POSTHUMOUS HONOURS.
'YPHERE has been a meeting at Edinburgh for the purpose ot pass- ing resolutions respecting a monument to the memory of Sir WAL- TER SCOTT, worthy of the fame of the deceased anti the .admiration of the living. All the principal gentry in that part of Scotland attended the meeting, and the Lord Provost of Eitinburgh pre- sided. The first resolution was moved by the Duke of Three LEUGH, and seconded by the Earl of ROSEBERRY ; the second was moved by Lord Advocate JEFFREY, and seconded by Professor WILSON,— a Whig following a Tory, and vice versa. There is a minute atten- tion to etiquette in all this, which we could have wished away. We could have wished to see more heart-work and less of mere head-work in the arrangement of the proceedings. The speeches were eloquent, as they must needs have been when JEFFREY and 'WILSON were the speakers ; but in them, too, a fastidious critic :would probably discover a degree of artificiality, that indicated in the orator more attention to himself than his theme. Mr. WIL- SON quoted scraps of poetry,—a practice which, though it be a -common one, straightforward common sense disdains for its petti- ness, and which honest feeling cannot stop to attend to ; and Mr. JEFFREY seemed to consider rather what would be expected from him, than what the occasion demanded.
Some of Mr.-JEFFREY'S compliments to the deceased were un- founded; and unfounded compliments add nothing to the greatest fame. He praised Sir WALTER for the moderation of his Toryism ; and instanced, in proof, the justice Sir WALTER had done to the Whigs of old by giving to Henry Morton, the Roundhead, a higher place, in his tale of the struggles against Charles the Second, than to his favourite Dundee. The case was unfortu- nately selected. Old Mortality was considered, on its publication, an unjustifiable attack upon the Scottish Reformers, by a more searching critic than Mr. JEFFREY, and a more accurate historian than Sir WALTER SCOTT; and the best proof that Dr. 111`Cuies censures were merited, is to be found in the abstinence from simi- lar injustice that Sir WALTER, from the period of their appearance, displayed. But surely, putting aside such considerations, we need riot remind Mr. JEFFREY, that strong reasons existed why Sir WALTER should not bring his political opinions into prominent re- lief, in publications which depended for their circulation on the pleasure they were calculated to give to general readers. Nor need we remind him, moreover, that Sir WALTER'S incognito forbade any such indulgence in party likings or dislikings as would have narrowed the circle of conjecture respecting thoir author. In his poetical and avowed works, Sir WALTER was not scrupulous in the indulgence of his political predilections. Marmion contains, if we recollect rightly, a triumphant allusion to the most ques- tionable act of the whole Revolutionary war—the storming of Copenhagen; and the only merit that the Tory bard, in the same poem, could discover in Fox, was his breaking off the attempt at treating with NAPOLEON ill 1806. The truth is, Sir WALTER SCOTT'S politics were not only of a bad school, but Sir WALTER himself was very far from being the best specimen of his school. Has Lord Advocate JEFFREY forgotten Sir Wm:riles subscription to the atrocious Beacon, and his late and lingering withdrawal from that disgraceful connexion? Has lie forgotten that one of the latest ads Of Sir WALTER'S political life was a foolish and fruitless at- tempt to stay the progress of the Reform Bill, and to rivet in Scotland that base and degrading system of squirearchy and borough-jobbery under which it has for centuries writhed? But these are the human infirmities of a noble character—the dusky spots on a glorious luminary : we only marvel that a man of Mr. JEFFREY'S tact selects so questionable points as the theme of panegyric.
