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Domestic Manners 
 
 and Private Life 
 
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 of Sir Walter Scott 
 
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DOMESTIC MANNERS 
 
 PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 By JAMES HOGG, 
 
 THE ETTHICK SHEPHEUD. 
 
 WITH A PREFACE AND NOTES BY THE EDITOR, 
 
 Reprinted from the Original Edition <7/" 1834. 
 
 WILLIAM BROWN, 
 
 149 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH 
 1882. 
 
250 Copies Pnnted on Vellum N'ote Paper. 
 
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 A\ 
 
 ■0. Xo 
 
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 npHE Ettrick Shepherd's "Familiar Anec- 
 dotes of Sir Walter Scott," as this 
 little work has sometimes been named, calls 
 for no apologetic preface upon its republica- 
 tion. 
 
 The book throws so much light upon the 
 social and more homely side of the Great 
 Novelist's character, and, at the same time, 
 reveals in so amusing a fashion the foibles 
 and egotism of the worthy and justly cele- 
 brated " Shepherd," that it has always been 
 exceedingly popular. 
 
 In recent years, however, the volume has 
 become so scarce that copies have been 
 only obtainable at a very high price. 
 
 The publisher therefore hopes that the 
 present edition will enable those who love 
 a good book in a good form, and who desire 
 to possess the brief but interesting sketch, 
 to add it to their stores. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 T3 Y whatever means the following sketch 
 came into the hands of its editor, its 
 paternity is certain ; it fathers itself : none 
 but James Hogg could write it. Indeed it 
 is almost as valuable for the light it throws 
 upon his literary history, as for what it com- 
 municates relative to Sir Walter Scott. 
 " Dear Sir Walter," says James, " ye can 
 never suppose that I belang to your school 
 o' chivalry ? ye are the king o' that school, 
 but I'm the king o' the mountain and fairy 
 school, which is a far higher ane nor yours.'' 
 We think we hear Sancho Panza arguing 
 that his governorship of Barrataria is a far 
 higher office than Don Quixote's knightly 
 power of bestowing kingdoms. 
 
 Nevertheless, as we have no doubt, as in- 
 deed we are quite certain that Sancho, had 
 he set himself about it, would have furnished 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 by far the best biography of his master, 
 so we think James's anecdotes by far the 
 most illustrative of Sir Walter's character 
 that we have seen. It is a strange muddy 
 piece of water in which the great poet's 
 image is reflected, still it is his image that is 
 reflected. Most scribblers about him have 
 only been trying what fine things they could 
 say. Distorted although honest James does 
 see many things through the medium of his 
 vanity, — nay, given to "leeing" though he 
 sometimes be, in a small way, still his narra- 
 tive has a smack of nature about it. It gives 
 us much such a notion of Sir Walter as 
 Wedgewood images do of the great originals 
 from which they are copied. Nay, the im- 
 pression produced upon Hogg will some- 
 times enable the reader, if he has studied 
 Sir Walter's soul in his own writings, to 
 guess pretty near the truth. 
 
 We talk lightly on the subject, but we are 
 far from thinking that this rude chalk sketch 
 has any thing of a caricature about it. Sir 
 Walter is seen to advantage in it. " Making 
 allowance for the wind," as Locksley says, 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 we recognise his very lineaments. He is 
 there both in his strength and in his weak- 
 ness. We see him caracoling across the wild 
 heaths of" the south hielandsl' laughing with 
 glee as he wades ** up to the oxters," in his 
 fishing excursion, in the exuberance of his 
 spirits, sinking a boat to duck his companions, 
 and thinking it an excellent joke. Then, 
 again, we see him in his hours of depression, 
 from his severe bilious indisposition, a suffi- 
 cient apology for certain inequalities of tem- 
 per. In his more happy moods we see him 
 overflowing with kindness, yet always shrewd 
 — always Scotch and cautious. In his less 
 amiable fits we see him annoyed even by 
 the remarks of "The Spy," or feeling the 
 contradiction of the author of the " Brownie 
 of Bodsbeck." We see too the mind which, 
 in the details of life, and in the delineation 
 of character, evinced so much practical sense, 
 as much enthralled by the dreams of a by- 
 gone age as the great knight of La Mancha 
 himself. 
 
 This is a point in Sir Walter's character 
 which is well worthy of note ; it shows how 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 the strongest minds, if they "get athraw" in 
 youth, are precisely those that retain it most 
 stubbornly. Sir Walter was sung into a 
 reverence for aristocracy in his cradle. He 
 grew up amid the first fervent glow of the 
 anti-gallican spirit. His sympathies received 
 a bent which his feudalized imagination led 
 him to cherish and exaggerate, instead of 
 seeking to counteract it. He felt the glam- 
 our of caste dispersing like mist before the 
 sun, and he sought to wrap the illusive 
 mantle round our hills again. It was this 
 that made him take pleasure in enacting the 
 feudal baron at Abbotsford. It was this that 
 made him cling to those great families with 
 which he claimed clanship. It was this that 
 made him take pride even in a questionable 
 alliance with nobility. It was this that made 
 him happy amid the tom-fooleries of the 
 king's welcome to Edinburgh. It was this 
 that in his latter day, when his mind was 
 enfeebled by disease, caused him to be 
 haunted by the dread of a violent and 
 bloody revolution. Sir Walter Scott was 
 in some respects, a Horace Walpole on a 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 greater scale, throwing a heart into his 
 play ; his greater depth of feeling, his more 
 powerful intellect and passions, render that 
 in him tragical which in the other was 
 only ludicrous. 
 
 A great degree of coarse, strong, graphic 
 talent will not be denied to the following 
 sketch. Sir Walter is brought bodily before 
 us, with all his peculiarities of look and 
 gesture. 
 
 There are some inaccuracies in what is 
 narrated of the minor persons of the drama 
 which must be corrected ; but not yet, 
 (1834) while so many survive whom truths, 
 only valuable as affording an insight into 
 character, might pain. The day may come, 
 however, when certain small circles which 
 attempted to catch a borrowed light from 
 the proximity of a great man, may become 
 matter of history. 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 IN the following miscellaneous narrative, 
 I do not pretend to give a life of my 
 illustrious and regretted friend. That has 
 been done by half-a-dozen already, and will 
 be given by his son-in-law fully and clearly 
 — the only man who is thoroughly qualified 
 for the task, and is in possession of the 
 necessary documents. The whole that I 
 presume to do, is, after an intimate acquaint- 
 ance of thirty years, to give a few simple 
 and personal anecdotes, which no man can 
 give but myself. It is well known what Sir 
 Walter was in his study, but these are to 
 show what he was in the parlour, in his 
 family, and among his acquaintances ; and, 
 in giving them, I shall in nothing extenuate, 
 
2 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 or set down aught through partiality, and 
 as for malice, that is out of the question. 
 
 The first time I ever saw Sir Walter was 
 one fine day in the summer of 1801. I was 
 busily engaged working in the field at 
 Ettrick-house, when old Wat Shiel came 
 posting over the water to me and told me 
 that I boud to gang away down to the 
 Ramsey-cleugh as fast as my feet could 
 carry me, for there were some gentlemen 
 there who wanted to see me directly. 
 
 " Wha can be at the Ramsey-cleugh that 
 want to see me, Wat ? " 
 
 " I couldna say, for it wasna me they 
 spake to i' the bygangin', but I'm thinking 
 it's the Shirra an' some o' his gang." 
 
 I was rejoiced to hear this, for I had seen 
 the first volumes of the " Minstrelsy of the 
 Border," and had copied a number of ballads 
 from my mother's recital, or chant rather, 
 and sent them to the editor, preparatory to 
 the publication of a third volume. I accord- 
 ingly flung down my hoe and hasted aw^ay 
 home to put on my Sunday clothes, but be- 
 fore reaching it I met the Shirra and Mr 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 3 
 
 William Laidlaw, coming to visit me. They 
 alighted, and remained in our cottage a 
 considerable time, perhaps nearly two hours, 
 and we were friends on the very first ex- 
 change of sentiments. It could not be other- 
 wise, for Scott had no duplicity about him ; 
 he always said as he thought. My mother 
 chanted the ballad of Old Maitlan' to him, 
 with which he was highly delighted, and 
 asked her if she thought it ever had been in 
 print ? And her answer was, " O na, na, 
 sir, it never was printed i' the world, for my 
 brothers an' me learned it an' mony mae 
 frae auld Andrew Moor, and he learned it 
 frae auld Baby Mettlin, wha was house- 
 keeper to the first laird of Tushilaw. She 
 was said to hae been another nor a gude 
 ane, an' there are many queer stories about 
 hersel' ; but O, she had been a grand singer 
 o' auld songs an' ballads." 
 
 "The first laird of Tushilaw, Margaret.?" 
 said he, " then that must be a very old story 
 indeed.?" 
 
 " Ay, it is that, sir ! It is an auld story ! 
 But mair nor that, excepting George Warton 
 
4 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 an' James Stewart, there were never ane o' 
 my sangs prentit till ye prentit them your- 
 sel', an' ye hae spoilt them awthegither. 
 They were made for singing an' no for read- 
 ing ; but ye hae broken the charm now, an' 
 they'll never be sung main An' the worst 
 thing of a', they're nouther right spell'd nor 
 right setten down." 
 
 " Take ye that, Mr Scott," said Laidlaw. 
 
 Scott answered with a hearty laugh, and 
 the quotation of a stanza from Wordsworth, 
 on which my mother gave him a hearty rap 
 on the knee with her open hand, and said, 
 *• Ye'U find, however, that it is a' true that 
 I'm tellin' ye." My mother has been too 
 true a prophetess, for from that day to this, 
 these songs, which were the amusement of 
 every winter evening, have never been sung 
 more. 
 
 We were all to dine at Ramsey-cleugh 
 with the Messrs Brydon, but Scott and 
 Laidlaw went away to look at some monu- 
 ments in Ettrick church-yard, . and some 
 other old thing, I have forgot what, and I 
 was to follow. On going into the stable- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 5 
 
 yard at Ramsey-cleugh I met with Mr 
 Scott's groom, a greater original than his 
 master, at whom I asked if the Shirra was 
 come ? 
 
 " Oo ay, lad, the Shirra's come," said he. 
 "Are ye the chap that mak's the auld 
 ballads an' sings them sae weel ? " 
 
 I said, I fancied I was he that he meant, 
 though I could not say that I had ever 
 made ony very auld ballads. 
 
 "Ay, then, lad, gang your ways into the 
 house, and speir for the Shirra. They'll let 
 ye see where he is, an' hell be very glad to 
 see ye, that I'll assure ye o'." 
 
 During the sociality of the evening, the 
 discourse ran very much on the different 
 breeds of sheep, that everlasting drawback 
 on the community of Ettrick Forest. The 
 original black-faced forest breed being 
 always denominated the s/iort sheep^ and the 
 Cheviot breed the long sheep. The disputes 
 at that time ran very high about the practic- 
 able profits of each. Mr Scott, who had 
 come into that remote district to visit a 
 bard of Nature's own making, and preserve 
 
6 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 what little fragments remained of the 
 country's legendary lore, felt himself rather 
 bored with the everlasting question of the 
 long and short sheep. So, at length, 
 putting on his most serious calculating face, 
 he turned to Mr Walter Brydon, and said, 
 " I am rather at a loss regarding the merits 
 of this very important question. How long 
 must a sheep actually measure to come 
 under the denomination of a long sheep ?'' 
 
 Mr Brydon, who, in the simplicity of his 
 heart, neither perceived the quiz nor the 
 reproof, fell to answer with great sincerity, 
 " It's the woo', sir ; it's the woo' that mak's 
 the difference, the lang sheep hae the short 
 woo' an' the short sheep hae the lang thing, 
 an' these are just kind o' names we gie 
 them, ye see." 
 
 Laidlaw got up a great guffaw, on which 
 Scott could not preserve his face of strict 
 calculation any longer ; it went gradually 
 awry, and a hearty laugh followed. When 
 I saw the very same words repeated near 
 the beginning of the Black Dwarf, how 
 could I be mistaken of the author ? It is 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7 
 
 true that Johnnie Ballantyne swore me into 
 a nominal acquiescence to the contrary for 
 several years, but in my own mind I could 
 never get the better of that and several 
 other similar coincidences. 
 
 The next day we went off, five in number, 
 to visit the wilds of Rankleburn, to see if, 
 on the farms of Buccleugh and Mount 
 Comyn, the original possession of the Scotts, 
 there were any relics of antiquity which 
 could mark out the original residence of 
 the chiefs whose distinction it was to 
 become the proprietors of the greater part 
 of the border districts. We found no 
 remains of either tower or fortalice, save 
 an old chapel and church-yard, and the 
 remnants of a kiln-mill and mill-dam, where 
 corn never grew, but where, as old Satchells 
 very appropriately says : — 
 
 " Had heather bells been corn o' the best, 
 The Buccleugh mill would have had a noble grist." 
 
 It must have been used for grinding the 
 chiefs black mails, which it is well known 
 were all paid to him in kind ; and an 
 immense deal of victual is still paid to him 
 
8 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 in the same way, the origin of which no 
 man knows. 
 
 Besides having been mentioned by Sat- 
 chells, the most fabulous historian that ever 
 wrote, there was a remaining tradition in 
 the country that there was a font-stone of 
 blue marble, out of which the ancient heirs 
 of Buccleugh were baptized, covered up 
 among the ruins of the old church. Mr 
 Scott was curious to see if we could 
 discover it, but on going among the ruins 
 where the altar was known to have been, 
 we found the rubbish at that spot dug out 
 to the foundation, we knew not by whom, 
 but it was manifest that the font had either 
 been taken away, or that there was none 
 there. I never heard since that it had ever 
 been discovered by any one. 
 
