Harriet Martineau

English sociologist and writer Harriet Martineau was born on June 12, 1810.  Martineau is remembered here for her bio of Walter Scott’s son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, which includes an account of Lockhart’s meeting Scott.

‘…After the Peace he went to Germany a not very common undertaking at that time and saw Göthe; and his account of this incident seems to have struck Scott, when they who were to become so closely related met for the first time in private society, in May, 1818. A few days after the dinner-party at which this happened, the Messrs. Ballantyne sent to Lockhart, to propose that he should undertake a task which Scott had delayed, and wished to surrender: the writing the historical portion of the "Edinburgh Annual Register" for 1816. When he called on Scott to talk it over, the great novelist, who was then receiving 10,000£ a year from the new vein he had opened, assigned a characteristic reason for giving up the Register. He said that if the war had gone on, he should have enjoyed writing the history of each year as it passed; but that he would not be the recorder of Radical riots, Corn Bills, Poor Bills, and the like. These things, he said, sickened him; and he thought it fair to devolve such work upon his juniors. Mr. Lockhart first saw Abbotsford the next October, when he was sent for from Elleray, with his friend John Wilson, to meet Lord Melville, and take the chance of some professional benefit arising from the interview with the First Lord of the Admiralty, if their sins in Blackwood could be overlooked by him. This shows that Blackwood's Magazine was already rising under the re-enforcement of Wilson's strength. The strength which raised it was not Lockhart's. His satire had, then and always, a quality of malice in it, where Wilson's had only fun; and he never had Wilson's geniality of spirit. Wilson's satire instructed the humble, and amused the proud who were the objects of it; but Lockhart's caused anguish in the one case, and excited mere wrath or contempt in the other, Scott confessed that it might be from complacency at Lockhart's account of this visit to Abbotsford that he judged so favorably of "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," which appeared a few months afterward. He called its satire lenient; but all the Edinburgh Whigs were up against it as a string of libels; and Lockhart himself tells us candidly that it was a book which none but a very young and a very thoughtless person would have written…’

Dinner with the Clerks

June 12 [1827].—At Court, a long hearing. Got home only about three. Corrected proofs, etc. Dined with Baron Clerk, and met several old friends; Will Clerk in particular.

Scott's Journal entry of June 12, 1827 mentions the Clerks; Baron John Scott Clerk, and his son William who was Walter Scott's close friend.  According to Scott biographer John Buchan, Baron Clerk 'forecast the tactics to which Rodney owed his victory.'  Clerk, a barrister, rose to become Lord Chancellor in 1801.

Scott and Will Clerk studied together in their legal schooling.  Quoting Buchan again, 'He (Scott) and William Clerk worked together, examining themselves daily in points of law, and every morning in summer, Scott would walk the two miles to the west end of Princes Street to beat up his friend.'

William Collins

Histories of William Collins credit him with sharing top honors with Thomas Gray as an 18th century poet.    He was enough of a talent for Samuel Johnson to include him in his "Lives of the Poets".  Scott, in an article published in the Foreign Quarterly Review (1827) titled "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition; and particularly on the works of Ernest Theodore William Hoffmann" refers to him as one of the Graveyard Poets.  William Collins died on June 12, 1759.

Collins was known for his talent, as well as his troubled mind.  He attended Winchester College, and began publishing verse at this time.  In 1742 he published "Persian Eclogues", which was the only work that received public support during his lifetime.  His greatest work was published on December 12, 1746; twelve odes, titled "Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects".

One the twelve odes, "Ode to Fear", Walter Scott quotes from in the article mentioned above.  From Scott:
...It is not so in early history, which is full of supernatural incidents; and although we now use the word romance as synonymous with fictitious composition, yet as it originally only meant a poem, or prose work contained in the Romaunce language, there is little doubt of the doughty chivalry who listened to the songs of the minstrel, "held each strange tale devoutly true", and the feats of knighthood which he recounted, mingled with tales of magic and supernatural interference, were esteemed as veracious as the legends of the monks, to which they bore a strong resemblance...

The full Ode to Fear (from Luminarium.org):


THOU, to whom the World unknown
With all its shadowy Shapes is shown;
Who see'st appall'd th'unreal Scene,
While Fancy lifts the Veil between:
Ah Fear! Ah frantic Fear!
I see, I see Thee near.
I know thy hurried Step, thy haggard Eye!
Like Thee I start, like Thee disorder'd fly,
For lo what Monsters in thy Train appear!
Danger, whose Limbs of Giant Mold
What mortal Eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his Round, an hideous Form,
Howling amidst the Midnight Storm,
Or throws him on the ridgy Steep
Of some loose hanging Rock to sleep:
And with him thousand Phantoms join'd,
Who prompt to Deeds accurs'd the Mind:
And those, the Fiends, who near allied,
O'er Nature's Wounds, and Wrecks preside;
Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid Air,
Lifts her red Arm, expos'd and bare:
On whom that rav'ning Brood of Fate,
Who lap the Blood of Sorrow, wait;
Who, Fear, this ghastly Train can see,
And look not madly wild, like Thee?