Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/488

 

 SCOTT, ALEXANDER (fl. 1550), Scottish poet, was probably a Lothian man, but particulars of his origin and of his life are entirely wanting. It is only by gathering together a few scraps of internal evidence that we learn that his poems were written between 1545 and 1568 (the date of the Bannatyne MS., the only MS. authority for the text). Allan Ramsay was the first to bring Scott’s work to the notice of modern readers, by printing some of the poems in his Ever Green. In a copy of verses (“Some Few of the Contents”) on the Bannatyne MS., he thus refers to Scott:

The sketch is just, for Scott’s poems deal chiefly with female character and with passion of a strongly erotic type. He is “sweit tunged,” for his technique is always good, and his lyrical measures show remarkable accomplishment. In this respect he holds his own with the best of the “makars” represented in the Bannatyne MS. In what may appear excessive coarseness to present-day taste, he makes good claim to rival Dunbar and his contemporaries. The poems referred to by Ramsay are “Ane Ballat maid to the Derisioun and Scorne of Wantoun Wemen,” “Ane New Yeir Gift to the Queen Mary quhen scho come first Hame, 1562,” and some or all of his amorous songs (about 30 in number). Of these “To luve unluvit,” “Ladeis, be war,” and “Lo, quhat it is to lufe” are favourable examples of his style. No early Scots poet comes nearer the quality of the Caroline love-lyric. His Justing and Debait vp at the Drum betwix W&#8198;[illiam] Adamsone and Johine Sym follows the literary tradition of Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene. He has left verse-renderings of the 1st and 50th Psalms.

 SCOTT, DAVID (1806–1849), Scottish historical painter, brother of William Bell Scott, was born at Edinburgh in October 1806, and studied art under his father, Robert Scott, the engraver. In 1828 he exhibited his first oil picture, the “Hopes of Early Genius dispelled by Death,” which was followed by “Cain, Nimrod, Adam and Eve singing their Morning Hymn,” “Sarpedon carried by Sleep and Death,” and other subjects of a poetic and imaginative character. In 1829 he became a member of the Scottish Academy, and in 1832 visited Italy, where he spent more than a year in study. At Rome he executed a large symbolical painting, entitled the “Agony of Discord, or the Household Gods Destroyed.” The works of his later years include “Vasco da Gama encountering the Spirit of the Storm,” a picture—immense in size and most powerful in conception—finished in 1842, and now preserved in the Trinity House, Leith; the “Duke of Gloucester entering the Water Gate of Calais” (1841); the “Alchemist” (1838), “Queen Elizabeth at the Globe Theatre” (1840) and “Peter the Hermit” (1845), remarkable for varied and elaborate character painting; and “Ariel and Caliban” (1837) and the “Triumph of Love” (1846), distinguished by beauty of colouring and depth of poetic feeling. The most important of his religious subjects are the “Descent from the Cross” (1835) and the “Crucifixion—the Dead Rising” (1844). Scott also executed several remarkable series of designs. Two of these—the Monograms of Man and the illustrations to Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner—were etched by his own hand, and published in 1831 and 1837 respectively, while his subjects from the Pilgrim’s Progress

and Nichol’s Architecture of the Heavens were issued after his death. He died in Edinburgh on the 5th of March 1849.

 SCOTT, SIR GEORGE GILBERT (1811–1878), English architect, was born in 1811 at Gawcott near Buckingham, where his father was rector; his grandfather, Thomas Scott (1747–1821), was a well-known commentator on the Bible. In 1827 young Scott was apprenticed for four years to an architect in London named Edmeston, and at the end of his pupildom acted as clerk of the works at the new Fishmongers’ Hall and other buildings. In Edmeston’s office he became acquainted with W. B. Moffat, a fellow-pupil, who possessed considerable talents for the purely business part of an architect’s work, and the two entered into partnership. In 1834 they were appointed architects to the union workhouses of Buckinghamshire, and for four years were busily occupied in building a number of cheap and ugly unions, both there and in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire. In 1838 Scott built at Lincoln his first church, the design for which won the prize in an open competition, and this was quickly followed by six others, all very poor buildings without chancels; church building in England had then reached its very lowest point both in style and in poverty of construction. About 1839 his enthusiasm was aroused by some of the eloquent writings of Pugin on medieval architecture, and by the various papers on ecclesiastical subjects published by the Camden Society. These opened a new world to Scott, and he thenceforth studied and imitated the architectural styles and principles of the middle ages with the utmost zeal and patient care. The first result of this new study was his design for the Martyrs’ Memorial at Oxford, erected in 1840, a clever adaptation of the late 13th-century crosses in honour of Queen Eleanor. From that time Scott became the chief ecclesiastical architect in England, and in the next twenty-eight years completed a large number of new churches and “restorations,” the fever for which was fomented by the Ecclesiological Society and the growth of ecclesiastical feeling in England.

In 1844 Scott won the first premium in the competition for the new Lutheran church at Hamburg, a noble building with a very lofty spire, designed strictly in the style of the 13th century. In the following year his partnership with Moffat was dissolved, and in 1847 he was employed to renovate and refit Ely cathedral, the first of a long series of English cathedral and abbey churches which passed through his hands. In 1851 he visited and studied the architecture of the chief towns in northern Italy, and in 1855 won the competition for the town-house at Hamburg, designed after the model of similar buildings in north Germany. In spite of his having won the first prize, another architect was selected to construct the building, after a very inferior design. In 1856 a competition was held for designs of the new government offices in London; Scott obtained the third place in this, but the work was afterwards given to him on the condition (insisted on by Lord Palmerston) that he should make a new design, not Gothic, but Classic or Renaissance in style. To this Scott very reluctantly consented, as he had little sympathy with any styles but those of England or France from the 13th to the 15th century. In 1862–1863 he was employed to design and construct the Albert Memorial, a costly and elaborate work, in the style of a magnified 13th-century reliquary or ciborium, adorned with many statues and reliefs in bronze and marble. On the partial completion of this he was knighted. In 1866 he competed for the new London law-courts, but the prize was adjudged to his old pupil, G. E. Street. In 1873, owing to illness caused by overwork, Scott spent some time in Rome and other parts of Italy. The mosaic pavement which he designed for Durham cathedral soon afterwards was the result of his study of the 13th-century mosaics in the old basilicas of Rome. On his return to England he resumed his professional labours, and continued to work almost without intermission till his short illness and death on the 27th of March 1878. He was buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, and an engraved brass, designed by G. E. Street, was