 As there appeared, however, to have been 
 a sort of recess in the eastern gable, we fell 
 a-turning over some loose stones, to see if 
 the baptismal font was not there, when we 
 came to one-half of a small pot encrusted 
 thick with rust. Mr Scott's eye brightened, 
 and he swore it was part of an ancient con- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 9 
 
 secrated helmet. Laidlaw, however, fell a 
 picking and scratching with great patience 
 until at last he came to a layer of pitch in- 
 side, and then with a malicious sneer, he 
 said, " The truth is, Mr Scott, it's nouther 
 mair nor less than an auld tar-pot, that some 
 of the farmers hae been buisting their sheep 
 out o' i' the kirk lang syne." Sir Walter's 
 shaggy eye-brows dipped deep over his eyes, 
 and, suppressing a smile, he turned and 
 strode away as fast as he could, saying, that 
 "we had just rode all the way to see that 
 there was nothing to be seen." 
 
 He was, at that time, a capital horseman, 
 and was riding on a terribly high-spirited 
 grey nag, which had the perilous fancy of 
 leaping every drain, rivulet, and ditch that 
 came in our way. The consequence was, 
 that he was everlastingly bogging himself, 
 while sometimes the rider kept his seat in 
 spite of the animal's plunging, and at other 
 times he was obliged to extricate himself 
 the best way he could. In coming through 
 a place called the Milsey Bog, I said to him, 
 " Mr Scott, that's the maddest de'il of a beast 
 
lO DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 I ever saw. Can you no gar him tak' a wee 
 mair time? he's just out o' ae lair intil 
 another wi' ye." 
 
 " Ay," said he, " he and I have been very 
 often like the Pechs {Picts) these two days 
 past, we could stand straight up and tie the 
 latchets of our shoes." I did not understand 
 the allusion, nor do I yet, but those were 
 his words. 
 
 We visited the old castles of Tushilaw 
 andThirlstane, dined and spent the afternoon 
 and the night with Mr Brydon of Crosslee. 
 Sir Walter was all the while in the highest 
 good humour, and seemed to enjoy the 
 range of mountain solitude which we tra- 
 versed, exceedingly. Indeed, I never saw 
 him otherwise in the fields. On the rugged 
 mountains, and even toiling in the Tweed 
 to the waist, I have seen his glee surpass 
 that of all other men. His memory, or per- 
 haps I should say, his recollection, was so 
 capacious, so sterling and minute, that a de- 
 scription of what I have witnessed regarding 
 it would not gain credit. When in Edin- 
 burgh, and even at Abbotsford, I was often 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. I I 
 
 obliged to apply to him for references in my 
 historical tales, that so I might relate 
 nothing of noblemen and gentlemen that 
 was not strictly true. I never found him at 
 fault. In that great library, he not only 
 went uniformly straight to the book, but ere 
 ever he stirred from the spot, turned up the 
 page which contained the information I 
 wanted. I saw a pleasant instance of this 
 retentiveness of memory recorded lately of 
 him, regarding Campbell's PLEASURES OF 
 Hope, but I think I can relate a more extra- 
 ordinary one. 
 
 He, and Skene of Rubislaw, and I were 
 out one night about midnight, leistering 
 kippers in Tweed,* about the end of January, 
 not long after the opening of the river for 
 fishing, which was then on the tenth, and 
 Scott having a great range of the river him- 
 self, we went up to the side of the Rough 
 haugh of Elibank ; but when we came to 
 
 * Sir Walter alludes in the notes to his collected 
 works by Cadell, to his " fire hunting " expeditions. 
 This narrative enables us to fill up the outline of one 
 of them. 
 
I 2 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 kindle our light, behold our peat was gone 
 out. This was a terrible disappointment ; 
 but to think of giving up our sport was out 
 of the question, so we had no other shift 
 save to send Rob Fletcher all the way 
 through the darkness, the distance of two 
 miles, for another fiery peat. 
 
 The night was mild, calm, and as dark as 
 pitch, ancf while Fletcher was absent we 
 three sat down on the brink of the river, on 
 a little green sward which I never will forget, 
 and Scott desired me to sing them my ballad 
 of " Gilman's-cleugh." Now, be it remem- 
 bered, that this ballad had never been 
 printed ; I had merely composed it by rote, 
 and, on finishing it three years before, had 
 sung it once over to Sir Walter. I began it, 
 at his request, but at the eighth or ninth 
 stanza I stuck in it, and could not get on 
 with another verse, on which he began it 
 again and recited it every word from begin- 
 ning to end. It being a very long ballad, 
 consisting of eighty-eight stanzas, I testified 
 my astonishment, knowing that he had 
 never heard it but once, and even then did 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. I 3 
 
 not appear to be paying particular attention. 
 He said he had been out with a pleasure 
 party as far as the opening of the Frith of 
 Forth, and, to amuse the company, he had 
 recited both that ballad and one of Southey's 
 (The Abbot of Aberbrothock), both of which 
 ballads he had only heard once from their 
 respective authors, and he believed he recited 
 them both without misplacing a word. 
 
 Rob Fletcher came at last, and old Mr 
 Laidlaw of the Peel with him, carrying a 
 lantern, and into the river we plunged in a 
 frail bark which had suffered some deadly 
 damage in bringing up. We had a fine 
 blazing light, and the salmon began to appear 
 in plenty, " turning up sides like swine ; " * 
 but wo be to us, our boat began instantly to 
 manifest a disposition to sink, and in a few 
 minutes we reached Gleddie's Weal, the 
 deepest pool in all that part of Tweed. 
 When Scott saw the terror that his neigh- 
 bour old Peel was in, he laughed till the 
 tears blinded his eyes. Always the more 
 mischief the better sport for him. " For 
 * Guy Mannering. 
 
14 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 God's sake, push her to the side ! " roared 
 Peel. " Oh, she goes fine," said Scott. 
 
 " 'An' gin the boat war bottomless, 
 An' seven miles to row.' " 
 
 A verse of an old song ; and during the 
 very time he was reciting these lines, down 
 went the boat to the bottom, plunging us 
 all into the Tweed, over head and ears. It 
 was no sport to me at all, for I had no 
 change of raiment at Ashiesteel, but that 
 was a glorious night for Scott, and the next 
 day was no worse. 
 
 I remember leaving my own cottage here 
 one morning with him, accompanied by my 
 dear friend, William Laidlaw, and Sir Adam 
 Ferguson, to visit the tremendous solitudes 
 of Loch-Skene and the Grey-mare's-tail. I 
 conducted them through that wild region 
 by a path, which, if not rode by Clavers, as 
 reported, never was rode by another gentle- 
 man. Sir Adam rode inadvertently into a 
 gulf and got a sad fright, but Sir Walter, in 
 the very worst paths, never dismounted, save 
 at Loch-Skene to take some dinner. We 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. I 5 
 
 went to Moffat that night, where we met 
 with lady Scott and Sophia, and such a day 
 and night of glee I never witnessed. Our 
 very perils were to him matter of infinite 
 merriment ; and then, there was a short 
 tempered boot-boy at the inn, who wanted 
 to pick a quarrel with him for some of his 
 sharp retorts, at which Scott laughed till 
 the water ran over his cheeks. 
 
 I was disappointed in never seeing some 
 incident in his subsequent works, laid in a 
 scene resembling the rugged solitude around 
 Loch-Skene, for I never saw him survey any 
 with so much attention. A single serious 
 look at a scene generally filled his mind 
 with it, and he seldom took another. But, 
 here, he took the names of all the hills, 
 their altitudes, and relative situations with 
 regard to one another, and made me repeat 
 all these several times. Such a scene may 
 occur in some of his works which I have not 
 seen, and I think it will, for he has rarely 
 ever been known to interest himself either in 
 a scene or a character, which did not appear 
 afterwards in its most striking peculiarities. 
 
l6 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 There are not above three people now 
 living, who, I think, knew Sir Walter better, 
 and who understood his character better 
 than I did, and I once declared that if I out- 
 lived him, I should draw a mental and 
 familiar portrait of him ; the likeness of 
 which to the original could not be disputed. 
 In the mean time, this is only a reminiscence, 
 in my own homely w^ay, of an illustrious 
 friend among the mountains. That revered 
 friend is novv gone, and the following pages 
 are all that I deem myself at liberty to 
 publish concerning him. 
 
 The enthusiasm with which he recited 
 and spoke of our ancient ballads, during that 
 first tour through the Forest, inspired me 
 with a determination immediately to begin 
 and imitate them, which I did, and soon 
 grew tolerably good at it. I dedicated 
 " The Mountain Bard" to him :— 
 
 Bless'd be his generous heart, for aye 
 He told me where the relic lay. 
 Pointed my way with ready will, 
 Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill ; 
 Watch'd my first notes with curious eye, 
 And wonder'd at my ministrelsy ; 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. I 7 
 
 He little ween'd a parent's tongue 
 Such strains had o'er my cradle sung. 
 
 The only foible I ever could discover in 
 the character of Sir Walter, was a too strong 
 leaning to the old aristocracy of the country. 
 His devotion for titled rank was prodigious, 
 and, in such an illustrious character, alto- 
 gether out of place. It amounted almost to 
 adoration, and, not to mention the numerous 
 nobility whom I have met at his own house 
 and in his company, I shall give a few in- 
 stances of that sort of feeling in him to 
 which I allude. 
 
 Although he, of course, acknowledged 
 Buccleugh as the head and chief of the 
 whole clan of Scott, yet he always acknow- 
 ledged Harden as his immediate chieftain, 
 and head of that powerful and numerous 
 sept of the name, and Sir Walter was wont 
 often to relate, how he, and his father before 
 him, and his grandfather before that, always 
 kept their Christmas with Harden in ac- 
 knowledgment of their vassalage. This he 
 used to tell with a degree of exultation, 
 which I always thought must have been 
 
I 8 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 astounding to every one who heard it ; as if 
 his illustrious name did not throw a blaze 
 of glory on the house of Harden a hundred 
 times more than that van of old border bar- 
 barians, however brave, could throw over him. 
 
 He was, likewise, descended from the 
 chiefs of Haliburton and Rutherford, on the 
 maternal side ; and to the circumstance of 
 his descent from these three houses he 
 adverted so often, mingling their arms in his 
 escutcheon, that to me, alas ! who, to this 
 day, could never be brought to discover any 
 distinction in ranks, save what was con- 
 stituted by talents or moral worth, it ap- 
 peared perfectly ludicrous, thinking, as no 
 man could help thinking, of the halo which 
 his genius shed over those families, while 
 he only valued himself as a descendant of 
 theirs. 
 
 I may mention one other instance, at 
 which I was both pleased and mortified. 
 We chanced to meet at a great festival at 
 Bowhill, when Duke Charles was living and 
 in good health. The company being very 
 numerous, there were two tables set in the 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. IQ 
 
 dining-room, one along and one across. 
 They were nearly of the same length, but 
 at the one along the middle of the room all 
 the ladies were seated mixed alternately with 
 gentlemen, and at this table all were noble, 
 save, if I remember aright, Sir Adam 
 Ferguson, whose everlasting good humour 
 insures him a passport into every company. 
 But I, having had some chat with the ladies 
 before dinner, and always rather a flattered 
 pet with them, imagined they could not 
 possibly live without me, and placed myself 
 among them. But I had a friend at the 
 cross table, at the head of the room, who 
 saw better. Sir Walter, who presided there, 
 arose, and addressing the Duke of Buccleugh, 
 requested of him, as a particular favour and 
 obligation, that he would allow Mr Hogg to 
 come to his table, for that, in fact, he could 
 not do without him, and, moreover, he 
 added, 
 
 If ye reave the Hoggs of Fauldshope, 
 Ye harry Harden's gear. 
 
 I, of course, got permission, and retired to 
 Sir Walter's table, when he placed me on 
 
20 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 tlie right hand of the gentleman on his right 
 hand, who, of course, was Scott of Harden. 
 And yet, notwithstanding the broad insinua- 
 tion about the Hoggs of Fauldshope, I sat 
 beside that esteemed gentleman the whole 
 night, and all the while took him for an 
 English clergyman ! I knew there were 
 some two or three clergymen of rank there, 
 connected with the family, and I took 
 Harden for one of them ; and though I was 
 mistaken, I still say, he ought to have been 
 one. I was dumbfoundered next day, when 
 the Duke told me, that my divine whom I 
 thought so much of, was Scott of Harden, 
 for I would have liked so well to have 
 talked with him about old matters, my 
 forefathers having been vassals under that 
 house, on the lands of Fauldshope, for more 
 than two centuries, and were only obliged to 
 change masters with the change of pro- 
 prietors. It was doubtless owing to this 
 connection, that my father had instilled into 
 my youthful mind so many traditions relating 
 to the house of Harden, of which I have 
 made considerable use. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 2 1 
 
 But the anecdote which I intended to 
 relate, before my ruling passion of egotism 
 came across me, was this : — When the dinner 
 came to be served, Sir Walter refused to 
 let a dish be set on our table,* which had not 
 been first presented to the Duke and the 
 nobility. "No, no!" said he. "This is 
 literally a meeting of the Clan and its 
 adherents, and we shall have one dinner in 
 the feudal style, it may be but for once in 
 our lives." 
 
 As soon as the Duke perceived this whim, 
 he admitted of it, although I believe the 
 dishes were merely set down and lifted 
 again. In the meantime, the venison and 
 beef stood on the sideboard, which was free 
 to all, so that we were all alike busy from 
 the beginning. At the end of our libations, 
 and before we parted, some time in the 
 
 * Sir Walter, practical, and with a strong grasp of 
 real life in his poetry, was always endeavouring to 
 live in a world of fiction. His Abbotsford, the 
 dinner here narrated, and the reception of the king at 
 Edinburgh, were continuous efforts to transplant 
 himself into another age — not unlike children playing 
 Crusaders, Reavers, Robinson Crusoes, &c. 
 
