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MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT,, BART 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 
 
 3|llu$trateD ILibrary (Qftition, 
 
 NINE VOLUMES IN THREE. 
 VOLS. I.-III. 
 
 f \ 
 
 (UNIVERSITY) 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 

TO 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 
 
 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, 
 is DEDICATED BY THB PUBLISHERS. 
 
 Boston, January, 1861. 
 
HSITY; 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHAKT, the biographer and son- 
 in-law of Sir Walter Scott, was born in the manse 
 or parsonage of Cambusnethan, County of Lanark, 
 Scotland, in the year 1794. He died at Abbots- 
 ford on the 25th of November, 1854, and now lies 
 in the same grave with Sir Walter at Dryburgh. 
 
 He was the first son by the second marriage of the 
 Rev. John Lockhart, minister of Cambusnethan, with 
 Elizabeth Gibson, daughter of the Rev. W. Gibson, 
 minister of St. Cuthbert s, Edinburgh. His father 
 was afterwards appointed to the College Church, 
 Glasgow, and in that city John received his first 
 education. His appetite for reading, even as a boy, 
 was insatiable, and though somewhat idle as regard? 
 school study, he greatly distinguished himself at 
 College, obtaining one of the valuable bursaries, 
 (worth about .150 per annum,) in virtue of which 
 he proceeded to Baliol College, Oxford, in 1809, 
 entering at the early age of fifteen. Dr. Jen- 
 kyns, the late dean of Wells, was his tutor. Before 
 leaving the University he took honours as a first- 
 
Vlll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 class man, and retired with the degree of LL. B, 
 After a tour on the Continent he was called to the 
 Edinburgh Bar in 1816, hut he failed to make an 
 impression as an advocate, wanting the gift of elo 
 quence to enable him to shine in that capacity. 
 His wit, his learning, and extensive reading scon 
 found a ready outlet through his pen. Being more 
 attached to literature than to law, on the establish 
 ment of " Blackwood s Magazine," in 1817, he be 
 came a contributor to its columns. For a period of 
 seven or eight years there were few numbers of that 
 periodical which did not contain some pungent or 
 graceful article from his pen. He tried all styles 
 and subjects ; he translated from the German and 
 Spanish, reviewed books, indited stinging political 
 articles, and no one excelled him either in sarcasm 
 or invective. In 1818 he was introduced to Sir 
 Walter Scott, who evinced his esteem and affection 
 for him, by giving him in marriage, in April 1820, 
 his eldest daughter, Sophia Charlotte. Previous 
 to this, Mr. Lockhart had, in conjunction with his 
 friend Professor Wilson, written " Peter s Letters to 
 his Kinsfolk," a lively picture of Scottish society, 
 character, and manners. Soon after his marriage, 
 he removed, with his wife, from Edinburgh to 
 Chiefswood, a pleasant retreat within two miles of 
 Abbotsford. He remained an industrious contribu 
 tor to " Blackwood," engaging with no mean skill in 
 all the party questions of the day. Unfortunately 
 the strife was not confined to squibs, and at least cne 
 fatal catastrophe was the result. In 1821 appeared 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. I* 
 
 his novel of " Valerius," an exquisite Roman story, 
 said to have been written in three weeks ; in 1822 
 "Adam Blair," a Scottish tale of domestic life, con 
 taining some powerful painting of the passions. In 
 the same year he edited an edition of " Don Qui 
 xote." with numerous notes ; in 1823 he published 
 a tale of English University life, called " Reginald 
 Dalton ; " also a translation of " Ancient Spanish 
 Ballads," remarkable for elegance of style and ver 
 sification. Those ballads caught at, at once, and 
 live in, the general ear. They have every charac 
 teristic beauty of ballads, life, rapidity, pictur- 
 esqueness, and grace. In 1824 he published a 
 novel somewhat in the style of Godwin, entitled 
 " Matthew Wald." In 1825 he became the editor 
 of the " Quarterly Review," which continued in his 
 hands for twenty-eight years. He conducted it un 
 til failing health compelled him to resign the labor 
 in 1853. He was only thirty-four years of age 
 when he accepted the editorship of the renowned 
 periodical, but under his charge he maintained and 
 increased its reputation. His connection with 
 " Blackwood s Magazine" he never entirely relin 
 quished. Many of the cleverest things in the 
 " Noctes Ambrosianas " were from his pen. In 
 1.828 he wrote for Constable s "Miscellany" a life 
 of Burns, also a life of Napoleon for Murray s 
 * Family Library." In 1836 appeared his " Mag 
 num Opus," his life of Sir Walter Scott. For the 
 biographer of the great novelist he was immediately 
 named. His strength lay in that department of lit> 
 
X. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 erature, and as the husband of Scott s daughter, en 
 joying the friendliest relations with the father, no 
 one else had a juster claim to the honour ; bit it was 
 a work of great difficulty and delicacy. He had to 
 fill a broad canvas with living or recent characters, 
 and with contemporary events. He had to enter a 
 critical arena, preoccupied by the greatest names of 
 the age, and to deal with aifairs of active life and 
 business, as well as with matters of intellect and 
 imagination. He aimed at strict impartiality ; and 
 in a private letter he declared, that he wrote as if 
 the spirit of Scott, intent only upon truth, looked 
 down upon him at the moment of composition. 
 His work must redound to his praise as a wise, 
 faithful, and masterly biographer. We recognize in 
 it his manly and independent tone of criticism, his 
 true and penetrating estimate of life and conduct, 
 and the eloquent powers of description and analy 
 sis which he brought to his task. As a mere lit 
 erary work, in style and treatment, it must rank in 
 the first class ; and as a biography, for fulness and 
 interest, it is only surpassed by Bos well s " Life 
 of Johnson." 
 
 In 1843 Mr. Lockhart received, through Sir 
 Robert Peel, the sinecure appointment of auditor 
 of the Duchy of Cornwall, worth <400 per annum> 
 This sum, with the large endowments received from 
 his literary labours, placed him, pecuniarily, in easy 
 circumstances, but the latter years of his life were 
 far from being happy. He had survived his wife, 
 his two sons, and all the family of Sir Walter 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. XI 
 
 Scott. Irregular health and study impaired his 
 strength, and he endeavoured by a winter in Italy 
 to renovate his shattered constitution. He returned 
 to Scotland somewhat invigorated, but he felt 
 acutely that premature old age had set in. He 
 had intended never again to visit Abbotsford after 
 Scott s death ; but in the desolation of his last days, 
 when his spirit was broken and health had utterly 
 fled, he turned to it once more. There, on the 
 25th of November, 1854, having just completed 
 his sixtieth year, he breathed his last in the arms of 
 his daughter, the sole survivor of the line of Scott, 
 in the second generation. His parting spirit was 
 soothed by the attentions of filial duty and tender 
 ness, amid those scenes immortalized by genius, 
 which had witnessed his youthful ambition and 
 happiness. 
 
 The " London Times," in noticing the death of 
 Mr. Lockhart, spoke of his character in terms which 
 are not inappropriate to be reproduced at the close 
 of this biographical sketch. The following extracts 
 are from that paper of the date December 9, 
 1854: 
 
 It is not in the first few days of regret for Mr. Lock- 
 hart s loss that the extent of it can be best defined. 
 Long will it be before those who knew him can admit 
 his life and his death into the same thought ; for, much 
 as he had suffered, mind and body, and precarious as had 
 been his state, there had been no decline of that which 
 constituted Lockhart the acuteness, the vigour, the 
 marvellous memory, the flashing wit, swift to sever trutb 
 
Xii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 from falsehood the stores of knowledge, ever ready 
 and bright, never displayed. Although his reputation 
 has been confined to literature, and although, by early- 
 amassed knowledge and long-sharpened thought, he had 
 reared himself into a pillar of literary strength, yet the 
 leading qualities of his mind would have fitted him for 
 any post where far-sighted sagacity, iron self-control^ and 
 rapid instinctive judgment mark the born leader of oth 
 ers. Nor did he care for literary triumphs, or trials of 
 strength, but rather avoided them with shrinking reserve. 
 Far from seeking, he could never be induced to take the 
 place which his reputation and his talents assigned him ; 
 he entered society rather to unbend his powers than to 
 exert them. Playful raillery, inimitable in ease and 
 brilliancy, with old friend, simple child, or with the gen 
 tlest or humblest present, was the relaxation he most 
 cared to indulge, and if that were denied him, and espe 
 cially if expected to stand forward and shine he would 
 shut himself up altogether. 
 
 Reserve, indeed too often misunderstood in it* 
 origin, ascribed to coldness and pride when its onlj 
 source was the rarest modesty and hatred of exhibit ior 
 with shyness both personal and national, was hi/ 
 strong external characteristic. Those whose acquaint 
 ance he was expressly invited to make would find nc 
 access allowed them to his mind, and go disappointed 
 away, knowing only that they had seen one of the most 
 interesting, most mysterious, but most chilling of men, 
 for their very deference had made him retire further 
 from them. Most happy was Lockhart when he could 
 literally take the lowest place, and there complacently 
 listen to the strife of conversers, till some dilemma in 
 tfie chain of recollection or argument arose, and then the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. X11I 
 
 ready memory drew forth the missing link, and the keen 
 sagacity fitted it home to its place, and what all wanted 
 and no one else could supply was murmured out ID 
 choice, precise, but most unstudied words. And there 
 were occasions also, when the expression of the listener 
 was not so complacent when the point at issue was not 
 one of memory or of fact, but of the subtle shades of 
 right and wrong ; and then the scorn on the lip, and the 
 cloud on the brow were but the prelude to some strong, 
 wiry sentence, withering in its sarcasm and unanswer 
 able in its sense, which scattered all sophistry to the 
 winds before it. 
 
 Far remote was he from the usual conditions of gen 
 ius its simplicity, its foibles, and its follies. Lock- 
 hart had fought the whole battle of life, both within and 
 without, and borne more than its share of sorrow. So 
 acute, satirical, and unsparing was his intellect, that, had 
 Lockhart been endowed with that alone, he would have 
 been the most brilliant, but the most dangerous of men ; 
 but so strong, upright, and true were his moral qualities 
 also, that, had he been a dunce in attainments, or a fool 
 in wit, he must still have been recognized as an ex 
 traordinary man. We will not call it unfortunate, for it 
 was the necessary consequence of the very conditions of 
 his life and nature, that while his intellect was known to 
 all, his heart could be known comparatively to few. All 
 knew how unsparing he was to morbid and sickly senti 
 ment, but few could tell how tender he was to genuine 
 feeling. All could see how he despised every species of 
 vanity, pretension, and cant ; but few had the opportu 
 nity of witnessing his unfailing homage to the humblest 
 r even stupidest worth. Many will believe what caus 
 tic he was to a false grief ; few could credit what bain 
 
Xiv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 to a real one. His indomitable reserve never prevented 
 his intellect from having fair play, but it greatly impeded 
 the justice due to his nobler part. 
 
 It was characteristic of Lockhart s peculiar individ 
 uality, that, wherever he was at all known, whether by 
 man or woman, by poet, man of business, or man of th 
 world, he touched the hidden chord of romance in all 
 No man less affected the poetical, the mysterious, or the 
 sentimental ; no man less affected anything ; yet, as he 
 stole stiffly away from the knot which, if he had not en 
 livened, he had hushed, there was not one who did not 
 confess that a being had passed before them who stirred 
 all the pulses of the imagination, and realized what is 
 generally only ideal in the portrait of a man. To this 
 impression there is no doubt that his personal appearance 
 greatly contributed, though too entirely the exponent of 
 his mind to be considered as a separate cause. Endowed 
 with the very highest order of manly beauty, both of feat 
 ure and expression, he retained the brilliancy of youth 
 and a stately strength of person , comparatively unim 
 paired in ripened life ; and then, though sorrow and sick 
 ness suddenly brought on a premature old age, which 
 none could witness unmoved, yet the beauty of the head 
 and of the bearing so far gained in melancholy loftiness 
 of expression what they lost in animation, that the last 
 phase, whether to the eye of painter or of anxious 
 friend, seemed always the finest. 
 
 As in social intercourse, so in literature, Lockhart 
 was guilty of injustice to his own surpassing powers. 
 With all his passion for letters, with all the ambition for 
 literary fame which burnt in his youthful mind, there was 
 ntill his shyness, fastidiousness, reserve. No doubt he 
 might have taken a higher place as a poet than by the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. XV 
 
 Spanish Ballads, as a writer of fiction than by his nov 
 els. These seem to have been thrown off by a sudden 
 uncontrollable impulse to relieve the mind of its fulness, 
 rather than as works of finished art or mature study. 
 The Ballads first appears 1 in Blackwood s Magazine; 
 the novels without his name. They were the flashes cf 
 & genius which would not be suppressed ; no one es 
 teemed them more humbly than Lockhart, or, having 
 once cast them on the world, thought less of their fame. 
 So, too, of his other writings of that period. The ice 
 once broken, the waters went dashing out with irresisti 
 ble force ; his exuberant spirits, his joyous humour, his 
 satiric vigour, his vehement fun, when the curb was once 
 loosened, ran away with him, he himself could hardly 
 see whither. These outbursts over, he retired again 
 within himself. Except in two short, but excellent 
 pieces of biography, written each for a special purpose, 
 and as by command the Life of Burns, yet unsur 
 passed, and that of Napoleon no book appeared under 
 the name of Lockhart till the Life of Scott. This was 
 a work of duty as of love. 
 
 Lockhart was designated at once, for no one else 
 could be, the biographer of Scott. His best papers in 
 the Quarterly Review were full and rapid condensations 
 of wide-spun volumes on the lives or works of authors or 
 statesmen. But while his relation and singular qualifi 
 cations gave him unrivalled advantages for this work, 
 they involved him in no less serious and peculiar diffi 
 culties. The history must tell not only the brilliant joy- 
 ras dawn and zenith of the poet s fame, but also the dark 
 sad decline and close. It was not only that Lockhart, as 
 the husband of his daughter as living in humble and 
 happy Chiefswood with his charming wife (in some re- 
 
Xvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Bpects so like her father), and his promising children, 
 under the shade of aspiring Abbotsford enjoyed the 
 closest intimacy with Scott, saw him in all his moods, 
 with veneration which could not blind his intuitive keen 
 observation of human character, read his heart of hearts ; 
 in some respects there was the most perfect congeniality 
 between the two. In outward manner no men indeed 
 could be more different. Scott frank, easy, accessible, 
 the least awful great man ever known, with his arms and 
 his heart open to every one who had any pretension, to 
 many who had no pretension, to be admitted within 
 them, as much at ease with the king as with Adam 
 Purdie. Lockhart, slow at first, retiring, almost repell 
 ing, till the thaw of kindly or friendly feelings had 
 warmed and kindled his heart, then, and not till then, 
 the pleasantest of companions. But in tastes, in politi 
 cal principles, in conviviality, in active life, in the enjoy 
 ment of Scottish scenery and Scottish sports, in the love 
 of letters for the sake of letters, with a sovereign con 
 tempt and aversion for the pedantry of authorship, warm 
 attachments, even the love of brute beasts in admira 
 tion of the past, in the enjoyment of the present, in 
 bright aspirations for the future there was the closest 
 sympathy, the happiest fellowship. So nothing can be 
 more delightful than the life in Edinburgh, the life on 
 the border, the life in London ; but stern truth, honour, 
 faith with the public, commanded the disclosure of the 
 gloomier evening of this glorious day, the evening of 
 disappointment, embarrassment, noble powers generously 
 overtaxed, breaking down in a death-struggle with the 
 resolute determination to be just, honourable, free. 
 
 Lockhart s was a singularly practical understanding} 
 he had remarkable talents for business, and read mer 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH CF THE AUTHOR. XVU 
 
 with a sharper and more just appreciation than generous 
 Scott. No one could discern more clearly the baseless 
 ness of his father-in-law s magnificent schemes, by which 
 his own unrivalled successes were to be the ordinary 
 rewards of the book trade. With a strange chivalrous 
 notion, Scott was to be at once the noblest and most 
 munificent patron of letters, to force good books on an un 
 prepared and reluctant public, and, at the same time, to 
 achieve such riches as had never crossed the imagination 
 of the most fortunate bibliopole. All this error Lockhart 
 had long seen through ; and, we are persuaded, that if 
 Scott had thrown his affairs into Lockhart s hands, we 
 will not say that they might have been retrieved^ but the 
 blow would have been mitigated ; something less might 
 have been necessary than the vital, the fatal wrestling 
 with unconquerable circumstances. But in the Life 
 how was this to be told? Too much was known, too 
 much was surmised for suppression or disguise. Lock- 
 hart resolved boldly, fairly, to reveal the whole ; for 
 Scott s fame we think he judged wisely, even though the 
 book may have been in some degree weighed dow If 
 there were those who suffered by the exposure, we can 
 not but think they deserved to suffer. All that was sor 
 did and grasping in trading speculation seemed to fall off 
 from the majestic image of Scott ; he rose like a hero in 
 the old Greek tragedy, doing battle to the last with des 
 tiny, nobler in his sad and tragic end than at the height 
 of his glory. All this must have been in the keep and 
 far-sighted view of Lockhart. 
 
 Lockhart was called on to fill, and filled for many 
 years, the very difficult position of the avowed and osten 
 sible editor of one of the two accredited journals of lit 
 erature. Here, too, he derived extraordinary advantage, 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OP THE AUTHOR. 
 
 while doubtless he laboured under some disadvantage 
 from his peculiar manners and habit of mind. In the 
 midst of London life it was not amiss that one of the 
 prime ministers of letters should be somewhat unap 
 proachable. About the secrets of his state there was 
 necessarily some mystery, it might be as well some re- 
 pulsiveness, to keep back the busy and forward those 
 who are perpetually seeking if they had dared to do 
 so, pertinaciously soliciting favours places for their 
 works with due amount of praise by the Review 
 places for their own articles in the Review. Unhap 
 pily, too, in some respects, perhaps happily in others, 
 the two great literary journals at the same time repre 
 senting the two great political parties. It was war to 
 the knife, a war deeper than the gashes of the knife, 
 for the pen wounds more acutely, wounds far more noble 
 parts. If Lockhart in this strife did not always control 
 himself, far more often did not control others, put your 
 self, reader, in his place, arm yourself with his wit, point 
 your lips with his power of sarcasm, give him credit for 
 the honesty of his political principles (right or wrong), 
 for the strength of his political passions. Adversary, it 
 may be ! if wounded by that hand, or through that hand, 
 be assured that, if he did you wrong, you yourself have 
 not felt it more deeply than did Lockhart. Remember 
 that you were at war perhaps you struck first, you 
 or your friends. Whiggism, Liberalism, may be in the 
 ascendant his Toryism in the decline ; but do not do 
 him or yourself the injustice to believe that Lockhart was 
 not an honest, conscientious Tory. Cast your stone, then, 
 not at his fame, but upon his grave, like the warriors of 
 old, who, after mortal combat, on whichever side thej 
 were, conspired to do honour to the illustrious dead. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. XIX 
 
 There was one thing which set Lockhart far above 
 common critics ; high over every other consideration 
 predominated the general love of letters. Whatever 
 might be the fate of those of more doubtful pretensions 
 (even to the humblest, the lowest of authors, there was 
 one kind of generosity in which Lockhart was never 
 wanting if his heart was closed, his hand was ever 
 open), yet if any great work of genius appeared, Trojan 
 or Tyrian, it was one to him his kindred spirit was 
 kindled at once, his admiration and sympathy threw off 
 all trammel. We have known where he has resisted 
 rebuke, remonstrance, to do justice to the works of polit 
 ical antagonists that impartial homage was at once 
 freely, boldly, lavishly paid. 
 
 We sincerely believe that Lockhart had no greater 
 delight or satisfaction than in conferring well-merited 
 praise, hailing the uprising of any new star, and doing 
 just honour to those whom after ages will recognize as 
 the leaders of letters in our day. Suffice it to add, that 
 no unlovable man could have left a dreary blank in the 
 hearts of so many friends ; that he was one whose friend 
 ship was more valued the more intimately he was known ; 
 that English literature had never a more fervent lover, 
 and that, whatever place may be assigned to him by pos 
 terity, none would acquiesce more entirely in that verdict 
 than Lockhart himself. 
 
[ORIGINAL DEDICATION.] 
 
 To JOHN BACON SAWREY MORRITT, OF ROKEBY PARK, 
 ESQ., THESE MEMOIRS OP HIS FRIEND ARE RESPECTED LL1 
 AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 LONDON, December 20, 1886. 
 
 IN obedience to the instructions of SIR WALTER 
 SCOTT S last will, I had made some progress in a narra 
 tive of his personal history, before there was discovered, 
 in an old cabinet at Abbotsford, an autobiographical 
 fragment, composed by him hi 1808 shortly after the 
 publication of his Marmion. 
 
 This fortunate accident rendered it necessary that I 
 should altogether remodel the work which I had com 
 menced. The first Chapter of the following Memoirs 
 consists of the Ashestiel fragment ; which gives a clear 
 outline of his early life down to the period of his call 
 to the bar July 1792. All the notes appended to 
 this Chapter are also by himself. They are in a hand 
 writing very different from the text, and seem, from 
 rarious circumstances, to have been added in 1826. 
 
 It appeared to me, however, that the author s modesty 
 had prevented him from telling the story of his youth 
 with that fulness of detatf which would now satisfy the 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 public. 1 have therefore recast my own collections aa 
 to the period in question, and presented the substance of 
 them, in five succeeding chapters, as illustrations of hia 
 too brief autobiography. This procedure has been at 
 tended with many obvious disadvantages ; but I greatly 
 preferred it to printing the precious fragment in an 
 Appendix. 
 
 I foresee that some readers may be apt to accuse me 
 of trenching upon delicacy in certain details of the sixth 
 and seventh chapters in this volume. Though the cir 
 cumstances there treated of had no trivial influence on 
 Sir Walter Scott s history and character, I should have 
 been inclined, for many reasons, to omit them ; but the 
 choice was, in fact, not left to me, for they had been 
 mentioned, and misrepresented, in various preceding 
 sketches of the Life which I had undertaken to illus 
 trate. Such being the case, I considered it as my duty 
 to tell the story truly and intelligibly ; but I trust I have 
 avoided unnecessary disclosures ; and, after all, there 
 was nothing to disclose that could have attached blame 
 to any of the parties concerned. 
 
 For the copious materials which the friends of Sir 
 Walter have placed at my disposal, I feel just grati 
 tude. Several of them are named in the course of the 
 present volume ; but I must take this opportunity of ex 
 pressing my sense of the deep obligations under which 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 I Lave been laid by the frank communications, in par 
 ticular, of William Clerk, Esq., of Eldin, John Irving, 
 Esq., W. S., Sir Adam Fergusson, James Skene, 
 Esq., of Rubislaw, Patrick Murray, Esq., of Sim- 
 prim, J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., of Rokeby, William 
 Wordsworth, Esq., Robert Southey, Esq., Poet Lau 
 reate, Samuel Rogers, Esq., William Stewart Rose, 
 Esq., Sir Alexander Wood, the Right Hon. the 
 Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, the Right Hon. Sir 
 William Rae, Bart., the late Right Hon. Sir William 
 Knighton, Bart., the Right Hon. J. W. Croker, Lord 
 Jeffrey, Sir Henry Halford, Bart., G. C. H., the 
 late Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G. C. B., Sir 
 Francis Chantrey, R. A., Sir David Wilkie, R. A., 
 Thomas Thomson, Esq., P. C. S., Charles Kirkpat- 
 rick Sharpe, Esq., William Scott, of Raeburn, Esq., 
 
 John Scott, of Gala, Esq., Alexander Pringle, of 
 Whytbank, Esq., M. P., John Swinton, of Inverleith- 
 Place, Esq., John Richardson, Esq., of Fludyer Street, 
 
 John Murray, Esq., of Albemarle Street, Robert 
 Bruce, Esq., Sheriff of Argyle, Robert Fergusson, 
 Esq., M. D.. G. P. R. James, Esq., William Laid- 
 law, Esq., Robert Cadell, Esq., John Elliot Short- 
 reed, Esq., Allan Cunningham, Esq., Claud Rus 
 sell, Esq., James Clarkson, Esq., of Melrose, the 
 late James Ballantyne, Esq., Joseph Train, Esq., 
 Adolphus Ross, Esq., M. D., William Allan, Esq., 
 R. A., Charles Dumergue, Esq., Stephen Nicholson 
 
XXVI PREFACE. 
 
 Barber, Esq., James Slade, Esq., Mrs. Joanna Bail* 
 lie, Mrs. George Ellis, Mrs. Thomas Scott, Mrs. 
 Charles Carpenter, Miss Russell of Ashestiel, Mrs. 
 Sarah Nicholson, Mrs. Duncan, Mertoun-Manse, 
 the Eight Hon. the Lady Polwarth, and her sons, 
 Henry, Master of Polwarth, the Hon. and Rev. Wil- 
 liam, and the Hon. Francis Scott. 
 
 I beg leave to acknowledge with equal thankfulness 
 the courtesy of the Rev. Dr. Harwood, Thomas White, 
 Esq., Mrs. Thomson, and the Rev. Richard Garnett, all 
 of Lichfield, and the Rev. Thomas Henry White, of 
 Glasgow, in forwarding to me Sir Walter Scott s early 
 letters to Miss Seward: that of the Lord Seaford, in 
 intrusting me with those addressed to his late cousin, 
 Geovge Ellis, Esq. : and the kind readiness with which 
 whatever papers in their possession could be service 
 able to my undertaking were supplied by the Duke and 
 Duchess of Buccleuch, and the Lord Montagu; the 
 Duchess-Countess of Sutherland, and the Lord Francis 
 Egerton ; the Lord Viscount Sidmouth, the Lord 
 Bishop of Llandaff, the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, 
 Bart., the Lady Louisa Stuart, the Hon. Mrs. War- 
 render, and the Hon. Catharine Arden, Lady Davy, 
 Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Maclean Clephane, of Tor- 
 loisk, Mrs. Hughes, of Uffington, Mrs. Terry, (now 
 Richardson,) Mrs. Bartley, Sir George Mackenzie 
 of Coul, Bart., the late Sir Francis Freeling, Bart. 
 
PREFACE. XXV11 
 
 . Captain Sir Hugh Pigott, R. N., the late Sir Wil 
 liam Gell, Sir Cuthbert Sharp, the Very Rev. 
 Principal Baird, the Rev. William Steven, of Rotter 
 dam, the late Rev. James Mitchell, of Wooler, Rob 
 ert William Hay, Esq., lately Under Secretary of State 
 for the Colonial Department, John Borthwick, of 
 Crookstone, Esq., John Cay, Esq., Sheriff of Linlith- 
 gow, Captain Basil Hall, R. N., Thomas Crofton 
 Croker, Esq., Edward Cheney, Esq., Alexander 
 Young, Esq., of Harburn, A. J. Valpy, Esq., James 
 Maidment, Esq., Advocate, the late Donald Gregory, 
 Esq., Robert Johnston, Esq., of Edinburgh,* J. J. 
 Masquerier, Esq., of Brighton, Owen Rees, Esq., of 
 Paternoster Row,f William Miller, Esq., formerly of 
 Albemarle Street, David Laing, Esq., of Edinburgh, 
 and John Smith the Youngest, Esq., of Glasgow. 
 
 J. G. LOCKHART. 
 
 * Bailie Johnston died 4th April 1838, in his 73d vear. 
 f Mr. Rees retired from the house of Longman & Co. at Midsum 
 mer 1837, and died 5th September following, hi his 67th year. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 VOLUME FIRST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MEMOIR OP THE EARLY LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, WRIT 
 TEN BY HIMSELF, i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1771-1778. 
 
 Illustrations of the Autobiographical Fragment Edinburgh 
 Sandy-Knowe Bath Prestonpans, 87 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1778-1783. 
 
 Illustrations of the Autobiography continued High School of 
 Edinburgh Residence at Kelso, 118 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1783-1786. 
 
 Illustrations of the Autobiography continued Anecdotes of 
 Scott s College Life, 149 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 1786-1790. 
 
 Illustrations continued Scott s Apprenticeship to his Father 
 - Excursions to the Highlands, &c. Debating Societies 
 Early Correspondence, &c. &c., 162 
 
XXX CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1790-1792. 
 
 Illustrations continued Studies for the Bar Excursion to 
 Northumberland Letter on Flodden Field Call to the Bar, 197 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1792-1796. 
 
 First Expedition into Liddesdale Study of German Political 
 Trials, &c. Specimen of Law Papers Burger s Lenore trans- / 
 lated Disappointment in Love, ..... 218 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 1796-1797. 
 
 Publication of Ballads after Biirger Scott Quarter-Master of 
 the Edinburgh Light-horse Excursion to Cumberland I 
 Gilsland Wells Miss Carpenter Marriage, .... 298 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 VOLUME SECOND. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1798-1799. p.vai 
 
 Early Married Life Lasswade Cottage Monk Lewis - Trans 
 lation of Goetz von Berlichingen, published Visit to London 
 
 House of Aspen Death of Scott s Father First Original 
 Ballads Glenfinlas, &c. Metrical Fragments Appoint 
 ment to the Sheriffship of Selkirkshire, . 7 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 1800-1802. 
 
 The Border Minstrelsy in preparation Richard Heber John 
 LeyAen William Laidlaw James Hogg Correspondence 
 with George Ellis Publication of the Two First Volumes of 
 the border Minstrelsy, 42 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 1802-1803. 
 Pr epa*tion of Volume III. of the Minstrelsy and of Sir Tristrem 
 
 Correspondence with Miss Seward and Mr. Ellis Ballad of 
 the Reiver s Wedding Commencement of the Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel Visit to London and Oxford Completion of the > " 
 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 71 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 1803-1804. 
 
 Contributions to the Edinburgh Review Progress of the Tris 
 trem - and of the Lay of the Last Minstrel Visit of Words- 
 wortb Publication of "Sir Tristrem," 106 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1804-1805. PA<M 
 
 Removal to Ashestiel Death of Captain Robert Scott Mungo 
 Park Completion and Publication of the Lay of the Last Min 
 strel, ... . HO 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1805. 
 
 Partnership with James Ballantyne Literary projects Edition 
 of the British Poets Edition of the Ancient English Chroni 
 cles, &c. &c. Edition of Dryden undertaken Earl Moira 
 Commander of the Forces in Scotland Sham Battles Arti 
 cles in the Edinburgh Review Commencement of Waverley 
 Letter on Ossian Mr. Skene s Reminiscences of Ashestiel 
 Excursion to Cumberland Alarm of Invasion Visit of Mr. 
 Southey Correspondence on Dryden with Ellis and Words 
 worth, .... .177 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1806. 
 
 Affair of the Clerkship of Session Letters to Ellis and Lord Dal- 
 keith Visit to London Earl Spencer and Mr. Fox Caro 
 line, Princess of Wales Joanna Baillie Appointment as Clerk 
 of Session Lord Melville s Trial Song on his Acquittal, . 22C 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 1806-1808. 
 
 Dryden Critical Pieces Edition of Slingsby s Memoirs, &c. 
 Marmion begun Visit to London Ellis Rose Canning 
 Miss Seward Scott Secretary to the Commission on Scotch 
 Jurisprudence Letters to Southey, &c. Publication of Mar 
 mion Anecdotes The Edinburgh Review on Marmion, . 247 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 1808. 
 
 Edition of Dryden published and criticised by Mr. Hallam 
 Weber s Romances Editions of Queenhoo-Hall ; Captain Car- 
 leton s Memoirs; The Memoirs of Robert Gary, Earl of Mon- 
 mouth; The Sadler Papers; and the Somers Tracts Edition 
 of Swift begun Letters to Joanna Baillie and George Ellis on 
 the affairs of the Peninsula John Struthers James Hogg 
 Visit of Mr. Morritt Mr. Morritt s Reminiscences of Ashestiel 
 Scott s Domestic Life, . . 294 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OP 
 
 VOLUME THIRD. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 1808-1809. 
 
