The Poetical Works of David Hume

On October 2^nd 1815, Walter Scott is musing on two of his own poems, “On the Field of Waterloo”, and “Dance of Death”, and one of David Hume’s.  He discusses these points, and others, in a letter to John Morritt on that date.  The letter is published in John Gibson Lockhart's "Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart."

“Abbotsford, 2d Oct. 1815.

“My dear Morritt,

…“We visited Corby Castle on our return to Scotland, which remains, in point of situation, as beautiful as when its walks were celebrated by David Hume in the only rhymes he was ever known to be guilty of. Here they are, from a pane of glass in an inn at Carlisle:

‘Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl, Here godless boys God’s glories squall, Here Scotchmen’s heads do guard the wall, But Corby’s walks atone for all.’

Would it not be a good quiz to advertise The Poetical Works of David Hume, with notes, critical, historical, and so forth—with an historical enquiry into the use of eggs for breakfast, a physical discussion on the causes of their being addled; a history of the English church music, and of the choir of Carlisle in particular; a full account of the affair of 1745, with the trials, last speeches, and so forth, of the poor plaids who were strapped up at Carlisle; and, lastly, a full and particular description of Corby, with the genealogy of every family who ever possessed it? I think, even without more than the usual waste of margin, the Poems of David would make a decent twelve shilling touch. I shall think about it, when I have exhausted mine own century of inventions.

…

Ever most truly yours,

Walter Scott

Godfather

On August 9, 1815, Charles Lamb wrote to Robert Southey on his pending godfathership:

‘I am going to stand godfather; I don’t like the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly disgrace the font.  I was at Hazlitt’s marriage, and had like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony.  Anything awful makes me laugh.  I misbehaved once at a funeral.  Yet I can read about these ceremonies with pious and proper feelings.  The realities of life only seem the mockeries.’

That letter was included in the Folio Book of Days.  Sir Walter Scott was probably godfather to more than one child, and he writes of one instance with more apparent zeal than did Lamb.  The text below comes from a letter to John Morritt, dated January 14, 1818, now published in “Familiar Letters of Walter Scott”.

‘…But my immediate labour has been in behalf of my friend Terry, the comedian, in whom, on account of his sense, information, and modesty I take a great interest. He has named a child after me, and I am preparing a godfather's gift in the shape of a drama.1 But godfathers, as in the time of conjurors and fames, may append what conditions they please to their gifts, and mine is that as I take no concern in the merit or in the emoluments of the piece in case of success, so I shall only be damn'd by proxy if damn'd I am. In a word, Terry takes his chance, and I believe there will be no medium, for if it does not succeed very decidedly, it will be damn'd most infernally. I have tried to coax the public to relax some of the rules of criticism, and to be amused with that medley of tragic and comic which life presents us, not only in the same course of action but in the same character. To deprecate all rigidity of judgment, I introduce the marvellous, the absurd, and something like the heroic, all to make the gruel slab…’