2 2 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 course of the morning, the Duke set his one 
 foot on the table and the other on his chair, 
 requesting us all to do the same, with which 
 every man complied, and in that position he 
 sang, *' Johnnie Cope are ye wauken yet?" 
 while all joined in the chorus. Sir Walter 
 set his weak foot on the table and kept his 
 position steadily, apparently more firm than 
 when he stood on the floor, joining in the 
 chorus with his straightforward bass voice, 
 with great glee, enjoying the whole scene 
 exceedingly, as he did every scene of hilarity 
 that I ever saw. But though a more social 
 companion never was born, he never filled 
 himself drunk. He took always his wine 
 after dinner, and, at least for upwards 
 of twenty years, a little gin toddy after 
 supper, but he was uniformly moderate in 
 eating and drinking. He liked a good 
 breakfast, but often confessed that he never 
 knew what a good breakfast was till he 
 came to my cottage, but he should never 
 want it again, and he kept steadily to his 
 resolution. 
 
 He was a most extraordinary being. How 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 23 
 
 or when he composed his voluminous works, 
 no man could tell. When in Edinburgh, he 
 was bound to the Parliament House all the 
 forenoon. He never was denied to any 
 living, neither lady nor gentleman, poor nor 
 rich, and he never seemed discomposed when 
 intruded on, but always good-humoured and 
 kind. Many a time have I been sorry for 
 him, for I have remained in his study, in 
 Castle Street, in hopes to get a quiet word 
 of him, and witnessed the admission of ten 
 intruders, forby myself Noblemen, gentle- 
 men, painters, poets, and players, all crowded 
 to Sir Walter, not to mention booksellers 
 and printers, who were never absent, but 
 these spoke to him privately. When at 
 Abbotsford, for a number of years his house 
 was almost constantly filled with company, 
 for there was a correspondence carried on, 
 and always as one freight went away, 
 another came. It was impossible not to be 
 sorry for the time of such a man thus broken 
 in upon. I felt it exceedingly, and once, 
 when I went down by particular invitation 
 to stay a fortnight, I had not the heart to 
 
24 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 stay any longer than three days, and that 
 space was generally the length of my visits. 
 But Sir Walter never was discomposed. He 
 was ready, as soon as breakfast was over, to 
 accompany his guests wherever they chose 
 to go, to stroll in the wood, or take a drive 
 up to Yarrow, or down to Melrose or 
 Dryburgh, where his revered ashes now 
 repose. He was never out of humour when 
 well, but when ill, he was very cross, he 
 being subject to a bilious complaint of the 
 most dreadful and severe nature, accom- 
 panied by pangs the most excruciating,* 
 and when under the influence of that malady 
 it was not easy to speak to him, and I found 
 it always the best plan to keep a due 
 distance. But then his sufi*erings had been 
 most intense, for he told me one day when 
 he was sitting as yellow as a primrose, that 
 roasted salt had been prescribed to lay on 
 
 * This fact, which we do not recollect to have seen 
 noticed before, accounts for some inequalities of 
 temper we have heard laid to Sir Walter's charge — 
 his uncourteous treatment of Lord Holland, Szc. 
 Before blaming any one for such freaks, we ought 
 always to inquire into the state of the stomach. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 25 
 
 the pit of his stomach, which was applied 
 and the next day it was discovered that his 
 breast was all in a blister, and the bosom of 
 his shirt burnt to an izel, and yet he never 
 felt it ! 
 
 But to return to our feast at Bowhill, from 
 which I have strangely wandered, although 
 the best of the fun is yet to come. When 
 the Duke retired to the drawing-room he 
 deputed Sir Alexander Don, who sat next 
 him, to his chair. We had long before been 
 all at one table. Sir Alexander instantly 
 requested a bumper out of champagne 
 glasses to the Duke's health, with all the 
 honours. It was instantly complied with, 
 and every one drank it to the bottom. Don 
 then proposed the following of so good an 
 example as his Grace had set us, and accord- 
 ingly we were all obliged to mount our 
 chairs again, and setting one foot on the 
 table, sing Johnnie Cope over again. Every 
 one at least attempted it, and Sir Alexander 
 sang the song in most capital style. The 
 Scotts, and the Elliots, and some Taits, now 
 began to fall with terrible thuds on the 
 
26 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 floor ; but Sir Walter still kept his station 
 as steady as a rock, and laughed immode- 
 rately. But this was too good fun to be 
 given up. The Marquis of Qucensberry, 
 who was acting as croupier, said, that such 
 a loyal and social Border Clan could never 
 separate without singing " God save the 
 King," and, that though we had drunk to 
 his health at the beginning, we behoved to 
 do it again, and join in the anthem. We 
 were obliged to mount our chairs again, and 
 in the same ticklish position, sing the King's 
 Anthem. Down we went, one after another. 
 Nay, they actually fell in heaps above each 
 other. I fell off and took a prodigious run 
 to one corner of the room, against which I 
 fell, which created great merriment. There 
 were not above six stood the test this 
 time, out of from thirty to forty. Sir Walter 
 did, and he took all the latter bumpers off 
 to the brim. He had a good head more 
 ways than one. 
 
 There was no man who ever testified more 
 admiration, and even astonishment, than he 
 did, at my poetical productions, both songs 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 27 
 
 and poems, and sometimes in very high 
 terms before his most intimate friends. It 
 was somewhat different with regard to my 
 prose works, with which he uniformly found 
 fault, and always with the disagreeable 
 adjunction, "how good they might have 
 been made with a little pains." When The 
 Three Perils of Man was first put to the 
 press, he requested to see the proof slips, 
 Ballantyne having been telling him some- 
 thing about the work. They were sent to 
 him on the instant, and on reading them, he 
 sent expressly for me, as he wanted to see 
 me and speak with me about my forthcoming 
 work. We being both at that time residing 
 in Edinburgh, I attended directly, and I 
 think I remember every word that passed. 
 Indeed, so implicit was my dependence on 
 his friendship, his good taste, and judgment, 
 that I never forgot a sentence nor a word 
 that he said to me about my own works, 
 but treasured them up in my heart. 
 
 " Well, Mr Hogg, I have read over your 
 proofs with a great deal of pleasure, and, I 
 confess, with some little portion of dread. 
 
28 
 
 I)(JMi:STIC MANNERS OF 
 
 In the first place, the meeting of the two 
 princesses at Castle Weiry is excellent. I 
 have not seen any modern thing more truly 
 dramatic. The characters are strongly 
 marked, old Peter Chisholme's in particular. 
 Ah ! man, what you might have made of 
 that, with a little more refinement, care, and 
 patience ! — But it is always the same with 
 you, just hurrying on from one vagary to 
 another, without consistency or proper 
 arrangement." 
 
 " Dear Mr Scott, a man canna do the 
 thing that he canna do." 
 
 " Yes, but you can do it. Witness your 
 poems, where the arrangements are all per- 
 fect and complete ; but in your prose works, 
 with the exception of a few short tales, you 
 seem to write merely by random, without 
 once considering what you are going to 
 write about." 
 
 " You are not often wrong, Mr Scott, and 
 you were never righter in your life than you 
 are now, for when I write the first line of a 
 tale or novel, I know not what the second 
 is to be, and it is the same way in every 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 29 
 
 sentence throughout. When my talc is 
 traditionary, the work is easy, as I then see 
 my way before me, though the tradition be 
 ever so short ; but in all my prose works of 
 imagination, knowing little of the world, I 
 sail on without star or compass." 
 
 " I am sorry to say, that this is too often 
 apparent. But, in the next place, and it 
 was on that account I sent for you, do you 
 not think there is some little danger in 
 making Sir Walter Scott, of Buccleuch, the 
 hero of this wild extravagant tale } " 
 
 " The devil a bit." 
 
 "Well, I think differently. The present 
 chief is your patron, your sincere friend, and 
 your enthusiastic admirer. Would it not then 
 be a subject of regret, not only to yourself and 
 me, but to all Scotland, should you, by any 
 rash adventure, forfeit the countenance and 
 friendship of so good and so great a man ? " 
 
 " There's nae part o' that at a', Mr Scott. 
 The Sir Walter of my tale is a complete 
 hero throughout, and is never made to do a 
 thing, or say a thing, of which his descend- 
 ant, our present chief, winna be proud." 
 
30 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 " I am not quite sure of that. Do you 
 not think you have made him a rather too 
 selfish character ? " 
 
 " O, ay ; but ye ken they were a' a little 
 gi'en that gate, else how could they hae 
 gotten haud o' a' the south o' Scotland, 
 naebody kens how." 
 
 Sir Walter then took to himself a hearty 
 laugh, and then pronounced these very 
 words. "Well, Hogg, you appear to me 
 just now like a man dancing upon a rope or 
 wire, at a great height ; if he is successful 
 and finishes his dance in safety, he has 
 accomplished no great matter; but if he 
 makes a slip, he gets a devil of a fall." 
 
 " Never say another word about it, Mr 
 Scott, I'm satisfied ; the designation shall 
 be changed throughout, before I either eat 
 or sleep." And I kept my word. 
 
 I went, when in Edinburgh, at his partic- 
 ular request, two or three days every week 
 to breakfast with him, as I was then always 
 sure of an hour's conversation with him, be- 
 fore he went to the Parhament House ; and I 
 often went for many days successively, as I 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 3 I 
 
 soon found it was impossible to be in his 
 company without gaining advantage. But 
 there was one Sunday morning I found him 
 in very bad humour indeed. He was sitting 
 at his desk in his study at Castle Street, 
 and when I went in, he looked up to me 
 with a visage as stern as that of a judge go- 
 ing to pronounce sentence on a malefactor, 
 and at the same time, he neither rose nor 
 saluted me, which was always his wont, and 
 the first words that he addressed to me were 
 these, " Mr Hogg, I am very angry with 
 you; I tell you it plainly, and I think I have a 
 right to be so. I demand, sir, an explanation 
 of a sentence in your Spy of yesterday." 
 
 Knowing perfectly well to what sentence 
 he alluded, my peasant blood began to boil, 
 and I found it rushing to my head and face 
 most violently, as I judged myself by far 
 the most aggrieved. "Then I must demand 
 an explanation from you, Mr Scott," said I. 
 " Were you the author of the article alluded 
 to in my paper, which places you at the 
 head and me at the tail, nay, as the very 
 dregs of all the poets of Britain V 
 
32 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 " What right have you, sir, to suppose 
 that I was the author of it?" said he in a 
 perfect rage. 
 
 " Nay, what right had you to suppose that 
 you were the author of it, that you are tak- 
 ing it so keenly to yourself?" said I. "The 
 truth is, that when I wrote the remarks, I 
 neither knew nor cared who was the author 
 of the article alluded to; but before the 
 paper went to press, I believed it to have 
 been Mr Southey, for Johnnie Ballantyne 
 told me so, and swore to it ; but if the 
 feather suits your cap, you are perfectly 
 welcome to it." 
 
 " Very well, Hogg," said he, '' that is 
 spoken like a man, and like yourself; I am 
 satisfied. I thought it was meant as 
 personal to me in particular. But never 
 mind. We are friends again as usual. Sit 
 down and we will go to our breakfast to- 
 gether immediately, and it shall never more 
 be mentioned between us." 
 
 Mr Southey long afterwards told me that 
 he was not the author of that article, and he 
 believed it to have been written by Scott. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 33 
 
 If it was, it was rather too bad of him ; but 
 he never said it was not his. It was a 
 review of modern hterature in the Edinburgh 
 Annual Register. As some readers of these 
 anecdotes may be curious to see the offen- 
 sive passage in the Spy, I shall here extract 
 it ; that work being long ago extinct, and 
 only occasionally mentioned by myself, as a 
 parent will sometimes mention the name of 
 a dear, unfortunate lost child, who has been 
 forgotten by all the world beside. 
 
 " The papers which have given the great- 
 est personal offence are those of Mr Shuffle- 
 ton, which popular clamour obliged the 
 editor reluctantly to discontinue. Of all 
 the poets and poetesses whose works are 
 there emblematically introduced, one gentle- 
 man alone stood the test, and* his firmness 
 was even by himself attributed to for- 
 giveness. All the rest, male and female, 
 tossed up their noses, and pronounced the 
 writer an ignorant and an incorrigible bar- 
 barian. The Spy hereby acknowledges 
 himself the author of these papers, and 
 adheres to the figurative characters he has 
 
34 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 there given of the poetical works of these 
 authors. He knows, that, in a future 
 edition, it is expected they are all to be 
 altered or obliterated. They never shall ! 
 Though the entreaties of respected friends 
 prevailed on him to relinquish a topic which 
 was his favourite one, what he has published, 
 he has published, and no private considera- 
 tion shall induce him to an act of such 
 manifest servility as that of making a renun- 
 ciation. Those who are so grossly ignorant 
 as to suppose the figurative characteristics 
 of the poetry, as having the smallest refer- 
 ence to the personal characters of the 
 authors, are below reasoning with. And 
 since it has of late become fashionable with 
 some great poets, to give an estimate of 
 their great powers in periodical works of 
 distinction, surely others have an equal right 
 to give likewise their estimates of the works 
 of such bards. It is truly amusing to see 
 how artfully a gentleman is placed at the 
 head of a school of poetry, and one who is 
 perhaps his superior at the tail of it. How 
 he can make himself to appear as the great- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 35 
 
 est genius that ever existed. With what 
 address he can paint his faihngs as beauties, 
 and depict his greatest excellences as slight 
 defects, finding fault only with those parts 
 which every one must admire. The design 
 is certainly an original, though not a very 
 creditable one. Great authors cannot re- 
 main always concealed, let them be as 
 cautious as they will ; the smallest incident 
 often assisting curiosity in the discovery." — 
 Spy for A iigust 24///, 1 8 1 1 . 
 
