In her last illness she would always reproach
her husband and children for their melancholy faces, even when that
melancholy was, as she well knew, due to the approaching shadow of her
own death.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 183-4.]
[Footnote 9: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 273.]
CHAPTER IV.
EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY.
Scott's first serious attempt in poetry was a version of Buerger's
_Lenore_, a spectre-ballad of the violent kind, much in favour in
Germany at a somewhat earlier period, but certainly not a specimen of
the higher order of imaginative genius. However, it stirred Scott's
youthful blood, and made him "wish to heaven he could get a skull and
two cross-bones!" a modest desire, to be expressed with so much
fervour, and one almost immediately gratified. Probably no one ever
gave a more spirited version of Buerger's ballad than Scott has given;
but the use to which Miss Cranstoun, a friend and confidante of his
love for Miss Stuart Belches, strove to turn it, by getting it
printed, blazoned, and richly bound, and presenting it to the young
lady as a proof of her admirer's abilities, was perhaps hardly very
sagacious.
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