Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/113

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Scott
105
Scott

and ‘Novels and Romances’ (7 vols. 1824). ‘Tales and Romances’ were published by Cadell in continuation, and two volumes of introductions (1827, 1833). The Collected edition, with the author's notes, appeared in 48 vols. from 1829 to 1833. Cadell also published the Cabinet edition (25 vols. fcap. 8vo, 1841–3), the People's edition (5 vols. royal 8vo, 1844–8), and the Abbotsford edition (12 vols. impl. 8vo, 1842–7). The copyright of Scott's works was bought in 1851 by Messrs. Black for about 27,000l. after Cadell's death. They published a Library edition of the ‘Waverley Novels’ in 25 vols. 8vo in 1852–4, Roxburghe edition (48 vols. 8vo, 1859–61), a Railway edition (1854–60), a Shilling edition (1862–4), and a Sixpenny edition (1866–8), each in 25 vols., and a Centenary edition in 25 vols. 8vo in 1870–1. Many other editions have appeared, and it is stated that about three million volumes of one of the cheaper issues were sold between 1851 and 1890 (Scott's Journal, ii. 108). Among the latest are the Dryburgh edition, 1892–4, in 25 vols. 8vo, and the Border edition in 48 vols. 4to, 1892–4, edited by Mr. Andrew Lang.

Scott's miscellaneous prose works were first collected in 1827 in 6 vols. 8vo, in 28 vols. 8vo, 1834–6; and in 3 vols. royal 8vo in 1841. They include the ‘Lives of the Novelists,’ the ‘Life of Leyden’ (from the ‘Edinburgh Annual Register’), ‘Paul's Letters,’ the articles in the ‘Encyclopædia,’ and the ‘Border and Provincial Antiquities,’ some reviews from the ‘Edinburgh’ and ‘Quarterly,’ the ‘Life of Napoleon,’ and the ‘Tales of a Grandfather.’

[The main authority for Scott is Lockhart's admirable life. It appeared originally in seven volumes, 1837. Pages cited above refer to the one-volume edition of 1841. Scott's last Journals (1890) and his Familiar Letters (1894), published by David Douglas from the Abbotsford collections, are an important supplement. The first includes some extracts from Skene's unpublished reminiscences. Other lives had been published by W. Weir, 1832, and by George Allan in 1834. References to Scott are to be found in nearly every biographical work of the period, especially in Southey's Life and Correspondence, where Southey's replies to Scott's letters in Lockhart are published, and the ‘selections’ from his letters, and Cockburn's Memorials (pp. 40, 211, 217, 267, 280, 317, 382, 401, 430). Of books more especially devoted to Scott may be mentioned the ‘Refutation’ of misstatements in Lockhart by Ballantyne's trustees (1838), Lockhart's Ballantyne Humbug Handled, and the Reply to this by the trustees, 1839. Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents (1873), vol. iii., and Smiles's Memoir of John Murray (1891), also throw some light upon the publishing transactions. The present Mr. Archibald Constable has kindly contributed some unpublished papers. Mr. Andrew Lang's Life of J. G. Lockhart (1897) discusses some of these points and gives other valuable information. Other books are: Domestic Life and Manners of Sir Walter Scott, by James Hogg (1834), which Lockhart resented, but which has some interest; Recollections of Sir Walter Scott [by R. P. Gillies], 1837, ‘valuable and written in an admirable spirit,’ says Mr. Lang; Letters from and to C. K. Sharpe (1838), with many letters of Scott's; Journal of a Tour to Waterloo … with Sir W. Scott in 1815, by the late John Scott of Harden (1842); Reminiscences of Scott, by John Gibson (one of Scott's trustees), 1871; Basil Hall's Fragments, iii. 280–328 (last voyage); Washington Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey (London, 1850); G. Ticknor's Life and Letters (1870), i. 280–4, 430, ii. 360, &c. (see also letters from Ticknor and Edward Everett in Allibone's Dictionary); R. Chambers's Life of Scott with Abbotsford Notanda (chiefly referring to W. Laidlaw), by R. Carruthers (1874); Centenary Memorial of Sir W. Scott, by C. S. M. Lockhart (1871), Catalogue of Library at Abbotsford, by J. G. Cochrane (Maitland Club, 1838); Abbotsford, the personal relics and antiquarian treasures of Sir W. Scott, described by the Hon. Mary Monica Maxwell Scott, with illustrations by W. Gibb (1893).]

L. S.

SCOTT, Sir WILLIAM (d. 1350), judge, and reputed founder of the Kentish family of Scot's Hall, is said to have been son of John Scott who resided at Brabourne, Kent, apparently as seneschal of the manor. But the pedigree of the Scot's Hall family has not been traced with certainty before the fifteenth century. The judge, according to a wholly untrustworthy tradition, was descended from a younger brother of John de Baliol [q. v.], king of Scotland, and also of Alexander de Baliol [q. v.], lord of Chilham, Kent. William Scott makes his first appearance as a pleader in the year-book for 1330 (Michaelmas term). He was made serjeant-at-law in 1334–5, and on 18 March 1336–7 justice of the common pleas, having been knighted the day before, when the Black Prince was created Duke of Cornwall. In December 1340, with Chief-justice Sir Robert Parning [q. v.] and other judges, he sat at Westminster to try their delinquent colleague, Sir Richard de Willoughby [q. v.] He has been doubtfully identified with William Scott, who was knight marshal of England, and is said, according to an epitaph recorded by Weever, to have been buried in Brabourne church in 1350. But there was a William Scott who purchased land at Brabourne between 1352 and 1396, and was assessed to the sixteenth