 This last sentence, supposing Sir Walter 
 to have been the author, which I now suspect 
 he was, certainly contained rather too broad 
 and too insolent a charge, to be passed over 
 with impunity. When I wrote it, I believed 
 he was ; but had I continued to believe so, 
 I would not have called on him the next 
 morning after the publication of the paper. 
 Luckily, before putting the paper to press, I 
 waited on Mr John Ballantyne, and asked 
 him who was the author of that insolent 
 paper in his Annual Register, which placed 
 me as the dregs of all the poets in Britain. 
 
 ** O, the paper was sent to our office by 
 
36 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 Southcy," said he, " you know he is editor, 
 and part proprietor of the work, and we 
 never think of objecting to any thing that 
 he sends us. Neither my brother James 
 nor I ever read the article until it was 
 published, and we both thought it was a 
 good one." 
 
 Now this was a story beside the truth, 
 for T found out afterwards that Mr James 
 Ballantyne had read the paper from manu- 
 script, in a library, long before its publica- 
 tion, where it was applauded in the highest 
 terms. I, however, implicitly believed it, 
 as I have done every body all my life. At 
 that period, the whole of the aristocracy 
 and literature of our country were set against 
 me, and determined to keep me down ; 
 nay, to crush me to a nonentity. Thanks be 
 to God ! I have lived to see the sentiments 
 of my countrymen completely changed. 
 
 There was once more, and only once, that 
 I found Sir Walter in the same querulous 
 humour with me. It was the day after the 
 publication of my Bro'W7iie of Bodsbeck. I 
 called on him after his return from the 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 37 
 
 Parliament House, on pretence of asking 
 his advice about some very important affair, 
 but, in fact, to hear his sentiments of my 
 new work. His shaggy eye-brows were 
 hanging very low down, a bad prelude, which 
 I knew too well. "I have read through 
 your new work, Mr Hogg," said he, " and 
 must tell you downright plainly, as I always 
 do, that I like it very ill— very ill indeed." 
 "What for, Mr Scott.?" 
 " Because it is a false and unfair picture 
 of the times and the existing characters ; 
 altogether an exaggerated and unfair pic- 
 ture!" 
 
 "I dinna ken, Mr Scott. It is the picture 
 I have been bred up in the belief o' sin' 
 ever I was born, and I had it frae them 
 whom I was most bound to honour and 
 believe. An' mair nor that, there is not 
 one sincrle incident in the tale — not one — 
 which I cannot prove from history, to be 
 literally and positively true. I was obliged 
 sometimes to change the situations to make 
 one part coalesce with another ; but in no 
 one instance have I related a story of a 
 
J 
 
 8 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 cruelty or a murder which is not h'terally 
 true. An' that's a great deal mair than you 
 can say for your tale o' Auld Mortality.'' 
 
 " You are overshooting the mark now, 
 Mr Hogg. I wish it were my tale. But it 
 is not with regard to that, that I find fault 
 with your tale at all, but merely because it 
 is an unfair and partial picture of the age 
 in which it is laid." 
 
 " Na, I shoudna hae said it was your tale, 
 for ye hae said to your best friends that it 
 was not, an' there I was wrang. Ye may 
 hinder a man to speak, but ye canna hinder 
 him to think, an' I can speak at the thinking. 
 But whoever wrote Auld Mortality, kenning 
 what I ken, an' what ye ken, I wadna 
 wonder at you being ill-pleased with my 
 tale, if ye thought it written as a counter- 
 poise to that ; but ye ken weel it was 
 written lang afore the other was heard of." 
 
 "Yes, I know that a part of it was in 
 manuscript last year ; but I suspect it has 
 been greatly exaggerated since." 
 
 "As I am an honest man, sir, there has 
 not been a line altered or added, that I 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 39 
 
 remember of. The original copy was printed. 
 Mr Blackwood was the only man, beside 
 yourself, who saw it. He read it painfully, 
 which I now know you did not, and I appeal 
 to him." 
 
 "Well, well. As to its running counter 
 to Old Mortality, I have nothing to say. 
 Nothing in the world. I only tell you, that 
 with the exception of Old Nanny, the crop- 
 eared Covenanter, who is by far the best 
 character you ever drew in your life, I dis- 
 like the tale exceedingly, and assure you it 
 is a distorted, a prejudiced, and untrue 
 picture of the Royal party." 
 
 " It is a devilish deal truer than yours 
 though, and on that ground I make my 
 appeal to my country." 
 
 And with that I rose and was going off 
 in a huff, 
 
 " No, no ! stop ! " cried he, " you are not 
 to go, and leave me again in bad humour. 
 You ought not to be offended with me for 
 telling you my mind freely." 
 
 " Why, to be sure, it is the greatest folly 
 in the world for me to be sae. But ane's 
 
40 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 beuks are like his bairns, he disna like to 
 hear them spoken ill o', especially when he 
 is conscious that they dinna deserve it." 
 
 Sir Walter, then, after his customary short 
 good-humoured laugh, repeated a proverb 
 about the Gordons, which was exceedingly 
 a propos to my feelings at the time ; but all 
 that I can do, I cannot remember it, though 
 I generally remembered every thing that 
 he said of any import. He then added, ** I 
 wish you to take your dinner with me 
 to-day. There will be nobody with us 
 but James Ballantyne, who will read you 
 something new, and I wanted to ask you 
 particularly about something which has 
 escaped me at this moment. Ay, it was 
 this. Pray had you any tradition on which 
 you founded that ridiculous story about the 
 Hunt of Eildon?" 
 
 " Yes, I had," said I, " as far as the two 
 white hounds are concerned, and of the one 
 pulling the poisoned cup twice out of the 
 king's hand when it was at his lips." 
 
 "That is very extraordinary," said he, 
 for the very first time I read it, it struck 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 4 1 
 
 me I had heard something of the same 
 nature before ; but how or where I cannot 
 comprehend. I think it must have been 
 when I was on the nurse's knee, or lying in 
 the cradle ; yet I was sure I had heard it. 
 It is a very ridiculous story, that, Mr Hogg. 
 The most ridiculous of any modern story I 
 ever read. What a pity it is that you are 
 not master of your own capabilities, for that 
 tale might have been made a good one." 
 
 It was always the same on the publica- 
 tion of any of my prose works. When The 
 Three. Perils of Man appeared, he read me 
 a long lecture on my extravagance in 
 Demonology, and assured me I had ruined 
 one of the best tales in the world. It is 
 manifest, however, that the tale had made 
 no ordinary impression on him, as he 
 subsequently copied the whole of the main 
 plot into his tale of Castle Dangerous. 
 
 Sir Walter's conversation was always 
 amusing, always interesting. There was a 
 conciseness, a candour and judiciousness in 
 it, which never was equalled. His anecdotes 
 were without end, and I am almost certain 
 
42 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 they were all made off-hand, for I never 
 heard one of them either before or after. 
 His were no Joe Miller's jokes. The only 
 time ever his conversation was to me 
 perfectly uninteresting, was with Mr John 
 Murray, of Albemarle-Street, London. 
 Their whole conversation was about noble- 
 men, parliamenters, and literary men of all 
 grades, none of which I had ever heard of 
 or cared about ; but every one of which 
 Mr Murray seemed to know, with their 
 characters, society, and propensities. This 
 information Sir Walter seemed to drink in 
 with as much zest as I did his whisky toddy, 
 and this conversation was carried on for 
 two days and two nights, with the exception 
 of a few sleeping hours ; and there I sat 
 beside them, all the while, like a perfect 
 stump ; a sheep who never got in a word, 
 not even a bleat. I wish I had the same 
 opportunity again. 
 
 I first met with Sir Walter at my own 
 cottage in the wilds of Ettrick Forest, as 
 above narrated, and I then spent two days 
 and two nights in his company. When we 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 43 
 
 parted, he shook my hand most heartily, 
 and invited me to his cottage on the banks 
 of the North Esk, above Lasswade, " By all 
 means come and see me," said he, ** and I 
 will there introduce you to my wife. She is 
 a foreigner, as dark as a blackberry, and 
 does not speak the broad Scots so well as 
 you and me ; of course, I don't expect you 
 to admire her much, but I shall assure you 
 of a hearty welcome." 
 
 I went and visited him the first time I 
 had occasion to be in Edinburgh, expecting 
 to see Mrs Scott a kind of half black-a- 
 moor, whom our sheriff had married for a 
 great deal of money. I knew nothing 
 about her, and had never heard of her, save 
 from his own description ; but the words, 
 "as dark as a blackberry," had fixed her 
 colour indelibly on my mind. Judge of my 
 astonishment when I was introduced to one 
 of the most beautiful and handsome 
 creatures, as Mrs Scott, whom I had ever 
 seen in my life. A brunette, certainly, with 
 raven hair and large black eyes, but in my 
 estimation a perfect beauty. I found her 
 
44 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 quite affable, and she spoke English very 
 well, save that she put always the d for the 
 ///, and left the aspiration of the h out alto- 
 gether. She called me all her life, Mr Og. 
 I understood perfectly well what she said, 
 but for many years I could not make her 
 understand what I said ; she had frequently 
 to ask an explanation from her husband, 
 and I must say this of Lady Scott, though 
 it was well known how jealous she was of 
 the rank of Sir Walter's visitors, yet I was 
 all my life received with the same kindness 
 as if I had been a relation or one of the 
 family, although one of his most homely 
 daily associates. But there were many 
 others, both poets and play-actors, whom 
 she received with no very pleasant 
 countenance. Jeffrey and his satellites she 
 could not endure, and there was none whom 
 she disliked more than Brougham, for what 
 reason I do not know, but I have heard her 
 misca' him terribly, as well as **dat body 
 Jeffrey." It might be owing to some reasons 
 which I did not know about. After the re- 
 view of Marmion appeared, she never would 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 45 
 
 speak to Jeffrey again, for, though not a lady 
 who possessed great depth of penetration, she 
 knew how to appreciate the great powers of 
 her lord, from the beginning, and despised all 
 those who ventured to depreciate them. 
 
 I have heard Sir Walter tell an anecdote 
 of this review of Marmion.* As he and 
 Jeffrey, Southey, Curwin, and some other 
 body, I have forgotten who, were sailing on 
 Denvent water, at Keswick, in Cumberland, 
 one fine day, Mr Jeffrey, to amuse the party, 
 took from his pocket the manuscript of the 
 review of Marmion, and read it throughout. 
 This, I think, was honest in Jeffrey, but the 
 rest of the company were astonished at his 
 insolence, and at some passages did not 
 know where to look. When he had finished, 
 
 * We have heard this story with a variation. 
 Jeffrey, in his review of Marmion, while praising the 
 author's talents highly, introduced some censure. 
 Going to sup with Scott, he, in the honesty of his 
 heart, took the proof-sheets of the review with him 
 and read them aloud. Mr Jeffrey's manner is un- 
 fortunate, and he was considerably Scott's junior. 
 Scott and all his friends (his wife in particular) took 
 the matter in high dudgeon. The review was not 
 modified. 
 
46 DOMESTIC MyVNNERS OF 
 
 he said, ''Well, Scott, what think you of it ? 
 what shall be done about it ?" "At all 
 events, I have taken my resolution what to 
 do," said Scott, 'Til just sink the boat." 
 The review was a little modified after that. 
 But to return to Lady Scott, she is 
 cradled in my remembrance, and ever shall 
 be, as a sweet, kind, and affectionate 
 creature. When any of the cottagers or 
 retainers about Abbotsford grew ill, they 
 durst not tell her, as it generally made her 
 worse than the sufferers, and I have heard 
 of her groaning, and occasionally weeping 
 for a whole day and a good part of the 
 night for an old tailor who was dying and 
 leaving a small helpless family behind 
 him. Her daughter Anne was very like 
 her, in the contour and expression of her 
 countenance. Who was Lady Scott origin- 
 ally ? I really wish anybody would tell me, 
 for surely somebody must know. There is 
 a veil of mystery hung over that dear lady's 
 birth and parentage, which I have been 
 unable to see through or lift up ; and there 
 have been more lies told to me about it 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 4/ 
 
 and even published in all the papers of 
 Britain, by those who oiigJit to have known, 
 than ever was told about those of any 
 woman that ever was born. I have, how- 
 ever, a few cogent reasons for believing that 
 the present Sir Walter's grandfather was a 
 nobleman of very high rank. 
 
 Like other young authors. Sir Walter was 
 rather vain of his early productions, and 
 liked to make them the subject of con- 
 versation. He recited Glenfinlas one day 
 to me on horseback, long before its publica- 
 tion. He read me also the Lay of the 
 Last Ministrel, from manuscript ; at least, 
 he and William Erskine, (Lord Kineder,) 
 and James Ballantyne, read it, canto about. 
 He always preferred their readings to his 
 own. Not so with me. I could always 
 take both the poetry and the story along 
 with me better from his reading than any 
 other body's whatsoever. Even with his 
 deep-toned bass voice, and his Berwick burr, 
 he was a far better reader than he was 
 sensible of Every thing that he read was 
 like his discourse, it always made an im- 
 
48 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 prcssion. He likewise read me Marmion 
 before it was published, but I think it was 
 then in the press, for a part of it, at least, was 
 read from proof slips and sheets, with correc- 
 tions on the margin. The Marmion manu- 
 script was a great curiosity. I wonder what 
 became of it. It was all written off-hand, 
 in post letters, from Ashiesteel, Mainsforth, 
 Rokeby, and London. The readings of 
 Marmion began on his own part. I had 
 newly gone to Edinburgh, and knew nothing 
 about the work — had never heard of it. 
 But the next morning after my arrival, on 
 going to breakfast with him, he sought out 
 a proof sheet, and read me his description 
 of my beloved St Mary's Lake, in one of 
 his introductions, I think to canto second, 
 to ask my opinion, as he said, of its cor- 
 rectness, as he had never seen the scene but 
 once. I said, there never was anything 
 more graphic written in this world ; and I 
 still adhere to the assertion, so it was no 
 flattery ; and I, being perfectly mad about 
 poetry then, begged of him to let me hear 
 the canto that followed that vivid descrip- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 49 
 
 tion, expecting to hear something more about 
 my native mountains. He was then, to 
 humour me, obHged to :,begin at the be- 
 ginning of the poem, and that day he read 
 me the two first books. 
 