 MM 
 
 Quarrel with Messrs. Constable and Hunter John Ballantyne 
 established as a bookseller in Edinburgh Scott s Literary Proj 
 ects The Edinburgh Annual Register, &c. Meeting of James 
 Ballantyne and John Murray Murray s visit to Ashestiel 
 Politics The Peninsular War Project of the Quarterly Re 
 view Correspondence with Ellis, Gifford, Morritt, Southey, 
 Sharpe, &c. . . ..." ..~ ~ . .... 7 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 1809-1810. 
 
 Case of a Poetical Tailor condemned to Death at Edinburgh His 
 Letters to Scott Death of Camp Scott in London Mr. 
 Morritt s description of him as " a Lion" in Town Dinner at 
 Mr. Sotheby s Coleridge s Fire, Famine, and Slaughter The 
 Quarterly Review started First Visit to Rokeby The Lady 
 of the Lake begun Excursion to the Trossachs and Loch Lo 
 mond Letter on Byron s English Bards and Scotch Review 
 ers Death of Daniel Scott Correspondence about Mr. Can 
 ning s Duel with Lord Castlereagh Miss Baillie s Family 
 Legend acted at Edinburgh Theatrical Anecdotes Kemble 
 Siddons Terry Letter on the Death of Miss Seward, . 49 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 1810. 
 
 Affair of Thomas Scott s Extractorship discussed in the House of 
 Lords Speeches of Lord Lauderdale, Lord Melville, &c. 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGI 
 
 Lord Holland at the Friday Club Publication of the Lady of 
 the Lake Correspondence concerning Versification with Ellis 
 and Canning The Poem criticised by Jeffrey and Mackintosh 
 
 Letters to Southey and Morritt Anecdotes from James Bal- 
 lantyne s Memoranda, . . . . . . .87 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 1810. 
 
 First Visit to the Hebrides Staffa Skye Mull lona, &c. 
 The Lord of the Isles projected Letters to Joanna Baillie, 
 Southey, and Morritt, . . cfiiY * *** 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 1810-1811. 
 
 Life of Miss Seward Waverley resumed Ballantyne s Critique 
 on the First Chapters of the Novel Waverley again laid aside 
 
 Unfortunate Speculations of John Baliantyne & Co.; History 
 of the Culdees; Tixall Poetry; Beaumont and Fletcher; Ed 
 inburgh Annual Register, &c. Scott s Essay on Judicial Re 
 form His scheme of going to India Letters on the War in 
 the Peninsula Death of Lord President Blair and of Lord 
 Melville Publication of the Vision of Don Roderick The 
 Inferno of Altisidora, &c., . . ... . 135 
 
 CHAPTER XXHI. 
 
 1811. 
 
 Hew Arrangement concerning the Clerks of Session Scott s 
 first Purchase of Land Abbotsford; Turn-again, &c. Joanna 
 Baillie s Orra, &c. Death of James Grahame and of John 
 Leyden, . ., . . . ,*_ .161 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 1811-1812. 
 
 the Poem of Rokeby begun Correspondence with Mr Morritt 
 Death of Henry Duke of Buccleuch George Ellis John Wil 
 son Apprentices of Edinburgh Scott s " Nick-Nackatories " 
 
 Letter to Miss Baillie on the Publication of Childe Harold 
 Correspondence with Lord Byron. . . . . . 18ft 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 1812-1813. 
 
 PAQI 
 
 The " Flitting " to Abbotsford Plantations George Thomson 
 Rokeby and Triermain in progress Excursion to Flodden, 
 Bishop-Auckland, and Rokeby Park Correspondence with 
 Crabbe Life of Patrick Carey, &c. Publication of Rokeby 
 
 and of the Bridal of Triermain, . . . , . .211 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 1813. 
 
 Affairs of John Ballantyne & Co. Causes of their derange 
 ment Letters of Scott to his Partners Negotiation for relief 
 with Messrs. Constable New purchase of Land at Abbotsford 
 
 Embarrassments continued John Ballantyne s Expresses 
 Drumlanrig, Penrith, &c. Scott s meeting with the Marquis 
 of Abercorn at Longtown His application to the Duke of Buc- 
 cleuch Offer of the Poet-Laureateship considered and de 
 clined Address of the City of Edinburgh to the Prince-Regent 
 
 its reception Civic Honors conferred on Scott Question 
 of Taxation on Literary Income Letters to Mr. Morritt, Mr. 
 Southey, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Crabbe, Miss Baillie, and Lord 
 Byron, . 9n 
 
\^ 
 
 MEMOIRS 
 
 OF 
 
 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 MEMOIR OP THE EARLY LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, 
 WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 
 
 Ashestiel, April 26^, 1808. 
 
 THE present age has discovered a desire, or rather a 
 rage, for literary anecdote and private history, that may 
 be well permitted to alarm one who has engaged in a 
 certain degree the attention of the public. That I have 
 had more than my own share of popularity, my contem 
 poraries will be as ready to admit, as I am to confess 
 that its measure has exceeded not only my hopes, but my 
 merits, and even wishes. I may be therefore permitted, 
 without an extraordinary degree of vanity, to take the 
 precaution of recording a few leading circumstances 
 (they do not merit the name of events) of a very quiet 
 and uniform life that, should my literary reputation 
 survive my temporal existence, the public may know 
 from good authority all that they are entitled to know oi 
 an individual who has contributed to their amusement. 
 
 From the lives of some poets a most important moraJ 
 
32 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 lesson may doubtless be derived, and few sermons can be 
 read with so much profit as the Memoirs of Burns, of 
 Chatterton, or of Savage. Were I conscious of any 
 thing peculiar in my own moral character which could 
 render such developement necessary or useful, I would 
 as readily consent to it as I would bequeath my body to 
 dissection, if the operation could tend to point out the 
 nature and the means of curing any peculiar malady. 
 But as my habits of thinking and acting, as well as my 
 rank in society, were fixed long before I had attained, or 
 even pretended to, any poetical reputation,* and as it 
 produced, when acquired, no remarkable change upon 
 either, it is hardly to be expected that much informa 
 tion can be derived from minutely investigating frailties, 
 follies, or vices, not very different in number or degree 
 from those of other men in my situation. As I have not 
 been blessed with the talents of Burns or Chatterton, I 
 have been happily exempted from the influence of their 
 violent passions, exasperated by the struggle of feelings 
 which rose up against the unjust decrees of fortune. Yet, 
 although I cannot tell of difficulties vanquished, and dis 
 tance of rank annihilated by the strength of genius, those 
 
 * I do not mean to say that my success in literature has not led me 
 to mix familiarly in society much above my birth and original preten- 
 eions, since I have been readily received in the first circles in Britain. 
 But there is a certain intuitive knowledge of the world, to which most 
 well-educated Scotchmen are early trained, that prevents them from 
 being much dazzled by this species of elevation. A man who to good 
 nature adds the general rudiments of good breeding, provided he rest 
 contented with a simple and unaffected manner of behaving and ex 
 pressing himself, will never be ridiculous in the best society, and so 
 far as his talents and information permit, may be an agreeable part 
 of the company. I have therefore never felt much elevated, nor did 
 I experience any violent change in situation, by the passport which 
 aiy poetical character afforded me into higher company than my birtt 
 warranted. [1826.] 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 33 
 
 who shall hereafter read this little Memoir may find in it 
 some hints to be improved, for the regulation of theii 
 own minds, or the training those of others. 
 
 Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a national 
 prerogative as unalienable as his pride and his poverty. 
 My birth was neither distinguished nor sordid. Accord 
 ing to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed 
 gentle, as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient 
 families both by my father s and mother s side. My 
 father s grandfather was Walter Scott, well known ID 
 Teviotdale by the surname of Beardie. He was the 
 second son of Walter Scott, first Laird of Raeburn, who 
 was third son of Sir William Scott, and the grandson of 
 Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition Auld Watt, 
 of Harden. I am therefore lineally descended from that 
 ancient chieftain, whose name I have made to ring in 
 many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower of 
 Yarrow no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel. 
 Beardie, my great-grandfather aforesaid, derived his cog 
 nomen from a venerable beard, which he wore unblem 
 ished by razor or scissors, in token of his regret for the 
 banished dynasty of Stewart. It would have been well 
 that his zeal had stopped there. But he took arms, and 
 intrigued in their cause, until he lost all he had in the 
 world, and, as I have heard, run a narrow risk of being 
 hanged, had it not been for the interference of Anne, 
 Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth. Beardie s elder 
 brother, William Scott of Raeburn, my great-granduncle, 
 was killed about the age of twenty-one, in a duel with 
 Pringle of Crichton, grandfather of the present Mark 
 Pringle of Clifton. They fought with swords, as was 
 the fashion of the time, in a field near Selkirk, called 
 from the catastrophe the Eaeburn Meadow-spot. Pringle 
 
 VOL. I. 3 
 
34 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 fled from Scotland to Spain, and was long a captive and 
 slave in Barbary. Beardie became, of course, Tutor of 
 Raeburn, as the old Scottish phrase called him that 
 is, guardian to his infant nephew, father of the present 
 Walter Scott of Raeburn. He also managed the estates 
 of Makerstoun, being nearly related to that family by his 
 mother, Isobel MacDougal. I suppose he had some 
 allowance for his care in either case, and subsisted upon 
 that and the fortune which he had by his wife, a Miss 
 Campbell of Siivercraigs, in the west, through which 
 connexion my father used to call cousin, as they say, 
 with the Campbells of Blythswood. Beardie was a man 
 of some learning, and a friend of Dr. JPitcairn, to whom 
 his politics probably made him acceptable. They had a 
 Tory or Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in which the con 
 versation is said to have been maintained in Latin. Old 
 Beardie died in a house, still standing, at the north-east 
 entrance to the Churchyard of Kelso, about . . . 
 [November 3, 1729.] 
 
 He left three sons. The eldest, Walter, had a family, 
 of which any that now remain have been long settled in 
 America : the male heirs are long since extinct. The 
 third was William, father of James Scott, well known in 
 India as one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales 
 island: he had, besides, a numerous family both of 
 sons and daughters, and died at Lasswade, in Mid- 
 Lothian, about .... 
 
 The second, Robert Scott, was my grandfather. He 
 was originally bred to the s^a ; but, being shipwrecked 
 near Dundee in his trial voyage, he took such a sincere 
 dislike to that element, that he could not be persuaded to 
 ft second attempt. This occasioned a quarrel betweer, 
 him and his father, who left him to shift for himself 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35 
 
 Robert was one of those active spirits to whom this was 
 no misfortune. He turned Whig upon the spot, and 
 fairly abjured his father s politics, and his learned pov 
 erty. His chief and relative, Mr. Scott of Harden, gave 
 him a lease of the farm of Sandy- Knowe, comprehending 
 he rocks in the centre of which Smailholm or Sandy- 
 Knowe Tower is situated. He took for his shepherd ai; 
 old man called Hogg, who willingly lent him, out of re 
 spect to his family, his whole savings, about 30, to stock 
 the new farm. With this sum, which it seems was at the 
 time sufficient for the purpose, the master and servant 
 set off to purchase a stock of sheep at Whitsun-Tryste, a 
 fair held on a hill near Wooler in Northumberland. The 
 old shepherd went carefully from drove to drove, till he 
 found a hirsel likely to answer their purpose, and then 
 returned to tell his master to come up and conclude the 
 bargain. But what was his surprise to see him galloping 
 a mettled hunter about the race-course, and to find he 
 had expended the whole stock in this extraordinary pur 
 chase ! Moses s bargain of green spectacles did not 
 strike more dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield s family 
 than my grandfather s rashness into the poor old shep 
 herd. The thing, however, was irretrievable, and they 
 returned without the sheep. In the course of a few days, 
 however, my grandfather, who was one of the best horse 
 men of his time, attended John Scott of Harden s hounds 
 on this same horse, and displayed him to such advantage 
 that he sold him for double the original price. The farm 
 was now stocked in earnest ; and the rest of my grand 
 father s career was that of successful industry. He was 
 one of the first who were active in the cattle trade, after 
 wards carried to such extent between the Highlands of 
 Scotland and the leading counties in England, and by his 
 
36 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 droving transactions acquired a considerable sum of 
 money. He was a man of middle stature, extremely 
 active, quick, keen, and fiery in his temper, stubbornly 
 honest, and so distinguished for his skill in country mat 
 ters, that he was the general referee in all points of dis 
 pute which occurred in the neighbourhood. His birth 
 being admitted as gentle, gave him access to the best 
 society in the county, and his dexterity in country 
 sports, particularly hunting, made him an acceptable 
 companion in the field as well as at the table.* 
 
 Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, married, in 1728, 
 Barbara Haliburton, daughter of Thomas Haliburton of 
 Newmains, an ancient and respectable family in Ber 
 wickshire. Among other patrimonial possessions, they 
 enjoyed the part of Dryburgh, now the property of the 
 Earl of Buchan, comprehending the ruins of the Abbey. 
 My granduncle, Robert Haliburton, having no male heirs, 
 this estate, as well as the representation of the family, 
 would have devolved upon my father, and indeed Old 
 Newmains had settled it upon him ; but this was pre 
 vented by the misfortunes of my granduncle, a weak 
 silly man, who engaged in trade, for which he had neither 
 stock nor talents, and became bankrupt. The ancient 
 patrimony was sold for a trifle (about 3000), and my 
 father, who might have purchased it with ease, was dis 
 suaded by my grandfather, who at that time believed a 
 more advantageous purchase might have been made of 
 some lands which Raeburn thought of selling. And 
 thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my 
 father s maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching 
 
 * The present Lord Haddington, and other gentlemen conversan 4 
 with the south country, remember my grandfather well- He was a fini 
 alert figure, and wore a jockey cap over his grey hair. [1826.] 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 
 
 our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye 
 but my own glances over these pages. 
 
 Walter Scott, my father, was born in 1729, and edu 
 cated to the profession of a Writer to the Signet. He 
 was the eldest of a large family, several of whom I shall 
 have occasion to mention with a tribute of sincere grati 
 tude. My father was a singular instance of a man rising 
 to eminence in a profession for which nature had in some 
 degree unfitted him. He had indeed a turn for labour, 
 and a pleasure in analyzing the abstruse feudal doc 
 trines connected with conveyancing, which would prob 
 ably have rendered him unrivalled in the line of a 
 special pleader, had there been such a profession in 
 Scotland ; but in the actual business of the profession 
 which he embraced, in that sharp and intuitive percep 
 tion which is necessary in driving bargains for himself 
 and others, in availing himself of the wants, necessities, 
 caprices, and follies of some, and guarding against the 
 knavery and malice of others, Uncle Toby himself could 
 not have conducted himself with more simplicity than my 
 father. Most attorneys have been suspected, more or 
 less justly, of making their own fortune at the expense of 
 their clients my father s fate was to vindicate his call 
 ing from the stain in one instance, for in many cases his 
 clients contrived to ease him of considerable sums. 
 Many worshipful and be-knighted names occur to my 
 memory, who did him the honour to run in his debt to 
 the amount of thousands, and to pay him with a lawsuit, 
 or a commission of bankruptcy, as the case happened. 
 But they are gone to a different accounting, and it would 
 be ungenerous to visit their disgrace upon their descend 
 ants. My father was wont also to give openings, to those 
 who were pleased to take them, to pick a quarrel with 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 him. Ho had a zeal for his clients which was almost 
 ludicrous : far from coldly discharging the duties of his 
 employment towards them, he thought for them, felt for 
 their honour as for his own, and rather risked disobliging 
 them than neglecting anything to which he conceived 
 their duty bound them. If there was an old mother or 
 aunt to be maintained, he was, I am afraid, too apt to 
 administer to their necessities from what the young heir 
 had destined exclusively to his pleasures. This ready 
 discharge of obligations which the Civilians tell us are 
 only natural and not legal, did not, I fear, recommend 
 him to his employers. Yet his practice was, at one pe 
 riod of his life, very extensive. He understood his busi 
 ness theoretically, and was early introduced to it by a 
 partnership with George Chalmers, Writer to the Signet 
 under whom he had served his apprenticeship. 
 
 His person and face were uncommonly handsome, witfc 
 an expression of sweetness of temper, which was not fal 
 lacious ; his manners were rather formal, but full of gen 
 uine kindness, especially when exercising the duties ol 
 hospitality. His general habits were not only temperate, 
 but severely abstemious; but upon a festival occasion, 
 there were few whom a moderate glass of wine exhila 
 rated to such a lively degree. His religion, in which he 
 was devoutly sincere, was Calvinism of the strictest kind, 
 and his favourite study related to church history. I sus 
 pect the good old man was often engaged with Knox and 
 Spottiswoode s folios, when, immured in his solitary 
 room, he was supposed to be immersed in professional 
 researches. In his political principles he was a steady 
 friend to freedom, with a bias, however, to the monarchi 
 cal part of our constitution, which he considered as pecu 
 liarly exposed to danger during the later years of hii 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 39 
 
 life. He had much of ancient Scottish prejudice respect 
 ing the forms of marriages, funerals, christenings, and so 
 forth, and was always vexed at any neglect of etiquette 
 upon such occasions. As his education had not been 
 upon an enlarged plan, it could not be expected that he 
 should be an enlightened scholar, but he had not passed 
 through a busy life without observation ; and his remarks 
 upon times and manners often exhibited strong traits of 
 practical though untaught philosophy. Let me conclude 
 this sketch, which I am unconscious of having over 
 charged, with a few lines written by the late Mrs. Cock- 
 burn * upon the subject. They made one among a set 
 of poetical characters which were given as toasts among a 
 few friends ; and we must hold them to contain a strik 
 ing likeness, since the original was recognised so soon as 
 they were read aloud : 
 
 " To a thing that s uncommon 
 A youth of discretion, 
 Who, though vastly handsome,- 
 Despises flirtation : 
 To the friend in affliction, 
 The heart of affection, 
 Who may hear the last trump 
 Without dread of detection." 
 
 In [April 1758] my father married Anne Rutherford, 
 eldest daughter of Dr. John Rutherford, professor of 
 medicine hi the University of Edinburgh. He was one 
 of those pupils of Boerhaave, to whom the school of 
 medicine in our northern metropolis owes its rise, and a 
 man distinguished for professional talent, for lively wit, 
 
 * Mrs. Cockburn (born Miss Rutherford of Fairnalie) was the au 
 thoress of the beautiful song 
 
 " I have seen the smiling 
 Of fortune beguiling." [1826.] 
 
40 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and for literary acquirements. Dr. Rutherford was 
 twice married. His first wife, of whom my mother is 
 the sole surviving child, was a daughter of Sir John 
 Swinton of Swinton, a family which produced many dis 
 tinguished warriors during the middle ages, and which, 
 for antiquity and honourable alliances, may rank with 
 any in Britain. My grandfather s second wife was Miss 
 Mackay, by whom he had a second family, of whom are 
 now (1808) alive, Dr. Daniel Rutherford, professor of 
 botany in the University of Edinburgh, and Misses Janet 
 and Christian Rutherford, amiable and accomplished 
 women. 
 
 My father and mother had a very numerous family, 
 no fewer, I believe, than twelve children, of whom many 
 were highly promising, though only five survived very 
 early youth. My eldest brother (that is, the eldest whom 
 I remember to have seen) was Robert Scott, so called 
 after my uncle, of whom I shall have much to say here 
 after. He was bred in the King s service, under Admiral, 
 then Captain William Dickson, and was in most of Rod 
 ney s battles. His temper was bold and haughty, and to 
 me was often checkered with what I felt to be capricious 
 tyranny. In other respects I loved him much, for he 
 had a strong turn for literature, read poetry with taste 
 and judgment, and composed verses himself, which had 
 gained him great applause among his messmates. Wit 
 ness the following elegy upon the supposed loss of the 
 vessel, composed the night before Rodney s celebrated 
 battle of April the 12th, 1782. It alludes to the varioui 
 amusements of his mess : 
 
 " No more the geese shall cackle on the poop, 
 
 No more the hagpipe through the orlop sound, 
 No more the midshipmen, a jovial group, 
 
 Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41 
 
 In death s dark road at anchor fast they stay, 
 Till Heaven s loud signal shall in thunder roar; 
 
 Then starting up, all hands shall quick obey, 
 Sheet home the topsail, and with speed unmoor." 
 
 Robert sung agreeably (a virtue which was never seen 
 in me) understood the mechanical arts, and when in 
 good humour, could regale us with many a tale of bold 
 adventure and narrow escapes. When in bad humour, 
 however, he gave us a practical taste of what was then 
 man-of-war s discipline, and kicked and cuffed without 
 mercy. I have often thought how he might have dis 
 tinguished himself, had he continued in the navy until 
 the present times, so glorious for nautical exploit. But 
 the peace of Paris [Versailles, 1783] cut off all hopes 
 of promotion for those who had not great interest ; and 
 some disgust which his proud spirit had taken at harsh 
 usage from a superior officer, combined to throw poor 
 Robert into the East-India Company s service, for which 
 his habits were ill adapted. He made two voyages to 
 the East, and died a victim to the climate in 
 
 John Scott, my second brother, is about three years 
 older than me. He addicted himself to the military ser 
 vice, and is now brevet-major in the 73d regiment.* 
 
 I had an only sister, Anne Scott, who seemed to be 
 from her cradle the butt for mischance to shoot arrows 
 at. Her childhood was marked by perilous escapes from 
 the most extraordinary accidents. Among others, I re 
 member an iron-railed door leading into the area in the 
 centre of George s Square being closed by the wind, 
 
 * He was this year made major of the second battalion, by the kind 
 intercession of Mr. Canning at the War-Office 1809. He retired 
 from the army, and kept house with my mother. His health waa 
 totally broken, and he died, yet a young .-nan, on 8th May, 1816. 
 [1826.] 
 
42 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 while her fingers were betwixt the hasp and staple, 
 Her hand was thus locked in, and must have been 
 smashed to pieces, had not the bones of her fingers been 
 remarkably slight and thin. As it was, the hand was 
 cruelly mangled. On another occasion she was nearly 
 drowned in a pond, or old quarry-hole, in what was then 
 called Brown s Park, on the south side of the square. 
 But the most unfortunate accident, and which, though it 
 happened while she was only six years old, proved the 
 remote cause of her death, was her cap accidentally 
 taking fire. The child was alone in the room, and before 
 assistance could be obtained, her head was dreadfully 
 scorched. After a lingering and dangerous illness, she 
 recovered but never to enjoy perfect health. The 
 slightest cold occasioned swellings in her face, and other 
 indications of a delicate constitution. At length, in 
 [1801], poor Anne was taken ill, and died after a very 
 short interval. Her temper, like that of her brothers, 
 was peculiar, and in her, perhaps, it showed more odd, 
 from the habits of indulgence which her nervous illnesses 
 had formed. But she was at heart an affectionate and 
 kind girl, neither void of talent nor of feeling, though 
 living in an ideal world which she had framed to herself 
 by the force of imagination. Anne was my junior by 
 about a year. 
 
 A year lower in the list was my brother Thomaa 
 Scott, who is still alive.* 
 
 * Poor Tom, a man of infinite humour and excellent parts, pursued 
 for some time my father s profession, but he was unfortunate, from en 
 gaging in speculations respecting farms and matters out of the line of 
 his proper business. He afterwards became paymaster of the 70th regi 
 ment, and died in Canada. Tom married Elizabeth, a daughter of 
 the family of M Culloch of Ardwell, an ancient Galwegian stock, by 
 whom he left a son, Walter Scott, now second lieutenant of Engineer! 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 43 
 
 Last, and most unfortunate of our family, was my 
 youngest brother Daniel. With the same aversion to 
 labour, or rather, I should say, the same determined indo 
 lence that marked us all, he had neither the vivacity of 
 intellect which supplies the want of diligence, nor the 
 pride which renders the most detested labour better than 
 dependence or contempt. His career was as unfortunate 
 as might be augured from such an unhappy combination ; 
 and after various unsuccessful attempts to establish him 
 self in life, he died on his return from the West Indies, 
 in [July 1806]. 
 
 Having premised so much of my family, I return to 
 my own story. I was born, as I believe, on the 15th 
 August 1771, in a house belonging to my father, at the 
 head of the College Wynd. It was pulled down, with 
 others, to make room for the northern front of the new 
 College. I was an uncommonly healthy child, but had 
 nearly died in consequence of my first nurse being ill of 
 a consumption, a circumstance which she chose to conceal, 
 though to do so was murder to both herself and me. 
 She went privately to consult Dr. Black, the celebrated 
 professor of chemistry, who put my father on his guard. 
 The woman was dismissed, and I was consigned to a 
 healthy peasant, who is still alive to boast of her laddie 
 being what she calls a grand gentleman.* I showed 
 every sign of health and strength until I was about eigh 
 teen months old. One night, I have been often told, I 
 showed great reluctance to be caught and put to bed ; and 
 after being chased about the room, was apprehended and 
 
 te the East India Company s service, Bombay and three daughters t 
 
 Jessie, married to Lieutenant-Colonel Huxley; 2. Anne ; 3. Eliza 
 
 the two last still unmarried. 
 
 * She died in 1810. [1826.] 
 
44 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 consigned to my dormitory with some difficulty. It waa 
 the last time I was to show such personal agility. In the 
 morning, I was discovered to be affected with the fever 
 which often accompanies the cutting of large teeth. It 
 held me three days. On the fourth, when they went to 
 bathe me as usual, they discovered that I had lost the 
 power of my right leg. My grandfather, an excellent 
 anatomist as well as physician, the late worthy Alexan 
 der Wood, and many others of the most respectable of 
 the faculty, were consulted. There appeared to be no 
 dislocation or sprain ; blisters and other topical remedies 
 were applied in vain. When the efforts of regular phy 
 sicians had been exhausted, without the slightest success, 
 my anxious parents, during the course of many year^ 
 eagerly grasped at every prospect of cure which was 
 held out by the promise of empirics, or of ancient ladies 
 or gentlemen who conceived themselves entitled to rec 
 ommend various remedies, some of which were of a na 
 ture sufficiently singular. But the advice of my grand 
 father, Dr. Rutherford, that I should be sent to reside in 
 the country, to give the chance of natural exertion, ex 
 cited by free air and liberty, was first resorted to ; and 
 before I have the recollection of the slightest event, I 
 was, agreeably to this friendly counsel, an inmate in the 
 farm-house of Sandy-Knowe. 
 
 An odd incident is worth recording. It seems my 
 mother had sent a maid to take charge of me, that I 
 might be no inconvenience in the family. But the dam- 
 gel sent on that important mission had left her heart 
 behind her, in the keeping of some wild fellow, it is 
 likely, who had done and said more to her than he was 
 like to make good. She became extremely desirous to 
 return to Edinburgh, and as my mother made a point of 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45 
 
 her remaining where she was, she contracted a sort ot 
 hatred at poor me, as the cause of her being detained at 
 Sandy-Knowe. This rose, I suppose, to a sort of deliri 
 ous affection, for she confessed to old Alison Wilson, the 
 housekeeper, that she had carried me up to the Craigs, 
 meaning, under a strong temptation of the Devil, to cut 
 my throat with her scissors, and bury me in the moss. 
 Alison instantly took possession of my person, and took 
 care that her confidant should not be subject to any 
 farther temptation, so far as I was concerned. She was 
 dismissed, of course, and I have heard became afterwards 
 a lunatic. 
 
 It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my 
 paternal grandfather, already mentioned, that I have the 
 first consciousness of existence ; and I recollect distinctly 
 that my situation and appearance were a little whimsical 
 Among the odd remedies recurred to to aid my lameness, 
 some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was 
 killed for the use of the family, I should be stripped, and 
 swathed up in the skin, warm as it was flayed from the 
 carcase of the animal. In this Tartar-like habiliment I 
 well remember lying upon the floor of the little parlour 
 in the farm-house, while my grandfather, a venerable old 
 tnan with white hair, used every excitement to make me 
 try to crawl. I also distinctly remember the late Sir 
 George MacDougal of Makerstoun, father of the present 
 Sir Henry Hay MacDougal, joining in this kindly at 
 tempt. He was, God knows how,* a relation of ours. 
 
 * He was a second cousin of my grandfather s. Isobel MacDougal, 
 wrife of Walter, the first Laird of Raeburn, and mother of Walter Scott, 
 called Beardie, was grand aunt, I take it, to the late Sir George Mao 
 Oougal. There was always great friendship between us and the 
 Makerstoun family. It singularly happened, that at the burial of the 
 ate Sir Henry MacDougal, my cousin William Scott younger of Rae 
 
46 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and I still recollect him in his old-fashioned military habit 
 (he had been colonel of the Greys), with a small cocked 
 hat, deeply laced, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a 
 light-coloured coat, with milk-white locks tied in a military 
 fashion, kneeling on the ground before me, and dragging 
 his watch along the carpet to induce me to follow it. 
 The benevolent old soldier and the infant wrapped in his 
 sheepskin would have afforded an odd group to uninter 
 ested spectators. This must have happened about my 
 third year, for Sir George MacDougal and my grand 
 father both died shortly after that period. 
 
 My grandmother continued for some years to take 
 charge of the farm, assisted by my father s second brother, 
 Mr. Thomas Scott, who resided at Crailing, as factor or 
 land-steward for Mr. Scott of Danesfield, then proprietor 
 of that estate.* This was during the heat of the Ameri 
 can war, and I remember being as anxious on my uncle s 
 weekly visits (for we heard news at no other time) to 
 hear of the defeat of Washington, as if I had had some 
 deep and personal cause of antipathy to him. I know 
 not how this was combined with a very strong prejudice 
 in favour of the Stuart family, which I had originally 
 imbibed from the songs and tales of the Jacobites. This 
 latter political propensity was deeply confirmed by the 
 stories told in my hearing of the cruelties exercised in 
 
 burn, and I myself, were the nearest blood-relations present, although 
 our connexion was of so old a date, and ranked as pall-bearers ac 
 cordingly. [1826.] 
 
 * My uncle afterwards resided at Elliston, and then took from Mr. 
 Cornelius Elliot the estate of Woollee. Finally he retired to Monklaw 
 in the neighbourhood of Jedburgh, where he died, 1823, at the ad 
 vanced age of ninety years, and in full possession of his faculties. It 
 was a fine thing to hear him talk over the change of the country which 
 he had witnessed. [1826."1 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 47 
 
 the executions at Carlisle, and in the Highlands, after 
 the battle of Culloden. One or two of our own distant 
 relations had fallen on that occasion, and I remember of 
 detesting the name of Cumberland with more than infant 
 hatred. Mr. Curie, farmer at Yetbyre, husband of one 
 of my aunts, had been present at their execution ; and It 
 was probably from him that I first heard these tragic 
 tales which made so great an impression on me. The 
 local information, which I conceive had some share in 
 forming my future taste and pursuits, I derived from the 
 old songs and tales which then formed the amusement of 
 a retired country family. My grandmother, in whose 
 youth the old Border depredations were matter of recent 
 tradition, used to tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, 
 Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dod- 
 head, and other heroes merrymen all of the persuasion 
 and calling of Robin Hood and Little John. A more 
 recent hero, but not of less note, was the celebrated Diel 
 of Littledean, whom she well remembered, as he had 
 married her mother s sister. Of this extraordinary per 
 son I learned many a story, grave and gay, comic and 
 warlike. Two or three old books which lay in the 
 window-seat were explored for my amusement in the 
 tedious winter-days. Automathes, and Ramsay s Tea- 
 table Miscellany, were my favourites, although at a later 
 period an odd volume of Josephus s Wars of the Jews 
 divided my partiality. 
 
 My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose 
 memory will ever be dear to me, used to read these works 
 to me with admirable patience, until I could repeat long 
 passages by heart. The ballad of Hardyknute I was 
 *arly master of, to the great annoyance of almost our 
 only visiter, the worthy clergyman of the parish, Dr. 
 
