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Letters to Dead Authors-Part11_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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affection for you, and that a pig, by his will, had never been



severed from your company. If some Circe had repeated in my case

her favourite miracle of turning mortals into swine, and had given



me a choice, into that fortunate pig, blessed among his race, would

I have been converted! You, almost alone among men of letters,



still, like a living friend, win and charm us out of the past; and

if one might call up a poet, as the scholiast tried to call Homer,



from the shades, who would not, out of all the rest, demand some

hours of your society? Who that ever meddled with letters, what



child of the irritable race, possessed even a tithe of your simple

manliness, of the heart that never knew a touch of jealousy, that



envied no man his laurels, that took honour and wealth as they came,

but never would have deplored them had you missed both and remained



but the Border sportsman and the Border antiquary?

Were the word "genial" not so much profaned, were it not misused in



easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that

worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But



perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a

character so rare, or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm as



that of Walter Scott. Here, in the heart of your own country, among

your own grey round-shouldered hills (each so like the other that



the shadow of one falling on its neighbour exactly outlines that

neighbour's shape), it is of you and of your works that a native of



the Forest is most frequently brought in mind. All the spirits of

the river and the hill, all the dying refrains of ballad and the



fading echoes of story, all the memory of the wild past, each legend

of burn and loch, seem to have combined to inform your spirit, and



to secure themselves an immortal life in your song. It is through

you that we remember them; and in recalling them, as in treading



each hillside in this land, we again remember you and bless you.

It is not, "Sixty Years Since" the echo of Tweed among his pebbles



fell for the last time on your ear; not sixty years since, and how

much is altered! But two generations have passed; the lad who used



to ride from Edinburgh to Abbotsford, carrying new books for you,

and old, is still vending, in George Street, old books and new. Of



politics I have not the heart to speak. Little joy would you have

had in most that has befallen since the Reform Bill was passed, to



the chivalrous cry of "burke Sir Walter." We are still very Radical

in the Forest, and you were taken away from many evils to come. How



would the cheek of Walter Scott, or of Leyden, have blushed at the

names of Majuba, The Soudan, Maiwand, and many others that recall



political cowardice or military incapacity! On the other hand, who

but you could have sung the dirge of Gordon, or wedded with immortal



verse the names of Hamilton (who fell with Cavagnari), of the two

Stewarts, of many another clansman, brave among the bravest! Only



he who told how

The stubborn spearmen still made good



Their dark impenetrable wood

could have fitly rhymed a score of feats of arms in which, as at



M'Neill's Zareba and at Abu Klea,

Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,



As fearlessly and well.

Ah, Sir, the hearts of the rulers may wax faint, and the voting



classes may forget that they are Britons; but when it comes to blows

our fighting men might cry, with Leyden,



My name is little Jock Elliot,

And wha daur meddle wi' me!



Much is changed, in the countryside as well as in the country; but

much remains. The little towns of your time are populous and



excessively black with the smoke of factories--not, I fear, at

present very flourishing. In Galashiels you still see the little



change-house and the cluster of cottages round the Laird's lodge,

like the clachan of Tully Veolan. But these plain remnants of the






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