 That night my friends Grieve and Mori- 
 son, who were as great enthusiasts as my- 
 self, expressed themselves so bitterly at my 
 advantage over them, that the next morning 
 I took them both with me, and they heard 
 him read the two middle cantos, which I am 
 sure neither of them will ever forget. When 
 we came to the door, Morison said, " For 
 God's sake, Hogg, don't ring." 
 
 "What for?" said I. 
 
 "Because I know there will be some- 
 thing so terribly gruff about him, I dare not 
 for my soul go in," said he. 
 
 " You never were so far mistaken in your 
 life," said I, "Sir Walter's manner is just 
 kindness personified," and rang the bell. 
 
 When the Lady of the Lake was mostly, 
 or at least partly in manuscript, he said to me 
 one evening, "I am going to adventure a poem 
 on the public quite different from my two 
 
 D 
 
50 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 last, perfectly different in its theme, style, 
 and measure." On which he took the 
 manuscript from his desk, and read me the 
 course of the Fiery Cross, and the Battle of 
 the Trosachs. I said, " I could not perceive 
 any difference at all between the style of 
 that and his former poems, save that^ because 
 it was quite new to me, I thought it rather 
 better." He was not quite well pleased with 
 the remark, and was just saying", I would 
 think differently when I had time to peruse 
 the whole poem, when Sir John Hope came 
 in, and I heard no more. 
 
 After that, he never read anything more 
 to me before publishing, save one ghost 
 story. His fame became so firmly esta- 
 blished that he cared not a fig for the 
 opinions of his literary friends, beforehand. 
 But there was one forenoon he said to me 
 in his study, " I have never durst venture 
 upon a real ghost story, Mr Hogg, but you 
 have published some such thrilling ones of 
 late, that I have been this very day employed 
 in writing one. I assure you, ' It's no little 
 that gars auld Donald pegh,' but yon Lewis 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 5 I 
 
 stories of yours frightened me so much, that 
 I could not sleep, and now I have been 
 trying my hand on one, and here it is." He 
 read it ; but it did not make a great im- 
 pression on me, for I do not know, at this 
 moment, not having his works by me, where 
 it is published. It was about the ghost of 
 a lady, and, I think, appeared in the Abbot 
 or Monastery. He read me also a humorous 
 poem in manuscript, which has never been 
 published that I know of. It was something 
 about finding out the happiest man, and 
 making him a present of a new holland 
 shirt.* Paddy got it, who had never known 
 the good of a shirt. Mr Scott asked me 
 what I thought of it. I said the characters 
 of the various nations were exquisitely hit 
 off, but I thought the winding-up was not 
 so effective as it might have been made. 
 
 * It appeared in the " Sale Room," a four-penny 
 literary weekly, published by John Ballantyne. It is 
 a circumstance not generally known, that a com- 
 munication to this publication signed Christopher 
 Corduroy, was the first thing that attracted Scott's 
 notice to Lockhart, of whom he previously knew 
 nothing. 
 
52 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 He said he believed I was perfectly right. 
 
 I never heard what became of that poem, or 
 
 whether it was ever published or not, for 
 
 living in the wilderness, as I have done, for 
 
 the last twenty years, I know very little of 
 
 what is going on in the literary world. One 
 
 of Sir Walter's representatives has taken it 
 
 upon him to assert, that Sir Walter always 
 
 held me in the lowest contempt! He never 
 
 was farther wrong in his life, but Sir Walter 
 
 would still have been farther wrong if he 
 
 had done so. Of that, posterity will judge ; 
 
 but I assure that individual, that there 
 
 never was a gentleman in the world who 
 
 paid more respect or attention to a friend 
 
 than Sir Walter did to me, for the space of 
 
 the thirty years that we were acquainted. 
 
 True, he sometimes found fault with me, 
 
 but in that there was more kindness than all 
 
 the rest. 
 
 I must confess, that, before people of high 
 rank, he did not much encourage my 
 speeches and stories. He did not then 
 hang down his brows, as when he was ill- 
 pleased with me, but he raised them up and 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 53 
 
 glowered, and put his upper lip far over the 
 under one, seeming to be always terrified at 
 what was to come out next, and then he 
 generally cut me short, by some droll 
 anecdote, to the same purport of what I was 
 saying. In this he did not give me fair 
 justice, for, in my own broad homely way, I 
 am a very good speaker, and teller of a 
 story too. 
 
 Mrs Hogg was a favourite of his. He 
 always paid the greatest deference and 
 attention to her. When we were married, L 
 of course, took her down to Abbotsford, 
 and introduced her, and though the company 
 was numerous, he did her the honour of 
 leading her into the dining-room and placing 
 her by his side. When the ladies retired, he, 
 before all our mutual friends present, testified 
 himself highly pleased with my choice, and 
 added, that he wondered how I had the 
 good sense and prudence to make such a 
 one. " I dinna thank ye at a' for the 
 compliment, Sir Walter," said I. 
 
 As for her, poor woman, she perfectly 
 adored him. There was one day, when he 
 
54 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 was dining with us at Mount Benger, on 
 going away he snatched up my little 
 daughter, Margaret Laidlaw, and kissed 
 her, and then laying his hand on her head, 
 said, " God Almighty bless you, my dear 
 child ! " on which my wife burst into tears. 
 On my coming back from seeing him into 
 the carriage, that stood at the base of the 
 hill, I said, "What ailed you, Margaret ?" 
 
 " O," said she, " I thought if he had but 
 just done the same to them all, I do not 
 know what in the world I would not have 
 given." 
 
 There was another year previous to that, 
 when he was dining with me at the same place, 
 he took a great deal of notice of my only son 
 James, trying to find out what was in him, 
 by a number of simple questions, not one of 
 which James would answer. He then asked 
 me anent the boy's capabilities. I said he 
 was a very amiable and affectionate boy, 
 but I was afraid he would never be the 
 Cooper of Fogo, for he seemed to be blessed 
 with a very thick head. "Why, but Mr 
 Hogg, you know, it is not fair to lay the 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 55 
 
 saddle upon a foal," said he. " I, for my 
 part, never liked precocity of genius all my 
 life, and can venture to predict that James 
 will yet turn out an honour to you and all 
 your kin." I was gratified by the prediction, 
 and lost not a word of it. 
 
 The boy had at that time taken a parti- 
 cular passion for knives, particularly for 
 large ones, and to amuse him. Sir Walter 
 showed him a very large gardener's knife, 
 which he had in his pocket, which contained 
 a saw, but I never regarded it, and would 
 not have known it the next day. James, 
 however, never forgot it, and never has to 
 this day, and I should like very well, if that 
 knife is still to be found, that James should 
 have it as a keepsake of his father's warmest 
 and most esteemed friend. Col. Ferguson, 
 perceiving the boy's ruling passion, made 
 him a present of a handsome two-bladed 
 knife. But that made no impression on 
 James. Col. Ferguson he forgot next day, 
 but Sir Walter he never forgot till he came 
 back again, always denominating him, "The 
 man wi' the gude knife." 
 
56 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 The last time Margaret saw him, was at 
 his own house in Maitland Street, a very 
 short time before he finally left it. We 
 were passing from Charlotte Square to make 
 a call in Laurieston, when I said, " See, yon 
 is Sir Walter's house, at yon red lamp." 
 *' O, let me go in and see him once more ! " 
 said she. 
 
 " No, no, Margaret," said I, " you know 
 how little time we have, and it would be too 
 bad to intrude on his hours of quiet and 
 study at this time of the day." " O, but I 
 must go in," said she, "and get a shake of 
 his kind, honest hand once more. I cannot 
 go by." So I, knowing that 
 
 " Nought's to be won at woman's hand, 
 Unless ye gie her a' the plea," 
 
 was obliged to comply. In we went, and 
 were received with all the affection of old 
 friends, but his whole discourse was ad- 
 dressed to my wife, while I was left to shift 
 for myself among books and newspapers. 
 He talked to her of our family, and of our 
 prospects of being able to give them a good 
 
: ' SIR WALTER SCOTT. 5 7 
 
 education, which he recommended at every 
 risk, and at every sacrifice. He talked to 
 her of his own family one by one, and of 
 Mr Lockhart's family, giving her a melan- 
 choly account of little Hugh John Lockhart 
 (the celebrated Hugh Littlejohn), who was 
 a great favourite of his, but whom, as he 
 said that day, he despaired of ever seeing 
 reach manhood. ^1 
 
 The only exchange of words I got with 
 him during that short visit, which did not 
 extend to the space of an hour, was of a 
 very important nature indeed. In order to 
 attract his attention from my wife, to one 
 who, I thought, as well deserved it, I went 
 close up to him with a scrutinizing look, and 
 said, " Gudeness guide us, Sir Walter, but 
 ye hae gotten a brawgown !" On which he 
 laughed and said, " I got it made for me in 
 Paris (such a year), when certain great 
 personages chose to call on me of a morning, 
 and I never thought of putting it on since, 
 until the day before yesterday, on finding 
 that my every-day one had been sent to 
 Abbotsford. But I shall always think the 
 
58 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 more highly of my braw gown, Mr Hogg, 
 for your notice of it." I think it was made 
 of black twilled satin and lined. 
 
 But to return to some general anecdotes, 
 with which I could fill volumes. When I 
 first projected my literary paper. The Spy, 
 I went and consulted him, as I generally did 
 in every thing regarding literature. He 
 shook his head, and let fall his heavy eye- 
 brows, but said nothing. The upper lip 
 came particularly far down. I did not like 
 these prognostics at all ; so I was obliged to 
 broach the subject again, without having 
 received one word in answer. 
 
 " Do ye not think it rather dangerous 
 ground to take after Addison, Johnson, and 
 Henry M'Kenzie ?" said he. 
 
 "No a bit!" said I, "I am no the least 
 feared for that. My papers may not be sae 
 yelegant as theirs, but I expect to make 
 them mair original." 
 
 "Yes, they will certainly be original 
 enough, with a vengeance ! " said he. 
 
 I asked him if he thought threepence 
 would be a remunerating price ^ He an- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 59 
 
 swered, with very heavy brows, that, " taking 
 the extent of the sale into proper calculation, 
 he suspected she must be a fourpenny cut." 
 He said this with a sneer which I never 
 could forget. I asked him if he would lend 
 me his assistance in it ? He said he would 
 first see how I came on, and if he saw the 
 least prospect of my success, he would sup- 
 port me, and with this answer I was obliged 
 to be content. He only sent me one letter 
 for the work, enclosing two poems of Ley- 
 den's. He was, however, right in discourag- 
 ing it, and I was wrong in adventuring it. 
 I never knew him wrong in any of his cal- 
 culations or inhibitions but once, and then I 
 am sure my countrymen will join with me 
 in saying that he was wrong. He wrote to 
 me once when I was living in Nithsdale, 
 informing me that he was going to purchase 
 the estate of Broadmeadows, on Yarrow. 
 That he was the highest offerer, and was, he 
 believed, sure of getting it, and that he had 
 offered a half more on my account that I 
 might be his chief shepherd, and manager 
 of all his rural affairs. The plan misgave. 
 
6o DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 Mr Boyd overbid him and became the pur- 
 chaser, on which Sir Walter was so vexed 
 on my account, I having kept myself out of 
 a place, depending upon his, that he actually 
 engaged me to Lord Porchester, as his chief 
 shepherd, where I was to have a handsome 
 house, a good horse, a small pendicle, rent 
 free, and twenty pounds a year. I approved 
 of the conditions as more than I expected 
 or was entitled to, only they were given 
 with this proviso, that " I was to put my 
 poetical talent under lock and key for 
 ever ! " I have the letter. Does any body 
 think Sir Walter was right here t I can't 
 believe it, and I am sure my friend, the 
 present Lord Porchester, would have been 
 the last man to have exacted such a stipu- 
 lation. I spurned the terms and refused to 
 implement the bargain. This is the circum- 
 stance alluded to in the Queen's Wake, as a 
 reflection on Walter the Abbot, which I think 
 it proper to copy here, to save researches for 
 an extract, where it may be impossible to 
 find it. It alludes to the magic harp of 
 Ettrick banks and Yarrow braes. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 6 I 
 
 " The day arrived — blest be the day, 
 Walter the Abbot came that way — 
 The sacred relic met his view ; 
 Ah, well the pledge of Heaven he knew ! 
 He screwed the chords, he tried a strain, 
 'Twas wild — he tuned and tried again, 
 Then pour'd the numbers, bold and free. 
 The ancient magic melody. 
 The land was charmed to hst his lays, 
 It knew the harp of ancient days, 
 The Border Chiefs that long had been 
 In sepulchres unhearsed and green, 
 Passed from their mouldy vaults away, 
 In armour red and stern array ; 
 And by their moonlit halls were seen, 
 In visor, helm, and habergeon. 
 Even fairies sought our land again, 
 So powerful was the magic strain. 
 , Blest be his generous heart for aye, 
 He told me where the relic lay. 
 Pointed my way with ready will 
 Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill ; 
 Watched my first notes with curious eye, 
 And wondered at my minstrelsy. 
 He little ween'd a parent's tongue 
 Such strains had o'er my cradle sung ! 
 Oh ! could the bard I loved so long 
 Reprove my fond aspiring song ? 
 Or could his tongue of candour say 
 That I should throw my harp away ; 
 Just when her notes began with skill 
 To sound beneath the Southern hill. 
 And twine around my bosom's core ; 
 How could we part for evermore ? 
 