48 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Duncan, who had not patience to have a sober chat inter 
 rupted by my shouting forth this ditty. Methinks I now 
 Bee his tall thin emaciated figure, his legs cased in clasped 
 gambadoes, and his face of a length that would have 
 rivalled the Knight of La Mancha s, and hear him ex 
 claiming, " One may as well speak in the mouth of a 
 cannon as where that child is." With this little acidity, 
 which was natural to him, he was a most excellent and 
 benevolent man, a gentleman in every feeling, and alto 
 gether different from those of his order who cringe at the 
 tables of the gentry, or domineer and riot at those of the 
 yeomanry. In his youth he had been chaplain in the 
 family of Lord Marchmont - had seen Pope and 
 could talk familiarly of many characters who had sur 
 vived the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Though val 
 etudinary, he lived to be nearly ninety, and to welcome 
 to Scotland his son, Colonel William Duncan, who, with 
 the highest character for military and civil merit, had 
 made a considerable fortune in India. In [1795], a few 
 days before his death, I paid him a visit, to inquire after 
 his health. I found him emaciated to the last degree, 
 wrapped in a tartan night-gown, and employed with all 
 the activity of health and youth in correcting a history 
 of the Revolution, which he intended should be given to 
 the public when he was no more. He read me several 
 passages with a voice naturally strong, and which the 
 feelings of an author then raised above the depression of 
 age and declining health. I begged him to spare this 
 fatigue, which could not but injure his health. His 
 answer was remarkable. " I know," he said, " that I 
 cannot survive a fortnight and what signifies i;ii exer 
 tion that can at worst only accelerate my death a few 
 days ? " I marvelled at the composure of this reply, foi 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 49 
 
 his appearance sufficiently vouched the truth of his 
 prophecy, and rode home to my uncle s (then my abode), 
 musing what there could be in the spirit of authorship 
 that could inspire its votaries with the courage of mar 
 tyrs. He died within less than the period he assigned 
 with which event I close my digression. 
 
 I was in my fourth year when my father was advised 
 that the Bath waters might be of some advantage to my 
 lameness. My affectionate aunt, although such a journey 
 promised to a person of her retired habits any thing but 
 pleasure or amusement, undertook as readily to accom 
 pany me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had expected 
 all the delight that ever the prospect of a watering-place 
 held out to its most impatient visitants. My health was 
 by this time a good deal confirmed by the country air, 
 and the influence of that imperceptible and unfatiguing 
 exercise to which the good sense of my grandfather had 
 subjected me ; for when the day was fine, I was usually 
 carried out and laid down beside the old shepherd, among 
 the crags or rocks round which he fed his sheep. The 
 impatience of a child soon inclined me to struggle with 
 my infirmity, and I began by degrees to stand, to walk, 
 and to run. Although the limb affected was much shrunk 
 and contracted, my general health, which was of more 
 importance, was much strengthened by being frequently 
 in the open air, and, in a word, I who in a city had prob 
 ably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepi 
 tude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness 
 fcpart, a sturdy child non sine diis animosus in/am. 
 
 We went to London by sea, and it may gratify the cu 
 riosity of minute biographers to learn, that our voyage 
 was performed in the Duchess of Buccleuch, Captain 
 Beatson, master. At London we made a short stay, and 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 saw some of the common shows exhibited to strangeis 
 When, twenty-five years afterwards, I visited the Towei 
 of London and Westminster Abbey, I was astonished to 
 find how accurate my recollections of these celebrated 
 places of visitation proved to be, and I have ever since 
 trusted more implicitly to my juvenile reminiscences, 
 At Bath, where I lived about a year, I went through all 
 the usual discipline of the pump-room and baths, but 
 I believe without the least advantage to my lameness. 
 During my residence at Bath, I acquired the rt diments 
 of reading at a day-school, kept by an old dame near our 
 lodgings, and I had never a more regular teacher, al 
 though I think I did not attend her a quarter of a year. 
 An occasional lesson from my aunt supplied the rest. 
 Afterwards, when grown a big boy, I had a few lessons 
 from Mr. Stalker of Edinburgh, and finally from the 
 Rev. Mr. Cleeve. But I never acquired a just pronun 
 ciation, nor could I read with much propriety. 
 
 In other respects my residence at Bath is marked by 
 very pleasing recollections. The venerable John Home, 
 author of Douglas, was then at the watering-place, and 
 paid much attention to my aunt and to me. His wife, 
 who has survived him, was then an invalid, and used to 
 take the air in her carriage on the Downs, when I was 
 often invited to accompany her. But the most delightful 
 recollections of Bath are dated after the arrival of my 
 uncle, Captain Robert Scott, who introduced me to all 
 the little amusements which suited my age, and above 
 all, to the theatre. The play was As You Like It ; and 
 the witchery of the whole scene is alive in my mind at 
 this moment. I made, I believe, noise more than enough, 
 and remember being so much scandalized at the quarrel 
 Orlando and his brother in the first scene, tha, 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 51 
 
 I screamed out, " A n t they brothers ? " A few weeks 
 residence at home convinced me, who had till then been 
 an only child in the house of my grandfather, that a quar 
 rel between brothers was a very natural event. 
 
 The other circumstances I recollect of my residence in 
 Bath are but trifling, yet I never recall them without a 
 feeling of pleasure. The beauties of the parade (which 
 of them I know not), with the river Avon winding 
 around it, and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite 
 hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only rivalled 
 by the splendours of a toy-shop somewhere near the 
 Orange Grove. I had acquired, I know not by what 
 means, a kind of superstitious terror for statuary of all 
 kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Calvinist could 
 have looked on the outside of the Abbey church (if I 
 mistake not, the principal church at Bath is so called) 
 with more horror than the image of Jacob s Ladder, with 
 all its angels, presented to my infant eye. My uncle 
 effectually combated my terrors, and formally introduced 
 me to a statue of Neptune, which perhaps still keeps 
 guard at the side of the Avon, where a pleasure boat 
 crosses to Spring Gardens. 
 
 After being a year at Bath, I returned first to Edin 
 burgh, and afterwards for a season to Sandy-Knowe ; 
 and thus the time whiled away till about my eighth year, 
 when it was thought sea-bathing might be of service to 
 aiy lameness. 
 
 For this purpose, still under my aunt s protection, I 
 remained some weeks at Prestonpans, a circumstance not 
 worth mentioning, excepting to record my juvenile inti- 
 nacy with an old military veteran, Dalgetty by name, 
 who had pitched his tent in that little village, after 
 all his campaigns, subsisting upon an ensign s half-pay, 
 
52 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 though called by courtesy a Captain. As this old gen 
 tleman, who had been in all the German wars, found very 
 few to listen to his tales of military feats, he formed a 
 sort of alliance with me, and I used invariably to attend 
 him for the pleasure of hearing those communications. 
 Sometimes our conversation turned on the American 
 war, which was then raging. It was about the time of 
 Burgoyne s unfortunate expedition, to which my Captain 
 and I augured different conclusions. Somebody had 
 showed me a map of North America, and, struck with the 
 rugged appearance of the country, and the quantity of 
 lakes, I expressed some doubts on the subject of the Gen 
 eral s arriving safely at the end of his journey, which 
 were very indignantly refuted by the Captain. The 
 news of the Saratoga disaster, while it gave me a little 
 triumph, rather shook my intimacy with the veteran.* 
 
 * Besides this veteran, I found another ally at Prestonpans, in the 
 person of George Constable, an old friend of my father s, educated to 
 the law, but retired upon his independent property, and generally re 
 siding near Dundee. He had many of those peculiarities of temper 
 which long afterwards I tried to develope in the character of Jonathan 
 Oldbuck. It is very odd, that though I am unconscious of any thing in 
 which I strictly copied the manners of my old friend, the resemblance 
 was nevertheless detected by George Chalmers, Esq., solicitor, London, 
 an old friend, both of my father and Mr. Constable, and who affirmed 
 to my late friend, Lord Kinedder, that I must needs be the author of 
 The Antiquary, since he recognized the portrait of George Constable. 
 But my friend George was not so decided an enemy to womankind as 
 his representative Monkbarns. On the contrary, I rather suspect that 
 he had a tendresse for my Aunt Jenny, who even then was a most beau 
 tiful woman, though somewhat advanced in life. To the close of her 
 \ife, she had the finest eyes and teeth I ever saw, and though she could 
 be sufficiently sharp when she had a mind, her general behaviour was 
 genteel and ladylike. However this might be, I derived a great deal 
 of curious information from George Constable, both at this early period, 
 and afterwards. He was constantly philandering about my aunt, and 
 of course very kind to me. He was the first person who told me abouf 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 53 
 
 From Prestonpans I was transported back to my fa 
 ther s house in George s Square, which continued to be 
 my most established place of residence, until my mar 
 riage in 1797. I felt the change from being a single 
 indulged brat, to becoming a member of a large family, 
 very severely ; for under the gentle government of my 
 kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, and of my 
 aunt, who, though of an higher temper, was exceedingly 
 
 Falstaff and Hotspur, and other characters in Shakspeare. What idea 
 I annexed to them I know not; but I must have annexed some, for I 
 remember quite well being interested on the subject. Indeed, I rather 
 Buspect that children derive impulses of a powerful and important kind 
 in hearing things which they cannot entirely comprehend ; and there 
 fore, that to write down to children s understanding is a mistake: set 
 them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out. To return to George 
 Constable, I knew him well at a much later period. He used always 
 to dine at my father s house of a Sunday, and was authorized to turn 
 the conversation out of the austere and Calvinistic tone, which it usu 
 ally maintained on that day, upon subjects of history or auld langsyne. 
 He remembered the forty-five, and told many excellent stories, all with 
 a strong dash of a peculiar caustic humour. 
 
 George s sworn ally as a brother antiquary was John Davidson, then 
 Keeper of the Signet; and I remember his flattering and compelling 
 me to go to dine there. A writer s apprentice with the Keeper of the 
 Signet, whose least officer kept us in order ! It was an awful event. 
 Thither, however, I went with some secret expectation of a scantling 
 of good claret. Mr. D. had a son whose taste inclined him to the 
 ariuy, to which his father, who had designed him for the bar, gave a 
 most unwilling consent. He was at this time a young officer, and he 
 and I, leaving the two seniors to proceed in their chat as they pleased, 
 never once opened our mouths either to them or each other. The 
 Pragmatic Sanction happened unfortunately to become the theme of 
 then* conversation, when Constable said in jest, "Now, John, I ll wad 
 you a plack that neither of these two lads ever heard of the Pragmatic 
 Sanction." "Not heard of the Pragmatic Sanction! " said John Da 
 vidson; "I would like to see that;" and with a voice of thunder 
 he asked his son the fatal question . As young D. modestly allowed 
 he knew nothing about it, his father drove him from the table in a 
 *age, and I absconded during the confusion ; nor could Constable ever 
 bring me back again to his friend Davidson s. [1826.] 
 
54 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 attached to me, I had acquired a degree of licence 
 which could not be permitted in a large family. I had 
 sense enough, however, to bend my temper to my new 
 circumstances; but such was the agony which I inter 
 nally experienced, that I have guarded against nothing 
 more in the education of my own family, than against 
 their acquiring habits of self-willed caprice and domina 
 tion. I found much consolation during this period of 
 mortification, in the partiality of my mother. She joined 
 to a light and happy temper of mind, a strong turn to 
 study poetry and works of imagination. She was sin 
 cerely devout, but her religion was, as became her sex, 
 of a cast less austere than my father s. Still, the disci 
 pline of the Presbyterian Sabbath was severely strict, 
 and I think injudiciously so. Although Bunyan s Pil 
 grim, Gesner s Death of Abel, Howe s Letters, and one 
 or two other books, which, for that reason, I still have a 
 favour for, were admitted to relieve the gloom of one dull 
 sermon succeeding to another there was far too much 
 tedium annexed to the duties of the day ; and in the end 
 it did none of us any good. 
 
 My week-day tasks were more agreeable. My lame 
 ness and my solitary habits had made me a tolerable 
 reader, and my hours of leisure were usually spent in 
 reading aloud to my mother Pope s translation of Homer 5 
 which, excepting a few traditionary ballads, and the songs 
 n Allan Ramsay s Evergreen, was the first poetry which 
 I perused. My mother had good natural taste and great 
 feeling : she used to make me pause upon those passages 
 which expressed generous and worthy sentiments, and if 
 she could not divert me from those which were descrip 
 tive of battle and tumult, she contrived at least to divide 
 my attention between them. My own enthusiasm, how 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5 
 
 erer, was chiefly awakened by the wonderful and the 
 terrible the common taste of children, but in which I 
 have remained a child even unto this day. I got by 
 heart, not as a task, but almost without intending it, the 
 passages with which I was most pleased, and used to 
 recite them aloud, both when alone and to others more 
 willingly, however, in my hours of solitude, for I had 
 observed some auditors smile, and I dreaded ridicule at 
 that time of life more than I have ever done since. 
 
 In [1778] I was sent to the second class of the Gram 
 mar School, or High School of Edinburgh, then taught 
 by Mr. Luke Fraser, a good Latin scholar and a very 
 worthy man. Though I had received, with my brothers, 
 hi private, lessons of Latin from Mr. James French, now 
 a minister of the Kirk of Scotland, I was nevertheless 
 rather behind the class in which I was placed both in 
 years and in progress. This was a real disadvantage, 
 and one to which a boy of lively temper and talents 
 ought to be as little exposed as one who might be less 
 expected to make up his lee-way, as it is called. The 
 situation has the unfortunate effect of reconciling a boy 
 of the former character (which in a posthumous work I 
 may claim for my own) to holding a subordinate station 
 among his class-fellows to which he would otherwise 
 affix disgrace. There is also, from the constitution of 
 the High School, a certain danger not sufficiently at 
 tended to. The boys take precedence in their places^ 
 AS they are called, according to their merit, and it re 
 quires a long while, in general, before even a clever boy, 
 if he falls behind the class, or is put into one for which 
 he is not quite ready, can force his way to the situation 
 which his abilities really entitle him to hold. But, in the 
 mean while, he is necessarily led to be the associate and 
 
56 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 companion of those inferior spirits with whom he is 
 placed ; for the system of precedence, though it does not 
 limit the general intercourse among the boys, has never 
 theless the effect of throwing them into clubs and coteries, 
 according to the vicinity of the seats they hold. A boy 
 of good talents, therefore, placed even for a time among 
 his inferiors, especially if they be also his elders, learns 
 to participate in their pursuits and objects of ambition, 
 which are usually very distinct from the acquisition of 
 learning ; and it will be well if he does not also imitate 
 them in that indifference which is contented with bus 
 tling over a lesson so as to avoid punishment, without 
 affecting superiority or aiming at reward. It was prob 
 ably owing to this circumstance, that, although at a more 
 advanced period of life I have enjoyed considerable fa 
 cility in acquiring languages, I did not make any great 
 figure at the High School or, at least, any exertions 
 which I made were desultory and little to be depended 
 on. 
 
 Our class contained some very excellent scholars. The 
 first Dux was James Buchan, who retained his honoured 
 place, almost without a day s interval, all the while we 
 were at the High School. He was afterwards at the 
 head of the medical staff in Egypt, and in exposing him 
 self to the plague infection, by attending the hospitals 
 there, displayed the same well-regulated and gentle, yet 
 determined perseverance, which placed him most worthily 
 Et the head of his school-fellows, while many lads of live 
 lier parts and dispositions held an inferior station. The 
 next best scholars (sed Iwigo intervallo) were my friend 
 David Douglas, the heir and eleve of the celebrated 
 Adam Smith, and James Hope, now a Writer to the 
 Signet, both since well known and distinguished in theii 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 57 
 
 departments of the law. As for myself, I glanced like a 
 meteor from one end of the class to the other, and com 
 monly disgusted my kind master as much by negligence 
 and frivolity, as I occasionally pleased him by flashes of 
 intellect and talent. Among my companions, my good 
 nature and a flow of ready imagination rendered me very 
 popular. Boys are uncommonly just in their feelings, 
 and at least equally generous. My lameness, and the 
 efforts which I made to supply that disadvantage, by 
 making up in address what I wanted in activity, engaged 
 the latter principle in my favour ; and in the winter play 
 hours, when hard exercise was impossible, my tales used 
 to assemble an admiring audience round Lucky Brown s 
 fireside, and happy was he that could sit next to the in 
 exhaustible narrator. I was also, though often negligent 
 of my own task, always ready to assist my friends, and 
 hence I had a little party of staunch partisans and ad 
 herents, stout of hand and heart, though somewhat dull 
 of head the very tools for raising a hero to eminence. 
 So, on the whole, I made a brighter figure in the yards 
 than in the class.* 
 
 My father did not trust our education solely to our 
 High School lessons. We had a tutor at home, a young 
 man of an excellent disposition, and a laborious student. 
 He was bred to the Kirk, but unfortunately :ook such a 
 
 * I read not long since, in that authentic record called the Percy 
 Anecdotes, that I had been educated at Musselburgh school, where I 
 had been distinguished as an absolute dunce ; only Dr. Blair, seeing 
 farther into the millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never 
 was at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr. Blair 
 at my father s and elsewhere, I never had the good fortune to attract 
 flis notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, I was never a dunce, nor thought 
 /> be so, but an incorrigibly idle imp, who was always longing to do 
 rOmething else than what was enjoined him. [1826.] 
 
58 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 very strong turn to fanaticism, that he afterwards re 
 signed an excellent living in a seaport town, merely 
 because he could not persuade the mariners of the guilt 
 of setting sail of a Sabbath, in which, by the bye, he 
 was less likely to be successful, as, cceteris paribus, sailors, 
 from an opinion that it is a fortunate omen, always choose 
 to weigh anchor on that day. The calibre of this young 
 man s understanding may be judged of by this anecdote ; 
 but in other respects, he was a faithful and active in 
 structor; and from him chiefly I learned writing and 
 arithmetic. I repeated to him my French lessons, and 
 studied with him my themes in the classics, but not classi 
 cally. I also acquired, by disputing with him (for this 
 he readily permitted), some knowledge of school-divinity 
 and church-history, and a great acquaintance in partic 
 ular with the old books describing the early history of 
 the Church of Scotland, the wars and sufferings of the 
 Covenanters, and so forth. I, with a head on fire for 
 chivalry, was a Cavalier ; my friend was a Roundhead : 
 I was a Tory, and he was a Whig. I hated Presbyteri 
 ans, and admired Montrose with his victorious High 
 landers ; he liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the dark and 
 politic Argyle : so that we never wanted subjects of dis 
 pute; but our disputes were always amicable. In all 
 these tenets there was no real conviction on my part, 
 arising out of acquaintance with the views or principles 
 of either party ; nor had my antagonist address enough 
 to turn the debate on such topics. I took up my politics 
 at that period, as King Charles II. did his religion, from 
 an idea that the Cavalier creed was the more gentleman 
 like persuasion of the two. 
 
 After having been three years under Mr. Fraser, our 
 class was, in the usual routine of the school, turned ovei 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 59 
 
 to Dr. Adam, the Rector. It was from this respectable 
 man that I first learned the value of the knowledge I had 
 hitherto considered only as a burdensome task. It was 
 the fashion to remain two years at his class, where we 
 read Caesar, and Livy, and Sallust, in prose; Virgil, 
 Horace, and Terence, in verse. I had by this time 
 mastered, in some degree, the difficulties of the language, 
 and began to be sensible of its beauties. This was really 
 gathering grapes from thistles; nor shall I soon forget 
 the swelling of my little pride when the Rector pro 
 nounced, that though many of my school-fellows under 
 stood the Latin better, Gualterus Scott was behind few 
 in following and enjoying the author s meaning. Thus 
 encouraged, I distinguished myself by some attempts at 
 poetical versions from Horace and Virgil. Dr. Adam 
 used to invite his scholars to such essays, but never made 
 them tasks. I gained some distinction upon these occa 
 sions, and the Rector in future took much notice of me ; 
 and his judicious mixture of censure and praise went far 
 to counterbalance my habits of indolence and inattention. 
 I saw I was expected to do well, and I was piqued in 
 honour to vindicate my master s favourable opinion. I 
 climbed, therefore, to the first form ; and, though I neve** 
 made a first-rate Latinist, my school-fellows, and what 
 was of more consequence, I myself, considered that I had 
 a character for learning to maintain. Dr. Adam, to 
 whom I owed so much, never failed to remind me of my 
 obligations when I had made some figure in the literary 
 world. He was, indeed, deeply imbued with that fortu- 
 nate vanity which alone could induce a man who has 
 arms to pare and burn a muir, to submit to the yet 
 more toilsome task of cultivating youth. As Catholics 
 eonfide in the imputed righteousness of their saints, so 
 
60 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 did the good old Doctor plume himself upon the success 
 of his scholars in life, all of which he never failed (and 
 often justly) to claim as the creation, or at least the 
 fruits, of his early instructions. He remembered the 
 fate of every boy at his school during the fifty years he 
 had superintended it, and always traced their success or 
 misfortunes entirely to their attention or negligence when 
 under his care. His " noisy mansion," which to others 
 would have been a melancholy bedlam, was the pride of 
 his heart ; and the only fatigues he felt, amidst din and 
 tumult, and the necessity of reading themes, hearing 
 lessons, and maintaining some degree of order at the 
 same time, were relieved by comparing himself to Caesar, 
 who could dictate to three secretaries at once ; so 
 ready is vanity to lighten the labours of duty. 
 
 It is a pity that a man so learned, so admirably adapted 
 for his station, so useful, so simple, so easily contented, 
 should have had other subjects of mortification. But the 
 magistrates of Edinburgh, not knowing the treasure they 
 possessed in Dr. Adam, encouraged a savage fellow, 
 called Nicol, one of the underniasters, in insulting his 
 person and authority. This man was an excellent classi 
 cal scholar, and an admirable convivial humourist (which 
 latter quality recommended him to the friendship of 
 Burns) ; but worthless, drunken, and inhumanly cruel to 
 the boys under his charge. He carried his feud against 
 the Rector within an inch of assassination, for he way 
 laid and knocked him down in the dark. The favour 
 which this worthless rival obtained in the town-council 
 led to other consequences, which for some time clouded 
 poor Adam s happiness and fair fame. When the French 
 Revolution broke out, and parties ran high in approving 
 r condemning it, the Doctor incautiously joined th 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61 
 
 former. This was very natural, for as all his ideas of 
 existing governments were derived from his experience 
 of the town-council of Edinburgh, it must be admitted 
 they scarce brooked comparison with the free states of 
 Rome and Greece, from which he borrowed his opinions 
 concerning republics. His want of caution in speaking 
 on the political topics of the day lost him the respect of 
 the boys, most of whom were accustomed to hear very 
 different opinions on those matters in the bosom of their 
 families. This, however (which was long after my time), 
 passed away with other heats of the period, and the 
 Doctor continued his labours till about a year since, 
 when he was struck with palsy while teaching his class. 
 He survived a few days, but becoming delirious before 
 his dissolution, conceived he was still in school, and after 
 some expressions of applause or censure, he said, " But 
 it grows dark the boys may dismiss," and instantly 
 expired. 
 
 From Dr. Adam s class I should, according to the 
 usual routine, have proceeded immediately to college. 
 But, fortunately, I was not yet to lose, by a total dismis 
 sion from constraint, the acquaintance with the Latin 
 which I had acquired. My health had become rather 
 delicate from rapid growth, and my father was easily 
 persuaded to allow me to spend half-a-year at Kelso with 
 my kind aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose inmate I again 
 became. It was hardly worth mentioning that I had fre 
 quently visited her during our short vacations. 
 
 At this time she resided in a small house, situated 
 very pleasantly in a large garde/3, to the eastward of the 
 churchyard of Kelso, which extended down to the Tweed. 
 It was then my father s property, from whom it was af 
 terwards purchased by my uncle. My grandmother was 
 
62 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 now dead, and my aunt s only companion, besides an old 
 maid-servant, was my cousin, Miss Barbara Scott, now 
 Mrs. Meik. My time was here left entirely to my own 
 disposal, excepting for about four hours in the day, when 
 I was expected to attend the Grammar-school of the 
 village. The teacher, at that time, was Mr. Lancelot 
 Whale, an excellent classical scholar, a humourist, and a 
 worthy man. He had a supreme antipathy to the puna 
 which his very uncommon name frequently gave rise to ; 
 insomuch, that he made his son spell the word Wale, 
 which only occasioned the young man being nicknamed 
 the Prince of Wales by the military rness to which he 
 belonged. As for Whale, senior, the least allusion to 
 Jonah, or the terming him an odd fish, or any similar 
 quibble, was sure to put him beside himself. In point of 
 knowledge and taste, he was far too good for the situa 
 tion he held, which only required that he should give his 
 scholars a rough foundation in the Latin language. My 
 time with him, though short, was spent greatly to my ad 
 vantage and his gratification. He was glad to escape to 
 Persius and Tacitus from the eternal Rudiments and 
 Cornelius Nepos ; and as perusing these authors with 
 one who began to understand them was to him a labour 
 of love, I made considerable progress under his instruc 
 tions. I suspect, indeed, that some of the time dedicated 
 to me was withdrawn from the instruction of his more 
 regular scholars ; but I was as grateful as I could. I 
 acted as usher, and heard the inferior classes, and I 
 spouted the speech of Galgacus at the public examina 
 tion, which did not make the less impression on the audi- 
 snce that few of them probably understood one word of it. 
 In the mean while my acquaintance with English liter 
 ature was gradually extending itself. In the intervals 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 63 
 
 of my school hours I had always perused with avidity 
 such books of history or poetry or voyages and travels 
 as chance presented to me not forgetting the usual, or 
 rather ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, eastern 
 stories, romances. &c. These studies were totally unreg 
 ulated and undirected. My tutor thought it almost a sin 
 to open a profane play or poem ; and my mother, besides 
 that she might be in some degree trammelled by the 
 religious scruples which he suggested, had no longer the 
 opportunity to hear me read poetry as formerly. I 
 found, however, in her dressing-room (where I slept at 
 one time) some odd volumes of Shakspeare, nor can I 
 easily forget the rapture with which I sate up in my shirt 
 reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment, until 
 the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me it 
 was time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed 
 to have been safely deposited since nine o clock. Chance, 
 however, threw in my way a poetical preceptor. This 
 was no other than the excellent and benevolent Dr. 
 Blacklock, well known at that time as a literary charac 
 ter. I know not hew I attracted his attention, and that 
 of some of the young men who boarded in his family ; 
 but so it was that I became a frequent and favoured 
 guest. The kind old man opened to me the stores of his 
 library, and through his recommendation I became inti 
 mate with Ossian and Spenser. I was delighted with 
 both, yet I think chiefly with the latter poet. The taw 
 dry repetitions of the Ossianic phraseology disgusted me 
 rather sooner than might have been expected from my 
 age. But Spenser I could have read for ever. Too 
 young to trouble myself about the allegory, I considered 
 all the knights and ladies and dragons and giants in theii 
 outward and exoteric sense, and God only knows 
 
64 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 delighted I was to find myself in such society. As I had 
 always a wonderful facility in retaining in my memory 
 whatever verses pleased me, the quantity of Spenser a 
 stanzas which I could repeat was really marvellous. 
 But this memory of mine was a very fickle ally, and has 
 through my whole life acted merely upon its own capri 
 cious motion, and might have enabled me to adopt old 
 Beattie of Meikledale s answer, when complimented by a 
 certain reverend divine on the strength of the same fac 
 ulty : " No, sir," answered the old Borderer, " I have no 
 command of my memory. It only retains what hits my 
 fancy ; and probably, sir, if you were to preach to me for 
 two hours, I would not be able when you finished to 
 remember a word you had been saying." My memory 
 was precisely of the same kind : it seldom failed to pre 
 serve most tenaciously a favourite passage of poetry, 
 playhouse ditty, or, above all, a Border-raid ballad ; but 
 names, dates, and the other technicalities of history, es 
 caped me in a most melancholy degree. The philosophy 
 of history, a much more important subject, was also a 
 sealed book at this period of my life ; but I gradually 
 assembled much of what was striking and picturesque in 
 historical narrative ; and when, in riper years, I attended 
 more to the deduction of general principles, I was fur 
 nished with a powerful host of examples in illustration 
 of them. I was, in shqrt, like an ignorant gamester, who 
 kept up a good hand until he knew how to play it. 
 
 I left the High School, therefore, with a great quantity 
 of general information, ill arranged, indeed, and collected 
 without system, yet deeply impressed upon my mind ; 
 readily assorted by my power of connexion and mem 
 ory, and gilded, if I may be permitted to say so, by a 
 vivid and active imagination. If my studies were not 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65 
 
 under any diiection at Edinburgh, in the country, it may 
 be well imagined, they were less so. A respectable sub 
 scription library, a circulating library of ancient standing, 
 and some private book-shelves, were open to my random 
 perusal, and I waded into the stream like a blind man 
 into a ford, without the power of searching my way, un- 
 
 ess by groping for it. My appetite for books was as 
 ample and indiscriminating as it was indefatigable, and I 
 since have had too frequently reason to repent that few 
 ever read so much, and to so little purpose. 
 
 Among the valuable acquisitions I made about this 
 time, was an acquaintance with Tasso s Jerusalem Deliv 
 ered, through the flat medium of Mr. Hoole s translation. 
 But above all, I then first became acquainted with Bishop 
 Percy s Reliques of Ancient Poetry. As I had been 
 from infancy devoted to legendary lore of this nature, 
 and only reluctantly withdrew my attention, from the 
 scarcity of materials and the rudeness of those which I 
 possessed, it may be imagined, but cannot be described, 
 with what delight I saw pieces of the same kind which 
 had amused my childhood, and still continued in secret 
 the Delilahs of my imagination, considered as the subject 
 of sober research, grave commentary, and apt illustra 
 tion, by an editor who showed his poetical genius was 
 capable of emulating the best qualities of what his pious 
 abour preserved. I remember well the spot where I 
 
 ead these volumes for the first time. It was beneath 
 a huge platanus-tree, in the ruins of what had been in 
 tended for an old-fashioned arbour in the garden I have 
 mentioned. The summer-day sped onward so fast, that 
 notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot 
 the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was 
 still found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To 
 
 VOL. I. 5 
 
66 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 read and to remember was in this instance the 
 thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows, 
 and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recita 
 tions from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, 
 too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were 
 not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself 
 a copy of these beloved volumes ; nor do I believe I ever 
 read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthu 
 siasm. About this period also I became acquainted with 
 the works of Richardson, and those of Mackenzie 
 (whom in later years I became entitled to call my friend) 
 ** with Fielding, Smollett, and some others of our best 
 
 novelists. 
 
 -- To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking 
 of that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural ob 
 jects which has never since deserted me. The neigh 
 bourhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if not the most 
 romantic village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to 
 awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand 
 in themselves, but venerable from their association. The 
 meeting of two superb rivers, the Tweed and the Te- 
 viot, both renowned in song the ruins of an ancient 
 Abbey the more distant vestiges of Roxburgh Castle 
 the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as 
 to combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with 
 those of modern taste are in themselves objects of the 
 first class ; yet are so mixed, united, and melted among 
 a thousand other beauties of a less prominent description, 
 that they harmonize into one general picture, and please 
 rather by unison than by concord. I believe I have 
 written unintelligibly upon this subject, but it is fitter for 
 the pencil than the pen. The romantic feeh ngs which I 
 have described as predominating in my mind, naturally 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 67 
 
 rested upon and associated themselves with these grand 
 features of the landscape around me : and the historical 
 incidents, or traditional legends connected with many of 
 them, gave to my admiration a sort of intense impression 
 of reverence, which at times made my heart feel too big 
 for its bosom. From this time the love of natural beauty, 
 more especially when combined with ancient ruins, or re 
 mains of our fathers piety or splendour, became with me 
 an insatiable passion, which, if circumstances had per 
 mitted, I would willingly have gratified by travelling 
 over half the globe. 
 
