general to be varied. It is amusing to find that Mrs. Grant was at one time one of the supposed 'Authors of "Waverley," until the disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It was the popularity of Marmion' that made Scott, as he himself confesses, nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, after meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has

2

A PENSION DIFFICULTY.

261

been allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be witty enough.' Mr. Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of paper* that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze-and no wonder.'

Scott endeavoured to secure Mrs. Grant a pension; merited, as he observes, by her as an authoress, but much more,' in his opinion, by the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had born a great succession of domestic calamities.' Unhappily,' he adds, there was only about 1007. open on the Pension List, and this the minister assigned in equal portions to Mrs. G- and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G-, proud as a Highlandwoman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this partition in malam partem, and written to Lord Melville about her merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the king. This is not the way to make her plack a bawbee, and Lord M-, a little miffed in turn, sends the whole correspondence to me to know whether Mrs. G- will accept the 50%. or not. Now, hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour, I have got the good-humoured Man of Feeling to find out the lady's mind, and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M-. After all, the poor lady is greatly to be pitied; her sole remaining

daughter deep and far gone in a decline.'

The Man of Feeling proved successful, and reported soon afterwards that the dirty pudding' was eaten by the almost destitute authoress. Scott's tone in the letters which refer to this subject does little credit to his good taste and delicacy of feeling, which were really attributable to his character.

Very few notices occur of any intercourse between Scott and Sydney Smith in Lockhart's 'Life.' It was not, indeed, Alluding to Lady Scott.

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6

JEFFREY AND COCKBURN.

until 1827 that Scott could be sufficiently cooled down from the ferment of politics which had been going on to meet Jeffrey and Cockburn. When he dined, however, with Murray, then Lord Advocate, and met Jeffrey, Cockburn, the late Lord Rutherford, then Mr. Rutherford, and others of that file,' he pronounced the party to be very pleasant, capital good cheer, and excellent wine, much laugh and fun. I do not know,' he writes, 'how it is, but when I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often merrier than when with our own set. Is it because they are cleverer? Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraor dinary men, yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our jests in daily contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to be courteous, and of course to be pleased.'

On his side, Cockburn did ample justice to the 'genius who,' to use his own words, 'has immortalized Edinburgh and delighted the world.' Mrs. Scott could not, however, recover the smarting inflicted by the critiques of Jeffrey on her husband's works. Her And I hope, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Constable paid you well for your article' (Jeffrey dining with her that day), had a depth of simple satire in it that even an Edinburgh reviewer could hardly exceed. It was, one must add, impertinent and in bad taste. You are very good at cutting up.'

Sydney Smith found Jeffrey and Cockburn rising barristers. Horner, on leaving Edinburgh, had left to Jeffrey his bar wig, and the bequest had been lucky. Jeffrey was settled at Craigcrook, a lovely English-looking spot, with wooded slopes and green glades, near Edinburgh; and Cockburn had, since 1811, set up his rural gods at Bonally, near Colinton, just under the Pentland Hills, and he wrote, 'Unless some avenging angel shall expel me, I shall never leave that paradise.' And a paradise it was. Beneath those

rough, bare hills, broken here and there by a trickling burn, like a silver thread on the brown sward, stands a Norman tower, the addition, by Playfair's skill, to what was once a scarcely habitable farm-house. That tower contained Lord Cockburn's fine library, also his ordinary sitting-rooms. There he read, and wrote, and received such society as will never meet again, there or elsewhere-amongst them Sydney Smith. Beneath-around the tower-stretches a delicious garden, composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that bloomed freely in that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of the few trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour: for to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills above: from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called them. And this was, for many years, one of the rallying points of the best Scottish society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the host called his carnival. Friends were summoned from the north and the south-'death no apology.' High jinks within doors, excursions without. Every Edinburgh man reveres the spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Lord Cockburn. Everything except the two burns,' he wrote, the few old trees, and the mountains, are my own work. Human nature is incapable of 'enjoying more happiness than has been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often tremble in the anticipation that the cloud must come at last.' And come it did; but found him not unprepared, although the burden that he had to bear in after-life was heavy. In their enlarged and philosophic minds, in their rapid transition from sense to nonsense, there was an affinity in the characters of Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn which was not carried out in any other point. Smith's conversation was wit-Lord Cockburn's was eloquence.

From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned contentedly to Foston-le-Clay, and to Bunch. Amongst other gifted visitors was Mrs. Marcet. Come here, Bunch,'