g
travellers a strong admonition touching the dangers of Irish
hospitality.]

[Footnote 119: These lines are part of a song on
_Little-tony_--_i. e._, the Parliamentary orator Littleton.
They are quoted in Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, originally
published in 1791.]

I have had much hesitation about inserting the preceding letter, but
could not make up my mind to omit what seems to me a most exquisite
revelation of the whole character of Scott at this critical period of
his history, both literary and personal;--more especially of his
habitual effort to suppress, as far as words were concerned, the more
tender feelings, which were in no heart deeper than in his.

It must, I think, have been, while he was indulging his _vagabond_
vein, during the autumn of 1795, that Mrs. Barbauld paid her visit to
Edinburgh, and entertained a party at Mr. Dugald Stewart's, by reading
Mr. William Taylor's then unpublished version of Buerger's Lenore. In
the essay on Imitation of Popular Poetry, the reader has a full
account of the interest with which Scott heard, some weeks afterwards,
a friend's imperfect recollections of this performance; the anxiety
with which he sought after a copy of the original German; the delight
with which he at length perused it; and how, having just been reading
the specimens of ballad poetry introduced into Lewis's romance of The
Monk, he called to mind the early facility of versification which had
lain so long in abeyance, {p.217} and ventured to promise his friend
a rhymed translation of Lenore from his own pen. The friend in
question was Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of Purgstall, the
sister of his friend George Cranstoun, now Lord Corehouse. He began
the task, he tells us, after supper, and did not retire to bed until
he had finished it, having by that time worked himself into a state of
excitement which set sleep at defiance.

Next morning, before breakfast, he carried his MS. to Miss Cranstoun,
who was not only delighted but astonished at it; for I have seen a
letter of hers to a common friend in the country, in which she
says--"Upon my word, Walter Scott is going to turn out a
poet--something of a cross, I think, between Burns and Gray." The same
day he read it also to his friend Sir Alexander Wood, who retains a
vivid recollection of the high strain of enthusiasm into which he had
been exalted by dwelling on the wild unearthly imagery of t