 I was recalled to Edinburgh about the time when the 
 College meets, and put at once to the Humanity class, 
 under Mr. Hill, and the first Greek class, taught by Mr. 
 Dalzell. The former held the reins of discipline very 
 loosely, and though beloved by his students, for he was 
 a good-natured man as well as a good scholar, he had not 
 the art of exciting our attention as well as liking. This 
 was a dangerous character with whom to trust one who 
 relished labour as little as I did, and amid the riot of 
 his class I speedily lost much of what I had learned 
 under Adam and Whale. At the Greek class, I might 
 have made a better figure, for Professor Dalzell main 
 tained a great deal of authority, and was not only himself 
 an admirable scholar, but was always deeply interested 
 in the progress of his students. But here lay the vil- 
 lany. Almost all my companions who had left the High 
 School at the same time with myself, had acquired a 
 smattering of Greek before they came to College. I, 
 alas ! had none ; and finding myself far inferior to all 
 my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of 
 vindicating my equality than by professing my contempt 
 for the language, and my resolution not to learn it A 
 
68 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 youth who died early, himself an excellent Greek scholai, 
 saw my negligence and folly with pain, instead of con 
 tempt. He came to call on me in George s Square, and 
 pointed out in the strongest terms the silliness of the 
 conduct I had adopted, told me I was distinguished by 
 the name of the Greek Blockhead, and exhorted me to 
 redeem my reputation while it was called to-day. My 
 stubborn pride received this advice with sulky civility 
 the birth of my Mentor (whose name was Archibald, the 
 gon of an inn-keeper) did not, as I thought in my folly, 
 authorize him to intrude upon me his advice. The other 
 was not sharp-sighted, or his consciousness of a generous 
 intention overcame his resentment. He offered me his 
 daily and nightly assistance, and pledged himself to bring 
 me forward with the foremost of my class. I felt some 
 twinges of conscience, but they were unable to prevail 
 over my pride and self-conceit. The poor lad left me 
 more in sorrow than in anger, nor did we ever meet 
 again. All hopes of my progress in the Greek were 
 now over ; insomuch that when we were required to 
 write essays on the authors we had studied, I had the 
 audacity to produce a composition in which I weighed 
 Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in 
 the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of 
 bad reading and flimsy argument. The wrath of the 
 Professor was extreme, while at the same time he could 
 ,\ot suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the- 
 way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon 
 me the severe sentence that dunce I was, and dunce 
 was to remain which, however, my excellent and 
 learned friend lived to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy 
 *at our literary Club at Fortune s, of which he was a dis* 
 tinguished member. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Meanwhile, as if to eradicate my slightest f 
 Greek, I fell ill during the middle of Mr. Dalzeh . 
 ond class, and migrated a second time to Kelso whe A 
 I again continued a long time reading what and how I 
 pleased, and of course reading nothing but what afforded 
 me immediate entertainment. The only thing which 
 saved my mind from utter dissipation, was that turn for 
 historical pursuit, which never abandoned me even at the 
 idlest period. I had forsworn the Latin classics for no 
 reason I know of, unless because they were akin to the 
 Greek ; but the occasional perusal of Buchanan s history, 
 that of Mathew Paris, and other monkish chronicles, kept 
 up a kind of familiarity with the language even in its 
 rudest state. But I forgot the very letters of the Greek 
 alphabet ; a loss never to be repaired, considering what 
 that language is, and who they were who employed it in 
 their compositions. 
 
 About this period or soon afterwards my father 
 judged it proper I should study mathematics, a study 
 upon which I entered with all the ardour of novelty. 
 My tutor was an aged person, Dr. MacFait, who had in 
 his time been distinguished as a teacher of this science. 
 Age, however, and some domestic inconveniences, had 
 diminished his pupils, and lessened his authority amongst 
 the few who remained. I think, that had I been more 
 fortunately placed for instruction, or had I had the 
 gpur of emulation, I might have made some progress in 
 t his science, of which, under the circumstances I have 
 mentioned, I only acquired a very superficial smatter- 
 ing. Y- 
 
 In other studies I was rather more fortunate. I made 
 some progress in Ethics under Professor John Bruce, 
 and was selected as one of his students whose progress 
 
i,IFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ne approved, to read an essay before Principal Robert 
 son. I was farther instructed in Moral Philosophy at 
 the class of Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose striking and im 
 pressive eloquence riveted the attention even of the most 
 volatile student. To sum up my academical studies, I 
 attended the class of History, then taught by the present 
 Lord Woodhouselee, and, as far as I remember, no others, 
 excepting those of the Civil and Municipal Law. So 
 that, if my learning be flimsy a 
 
 must have some"compassibn even for an idle workman, 
 who had so narrow a foundation to build upon. If, how 
 ever, it should ever fall to the lot of youth to peruse 
 these pages let such a reader remember, that it is with 
 the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the 
 opportunities of learning which I neglected in my youth ; 
 that through every part of my literary career I have felt 
 pinched and hampered by my own ignorance ; and that I 
 would at this moment give half the reputation I have 
 had the good fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could 
 rest the remaining part upon a sound foundation of 
 learning and science. 
 
 I imagine my father s reason for sending me to so few 
 classes in the College, was a desire that I should apply 
 myself particularly to my legal studies. He had not 
 determined whether I should fill the situation of an Ad 
 vocate or a Writer ; but judiciously considering the tech 
 nical knowledge of the latter to be useful at least, if not 
 essential, to a barrister, he resolved I should serve the 
 ordinary apprenticeship of five years to his own profes 
 sion. I accordingly entered into indentures with my 
 father about 1785-6, and entered upon the dry and 
 barren wilderness of forms and conveyances. 
 
 I cannot reproach myself with being entirely an idle 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 71 
 
 apprentice far less, as the reader might reasonably 
 have expected, 
 
 " A clerk foredooic d my father s soul to cross/ 
 
 The drudgery, indeed, of the office I disliked, and the 
 sonfmement I altogether detested ; but I loved my father 
 and I felt the rational pride and pleasure of rendering 
 myself useful to him. I was ambitious also ; and among 
 my companions in labour, the only way to gratify ambi 
 tion was to labour hard and well. Other circumstances 
 reconciled me in some measure to the confinement. The 
 allowance for copy-money furnished a little fund for the 
 menus plaisirs of the circulating library and the Thea 
 tre ; and this was no trifling incentive to labour. When 
 actually at the oar, no man could pull it harder than I, 
 and I remember writing upwards of 120 folio pages with 
 no interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of 
 attendance on the office were lightened by the power of 
 choosing my own books, and reading them in my own 
 fray, which often consisted in beginning at the middle or 
 the end of a volume. A deceased friend, who was a 
 fellow-apprentice with me, used often to express his sur 
 prise that, after such a hop-step-and-jump perusal, I knew 
 us much of the book as he had been able to acquire from 
 reading it in the usual manner. My desk usually con 
 tained a store of most miscellaneous volumes, especially 
 works of, fiction of every kind, which were my supremo 
 delight. I Inight except novels, unless those of the bet 
 ter and higher class ; for though I read many of them, 
 yet it was with more selection than might have been ex 
 pected. The whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe I 
 abhorred, and it required tne art of Burney, or the feel- 
 Ing of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic 
 
72 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic I de 
 voured without much discrimination, and I really believe 
 / 1 have read as much nonsense of this class as any man 
 / now living. Everything which touched on knight-er- 
 ) rantry was particularly acceptable to me, and I soon 
 
 / attempted to imitate what I so greatly admired. My 
 efforts, however, were in the manner of the tale-teller 
 not of the bard. 
 
 My greatest intimate, from the days of my school-tide 
 was Mr. John Irving, now a Writer to the Signet. Wt 
 lived near each other, and by joint agreement were wont, 
 each of us, to compose a romance for the other s amuse 
 ment. These legends, in which the martial and the 
 miraculous always predominated, we rehearsed to each 
 other during our walks, which were usually directed to 
 the most solitary spots about Arthur s Seat and Salisbury 
 Crags. We naturally sought seclusion, for we were con 
 scious no small degree of ridicule would have attended 
 our amusement, if the nature of it had become known- 
 
 /""Whole holidays were spent in this singular pastime, 
 which continued for two or three years, and had, I be 
 lieve, no small effect in directing the turn of my imag 
 ination to the chivalrous and romantic in poetry and 
 
 V prose. 
 
 Meanwhile, the translations of Mr. Hoole having made 
 me acquainted with Tasso and Ariosto, I learned from 
 his notes on the latter, that the Italian language con 
 tained a fund of romantic lore. A part of my earning^ 
 was dedicated to an Italian class which I attended twice 
 i-week, and rapidly acquired some proficiency. I had 
 previously renewed and extended my knowledge of the 
 FKejnch language, from th~e~~same~ "principle of romantic 
 research. Tressan s romances, the Bibliotheque Bleue 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 73 
 
 and Bibliotheque de Romans, were already familiar to 
 me, and I now acquired similar intimacy with the works 
 of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci, and other eminent Italian au 
 thors. I fastened also, like a tiger, upon every collection 
 of old songs or romances which chance threw in my way, 
 or which my scrutiny was able to discover on the dusty 
 shelves of James Sibbald s circulating library in the Par 
 liament Square. This collection, now dismantled and 
 dispersed, contained at that time many rare and curious 
 works, seldom found in such a collection. Mr. Sibbald 
 himself, a man of rough manners but of some taste and 
 judgment, cultivated music and poetry, and in his shop I 
 had a distant view of some literary characters, besides 
 the privilege of ransacking the stores of old French and 
 Italian books, which were in little demand among the 
 bulk of his subscribers. Here I saw the unfortunate 
 Andrew Macdonald, author of Vimonda ; and here, too, 
 I saw at a distance the boast of Scotland, Robert Burns. 
 Of the latter I shall presently have occasion to speak 
 more fully. 
 
 I am inadvertently led to confound- dates while I talk 
 of this remote period, for, as I have no notes, it is impos 
 sible for me to remember with accuracy the progress of 
 studies, if they deserve the name, so irregular and mis 
 cellaneous. But about the second year of my appren 
 ticeship, my health, which from rapid growth and other 
 causes, had been hitherto rather uncertain and delicate, 
 was affected by the breaking of a blood-vessel. The regi 
 men I had to undergo on this occasion was far from agree 
 able. It was Spring, and the weather raw and cold, yet I 
 was confined to bed with a single blanket, and bled and 
 blistered till I scarcely had a pulse left. I had all the 
 appetite of a growing boy, but was prohibited any sus- 
 
74 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tenance beyond what was absolutely necessary for the 
 support of nature, and that in vegetables alone. Above 
 all, with a considerable disposition to talk, I was not per 
 mitted to open my lips without one or two old ladies who 
 watched my couch being ready at once to souse upon me, 
 " imposing silence with a stilly sound." * My only refuge 
 was reading and playing at chess. To the romances a ad 
 poetry, which I chiefly delighted in, I had always added 
 the study of history, especially as connected with military 
 events. I was encouraged in this latter study by a toler 
 able acquaintance with geography, and by the opportuni 
 ties I had enjoyed while with Mr. MacFait to learn the 
 meaning of the more ordinary terms of fortification. 
 While, therefore, I lay in this dreary and silent soli 
 tude, I fell upon the resource of illustrating the battles I 
 read of by the childish expedient of arranging shells, and 
 seeds, and pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies. 
 Diminutive cross-bows were contrived to mimic artillery, 
 and with the assistance of a friendly carpenter, I con 
 trived to model a fortress, which, like that of Uncle Toby, 
 represented whatever place happened to be uppermost in 
 my imagination. I fought my way thus through Vertot s 
 Knights of Malta a book which, as it hovered between 
 history and romance, was exceedingly dear to me ; and 
 Orme s interesting and beautiful History of Indostan, 
 whose copious plans, aided by the clear and luminous ex 
 planations of the author, rendered my imitative amuse 
 ment peculiarly easy. Other moments of these weary 
 weeks were spent in looking at the Meadow Walks, by 
 assistance of a combination of mirrors so arranged that, 
 while lying in bed, I could see the troops march out to 
 exercise, or any other incident which occurred on that 
 
 promenade. 
 
 * HOME S Tragedy of Douglas. 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 75 
 
 After one or two relapses, my constitution recovered 
 the injury it had sustained, though for several months 
 afterwards I was restricted to a severe vegetable diet. 
 And I must say, in passing, that though I gained health 
 under this necessary restriction, yet it was far from being 
 agreeable to me, and I was affected whilst under its 
 influence with a nervousness which I never felt before 
 or since. A disposition to start upon slight alarms a 
 want of decision in feeling and acting, which has not 
 usually been my failing an acute sensibility to trifling 
 inconveniences and an unnecessary apprehension of 
 contingent misfortunes, rise to my memory as connected 
 with my vegetable diet, although they may very possibly 
 have been entirely the result of the disorder, and not of 
 the cure. Be this as it may, with this illness I bade fare 
 well both to disease and medicine ; for since that time, till 
 the hour I am now writing, I have enjoyed a state of the 
 most robust health, having only had to complain of occa 
 sional headaches or stomachic affections when I have 
 been long without taking exercise, or have lived too con- 
 vivially the latter having been occasionally though not 
 habitually the error of my youth, as the former has been 
 of my advanced life. 
 
 My frame gradually became hardened with my con 
 stitution, and being both tall and muscular, I was rather 
 disfigured than disabled by my lameness. This personal 
 disadvantage did not prevent me from taking much exer 
 cise on horseback, and making long journeys on foot, in 
 the course of which I often walked from twenty to thirty 
 miles a day. A distinct instance occurs to me. I remem 
 ber walking with poor James Ramsay, my fellow-appren 
 tice, now no more, and two other friends, to breakfast at 
 Prestonpans. We spent the forenoon in visiting the ruins 
 
7b LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 at Seton, and rlie field of battle at Preston dined at 
 Prestonpans on tiled haddocks very sumptuously drank 
 half a bottle of port each, and returned in the evening. 
 This could not be less than thirty miles, nor do I remem 
 ber being at all fatigued upon the occasion. 
 
 These excursions on foot or horseback formed by far 
 my most favourite amusement. I have all my life de 
 lighted in travelling, though I have never enjoyed that 
 pleasure upon a large scale. It was a propensity which 
 I sometimes indulged so unduly as to alarm and vex my 
 parents. Wood, water, wilderness itself, had an inexpres 
 sible charm for me, and I had a dreamy way of going 
 much farther than I intended, so that unconsciously my 
 return was protracted, and my parents had sometimes 
 serious cause of uneasiness. For example, I once set 
 out with Mr. George Abercromby * (the son of the im 
 mortal General), Mr. William Clerk, and some others, to 
 fish in the lake above Howgate, and the stream which 
 descends from it into the Esk. We breakfasted at How- 
 gate, and fished the whole day ; and while we were on 
 our return next morning, I was easily seduced by William 
 Clerk, then a great intimate, to visit Pennycuik House, 
 the seat of his family. Here he and John Irving, and I 
 for their sake, were overwhelmed with kindness by the 
 late Sir John Clerk and his lady, the present Dowager 
 Lady Clerk. The pleasure of looking at fine pictures, 
 the beauty of the place, and the flattering hospitality of 
 the owners, drowned all recollection of home for a day or 
 two. Meanwhile our companions, who had walked OR 
 without being aware of our digression, returned to Edin 
 burgh without us, and excited no small alarm in my 
 father s household. At length, however, they became 
 * Now Lord Abercromby. [1826.] 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 77 
 
 accustomed to my escapades. My father used to protest 
 to me on such occasions that he thought I was born to 
 be a strolling pedlar ; and though the prediction was in 
 tended to mortify my conceit, I am not sure that I alto 
 gether disliked it. I was now familiar with Shakspeare, 
 and thought of Autolycus s song 
 
 " Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, 
 
 And merrily hent the stile-a: 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 Your sad tires in a mile-a." 
 
 My principal object in these excursions was the pleas 
 ure of seeing romantic scenery, or what afforded me at 
 least equal pleasure, the places which had been distin 
 guished by remarkable historical events. The delight 
 with which I regarded the former, of course had general 
 approbation, but I often found it difficult to procure sym 
 pathy with the interest I felt in the latter. Yet to me, 
 the wandering over the field of Bannockburn was the 
 source of more exquisite pleasure than gazing upon the 
 celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling 
 castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to 
 the feeling of picturesque scenery ; on the contrary, few 
 delighted more in its general effect. But I was unable 
 with the eye of a painter to dissect the various parts of 
 the scene, to comprehend how the one bore upon the 
 other, to estimate the effect which various features of the 
 view had in producing its leading and general effect. I 
 have never, indeed, been capable of doing this with pre 
 cision or nicety, though my latter studies have led me to 
 amend and arrange my original ideas upon the subject. 
 Even the humble ambition, which I long cherished, of 
 making sketches of those places which interested me, 
 from a defect of eye or of hand was totally ineffectual 
 
78 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 After long study and many efforts, I was unable to apply 
 the elements of perspective or of shade to the scene be 
 fore me, and was obliged to relinquish in despair an art 
 which I was most anxious to practise. But show me an 
 old castle or a field of battle, and I was at home at once, 
 filled it with its combatants in their proper costume, and 
 overwhelmed my hearers by the enthusiasm of my de 
 scription. In crossing Magus Moor, near St. Andrews, 
 the spirit moved me to give a picture of the assassination 
 of the Archbishop of St. Andrews to some fellow-travel 
 lers with whom I was accidentally associated, and one of 
 them, though well acquainted with the story, protested 
 my narrative had frightened away his night s sleep. I 
 mention this to show the distinction between a sense of 
 the picturesque in action and in scenery. If I have since 
 been able in poetry to trace with some success the princi 
 ples of the latter, it has always been with reference to its 
 general and leading features, or under some alliance with 
 moral feeling; and even this proficiency has cost me 
 study. Meanwhile I endeavoured to make amends for 
 my ignorance of drawing, by adopting a sort of technical 
 memory respecting the scenes I visited. Wherever I 
 went, I cut a piece of a branch from a tree these con 
 stituted what I called my log-book ; and I intended to 
 have a set of chessmen out of them, each having refer 
 ence to the place where it was cut as the kings from 
 Falkland and Holy-Rood ; the queens from Queen Mary s 
 yew-tree at Crookston ; the bishops from abbeys or epis 
 copal palaces ; the knights from baronial residences ; the 
 rooks from royal fortresses ; and the pawns generally 
 from places worthy of historical note. But this whimsi 
 cal design I never carried into execution. 
 
 With music it was even worse than with painting 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 79 
 
 My mother was anxious we should at leas>t learn Psal 
 mody ; but the incurable defects of my voice and ear soon 
 drove my teacher to despair.* It is only by long practice 
 that I have acquired the power of selecting or distinguish 
 ing melodies; and although now few things delight or 
 affect me more than a simple tune sung with feeling, yet 
 I am sensible that even this pitch of musical taste has 
 only been gained by attention and habit, and, as it were, 
 by my feeling of the words being associated with the 
 tune. I have, therefore, been usually unsuccessful in 
 composing words to a tune, although my friend, Dr. 
 Clarke, and other musical composers, have sometimes 
 been able to make a happy union between their music 
 and my poetry. 
 
 In other points, however, I began to make some 
 amends for the irregularity of my education. It is well 
 known that in Edinburgh one great spur to emulation 
 among youthful students is in those associations called 
 literary societies, formed not only for the purpose of 
 
 * The late Alexander Campbell, a warm-hearted man, ad an en 
 thusiast in Scottish music, which he sang most beautifully, had this 
 ungrateful task imposed on him. He was a man of many accomplish 
 ments, but dashed with a bizarrerie of temper which made them useless 
 to their proprietor. He wrote several books as a Tour in Scotland, 
 &c. ; and he made an advantageous marriage, but fell nevertheless 
 into distressed circumstances, which I had the pleasure of relieving, if 
 I could not remove. His sense of gratitude was very strong, and showed 
 itself oddly in one respect. He would never allow that I had a bad ear ; 
 but contended, that if I did not understand music, it was because I did 
 not choose to learn it. But when he attende d us in George s Square, 
 our neighbour, Lady Gumming, sent to beg the boys might not be all 
 flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had no doubt the 
 punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord was really dreadful. 
 Robert was the only one of our family who could sing, though my 
 father was musical, and a performer on the violoncello at the gentle* 
 men s concerts. [1826.] 
 
80 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 debate, but of composition. These undoubtedly have 
 borne disadvantages, where a bold, petulant, and dispu 
 tatious temper happens to be combined with considerable 
 information and talent. Still, however, in order to such 
 a person being actually spoiled by his mixing in such 
 debates, his talents must be of a very rare nature, or his 
 effrontery must be proof to every species of assault ; for 
 there is generally, in a well-selected society of this nature, 
 talent sufficient to meet the forwardest, and satire enough 
 to penetrate the most undaunted. I am particularly 
 obliged to this sort of club for introducing me about my 
 seventeenth year into the society which at one time I 
 had entirely dropped ; for, from the time of my illness at 
 college, I had had little or no intercourse with any of my 
 class-companions, one or two only excepted. Now, how 
 ever, about 1788, I began to feel and take my ground in 
 society. A ready wit, a good deal of enthusiasm, and a 
 perception that soon ripened into tact and observation of 
 character, rendered me an acceptable companion to many 
 young men whose acquisitions in philosophy and science 
 were infinitely superior to any thing I could boast. 
 
 In the business of these societies for I was a mem 
 ber of more than one successively I cannot boast of 
 having made any great figure. I never was a good 
 speaker unless upon some subject which strongly ani 
 mated my feelings ; and, as I was totally unaccustomed \ 
 to composition, as well as to the art of generalizing my j) 
 ideas upon any subject, my literary essays were but verv^/ 
 poor work. I never attempted them unless when com 
 pelled to do so by the regulations of the society, and then 
 I was like the Lord of Castle Rackrent, who was obliged 
 to cut down a tree to get a few faggots to boil the kettle 
 for the quantity of ponderous and miscellaneous knowl- 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 81 
 
 edge, which I really possessed on many subjects, was not 
 easily condensed, or brought to bear upon the object I 
 wished particularly to become master of. Yet there 
 occurred opportunities when this odd lumber of my brain, 
 especially that which was connected with the recondite 
 parts of history, did me, as Hamlet says, " yeoman s ser 
 vice." My memory of events was like one of the large, 
 old-fashioned stone-cannons of the Turks very difficult 
 to load well and discharge, but making a powerful effect 
 when by good chance any object did come within range 
 of its shot. Such fortunate opportunities of exploding 
 with effect maintained my literary character among my 
 companions, with whom I soon met with great indulgence 
 and regard. The persons with whom I chiefly lived at 
 this period of my youth were William Clerk, already 
 mentioned ; James Edmonstoune, of Newton ; George 
 Abercromby; Adam Fergusson, son of the celebrated 
 Professor Fergusson, and who combined the lightest and 
 most airy temper with the best and kindest disposition ; 
 John Irving, already mentioned ; the Honourable Thomas 
 Douglas, now Earl of Selkirk ; David Boyle,* and two 
 or three others, who sometimes plunged deeply into poli 
 tics and metaphysics, and not unfrequently " doffed the 
 world aside, and bid it pass." 
 
 Looking back on these times, I cannot applaud in all 
 respects the way in which our days were spent. There 
 was too much idleness, and sometimes too much conviv 
 iality : but our hearts were warm, our minds honourably 
 bent on knowledge and literary distinction ; and if I, cer 
 tainly the least informed of the party, may be permitted 
 to bear witness, we were not without the fair and cred 
 itable means of attaining the distinction to which we 
 * Now Lord Justice-Clerk. [1826.] 
 
82 LIFE 01 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 aspired. In this society I was naturally led to correct 
 my former useless course of reading ; for feeling my 
 self greatly inferior to my companions in metaphysical 
 philosophy and other branches of regular study I 
 laboured, not without some success, to acquire at least 
 such a portion of knowledge as might enable rne to main 
 tain my rank in conversation. In this I succeeded pretty 
 well ; but unfortunately then, as often since through my 
 life, I incurred the deserved ridicule of my friends from 
 the superficial nature of my acquisitions, which being, 
 hi the mercantile phrase, got up for society, very often 
 proved flimsy in the texture ; and thus the gifts of an 
 uncommonly retentive memory and acute powers of per 
 ception were sometimes detrimental to their possessor, by 
 encouraging him to a presumptuous reliance upon them. 
 Amidst these studies, and in this society, the time of 
 my apprenticeship elapsed ; and in 1790, or thereabouts, 
 it became necessary that I should seriously consider to 
 which department of the law I was to attach myself. 
 My father behaved with the most parental kindness. 
 He offered, if I preferred his own profession, immedi 
 ately to take me into partnership with him, which, though 
 his business was much diminished, still afforded me an 
 immediate prospect of a handsome independence. But 
 he did not disguise his wish that I should relinquish this 
 situation to my younger brother, and embrace the more 
 ambitious profession of the bar. I had little hesitation 
 hi making my choice for I was never very fond of 
 money ; and in no other particular do the professions 
 admit of a comparison. Besides, I knew and felt the 
 inconveniences attached to that of a writer ; and I 
 hought (like a young man) many of them were " in- 
 genio non subeunda meo." The appearance of persona] 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 83 
 
 dependence which that profession requires was disagree 
 able to me ; the sort of connexion between the client and 
 the attorney seemed to render the latter more subservient 
 than was quite agreeable to my nature ; and, besides, I 
 had seen many sad examples, while overlooking my 
 father s business, that the utmost exertions, and the best 
 meant services, do not secure the man of business, as he 
 is called, from great loss, and most ungracious treatment 
 on the part of his employers. The bar, though I was 
 conscious of my deficiencies as a public speaker, was the 
 line of ambition and liberty ; it was that also for which 
 most of my contemporary friends were destined. And, 
 lastly, although I would willingly have relieved my father 
 of the labours of his business, yet I saw plainly we could 
 not have agreed on some particulars if we had attempted 
 to conduct it together, and that I should disappoint his 
 expectations if I did not turn to the bar. So to that 
 object my studies were directed with great ardour and 
 perseverance during the years 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792. 
 
 In the usual course of study, the Roman or Civil Law 
 was the first object of my attention the second, the 
 Municipal Law of Scotland. In the course of reading 
 on both subjects, I had the advantage of studying in con 
 junction with my friend William Clerk, a man of the 
 most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, and 
 who, should he ever shake loose the fetters of indolence 
 by which he has been hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to 
 be distinguished in the highest degree. We attended 
 the regular classes of both laws in the University of Ed 
 inburgh. The Civil Law chair, now worthily filled by 
 Mr. Alexander Irving, might at that time be considered 
 as in abeyance, since the person by whom it was occupied 
 aad never been fit for the situation, and was then almost 
 
84 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in a state of dotage. But the Scotch Law lectures were 
 those of Mr. David Hume, who still continues to occupy 
 that situation with as much honour to himself as advan 
 tage to his country. I copied over his lectures twice 
 with my own hand, from notes taken in the class ; and 
 when I have had occasion to consult them, I can never 
 sufficiently admire the penetration and clearness of con 
 ception which were necessary to the arrangement of the 
 fabric of law, formed originally under the strictest influ 
 ence of feudal principles, and innovated, altered, and 
 broken in upon by the change of times, of habits, and of 
 manners, until it resembles some ancient castle, partly 
 entire, partly ruinous, partly dilapidated, patched and 
 altered during the succession of ages by a thousand 
 additions and combinations, yet still exhibiting, with 
 the marks of its antiquity, symptoms of the skill and 
 wisdom of its founders, and capable of being analyzed 
 and made the subject of a methodical plan by an 
 architect who can understand the various styles of 
 the different ages in which it was subjected to alter 
 ation. Such an architect has Mr. Hume been to the 
 law of Scotland, neither wandering into fanciful and ab 
 struse disquisitions, which are the more proper subject 
 of the antiquary, rior satisfied with presenting to his 
 pupils a dry and undigested detail of the laws in their 
 present state, but combining the past state of our legal 
 enactments with the present, and tracing clearly and 
 judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes 
 which led to them. 
 
 Under these auspices, I commenced my legal studies. 
 A little parlour was assigned me in my father s house, 
 which was spacious and convenient, and I took the ex 
 elusive possession of my new realms with all the feelings 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 85 
 
 .^W-LJLl, ^V^VIJ, CVXXVl l**X^ , X^VXX^ XXXV^^XJ. ^XXV, X^XV^ WX XXX J 
 
 friend Clerk and myself was, that we should mutually 
 qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination upon 
 certain points of law every morning in the week, Sun 
 days excepted. This was at first to have taken place 
 alternately at each other s houses, but we soon discovered 
 that my friend s resolution was inadequate to severing 
 him from his couch at the early hour fixed for this exer- 
 citation. Accordingly, I agreed to go every morning to 
 his house, which, being at the extremity of Prince s 
 Street, New Town, was a walk of two miles. With 
 great punctuality, however, I beat him up to his task 
 every morning before seven o clock, and in the course of 
 two summers, we went, by way of question and answer, 
 through the whole of Heineccius s Analysis of the Insti 
 tutes and Pandects, as well as through the smaller copy 
 of Erskine s Institutes of the Law of Scotland. This 
 course of study enabled us to pass with credit the usual 
 trials, which, by the regulations of the Faculty of Advo 
 cates, must be undergone by every candidate for admis 
 sion into their body. My friend William Clerk and I 
 passed these ordeals on the same days namely, the 
 Civil Law trial on the [30th June 1791], and the Scots 
 Law trial on the [6th July 1792]. On the [llth July 
 1792], we both assumed the gown with all its duties and 
 honours. 
 
 My progress in life during* these two or three years 
 had been gradually enlarging my acquaintance, and facil 
 itating my entrance into good company. My father and 
 mother, already advanced in life, saw little society at 
 home, excepting that of near relations, or upon particular 
 
86 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 occasions, so that I was left to form connexions in a 
 great measure for myself. It is not difficult for a youth 
 with a real desire to please and be pleased, to make his 
 way into good society in Edinburgh or indeed any 
 where ; and my family connexions, if they did not 
 greatly further, had nothing to embarrass my progress. 
 I was a gentleman, and so welcome any where, if so be 
 I could behave myself, as Tony Lumpkin says, " in a 
 concatenation accordingly." 
 
PEDIGREE. 87 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 illustrations of the Autobiographical Fragment Edinburgh 
 Sandy-Knowe Bath Prestonpans. 
 
 1771-1778. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT opens his brief account of his 
 ancestry with a playful allusion to a trait of national 
 character, which has, time out of mind, furnished merri 
 ment to the neighbours of the Scotch ; but the zeal of 
 pedigree was deeply rooted in himself, and he would 
 have been the last to treat it with serious disparagement. 
 It has often been exhibited under circumstances suffi 
 ciently grotesque ; but it has lent strength to many a 
 good impulse, sustained hope and self-respect under 
 many a difficulty and distress, armed heart and nerve 
 to many a bold and resolute struggle for independence ; 
 and prompted also many a generous act of assistance, 
 which under its influence alone could have been accepted 
 without any feeling of degradation. 
 
 He speaks modestly of his own descent ; for, while 
 none of his predecessors had ever sunk below the situa 
 tion and character of a gentleman, he had but to go three 
 or four generations back, and thence, as far as they could 
 be followed, either on the paternal or maternal side, they 
 were to be found moving in the highest ranks of our 
 baronage. When he fitted up, in his later years, the beau- 
 
88 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tifu.1 hall of Abbotsford, he was careful to have the armo 
 rial bearings of his forefathers blazoned in due order on 
 the compartments of its roof; and there are few in Scot 
 land, under the titled nobility, who could trace their blood 
 to so many stocks of historical distinction. 
 
 In the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Notes 
 to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the reader will find 
 sundry notices of the " Bauld Rutherfords that were sae 
 stout," and the Swintons of Swinton in Berwickshire, the 
 two nearest houses on the maternal side. An illustrious 
 old warrior of the latter family, Sir John Swinton, ex 
 tolled by Froissart, is the hero of the dramatic sketch, 
 Halidon Hill ; and it is not to be omitted, that through 
 the Swintons Sir Walter Scott could trace himself to 
 William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, the poet and dram 
 atist.* His respect for the worthy barons of Newmains 
 and Dryburgh, of whom, in right of his father s mother 
 he was the representative, and in whose venerable sepul 
 chre his remains now rest, was testified by his " Memo 
 rials of the Haliburtons," a small volume printed (fo> 
 private circulation only) in the year 1820. His OWD 
 male ancestors of the family of Harden, whose lineage 
 is traced by Douglas in his Baronage of Scotland back 
 
 * On Sir Walter s copy of " Recreations with the Muses, by Wil 
 liam Earl of Stirling, 1637," there is the following MS. note: " Sir 
 William Alexander, sixth Baron of Menstrie, and first Earl of Stirling, 
 the friend of Drummond of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, died in 
 1640. His eldest son, William Viscount Canada, died before his father 
 leaving one son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Doug 
 las, eldest daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Margaret, 
 the second of these daughters, married Sir Robert Sinclair of Longfor- 
 macus in the Merse, to whom she bore two daughters, Anne and Jean, 
 Jean Sinclair, the younger daughter, married Sir John Swinton of 
 Swinton; and Jean Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmothei 
 of the proprietor of this volume." 
 
