SIR WALTER SCOTT'S FRIENDS.
Sir Walter Scott's Friends. By Florence MacCunn. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 10s. net.)—Some of the " Friends " will be well known to all students of Sir Walter's life and work ; others will be less familiar. Most of us know something of his relations with his brother-poets ; the same may be said of those who are here classed together as " Makers Of the '3finstrelry, " Leyden, Kitson, and Hogg, with others. Then, in another province of Scott's life, there are Tom Purdie and Willie Laidlaw. With all wo are glad to renew acquaintance, and there are some among the number—we find thirty-six in all—of whom many will have heard little or nothing. There is Jane Anne Cranston, for example, of whom, it is probable, many English readers will scarcely have heard. George Cranstoun (Lord Corhouse), one of Scott's legal friends, was her brother, and she with her sister, Mrs. Dugald Stewart, "shared the devotion of all the distinguished young men of Edinburgh." It was she whom the young poet summoned at 6 a.m. to hear his translation of Burger's " Lenore." He was on the eve of putting his fate to the touch with the "lady of his dreams," and Miss Cranston thought that it might help him to have this poem as a credential. Accordingly, she had some copies beautifully printed and bound. Her own marriage was romantic. Her husband was a young Austrian noble, Count Purgstall. He had a place at the Austrian Court, and that was not a happy lot in the first decade of the nineteenth century. He was taken prisoner in 1809, and died shortly after his release. There was one child of the marriage, a boy of brilliant genius, who died on the threshold of manhood. She never came back to Scotland. When the longing seized her it was too late. One thing troubled her in her old age. She had sent her old friend a memoir of her husband and her son, and he had never acknow- ledged it. Lockhart was referred to, and said that the letter was written but never sent. He forwarded it, but it reached the castle of Hainfield too late. But she knew of its existence. This is but one of the many deeply interesting things which Miss MacCunn has collected for us.
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