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CONVERSATIONS OF
“I hope Walter Scott did not write the review on ‘Christabel;’ for he certainly, in common with many of us, is indebted to Coleridge. But for him, perhaps, ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ would never have been thought of. The line
‘Jesu Maria shield thee well!’
is word for word from ‘Christabel.’
“Of all the writers of the day, Walter Scott is the least jealous: he is too confident of his own fame to dread the rivalry of others. He does not think of good writing, as the Tuscans do of fever,—that there is only a certain quantity of it in the world.”[1]
“What did you mean,” said a person who was with Lord Byron, “by calling Rogers a Nestor and an Argo-
- ↑ Travellers in Italy should be cautious of taking bouquets of flowers from the Contadini children, as they are in the habit of placing them on the breasts of persons having malignant fevers, and think that, by communicating the disorder to another, it will be diminished in the person affected.
