Читать книгу The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor онлайн

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A short distance from Edinburgh, the pedestrians saw the birthplace and hermitage of Drummond. It is a delightful, sequestered chateau, called “Hawthornden,” and in it the poet wrote nearly all his elegant sonnets, and it was there that old Ben Jonson, after a walk from London, was entertained by Drummond, and Drummond was in turn entertained by Jonson. Going by the way of Galashiels and Selkirk, the party visited Abbotsford and its environs, where the immortal Scott lived and wrote. In the beautiful mansion which Scott built, and in which he wrote his most popular works, they read his manuscripts; sat at his desk; wandered in his gardens; gazed intently over the wide lawn and the distant Tweed; scrutinized the enormous variety of relics which had been collected by that antiquarian, to whom kings and queens were glad to become tributary. Thence they walked along the hard and smooth highway to old Melrose.

Ruins they would see in the near England, and on the distant continent, which would enclose a dozen abbeys such as this; Gothic arches they would enter which would make those of Melrose seem as a toy; and ivy and carving and chancels would be noticed, so much more rich and beautiful, that these would suffer sadly if put in comparison. But nowhere else in all the wide world would they find a locality made more interesting than this. The associations are almost everything. And to the initiated, the great magician, Scott, still speaks in the groined arches, flowering pillars, old clock, and willow-like windows. Melrose Abbey is a marked illustration of the power of a master-mind to give influence, life, and interest to inanimate things. Bayard felt this truth and mentioned it. He read “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” in the shadow of the arches, and imagined how the ruins glowed when the grave of the wizard opened and the book was revealed. Who knows but it was there, in the presence of those stirring associations, that he first conceived the plan which led him to make classic in poetry and fiction the fields, hills, and Quakers of his native county. Had he lived ten years longer than he did, his loved Kennett might have been as classic in song and story as Abbotsford itself.