SIR WALTER SCOTT AND JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Remarks by Patrick Killough
to the 2007 Convention
of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association
Pittsburgh Holiday Inn

Friday August 10   8:30 - 9:20 a. m.

FOOTNOTE # 04

(4) Death of Sir Walter Scott.

When he was dying I was saying prayers ... for him
continually, thinking of Keble's words, 'Think on the
minstrel as ye kneel.'

Ornsby: Hope-Scott (2007), p. 104.


During his last illness, Scott asked Lockhart to read to him; 'and when I asked from what book, he said, ---"Need you ask? There is but one.'" Lockhart read from the fourteenth chapter of St. John. As he sank into death he uttered passages from the Bible, or some of the magnificent hymns of the Romish ritual, in which he had always delighted. We very often heard distinctly the cadence of the Dies Irae, and I think the very last stanza that we could make out, was the first of a still greater favourite:
    Stabat mater dolorosa
    Juxta crucem lachrymosa,
    Dum pendebat Filius. ...

[A.N. Wilson (1980), p. 92 f, citing J.G. Lockhart, LIFE OF SCOTT (1838), iii 128.]