ART. I. THE SUBTLETIES OF SCOTT'S NAMES, . II. A VISION OF MOUNT VERNON. BY ISAAC MACLELLAN, III. ELEANOR MANTON: OR LIFE-PICTURES, IV. THE SAND. BY H. B. WILDMAN, V. CARWALLON'S FEAST, VI. MY FIRST DUEL, 1. THE HUMOROUS POETRY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, 3. CREASY'S RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, EDITOR'S TABLE: 1. OUR 'UP-RIVER' CORRESPONDENT AT NIAGARA, 2. GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS, 1. 'H. P. L.' ON HIS TRAVELS: A Letter to the EDITOR: THE FALLS OF MINNEHAHA, ་ THERE are certain curious instances of resemblance between the proper names in Sir Walter Scott's writings and the individuals they represent, which may possibly have escaped the attention of some readers. An essay upon the merits of his works, which have been pronounced peerless by the judgment of his age, would fairly be deemed superfluous, and consequently we merely wish to point out certain subtleties of wit, and certain beauties of melody, with which his proper names abound, together with a few striking instances of similarity between names and characters. From Waverly to Castle Dangerous, from Marmion to Sir John De Walton, we have a strain of names, musical as the warbling of an Æolian harp, and whether the subject be lord or peasant, dowager or milk-maid, Cavalier or Puritan, harvest-field or haunted glen, to each is given a designation that impresses it indelibly on the mind of the reader, while fancy suggests the character to be developed. It is true that the tenaciousness with which the mind clings to the beautiful stories, often leads us to connect the character with the name; but, nevertheless, the association is much aided by the designation selected. Wit, euphony, and fitness, are rivals from beginning to end of these names, each claiming the highest honors. Let the name be harsh at first sight, the apparent roughness disappears, and dissolves into euphony the instant that it is pronounced, and we often find wit lurking among formidable consonants, like a bud among briars. The field of Bannockburn was not more full of pit-falls than Scott's names are full of puns, direct or indirect; sometimes plainly expressed, at others only indicated by a resemblance in sound or spelling. If the word he selects be long, some prosy Gabriel Kettledrumle, who reminds us of sounding brass and tinkling cymbals,' and who was in the habit of 'preaching two mortal hours at a breathing,' is made re sponsible for it; if short, some Callum Beg, more ready with his dagger than his tongue, is found to represent it. The old tower relinquished to the rook, the cave inhabited by the gloomy bat, the glen 'Where bogles dance o'er dead men's graves,' the dungeon of the captive, the cottage of the free, the palace of the rich, the hovel of the poor, all seem to have received from this gifted Caledonian pen their appropriate signification. But let us stroll through the library at Abbotsford, and while we DREAM of the grand old masters,' Dream of the bards sublime; Through the corridors of time,' let us cull a few buds from this flower-garden of English literature, in support of our proposition. Can any one imagine that Fitz-James was not a gallant carpet knight,' bred in the luxury of the lowlands; or that the wild, free step of Roderick Dhu ever fell on other carpet than the heath of Clan Alpine? What visions of loveliness float around us at the mention of the Lady of the Lake: could she be other than 'The bold and beautiful?' And does not fancy lend a thousand charms to the little sheet of water, over which the fair Ellen Douglass once guided her skiff? Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine of Bradwardine is standing at the door of his baronial mansion, quaffing a stirrup cup with some neighboring laird. What a braw name for the brave old baron, descended from a race who had claimed fealty of the yeomen of Bradwardine from the time of the Norman to the Stuart. Who is that callous, hardy, active, devoted little Highlander, but Callum Beg,' who wanted to'kittle the quarters of ta auld deevil whig carle, wi' her skene occle'-in other words, to perform a summary surgical operation with his dagger on some unfortunate individual who happened to differ from him in opinion? How different from Jacob Jobson, the honest lowland peasant, who would betray no mon's bluid,' whose knife was the sickle, whose sword was the plough. The bare knee, the gaudy hose, the gay tartan plaid, start up, as we pronounce the euphonious name, Vich Jan Vohr,' and well the Highland euphony hangs about the memory of this high-souled and determined chieftain. 6 The brightest flower that ever bloomed in Tully Veolan, budded into existance the day Rose Bradwardine first saw the light, and the Craigs of Glennaquoich are still ringing with the wild Celtic strain in which the daughter of Mac Ivor bade 'THE race of Clan GILLIAN, the fearless and free, Woodburne sounds like the name of some secluded manor of which a Guy Mannering was lord, and a Julia the mistress, while Ellan gowan could never have belonged to a sneaking, glossy, pettifogging fellow like Glossin, when it was claimed by a Henry Bertram. The traveller who finds himself near the kaim of Derncleugh at mid-night, begins to think of beings that have gone, and if he does not meet a troop of warlochs from the other world, or a troop of smugglers from this, in the wood of Warroch, it will be because he has got the herculean arm and pepper-and-mustard terriers of a Dandie Dinmont to defend him. We involuntarily utter pro-di-gi-ous as we think of the long, lank, absent-minded Dominie who, 'Marvelling at his sable suit, stalked past ;' and the knife of the smuggler is fairly sticking in our ribs, as the des perate Dirk Hatteraick favors our imagination with a visit. That old red cloak keeps the winds of Derncleugh from the form of a crazed but commanding woman, who, standing upon yon hill, asserts, with the prophetic force of madness, that 'DARK shall be light, And wrong done to right, When BERTRAM's right and BERTRAM's might, Shall meet on Ellangowan's height,' and something whispers it can only be Meg Merrilies. Pertinacious Mr. Oldbuck: "T IS said he was a soldier bred, And one wad rather fa'en than fled. And ta'en the antiquarian trade, I think they call it :' and certainly he was an antiquary, and, like many others of that class, often gave to remnants of antiquity an interest which must have astonished and mortified the musty relics considerably; for no one could suppose that a buckle or button, fashioned by some honest Glasgow artisan in the eighteenth century could hear itself charged with having invaded Britain with the Cæsar, without a blush of indignation. It really is very hard upon such items, that they never can be accidentally buried, but some confounded 'Dryasdust' digs them up and charges them with being invaders of their country, or fossil remains of some antediluvian people, who probably never existed. But the defence of these relics must be left to the thickness of the dust that hides them, and the brain that seeks them, while we return to our antiquary, of whom history asserts, that he was a fine old buck, and always ready to crack a bottle with the young fellows who sought his society, and that if he did violently remonstrate with Jenny Rintherout for running in and out his study, and for having the temerity to put it to rights, it was under his other appellation of Monkbarns. This latter cognomen, however, is as grateful to the ear as the former, if we consider him merely as the child of the cloister, and consider the cloister to mean his study, but otherwise it is a reflection upon the character of some one of his forefathers, for we believe the Church does not allow to monks the privilege of being ancestors. |