Volume 3 > Half-Volume 5

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were so ready under such circumstances to obey!
The story of the Birkenhead will be imperishable,
and it will enshrine to all time the name of Colonel
Alexander Seton.1
SHARPE, CHARLES KIRKPATRICK, M.A., well
known in the literary circles of Edinburgh during the
last half-century, was descended from the ancient
family of Closeburn. His father, Charles, was grand-
son of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, of Closeburn, Bart.,
and assumed the name of Sharpe on succeeding to
the barony of Hoddam, or Hodholm, in Annandale,
bequeathed to him by his kinsman Mathew Sharpe,
of Hoddam, who died unmarried in 1769. By the
mother's side Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was con-
nected with the noble families of Cassillis and Eglin-
toun. Being a younger son (his elder brother was
the late General Sharpe, of Hoddam, who long re-
presented the Dumfries burghs in parliament) he was
educated with a view to holy orders, and studied for
a number of years at Christ Church, Oxford, where
he was distinguished by his classical and other attain-
ments in literature and arts.
Whether Mr. Sharpe ever seriously entertained the
idea of adopting the clerical profession may be ques-
tioned. He seems to have early imbibed a taste for
light literature, and "before he had attained his
thirtieth year he had fixed himself in the position
which he kept to the last�that of a man of fashion
devoting his leisure hours to the successful cultiva-
tion of literature, music, and the fine arts." No
small share of his attention was, at the same time,
given to subjects of antiquarian interest; and his
collection of the rare and curious belonging to days
gone by, or to distant countries, rendered the house
of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Drummond Street,
Edinburgh, like that of Horace Walpole, Straw-
berry Hill, London, a treat of no ordinary descrip-
tion to the virtuoso. A peculiarity in personal ap-
pearance and in the style of his dress�which belonged
to a past rather than the present age of fashion�
claimed for him an individuality as singular as it
might seem eccentric. His manners had all that
gracefulness and ease�familiar yet polite�which
distinguish the highly aristocratic school in which
he had been brought up. In sentiment he was a
Jacobite, and of course attached to the old regime.
His education at Oxford had probably some influence
upon him in this respect; but he had a poetical love
of traditionary lore, and his deep veneration for
antiquity no doubt tended to fix those elements
upon which the old cavalier school of politicians so
long maintained itself amidst the more utilitarian
liberalism of modern times. Nor was his intercourse
and correspondence, which embraced a wide circle
of the literati (including Sir Walter Scott) of his
own and other countries�men imbued with similar
sympathies as himself�calculated to lessen the bias
of his early years, when he listened with delight, as
1 In the meantime government has done what it could for
preserving the record of the event and the names of those who
perished, by a mural tablet erected at Chelsea Hospital, bear-
ing the following inscription:�"This monument is erected by
command of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, to record the heroic
constancy and unbroken discipline shown by Lieutenant-col-
onel Seton, 74th Highlanders, and the troops embarked under
his command, on board the 'Birkenhead,' when that vessel
was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, on the 26th Febru-
ary, 1852, and to preserve the memory of the Officers, Non-
commissioned Officers, and Men, who perished on that Occas-
ion. Their names were as follows:
" Lieutenant-colonel A. Seton, 74th Highlanders, command-
ing the Troops" (after which follow the names of the com-
missioned and non-commissioned officers).
"In all three-hundred and fifty-seven officers and men.
The names of the Privates will be found inscribed on brass plates
adjoining."
he himself has expressed it, to songs sung by nurses,
dairymaids, and tailors, while the latter were wont
to reside in his father's castle, "mis-shaping clothes
for the children and servants."
Mr. Sharpe first became known to the literary
world in 1803, when he contributed to the Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border, edited by Sir Walter Scott, the
well-known ballad entitled the "Tower of Repent-
ance," a stronghold built by one of the former pro-
prietors of his father's estate of Hoddam. In 1807 he
gave a still more decided proof of the career he had
entered upon by the publication of a volume entitled
Metrical Romances. This little work was favour-
ably noticed by Sir Walter Scott in the Quarterly
Review some years afterwards. His muse, however,
was not of a very high caste; nor does he seem to
have been at the trouble of cultivating it to any great
extent. To him it was a matter of pastime, not of
labour or ambition. It was not till 1823 that
anything in the same strain appeared from his pen.
He then produced his Ballad Book, a small collection
of Scottish ballads, inscribed to Sir Walter Scott.
After an interval of eleven years, in 1834, he printed
privately, " The Wizard Peter, a Song of the Sol-
way," founded on a tradition formerly well known
in Annandale. These long interregnums, at the
same time, were not passed in idleness.
"Almost contemporaneously with his appearance
as a poet," says a well-written obituary notice of
him in the Edinburgh Courant, "Mr. Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe gave proof of a much higher
skill in the fine arts. Many of our readers must
have seen, either in the copper etching or in the
original drawing at Abbotsford, his ' Queen Elizabeth
Dancing High and Disposedly' before the Scottish
envoy Sir James Melville, who had excited her
jealousy by commendations of the exquisite grace
with which Mary Stuart led the dance at Holyrood
or Linlithgow. On this admirable sketch Scott
was accustomed to expatiate with a delight which
will be shared by every one who is able to appreci-
ate the humorous. A scarcely less felicitous effort
of Mr. Sharpe's is his ' Marriage of Muckle-mou'd
Meg,' illustrating a well-known incident in Border
history, the subject of a ballad by Hogg. The
original of Mr. Sharpe's sketch is at Abbotsford.
It has been etched, like the 'Feast of Spurs' and
many other things of the same kind which his ready
pencil was ever throwing off. . . . Mr Sharpe
was not only a successful amateur in art, but a
highly accomplished musician. He has left, we
hear, much that will be curious and interesting to
the lovers of melody."
Mr. Sharpe, however, will be best known to
posterity as a literary antiquary, as the editor of
various interesting and curious works. Amongst
these are Law's Memorials, a work repeatedly re-
ferred to by historical writers as a book of authority.
In 1817 appeared Kirkton's History of the Church of
Scotland, to which were appended a series of notes,
"which, if not very appropriate to the covenanting
gravity of the text, are at least irresistible in their
piquancy." Scott felt much pleased with this work,
so much in unison with his own sentiments, and
honoured it with a long criticism in the Quarterly
Review for January, 1818. In 1827 he edited the
Life of Lady Margaret Cuninghame and "A Mem-
orial of the Conversion of Jean Livingstone, Lady
Wariston, with an Account of her Carriage at her
Execution, July, 1600." To this curious production,
printed from a MS. of the Rev. R. Wodrow, is pre-
fixed a very amusing introduction, which includes the
trial of the lady, a daughter of the Laird of Duni-
pace, for the murder of her husband, from the jus-