To MR. BANNATYNE.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Nov. 12, 1832.
The death of Sir Walter Scott has filled us all, as his private friends
and admirers, with sorrow. I do not mean that we could have wished the
prolongation of his life such as it had been for the last months; quite
the contrary: but we feel poignant anguish from the thought that such a
life as his was prematurely shortened—that such faculties, such a
genius, such as is granted but once in an age, once in many ages, should
have been extinguished of its light, of its power to enlighten and
vivify the world, long before its natural term for setting! Whatever the
errors may have been, oh, what have been the unremitted, generous, alas! overstrained exertions of that noble nature!