62 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 'Twas kindness all, — I cannot blame, 
 For bootless is the minstrel flame. 
 But sure a bard might well have known 
 Another's feelings by his own ! " 
 
 Queen's Wake. — dth edit. p. 336-7. 
 
 I never knew any gentleman so shy and 
 chary of his name and interest as Sir Walter 
 was, and though I know Allan Cunningham 
 and Captain J. G. Burns will not join me in 
 this, "let every man roose the ford as he 
 finds it." He never would do any thing for 
 me in that, save by the honour of his un- 
 deviating friendship and genuine good ad- 
 vices, both of which were of great value to 
 me, insuring me a welcome among all the 
 genteel company of the kingdom, and the 
 other tending greatly to guide my path in a 
 sphere with which I was entirely un- 
 acquainted, and these I set a high value on. 
 But he would never bring me forward in 
 any way by the shortest literary remark in 
 any periodical — never would review any of 
 my works, although he once promised to do 
 it. No, he did not promise, he only said 
 before several friends, to whom he had been 
 speaking very highly of the work, that he 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 63 
 
 was thinking of doing it. But seeing, I 
 suppose, that the poem did not take so well 
 as he had anticipated, he never accomplished 
 his kind intent. I asked him the following 
 year, why he had not fulfilled his promise 
 to me. 
 
 "Why, the truth is, Hogg," said he, "that 
 I began the thing, and took a number of 
 notes, marking extracts, but I found, that 
 to give a proper view of your poetical pro- 
 gress and character, I was under the necessity 
 of beginning with the ballads, and following 
 through The Wake and all the rest, and, 
 upon the whole, I felt that we were so much 
 of the same school, that, if I had said of you 
 as I wished to say, I would have been 
 thought by the world to be applauding 
 myself" 
 
 I cannot aver that these were Sir Walter's 
 very words, but they were precisely to that 
 purport. But I, like other disappointed 
 men, not being by half satisfied with the 
 answer, said, " Dear Sir Walter, ye can never 
 suppose that I belang to your school o' 
 chivalry ! Ye are the king o' that school, 
 
64 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 but I'm the king o' the mountain and fairy- 
 school, which is a far higher ane nor 
 yours." 
 
 He rather hung down his brows and said, 
 **The higher the attempt to ascend, the 
 greater might be the fall ; " and changed the 
 subject by quoting the saying of some old 
 English baronet in a fox-chase. 
 
 He paid two high compliments to me, 
 without knowing of either, and although 
 some other person should have related these 
 rather than me, I cannot refrain from it. 
 One of them was derogatory to himself too, 
 a thing which a young poet is not very apt 
 to publish. He was, he said, quarter-master 
 to the Edinburgh gentlemen-cavalry, and 
 composed a song for the corps, got a friend 
 to learn it and sing it at the mess, but it 
 did not take very well. At length a Mr 
 Robertson got up and said, " Come, come, 
 that's but a droo of a song. Let us have 
 Donald M'Donald." On which Donald 
 M 'Donald was struck up, and was joined in 
 with such glee that all the mess got up, 
 joined hands, and danced round the table, 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 65 
 
 and, added Scott, " I joined the ring too and 
 danced as well as I could, and there were 
 four chaps, all of the clan Donachie, who 
 got so elevated that they got upon the top 
 of the table and danced a Highland reel to 
 the song." He did not know it was mine 
 until after he had told the anecdote, when I 
 said, " Dear man, that sang's mine, and was 
 written sax or seven years bygane. I won- 
 der ye didna ken that.'' 
 
 There was another day, as we were walk- 
 ing round the north side of St Andrew's 
 Square, to call on Sir C. Sharpe in York 
 Place, he said to me, laughing very heartily, 
 " I found Ballantyne in a fine quandary 
 yesterday, as I called on leaving the Parlia- 
 ment House. He was standing behind his 
 desk, actually staring, and his mouth quite 
 open. * I am glad you have come in, Mr 
 Scott,' said he, ' to tell me if you think I am 
 in my right senses to-day, or that I am in a 
 dream ? ' * O, it is quite manifest, from the 
 question, that you are not in your right 
 senses ! ' said I ; ' what is the matter .? ' 
 ' Here is a poem sent me by Mr Gillies, to 
 
66 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 publish in a work of his,' said he ; 'It is in 
 his own hand-writing, and the gradation of 
 the ascent is so regular and well-managed, 
 that I am bound to believe it is his. Well, be- 
 fore you came in, I read and read on, in 
 these two proofs, until at last I said to my- 
 self, Good Lord, is this the poetry of Mr 
 Gillies that I am reading ? I must be asleep 
 and dreaming. And then I bit my little 
 finger, to prove if I was not asleep, and I 
 thought I was not. But sit down and judge 
 for yourself.' 
 
 "So James read the poem to me from 
 beginning to end," continued he, " and then 
 said, ' Now, what think you of this ? ' ' The 
 only thing that I can say,' said I, * is, that 
 the former part of the poem is very like the 
 writing of a eunuch, and the latter part like 
 that of a man. The style is altogether 
 unknown to me, but Mr Gillies's it cannot 
 be.' " I was sorry I durst not inform him 
 it was mine, for it had been previously 
 agreed between Mr Gillies and me, that 
 no one should know. It was a blank 
 verse poem, but I have entirely forgotten 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 67 
 
 what it was about ; the latter half only 
 was mine. 
 
 " * So you say that the poetry is not the 
 composition of Mr Gillies?' said James. 
 
 *Yes, I do, positively. The thing is 
 impossible.' 
 
 ***Well, sir, I can take your word for 
 that ; and I have not lost my senses, nor am 
 I dreaming at all.' " 
 
 There was one day that I met with him 
 on the North Bridge, on his return from the 
 Court of Session, when he took my arm, 
 and said, " Come along with me, Hogg, I 
 want to introduce you to a real brownie, one 
 who does a great deal of work for me, for 
 which I am paid rather liberally." I accom- 
 panied him into one of the register offices, 
 where a good-looking, little spruce fellow, 
 his deputy clerk, I suppose, produced papers, 
 bunch after bunch, to the amount of some 
 hundreds, all of which he signed with W. 
 Scott, laughing and chatting with me all 
 the while. We then took a walk round the 
 Calton Hill, till dinner time, when I went 
 home with him and met Ballantyne and 
 
68 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 Terry. I think it was on that day, for it 
 was during a walk round the Calton Hill, 
 and I never enjoyed that pleasure with him 
 but twice in my life, that we were discussing 
 the merits of his several poems. The Lady 
 of the Lake had had an unprecedented run 
 previous to that, and as it was really my 
 favourite, I was extolling it highly, assured 
 that I was going on safe ground, but I found 
 that he preferred Marmion, and said some- 
 thing to the following effect, That the Lady 
 of the Lake would always be the favourite 
 with ladies and people who read merely for 
 amusement, but that Marmion would have 
 the preference by real judges of poetry. I 
 have heard people of the first discernment 
 express the same opinion since. For me, I 
 think in The Lady of the Lake he 
 reached his acme in poetry ; for, in fact, the 
 whole both of his poetry and prose have 
 always appeared to me as two splendid 
 arches, of which the Lady of the Lake is the 
 key-stone of the one, and Guy Mannering 
 and Old Mortality the joint keystones of 
 the other. I should like very well to write 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 69 
 
 a review of his whole works, but that is quite 
 out of my way at present. 
 
 The only other walk that I ever got with 
 him round the Calton Hill was several years 
 subsequent to that. At that time I did not 
 believe that he was the author of the cele- 
 brated novels, for Johnnie Ballantyne had 
 fairly sworn me out of my original fixed be- 
 lief, so I began about them very freely, and 
 he did the same, laughing heartily at some 
 of the jokes, and often standing still and 
 sitting down, and telling me where he 
 thought the author had succeeded best and 
 where least, and there were some places 
 where he did not scruple to say he had failed 
 altogether. He never tried to defend any 
 passage when it was attacked, but generally 
 laughed at the remarks. 
 
 There cannot be a better trait of Sir 
 Walter's character than this, that all who 
 knew him intimately, loved him ; nay, many 
 of them almost worshipped him. The 
 affection and subservience of the two Messrs 
 Ballantyne far surpassed description. They 
 were entrusted with all his secrets, and all 
 
70 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 his transactions, and faithful to the last ; 
 and I know, that had he taken some most 
 serious advices which James gave him, he 
 never would have been involved as he was. 
 In James he always reposed the most 
 implicit confidence. John he likewise 
 trusted with everything, and loved him as a 
 wayward brother, but he often broke a joke 
 at his expense. There was one day I was 
 telling the Sheriff some great secret about 
 the author of a certain work or article, I have 
 quite forgot what it was, when he said, " I 
 suspect you are widely misinformed there, 
 Mr Hogg, for I think I know the author to 
 be a different person." 
 
 " Na, na, Mr Scott, you are clean wrang," 
 said I, "for Johnnie Ballantyne tauld me, 
 an' he coudna but ken." 
 
 "Ay, but ye should hae ascertained 
 whether it was leeing Johnnie or true Johnnie 
 who told you that, before you avouched it ; 
 for they are two as different persons as exist 
 on the face of the earth," said he. " Had 
 James told you so, you might have averred 
 it, for James never diverges from the right- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 7 1 
 
 forward truth." As Mr Southey once told 
 me the very same thing, I think I am at 
 liberty to publish the sentiments of two such 
 eminent men, of the amiable deceased. 
 James was a man of pomp and circumstance, 
 but he had a good affectionate heart. It 
 was too good and too kind for this world, 
 and the loss first of his lady, and then of his 
 great patron and friend, broke it, and he 
 followed him instantly to the land of forget- 
 fulness. How strange it is that all connected 
 with those celebrated novels have been 
 hunted off the stage of time, as it were, to- 
 gether ! The publisher, the author, the two 
 printers, and, last of all, the corrector of the 
 press, the honest and indefatigable Daniel 
 MacCorkingdale, — all gone ! and none to 
 tell the secrets of that faithful and devoted 
 little community. 
 
 There was no man knew Scott so well as 
 James Ballantyne, and I certainly never 
 knew a man admire and revere a friend and 
 patron so much. If any person ventured 
 to compare other modern productions with 
 those of Scott, he stared with astonishment. 
 
72 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 and took it as a personal insult to himself. 
 There was one time, that, in my usual rash, 
 forward way, I said that Miss Ferrier's 
 novels were better than Sir Walter's. James 
 drew himself up ; I wish any reader of this 
 had seen his looks of utter astonishment, 
 for he was always a sort of actor, James. 
 **What do I hear.? what do I hear.?" cried 
 he, with prodigious emphasis, " is it possible 
 that I hear, sir, such a sentiment drop from 
 your lips } " I was obliged to burst out a- 
 laughing and run away. 
 
 Sir Walter's attached and devoted friends 
 were without number, but William Erskine 
 and James Ballantyne were his constant 
 and daily associates. It is a pity that 
 Ballantyne had not left a written character 
 of him, for he could and would have done 
 him justice. But the interesting part of 
 their correspondence will soon all come to 
 light in Lockhart's life of his illustrious 
 father-in-law. He was the only one I ever 
 knew whom no man, either poor or rich, 
 held at ill-will. I was the only exception 
 myself, that ever came to my knowledge. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 73 
 
 but that was only for a short season, and 
 all the while it never lessened his interest 
 in my welfare. I found that he went uni- 
 formly on one system. If he could do 
 good to any one, he would do it, but he 
 would do harm to no man. He never re- 
 sented a literary attack, however virulent, 
 of which there were some at first, but always 
 laughed at them. This showed a superi- 
 ority of mind and greatness of soul which 
 no other young author is capable of He 
 never retaliated, but trusted to his genius to 
 overcome all ; and it was not on a bruised 
 reed that he leaned. 
 
 Although so shy of his name and literary 
 assistance, which, indeed, he would not 
 grant to any one, on any account, save to 
 Lockhart, yet to poor men of literary merit 
 his purse-strings were always open as far as 
 it was in his power to assist them. I 
 actually knew several unsuccessful authors, 
 who for years depended on his bounty for 
 their daily bread. And then there was a 
 delicacy in his way of doing it which was 
 quite admirable. He gave them some old 
 
74 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 papers or old ballads to copy for him, pre- 
 tending to be greatly interested in them, 
 for which he sent them a supply every week, 
 making them believe that they were reaping 
 the genuine fruit of their own labours. 
 
 There was one day when I was chatting 
 with Ballantyne in his office, where I was 
 generally a daily visitor, as well as my 
 illustrious friend, I chanced to say that I 
 never in my life knew a man like Scott, for 
 that I knew to a certainty, he was, at that 
 time, feeling himself a successful author, 
 lending pecuniary assistance to very many 
 unsuccessful ones, and the best thing of all, 
 he never let his left hand know what his 
 right hand was doing. 
 
