“Naples, thou’rt a gallant city,
    But thou hast been dearly bought”—­[506]

So is King Alphonso made to sum up the praises of this princely town, with the losses which he had sustained in making himself master of it.  I looked on it with something of the same feelings, and I may adopt the same train of thought when I recall Lady Northampton, Lady Abercorn, and other friends much beloved who have met their death in or near this city.

FOOTNOTES: 

[499] By “Board of Literature” Scott doubtless means the Royal Society of Literature, instituted in 1824 under the patronage of George iv.; see ante, vol. i. pp. 390-91.  Besides the members who paid a subscription there were ten associates, of whom Coleridge was one, who each received an annuity of a hundred guineas from the King’s bounty.  When William IV. succeeded his brother in 1830, he declined to continue these annuities.  Representations were made to the Government, and the then Prime Minister, Earl Grey, offered Coleridge a private grant of L200 from the Treasury, which he declined.

The pension from the Society or the Privy Purse of George iv., which Mr. Hookham Frere told Sir Walter he had made up to Coleridge, was one hundred guineas.

[500] Afterwards Lord Berwick.

[501] The travellers established themselves in the Palazzo Caramanico as soon as they were released from quarantine.

[502] A brother of Malcolm Laing, the historian.

[503] An account is given by Sir William Gell of an excursion by sea to the ruins of such a Roman villa on the promontory of Posilipo, to which he had taken Sir Walter in a boat on the 26th of January.—­Life, vol. x. pp. 157-8.

[504] For a picturesque sketch of Naples during the insurrection of 1647 see Sir Walter’s article on Masaniello and the Duke of Guise.—­Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. iv. pp. 355-403.

[505] See Appendix iv.:  “A former Empress.”  Sir Walter no doubt means the mother of Conradin of Suabia, or, as the Italians call him, Corradino,—­erroneously called “Empress,” though her husband had pretensions to the Imperial dignity, disputed and abortive.  For the whole affecting story see Histoire de la Conquete de Naples, St. Priest, vol. iii. pp. 130-185, especially pp. 162-3.

[506] A variation of the lines on Alphonso’s capture of the city in 1442:—­

“And then he looked on Naples, that great city of the sea, ‘O city,’ saith the King, ’how great hath been thy cost, For thee I twenty years—­my fairest years—­have lost.’”

—­Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads, “The King of Arragon.”

1832.

JANUARY.