Abbotsford and Sir Walter ScottMabbott, 1854 - 235 pages |
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Abbotsford Abbotsford House Allan Water amid amongst ancient anecdote appeared auld author of Waverley badger banks beautiful beneath beside brae called character cottage countenance Creeshies cross Daft Darnick Dearie deep delight Deloraine dogs door doubt ears Eildon hills entered exclaimed fairy fancy favourite feeling frae Gala Gala water Galashiels Gattonside green hand Hawthorndale Village head heard heart immortal Jedburgh John of Skye Johnny Bowers Johnny Scott Keely Lady laugh listened look loved master Melrose Abbey memory merry mind Minstrel monk neighbour neighbourhood never night novels occasion once picturesque plantations poem poet poetical poor present Purdie Rhymer's river river Tweed road round scene scenery Scotland seemed seen Selkirk Sherra side Sir Walter Scott Smollett spot stands stone stood tell thought Tom Purdie Tom's took tower tree Tweed waur Waverley Novels Weel wild window woods Yarrow ye ken
Popular passages
Page 227 - The moon on the east oriel shone Through slender shafts of shapely stone, By foliaged tracery combined; Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand In many a freakish knot had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone.
Page 45 - A hard and harsh countenance — eyes far sunk under projecting eyebrows, which were grizzled like his hair— a wide mouth, furnished from ear to ear with a range of unimpaired teeth, of uncommon whiteness, and a size and breadth which might have become the jaws of an ogre, completed this delightful portrait.
Page 1 - TIME rolls his ceaseless course. The race of yore, Who danced our infancy upon their knee, And told our marvelling boyhood legends store, Of their strange ventures happ'd by land or sea, How are they blotted from the things that be!
Page 188 - Action, and tone, and gesture, the smile of the lover, the frown of the tyrant, the grimace of the buffoon, all must be told, for nothing can be shown. Thus the very dialogue becomes mixed with the narration, for he must not only tell what the characters actually said, in which his task is the same as that of the dramatic author, but must also describe the tone, the look, the gesture, with which their speech was accompanied — telling, in short, all which in the drama it becomes the province of...
Page 149 - Now simmer blinks on flowery braes, And o'er the crystal streamlet plays ; Come, let us spend the lightsome days In the birks of Aberfeldy.
Page 190 - He was, like a pre-eminent poet of our own day, a searcher of dark bosoms, and loved to paint characters under the strong agitation of fierce and stormy passions.
Page 189 - Every successful novelist must be more or less a poet, even although he may never have written a line of verse. The quality of imagination is absolutely indispensible to him : his accurate power of examining and embodying human character and human passion, as well as the external face of nature...
Page 194 - In the comic part of their writings, we have already said, Fielding is pre-eminent in grave irony, a Cervantic species of pleasantry, in which Smollett is not equally successful. On the other hand, the Scotchman, (notwithstanding the general opinion denies that quality to his countrymen,) excels in broad and ludicrous humour. His fancy seems to run riot in accumulating ridiculous circumstances one upon another, to the utter destruction of all power of gravity; and perhaps no books ever written have...
Page 123 - The lyart veteran heard the Word of God By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured In gentle stream : then rose the song, the loud Acclaim of praise ; the wheeling plover ceased Her plaint ; the solitary place was glad. And on the distant cairns, the watcher's ear Caught doubtfully at times, the breeze-borne note.
Page 187 - ... congenial reader, he places before his mind's eye, landscapes fairer than those of Claude, and wilder than those of Salvator. He cannot, like the dramatist, present before our living eyes the heroes of former days, or the beautiful creations of his own fancy, embodied in the grace and majesty of Kemble or of Siddons ; but he can teach his reader to conjure up forms even more dignified and beautiful than theirs. The same difference follows him through every branch of his art. The author of a novel,...