The Sun.
London, England, 1837-05-05 00:00:00

CARLOW ELECTION COMMITTEE.

LITERATURE.

(THIS DAY.)

In consequence of some misunderstanding as to the hour of
meeting on the part of several Members of the Committee,
the. proceedings could not regularly come before them until
their number was completed ; but at the request of Mr. Austin,
the CHAIRMAN received the evidence of William Groves, a
messenger, who was despatched from Carlow on Monday last,
with the " Rathvilly" poll:book, of which our readers have
heard so much, and the purloining of which from the Committee
room was so accurately sworn to in the course of the week.
'I he witness Groves, though specially despatched with the
book in a sealed parcel, forgot it at Birmingham ; but it was
forwarled from thence, and arrived this morning. It was not,
however, put in evidence, as it had reference only to a class of
voters which had been already disposed of.
A few minutes before twelve, the Committee having been
completed,
Mr. AUSTIN objecel to the vote of Patrick Ryan, on
which a disouss4 n arose, which bad not conclu led when our
Reporter left.

ROLLS' COURT.-(THIS DAY.)
The COURT was occupied the whole of the morning with
consent petitions.

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY b, 18..57

LOCKHART'S LIFE OF SCOTT.
Cadelt, Edinburgh, 1837.

JTO7 2.

It was thus that Scott was enabled with compara

Like his great contemporary, Lord Byron, Sir Walter
Scott, it is well known, was extremely partial to dogs.
The following particulars, respecting the death of his
favourite Camp, will be read with interest :
" This favourite animal began to droop early in 1808, and
became incapable of accompanying Scott in his rides; but he
preserved his affection and sagacity to the last. At Ashestiel,
as the servant was laying the cloth for dinner, he would ad-
dress the dog lying on his mat by the fire, and say, Camp,
my good fellow, the Sheriff's coming home by the ford, or by
the hill,' and the sick animal would immediately bestir himself
to welcome his master, going out at the back door, or the
front door, according to the direction given, and advancing as
far as lie was able. Ile died about January 1809, and was bu-
ried on a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the
the House in Castle-street immediately opposite the window at
which Scott usually sat writing. My wife tells me she remem-
bers the whole family standing in tears about the grave, as her
father himself smoothed down the turf above Camp, with the
saddest expression of face she had ever seen in him. He had
been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologized, on ac-
.

count of 'the death of a dear old friend ;' .and Mr. Macdo-

nald 13uelianan was not at all surprised that lie should have
done so, when it came out next morning that Camp was no
more."

This anecdote is as delightful as that famous one
recorded in Boswell, of Johnson going out late on a
rainy night to buy oysters for his cat Hodge. We shall
look forward to the next volume with considerable in-
terest, for we see by the advertisement that it is to con-
tain Scott's own Diary of his voyage to the Shetland
Isles.

THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN REVIEW.
Ridgway and Sons.

This is the best Number of the " British and Foreign
Review," that has yet made its appearance. The
subjects of the• articles arc sufficiently varied to suit the
taste of every class of readers ; and the handling of
them must convince the most fastidious critic that the
contributors are men of first-rate ability. Of ten ar-
ticles which compose this Number, three are especially
devoted to questions of domestic policy—three are upon
subjects having more or less regard to our foreign rela-
tions—three are strictly critical, as that term applies
to literature in an abstract sense—and the remaining
one is confined to some points relative to our colonial
this
policy. The political papers--foreign and domestic—
of
for the most part, rife with facts, which are brought to
bear upo periodical,t
the arc generally the best. They arc,
plain,b
questionsdi
direct,
.cta cogent,
issue
ya
an
dl ne ofargt-
rnent at onceconvincing.
They abound in illustrations—here quaint and recon-
dite," there familiar, even to domesticity—if the phraFe
may be allowed us. Supported by the talent which
now enriches its pages the " British and Foreign Re-
view" promises to become a powerful auxiliary to those
who are fighting the battles of constitutional freedom
throughout the world. - The article on " The Poli-
tical Press of France," affords an excellent bird's-eye
view of the past and present state of periodical and
diurnal literature in that country. The writer— who
-thoroughly understands the bearing of the minutest
detail upon the main object of his inquiry—com-
mences with the declaration of the French Constitu-
ent Assembly in 1789, establishing the freedom of the
press ; and after enumerating the journals which this
declaration called into existence, he continues to trace
the perilous growth, and gradually acquired influence
of this new power, down to the present time. He
carefully analyzes its abuses, and traces them to their

