Note 6 — NOTICES OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE LATE SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

Footnote 6

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Many anecdotes are related in illustration of Sir Walter Scott's excellent memory. The Ettrick Shepherd tells of his attempting to sing his ballad of Gilmanscleuch, which had never been printed or penned, but which the Shepherd had sung once over to Sir Walter three years previously. On the second attempt to sing it, says the Shepherd, "in the eighth or ninth verse, I stuck in it, and could not get on with another line; on which he (Sir Walter) began it a second time, and recited it every word from beginning to the end of the eighty-eighth stanza:" and, on the Shepherd expressing his astonishment, Sir Walter related that he had recited that ballad and one of Southey's, but which ballads he had only heard once from their respective authors, and he believed he had recited them both without missing a word. Sir Walter also used to relate that his friend, Mr. Thomas Campbell, called upon him one evening to show him the manuscript of a poem he had written—The Pleasures of Hope. Sir Walter happened to have some fine old whisky in his house, and his friend sat down and had a tumbler or two of punch. Mr. Campbell left him, but Sir Walter thought he would dip into the manuscript before going to bed. He opened it, read, and read again—charmed with the classical grace, purity, and stateliness of that finest of all our modern didactic poems. Next morning Mr. Campbell again called, when to his inexpressible surprise, his friend on returning the manuscript to its owner, said he should guard well against piracy, for that he himself could repeat the poem from beginning to end! The poet dared him to the task, when Sir Walter Scott began and actually repeated the whole, consisting of more than two thousand lines, with the omission of only a few couplets.—Inverness Courier.