Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 257 



week more he sat up for some time in the middle of the 

 day, and then took to his bed entirely. Even at this time 

 it is unlikely the leather chair was used ; the arms and 

 guards would make it extremely difficult to get a heavy, 

 helpless invalid into it. 



The journey to Italy, on the whole, seems to have done 

 him more harm than good ; and after he heard, at Naples 

 (where his son Charles had a diplomatic appointment) of the 

 death of Goethe, whom he had meant to visit on his way 

 home, he thought of nothing but to get back to Abbotsford. 

 The great German genius was old enough to have been his 

 father, but had taken life much more easily, and was 

 described to him as having been, the year before, quite well 

 both in mind and body. 



Sir Walter stopped for some weeks in Eome, rather to 

 please his daughter than himself. He was interested in the 

 Benedictine archives and similar treasures ; but, as is well 

 known, he could not be induced to take any interest in the 

 remains of classical antiquity, in Eome or elsewhere in Italy. 

 The one exception was perhaps hardly an exception, and is 

 curious. At Pompeii he insisted on seeing everything that 

 was to be seen, though he had to be carried through the 

 ruins in a chair, which Sir William Gell had lent him ; and 

 lie seemed fully occupied with what was before him, though 

 he only said — "the city of the dead! the city of the 

 dead ! " While, no doubt, what really affected him was 

 the perception that Pompeii is, in a very peculiar way, the 

 city of the living. 



The long galleries and slippery floors of the great Roman 

 buildings tried his walking powers very much. But, when 

 once fairly started homeward, he would have liked to travel 

 night and day, and he did hurry the journey to an extent 

 which no doubt hastened his complete breakdown. His son 

 and daughter were afraid of one of the attacks of "apoplectic 

 paralysis," of which he had had four or five, and he was 

 bled, as he had been on other occasions, by his faithful 

 manservant. This treatment was probably one main cause 

 of his health failing in the way it did. He himself attribu- 

 ted his earlier complaints, which involved great bodily 

 suffering, to the drinking habits of society in his earlier 

 days; and, as everybody knows, he overworked his brain 