 Ballantyne's face glowed with delight and 
 the tear stood in his eye. " You never were 
 more right in your life," said he, " you never 
 were more right in your life ! and I am glad 
 that you know and so duly appreciate the 
 merits of our noble, our invaluable friend. 
 Look here," and with that he turned up his 
 day-book, and added, '' some word it seems 
 had reached Scott, that Maturin, the Irish 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 75 
 
 poet, was lying in prison for a small debt, 
 and here have I, by Mr Scott's orders, been 
 obliged to transmit him a bill of exchange 
 for sixty pounds, and Maturin is never to 
 know from whom or whence it came." I 
 have said it oft, and now say it again for 
 the last time, that those who knew Scott 
 only from the few hundreds, or I might say, 
 hundreds of thousands of volumes to which 
 he has given birth and circulation through 
 the world, knew only one-half of the man, 
 and that not the best half either. As a 
 friend he was sometimes stern, but always 
 candid and sincere, and 1 always found his 
 counsels of the highest value, if I could have 
 followed them. I was indebted to him for the 
 most happy and splendid piece of humorous 
 ballad poetry which I ever wrote. He said 
 to me one day, after dinner, " It was but 
 very lately, Mr Hogg, that I was drawn by 
 our friend, Kirkpatrick Sharpe, to note the 
 merits of your ballad, * The Witch of Fife.' 
 There never was such a thing written for 
 genuine and ludicrous humour ; but why. 
 in the name of wonder, did you suffer the 
 
76 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 gude auld man to be burned skin and bone 
 by the English at Carlisle ? (for in the first 
 and second editions that was the issue). I 
 never saw a piece of such bad taste in all 
 my life. What had the poor old carle done 
 to deserve such a fate ? Only taken a 
 drappy o' drink too much at another man's 
 expense, which you and I have done often. 
 It is a finale which I cannot bear, and you 
 must bring off the old man, by some means 
 or other, no matter how extravagant or 
 ridiculous in such a ballad as yours ; but by 
 all means bring off the fine old fellow, for 
 the present termination of the ballad is one 
 which I cannot brook." I went home, and 
 certainly brought off the old man with 
 flying colours, which is by far the best part 
 of the ballad. I never adopted a sugges- 
 tion of his, either in prose or verse, which 
 did not improve the subject. He knew 
 mankind well. He knew the way to the 
 human heart, and he certainly had the art 
 of leading the taste of an empire, I may say 
 of a world, above all men that ever existed. 
 As long as Sir Walter Scott wrote poetry, 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. "J"] 
 
 there was neither man nor woman ever 
 thought of either reading or writing any 
 thing but poetry. But the instant that he 
 gave over writing poetry, there was neither 
 man nor woman ever read it more ! All 
 turned to tales and novels, which I, among 
 others, was reluctantly obliged to do. Yes, 
 I was obliged, from the tide, the irresistible 
 current that followed him, to forego the 
 talent which God had given me at my birth, 
 and enter into a new sphere with which I 
 had no acquaintance. The world of im- 
 agination had been opened wide to me, 
 but the world of real life I knew nothing 
 of Sir Walter knew it, in all its shades 
 and gradations, and could appreciate any 
 singular character at once. He had a clear 
 head, as well as a benevolent heart ; was a 
 good man, an anxiously kind husband, an 
 indulgent parent, and a sincere, forgiving 
 friend, a just judge, and a punctual corres- 
 pondent. I believe that he answered every 
 letter sent to him, either from rich or poor, 
 and generally not very shortly. Such is 
 the man we have lost, and such a man we 
 
7^ DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 shall never see again. He was truly an 
 extraordinary man — the greatest man in 
 the world. What are kings or emperors 
 compared with him ? Dust and sand ! 
 And, unless when connected with literary 
 men, the greater part of their names either 
 not remembered at all, or only remembered 
 with detestation. But here is a name, 
 which, next to that of William Shakspeare, 
 will descend with rapt admiration to all the 
 ages of futurity. And is it not a proud 
 boast for an old shepherd, that for thirty 
 years he could call this man friend, and 
 associate with him every day and hour that 
 he chose ? 
 
 Yes, it is my proudest boast. Sir 
 Walter sought me out in the wilderness, 
 and att?xhed himself to me before I had 
 ever seen him, and although I took cross 
 fits with him, his interest in me never 
 subsided for one day or one moment. He 
 never scrupled to let me know that I 
 behoved to depend entirely on myself for 
 my success in life, but at the same time 
 always assured me that I had talents to 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 79 
 
 insure that success, if properly applied and 
 not suffered to run to waste. I was always 
 received in his house like a brother, and he 
 visited me on the same familiar footing. I 
 never went into the Inner House of Parlia- 
 ment, where he sat, on which he did not 
 rise and come to me, and conduct me to a 
 seat in some corner of the Outer House, 
 where he would sit with me two or three 
 minutes. I am sorry to think that any of 
 his relations should entertain an idea that 
 Sir Walter undervalued me, for of all men 
 I ever m.et with, not excepting the noble- 
 men and gentlemen in London, there never 
 was a gentleman paid more deference to 
 me than Sir Walter ; and although many 
 of my anecdotes are homely and common- 
 place ones, I am sure there is not a man in 
 Scotland who appreciates his value more 
 highly, or reveres his memory more. 
 
 With regard to his family, I have not 
 much to say, for I know but little. Sophia 
 was a baby when I first visited him, about 
 two or three months old, and I have 
 watched her progress ever since. By the 
 
cSo DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 time she had passed beyond the years of 
 infancy, I perceived that she was formed to 
 be the darling of such a father's heart, and 
 so it proved. She was a pure child of 
 nature, without the smallest particle of 
 sophistication in her whole composition. 
 And then she loved her father so. O ! how 
 dearly she loved him ! I shall never forget 
 the looks of affection that she would throw 
 up to him as he stood leaning on his crutch, 
 and hanging over her at the harp, as she 
 chanted to him his favourite old Border 
 Ballads, or his own wild Highland gatherings. 
 Whenever he came into a room where she 
 was, -her countenance altered, and she often 
 could not refrain from involuntary laughter. 
 She is long ago a wife and mother herself, 
 but I am certain she will always cherish the 
 memory of the most affectionate of fathers. 
 
 Walter is a fine, manly, gentlemanly 
 fellow, without pride or affectation, but 
 without the least spark of his father's genius 
 that I ever could discern ; and for all the 
 literary company that he mixed with daily 
 in his youth, he seemed always to hold 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 8 1 
 
 literature, and poetry in particular, in very 
 low estimation. He was terribly cast down 
 at his father's death. I never saw a face of 
 such misery and dejection, and though I 
 liked to see it, yet I could not help shed- 
 ding tears on contemplating his features, 
 thinking of the jewel that had fallen from 
 his crown. 
 
 I always considered Anne as the cleverest 
 of the family ; shrewd, sensible, and dis- 
 cerning, but I believe a little of a satirist, for 
 I know that when a mere girl, her associates 
 were terrified for her. Charles is a queer 
 chap, and will either make a spoon or spoil 
 a good horn. 
 
 Of Lockhart's genius and capabilities, Sir 
 Walter always spoke with the greatest 
 enthusiasm ; more than I thought he 
 deserved, for I knew him a great deal better 
 than Sir Walter did, and whatever Lockhart 
 may pretend, I knew Sir Walter a thousand 
 times better than he did. There is no man 
 now living who knew Scott's character so 
 thoroughly in all its bearings as William 
 Laidlaw did. He was his land steward, his 
 
82 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 amanuensis, and managed the whole of his 
 rural concerns and improvements for the 
 period of twenty years, and sorry am I that 
 the present Sir Walter did not find it meet 
 to keep Laidlaw on the estate, for without 
 him, that dear-bought and classical property 
 will be like a carcase without a head. 
 Laidlaw's head made it. He knows the 
 value of every acre of land on it to a tithe, 
 and of every tree in the forest, with the 
 characters of all the neighbours and 
 retainers. He was, to be sure, a subordinate, 
 but Sir Walter always treated him as a 
 friend, inviting Mrs Laidlaw and him down 
 to every party where there was any body he 
 thought Laidlaw would like to meet, and 
 Sir Walter called on Mrs Laidlaw once or 
 twice every day when he was in the country. 
 I have seen him often pop in to his breakfast 
 and take his salt herring and tea with us 
 there, with as much ease and good humour 
 as if he had come into his brother's house. 
 He once said to me, as we were walking out 
 about Abbotslee, and I was so much in- 
 terested in the speech that I am sure I can 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 83 
 
 indite it word by word, for Laidlaw was one 
 of my earliest and dearest friends : 
 
 " Was it not an extraordinary chance for 
 me that threw Laidlaw into my hands ? 
 Without Laidlaw's head I could have done 
 nothing ; and to him alone I am indebted 
 for all these improvements. I never found 
 a mind so inexhaustible as Laidlaw's. I 
 have met with many of the greatest men of 
 our country, but uniformly found, that after 
 sounding them on one or two subjects, there 
 their information terminated. But with the 
 worst of all manners of expression, Laidlaw's 
 mind is inexhaustible. Its resources seem 
 to be without end. Every day, every hour, 
 he has something new, either of theory or 
 experiment, and he sometimes abuses me 
 like a tinkler because I refuse to follow up 
 his insinuations." 
 
 Another day he said to me, " You know I 
 recommended your friend Laidlaw last year 
 to Lord Mansfield as his factor, but was 
 obliged to withdraw my recommendation, 
 and give his lordship a hint to relinquish his 
 choice. For in the first place I was afraid 
 
84 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 that Laidlaw's precarious health might unfit 
 him for such a responsible situation ; and 
 more than that, I found that I could not live 
 without him, and was obliged, maugre all 
 misfortunes, to replace him in his old 
 situation." I therefore wish, from my heart 
 and soul, that matters could have been so 
 arranged, that Laid law should not have 
 been separated from Abbotsford ; for though 
 my own brother has long had and still has a 
 high responsibility as shepherd and superin- 
 tendent of the enclosures, I cannot see how 
 the management of the estate can go on 
 without Laidlaw. Under the law agents it 
 will both cost more and go to ruin, and I 
 say again, without Laidlaw that grand 
 classical estate is a carcase without a 
 head. 
 
 Whenever Sir Walter spoke of either of 
 his two sons, which he frequently did, it was 
 always in a jocular way, to raise a laugh at 
 their expense. His description of Walter,, 
 when he led in Mrs Lockhart a bride, with 
 his false mustachios and whiskers, was a 
 source of endless amusement to him. He 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT 85 
 
 was likewise wont often to quote some 
 of Charles's wise sayings, which, in the way 
 that he told them, never failed to set the 
 table in a roar of laughter. 
 
 Sir Walter had his caprices like other 
 men, and when in poor health was parti- 
 cularly cross, but I always found his heart 
 in the right place, and that he had all the 
 native feelings and generosity of a man of 
 true genius. I am ashamed to confess that 
 his feelings for individual misfortune were 
 far more intense than my own. There was 
 one day that I went in to breakfast with 
 him as usual, when he said to me, with eyes 
 perfectly staring, " Good Heaven ! Hogg, 
 have you heard what has happened .?" 
 
 " Na, no that I ken o', what is it that ye 
 allude to, Mr Scott .?" 
 
 " That our poor friend Irving has cut his 
 throat last night or this morning, and is 
 dead." 
 
 " O, ay ! I heard o' that," said I with a 
 coldness that displeased him. " But I never 
 heedit it, for the truth is that Irving was 
 joost like the Englishman's fiddle ; the warst 
 
86 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 fault that he had, he was useless. Irving 
 could never have done any good either for 
 himself, his family, or any other leevin' 
 creature.'' 
 
 " I don't know, Mr. Hogg, what that poor 
 fellow might have done, with encourage- 
 ment. This you must at least acknowledge, 
 that if he did not write genuine poetry, he 
 came the nearest to it of any man that ever 
 failed." These were Sir Walter's very words, 
 and I record them in memory of the hapless 
 victim of despair and disappointed literary 
 ambition. He farther added, " For me, his 
 melancholy fate has impressed me so deeply, 
 and deranged me so much, that it will be 
 long before I can attend to anything again." 
 
 He abhorred all sorts of low vices and 
 blackguardism with a perfect detestation. 
 There was one Sunday when he was riding 
 down Yarrow, in his carriage, attended by 
 several gentlemen on horseback, and I be- 
 ing among them went up to the carriage 
 door, and he being our Sheriff, I stated to 
 him with the deepest concern that there was 
 at that moment a cry of murder from the 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 87 
 
 Broadmeadows wood, and that Will Wather- 
 ston was murdering Davie Brunton. '' Never 
 you regard that, Hogg," said he, with rather 
 a stern air, and without a smile on his 
 countenance. " If Will Watherston murders 
 Davie Brunton, and be hanged for the 
 crime, it is the best thing that can befall to 
 the parish — drive on, Peter." 
 
 He was no great favourer of sects, and 
 seldom or never went to church. He was a 
 complete and finished aristocrat, and the 
 prosperity of the state was his great concern, 
 which prosperity he deemed lost unless both 
 example and precept flowed by regular gra- 
 dation from the highest to the lowest. He 
 dreaded religion as a machine by which the 
 good government of the country might be 
 deranged, if not uprooted. There was one 
 evening when he and Morrit of Rokeby, 
 some of the Fergusons, and I were sitting 
 over our wine, that he said, " There is 
 nothing that I dread so much as a very 
 religious woman ; she is not only a danger- 
 ous person, but a perfect shower-bath on all 
 social conviviality. The enthusiasm of our 
 
88 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 Scottish ladies has now grown to such 
 a height that I am almost certain it will 
 lead to some dangerous revolution in the 
 state. And then, to try to check it would 
 only make the evil worse. If you ever 
 choose a wife, Hogg, for goodness' sake, as 
 you value your own happiness, don't choose 
 a very religious one." 
 
 He had a settled impression on his mind 
 that a revolution was impending over this 
 country, even worse than we have experi- 
 enced, and he was always keeping a sharp 
 look-out on the progress of enthusiasm 
 in religion, as a dangerous neighbour. There 
 was one day that he and Laidlaw were 
 walking in the garden at Abbotsford, during 
 the time that the western portion of the 
 mansion-house was building. The archi- 
 tect's name, I think, was Mr Paterson. 
 
 " Well, do you know, Laidlaw," said Scott, 
 " that I think Paterson one of the best na- 
 tured, shrewd, sensible fellows that I ever 
 met with. I am quite delighted with him, 
 for he is a fund of continual amusement to 
 me. If you heard but how I torment him ! 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 89 
 
 I attack him every day on the fundamental 
 principles of his own art. I take a position 
 which I know to be false, and persist in 
 maintaining it, and it is truly amazing with 
 what good sense and good nature he sup- 
 ports his principles. I really like Paterson 
 exceedingly." 
 
