Elizabeth is wounded, and is
carried to the Kirk of Field, and laid in Darnley's chamber, while
Darnley goes out and makes love to my rural heroine, the lady of
Fernilee, a Kerr. That night Bothwell blows up the Kirk of Field,
Elizabeth and all. Darnley has only one resource. Borrowing the riding
habit of the rural heroine, the lady of Fernilee, he flees across the
Border, and, for the rest of his life, personates Queen Elizabeth. That
is why Elizabeth, who was Darnley, hated Mary so bitterly (on account of
the Kirk of Field affair), and _that is why Queen Elizabeth was never
married_. Side-lights on Shakespeare's Sonnets were obviously cast. The
young man whom Shakespeare admired so, and urged to marry, was--Darnley.
This romance did not get the prize (the anachronism about Shakespeare is
worthy of Scott), but I am conceited enough to think it deserved an
honourable mention.
Enough of my own cigarettes. But there are others of a more fragrant
weed. Who will end for me the novel of which Byron only wrote a chapter;
who, as Bulwer Lytton is dead? A finer opening, one more mysteriously
stirring, you can nowhere read. And the novel in letters, which Scott
began in 1819, who shall finish it, or tell us what he did with his fair
Venetian courtezan, a character so much out of Sir Walter's way? He
tossed it aside--it was but an enchanted cigarette--and gave us "The
Fortunes of Nigel" in its place.
Pages:
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249