PEDIGREE. SATCHELLS. 89 
 
 to the middle of the fourteenth century, when they 
 branched off from the great blood of Buccleuch, have 
 been so largely celebrated in his various writings, that I 
 might perhaps content myself with a general reference 
 to those pages, their only imperishable monument. The 
 antique splendour of the ducal house itself has been dig 
 nified to all Europe by the pen of its remote descendant ; 
 but it may be doubted whether his genius could have 
 been adequately developed, had he not attracted, at an 
 early and critical period, the kindly recognition and sup 
 port of the Buccleuchs. 
 
 The race had been celebrated, however, long before 
 his day, by a minstrel of its own ; nor did he conceal his 
 belief that he owed much to the influence exerted over 
 his juvenile mind by the rude but enthusiastic clan- 
 poetry of old Satchells, who describes himself on his title- 
 page as 
 
 " Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler, 
 And one that can write nane, 
 But just the Letters of his Name." 
 
 His "True History of several honourable Families of 
 the Right Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of 
 Roxburgh and Selkirk, and others adjacent, gathered out 
 of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and Traditions of our 
 Fathers," includes, among other things, a string of com 
 plimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of Rae- 
 burn ; and the copy which had belonged to that gentleman 
 was in all likelihood about the first book of verses that 
 fell into the poet s hand.* How continually its wild and 
 
 * His family well remember the delight which he expressed on re 
 ceiving, in 1818, a copy of this first edition, a small dark quarto of 1688, 
 from his friend Constable. He was breakfasting when the present was 
 delivered, and said, " This is indeed the resurrection of an old ally 
 
DO LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 uncouth doggrel was on his lips to his latest day, all his 
 familiars can testify ; and the passages which he quoted 
 with the greatest zest were those commemorative of 
 two ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend 
 against physical misfortune similar to his own. The 
 former of these, according to Satchells, was the imme 
 diate founder of the branch originally designed of Sinton, 
 afterwards of Harden : 
 
 " It is four hundred winters past in order 
 Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border; 
 A son he had at that same tide, 
 Which was so lame could neither run nor ride. 
 
 I mind spelling these lines." He read aloud the jingling epistle to his 
 own great-great-grandfather, which, like the rest, concludes with a 
 broad hint, that, as the author had neither lands nor flocks " no es 
 tate left except his designation " the more fortunate kinsman who 
 enjoyed, like Jason of old, a fair share of fleeces, might do worse than 
 bestow on him some of King James s broad pieces. On rising from 
 table, Sir Walter immediately wrote as follows on the blank leaf oppo 
 site to poor Satchell s honest title-page 
 
 " I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier, but a soldier s 
 
 lover, 
 
 In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover, 
 That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million timel 
 
 over; 
 
 And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces 
 As ever were hairs in Jason s and Medea s golden fleeces." 
 
 The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that the copy 
 DOW at Abbotsford was the only one Mr. Constable had ever seen 
 and no wonder, for the author s envoy is in these words: 
 
 " Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly 
 Amongst the nobles and gentility ; 
 Thou rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns, 
 But given to worthy persons of renown. 
 The number s few I ve printed, in regard 
 My charges have been great, and I hope reward ; 
 I caus d not print many above twelve score, 
 And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more." 
 
PEDIGREE. SATCHELLS. 91 
 
 John, this lame son, if my author speaks true, 
 
 He sent him to St. Mungo s in Glasgu, 
 
 Where he remained a scholar s time, 
 
 Then married a wife according to his mind. . . 
 
 And betwixt them twa was procreat 
 
 Headshaw, Askirk, SINTON, and Glack." 
 
 But, if the scholarship of John the Lamiter furnished his 
 descendant with many a mirthful allusion, a far greater 
 favourite was the memory of William the Boltfoot, who 
 Allowed him in the sixth generation. 
 
 " The Laird and Lady of Harden 
 Betwixt them procreat was a son 
 Called William Boltfoot of Harden " 
 
 The emphasis with which this next line was quoted I can 
 never forget 
 
 " He did survive to be A. MAN." 
 
 He was, in fact, one of the "prowest knights" of the 
 whole genealogy a fearless horseman and expert spear 
 man, renowned and dreaded ; and I suppose I have heard 
 Sir Walter repeat a dozen times, as he was dashing into 
 the Tweed or Ettrick, " rolling red from brae to brae," a 
 stanza from what he called an old ballad, though it was 
 most likely one of his own early imitations : 
 
 " To tak the foord he aye was first, 
 
 Unless the English loons were near; 
 Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man, 
 Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear." 
 
 " From childhood s earliest hour," says the poet in one 
 of his last Journals, " I have rebelled against external 
 circumstances." How largely the traditional famousness 
 of the stalwart Boltfoot may have helped to develope this 
 element of his character, I do not pretend to say ; but I 
 cannot avoid regretting that Lord Byron had not dis- 
 
i)2 LIP 3J OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 covered such another " Deformed Transformed among 
 his own chivalrous progenitors. 
 
 So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he 
 used to make an autumnal excursion, with whatever 
 friend happened to be his guest at the time, to the tower 
 of Harden, the incunabula of his race. A more pictu 
 resque scene for the fastness of a lineage of Border 
 marauders could not be conceived ; and so much did he 
 delight in it, remote and inaccessible as its situation is, 
 that, in the earlier part of his life, he had nearly availed 
 himself of his kinsman s permission to fit up the dilapi 
 dated peel for his summer residence. Harden (the ravine 
 of hares) is a deep, dark, and narrow glen, along which a 
 little mountain brook flows to join the river Borthwick, 
 itself a tributary of the Teviot. The castle is perched on 
 the brink of the precipitous bank, and from the ruinous 
 windows you look down into the crows nests on the sum 
 mits of the old mouldering elms, that have their roots on 
 the margin of the stream far below : 
 
 f< Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand, 
 Rolls her red tide to Teviot s western strand, 
 Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn, 
 Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn, 
 Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale, 
 And clouds of ravens o er the turrets sail. 
 A hardy race who never shrunk from war, 
 The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar, 
 Here fixed his mountain home ; a wide domain, 
 And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain ; 
 But what the niggard ground of wealth denied, 
 From fields more bless d his fearless arm supplied." * 
 
 * Leyden, the author of these beautiful lines, has borrowed, as tho 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel did also, from one of Satchells primitive 
 couplets 
 
 " If heather-tops had been corn of the best, 
 Then Buccleugh mill had gotten a noble grist." 
 
PEDIGREE. HARDEN. 93 
 
 It was to this wild retreat that the Harden of the Lay 
 f the Last Minstrel, the Auld Wat of a hundred Border 
 ditties, brought home, in 1567, his beautiful bride, Mary 
 Scott, " the Flower of Yarrow," whose grace and gentle 
 ness have lived in song along with the stern virtues of 
 her lord. She is said to have chiefly owed her celebrity 
 to the gratitude of an English captive, a beautiful child, 
 whom she rescued from the tender mercies of Wat s 
 moss-troopers, on their return from a foray into Cumber 
 land. The youth grew up under her protection, and is 
 believed to have been the composer both of the words 
 and the music of many of the best old songs of the 
 Border. As Leyden says, 
 
 " His are the strains whose wandering echoes thrill 
 The shepherd lingering on the twilight hill, 
 When evening brings the merry folding hours, 
 And sun-eyed daisies close their winking flowers. 
 He lived o er Yarrow s Flower to shed the tear, 
 To strew the holly leaves o er Harden s bier; 
 But none was found above the minstrel s tomb, 
 Emblem of peace, to bid the daisy bloom. 
 He, nameless as the race from which he sprung, 
 Saved other names, and left his own unsung." 
 
 We are told, that when the last bullock which Auld 
 Wat had provided from the English pastures was con- 
 flumed, the Flower of Yarrow placed on her table a dish 
 containing a pair of clean spurs ; a hint to the company 
 that they must bestir themselves for their next dinner. 
 Sir Walter adds, in a note to the Minstrelsy, " Upon one 
 occasion when the village herd was driving out the cattle 
 to pasture, the old laird heard him call loudly to drive 
 out Harden s cow. Harden s cow! echoed the affronted 
 shief ; 4 is it come to that pass ? By my faith they shall 
 soon say Harden s kye (cows.) Accordingly, he sounded 
 
94 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 his bugle, set out with his followers, and next day re 
 turned with a bow of kye, and a bassen d (brindled) bull. 
 On his return with this gallant prey, he passed a very 
 large haystack. It occurred to the provident laird that 
 this would be extremely convenient to fodder his new 
 stock of cattle ; but as no means of transporting it were 
 obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apos 
 trophe, now become proverbial By my saul, had ye 
 but four feet, ye should not stand Ian ff there. In short, 
 as Froissart says of a similar class of feudal robbers, 
 nothing came amiss to them that was not too heavy or 
 too hot." 
 
 Another striking chapter in the genealogical history 
 belongs to the marriage of Auld Wat s son and heir, 
 afterwards Sir William Scott of Harden, distinguished by 
 the early favour of James VI., and severely fined for his 
 loyalty under the usurpation of Cromwell. The period 
 of this gentleman s youth was a very wild one in that 
 district. The Border clans still made war on each other 
 occasionally, much in the fashion of their forefathers ; 
 and the young and handsome heir of Harden, engaging 
 in a foray upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of Eli- 
 bank, treasurer-depute of Scotland, was overpowered by 
 that baron s retainers, and carried in shackles to his 
 castle, now a heap of ruins, on the banks of the Tweed. 
 Elibank s " doomtree " extended its broad arms close to 
 the gates of his fortress, and the indignant laird was on 
 the point of desiring his prisoner to say a last prayer 
 when his more considerate dame interposed milder coun 
 sels, suggesting that the culprit was born to a good estate, 
 and that they had three unmarried daughters. Young 
 Harden, not, it is said, without hesitation, agreed to save 
 his life by taking the plainest of the three off their hands 
 
PEDIGREE. 95 
 
 and the contract of marriage, executed instantly on the 
 parchment of a drum, is still in the charter-chest of his 
 noble representative. 
 
 Walter Scott, the third son of this couple, was the 
 first Laird of Raeburn, already alluded to as one of the 
 patrons of Satchells. He married Isabel Macdougal, 
 daughter of Macdougal of Mackerstoun a family of 
 great antiquity and distinction in Roxburghshire, of 
 whose blood, through various alliances, the poet had a 
 large share in his veins. Raeburn, though the son and 
 brother of two steady cavaliers, and married into a family 
 of the same political creed, became a Whig, and at last a 
 Quaker ; and the reader will find, in one of the notes to 
 The Heart of Mid-Lothian, a singular account of the per 
 secution to which this backsliding exposed him at the 
 hands of both his own and his wife s relations. He was 
 incarcerated (A. D. 1665), first at Edinburgh and then at 
 Jedburgh, by order of the Privy Council his children 
 were forcibly taken from him, and a heavy sum was 
 levied on his estate yearly, for the purposes of their edu 
 cation beyond the reach of his perilous influence. " It 
 appears," says Sir Walter, in a MS. memorandum now 
 before me, " that the Laird of Makerstoun, his brother- 
 in-law, joined with Raeburn s own elder brother, Harden, 
 in this singular persecution, as it will now be termed by 
 Christians of all persuasions. It was observed by the 
 people that the male line of the second Sir William of 
 Harden became extinct in 1710, and that the representa 
 tion of Makerstoun soon passed into the female line. 
 They assigned as a cause, that when the wife of Raeburn 
 found herself deprived of her husband, and refused per 
 mission even to see her children, she pronounced a male- 
 iiction on her husband s brother as well as on her own, 
 
06 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and prayed that a male of their body might not inherit 
 their property." 
 
 The MS. adds, " of the first Raeburn s two sons k may 
 be observed, that, thanks to the discipline of the Privy 
 Council, they were both good scholars." Of these sons, 
 Walter, the second, was the poet s great-grandfather, the 
 enthusiastic Jacobite of the autobiographical fragment, 
 who is introduced, 
 
 " With amber beard and flaxen hair, 
 And reverend apostolic air," 
 
 in the epistle prefixed to the sixth canto of Marmion. 
 A good portrait of Bearded Wat, painted for his friend 
 Pitcairn, was presented by the Doctor s grandson, the 
 Earl of Kellie, to the father of Sir Walter. It is now at 
 Abbotsford ; and shows a considerable resemblance to 
 the poet. Some verses addressed to the original by his 
 kinsman Walter Scott of Harden, are given in one of the 
 Notes to Marmion. The old gentleman himself is said 
 to have written verses occasionally, both English and 
 Latin ; but I never heard more than the burden of a 
 drinking-song 
 
 " Barba crescat, barba crescat, 
 Donee carduus revirescat." * 
 
 * Since this book was first published, I have seen in print " A Poem 
 on the Death of Master Walter Scott, who died at Kelso, November 3 
 1729," written, it is said, by Sir William Scott of Thirlestane, BarU 
 the male ancestor of Lord Napier. It has these lines : 
 " His converse breathed the Christian. On his tongue 
 The praises of religion ever hung ; 
 Whence it appeared he did on solid ground 
 Commend the pleasures which himself had found. . . 
 His venerable mien and goodly air 
 Fix on our hearts impressions strong and fair. 
 Full seventy years had shed their silvery glow 
 Around his locks, and made his beard to grow ; 
 That decent beard, which in becoming grace 
 Did spread a reverend honour on his face," &c. [1888.] 
 
PARENTAGE. 97 
 
 Scantily as the worthy Jacobite seems to have been 
 provided with this world s goods, he married the daughter 
 of a gentleman of good condition, " through whom," says 
 the MS. memorandum already quoted, " his descend 
 ants have inherited a connexion with some honourable 
 branches of the Slioch nan Diarmid, or Clan of Camp 
 bell," To this connexion Sir Walter owed, as we shall 
 see hereafter, many of those early opportunities for 
 studying the manners of the Highlanders, to which the 
 world are indebted for Waverley, Rob Roy, and the 
 Lady of the Lake. 
 
 Robert Scott, the son of Beardie, formed also an hon 
 ourable alliance. His father-in-law, Thomas Halibur- 
 ton,* the last but one of the " good lairds of Newmains," 
 entered his marriage as follows in the domestic record, 
 which Sir Walter s pious respect induced him to have 
 printed nearly a century afterwards : " My second 
 
 * " From the genealogical deduction in the Memorials, it appears 
 that the Haliburtons of Newmains were descended from and repre 
 sented the ancient and once powerful family of Haliburton of Mertoun, 
 which became extinct in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The 
 first of this latter family possessed the lands and barony of Mertoun by 
 a charter granted by Archibald Earl of Douglas and Lord of Galloway 
 (one of those tremendous lords whose coronets counterpoised the 
 Scottish crown) to Henry de Haliburton, whom he designates as his 
 standard-bearer, on account of his service to the earl in England. On 
 this account the Haliburtons of Mertoun and those of Newmains, in 
 addition to the arms borne by the Haliburtons of Dirleton (the ancient 
 chiefs of that once great and powerful, but now almost extinguished 
 lame) viz. or, on a bend azure, three mascles of the first gave the 
 distinctive bearing of a buckle of the second in the sinister canton. 
 These arms still appear on various jld tombs in the abbeys of MeLrose 
 and Dryburgh, as well as on their house at Dryburgh, which was built 
 in 1572." MS. Memorandum, 1820. Sir Walter was served heir to 
 these Haliburtons soon after the date of this Memorandum, and thence 
 forth quartered the arms above described with those of his paternal 
 family. 
 
98 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 daughter Barbara is married to Robert Scott, son to 
 Walter Seott, uncle to Raeburn, upon this sixteen day 
 of July 1728, at my house of Dryburgh, by Mr. James 
 Innes, minister of Mertoun, their mothers being cousings ; 
 may the blessing of the Lord rest upon them, and make 
 them comforts to each other and to all their relations ; " 
 to which the editor of the Memorials adds this note 
 " May God grant that the prayers of the excellent per 
 sons who have passed away, may avail for the benefit of 
 those who succeed them ! Abbotsford, Nov. 1824." 
 
 I need scarcely remind the reader of the exquisite 
 description of the poet s grandfather, in the Introduction 
 to the third canto of Marmion 
 
 " the thatched mansion s grey-hair d sire, 
 
 Wise without learning, plain and good, 
 And sprung of Scotland s gentler blood; 
 Whose eye, in age quick, clear, and keen, 
 Showed what in youth its glance had been ; 
 Whose doom discording neighbours sought, 
 Content with equity unbought." 
 
 In the Preface to Guy Mannering, we have an anecdote 
 of Robert Scott in his earlier days : " My grandfather, 
 while riding over Charterhouse Moor, then a very ex 
 tensive common, fell suddenly among a large band of 
 gipsies, who were carousing in a hollow surrounded by 
 bushes. They instantly seized on his bridle with shouts 
 of welcome, exclaiming that they had often dined at his 
 expense, and he must now stay and share their cheer 
 My ancestor was a little alarmed, for he had more money 
 about his person than he cared to risk in such society. 
 However, being naturally a bold lively-spirited man, he 
 entered into the humour of the thing, and sat down to the 
 feast, which consisted of all the varieties of game, poultry 
 
PARENTAGE. 99 
 
 pigs, and so forth, that could be collected by a wide and 
 indiscriminate system of plunder. The dinner was a 
 very merry one, but my relative got a hint from some of 
 the older gipsies, just when the mirth and fun grew fast 
 and furious, and mounting his horse accordingly, he took 
 a French leave of his entertainers." His grandson might 
 have reported more than one scene of the like sort in 
 which he was himself engaged, while hunting the same 
 district, not in quest of foxes or of cattle sales, like the 
 goodman of Sandy- Knowe, but of ballads for the Min 
 strelsy. Gipsy stories, as we are told in the same Pref 
 ace, were frequently in the mouth of the old man when 
 his face " brightened at the evening fire," in the days of 
 the poet s childhood. And he adds, that " as Dr. John 
 son had a shadowy recollection of Queen Anne as a 
 stately lady in black, adorned with diamonds," so his own 
 memory was haunted with " a solemn remembrance of 
 a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long 
 red cloak, who once made her appearance beneath the 
 thatched roof of Sandy-Knowe, commenced acquaintance 
 by giving him an apple, and whom he looked on, never 
 theless, with as much awe as the future doctor, High 
 Church and Tory as he was doomed to be, could look 
 upon the Queen." This was Madge Gordon, grand 
 daughter of Jean Gordon, the prototype of Meg Mer- 
 rilees. 
 
 Of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, also, there is a very tol 
 erable portrait at Abbotsford, and the likeness of the poet 
 to his grandfather must have forcibly struck every one 
 who has seen it. Indeed, but for its wanting some inches 
 in elevation of forehead (a considerable want, it must 
 be allowed) the picture might be mistaken for one of 
 Sir Walter Scott. The keen shrewd expression of the 
 
100 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 eye, and the remarkable length and compression of the 
 upper lip, bring him exactly before me as he appeared 
 when entering with all the zeal of a professional agricul 
 turist into the merits of a pit of marie discovered at 
 Abbotsford. Had the old man been represented with 
 his cap on his head, the resemblance to one particular 
 phasis of the most changeful of countenances would have 
 been perfect. 
 
 Robert Scott had a numerous progeny, and Sir Walter 
 has intimated his intention of recording several of them 
 u with a sincere tribute of gratitude " in the contemplated 
 prosecution of his autobiography. Two of the younger 
 sons were bred to the naval service of the East India 
 Company ; one of whom died early and unmarried ; the 
 other was the excellent Captain Robert Scott, of whose 
 kindness to his nephew some particulars are given in 
 the Ashestiel Fragment, and more will occur hereafter. 
 Another son, Thomas, followed the profession of his 
 father with ability, and retired in old age upon a hand 
 some independence, acquired by his industrious exertions. 
 He was twice married, first to his near relation, a 
 daughter of Raeburn ; and secondly to Miss Rutherford 
 of Know-South, the estate of which respectable family 
 is now possessed by his son Charles Scott, an amiable 
 and high-spirited gentleman, who was always a -pecial 
 favourite with his eminent kinsman. The death of 
 Thomas Scott is thus recorded in one of the MS. notes 
 on his nephew s own copy of the Haliburton Memorials 
 " The said Thomas Scott died at Monklaw, near Jed- 
 burgh, at two of the clock, 27th January 1823, in the 
 90th year of his life, and fully possessed of all his facul 
 ties. He read till nearly the year before his death ; and 
 being a great musician on the Scotch pipes, had, when 
 
PARENTAGE. 101 
 
 on his deathbed, a favourite tune played over to him bj 
 his son James, that he might be sure he left him in full 
 possession of it. After hearing it, he hummed it over 
 himself, and corrected it in several of the notes. The 
 air was that called Sour Plums in Galashiels. When 
 barks and other tonics were given him during his last 
 illness, he privately spat them into his handkerchief, say 
 ing, as he had lived all his life without taking doctor s 
 drugs, he wished to die without doing so." 
 
 I visited this old man, two years before his death, in 
 company with Sir Walter, and thought him about the 
 most venerable figure I had ever set my eyes on tall 
 and erect, with long flowing tresses of the most silvery- 
 whiteness, and stockings rolled up over his knees, after 
 the fashion of three generations back. He sat reading 
 his Bible without spectacles, and did not, for a moment, 
 perceive that any one had entered his room, but on recog 
 nizing his nephew he rose, with cordial alacrity, kissing 
 him on both cheeks, and exclaiming, " God bless thee, 
 Walter, my man ! thou hast risen to be great, but thou 
 wast always good." His remarks were lively and saga 
 cious, and delivered with a touch of that humour which 
 seems to have been shared by most of the family. He 
 had the air and manner of an ancient gentleman, and 
 must in his day have been eminently handsome. I saw 
 more than once, about the same period, this respectable 
 man s sister, who had married her cousin Walter, Laird 
 of Raeburn thus adding a new link to the closeness of 
 the family connexion. She also must have been, in her 
 youth, remarkable for personal attractions ; as it was, she 
 dwells on my memory as the perfect picture of an old 
 Scotch lady, with a great deal of simple dignity in her 
 bearing, but with the softest eye, and the sweetest voice, 
 
102 LIF^ OF SIP, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and a charm of meekness and gentleness about every 
 look and expression ; all which contrasted strikingly 
 enough with the stern dry aspect and manners of her 
 husband, a right descendant of the moss-troopers of Har 
 den, who never seemed at his ease but on horseback, and 
 continued to be the boldest fox-hunter of the district, 
 even to the verge of eighty. The poet s aunt spoke her 
 native language pure and undiluted, but without the 
 slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems al 
 most unavoidable in the oral use of a dialect so long ban 
 ished from courts, and which has not been avoided by 
 any modern writer who has ventured to introduce it, with 
 the exception of Scott, and I may add, speaking gener 
 ally, of Burns. Lady Raeburri, as she was universally 
 styled, may be numbered with those friends of early 
 days whom her nephew has alluded to in one of his pref 
 aces, as preserving what we may fancy to have been the 
 old Scotch of Holyrood. 
 
 The particulars which I have been setting down may 
 help English readers to form some notion of the struct 
 ure of society in those southern districts of Scotland. 
 When Satchells wrote, he boasted that Buccleuch could 
 summon to his banner one hundred lairds, all of his own 
 name, with ten thousand more landless men, but stil] 
 of the same blood. The younger sons of these various 
 lairds were, through many successive generations, por 
 tioned off with fragments of the inheritance, until such 
 subdivision could be carried no farther, and then the 
 cadet, of necessity, either adopted the profession of arms, 
 in some foreign service very frequently, or became a 
 cultivator on the estate of his own elder brother, of the 
 chieftain of his branch, or of the great chief and patri 
 archal protector of the whole clan. Until the commerce 
 
PARENTAGE. 103 
 
 of England, and above all, the military and civil services 
 of the English colonies, were thrown open to the enter 
 prise of the Scotch, this system of things continued en 
 tire. It still remained in force to a considerable extent 
 at the time when the Goodman of Sandy-Knowe was 
 establishing his children in the world and I am happy 
 to say, that it is far from being abolished even at the 
 present day. It was a system which bound together the 
 various classes of the rural population in bonds of mu 
 tual love and confidence : the original community of lin 
 eage was equally remembered on all sides ; the landlord 
 could count for more than his rent on the tenant, who 
 regarded him rather as a father or an elder brother, than 
 as one who owed his superiority to mere wealth ; and the 
 farmer who, on fit occasions, partook on equal terms of 
 the chase and the hospitality of his landlord, went back 
 with content and satisfaction to the daily labours of a 
 vocation which he found no one disposed to consider as 
 derogating from his gentle blood. Such delusions, if de 
 lusions they were, held the natural arrogance of riches in 
 check, taught the poor man to believe that in virtuous 
 poverty he had nothing to blush for, and spread over the 
 whole being of the community the gracious spirit of a 
 primitive humanity. 
 
 Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy- 
 Knowe, appears to have been the first of the family 
 that ever adopted a town life, or any thing claiming to be 
 classed among the learned professions. His branch of 
 the law, however, could not in those days be advanta 
 geously prosecuted without extensive connexions in the 
 Country ; his own were too respectable not to be of much 
 service to him in his calling, and they were cultivated 
 accordingly. His professional visits to Roxburghshire 
 
104 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and Ettrick Forest were, in his vigorous life, very fre 
 quent ; and though he was never supposed to have any 
 tincture either of romance or poetry in his composition, 
 he retained to the last a warm affection for his native dis 
 trict, with a certain reluctant flavour of the old feelings 
 and prejudices of the Borderer. I have little to add to 
 Sir Walter s short and respectful notice of his father, 
 except that I have heard it confirmed by the testimony 
 of many less partial observers. According to every ac 
 count, he was a most just, honourable, conscientious man ; 
 only too high of spirit for some parts of his business. 
 " He passed from the cradle to the grave," says a sur 
 viving relation, " without making an enemy or losing a 
 friend. He was a most affectionate parent, and if he 
 discouraged, rather than otherwise, his son s early devo 
 tion to the pursuits which led him to the height of liter 
 ary eminence, it was only because he did not understand 
 what such things meant, and considered it his duty to 
 keep his young man to that path in which good sense 
 and industry might, humanly speaking, be thought sure 
 of success." 
 
 Sir Walter s mother was short of stature, and by no 
 means comely, at least after the days of her early youth. 
 She had received, as became the daughter of an emi 
 nently learned physician, the best sort of education then 
 bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland. The poet, 
 speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the 
 school at which his mother was reared, to the ingenious 
 local antiquary, Mr. Robert Chambers, said that "she 
 must have been possessed of uncommon talents for edu 
 cation, as all her young ladies were, in after life, fond 
 f reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well ac 
 quainted with history and the belles lettres, without neg 
 
PARENTAGE. 105 
 
 lecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt 
 book ; and perfectly well-bred in society." Mr. Cham 
 bers adds, " Sir W. further communicated that his 
 mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair s pupils, were 
 sent afterwards to be finished off by the Honourable 
 Mrs. OgiLvie, a lady who trained her young friends to 
 a style of manners which would now be consideied in 
 tolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early training 
 upon the mind of Mrs. Scott, that even when she ap 
 proached her eightieth year, she took as much care to 
 avoid touching her chair with her back, as if she had 
 still been under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie." * The 
 physiognomy of the poet bore, if their portraits may be 
 trusted, no resemblance to either of his parents.f 
 
 Mr. Scott was nearly thirty years of age when he 
 married, and six children, born to him between 1759 and 
 1766, all perished in infancy.! A suspicion that the 
 close situation of the College Wynd had been unfavour- 
 
 * See Chambers s Traditions of Edinburgh, vol. ii. pp. 127-131. 
 The functions here ascribed to Mrs. Ogilvie may appear to modern 
 readers little consistent with her rank. Such things, however, were 
 not uncommon in those days in poor old Scotland. Ladies with whom 
 I have conversed in my youth well remembered an Honourable, Mrs. 
 Maitland who practised the obstetric art in the Cowgate. 
 
 f Portraits pf Mr. and Mrs. Scott are engraved for subsequent vol 
 umes of this work. 
 
 J In Sir Walter Scott s desk, after his death, there was fcrrd a little 
 packet containing six locks of hair, with this inscription in the hand 
 writing of his mother : 
 
 " 1. Anne Scott, born March 10, 1759. 
 
 2. Robert Scott, born August 22, 1760. 
 
 3. John Scott, born November 28, 1761. 
 
 4. Robert Scott, born June 7, 1763. 
 
 5. Jean Scott, born March 27, 1765. 
 
 6. Walter Scott, born August 30, 1766- 
 
 A.11 these are dead, and none of my present family was born till somft 
 time afterwards." 
 
106 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 able to the health of his family, was the motive that in 
 duced him to remove to the house which he ever after 
 wards occupied in George s Square. This removal took 
 place shortly after the poet s birth ; and the children born 
 subsequently were in general healthy. Of a family of 
 twelve, of whom six lived to maturity, not one now sur 
 vives ; nor have any of them left descendants, except 
 Sir Walter himself, and his next and dearest brother 
 Thomas Scott. 
 
 He says that his consciousness of existence dated from 
 Sandy-Knowe ; and how deep and indelible was the im 
 pression which its romantic localities had left on his imag 
 ination, I need not remind the readers of Marmion and 
 the Eve of St. John. On the summit of the Crags which 
 overhang the farm-house stands the ruined tower of 
 Smailholme, the scene of that fine ballad ; and the view 
 from thence takes in a wide expanse of the district in 
 which, as has been truly said, every field has its battle, 
 and every rivulet its song : 
 
 " The lady looked in mournful mood, 
 
 Looked over hill and vale, 
 O er Mertoun s wood, and Tweed s fair flood, 
 And all down Teviotdale." 
 
 Mertoun, the principal seat of the Harden family, with 
 its noble groves ; nearly in front of it, across the Tweed, 
 Lessudden, the comparatively small but still venerable 
 and stately abode of the Lairds of Raeburn ; and the 
 hoary Abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with yew-trees as 
 ancient as itself, seem to lie almost below the feet of the 
 spectator. Opposite him rise the purple peaks of Eildon, 
 ihe traditional scene of Thomas the Rymer s interview 
 with the Queen of Faerie ; behind are the blasted peel 
 vhich the seer of Erceldoun himself inhabited, < the 
 
SANDY-KNOWE. 107 
 
 Broom of the Cowdenknowes/ the pastoral valley of the 
 Leader, and the bleak wilderness of Lammermoor. To 
 the eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle 
 breaks the horizon, as the eye travels towards the range 
 of the Cheviot. A few miles westward, Melrose, " like 
 some tall rock with lichens grey," appears clasped 
 amidst the windings of the Tweed ; and the distance 
 presents the serrated mountains of the Gala, the Ettrick, 
 and the Yarrow, all famous in song. Such were the 
 objects that had painted the earliest images on the eye 
 of the last and greatest of the Border Minstrels. 
 
 As his memory reached to an earlier period of child 
 hood than that of almost any other person, so assuredly 
 no poet has given to the world a picture of the dawning 
 feelings of life and genius, at once so simple, so beautiful, 
 and so complete, as that of his epistle to William Erskine, 
 the chief literary confidant and counsellor of his prime 
 of manhood. 
 
