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much of his time in visiting La Valetta with its knightly antiquities, the church and monuments of St. John, and the deserted palaces and libraries of the Knights of Malta. He met a lady, too, here, a Mrs. John Davy, daughter of a brother advocate, a Mr. A. Fletcher, whose house had stood. close to 'poor dear 39,' as he called his own old house in Castle Street. This lady, who watched him with all the truth of a woman's eye and the tenderness of a woman's heart, has left in her diary some pleasingly pathetic glimpses of the faded but amiable poet as she saw him at Malta, and contrasted him with the Scott she had known in Scotland only five or six years before: 'His articulation was manifestly affected, though not, I think, quite so much so as his expression of face. He wore trousers of the Lowland small-checked plaid, and, sitting with his hands crossed over the top of a shepherd-like staff, he was very like the picture painted by Leslie and engraved for one of the annuals; but when he spoke, the varied expression that used quite to redeem all heaviness of features was no longer to be seen. . . Hearing the sound of his voice as he chatted sociably with Mr. Greig, on whose arm he leaned while walking from the carriage to the door of the hotel, it seemed to me that I had hardly heard so homelike a sound.

in this strange land, or one that took me so back to Edinburgh and our own Castle Street, where I had heard it as he passed so often. Nobody was at hand at the moment for me to show him to but an English maid, who, not having my Scotch interest in the matter, only said, when I tried to enlighten her on the subject of his arrival, “Poor old gentleman, how ill he looks!" It showed how sadly a little time must have changed him; for when I had seen him last in Edinburgh, perhaps five or six years before, no one would have thought of calling him an old gentleman. At dinner parties he retired soon, being resolutely prudent as to keeping early hours, though he was unfortunately careless as to what he ate or drank, especially of the latter.'

She met him afterwards at a party where he was all himself, with the same rich felicitous quotation from favourite authors, the same happy introduction of old traditionary stories-Scotch especially —in a manner so easy and so unprepared. To Dr. Davy, then preparing a life of his great brother, Scott made a feeling and characteristic remark: 'I hope, Dr. Davy, your mother lived to see your brother's eminence. There must have been such great pleasure in that to her.' Neglecting medical advice, he had one or two additional shocks while

at Malta. On Tuesday the 14th December he and his party went again on board the Barham, and reached Naples on the 17th of the same month, where his son Charles was waiting to receive him.

CHAPTER XXV.

RETURN HOME AND DEATH.

T Naples a similar reception with that of Malta awaited Scott. The British

minister — Mr. Hill, afterwards Lord Berwick-took the lead in showing him every attention, and the English nobility and gentry vied with him in the task. Some remarkable men were then in Naples, such as Mr. Auldjo, who gained fame in his day by an ascent of Mont Blanc, and published an account of it which will be found. noticed in the Edinburgh Review for 1829–30. There, too, was old Matthias, whose Pursuits of Literature, seldom read now, had great vogue about the beginning of the century. Few are aware that it was a lengthy poem, with much lengthier notes, and that alike text and notes were steeped in the bitterest personalities and Tory prejudices, blended with vast learning and classical

taste. The author had outlived his power, though not his powers; had had the mortification to see the authors he had underrated, such as Parr and Godwin, universally acknowledged, and the party he had vilified-the Whigs-in place; and was now in Naples resting under the shadow of withered laurels. Scott in his ruins he must have surveyed with something of a Sir Mungo Malagrowther satisfaction. Metal more attractive was found in Sir William Gell, the famous topographer, a gentleman who at fifty-six was nearly as complete a wreck as Sir Walter, and this fellow-feeling secured their intimacy. They leaned on each other like two half-fallen pillars in the same crumbling temple.

Sir Walter appeared each morning at the Neapolitan court in the dress of a Scottish archer, of light green and gold embroidery, following in this the same fine instinctive taste which led O'Connell, when he stood on the Calton Hill in 1835, to stand

'In Erin's verdant vesture clad,'

with a gold band around his cap, while all else was green as emerald! Scott would thus cut a gallant figure; and only those near could see in the loose hanging lips and the vacant eye, marks of deepseated decay. In the evenings the old cacoethes

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