Adventures among Books [25]
creature from whom Scott borrowed the character that gives a name to one of his minor Border stories. The real Black Dwarf (David Ritchie he was called among men) was fond of poetry, but hated Burns. He was polite to the fair, but classed mankind at large with his favourite aversions: ghosts, fairies, and robbers. There was this of human about the Black Dwarf, that "he hated folk that are aye gaun to dee, and never do't." The village beauties were wont to come to him for a Judgment of Paris on their charms, and he presented each with a flower, which was of a fixed value in his standard of things beautiful. One kind of rose, the prize of the most fair, he only gave thrice. Paris could not have done his dooms more courteously, and, if he had but made judicious use of rose, lily, and lotus, as prizes, he might have pleased all the three Goddesses; Troy still might be standing, and the lofty house of King Priam.
Among Dr. Brown's papers on children, that called "Pet Marjorie" holds the highest place. Perhaps certain passages are "wrote too sentimentally," as Marjorie Fleming herself remarked about the practice of many authors. But it was difficult to be perfectly composed when speaking of this wonderful fairy-like little girl, whose affection was as warm as her humour and genius were precocious. "Infant phenomena" are seldom agreeable, but Marjorie was so humorous, so quick-tempered, so kind, that we cease to regard her as an intellectual "phenomenon." Her memory remains sweet and blossoming in its dust, like that of little Penelope Boothby, the child in the mob cap whom Sir Joshua painted, and who died very soon after she was thus made Immortal.
It is superfluous to quote from the essay on Marjorie Fleming; every one knows about her and her studies: "Isabella is teaching me to make simme colings, nots of interrigations, peorids, commoes, &c." Here is a Shakespearian criticism, of which few will deny the correctness: "'Macbeth' is a pretty composition, but awful one." Again, "I never read sermons of any kind, but I read novelettes and my Bible." "'Tom Jones' and Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Her Calvinistic belief in "UNQUESTIONABLE fire and brimston" is unhesitating, but the young theologian appears to have substituted "unquestionable" for "unquenchable." There is something humorous in the alteration, as if Marjorie refused to be put off with an "excellent family substitute" for fire and brimstone, and demanded the "unquestionable" article, no other being genuine, please observe trade mark.
Among Dr. Brown's contributions to the humorous study of dogs, "Rab," of course, holds the same place as Marjorie among his sketches of children. But if his "Queen Mary's Child Garden," the description of the little garden in which Mary Stuart did NOT play when a child, is second to "Marjorie," so "Our Dogs" is a good second to "Rab." Perhaps Dr. Brown never wrote anything more mirthful than his description of the sudden birth of the virtue of courage in Toby, a comic but cowardly mongrel, a cur of low degree.
"Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens before his own and the neighbouring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a bulky, choleric, red-faced man--torvo vultu--was, by law of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of his eye. One day, his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone, and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting some precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick Toby made very light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged covering it, or thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling nose, when S. spied him through the inner glass door, and was out upon him, like the Assyrian, with a terrific GOWL. I watched them. Instantly Toby made at him with a roar too, and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreating without reserve,
Among Dr. Brown's papers on children, that called "Pet Marjorie" holds the highest place. Perhaps certain passages are "wrote too sentimentally," as Marjorie Fleming herself remarked about the practice of many authors. But it was difficult to be perfectly composed when speaking of this wonderful fairy-like little girl, whose affection was as warm as her humour and genius were precocious. "Infant phenomena" are seldom agreeable, but Marjorie was so humorous, so quick-tempered, so kind, that we cease to regard her as an intellectual "phenomenon." Her memory remains sweet and blossoming in its dust, like that of little Penelope Boothby, the child in the mob cap whom Sir Joshua painted, and who died very soon after she was thus made Immortal.
It is superfluous to quote from the essay on Marjorie Fleming; every one knows about her and her studies: "Isabella is teaching me to make simme colings, nots of interrigations, peorids, commoes, &c." Here is a Shakespearian criticism, of which few will deny the correctness: "'Macbeth' is a pretty composition, but awful one." Again, "I never read sermons of any kind, but I read novelettes and my Bible." "'Tom Jones' and Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Her Calvinistic belief in "UNQUESTIONABLE fire and brimston" is unhesitating, but the young theologian appears to have substituted "unquestionable" for "unquenchable." There is something humorous in the alteration, as if Marjorie refused to be put off with an "excellent family substitute" for fire and brimstone, and demanded the "unquestionable" article, no other being genuine, please observe trade mark.
Among Dr. Brown's contributions to the humorous study of dogs, "Rab," of course, holds the same place as Marjorie among his sketches of children. But if his "Queen Mary's Child Garden," the description of the little garden in which Mary Stuart did NOT play when a child, is second to "Marjorie," so "Our Dogs" is a good second to "Rab." Perhaps Dr. Brown never wrote anything more mirthful than his description of the sudden birth of the virtue of courage in Toby, a comic but cowardly mongrel, a cur of low degree.
"Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens before his own and the neighbouring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a bulky, choleric, red-faced man--torvo vultu--was, by law of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of his eye. One day, his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone, and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting some precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick Toby made very light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged covering it, or thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling nose, when S. spied him through the inner glass door, and was out upon him, like the Assyrian, with a terrific GOWL. I watched them. Instantly Toby made at him with a roar too, and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreating without reserve,