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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1837, Edition 1 of 1, Page 256

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  • Departments (2)
    • Printed by C. and W. Rxyhiix, Little Pultenty street.
    • NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.
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  • Text (4)
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      Untitled Article

      claiming the right of expressing an unbiassed and sincere opinion , we do make an objection , and our reason is founded on a perception of the marketing spirit betrayed in the arrangement . While the lives of literary men are so proverbially deficient of striking and eventful circumstances ; and while we know that the real life of Scott , with no great diversity of other business , was passed at his writing desk , what are we to think of a work , got up in the manner of a life of Napoleon , with elaborate , and many of them trivial , communications and contributions from hundreds

      of individuals , together with documents , references , notes , illustrations , quotations , &c . &c . &c . to be carried to the extent of six volumes like the present ? The real life of Scott—as are the lives of almost all literary men—is in his works . After the innumerable and minute notes he himself has appended to them , we cannot say we think the public fairly dealt by in being called upon to re-purchase so large a mass of the same matter , rendered in other words , and mixed up with numerous common-place letters and anecdotes . That this volume contains , and that the others will also contain , much interesting matter there can be no doubt ; but we will venture to believe that less than half the

      space of the projected six volumes would hold all that is important , and without endangering the binding by the inward expansion under " high pressure . " We cannot say , however , that we wish this condensation to be tried in the present instance ; for inasmuch as the material is extant , it would be sure , tinder a fresh title , to come forth at some time or other . The first sentence of Mr Lockhart ' s Preface is curious from its sympathetic character : —

      " In obedience to the instructions of Sir Walter Scott ' s last will , I had made some progress in a narrative of his personal history , before there was discovered , in an old cabinet at Abbotsford , an autobiographical fragment , composed by him in 1808—shortly after the publication of his * Marmion .

      It is not impossible , at some future time , but one of his descendants may find the rather mould y fragments of some unpublished novel , concealed in a favourite old breastplate or helmet , which Sir Walter ' s family had suffered to hang upon the " pegs , " untouched ever since his death . Joking apart , we much admire the little fragment of his own reminiscences , which , however , only occupies sixty pages out of four hundred *

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      Communications will be left at the Office , in a few days , for C . T . and £ . S . During the last three months we have had several poems in type , but have hitherto Seen unable to insert them .

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      256 Critical Notices .

      Printed By C. And W. Rxyhiix, Little Pultenty Street.

      Printed by C . and W . Rxyhiix , Little Pultenty street .

      Notice To Correspondents.

      NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS .

      Untitled Picture

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  • Citation
    • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1837, page 256, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1830/page/66/