 " Whether an impulse that has birth, 
 Soon as the infant wakes on earth, 
 One with our feelings and our powers, 
 And rather part of us than ours ; 
 Or whether fitlier terni d the sway 
 Of habit, formed in early day, 
 Howe er derived, its force confest 
 Rules with despotic sway the breast. 
 And drags us on by viewless chain, 
 While taste and reason plead in vain. . . . 
 Thus, while I ape the measure wild 
 Of tales that charm d me yet a child, 
 Rude though they be, still with the chime 
 Return the thoughts of early time, 
 And feelings rous d in life s first day, 
 Glow in the line and prompt the lay. 
 Then rise those crags, that mountain tower 
 Which charm d my fancy s wakening hoar. 
 It was a barren scene and wild 
 
108 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; 
 
 But ever and anon between 
 
 Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; 
 
 And well the lonely infant knew 
 
 Recesses where the wall-flower grew, 
 
 And honey-suckle loved to crawl 
 
 Up the low crag and ruin d wall. 
 
 I deem d such nooks the sweetest shade 
 
 The sun in all its round surveyed ; 
 
 And still I thought that shattered tower 
 
 The mightiest work of human power, 
 
 And marvelled as the aged hind, 
 
 With some strange tale bewitch d my mind, 
 
 Of forayers who, with headlong force, 
 
 Down from that strength had spurr d their hers*. 
 
 Their southern rapine to renew, 
 
 Far in the distant Cheviots blue, 
 
 And home returning, fill d the hall 
 
 With revel, wassel-rout, and brawl. 
 
 Methought that still with trump and clang 
 
 The gateway s broken arches rang; 
 
 Methought grim features, seam d with scare, 
 
 Glared through the windows rusty bars ; 
 
 And ever, by the winter hearth, 
 
 Old tales I heard of wo or mirth, 
 
 Of lovers slights, of ladies charms, 
 
 Of witches spells, of warriors arms 
 
 Of patriot battles won of old 
 
 By Wallace Wight and Bruce the Bold 
 
 Of later fields of feud and fight, 
 
 When, pouring from their Highland height, 
 
 The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, 
 
 Had swept the scarlet ranks away. 
 
 While stretched at length upon the floor, 
 
 Again I fought each combat o er, 
 
 Pebbles and shells, in order laid, 
 
 The mimic ranks of war displayed, 
 
 And ocward still the Scottish Lion bore, 
 
 And still the scattered Southron fled before." 
 
 There are still living in that neighbourhood two old 
 women, who were in the domestic service of Sandy 
 
SANDY-KNOWE. 109 
 
 Knowe, when the lame child was brought thither in the 
 third year of his age. One of them, Tibby Hunter, 
 remembers his coming well ; and that " he was a sweet- 
 tempered bairn, a darling with all about the house." The 
 young ewemilkers delighted, she says, to carry him about 
 on their backs among the crags ; and he was " very gleg 
 (quick) at the uptake, and soon kenned every sheep and 
 lamb by head-mark as well as any of them." His great 
 pleasure, however, was in the society of the " aged hind," 
 recorded in the epistle to Erskine. " Auld Sandy Ormis- 
 toun," called, from the most dignified part of his function, 
 " the Cow-bailie," had the chief superintendence of the 
 flocks that browsed upon " the velvet tufts of loveliest 
 green." If the child saw him in the morning, he could 
 not be satisfied unless the old man would set him astride 
 on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company as 
 he lay watching his charge. 
 
 " Here was poetic impulse given 
 By the green hill and clear blue heaven." 
 
 The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, 
 which signified to the maid-servants in the house below 
 when the little boy wished to be carried home again. He 
 told his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, when spending 
 a summer day in his old age among these well-remem 
 bered crags, that he delighted to roll about on the grass 
 all day long in the midst of the flock, and that " the sort 
 of fellowship he thus formed with the sheep and lambs 
 had impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate feel 
 ing towards them which had lasted throughout life." 
 There is a story of his having been forgotten one day 
 among the knolls when a thunder-storm came on; and 
 his aunt, suddenly recollecting his situation, and running 
 
110 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 out to bring him home, is said to have found him lying 
 on his back, clapping his hands at the lightning, and cVy- 
 ing out, " Bonny ! bonny ! " at every flash. 
 
 I find the following marginal note on his copy of Allan 
 Ramsay s Tea-Table Miscellany (edition 1724) : " This 
 book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out 
 of it I was taught Hardiknute by heart before I could 
 read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever 
 learnt the last I shall ever forget." According to 
 Tibby Hunter, he was not particularly fond of his book, 
 embracing every pretext for joining his friend the Cow- 
 bailie out of doors ; but " Miss Jenny was a grand hand 
 at keeping him to the bit, and by degrees he came to 
 read brawly." * An early acquaintance of a higher class, 
 Mrs. Duncan, the wife of the present excellent minister 
 of Mertoun, informs me, that though she was younger 
 than Sir Walter, she has a dim remembrance of the 
 interior of Sandy-Knowe " Old Mrs. Scott sitting, with 
 her spinning-wheel, at one side of the fire, in a clean 
 clean parlour ; the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his 
 elbow-chair opposite ; and the little boy lying on the 
 carpet, at the old man s feet, listening to the Bible, or 
 whatever good book Miss Jenny was reading to them." 
 
 Robert Scott died before his grandson was four years 
 of age ; and I heard him mention when he was an old 
 man that he distinctly remembered the writing and seal 
 ing of the funeral letters, and all the ceremonial of the 
 melancholy procession as it left Sandy-Knowe. I shall 
 conclude my notices of the residence at Sandy-Knowe 
 
 * This old woman still possesses the banes" (bones) that is to 
 say, the hoards of a Psalm-book, which Master Walter gave her at 
 Sandy-Knowe. " He chose it," she says, " of a very large print, that 
 I might be able to read it when I was very auld forty ybar avM; bu ; 
 the bairns pulled the leaves out langsyne." 
 
BATH. 1 1 
 
 with observing, that in Sir Walter s account of the 
 friendly clergyman who so often sat at his grandfather s 
 fireside, we cannot fail to trace many features of the 
 secluded divine in the novel of Saint Ronan s Well. 
 
 I have nothing to add to what he has told us of that 
 excursion to England which interrupted his residence at 
 Sandy-Knowe for about a twelvemonth, except that I 
 had often been astonished, long before I read his auto 
 biographic fragment, with the minute recollection he 
 seemed to possess of all the striking features of the city 
 of Bath, which he had never seen again since he quitted 
 it before he was six years of age.* He has himseli 
 alluded, in his- Memoir, to the lively recollection he re 
 tained of his first visit to the theatre, to which his uncle 
 Robert carried him to witness a representation of As Yon 
 Like It. In his Reviewal of the Life of John Kemblr, 
 written in 1826, he has recorded that impression more 
 fully, and in terms so striking, that I must copy them in 
 this place : 
 
 " There are few things which those gifted with any degrcu 
 of imagination recollect with a sense of more anxious anil 
 mysterious delight than the first dramatic representation which 
 they have witnessed. The unusual form of the house, filled 
 with such groups of crowded spectators, themselves forming an 
 extraordinary spectacle to the eye which lias never witnessed 
 it before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, 
 whose dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern 
 the momentary glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of 
 gome sandalled foot, which trips lightly within : Then the 
 light, brilliant as that of day ; then the music, which, in itself 
 a treat sufficient in every other situation, our inexperience 
 takes for the very play we came to witness; then the 
 
 * The Miniature engraved on the title-page of this volume was painted 
 It Bath. 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 rise of the shadowy curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a 
 new land, with woods, and mountains, and lakes, lighted, it 
 seems to us, by another sun, and inhabited by a race of beinga 
 different from ourselves, whose language is poetry, whose 
 dress, demeanour, and sentiments seem something supernat 
 ural, and whose whole actions and discourse are calculated 
 not for the ordinary tone of every-day life, but to excite the 
 stronger and more powerful faculties to melt with sorrow, 
 overpower with terror, astonish with the marvellous, or con 
 vulse with irresistible laughter : all these wonders stamp in 
 delible impressions on the memory. Those mixed feelings, also, 
 which perplex us between a sense that the scene is but a play 
 thing, and an interest which ever and anon surprises us into a 
 transient belief that that which so strongly affects us cannot 
 be fictitious ; those mixed and puzzling feelings, also, are ex 
 citing in the highest degree. Then there are the bursts of 
 applause, like distant thunder, and the permission afforded to 
 clap our little hands, and add our own scream of delight to a 
 sound so commanding. All this, and much, much more, is 
 fresh in our memory, although, when we felt these sensations, 
 we looked on the stage which Garrick had not yet left. It is 
 now a long while since ; yet we have not passed many hours 
 of such unmixed delight, and we still remember the sinking 
 lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain longings which we 
 felt that the music would again sound, the magic curtain once 
 more arise, and the enchanting dream recommence ; and the 
 astonishment with which we looked upon the apathy of the 
 elder part of our company, who, having the means, did not 
 spend every evening in the theatre." * 
 
 Probably it was this performance that first tempted 
 liim to open the page of Shakspeare. Before he re 
 turned to Sandy-Knowe, assuredly, notwithstanding the 
 modest language of his autobiography, the progress which 
 tad been made in his intellectual education was extraor 
 
 * Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xx. 
 
EDINBURGH 1777. 113 
 
 dinaiy; and it is impossible to doubt that his hitherto 
 almost sole tutoress, Miss Jenny Scott, must have been a 
 woman of tastes and acquirements very far above what 
 could have been often found among Scotch ladies, of any 
 but the highest class at least, in that day. In the winter 
 of 1777, she and her charge spent some few weeks not 
 happy weeks, the " Memoir " hints them to have been 
 in George s Square, Edinburgh ; and it so happened, that 
 during this little interval, Mr. and Mrs. Scott received in 
 their domestic circle a guest capable of appreciating, and, 
 fortunately for us, of recording in a very striking manner 
 the remarkable development of young Walter s faculties. 
 Mrs. Cockburn, mentioned by him in his Memoir as the 
 authoress of the modern " Flowers of the Forest," born 
 a Rutherford, of Fairnalie, in Selkirkshire, was distantly 
 related to the poet s mother, with whom she had through 
 life been in habits of intimate friendship. This accom 
 plished woman was staying at Ravelstone, in the vicinity 
 of Edinburgh, a seat of the Keiths of Dunnotar, nearly 
 related to Mrs. Scott, and to herself. With some of that 
 family she spent an evening in George s Square. She 
 chanced to be writing next day to Dr. Douglas, the well- 
 known and much respected minister of her native parish, 
 Galashiels ; and her letter, of which the Doctor s son has 
 kindly given me a copy, contains the following pas- 
 
 14 Edinburgh, Saturday night, 15th of the gloomy month when the 
 people of England hang and drown themselves. 
 
 ****"! last night supped in Mr. Walter 
 Scott s. He has the most extraordinary genius of a boy 
 I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when 
 I went in. I made him read on ; it was the description 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
114 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. He 
 lifted his eyes and hands. There s the mast gone/ saya 
 he ; * crash it goes ! they will all perish ! After his 
 agitation, he turns to me. t That is too melancholy, says 
 he ; I had better read you something more amusing. I 
 preferred a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton 
 and other books he was reading, which he gave me 
 wonderfully. One of his observations was, * How itrange 
 it is that Adam, just new come into the world, should 
 know every thing that must be the poet s fancy/ says 
 he. But when he was told he was created perfect by 
 God, he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last 
 night, he told his aunt he liked that lady. < What lady ? 
 says she. * Why, Mrs. Cockburn ; for I think she is a 
 virtuoso like myself. * Dear Walter/ says aunt Jenny, 
 what is a virtuoso ? < Don t ye know ? Why, it s one 
 who wishes and will know every thing. * Now, sir, 
 you will think this a very silly story. Pray, what age 
 do you suppose this boy to be ? Name it now, before I 
 tell you. Why, twelve or fourteen. No such thing ; he 
 is not quite six years old.f He has a lame leg, for which 
 he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the perfect 
 
 * It may amuse my reader to recall, by the side of Scott s early defi 
 nition of "a Virtuoso," the lines in which Akenside has painted that 
 character lines which might have been written for a description of the 
 Author of Waverley : 
 
 " He knew the various modes of ancient times, 
 
 Their arts and fashions of each various guise ; 
 
 Their weddings, funerals, punishments of crimes; 
 
 Their strength, thei? learning eke, and rarities. 
 
 Of old habiliment, each sort and size, 
 
 Male, female, high and low, to him were known ; 
 
 Each gladiator s dress, and stage disguise, 
 
 With learned clerkly phrase he could have shown." 
 
 t He was, in fact, six years and three months old before this letter 
 was written. 
 
RAVELSTONE 1777. 115 
 
 English accent, which he has not lost since he came, and 
 he reads like a Garrick. You will allow this an uncom 
 mon exotic." 
 
 Some particulars in Mrs. Cockburn s account appear 
 considerably at variance with what Sir "Walter has told 
 us respecting his own boyish proficiency especially in 
 the article of pronunciation. On that last head, how 
 ever, Mrs. Cockburn was not, probably, a very accurate 
 judge ; all that can be said is, that if at this early period 
 he had acquired anything which could be justly described 
 as an English accent, he soon lost, and never again re 
 covered, what he had thus gained from his short resi 
 dence at Bath. In after life his pronunciation of words, 
 considered separately, was seldom much different from 
 that of a well-educated Englishman of his time ; but he 
 used many words in a sense which belonged to Scotland, 
 not to England, and the tone and accent remained 
 broadly Scotch, though, unless in the burr, which no 
 doubt smacked of the country bordering on Northumber 
 land, there was no provincial peculiarity about his utter 
 ance. He had strong powers of mimicry could talk 
 with a peasant quite in his own style, and frequently 
 in general society introduced rustic patois, northern, 
 southern, or midland, with great truth and effect ; but 
 these things were inlaid dramatically, or playfully, upon 
 his narrative. His exquisite taste in this matter was no 
 loss remarkable in his conversation than in the prose of 
 his Scotch novels. 
 
 Another lady, nearly connected with the Keiths of 
 Bavelstone, has a lively recollection of young Walter, 
 when paying a visit much about the same period to his 
 kind relation,* the mistress of that picturesque old man- 
 
 * Mrs. Keith of Ravelstone was born a Swinton of Swinton, and 
 sister to Sir Walter s maternal grandmother. 
 
116 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Bion, which furnished him in after days with many of the 
 features of his Tully-Veolan, and whose venerable gar 
 dens, with their massive hedges of yew ard holly, he 
 always considered as the ideal of the art. The lady, 
 whose letter I have now before me, says she distinctly 
 remembers the sickly boy sitting at the gate of the house 
 with his attendant, when a poor mendicant approached, 
 old and woe-begone, to claim the charity which none 
 asked for in vain at Ravelstone. When the man was 
 retiring, the servant remarked to Walter that he ought 
 to be thankful to Providence for having placed him 
 above the want and misery he had been contemplating. 
 The child looked up with a half wistful, half incredulous 
 expression, and said, " Homer was a beggar ! " " How 
 do you know that ? " said the other. " Why, don t you 
 remember," answered the little Virtuoso, " that 
 
 Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread? " 
 
 The lady smiled at the "Roman cities," but already 
 
 " Each blank in faithless memory void 
 The poet s glowing thought supplied." 
 
 It was in this same year, 1777, that he spent some 
 time at Prestonpans ; made his first acquaintance with 
 George Constable, the original of his Monkbarns ; ex 
 plored the field where Colonel Gardiner received his 
 death-wound, under the learned guidance of Dalgetty ; 
 and marked the spot " where the grass grew long and 
 green, distinguishing it from the rest of the field,"* 
 above the grave of poor Balmawhapple. 
 
 His uncle Thomas, whom I have described as I saw 
 him in extreme old age at Monklaw, had the manage* 
 
 * Waverley, vol. ii. 
 
SANDY-KNOWE 1777. 117 
 
 toent of the farm affairs at Sandy-Knowe, when Walter 
 returned thither from Prestonpans ; he was a kindhearted 
 man, and very fond of the child. Appearing on his re 
 turn somewhat strengthened, his uncle promoted him 
 from the Cow-bailie s shoulder to a dwarf of the Shet 
 land race, not so large as many a Newfoundland dog. 
 This creature walked freely into the house, and was 
 regularly fed from the boy s hand. He soon learned to 
 sit her well, and often alarmed aunt Jenny, by cantering 
 over the rough places about the tower. In the evening 
 of his life, when he had a grandchild afflicted with an 
 infirmity akin to his own, he provided him with a little 
 mare of the same breed, and gave her the name of 
 Marion, in memory of this early favourite. 
 
118 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Illustrations of the Autobiography continued High School of 
 Edinburgh Residence at Kelso. 
 
 1778-1783. 
 
 THE report of Walter s progress in horsemanship 
 probably reminded his father that it was time he should 
 be learning other things beyond the department either 
 of aunt Jenny or uncle Thomas, and after a few months 
 he was recalled to Edinburgh. But extraordinary as 
 was the progress he had by this time made in that self- 
 education which alone is of primary consequence to 
 spirits of his order, he was found too deficient in lesser 
 matters to be at once entered in the High School. Prob 
 ably his mother dreaded, and deferred as long as she 
 could, the day when he should be exposed to the rude 
 collision of a crowd of boys. At all events he was 
 placed first in a little private school kept by one Leech- 
 man in Bristo-Port ; and then, that experiment not an 
 swering expectation, under the domestic tutorage of Mr. 
 James French, afterwards minister of East Kilbride in 
 Lanarkshire. This respectable man considered him fit 
 to join Luke Eraser s class in October 1778. 
 
 His own account of his progress at this excellent 
 eeminary is, on the whole, very similar to what I have 
 received from some of his surviving school-fellows. Hi 
 
EDINBURGH. HIGH SCHOOL. 119 
 
 quick apprehension and powerful memory enabled him, 
 at little cost of labour, to perform the usual routine of 
 tasks, in such a manner as to keep him generally " in a 
 decent place " (so he once expressed it to Mr. Skene) 
 " about the middle of the class ; with which," he contin 
 ued, " I was the better contented, that it chanced to be 
 near the fire." * Mr. Fraser was, I believe, more zeal 
 ous in enforcing attention to the technicalities of gram 
 mar, than to excite curiosity about historical facts, or 
 imagination to strain after the flights of a poet. There 
 is no evidence that Scott, though he speaks of him as his 
 "kind master," in remembrance probably of sympathy 
 for his physical infirmities, ever attracted his special no 
 tice with reference to scholarship ; but Adam, the Rector, 
 into whose class he passed in October 1782, was, as his 
 situation demanded, a teacher of a more liberal caste ; 
 and though never, even under his guidance, did Walter 
 fix and concentrate his ambition so as to maintain an 
 eminent place, still the vivacity of his talents was ob 
 served, and the readiness of his memory in particular 
 was so often displayed, that (as Mr. Irving, his chosen 
 friend of that day, informs me) the Doctor " would con 
 stantly refer to him for dates, the particulars of battles, 
 and other remarkable events alluded to in Horace, or 
 whatever author the boys were reading, and used to call 
 Him the historian of the class." No one who has read, as 
 few have not, Dr. Adam s interesting work on Roman 
 Antiquities, will doubt the author s capacity for stimulat 
 ing such a mind as young Scott s. 
 
 * According to Mr. Irvmg s recollections, Scott s place, after the 
 first winter, was usually between the 7th and the 15th from the top of 
 the class. He adds, "Dr. James Buchan was always the dux; David 
 Douglas (Lord Reston) second; and the present Lord Melville third 
 
120 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 He speaks of himself as occasionally "glancing like 
 a meteor from the bottom to the top of the form." His 
 school-fellow, Mr. Claud Russell, remembers that he once 
 made a great leap in consequence of the stupidity of 
 some laggard on what is called the dulfs (dolt s) bench, 
 who being asked, on boggling at cum, " what part of 
 speech is with ? " answered, " a substantive." The Rec 
 tor, after a moment s pause, thought it worth while to ask 
 his dux " Is with ever a substantive ? " but all were 
 silent until the query reached Scott, then near the bot 
 tom of the class, who instantly responded by quoting a 
 verse of the book of Judges : " And Samson said unto 
 Delilah, If they bind me with seven green withs that 
 were never dried, then shall I be weak, and as another 
 man." * Another upward movement, accomplished in a 
 less laudable manner, but still one strikingly illustrative 
 of his ingenious resources, I am enabled to preserve 
 through the kindness of a brother poet, and esteemed 
 friend, to whom Sir Walter himself communicated it in 
 the melancholy twilight of his bright day. 
 
 Mr. Rogers says " Sitting one day alone with him 
 in your house, in the Regent s Park (it was the day 
 but one before he left it to embark at Portsmouth for 
 Malta) I led him, among other things, to tell me once 
 again a story of himself, which he had formerly told me, 
 and which I had often wished to recover. When I re 
 turned home, I wrote it down, as nearly as I could, in 
 his own words ; and here they are. The subject is an 
 achievement worthy of Ulysses himself, and such as 
 many of his school-fellows could, no doubt, have related 
 of him ; but I fear I have done it no justice, though the 
 Btory is so very characteristic that it should not be lost. 
 * Chap. xvi. verse 7. 
 
EDINBURGH. HIGH SCHOOL. 121 
 
 The inimitable manner in which he told it the glance 
 of the eye, the turn of the head, and the light that played 
 over his faded features, as, one by one, the circumstances 
 came back to him, accompanied by a thousand boyish 
 feelings, that had slept perhaps for years there is no 
 language, not even his own, could convey to you; but 
 you can supply them. Would that others could do so, 
 who had not the good fortune to know him ! The mem 
 orandum (Friday, October 21, 1831) is as follows: 
 
 " There was a boy in my class at school, who stood 
 always at the top,* nor could I with all my efforts sup 
 plant him. Day came after day, and still he kept his 
 place, do what I would ; till at length I observed that, 
 when a question was asked him, he always fumbled with 
 his fingers at a particular button in the lower part of his 
 waistcoat. To remove it, therefore, became expedient in 
 my eyes ; and in an evil moment it was removed with a 
 knife. Great was my anxiety to know the success of 
 my measure ; and it succeeded too well. When the boy 
 was again questioned, his fingers sought again for the 
 button, but it was not to be found. In his distress he 
 looked down for it ; it was to be seen no more then to be 
 felt. He stood confounded, and I took possession of his 
 place ; nor did he ever recover it, or ever, I believe, sus 
 pect who was the author of his wrong. Often in after 
 life has the sight of him smote me as I passed by him ; 
 and often have I resolved to make him some reparation ; 
 but it ended in good resolutions. Though I never re 
 newed my acquaintance with him, I often saw him, for 
 
 * Mr, Irving inclines to think that this incident must have occurred 
 during Scott s attendance on Luke Eraser, not after he went to Dr. 
 A.dam ; and he also suspects that the boy referred to sat at the top, not 
 tf the dass, but of Scott s own bench or division of the class. 
 
122 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 he filled some inferior office in one of the courts of law 
 at Edinburgh. Poor fellow ! I believe he is dead ; he 
 took early to drinking." 
 
 The autobiography tells us that his translations in 
 verse from Horace and Virgil were often approved by 
 Dr. Adam. One of these little pieces, written in a weak 
 boyish scrawl, within pencilled marks still visible, had 
 been carefully preserved by his mother; it was found 
 folded up in a cover inscribed by the old lady " My 
 Walter s fast lines, 1782." 
 
 " In awful ruins JEtna thunders nigh, 
 And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky 
 Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire, 
 From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire ; 
 At other times huge balls of fire are toss d, 
 That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost: 
 Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn, 
 Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne 
 With loud explosions to the starry skies, 
 The stones made liquid as the huge mass flies, 
 Then back again with greater weight recoils, 
 While JStna thundering from the bottom boils." 
 
 I gather from Mr. Irving that these lines were consid 
 ered as the second best set of those produced on the 
 occasion Colin Mackenzie of Portmore, through life 
 Scott s dear friend, carrying off the premium. 
 
 In his Introduction to the "Lay," he alludes to an 
 original effusion of these " schoolboy days," prompted 
 by a thunder-storm, which he says " was much approved 
 of, until a malevolent critic sprung up in the shape of an 
 apothecary s blue-buskined wife, who affirmed that my 
 most sweet poetry was copied from an old magazine. I 
 never " (he continues) " forgave the imputation, and even 
 now I acknowledge some resentment against the poo* 
 
EDINBURGH. HIGH SCHOOL. 123 
 
 woman s memory. She indeed accused me unjustly, 
 when she said I had stolen my poem ready made ; but 
 as I had, like most premature poets, copied all the words 
 and ideas of which my verses consisted, she was so far 
 right. I made one or two faint attempts at verse after 
 I had undergone this sort of daw-plucking at the hands 
 of the apothecary s wife, but some friend or other always 
 advised me to put my verses into the fire ; and, like 
 Dorax in the play, I submitted, though with a swelling 
 heart." These lines, and another short piece " On the 
 Setting Sun," were lately found wrapped up in a cover, 
 inscribed by Dr. Adam, "Walter Scott, July 1783," and 
 have been kindly transmitted to me by the gentleman 
 who discovered them. 
 
 "ON A THUNDER-STORM. 
 
 " Loud o er my head though awful thunders roll, 
 And vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole, 
 Yet tis thy voice, my God, that bids them fly, 
 Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky. 
 Then let the good thy mighty name revere, 
 And hardened sinners thy just vengeance fear." 
 
 "ON THE SETTING SUN. 
 
 " Those evening clouds, that setting ray 
 And beauteous tints, serve to display 
 
 Their great Creator s praise; 
 Then let the short-lived thing call d man, 
 Whose life s comprised within a span, 
 To Him his homage raise. 
 
 " We often praise the evening clouds, 
 
 And tints so gay and bold, 
 But seldom think upon our God, 
 
 Who tinged these clouds with gold ! " * 
 
 * I am obliged for these little memorials to the Rev. W. Steven of 
 Rotterdam, author of an interesting book on the history of the branch 
 f the Scotch Church long established in Holland, and still flourishing 
 
124 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 It must, I think, be allowed that these lines, though of 
 the class to which the poet himself modestly ascribes 
 them, and not to be compared with the efforts of Pope, 
 still less of Cowley at the same period, show, neverthe 
 less, praiseworthy dexterity for a boy of twelve. 
 
 The fragment tells us, that on the whole he was " more 
 distinguished in the Yards (as the High School play 
 ground was called), than in the class ; " and this, not less 
 than the intellectual advancement which years before had 
 excited the admiration of Mrs. Cockburn, was the natural 
 result of his lifelong " rebellion against external circum 
 stances." He might now with very slender exertion have 
 been the dux of his form ; but if there was more dif 
 ficulty, there was also more to whet his ambition, in the 
 attempt to overcome the disadvantages of his physical 
 misfortune, and in spite of them assert equality with the 
 best of his compeers on the ground which they considered 
 as the true arena of honour. He told me, in walking 
 through these same yards forty years afterwards, that he 
 had scarcely made his first appearance there, before some 
 dispute arising, his opponent remarked that " there was 
 no use to hargle-bargle with a cripple ; " upon which he 
 replied, that if he might fight mounted, he would try his 
 hand with any one of his inches. " An elder boy," said 
 he, " who had perhaps been chuckling over our friend 
 Roderick Random when his mother supposed him to be 
 in full cry after Pyrrhus or Porus, suggested that the 
 two little tinklers might be lashed front to front upon a 
 deal board and O gran bonta de cavalier antichi 
 
 under the protection of the enlightened government of that country 
 Mr. Steven found them in the course of his recent researches, under 
 taken with a view to some memoirs of the High School of Edinburgh 
 tt which he had received his own early education. 
 
EDINBURGH. HIGH SCHOOL. 125 
 
 the proposal being forthwith agreed to, I received my 
 rirst bloody nose in an attitude which would have entitled 
 hie, in the blessed days of personal cognizances, to assume 
 that of a lioncel seiant gules. My pugilistic trophies 
 here," he continued, " were all the results of such sittings 
 in banco." Considering his utter ignorance of fear, the 
 strength of his chest and upper limbs, and that the scien 
 tific part of pugilism never flourished in Scotland, I 
 daresay these trophies were not few. 
 
 The mettle of the High-School boys, however, was 
 principally displayed elsewhere than in their own yards , 
 and Sir Walter has furnished us with ample indications 
 of the delight with which he found himself at length 
 capable of rivalling others in such achievements as re 
 quired the exertion of active locomotive powers. Speak 
 ing of some scene of his infancy in one of his latest tales, 
 he says " Every step of the way after I have passed 
 through the green already mentioned," (probably the 
 Meadows behind George s Square,) "has for me some 
 thing of an early remembrance. There is the stile at 
 which I can recollect a cross child s-maid upbraiding me 
 with my infirmity as she lifted me coarsely and carelessly 
 over the flinty steps which my brothers traversed with 
 shout and bound. I remember the suppressed bitter 
 ness of the moment, and conscious of my own infirmity, 
 the envy with which I regarded the easy movements 
 and elastic steps of my more happily formed brethren. 
 Alas ! " he adds, " these goodly barks have all perished 
 in life s wide ocean, and only that which seemed, as the 
 naval phrase goes, so little sea-worthy, has reached the 
 port when the tempest is over." How touching to com 
 pare with this passage, that in which he records his pride 
 in being found before he left the High School one of the 
 
126 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 boldest and nimblest climbers of " the kittle nine stanes," 
 a passage of difficulty which might puzzle a chamois- 
 hunter of the Alps, its steps "few and far between," 
 projected high in the air from the precipitous black gran 
 ite of the Castle rock. But climbing and fighting could 
 sometimes be combined, and he has in almost the same 
 page dwelt upon perhaps the most favourite of all these 
 juvenile exploits namely, " the manning of the Cow- 
 gate Port," in the season when snowballs could be 
 employed by the young scorners of discipline for the 
 annoyance of the Town-guard. To understand fully the 
 feelings of a High-School boy of that day with regard to 
 those ancient Highlanders, who then formed the only 
 police of the city of Edinburgh, the reader must consult 
 the poetry of the scapegrace Ferguson. It was in defi 
 ance of their Lochaber axes that the Cowgate Port was 
 manned and many were the occasions on which its 
 defence presented a formidable mimicry of warfare. 
 " The gateway," Sir Walter adds, " is now demolished, 
 and probably most of its garrison lie as low as the for 
 tress! To recollect that I, however naturally disquali- 
 6ed, was one of these juvenile dreadnoughts, is a sad 
 reflection for one who cannot now step over a brook 
 without assistance." 
 
 I am unwilling to swell this narrative by extracts from 
 Scott s published works, but there is one juvenile exploit 
 told in the General Preface to the Waverley Novels, 
 which I must crave leave to introduce here in his own 
 language, because it is essentially necessary to complete 
 our notion of his schoolboy life and character. " It is 
 well known," he says, " that there is little boxing at the 
 Scottish schools. About forty or fifty years ago, how 
 ever, a far more dangerous mode of fighting, in partiei 
 
HIGH SCHOOL. GREEN-BREEKS. 127 
 
 or factions, was permitted in the streets of Edinburgh, to 
 the great disgrace of the police, and danger of the parties 
 concerned. These parties were generally formed from 
 the quarters of the town in which the combatants resided, 
 those of a particular square or district fighting against 
 those of an adjoining one. Hence it happened that the 
 children of the higher classes were often pitted against 
 those of the lower, each taking their side according to the 
 residence of their friends. So far as I recollect, however, 
 it was unmingled either with feelings of democracy or 
 aristocracy, or indeed with malice or ill-will of any kind 
 towards the opposite party. In fact, it was only a rough 
 mode of play. Such contests were, however, maintained 
 with great vigour with stones, and sticks, and fisticuffs, 
 when one party dared to charge, and the other stood 
 their ground. Of course, mischief sometimes happened ; 
 boys are said to have been killed at these Bickers, as 
 they were called, and serious accidents certainly took 
 place, as many contemporaries can bear witness. 
 