The present volume commences w►th the publication
of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, in 1801, and goes
down to the year 1812, when Scott was hard at work
with Rokcby, one of the latest and most elaborate,
but by no means the most successful, of his poems.
The volume abounds in anecdote, and fragments of
letters addressed _ by Scott to his English friends,
chiefly Ellis, Canning, Morritt, Gifford, and Southey,
on the subject of his own literary projects, and the
political events of the day. These last--more particu-
larly the disasters that signalised the earlier periods of
the Peninsular war, previously to Wellington's assum-
ing the command of tl)c English army—seem to have
exercised extraordinary influence over Scott's mind,
keeping him in a constant, fever of anxiety. The
wide-spread popularity, too, of the Edinburgh Re-
w, whose political tenets he held in undisguised ab-
horrence, appear to have been gall and wormwood to
him, so thoroughly was he wedded to Toryism. We
question, indeed, whether a more thoroughgoing parti-
zan ever existed. We always knew that Sir Walter
was a Tory ; but we were not aware, till we perused
this volume, how deeply all his thoughts and feelings
were embarked in the cause. He would hear of no
relaxation—no softening-off the creed—no such liberal
interpretation as Mr. Canning afterwards endeavoured
to put on it, so as to bring it more in accordance with
the altered feelings of the day—Toryism was with him
a system which, like the laws of the Medes and Per-
sians, should be immutable and irreversible. Actu-
ated by these feelings, Scott was among the first to
get up an opposition to the Edinburgh Review ; and
it was chiefly at his instigation, and by his urgent re-
monstrances, addressed week after week to his Tory
friends in London, that the Quarterly was established,
the editorship of which laving been offered to, and de-
clined by him, was ultimately assumed by Gifford.
The most interesting portions of the present volume
are those which contain the letters of Scott on this
subject. They are full of shrewd, practical common
sense, and impress on Gifford, and on those whom
Scott proposes as contributors to the Review, to pre-
serve temper and moderation in their articles, and,
above all, to refrain from petty and flippant personali-
ties. Of his literary habits, Mr. Lockhart gives us
the following interesting details:—

" He rose by five o'clock, lit his own fire when the season
required one, and shaved and dressed with great deliberation,
for he was a very Martinet as to all but the mere coxcombries
of the toilet. Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever
dress he meant to use till dinner time, he was seated at his
desk by six o'clock, all his papers arranged before him in the
most accurate order, and his books of reference marshalled
round him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay
watching his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation.
Thus, by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between
nine and ten, be had done enough (in his own language) to
break the neck of the day.' After breakfast a couple of hours
more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as
he used to say, his own man. When the weather was bad, he
would labour incessantly all the morning, but the general rule
was, to be out and on horsebick, by one o'clock at the latest.
It was another rule that every letter he received should be
answered the same day."

tive ease and readiness to get through that immense
mass of intellectual labour, which is without a parallel
in the annals of literature. It is greatly to the credit
of his sagacity that he was the very first to predict the
future triumphs of Sir Arthur Wellesley in Spain, and
to state on every oocasion, that he, and he only, could
restore the glory of the British arms in the Peninsula.
The well-known victory at Assays had impressed him
with the conviction that Sir Arthur was the first mili-
tary genius of his age, when he was yet a name unknown
to a great body of his countrymen. On Sir Walter's first
visit to London, after the publication of Marmion, he
was of course the great " lion" of the day, and roared
in the most fashionable societies, more however to the
satisfaction of others than his own. Among other
illustrious personages to whom -he was introduced at
this period, was the unfortunate Princess of Wales,
wife of George the IVth, of Tv 11 om we hare a charac-
teristic anecdote
The careless levity of the Princess's manner was ob-
served by Scott, as I have heard him say, with much regret,
as likely to bring the purity of heart and mind, for which he
have her credit, into -suspicion. For example, when in the
course of the evening, she conducted him by himself to admire
some flowers in a conservatory, and the place being rather
dark, his lameness occasioned him to hesitate for a moment in
following her down some steps which she had taken at a skip,
she turned round, and said with mock-indignation, ' Ah false
and faint-hearted trobadour you will not trust yourself with
me for fear of your neck. "