Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart..

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Robert Cadell, Edinburgh. John Murray and Whittaker and Company, London., 1837
 

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Page 292 - My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy : how dost, my boy ? art cold ? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow ? The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee.
Page 74 - There is a stone there, that whoever kisses, Oh ! he never misses to grow eloquent. 'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber, Or become a member of parliament : A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or An out-and-outer, "to be let alone...
Page 371 - Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin. Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in...
Page 330 - Our time is like our money. When we change a guinea, the shillings escape as things of small account ; when we break a day by idleness in the morning, the rest of the hours lose their importance in our eye. I set stoutly...
Page 217 - Minstrel, and — it was a price that made men's hair stand on end — £1000 for Marmion. I have been far from suffering by James Ballantyne. I owe it to him to say, that his difficulties, as well as his advantages, are owing to me.
Page 197 - I have planted — sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. My poor people whom I loved so well! — There is just another die to turn up against me in this run of ill-luck...
Page 388 - Cecilia,' an elderly lady with no remains of personal beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, and pleasing expression of countenance, and apparently quick feelings. She told me she had wished to see two persons — myself, of course, being one, the other George Canning. This was really a compliment to be pleased with — a nice little handsome pat of butter made up by a neat-handed Phillis of a dairymaid, instead of the grease fit only for cart-wheels which one is dosed with by the pound.
Page 138 - If the Duke marries her, he ensures an immense fortune; if she marries him, she has the first rank. If he marries a woman older than himself by twenty years, she marries a man younger in wit by twenty degrees.
Page 264 - I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow Strain I can do myself like any now going ; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
Page 252 - On the whole, I am glad of this bruilzie, as far as I am concerned ; people will not dare talk of me as an object of pity — no more ' poor-manning.' Who asks how many punds Scots the old champion had in his pocket when ' He set a bugle to his mouth, And blew so loud and shrill, The trees in greenwood shook thereat, Sae loud rang every hill ? * * This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth.

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