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doubt expressed-" Have I heard, quo she!!! To be sure, he canna but hae heard," said the good woman.

The kind inquiries which Sir Walter Scott occasionally made concerning me when he fell in with any mutual friend,

led me, more than once, to think of writing to him; and, when I heard that he was engaged in preparing a life

of Buonaparte for the press, I began a letter, with the intention of giving him some account of the scene which I witnessed at a magnificent levee at the Tuilleries, when that wonderful man declared himself, for such was the real fact, first Consul for life. I had likewise been presented, by my friend Mr. J. H. Vivian, with a very interesting and well-written memoir of a conversation which, on his return from the congress at Vienna, he had with Buonaparte at Elba, a short time prior to his escape from that Island. But I shrunk, through mere diffidence, from making the purposed communication, and committed what I then wrote to the flames. It was not till towards the close, as it unhappily proved, of Sir Walter's life, that I again felt a desire to renew my acquaintance with him, and whilst I was considering how to effect this, my friend Dr. Collins died, and I determined to apprize him of this melancholy event, in a letter, of which the following is a copy :

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"I have reason to know from your repeated kind inquiries concerning us, that you have not forgotten the two young fishermen who were so fortunate

as to have been quartered at Mother Trumbull's, on the banks of the Tweed, when the old lady claimed for you a prescriptive right of admission under the same humble roof with ourselves.

"It was natural enough for us, but

very

kind of you,

not to forget the circumstances of this occurrence.

"Dr. Collins, I grieve to say, departed this life on the 14th of last August, (1831,) after twenty-five years of great success and usefulness in his profession; and I herewith send you, as my chief excuse for this letter, the following brief notice of him, which appeared in our provincial newspapers :—

"Exeter, August 23, 1831. "On Sunday the 14th, of consumption, at St. Ewe, in Cornwall, Doctor Collins, for many years an eminent Physician in this city. To great skill in his profession, were united an attention and a tenderness of manner singularly pleasing, which, not being the result of art, but the spontaneous effusion of a kind and beneficent nature, poured a balm into the wounds of those whom he could not cure.'

"There was a fuller account, in a London paper, of his professional and philosophical attainments; but that, which I send you, is from the heart, as well as the pen, of a near relation of his, and will suffice to remind you of one who was once much indebted to you for very kind and unlooked-for attentions, in which I participated, and for

which we were equally grateful. We were then, all of us, more or less, in the morning of life; that morning was fair, and did not lead to disappointment with any of us. You had much the start then, and I most cordially congratulate you on the noble manner in which you have kept it.

"When we met at the Tweed, in the summer of 1803, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' had made its appearance; and the Lay of the Last Minstrel' was in great forwardness. I shall always recollect your animated recital, at Melrose Abbey, of the beautiful lines which have conferred immortality on those aspiring ruins. You had likewise with you, the then unedited manuscript of Sir Tristram, which enabled you to say to me, on our first meeting, that you had my name (a thoroughly Cornish one) in your pocket. I have likewise since ascertained, that the name of Tristram frequently occurs in the pedigree of the Carlyon family; and it is the name, at this time, of the eldest son of the senior branch of the family. Coleridge,* of whom we

* So late as April 22, 1828, we find the following characteristic notice of Coleridge, in Sir Walter's journal :

"Lockhart and I dined with Sotheby, where we met a large party, the orator of which was that extraordinary man, Coleridge. After eating a hearty dinner, during which he spoke not a word, he began a most learned harangue on the Samothracian Mysteries, which he regards as affording the germ of all tales about fairies-past, present, and to come. He then diverged to Homer, whose Iliad he considered as a collection of poems by different authors, at different times, during a century. Morritt, a zealous worshipper of the old bard, was incensed at a system which would turn him into a polytheist, gave battle with keenness, and was joined by Sotheby. Mr. Coleridge behaved with the utmost complaisance and temper, but relaxed not from his exertions. Morritt's impatience must have cost him an extra sixpence worth of snuff "-LOCKHART'S Life of Sir W. Scott, vol. vii. p. 126, 1st edit.

talked a good deal, and Wordsworth, are still living. I saw and knew a good deal of the former, at one part of my life; and I lately found, among my papers, a manuscript copy of "His Fears in Solitude," the simplest and most beautiful of his "Sibyline leaves." My friend and schoolfellow, Sir Humphry Davy, another common acquaintance of ours, has paid (alas! too soon) the debt of nature. The world valued him chiefly as a Chymist, but he was by nature a Poet; and Coleridge used likewise to say of him, that he was the greatest Metaphysician he knew, Wordsworth, I suppose, always excepted. I remember how highly he praised his "Spinosist;" of which Davy gave me a copy, differing slightly from both the copies of Dr. Paris. But I must not presume to extend my prosing further; lest you think that, instead of a few days, I am claiming the privilege of a thirty-years' acquaintance, such being the number of years nearly which have elapsed since poor Collins and myself were together fishing on the banks of "Tweed's silver streams" or the " dowie banks of Yarrow." Coleridge had manifested those "Fears in Solitude," to which I have alluded, some years prior to this; and fears of invasion still prevailed throughout the land, kindling the flame of patriotism in every loyal bosom. But at that healthful prime, in which you are so pleasingly associated with these visions of the past, however we might have talked of fears, we were strangers to their reality; for with us, at that time, whatever might have been stirring in the busy world,

"Life went a maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy."

"Ah! for the change 'twixt now and then."

The spectre of Invasion has grown into the real substance of Reform!

"I hope, my dear Sir, you will pardon this intrusion, and believe me to be, with much esteem and gratitude, "Your obliged friend and servant,

"C. CARLYON."

To this letter, I received no answer. It was directed to Abbotsford; but messengers from the King of Terrors had been there previously, telling its master, but too plainly, that ready were his days numbered. He had sustained, as we have since learned, from Mr. Lockhart's authentic and painfully interesting relation of the periods of their occurrence, several paralytic attacks, of which little was generally known at the time, and of which I was wholly ignorant; for, notwithstanding many vague rumours, it was not, in fact, until he was on the eve of embarking for Italy, that the public were fully in possession of the melancholy certainty, that the health of this interesting man was so sadly failing.

The unsuccessful result of the Italian journey, so far, at least, as its main object, the recovery of health was concerned, is well known to all. The illustrious subject of so much solicitude returned with difficulty to Abbotsford, and there breathed his last, on the 21st of September, 1832;

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