 " The author s father, residing in George s Square, in 
 the southern side of Edinburgh, the boys belonging to 
 that family, with others in the square, were arranged into 
 a sort of company, to which a lady of distinction pre 
 sented a handsome set of colours.* Now, this company 
 or regiment, as a matter of course, was engaged in weekly 
 warfare with the boys inhabiting the Cross-causeway, 
 Bristo-Street, the Potterrow in short, the neighbour 
 ing suburbs. These last were chiefly of the lower rank, 
 but hardy loons, who threw stones to a hair s-breadth, and 
 were very rugged antagonists at close quarters. The 
 skirmish sometimes lasted for a whole evening, until one 
 
 * TMs young patroness was the late Duchess-Countess of Suther- 
 
128 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 party or the other was victorious, when, if ours were 
 successful, we drove the enemy to their quarters, and 
 were usually chased back by the reinforcement of bigger 
 lads who came to their assistance. If, on the contrary, 
 we were pursued, as was often the case, into the precincts 
 of our square, we were in our turn supported by our elder 
 brothers, domestic servants, and similar auxiliaries. It 
 followed, from our frequent opposition to each other, that, 
 though not knowing the names of our enemies, we were 
 yet well acquainted with their appearance, and had nick 
 names for the most remarkable of them. One very active 
 and spirited boy might be considered as the principal 
 leader in the cohort of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, 
 thirteen or fourteen years old, finely made, tall, blue-eyed, 
 with long fair hair, the very picture of a youthful Goth. 
 This lad was always first in the charge, and last in the 
 retreat the Achilles at once and Ajax of the Cross- 
 causeway. He was too formidable to us not to have a 
 cognomen, and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken 
 from the most remarkable part of his dress, being a pair 
 of old green livery breeches, which was the principal 
 part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to 
 Don Quixote s account, Green-breeks, as we called him, 
 always entered the battle with bare arms, legs, and feet. 
 
 " It fell, that once upon a time when the combat was 
 at its thickest, this plebeian champion headed a charge 
 go rapid and furious, that all fled before him. He was 
 several paces before his comrades, and had actually laid 
 his hands upon the patrician standard, when one of our 
 party, whom some misjudging friend had entrusted with 
 a couteau de chasse, or hanger, inspired with a zeal for 
 the honour of the corps, worthy of Major Sturgeon 
 himself, struck poor Green-breeks over the head, witb 
 
GREEN-BREEKS. 129 
 
 strength sufficient to cut him down. When this was 
 seen, the casualty was so far beyond what had ever 
 taken place before, that both parties fled different ways, 
 leaving poor Green-breeks, with his bright hair plenti 
 fully dabbled in blood, to the care of the watchman, who 
 (honest man) took care not to know who had done the 
 mischief. The bloody hanger was thrown into one of 
 the Meadow ditches, and solemn secrecy was sworn on 
 all hands ; but the remorse and terror of the actor were 
 beyond all bounds, and his apprehensions of the most 
 dreadful character. The wounded hero was for a few 
 days in the Infirmary, the case being only a trifling one. 
 But though enquiry was strongly pressed on him, no ar 
 gument could make him indicate the person from whom 
 he had received the wound, though he must have been 
 perfectly well known to him. When he recovered and 
 was dismissed, the author and his brothers opened a com 
 munication with him, through the medium of a popular 
 gingerbread baker, of whom both parties were customers, 
 in order to tender a subsidy in the name of smart-money. 
 The sum would excite ridicule were I to name it ; but 
 sure I am, that the pockets of the noted Green-breeks 
 never held as much money of his own. He declined the 
 remittance, saying that he would not sell his blood ; but 
 at the same time reprobated the idea of being an inform 
 er, which he said was clam, i. e. base or mean. With 
 much urgency, he accepted a pound of snuff for the use 
 of some old woman aunt, grandmother, or the like 
 with whom he lived. We did not become friends, for the 
 biekers were more agreeable to both parties than any 
 more pacific amusement ; but we conducted them ever 
 after, under mutual assurances of the highest considera 
 lion for each other." Sir Walter adds " Of five broth- 
 
130 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ers, all healthy and promising in a degree far beyond on 
 whose infancy was visited by personal infirmity, an 
 whose health after this period seemed long very preca 
 rious, I am, nevertheless, the only survivor. The best 
 loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had des 
 tined this incident to be the foundation of a literary com 
 position, died " before his day," in a distant and foreigi 
 land; and trifles assume an importance not their own 
 when connected with those who have been loved anc 
 lost." 
 
 During some part of his attendance on the Hig. 
 School, young Walter spent one hour daily at a sma~ 
 separate seminary of writing and arithmetic, kept by one 
 Morton, where, as was, and I suppose continues to be, the 
 custom of Edinburgh, young girls came for instruction as 
 well as boys ; and one of Mr. Morton s female pupils has 
 been kind enough to set down some little reminiscences 
 of Scott, who happened to sit at the same desk with her 
 self. They appear to me the more interesting, because 
 the lady had no acquaintance with him in the course of 
 his subsequent life. Her nephew Mr. James (the accom 
 plished author of Richelieu), to whose friendship I owe 
 her communication, assures me too, that he had con 
 stantly heard her tell the same things in the very same 
 ,vay, as far back as his own memory reaches, many years 
 before he had ever seen Sir Walter, or his aunt could 
 have dreamt of surviving to assist in the biography of 
 his early days. 
 
 " He attracted," Mrs. Churnside says, " the regard and 
 fondness of all his companions, for he was ever rational, 
 fanciful, lively, and possessed of that urbane gentleness 
 of manner, which makes its way to the heart. His im 
 agination was constantly at work, and he often so en 
 
MRS. CHURNSIDE. 131 
 
 grossed the attention of those who learnt with him, that 
 little could be done Mr. Morton himself being forced 
 to laugh as much as the little scholars at the odd turns 
 and devices he fell upon ; for he did nothing in the ordi 
 nary way, but, for example, even when he wanted ink to 
 his pen, would get up some ludicrous story about sending 
 his doggie to the mill again. He used also to interest us 
 in a more serious way, by telling us the visions, as he 
 called them, which he had lying alone on the floor or 
 sofa, when kept from going to church on a Sunday by ill 
 health. Child as I was, I could not help being highly 
 delighted with his description of the glories he had seen 
 his misty and sublime sketches of the regions above, 
 which he had visited in his trance. Recollecting these 
 descriptions, radiant and not gloomy as they were, I have 
 often thought since, that there must have been a bias in 
 his mind to superstition the marvellous seemed to 
 have such power over him, though the mere offspring 
 of his own imagination, that the expression of his face, 
 habitually that of genuine benevolence, mingled with a 
 shrewd innocent humour, changed greatly while he was 
 speaking of these things, and showed a deep intenseness 
 of feeling, as if he were awed even by his own recital. 
 ... I may add, that in walking he used always to keep 
 his eyes turned downwards as if thinking, but with a 
 pleasing expression of countenance, as if enjoying his 
 thoughts. Having once known him, it was impossible 
 ever to forget him. In this manner, after all the changes 
 of a long life, he constantly appears as fresh as yesterday 
 to my mind s eye." 
 
 This beautiful extract needs no commentary. I may 
 us well, however, bear witness, that exactly as the school 
 
132 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 boy still walks before " her mind s eye," his image rises 
 familiarly to mine, who never saw him until he was past 
 the middle of life : that I trace in every feature of her 
 delineation, the same gentleness of aspect and demeanour 
 which the presence of the female sex, whether in silk or 
 in russet, ever commanded in the man ; and that her 
 description of the change on his countenance when pass 
 ing from the " doggie of the mill " to the dream of Par 
 adise, is a perfect picture of what no one that has heard 
 him recite a fragment of high poetry, in the course 
 of table talk, can ever forget. Strangers may catch 
 some notion of what fondly dwells on the memory of 
 every friend, by glancing from the conversational bust 
 of Chantrey, to the first portrait by Raeburn, which rep 
 resents the Last Minstrel as musing in his prime within 
 sight of Hermitage. 
 
 I believe it was about this time that, as he expresses it 
 in one of his latest works, " the first images of horror 
 from the scenes of real life were stamped upon his mind," 
 by the tragical death of his great-aunt Mrs. Margaret 
 Swinton. This old lady, whose extraordinary nerve of 
 character he illustrates largely in the introduction to the 
 story of Aunt Margaret s Mirror, was now living with 
 one female attendant, in a small house not far from Mr. 
 Scott s residence in George s Square. The maid-servant, 
 in a sudden access of insanity, struck her mistress to 
 death with a coal-axe, and then rushed furiously into the 
 street with the bloody weapon in her hand, proclaiming 
 aloud the horror she had perpetrated. I need not dwell 
 on the effects which must have been produced in a vir* 
 tuous and affectionate circle by this shocking incident 
 The old lady had been tenderly attached to her nephew 
 
REV. JAMES MITCHELL. 133 
 
 " She was," he says, " our constant resource in sickness, 
 or when we tired of noisy play, and closed round her to 
 listen to her tales." 
 
 It was at this same period that Mr. and Mrs. Scott 
 received into their house, as tutor for their children, Mr. 
 James Mitchell, of whom the Ashestiel Memoir gives us 
 a description, such as I could not have presented had he 
 been still alive. Mr. Mitchell was living, however, at the 
 time of his pupil s death, and I am now not only at 
 liberty to present Scott s unmutilated account of their 
 intercourse, but enabled to give also the most simple and 
 characteristic narrative of the other party. I am sure no 
 one, however nearly related to Mr. Mitchell, will now 
 complain of seeing his keen-sighted pupil s sketch placed 
 by the side, as it were, of the fuller portraiture drawn by 
 the unconscious hand of the amiable and worthy man 
 himself. The following is an extract from Mr. Mitchell s 
 MS., entitled " Memorials of the most remarkable occur 
 rences and transactions of my life, drawn up in the hope 
 that, when I shall be no more, they may be read with 
 profit and pleasure by my children." The good man was 
 so kind as to copy out one chapter for my use, as soon as 
 he heard of Sir Walter Scott s death. He was then, and 
 had for many years been, minister of a Presbyterian 
 chapel at Wooler, in Northumberland, to which situation 
 he had retired on losing his benefice at Montrose, in con 
 sequence of the Sabbatarian scruples alluded to in Scott s 
 Autobiography. 
 
 " In 1782," says Mr. Mitchell, " I became a tutor in 
 Mr. Walter Scott s family. He was a Writer to the 
 Signet in George s Square, Edinburgh. Mr. Scott was a 
 fine looking man, then a little past the meridian of life, of 
 dignified, yet agreeable manners. His business was ex 
 
134 1,IFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tensive. He was a man of tried integrity, of strict 
 morals, and had a respect for religion and its ordinances. 
 The church the family attended was the Old Grey friars, 
 of which the celebrated Doctors Robertson and Erskine 
 were the ministers. Thither went Mr. and Mrs. Scott 
 every Sabbath, when well and at home, attended by their 
 fine young family of children, and their domestic servants 
 a sight so amiable and exemplary as often to excite in 
 my breast a glow of heartfelt satisfaction. According to 
 an established and laudable practice in the family, the 
 heads of it, the children, and servants, were assembled on 
 Sunday evenings in the drawing-room, and examined on 
 the Church Catechism and sermons they had heard de 
 livered during the course of the day ; on which occasions 
 I had to perform the part of chaplain, and conclude with 
 prayer. From Mrs. Scott I learned that Mr. Scott was 
 one that had not been seduced from the paths of virtue ; 
 but had been enabled to venerate good morals from his 
 youth. When he first came to Edinburgh to follow out 
 his profession, some of his school-fellows, who, like him, 
 had come to reside in Edinburgh, attempted to unhinge 
 his principles, and corrupt his morals ; but when they 
 found him resolute, and unshaken in his virtuous disposi 
 tions, they gave up the attempt ; but, instead of abandon 
 ing him altogether, they thought the more of him, and 
 honoured him with their confidence and patronage ; which 
 is certainly a great inducement to young men in the out 
 set of life to act a similar part. 
 
 " After having heard of his inflexible adherence to the 
 cause of virtue in his youth, and his regular attendance 
 on the ordinances of religion in after-life, we will not be 
 surprised to be told that he bore a sacred regard for the 
 Sabbath, nor at the following anecdote illustrative of it 
 
MR. MITCHELL S REMINISCENCES. 1 
 
 An opulent farmer of East Lothian had employed Mr. 
 Scott as his agent, in a cause depending before the Court 
 of Session. Having a curiosity to see something in the 
 papers relative to the process, which were deposited in 
 Mr. Scott s hands, this worldly man came into Edinburgh 
 on a Sunday to have an inspection of them. As ther 
 was no immediate necessity for this measure, Mr. Scott 
 asked the farmer if an ordinary week-day would not 
 answer equally well. The farmer was not willing to 
 take this advice, but insisted on the production of his 
 papers. Mr. Scott then delivered them to him, saying, 
 it was not his practice to engage in secular business on 
 Sabbath, and that he would have no difficulty in Edin 
 burgh to find some of his profession who would have 
 none of his scruples. No wonder such a man was con 
 fided in, and greatly honoured in his professional line. 
 All the poor services I did to his family were more than 
 repaid by the comfort and honour I had by being in the 
 family, the pecuniary remuneration I received, and par 
 ticularly by his recommendation of me, sometime after 
 wards, to the Magistrates and Town- Council of Montrose, 
 when there was a vacancy, and this brought me on the 
 carpet, which, as he said, was all he could do, as the 
 settlement would ultimately hinge on a popular elec 
 tion. 
 
 " Mrs. Scott was a wife in every respect worthy of 
 such a husband. Like her partner, she was then a little 
 past the meridian of life, of a prepossessing appearance, 
 amiable manners, of a cultivated understanding, affection 
 ate disposition, and fine taste. She was both able and 
 disposed to soothe her husband s mind under the asperi 
 ties of business, and to be a rich blessing to her numerous 
 progeny. But what constituted her distinguishing oraa 
 
136 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ment was, that she was sincerely religious. Some years 
 previous to my entrance into the family, I understood 
 from one of the servants she had been under deep relig 
 ious concern about her soul s salvation, which had ulti 
 mately issued in a conviction of the truth of Christianity, 
 and in the enjoyment of its divine consolations. She 
 liked Dr. Erskine s sermons ; but was not fond of the 
 Principal s, however rational, eloquent, and well com 
 posed, and would, if other things had answered, have 
 gone, when he preached, to have heard Dr. Davidson. 
 Mrs. Scott was a descendant of Dr. Daniel Rutherford, 
 a professor in the Medical School of Edinburgh, and one 
 of those eminent men, who, by learning and professional 
 skill, brought it to the high pitch of celebrity to which it 
 has attained. He was an excellent linguist, and, accord 
 ing to the custom of the times, delivered his prelections 
 to the students in Latin. Mrs. Scott told me, that, when 
 prescribing to his patients, it was his custom to offer up 
 at the same time a prayer for the accompanying bless 
 ing of heaven ; a laudable practice, in which, I fear, he 
 has not been generally imitated by those of his profes 
 sion. 
 
 " Mr. Scott s family consisted of six children, all of 
 which were at home except the eldest, who was an officer 
 in the army ; and as they were of an age fit for instruc 
 tion, they were all committed to my superintendence, 
 which, in dependence on God, I exercised with an 
 earnest and faithful regard to their temporal and spirit 
 ual good. As the most of them were under public 
 teachers, the duty assigned me was mainly to assist them 
 in the prosecution of their studies. In all the excel 
 lencies, whether as to temper, conduct, talents natural or 
 acquired, which any of the children individually pos 
 
MR. MITCHELL S REMINISCENCES. 137 
 
 sessed, to Master Walter, since the celebrated Sir Walter, 
 must a decided preference be ascribed. Though, like 
 the rest of the children, placed under my tuition, the con 
 ducting of his education comparatively cost me but little 
 trouble, being, by the quickness of his intellect, tenacity 
 f memory, and diligent application to his studies, gener 
 ally equal of himself to the acquisition of those tasks I or 
 others prescribed to him. So that Master Walter might 
 be regarded not so much as a pupil of mine, but as a 
 friend and companion, and I may add, as an assistant 
 also ; for, by his example and admonitions, he greatly 
 strengthened my hands, and stimulated my other pupils 
 to industry and good behaviour. I seldom had occasion 
 all the time I was in the family to find fault with him 
 even for trifles, and only once to threaten serious castiga- 
 tion, of which he was no sooner aware than he suddenly 
 sprung up, threw his arms about my neck, and kissed 
 me. It is hardly needful to state, that now the intended 
 castigation was no longer thought of. By such generous 
 and noble conduct, my displeasure was in a moment con 
 verted into esteem and admiration ; my soul melted into 
 tenderness, and I was ready to mingle my tears with his. 
 Some incidents in reference to him in that early period, 
 and some interesting and useful conversations I had with 
 him, then deeply impressed on my mind, and which the 
 lapse of near half a century has not yet obliterated, 
 fforded no doubtful presage of his future greatness and 
 celebrity. On my going into the family, as far as I can 
 judge, he might be in his twelfth or thirteenth year, a 
 boy in the Rector s class. However elevated above the 
 other boys in genius, though generally in the list of the 
 duxes, he was seldom, as far as I recollect, the leader of 
 the school : nor need this be deemed surprising, as it has 
 
138 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 often been observed, that boys of original genius have 
 been outstripped, by those that were far inferior to them 
 selves, in the acquisition of the dead languages. Dr 
 Adam, the rector, celebrated for his knowledge of th 
 Latin language, was deservedly held by Mr. Walter in 
 high admiration and regard; of which the following 
 anecdote may be adduced as a proof. In the Higlj 
 School, as is well known, there are four masters and a 
 rector. The classes of those masters the rector in rota 
 tion inspects, and in the mean time the master, whose 
 school is examined, goes in to take care of the rector s, 
 of the masters, on account of some grudge, had 
 rudely assaulted and injured the venerable rector one 
 night in the High School Wynd. The rector s scholars, 
 exasperated at the outrage, at the instigation of Master 
 Walter, determined on revenge, and which was to be 
 executed when this obnoxious master should again come 
 to teach the class. When this occurred, the task the 
 class had prescribed to them was that passage in the 
 jEneid of Virgil, where the Queen of Carthage interro 
 gates the court as to the stranger that had come to her 
 habitation 
 
 Quis novus hie hospes successit sedibus nostris ? * 
 
 Master Walter having taken a piece of paper, inscribed 
 upon it these words, substituting vanus for novus, and 
 pinned it to the tail of the master s coat, and tumed him 
 into ridicule by raising the laugh of the whole school 
 
 # This transposition of hospes and nostris sufficiently confirms hii 
 pupil s statement that Mr. Mitchell " superintended his classical 
 themes, but not classically." The "obnoxious master" alluded tt 
 was Burns s friend Nicoll, the hero of the song 
 
 " Willie brewed a peck o maut, 
 And Rob and Allan came to see," &c. 
 
MR. MITCHELL S REMINISCENCES. 139 
 
 against him. Though this juvenile action could not be 
 justified on the footing of Christian principles, yet cer 
 tainly it was so far honourable that it was not a dictate 
 of personal revenge, but that it originated in respect for 
 a worthy and injured man, and detestation of one whom 
 he looked upon as a bad character. 
 
 " One forenoon, on coming from the High School, he 
 said he wished to know my opinion as to his conduct in 
 a matter he should state to me. When passing through 
 the High-School Yards, he found a half-guinea piece on 
 the ground. Instead of appropriating this to his own 
 use, a sense of honesty led him to look around, and on 
 doing so he espied a countryman, whom he suspected to 
 be the proprietor. Having asked the man if he had lost 
 anything, he searched his pockets, and then replied that 
 he had lost half-a-guinea. Master Walter with pleasure 
 presented him with his lost treasure. In this transaction, 
 his ingenuity in finding out the proper owner, and his 
 integrity in restoring the property, met my most cordial 
 approbation. 
 
 " When in church, Master Walter had more of a sop 
 orific tendency than the rest of my young charge. This 
 seemed to be constitutional. He needed one or other of 
 the family to arouse him, and from this it might be in 
 ferred that he would cut a poor figure on the Sabbath 
 evening when examined about the sermons. But what 
 jxcited the admiration of the family was, that none of 
 the children, however wakeful, could answer as he did. 
 The only way that I could account for this was, that 
 when he heard the text, and divisions of the subject, his 
 good sense, memory, and genius, supplied the thoughts 
 which would occur to the preacher. 
 
 " On one occasion, in the dining room, when, according 
 
140 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to custom, he was reading some author in the time of 
 relaxation from study, I asked him how he accounted for 
 the superiority of knowledge he possessed above the rest 
 of the family. His reply was : Some years ago he had 
 been attacked by a swelling in one of his ankles, which 
 confined him to the house, and prevented him taking 
 amusement and exercise, and which was the cause of his 
 lameness. As under this ailment he could not rcmp with 
 his brothers and the other young people in the green in 
 George s Square, he found himself compelled to have 
 recourse to some substitute for the juvenile amusements 
 of his comrades, and this was reading. So that, to what 
 he no doubt accounted a painful dispensation of Provi 
 dence, he probably stood indebted for his future celebrity* 
 When it was understood I was to leave the family, Mas- 
 t er Walter told me that he had a small present to give 
 me, to be kept as a memorandum of his friendship, and 
 that it was of little value : But you know, Mr. Mitchell/ 
 said he, that presents are not to be estimated according 
 to their intrinsic value, but according to the intention of 
 the donor. This was his Adam s Grammar, which had 
 seen hard service in its day, and had many animals and 
 inscriptions on its margins. This, to my regret, is no 
 longer to be found in my collection of books, nor do I 
 know what has become of it. 
 
 " Since leaving the family, although no stranger to the 
 widely spreading fame of Sir Walter, I have had few 
 opportunities of personal intercourse with him. When 
 minister in the second charge of the Established Church 
 at Montrose, he paid me a visit, and spent a night with 
 me few visits have been more gratifying. He wag 
 then on his return from Aberdeen, where he, as an advo 
 cate, had attended the Court of Justiciary in its norther** 
 
MR. MITCHELL S REMINISCENCES. 141 
 
 circuit. Nor was his attendance in this court his sole 
 object : another, and perhaps the principal, was, as he 
 stated to me, to collect in his excursion ancient ballads 
 and traditional stories about fairies, witches, and ghosts. 
 Such intelligence proved to me as an electrical shock ; 
 and as I then sincerely regretted, so do I still, that Sir 
 Walter s precious time was so much devoted to the dulce, 
 rather than the utile of composition, and that his great 
 talent should have been wasted on such subjects. At the 
 same time I feel happy to qualify this censure, as I am 
 generally given to understand that his Novels are of a 
 more pure and unexceptionable nature than characterizes 
 writings of a similar description ; while at the same time 
 his pen has been occupied in the production of works of 
 a better and nobler order. Impressed with the convic 
 tion that he would one day arrive at honour and influ 
 ence in his native country, I endeavoured to improve the 
 occasion of his visit to secure his patronage in behalf of 
 the strict and evangelical party in the Church of Scot 
 land, in exerting himself to induce patrons to grant to 
 the Christian people liberty to elect their own pastors in 
 cases of vacancy. His answer struck me much : it was 
 Nay, nay, Mr. Mitchell, I ll not do that ; for if that 
 were to be done, I and the like of me would have no life 
 with such as you ; from which I inferred he thought 
 that, were the evangelical clergy to obtain the superior 
 ity, they would introduce such strictness of discipline as 
 would not quadrate with the ideas of that party called 
 he moderate in the Church of Scotland, whose views, I 
 presume, Sir Walter had now adopted. Some, however, 
 to whom I have mentioned Sir Walter s reply, have sug 
 gested that I had misunderstood his meaning, and that 
 what he said was not in earnest, but in jocularity and 
 
142 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 good-humour. This may be true, and certainly is a 
 candid interpretation. As to the ideal beings already 
 mentioned as the subject of his enquiries, my materials 
 were too scanty to afford him much information." 
 
 Notwithstanding the rigidly Presbyterian habits which 
 this chronicle describes with so much more satisfaction 
 than the corresponding page in the Ashestiel Memoir, I 
 am reminded, by a communication already quoted from a 
 lady of the Ravelstone family, that Mrs. Scott, who had, 
 she says, " a turn for literature quite uncommon among 
 the ladies of the time," encouraged her son in his passion 
 for Shakspeare ; that his plays, and the Arabian Nights, 
 were often read aloud in the family circle by Walter, 
 " and served to spend many a happy evening hour ; " 
 nay, that, however good Mitchell may have frowned at 
 such a suggestion, even Mr. Scott made little objection 
 to his children, and some of their young friends, getting 
 up private theatricals occasionally in the dining-room 
 after the lessons of the day were over. The lady adds, 
 that "Walter was always the manager, and had the whole 
 charge of the affair, and that the favourite piece used to 
 be Jane Shore, in which he was the Hastings, his sister 
 the Alicia. I have heard from another friend of the 
 family, that Richard III. also was attempted, and that 
 Walter took the part of the Duke of Gloucester, observ 
 ing that " the limp would do well enough to represent 
 the hump.* 
 
 A story which I have seen in print, about his par 
 taking in the dancing lessons of his brothers, I do not 
 believe. But it was during Mr. Mitchell s residence 
 in the family that they all made their unsuccessful at 
 tempts in the art of music, under the auspices of 
 
KELSO. THE GARDEN. 143 
 
 poor Allister Campbell the Editor of "Albyn s An 
 thology." 
 
 Mr. Mitchell appears to have terminated his superin 
 tendence before Walter left Dr. Adam, and in the inter 
 val between this and his entrance at College, he spent 
 some time with his aunt, who now inhabited a cottage at 
 Kelso; but the Memoir, I suspect, gives too much ex 
 tension to that residence which may be accounted 
 for by his blending with it a similar visit which he paid 
 to the same place during his College vacation of the next 
 year. 
 
 Some of the features of Miss Jenny s abode at Kelso 
 are alluded to in the Memoir, but the fullest description 
 of it occurs in his "Essay on Landscape Gardening" 
 (1828), where, talking of grounds laid out in the Dutch 
 taste, he says : " Their rarity now entitles them to 
 some care as a species of antiques, and unquestionably 
 they give character to some snug, quiet, and sequestered 
 situations, which would otherwise have no marked feature 
 of any kind. I retain an early and pleasing recollection 
 of the seclusion of such a scene. A small cottage, adja 
 cent to a beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient 
 maiden lady, was for some time my abode. It was sit 
 uated in a garden of seven or eight acres, planted about 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century, by one of the 
 Millars, related to the author of the " Gardeners Dic 
 tionary," or, for aught I know, by himself. It was full 
 f long straight walks, between hedges of yew and horn 
 beam, which rose tall and close on every side. There 
 were thickets of flowery shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, 
 to which access was obtained through a little maze of 
 contorted walks calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre 
 of the bower was a splendid Platanus, or Oriental plane 
 
144 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 a huge hill of leaves one of the noblest specimens 
 of that regularly beautiful tree which I remember to 
 have seen. In different parts of the garden were fine 
 ornamental trees, which had attained great size, and the 
 orchard was filled with fruit trees of the best description. 
 There were seats, and hilly walks, and a banqueting 
 house. I visited this scene lately, after an absence of 
 many years. Its air of retreat, the seclusion which its 
 alleys afforded, was entirely gone ; the huge Platanus 
 had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning of this 
 century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed 
 up, and the whole character of the place so destroyed, 
 that I was glad when I could leave it." It was under 
 this Platanus that Scott first devoured Percy s Reliques. 
 I remember well being with him, in 1820 or 1821, when 
 he revisited the favourite scene, and the sadness of his 
 looks when he discovered that " the huge hill of leaves " 
 was no more. 
 
 To keep up his scholarship while inhabiting the gar 
 den, he attended daily, as he informs us, the public school 
 of Kelso, and here he made his first acquaintance with a 
 family, two members of which were intimately connected 
 with the most important literary transactions of his aftei 
 life James Ballantyne, the printer of almost all his 
 works, and his brother John, who had a share hi the pub 
 lication of many of them. Their father was a respect 
 able tradesman in this pretty town. The elder of the 
 brothers, who did not long survive his illustrious friend, 
 was kind enough to make an exertion on behalf of this 
 work, while stretched on the bed from which he never 
 rose, and dictated a valuable paper of memoranda, from 
 which I shall here introduce my first extract : 
 
 " I think," says James Ballantyne, " it was in the yea? 
 
KELSO. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 145 
 
 i783 that I first became acquainted with Sir Walter 
 Soott, then a boy about my own age, at the Grammar 
 School of Kelso, of which Mr. Lancelot Whale was the 
 Rector. The impression left by his manners was, even 
 at that early period, calculated to be deep, and I cannot 
 recall any other instance in which the man and the boy 
 continued to resemble each other so much and so long. 
 Walter Scott was not a constant schoolfellow at this 
 seminary; he only attended it for a few weeks during 
 the vacation of the Edinburgh High School. He was 
 then, as he continued during all his after life to be, de 
 voted to antiquarian lore, and was certainly the best 
 story-teller I had ever heard, either then or since. He 
 soon discovered that I was as fond of listening as he him 
 self was of relating ; and I remember it was a thing of 
 daily occurrence, that after he had made himself master 
 of his own lesson, I, alas ! being still sadly to seek in 
 mine, he used to whisper to me, * Come, slink over be 
 side me, Jamie, and I ll tell you a story/ I well recol 
 lect that he had a form, or seat, appropriated to himself, 
 the particular reason of which I cannot tell, but he was 
 always treated with a peculiar degree of respect, not by 
 the boys of the different classes merely, but by the ven 
 erable Master Lancelot himself, who, an absent, grotesque 
 being, betwixt six and seven feet high, was nevertheless 
 an admirable scholar, and sure to be delighted to find 
 any one so well qualified to sympathize with him as 
 young Walter Scott; and the affectionate gratitude of 
 the young pupil was never intermitted, so long as his 
 venerable master continued to live. I may mention, in 
 passing, that old Whale bore, in many particula rsr~a~ 
 strong resemblance to Dominie Sampson, though, it must 
 be admitted, combining more gentlemanly manners with 
 VOL. i. 10 
 
146 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 equal classical lore, and, on the whole, being a much 
 superior sort of person. In the intervals of school-hours, 
 it was our constant practice to walk together by the 
 banks of the Tweed, our employment continuing exactly 
 the same, for his stories seemed to be quite inexhausti 
 ble. This intercourse continued during the summers of 
 the years 1783-4, but was broken off in 1785-6, when I 
 went into Edinburgh to College." 
 
 Perhaps the separate seat assigned to Walter Scott 
 by the Kelso schoolmaster, was considered due to him as 
 a temporary visiter from the great Edinburgh seminary. 
 Very possibly, however, the worthy Mr. Whale thought 
 of nothing but protecting his solitary student of Persius 
 and Tacitus from the chances of being jostled among the 
 adherents of Ruddiman and Cornelius Nepos. 
 
 Another of his Kelso schoolfellows was Robert Wai- 
 die (son of Mr. Waldie of Henderside), and to this con 
 nexion he owed, both while quartered in the Garden, and 
 afterwards at Rosebank, many kind attentions, of which 
 he ever preserved a grateful recollection, and which 
 have left strong traces on every page of his works in 
 which he has occasion to introduce the Society of 
 Friends. This young companion s mother, though al 
 ways called in the neighbourhood " Lady Waldie," be 
 longed to that community ; and the style of life and 
 manners depicted in the household of Joshua Geddes of 
 Mount Sharon and his amiable sister, in some of the 
 sweetest chapters of Redgauntlet, is a slightly decorated 
 edition of what he witnessed under her hospitable roof. 
 He records, in a note to the Novel, the " liberality and 
 benevolence " of this " kind old lady " in allowing him to 
 " rummage at pleasure, and carry home any volumes hs 
 chose of her small but valuable library ; " annexing only 
 
KELSO. 1783. 147 
 
 the condition that he should " take at the same time some 
 of the tracts printed for encouraging and extending the 
 doctrines of her own sect. She did not," he adds, " even 
 exact any assurance that I would read these performances, 
 being too justly afraid of involving me in a breach of 
 promise, but was merely desirous that I should have the 
 chance of instruction within my reach, in case whim, 
 curiosity, or accident, might induce me to have recourse 
 to it." I remember the pleasure with which he read, 
 late in life, " Rome in the Nineteenth Century," an in 
 genious work produced by one of Mrs. Waldie s grand 
 daughters, and how comically he pictured the alarm with 
 which his ancient friend would have perused some of its 
 delineations of the high places of Popery. 
 