Our able contemporary the Examiner has suggested, that the public should wait, ere they entered into any resolution to raise a land for the relief of Sir WALTER SCOTT'S family from the difficul- ties in which they were described as plunged, until they saw what the Duke of BUCCILEUGH, Sir WALTER'S wealthy relation, in- tended to do. We are not aware that the Duke is a relation of the deceased. But passing that, we demur to the public being called on to wait for him, or any one else. The proposed object of a subscription was, we understood, twofold—to show the grateful. feeling of the nation towards the memory of Sir WALTER, and to provide for the offspring which the noble and devoted consecration of his labour and talents to his creditors had impoverished. The latter part only could be fulfilled by any individual, however exalted ; nor would it be fulfilled in so gratifying a way. Sir WALTER himself would certainly have refused, and we believe his children would hesitate to accept, the eleemosynary grant even of a ]like; but the proudest and most delicate-minded would be °honoured in accepting the spontaneous gift of a nation. From a statement in the Chronicle, we would fain hope that neither the public nor the Duke of BUCCLEUGH will be called to show their admiration of Sir WALTER'S genius in this way; and thas.consideration the more encourages us in an -attempt to direct the sympathies of both into a channel where they may be really 'useful. "He asked. Ter bread, and they gave him a stone," has been ,the bitter remark of the biographer of more than one un- lortunateson of genius. When BURNS died, how loud were the lamentations over the .neglect which had " damned him in the Excise," and hurried to an early grave that noblest of all kindly ' and brave natures t BURNS had his monument; and the Scottish nation, wise from experience, vowed to cherish as the apple of their eye the next bright -spirit that Providence sent down to lighten their misty hills. Scow, a greater than BURNS, came among them—he too felt the gripe of distress. What hand was stretched forth to relieve him when the labours of his mighty soul were sapping its tabernacle of decay ? When the debts, in which he had unwittingly been involved, hung with deadly weight on his drooping years, who stepped forward to deliver him from that body of death? What meetings took place—what Dukes and Lords spoke their sympathy in rounded periods then ? Now, that SCOTT is gone, what zeal for his honour do we not display ! He too asked for bread, and we give him a stone. Is it to be eves thus ?
We cannot recall the past. The authors of Halloween and of the Lay sleep sound ; and our blame or our praise fall with equal effect on their stopped ears ; but there is still living and moving among us one in respect of whom we may at length invert the pro- verb,—one whose hearth we may gladden, instead of strewing idle garlands on his grave. The author of Kilmeny is neither a BURNS nor a SCOTT; but he is a man of great and varied genius. What are those who now hasten with pious affection to pour their re- grets over the grave of WALTER SCOTT, prepared to do for JAMES H000? In bequeathing his harp to his surviving friends, MOORE invokes their sympathies, not for senseless dust, but for the kin- dred spirit who can best awaken its tones. If Scotchmen are sincere in their admiration of the dead, let them show their sin- cerity by caring for the living. HOGG has been a man who, during his entire pilgrimage, might say to poverty " thou art my mother," and to disappointment, " thou art my father and my brother." He lost the advantage of his great work by the bankruptcy of its publisher. His last at- tempt to realize a small sum by the publication of his collected works failed from a similar cause. He was some two years ago ejected from the farm that he held of the Duke of BUCCLEliGH; the rent of which had absorbed every sixpence that, while he held it, he had received for his writings ; and his entire stock was sold off to defray the arrears. Such, at least, is the report we have heard. We mention it not in blame of the Duke; but merely to show the present state and condition of the simple and honest- hearted bard of Ettrick. The ejection is certain; the destitution of HOGG is equally so. We believe that, at this moment, he has no means of support save the petty income he derives from his contri- butions to the Magazines of the day. An annuity of two or three hundred pounds would amply suffice for all the wants of this sterling poet ; and how , trifling the purchase of such an an- nuity to the neblemeit and gentlemen who attended the Edinburgh meeting ! The author of the Queen's Wake is above sixty years of age.
We are far from decrying the noblest monument that art can fabricate or taste devise to the memory of the great departed. Let the people of Edinburgh heap the pile to heaven till Ossa appear a wart, to show their regard for the memory of their townsman; but while paying their " tithes of mint and anise and cummin," let them not forget that there are "weightier matters of the law," without whose observance the former are vain, hollow, and hypo- critical—rejected of Heaven, and despised of men.
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