Note 376 — OCTOBER

Mr. Pringle was a Roxburghshire farmer's son who in youth attracted Sir Walter's notice by his poem called The Autumnal Excursion; or, Sketches in Teviotdale. He was for a short time Editor of Blackwood's Magazine, but the publisher and he had different politics, quarrelled, and parted. Sir Walter then gave Pringle strong recommendations to the late Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope in which colony he settled, and for some years throve under the Governor's protection; but the newspaper alluded to in the text ruined his prospects at the Cape; he returned to England, became Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society, published a charming little volume entitled African Sketches, and died in December 1834. He was a man of amiable feelings and elegant genius.