A Few Hours With Scott Author:Walter Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 40 INTRODUCTORY. The late Mr. Mathews, as I have been told, had a story in one of his Evening Miscellanies, in which a " Major Longbow " is supposed to giv... more »e an account of a domestic calamity which befel him in the West Indies. In a sudden thunder-storm which came on, while he was sitting in an apartment with his wife, one dreadful flash struck the unhappy lady, and reduced her in an instant to a heap of ashes before his eyes. For some moments he was stunned at the sight of this dreadful catastrophe—but summoning all his fortitude to his aid, he rang the bell; and, pointing to the sad remains, said to the servant—" Sweep away Mrs. Longbow, and—bring in coffee." My heart reproves me, as I recite this profane tale, to think I should utter it in any, the remotest, connection with a Work of our honoured Bard. And yet— " Credite Pisones"—a glimmering of resemblance strikes me, between this and the conclusion of " Eokeby ; " wherein the Poet seems to hurry us away, with such startling abruptness, from the scarce-finished tragedy at Eglistone, to look out on the " gladsome " bridal party, on their way to that self-same spot, that we are almost fain to exclaim, with one of old,—Giveme first a burying-place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. The transitions of fiction, whether dramatic, or merely narrative, are often, no doubt, very rapid. It needs but the prompter's whistle, and the mysterious agency of the concealed scene-shifter, and we pass at once from the dreary dungeon and its woes, to the regal festivities of the palace:— " The hut's dark walls we see no more : Our foot is on the marble floor ; And o'er our head the dazzling spars Gleam like a firmament of stars." But manner and circumstance, in such cases, are everything, and the feelings of the spectator the...« less