Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/334

282 volumes of "Constable's Miscellany," contained not only a highly interesting account of the people of these countries, and the events of the war of South American independence, but a memoir on the navigation of the South American station, a valuable collection of scientific observations, and an article "On the Duties of Naval Commanders in-chief on the South American Station, before the appointment of Consuls."

Captain Hall had now established for himself a higher reputation than that of a brave sailor, skilful navigator, and rising man in his profession; his scientific acquirements, which he made by close study and careful observation during the course of his professional service in every quarter of the world, had insured him the favourable notice of the most eminent in the several departments of physics, while the literary excellence of the works he had already published had given him an honoured place among the most popular writers of the day. On this account, while he was on shore, it was as an author, and in the society of authors; and in this respect his journal affords such a mass of information that we wonder how a sailor could have written it. But every phase of intellectual society, every movement, every utterance, was as carefully noted by him as if he had been on the look-out upon the mast-head amidst a new ocean studded with rocks, shoals, and sunny islands. In this way, amongst other information, he has given us one of the most minute, and at the same time most graphic and interesting, accounts which we possess of the domestic life of Sir Walter Scott. As he was living on shore at the time, he spent the Christmas of 1824 at Abbotsford, with the "Great Unknown," while the mansion itself, which was newly finished and now to be inaugurated, had a greater concourse of distinguished guests than it could well contain. "Had I a hundred pens," exclaims Hall on this occasion, " each of which at the same time should separately write down an anecdote, I could not hope to record one- half of those which our host, to use Spenser's expression, 'welled out alway.' " But what man could do he did on this occasion ; and during these ten or twelve happy days, every hour found him on the alert, and every evening occupied in bringing up his log. In this way his "Abbotsford Journal" alone would form a delightful volume. "Certainly Sir Walter Scott," observes his sou-in-law and biographer, "was never subjected to sharper observation than that of his ingenious friend, Captain Basil Hall." But while thus observant, Hall could also be as frolicsome a Jack-ashore as ever landed after a two years' cruise, and this he showed when Hogmany-night came; that night often so destructive of merriment, because people are then, as it were, enjoined by proclamation, like those of Cyprus, to "put themselves in triumph." "It is true enough," says Hall, when philosophizing upon this perverse tendency, "that it is to moralize too deeply to take things in this way, and to conjure up, with an ingenuity of self-annoyance, these blighting images. So it is, and so I acted; and as my heart was light and unloaded with any care, I exerted myself to carry through the ponderous evening; ponderous only because it was one set apart to be light and gay. I danced reels like a wild man, snapped my fingers, and hallooed with the best of them; flirted with the young ladies at all hazards; and with the elder ones of which there was a store I talked and laughed finely." One part of this journal, and not the least interesting part of it, is a solution of one of the great literary problems of the day; viz., how Sir Walter Scott could write so much, and yet be apparently so little in his study. Did he labour while all the world was asleep, that he might mingle in its daily intercourse ? Captain Hall's