THE MEMOIRS OF SUSAN SIBBALD 1783-1812. Edited by F. P.
Heft. (Lane. 18s.)-The memoirs of an old Scottish lady married to a Scottish soldier-laird ought to be interesting, but are not perhaps so interesting as other books of the kind have been. Possibly the lack of life lies in the fact that the lady only began them in 1853 when she was seventy, but anyhow we look up apparently alluring entries in the index- Musselburgh Races, Niel Gow, the fiddler minstrel, Chillian- wallah, George IV., Adam Fergusson, Sir Walter's lifelong friend-and draw them all blank. Though there is an intoler- able deal of small-beer chronicle about the lady's schooldays in Bath where " I loved Geography above all things," yet there are a few vivid touches on the Nore Mutiny of 1797 when bluejackets carried popular naval officers shoulder-high about the streets of Plymouth, intimate glimpses of the publicly foul-mouthed but domestically quite pleasant Dr. John Wolcot (" Peter Pindar ") who was a friend of the family, and some good sound stuff about Scottish country ways and country folk at the start of the last century. We meet, for instance, at Dryburgh, David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan, who would often sell " a pennyworth of gooseberries himself to the village children. Once when he told a little girl to say to her Mother that the Earl gave them to her himself, ' Aye wull I,' she answered, ' and tell her the Yearl tuk the bawbees.' " One other instance of prudent Scottish thrift Mrs. Sibbald preserves for us when the Peebles Drummer or Town Crier was sent round the burgh to announce that a sheep was going to be killed " and who wants ony " ? But on another day the Crier proclaimed : " There's a yowe [ewe] coming down fra' the hills; twa o' her legs are ta'en, and gin the ither twa is not bespoket, she'll jist gang back again., A good deal may be forgiven the memoirist for things like that
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