 "O he's a verra fine fellow," said Laid- 
 law, " an extraordinar fine fellow, an' has a 
 great deal o' comings an' gangings in him. 
 But dinna ye think, Mr Scott, that it's a 
 great pity he should hae been a preacher .?'' 
 
 *^ A preacher.?" said Scott, staring at him. 
 " Good Lord ! what do you mean .? " 
 
 " Aha ! It's a' ye ken about it ! " said 
 Laidlaw, " I assure you he's a preacher, an' 
 a capital preacher too. He's reckoned the 
 best Baptist preacher in a' Galashiels, an' 
 preaches every Sunday to a great community 
 p' low kind o' folks. 
 
 On hearing this, Sir Walter (then Mr 
 Scott,) wheeled about and halted off with a 
 swiftness Laidlaw had never seen him exer- 
 cise before; exclaiming vehemently to him- 
 self, " Preaches ! D him ! " From that 
 
 ^iiw- 
 
90 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 time forth, his delightful colloquies with Mr 
 Paterson ceased. 
 
 There was another time at Abbotsford, 
 when some of the Sutherland family, (for I 
 don't remember the English title,) and many 
 others were there, that we were talking of 
 the Earl of Buchan's ornamental improve- 
 ments at Dryburgh, and among other things, 
 of the colossal statue of Wallace, which I 
 rather liked and admired, but which Sir 
 Walter perfectly abhorred ; he said these 
 very words ; " if I live to see the day when 
 the men of Scotland, like the children of 
 Israel, shall every one do that which is right 
 in his own eyes, which I am certaht either I 
 or my immediate successors will see, I have 
 settled in my own mind long ago what I 
 shall do first. I'll go down and blow up 
 the statue of Wallace with gunpowder. 
 Yes, I shall blow it up in such a style, that 
 there shall not be one fragment of it left ! 
 the horrible monster ! " He had a great 
 veneration for the character of Sir William 
 Wallace, and I have often heard him 
 eulogise it. He said to me one morning 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 9 1 
 
 long ago, when Miss Porter's work, The 
 Scottish Chiefs, first appeared, " I am 
 grieved about this work of Miss Porter ! I 
 cannot describe to you how much I am dis- 
 appointed, I wished to think so well of it ; 
 and I do think highly of it as a work of 
 genius. But, Lord help her! her Wallace 
 is no more our Wallace, than Lord Peter is, 
 or King Henry's messenger to Percy Hot- 
 spur. It is not safe meddling with the hero 
 of a country, and, of all others, I cannot 
 bear to see the character of Wallace frittered 
 away to that of a fine gentleman." 
 
 Sir Walter was the best formed man I 
 ever saw, and, laying his weak limb out of 
 the question, a perfect model of a man for 
 gigantic strength. The muscles of his arms 
 were prodigious. I remember of one day 
 long ago, I think it was at some national 
 dinner in Oman's Hotel, that at a certain 
 time of the night, a number of the young 
 heroes differed prodigiously with regard to 
 their various degrees of muscular strength. 
 A general measurement took place around 
 the shoulders and chest, and I, as a par- 
 
92 DOMESTIC MANNERS (JF 
 
 ticular judge in these matters, was fixed on 
 as the measurer and umpire. Scott, who 
 never threw cold water on any fun, submitted 
 to be measured with the rest. He measured 
 most round the chest, and, to their great 
 chagrin, I was next to him, and very little 
 short. But when I came to examine the 
 arms. Sir Walter's had double the muscular 
 power of mine, and very nearly so of every 
 man's who was there ! I declare, that from 
 the elbow to the shoulder, they felt as if he 
 had the strength of an ox. 
 
 There was a gentleman once told me that 
 he walked into Sir Walter's house, in Castle 
 Street, just as the footman was showing 
 another gentleman out, and that, being an 
 intimate acquaintance, he walked straight 
 into Sir Walter's study, where he found him 
 stripped, with his shirt sleeves rolled up to 
 his shoulders, and his face very red. "Good 
 Heaven, Scott, what is the matter.?" said 
 the intruder. "Pray, may I ask an explana- 
 tion of this.?" "Why, the truth is, that I 
 have just been giving your friend, Mr Martin, 
 a complete drubbing," said Scott laughing. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 93 
 
 " The scroundrel dared me to touch him but 
 with one of my fingers ; but if I have not 
 given him a thorough basting, he knows 
 himself. He is the most impudent and 
 arrant knave I ever knew. But I think it 
 will be a while before he attempts to impose 
 again upon me." This Mr Martin, the 
 gentleman said, was some great picture 
 dealer. But as I never heard Sir Walter 
 mention the feat in his hours of hilarity, I 
 am rather disposed to discredit the story. 
 He was always so reasonable and so prudent, 
 that I hardly think he would fall on and 
 baste even a knavish picture dealer black 
 and blue, in his own study. The gentleman 
 who told me this is alive, and well, and may 
 answer for himself in this matter. 
 
 Sir Walter in his study, and in his s^at^in 
 the Parliament House, had rather a dull, 
 heavy appearance, but in company his coun- 
 tenance was always lighted up, and Chantrey 
 has given the likeness of him there precisely. 
 In his family he was kind, condescending, 
 and attentive, but highly imperative. No 
 one of them durst for a moment disobey his 
 
94 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 orders, and if he began to hang down his 
 eyebrows, a single hint was enough. In 
 every feature of his face decision was strongly 
 marked. He was exactly what I conceive 
 an old Border Baron to have been, with his 
 green jacket, his blue bonnet, his snow-white 
 locks, muscular frame, and shaggy eyebrows. 
 
 He was said to be a very careless com- 
 poser, yet I have seen a great number of 
 his manuscripts, corrected and enlarged on 
 the white page which he alternately left, a 
 plan which I never tried in my life. He 
 once undertook to correct the press for a 
 work of mine, "The Three Perils of Women," 
 when I was living in the country, and when 
 I gave the manuscript to Ballantyne, I said, 
 " Now you must send the proofs to Sir 
 Walter, he is to correct them for me." 
 
 " He correct them for you ! " exclaimed 
 Ballantyne, " Lord help you and him both ! 
 I assure you if he had nobody to correct 
 after him, there would be a bonny song 
 through the country. He is the most care- 
 less and incorrect writer that ever was born, 
 for a voluminous and popular writer, and as 
 
' SIR WALTER SCOTT. 95 
 
 for sending a proof sheet to him, we may as 
 well keep it in the office. He never heeds 
 it. No, no^ you must trust the correction of 
 the press to my men and me ; I shall 
 answer for them, and if I am in a difficulty 
 at any time, I'll apply to Lockhart. He is 
 a very different man, and has the best eye 
 for a corrector, of any gentleman corrector 
 I ever saw. He often sends me an article 
 written off-hand like your own, without the 
 interlineation of a word, or the necessity of 
 correcting one afterwards. But as for Sir 
 Walter, he will never look at either your 
 proofs or his own, unless it be for a minute's 
 amusement." 
 
 The Whig ascendancy in the British 
 Cabinet killed Sir Walter. Yes, I say and 
 aver, it was that which broke his heart, de- 
 ranged his whole constitution, and murdered 
 him. As I have shown before, a dread of 
 revolution had long preyed on his mind ; he 
 withstood it to the last ; he fled from it, but 
 it affected his brain, and killed him. From 
 the moment he perceived the veto of a 
 democracy prevailing, he lost all hope of the 
 
g6 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 prosperity and ascendancy of the British 
 empire. He not only lost hope of the 
 realm, but of every individual pertaining 
 to it, as my last anecdote of him will show, 
 for though I could multiply these anecdotes 
 and remarks to volumes, yet I must draw 
 them to a conclusion. They are trivial in 
 the last degree, did they not relate to so 
 great and so good a man. I have depicted 
 him exactly as he was, as he always appeared 
 to me, and was reported by others, and I 
 revere his memory as that of an elder brother. 
 The last time that I saw his loved and 
 honoured face was at the little inn on my 
 own farm, in the autumn of 1830. He sent 
 me word that he was to pass on such a day, 
 on his way from Drumlanrig Castle to 
 Abbotsford, but he was sorry he could not 
 call at Altrive, to see Mrs Hogg and the 
 bairns, it being so far off the way. I 
 accordingly waited at the inn, and handed 
 him out of the carriage. His daughter was 
 with him, but we left her at the inn, and 
 walked slowly down the way as far as 
 Mountbenger Burn. He then walked very 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 97 
 
 ill indeed, for the weak limb had become al- 
 most completely useless ; but he leaned on 
 my shoulder all the way, and did me the 
 honour of saying that he never leaned on a 
 firmer or a surer. 
 
 We talked of many things, past, present, 
 and to come, but both his memory and on- 
 ward calculation appeared to me then to be 
 considerably decayed. I cannot tell what it 
 was, but there was something in his manner 
 that distressed me. He often changed the 
 subject very abruptly, and never laughed. 
 He expressed the deepest concern for my 
 welfare and success in life, more than I had 
 ever heard him do before, and all mixed 
 with sorrow for my worldly misfortunes. 
 There is little doubt that his own were then 
 preying on his vitals. He told me that 
 which I never knew nor suspected before ; 
 that a certain game-keeper, on whom he be- 
 stowed his maledictions without reserve, had 
 prejudiced my best friend, the young Duke 
 of Byccleuch, against me by a story ; and 
 though he himself knew it to be a malicious 
 and invidious lie, yet seeing his grace so 
 
qS domestic manners of 
 
 much irritated, he durst not open his Hps on 
 the subject, farther than by saying, " But, 
 my lord duke, you must always remember 
 that Hogg is no ordinary man, although he 
 may have shot a stray moorcock." And 
 then turning to me he said, " Before you 
 had ventured to give any saucy language to 
 a low scoundrel of an English game-keeper, 
 you should have thought of Fielding's tale 
 of Black George." 
 
 " I never saw that tale," said I, " an' 
 dinna ken ought about it. But never trouble 
 your head about that matter, Sir Walter, for 
 it is awthegither out o' nature for our young 
 chief to entertain ony animosity against me. 
 The thing will never mair be heard of, an' 
 the chap that tauld the lees on me will gang 
 to hell, that's aye some comfort." 
 
 I wanted to make him laugh, but I could 
 not even make him smile. "You are still 
 the old man, Hogg, careless and impro- 
 vident as ever," said he, with a countenance 
 as gruff and demure as could be. 
 
 Before we parted I mentioned to him my 
 plan of trusting an edition of my prose tales. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 99 
 
 in twenty volumes, to Lockhart's editing. 
 He disapproved of the plan decidedly, and 
 said, " I would not for anything in the world, 
 that Lockhart should enter on such a 
 responsibility, for taking your random way 
 of writing into account, the responsibility 
 would be a very heavy one — ay, and a 
 dangerous one too ! " Then turning half 
 round, leaning on his crutch, and fixing his 
 eyes on the ground for a long space, he said, 
 " You have written a great deal that might 
 be made available, Hogg, with proper 
 attention. And I am sure that one day or 
 other, it will be made available to you or 
 your family. But in my opinion, this is not 
 the proper season. I wish you could drive 
 off the experiment until the affairs of the 
 nation are in better keeping, for at present 
 all things, and literature in particular, are 
 going straight down-hill to destruction and 
 ruin." And then he mumbled something to 
 himself, which I took to be an inward curse. 
 I say again, and I am certain of it, that the 
 democratic ascendancy, and the grievous 
 and shameful insults he received from the 
 
lOO DOMESTIC MANNERS OF 
 
 populace of his own country, broke the 
 heart of, and killed the greatest man that 
 ever that country contained. 
 
 When I handed him into the coach that 
 day, he said something to me which, in the 
 confusion of parting, I forgot ; and though I 
 tried to recollect the words the next minute, 
 I could not, and never could again. It was 
 something to the purport that it was likely 
 it would be long ere he leaned as far on my 
 shoulder again, but there was an expression 
 in it, conveying his affection for me, or his 
 interest in me, which has escaped my 
 memory for ever. 
 
 This is my last anecdote of my most 
 sincere and esteemed friend. After this I 
 never saw him again. I called twice at 
 Abbotsford, during his last illness, but they 
 would not let me see him, and I did not at 
 all regret it, for he was then reduced to the 
 very lowest state of weakness to which poor 
 prostrate humanity could be subjected. He 
 was described to me by one who saw him 
 often, as exactly in the same state with a man 
 mortally drunk, who could in nowise own or 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. lOI 
 
 assist himself; the pressure of the abcess on 
 the brain having apparently the same effect 
 as the fumes of drunkenness. He could, at 
 short intervals, distinguish individuals, and 
 pronounce a few intelligible words ; but these 
 lucid glimpses were of short duration, the 
 sunken eye soon ceased again from distin- 
 guishing objects, and the powerless tongue 
 became unable to utter a syllable, though con- 
 stantly attempting it, which made the sound 
 the most revolting that can be conceived. 
 
 I am sure heaven will bless Lockhart for his 
 attention to the illustrious sufferer. The toil 
 and the watching that he patiently endured, 
 one would have thought was beyond human 
 nature to have stood, and yet I never saw 
 him look better or healthier all the while. 
 He will not miss his reward. I followed my 
 friend's sacred remains to his last narrow 
 house, remained the last man at the grave, 
 and, even then, left it with reluctance. 
 
 Omnes eodem cogimur : omnium 
 Vesatur urna, serius, ocyus 
 Sors exitura. 
 
Printed by Turnbull ^ Spears, Edinburgh. 
 
I 
 
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 Renewed books are subject to inunedlate recall. 
 
 lECDLD, N0V2e'73-UAM 
 
 FEB 2 8 1984 
 
 RECCIPJUN 61984 
 
 I 
 
 LD21A-30m-10,'73 
 (R3728sl0)476 — A-30 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
 

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