ds which shall necessarily
excite the idea of being _hell-sprung_--the sound of simmering
seas of fire--pinings of goblins damned--or some analogous noise.
The forty-seventh stanza is a very great improvement of the
original. The profanest blasphemous speeches need not have been
softened down, as, in proportion to the impiety of the
provocation, increases the poetical probability of the final
punishment. I should not have ventured upon these criticisms, if
I did not think it required a microscopic eye to make any, and if
I did not on the whole consider The Chase as a most spirited and
beautiful translation. I remain (to borrow in another sense a
concluding phrase from the Spectator), your constant admirer,

W. TAYLOR, Jun.

NORWICH, 14th December, 1796.

The anticipations of these gentlemen, that Scott's versions would
attract general attention in the south, were not fulfilled. He himself
attributes this to the contemporaneous appearance of so many other
translations from Lenore. "In a word," he says, "my adventure, where
so many pushed off to sea, proved a dead loss, and a great part of the
edition was condemned to the service of the trunkmaker. This failure
did not operate in any unpleasant degree either on my feelings or
spirits. I was coldly received by strangers, but my reputation began
rather to increase among my own friends, and on the whole I was more
bent to show the world that it had neglected something worth notice,
than to be affronted by its indifference; or rather, to speak
candidly, I found pleasure in the literary labors in which I had
almost by accident become engaged, and labored less in the hope of
pleasing {p.237} others, though certainly without despair of doing
so, than in a pursuit of a new and agreeable amusement to
myself."[131]

[Footnote 131: _Remarks on Popular Poetry._ 1830.]

On the 12th of December Scott had the curiosity to witness the trial
of one James Mackean, a shoemaker, for the murder of Buchanan, a
carrier, employed to convey money weekly from the Glasgow bank to a
manufacturing establishment at Lanark. Mackean invited the carrier to
spend the evening in his house; conducted family worship in a style of
much seeming fervor; and then, while his friend was occupied, came
behind him, and almost severed his head from his body by one stroke of
a razor. I have heard Scott de