 I shall be pardoned for adding a marginal note written, 
 apparently late in Scott s life, on his copy of a little for 
 gotten volume, entitled Trifles in Verse, by a Young 
 Soldier. "In 1783," he says, "or about that time, I 
 remember John Marjoribanks, a smart recruiting officer 
 in the village of Kelso, the Weekly Chronicle of which 
 Ue filled with his love verses. His Delia was a Miss 
 Dickson, daughter of a shopkeeper in the same village 
 ais Gloriana a certain prudish old maiden lady, benempt 
 Miss Goldie ; I think I see her still, with her thin arms 
 sheathed in scarlet gloves, and crossed like two lobsters 
 in a fishmonger s stand. Poor Delia was a very beauti 
 ful girl, and not more conceited than a be-rhymed miss 
 ought to be. Many years afterwards I found the Kelso 
 belle, thin and pale, her good looks gone, and her smart 
 dress neglected, governess to the brats of a Paisley 
 manufacturer. I ought to say there was not an atom of 
 scandal in her flirtation with the young military poet. 
 The bard s fate was not much better ; after some service 
 
148 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in India, and elsewhere, he led a half-pay life about 
 Edinburgh, and died there. There is a tenuity of thought 
 in what he has written, but his verses are usually easy, 
 and I like them because they recall my schoolboy days, 
 when I thought him a Horace, and his Delia a god 
 dess." 
 
EDINBURGH COLLEGE. 149 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ({lustrations of the Autobiography continued Anecdotes of 
 Scott s College Life. 
 
 1783-1786. 
 
 ON returning to Edinburgh, and entering the College, 
 in November, 1783, Scott found himself once more in the 
 fellowship of all his intimates of the High School; of 
 whom, besides those mentioned in the autobiographical 
 fragment, he speaks in his diaries with particular affec 
 tion of Sir William Rae, Bart., David Monypenny (after 
 wards Lord Pitmilly), Thomas Tod, W. S., Sir Archibald 
 Campbell of Succoth, Bart., all familiar friends of his 
 through manhood, and the Earl of Dalhousie,* whom, 
 on meeting with him after a long separation in the even 
 ing of life, he records as still being, and having always 
 been, " the same manly and generous character that all 
 about him loved as the Lordie Ramsay of the Yards." 
 The chosen companion, however, continued to be for 
 some time Mr. John Irving his suburban walks with 
 whom have been recollected so tenderly, both in the 
 Memoir of 1808, and in the Preface to Waverley of 
 1829. It will interest the rsader to compare with those 
 
 * George, ninth Earl of Dalhousie, highly distinguished in the mill- 
 toy annals of his time, died on the 21st March 1838, in his 68th year 
 
150 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 beautiful descriptions, the following extract from a lettei 
 with which Mr. Irving has favoured me : 
 
 " Every Saturday, and more frequently during the vaca 
 tions, we used to retire, with three or four books from the cir 
 culating library, to Salisbury Crags, Arthur s Seat, or Black- 
 ford Hill, and read them together. He read faster than I, and 
 had, on this account, to wait a little at finishing every two 
 pages, before turning the leaf. The books we most delighted 
 in were romances of knight-errantry ; the Castle of Otranto, 
 Spenser, Ariosto, and Boiardo were great favourites. We used 
 to climb up the rocks in search of places where we might sit 
 sheltered from the wind; and the more inaccessible they were, 
 the better we liked them. He was very expert at climbing. 
 Sometimes we got into places where we found it difficult to 
 move either up or down, and I recollect it being proposed, on 
 several occasions, that I should go for a ladder to see and ex 
 tricate him ; but I never had any need really to do so, for he 
 always managed somehow either to get down or ascend to the 
 top. The number of books we thus devoured was very great. - 
 I forgot great part of what I read ; but my friend, notwith 
 standing he read with such rapidity, remained, to my surprise, 
 master of it all, and could even weeks or months afterwards 
 repeat a whole page in which any thing had particularly 
 struck him at the moment. After we had continued this prac 
 tice of reading for two years or more together, he proposed 
 that we should recite to each other alternately such adven 
 tures of knight-errants as we could ourselves contrive ; and we 
 continued to do so a long while. He found no difficulty in it, 
 and used to recite for half an hour or more at a time, while I 
 seldom continued hah 7 that space. The stories we told were, 
 as Sir Walter has said, interminable for we were unwilling 
 to have any of our favourite knights killed. Our passion for 
 romance led us to learn Italian together ; after a time we could 
 both read it with fluency, and we then copied such tales as we 
 had met with in that language, being a continued succession 
 of battles and enchantments. He began early to collect old 
 
MR. IRVING S REMINISCENCES. 151 
 
 ballads, and as my mother could repeat a great many, he used 
 to come and learn those she could recite to him. He used to 
 get all the copies of these ballads he could, and select the 
 best." 
 
 These, no doubt, were among the germs of the collec 
 tion of ballads in six little volumes, which, from the hand 
 writing, had been begun at this early period, and which 
 is still preserved at Abbotsford. And it appears, that at 
 least as early a date must be ascribed to another collec 
 tion of little humorous stories in prose, the Penny Chap- 
 books, as they are called, still in high favour among the 
 lower classes in Scotland, which stands on the same shelf. 
 In a letter of 1830* he states that he had bound up 
 things of this kind to the extent of several volumes, be 
 fore he was ten years old. 
 
 Although the Ashestiel Memoir mentions so very 
 lightly his boyish addiction to verse, and the rebuke 
 which his vein received from the Apothecary s blue- 
 buskined wife as having been followed by similar treat 
 ment on the part of others, I am inclined to believe that 
 while thus devouring, along with his young friend, the 
 stories of Italian romance, he essayed, from time to time, 
 to weave some of their materials into rhyme ; nay, 
 that he must have made at least one rather serious effort 
 of this kind, as early as the date of these rambles to 
 the Salisbury Crags. I have found among his mother s 
 __ apers a copy of verses, headed " Lines to Mr. Walter 
 Scott on reading his poem of Guiscard and Matilda, 
 inscribed to Miss Keith of Ravelston" There is no date ; 
 but I conceive the lines bear internal evidence of having 
 been written when he was very young not, I should 
 suppose, above fourteen or fifteen at most. I think it 
 * See Strang s Germany in 1831, vol. i. p. 265. 
 
152 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 also certain that the writer was a woman ; and have 
 almost as little doubt that they came from the pen of liis 
 old admirer, Mrs. Cockburn. They are as follows : 
 
 " If such the accents of thy early youth 
 When playful fancy holds the place of truth; 
 If so divinely sweet thy numbers flow, 
 And thy young heart melts with such tender wo; 
 What praise, what admiration shall be thine, 
 When sense mature with science shall combine 
 To raise thy genius, and thy taste refine ! 
 
 " Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue 
 Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you ; 
 Go, bid the seeds her hand hath sown arise 
 By timely culture, to their native skies ; 
 Go, and employ the poet s heavenly art, 
 Not merely to delight, but mend the heart. 
 Than other poets happier mayst thou prove, 
 More blest in friendship, fortunate in love, 
 Whilst Fame, who longs to make true merit kno^n, 
 Impatient waits, to claim thee as her own. 
 
 " Scorning the yoke of prejudice and pride, 
 Thy tender mind let truth and reason guide ; 
 Let meek humility thy steps attend, 
 And firm integrity, youth s surest friend. 
 So peace and honour all thy hours shall bless, 
 And conscious rectitude each joy increase; 
 A nobler meed be thine than empty praise 
 Heaven shall approve thy life, and Keith thy lays." 
 
 At the period to which 1 refer these verses, Scott s 
 parents still continued to have some expectations of cur 
 ing his lameness, and Mr. Irving remembers to have 
 often assisted in applying the electrical apparatus, on 
 which for a considerable time they principally rested 
 their hopes. There is an allusion to these experiments 
 in Scott s autobiographical fragment, but I have found 
 a fuller notice on the margin of his copy of the " Guide 
 k> Health, Beauty, Riches, and Longevity," as Captain 
 
DR. GRAHAM. 153 
 
 Grose chose to entitle an amusing collection of quack 
 advertisements. 
 
 " The celebrated Dr. Graham," says the annotator, 
 " was an empiric of some genius and great assurance. 
 In iact, he had a dash of madness in his composition. He 
 had a fine electrical apparatus, and used it with skill. 1 
 myself, amongst others, was subjected to a course of elec 
 tricity under his charge. I remember seeing the old 
 Earl of Hopetoun seated in a large arm-chair, and hung 
 round with a collar, and a belt of magnets, like an Indian 
 chief. After this, growing quite wild, Graham set up his 
 Temple of Health, and lectured on the Celestial Bed. He 
 attempted a course of these lectures at Edinburgh, and 
 as the Magistrates refused to let him do so, he libelled 
 them in a series of advertisements, the nights of which 
 were infinitely more absurd and exalted than those which 
 Grose has collected. In one tirade (long in my posses 
 sion), he declared that he looked down upon them (the 
 Magistrates) as the sun in his meridian glory looks 
 down on the poor, feeble, stinking glimmer of an expiring 
 farthing candle, or as G himself, in the plenitude of his 
 omnipotence, may regard the insolent bouncings of a few 
 refractory maggots in a rotten cheese. Graham was a 
 good-looking man ; he used to come to the Greyfriars 
 Church in a suit of white and silver, with a chapeau-bras, 
 and his hair marvellously dressed into a sort of double 
 toupee, which divided upon his head like the tvo tops of 
 Parnassus. Mrs. Macaulay the historianess, married his 
 brother. Lady Hamilton is said to have first enacted his 
 Goddess of Health, being at this time a file de joie of 
 great celebrity.* The Temple of Health dwindled into 
 
 * Lord Nelson s connexion with this lady will preserve her celebrity. 
 In " Kay s Edinburgh Portraits " tne reader will find more about Dr. 
 Qraham. 
 
154 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 a sort of obscene hell, or gambling house. In a quarrel 
 which took place there, a poor young man was run into 
 the bowels with a red-hot poker, of which injury he died. 
 The mob vented their fury on the house, and the Magis 
 trates, somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. A 
 quantity of glass and crystal trumpery, the remains of 
 the splendid apparatus, was sold on the South Bridge 
 for next to nothing. Graham s next receipt was the 
 earth-bath, with which he wrought some cures ; but 
 that also failing, he was, I believe, literally starved to 
 death." 
 
 Graham s earth-bath too was, I understand, tried upon 
 Scott, but his was not one of the cases, if any such there 
 were, in which it worked a cure. He, however, improved 
 about this time greatly in his general health and strength, 
 and Mr. Irving, in accordance with the statement in the 
 Memoir, assures me, that while attending the early 
 classes at the College, the young friends extended their 
 walks, so as to visit in succession all the old castles 
 within eight or ten miles of Edinburgh. " Sir Walter," 
 he says, " was specially fond of Rosslyn. We frequently 
 walked thither before breakfast after breakfasting there, 
 walked all down the river side to Lasswade and thence 
 home to town before dinner. He used generally to rest 
 one hand upon my shoulder when we walked together, 
 and leaned with the other on a stout stick." 
 
 The love of picturesque scenery, and especially of 
 feudal castles, with which the vicinity of Edinburgh is 
 plentifully garnished, awoke, as the Memoir tells us, the 
 desire of being able to use the pencil. Mr. Irving says 
 " I attended one summer a class of drawing along with 
 him, but although both fond of it, we found it took up so 
 much time that we gave this up before we had made 
 
BURRELL. WALKER. 155 
 
 much progress." In one of his later diaries, Scott him 
 self gives the following more particular account of this 
 matter : 
 
 " I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a little 
 Jew animalcule a smouch called Burrell a clever 
 sensible creature though. But I could make no progress 
 in either painting or drawing. Nature denied me the 
 correctness of eye and neatness of hand. Yet I was 
 very desirous to be a draughtsman at least and la 
 boured harder to attain that point than at any other in 
 my recollection to which I did not make some approaches. 
 Burrell was not useless to me altogether neither. He 
 was a Prussian, and I got from him many a long story 
 of the battles of Frederick, in whose armies his father 
 had been a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember 
 his picturesque account of seeing a party of the black 
 hussars bringing in some forage carts which they had 
 taken from a body of the Cossacks, whom he described 
 as lying on the top of the carts of hay mortally wounded, 
 and like the dying gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it 
 ran down through the straw." 
 
 A year or two later, Scott renewed his attempt. " I 
 afterwards," he says, " took lessons from Walker, whom 
 we used to call Blue Beard. He was one of the most 
 conceited persons in the world, but a good teacher ; one 
 of the ugliest countenances he had that need be exhibited 
 enough, as we say, to spean weans. The man was 
 always extremely precise in the quality of every thing 
 about him ; his dress, accommodations, and every thing 
 else. He became insolvent, poor man, and, for some 
 reason or other, I attended the meeting of those con 
 cerned in his affairs. Instead of ordinary accommo 
 dations for writing, each of the persons present was 
 
156 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 equipped with a large sheet of drawing-paper, and a 
 swan s quill. It was mournfully ridiculous enough. 
 Skirving made an admirable likeness of Walker ; not a 
 single scar or mark of the small-pox, which seamed his 
 countenance, but the too accurate brother of the brush 
 had faithfully laid it down in longitude and latitude. 
 Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons) rather than 
 let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the sale of his 
 effects. I did learn myself to take some vile views from 
 nature. When Will Clerk and I lived very much to 
 gether, I used sometimes to make them under his in 
 struction. He to whom, as to all his family, art is a 
 familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland 
 dog would *t a greyhound which showed fear of the 
 water." 
 
 Notwithstanding all that Scott says about the total 
 failure of his attempts in the art of the pencil, I presume 
 feiv will doubt that they proved very useful to him after 
 wards ; *Vom them it is natural to suppose he caught the 
 habit of analyzing, with some approach at least to ac 
 curacy, the scenes over which his eye might have con 
 tinued to wander with the vague sense of delight. I may 
 add. that a longer and more successful practice of the 
 crayon might, I cannot but think, have proved the re 
 verse of serviceable to him as a future painter with the 
 pen. He might have contracted the habit of copying 
 from pictures rather than from nature itself; and we 
 should thus have lost that which constitutes the very 
 highest charm in his delineations of scenery, namely, 
 that the effect is produced by the selection of a few 
 striking features, arranged with a light unconscious 
 grace, neither too much nor too little equally remote 
 from the barren generalizations of a former age, and 
 
LESSONS IN DRAWING. 157 
 
 the dull servile fidelity with which so many inferior 
 writers of our time fill in both background and fore 
 ground, having no more notion of the perspective of 
 genius than Chinese paper-stainers have of that of the 
 atmosphere, and producing in fact not descriptions but 
 inventories. 
 
 The illness which he alludes to in his Memoir, as in 
 terrupting for a considerable period his attendance on the 
 Latin and Greek classes in Edinburgh College, is spoken 
 of more largely in one of his prefaces.* It arose from 
 the bursting of a blood-vessel in the lower bowels ; and 
 I have heard him say that his uncle, Dr. Rutherford, 
 considered his recovery from it as little less than miracu 
 lous. His sweet temper and calm courage were no doubt i> 
 important elements of safety. He submitted without a 
 murmur to the severe discipline prescribed by his affec 
 tionate physician, and found consolation in poetry, ro 
 mance, and the enthusiasm of young friendship. Day 
 after day, John Irving relieved his mother and sister in 
 their attendance upon him. The bed on which he lay 
 was piled with a constant succession of works of imag 
 ination, and sad realities were forgotten amidst the brill 
 iant day-dreams of genius drinking unwearied from the 
 eternal fountains of Spenser and Shakspeare. Chess 
 was recommended as a relief to these unintermitted, 
 though desultory studies ; and he engaged eagerly in the 
 game which had found favour with so many of his Pala 
 dins. Mr. Irving remembers playing it with him hour 
 after hour, in very cold weather, when, the windows be 
 ing kept open as a part of the medical treatment, nothing 
 but youthful nerves and spirit could have persevered. 
 But Scott did not pursue the science of chess after his 
 * See Preface to Waverley, 1829. 
 
158 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 boyhood. He used to say that it was a shame to tioow 
 away upon mastering a mere game, however ingenious, 
 the time which would suffice for the acquisition of a new 
 language. " Surely," he said, " chess-playing is a sad 
 waste of brains." 
 
 His recovery was completed by another visit to Rox 
 burghshire. Captain Robert Scott, who had been so 
 kind to the sickly infant at Bath, finally retired about 
 this time from his profession, and purchased the elegant 
 villa of Rosebank, on the Tweed, a little below Kelso. 
 Here Walter now took up his quarters, and here, during 
 all the rest of his youth, he found, whenever he chose, a 
 second home, in many respects more agreeable than his 
 own. His uncle, as letters to be subsequently quoted 
 will show, had nothing of his father s coldness for po 
 lite letters, but entered into all his favourite pursuits 
 with keen sympathy, and was consulted, from this time 
 forth, upon all his juvenile essays, both in prose and 
 verse. 
 
 He does not seem to have resumed attendance at Col 
 lege during the session of 1785-6 ; so that the Latin and 
 Greek classes, with that of Logic, were the only ones he 
 had passed through previous to the signing of his inden 
 tures as an apprentice to his father. The Memoir men 
 tions the ethical course of Dugald Stewart, as if he had 
 gone immediately from the logical professor (Mr. Bruce) 
 to that eminent lecturer; but he, in fact, attended Mr. 
 Stev/art four years afterwards, when beginning to con 
 sider himself as finally destined for the bar. 
 
 I shall only add to what he sets down on the subject 
 of his early academical studies, that in this, as in almos 
 every case, he appears to have underrated his own attain 
 ments. He had, indeed, no pretensions to the name of 
 
ACADEMICAL STUDIES. 159 
 
 an extensive, far less of an accurate, Latin scholar ; but 
 he could read, I believe, any Latin author, of any age, 
 so as to catch without difficulty his meaning; and al 
 though his favourite Latin poet, as well as historian, in 
 later days, was Buchanan, he had preserved, or subse 
 quently acquired, a strong relish for some others of more 
 ancient date. I may mention, in particular, Lucan and 
 Claudian. Of Greek, he does not exaggerate in saying 
 that he had forgotten even the alphabet ; for he was puz 
 zled with the words aoidoe and mwrnis, which he had occa 
 sion to introduce, from some authority on his table, into 
 his " Introduction to Popular Poetry," written in April 
 1830 ; and happening to be in the house with him at the 
 time, he sent for me to insert them for him in his MS. 
 Mr. Irving has informed us of the early period at which 
 he enjoyed the real Tasso and Ariosto. I presume he 
 had at least as soon as this enabled himself to read Gil 
 Bias in the original ; and, in all probability, we may 
 refer to the same time of his life, or one not much later, 
 his acquisition of as much Spanish as served for the 
 Guerras Civiles de Granada, Lazarillo de Tormes, and, 
 above all, Don Quixote. He read all these languages in 
 after life with about the same facility. I never but once 
 heard him attempt to speak any of them, and that was 
 when some of the courtiers of Charles X. came to Ab- 
 botsford, soon after that unfortunate prince took up his 
 residence for the second time at Holyroodhouse. Find 
 ing that one or two of these gentlemen could speak no 
 English at all, he made some efforts to amuse them in 
 their own language after the champagne had been pass 
 ing briskly round the table ; and I was amused next 
 morning with the expression of one of the party, who, 
 alluding to the sort of reading in which Sir Walter 
 
160 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 seemed to have chiefly occupied himself, said " Mon 
 Dieu ! comme il estropiait, entre deux vins, le Franais 
 du bon sire de Joinville ! " Of all these tongues, as of 
 German somewhat later, he acquired as much as was 
 needful for his own purposes, of which a critical study 
 of any foreign language made at no time any part. In 
 them he sought for incidents, and he found images ; but 
 for the treasures of diction he was content to dig on 
 British soil. He had all he wanted in the old wells 
 of " English undefiled," and the still living, though fast 
 shiinking, waters of that sister idiom which had not al 
 ways, as he flattered himself, deserved the name of a 
 dialect. 
 
 As may be said, I believe, with perfect truth of every 
 really great man, Scott was self-educated in every branch 
 of knowledge which he ever turned to account in the 
 works of his genius and he has himself told us that 
 his real studies were those lonely and desultory ones 
 of which he has given a copy in the first chapter of 
 Waverley, where the hero is represented as " driving 
 through the sea of books, like a vessel without pilot or 
 rudder ; " that is to say, obeying nothing but the strong 
 breath of native inclination : He had read, and stored 
 in a memory of uncommon tenacity, much curious, though 
 ill arranged and miscellaneous information. In English 
 literature, he was master of Shakspeare and Milton, of 
 our earlier dramatic authors, of many picturesque and 
 interesting passages from our old historical chronicles, 
 and was particularly well acquainted with Spenser, 
 Dray ton, and other poets, who have exercised them 
 selves on romantic fiction, of all themes the most fas 
 cinating to a youthful imagination, before the passions 
 have roused themselves, and demand poetry of a more sen> 
 
SELF-EDUCATION. 16 * 
 
 timental description"* I need not repeat his enumer 
 ation of other favourites, Pulci, the Decameron, Frois- 
 sart, Brantome, Delanone, and the chivalrous and ro 
 mantic lore of Spain. I have quoted a passage so well 
 known, only for the sake of the striking circumstance 
 by which it marks the very early date of these multifa- 
 ious studies. 
 
 * Waverley, vol. i. 
 
 TOL. I. 11 
 
162 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Illustrations continued Scoff s Apprenticeship to his Pather 
 Excursions to the Highlands, fyc. Debating Societies 
 Early Correspondence, fyc. Sfc. 
 
 1786-1790. 
 
 IN the Minute-books of the Society of Writers to the 
 Signet appears the following entry : " Edinburgh, 15th 
 May 1786. Compeared Walter Scott, and presented an 
 indenture, dated 31st March last, entered into between 
 him and Walter Scott, his son, for five years from the 
 date thereof, under a mutual penalty of 40 sterling. 
 
 An inauspicious step this might at first sight appear in 
 the early history of one so strongly predisposed for pur 
 suits wide as the antipodes asunder from the dry techni 
 calities of conveyancing ; but he himself, I believe, was 
 never heard, in his mature age, to express any regret 
 that it should have been taken ; and I am convinced for 
 my part that it was a fortunate one. It prevented him, 
 indeed, from passing with the usual regularity through 
 a long course of Scotch metaphysics ; but I extremely 
 doubt whether any discipline could ever have led him to 
 derive either pleasure or profit from studies of that order. 
 His apprenticeship left him time enough, as we shall find, 
 for continuing his application to the stores of poetry and 
 romance, and those old chroniclers, wl>o to the end were 
 
APPRENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHEK. 163 
 
 his darling historians. Indeed, if he had wanted any 
 new stimulus, the necessity of devoting certain hours of 
 every day to a routine of drudgery, however it might 
 have operated on a spirit more prone to earth, must have 
 tended to quicken his appetite for "the sweet bread 
 eaten in secret." But the duties which he had now to ful 
 fil were, in various ways, directly and positively beneficial 
 to the development both of his genius and his character. 
 It was in the discharge of his functions as a Writer s 
 Apprentice that he first penetrated into the Highlands, 
 and formed those friendships among the surviving heroes 
 of 1745, which laid the foundation for one great class of 
 his works. Even the less attractive parts of his new 
 vocation were calculated to give him a more complete 
 insight into the smaller workings of poor human nature, 
 than can ever perhaps be gathered from the experience 
 of the legal profession in its higher walk ; the etiquette 
 of the Bar in Scotland, as in England, being averse to 
 personal intercourse between the advocate and his client. 
 But finally, and I will say chiefly, it was to this prosaio 
 discipline that he owed those habits of steady, sober dili 
 gence, which few imaginative authors had ever before 
 exemplified and which, unless thus beaten into his 
 composition at a ductile stage, even he, in all probability, 
 could never have carried into the almost professional ex 
 ercise of some of the highest and most delicate facultie 
 of the human mind. He speaks, in not the least remark 
 able passage of the preceding Memoir, as if constitutional 
 indolence had been his portion in common with all the 
 members of his father s family. When Gifford, in a dis 
 pute with Jacob Bryant, quoted Doctor Johnson s own 
 confession that he knew little Greek, Bryant answered, 
 " Yes, young man ; but how shall we know what Johnson 
 
164 LTFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 would have called much Greek?" and Gifford has re 
 corded the deep impression which this hint left on hia 
 own mind. What Scott would have called constitutional 
 diligence, I know not; but surely, if indolence of any 
 kind had been inherent in his nature, even the triumph 
 of Socrates was not more signal than his. 
 
 It will be, by some of my friends, considered as trivial 
 to remark on such a circumstance but the reader who 
 is unacquainted with the professional habits of the Scotch 
 lawyers, may as well be told that the Writer s Appren 
 tice receives a certain allowance in money for every page 
 he transcribes ; and that, as in those days the greater 
 part of the business, even of the supreme courts, was 
 carried on by means of written papers, a ready penman, 
 in a well-employed chamber, could earn in this way 
 enough, at all events, to make a handsome addition to 
 the pocket-money which was likely to be thought suitable 
 for a youth of fifteen by such a man as the elder Scott. 
 The allowance being, I believe, threepence for every 
 page containing a certain fixed number of words, when 
 Walter had finished, as he tells us he occasionally did, 
 120 pages within twenty-four hours, his fee would 
 amount to thirty shillings ; and in his early letters I find 
 him more than once congratulating himself on having 
 been, by some such exertion, enabled to purchase a book, 
 or a coin, otherwise . beyond his reach. . A schoolfellow, 
 who was now, like himself, a writer s apprentice, recol- 
 lects the eagerness with which he thus made himself 
 master of Evans s Ballads, shortly after their publication 
 and another of them, already often referred to, remem 
 bers, in particular, his rapture with Mickle s Cumnor 
 Hall, which first appeared in that collection. " After the 
 labours of the day were over," says Mr. Irving, " we 
 
APPRENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHER. 165 
 
 often walked in the Meadows " (a large field inter 
 sected by formal alleys of old trees, adjoining George s 
 Square) " especially in the moonlight nights ; and he 
 seemed never weary of repeating the first stanza 
 
 The dews of summer night did fall 
 The Moon, sweet regent of the sky, 
 Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall, 
 And many an oak that grew thereby. " 
 
 I have thought it worth while to preserve these remi 
 niscences of his companions at the time, though he has 
 himself stated the circumstance in his Preface to Kenil- 
 worth. " There is a period in youth," he there says, 
 * when the mere power of numbers has a more strong 
 effect on ear and imagination than in after life. At this 
 season of immature taste, the author was greatly de 
 lighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne. The 
 first stanza of Cumnor Hall especially had a peculiar 
 enchantment for his youthful ear the force of which 
 is not yet (1829) entirely spent." Thus that favourite 
 elegy, after having dwelt on his memory and imagination 
 for forty years, suggested the subject of one of his noblest 
 romances. 
 
 It is affirmed by a preceding biographer, on the au 
 thority of one of these brother-apprentices, that about 
 this period Scott showed him a MS. poem on the Con 
 quest of Granada, in four books, each amounting to about 
 400 lines, which, soon after it was finished, he committed 
 to the flames.* As he states in his Essay on the Imita 
 tion of Popular Poetry, that," for ten years previous to 
 1796, when his first translation from the German was 
 executed, he had written no verses " except an occa 
 sional sonnet to his mistress s eyebrow," I presume this 
 * Life of Scott, by Mr. Allan, p. 53. 
 
166 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Conquest of Granada, the fruit of his study of the Cfuer- 
 ras Civiles, must be assigned to the summer of 1786 
 or, making allowance for trivial inaccuracy, to the next 
 year at latest. It was probably composed in imitation of 
 Mickle s Lusiad : at ah 1 events, we have a very distinct 
 statement, that he made no attempts in the manner of the 
 old minstrels, early as his admiration for them had been 
 until the period of his acquaintance with Burger. Thus 
 with him, as with most others, genius had hazarded many 
 a random effort ere it discovered the true key-note. 
 Long had 
 
 Amid the strings his fingers stray d, 
 And an uncertain warbling made, 
 
 before the measure wild was caught, and 
 
 In varying cadence, soft or strong, 
 He swept the sounding chords along. 
 
 His youthful admiration of Langhorne has been ren- 
 ilered memorable by his own record of his first and only 
 interview with his great predecessor, Robert Burns. 
 Although the letter in which he narrates this incident, 
 addressed to myself in 1827, when I was writing a short 
 biography of that poet, has been often reprinted, it is too 
 important for my present purpose to be omitted here. 
 
 " As for Burns," he writes, " I may truly say, Virgil 
 \um vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, whei 
 he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling 
 enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would 
 have given the world to know him ; but I had very little 
 acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with 
 the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most 
 frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a 
 clerk of my father s. He knew Burns, and promised to 
 ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity 
 
KOBERT BURNS. 1786-7. 167 
 
 lo keep his word, otherwise I might have seen more of 
 this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one day 
 at the late venerable Professor Fergusson s, where there 
 were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among 
 whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. 
 Of course we youngsters sate silent, looked and listened. 
 The only thing I remember which was remarkable in 
 Burns manner, was the effect produced upon him by a 
 print of Bunbury s, representing a soldier lying dead on 
 the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on the 
 other his widow, with a child in her arms. These lines 
 were written beneath, 
 
 Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden s plain, 
 Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain ; 
 Bent o er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
 The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, 
 Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
 The child of misery baptized in tears. 
 
 Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the 
 ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed 
 tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced 
 that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a 
 half-forgotten poem of Langhorne s, called by the un 
 promising title of The Justice of the Peace. I whis 
 pered my information to a friend present, who mentioned 
 it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, 
 which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still 
 recollect, with very great pleasure. 
 
 " His person was strong and robust : his manners 
 rastic, not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and 
 simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from 
 one s knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His fea 
 tures are represented in Mr. Nasmyth s picture, but to 
 
168 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen 
 in perspective. I think his countenance was more mas 
 sive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have 
 taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very 
 sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school i. e. 
 none of your modern agriculturists, who keep labourers 
 for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman who held hia 
 own plough. There was a strong expression of sense 
 and shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I 
 think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. 
 It was large, and of a dark cast, and glowed (I say liter 
 ally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I 
 never saw such another eye in a human head, though I 
 have seen the most distinguished men in my time. His 
 conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the 
 slightest presumption. Among the men who were the 
 most learned of their time and country, he expressed 
 himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intru 
 sive forwardness ; and when he differed in opinion, he did 
 not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time 
 with modesty. I do not remember any part of hfe con 
 versation distinctly enough to be quoted, nor did I ever 
 see him again, except in the street, where he did not 
 recognise me, as I could not expect he should. He was 
 much caressed in Edinburgh, but (considering what liter 
 ary emoluments have been since his day) the efforts made 
 for his relief were extremely trifling. 
 
 "I remember on this occasion I mention, I thought 
 Burns acquaintance with English poetry was rather 
 limited, and also, that having twenty times the abilities 
 of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them 
 with too much humility as his models ; there was doubt* 
 less national predilection in his estimate." 
 
KOBERT BURNS. 169 
 
 I need not remark on the extent of knowledge, and 
 justness of taste, exemplified in this early measurement 
 of Burns, both as a student of English literature and as 
 a Scottish poet. The print, over which Scott saw Bums 
 shed tears, is still in the possession of Dr. Fergusson s 
 family, and I had often heard him tell the story, in the 
 room where the precious relic hangs, before I requested 
 him to set it down in writing how little anticipating the 
 use to which I should ultimately apply it ! 
 
 His intimacy with Adam (now Sir Adam Fergusson) 
 was thus his first means of introduction to the higher 
 literary society of Edinburgh ; and it was very probably 
 to that connexion that he owed, among the rest, his ac 
 quaintance with the blind poet Blacklock, whom Johnson, 
 twelve years earlier, " beheld with reverence." We have 
 seen, however, that the venerable author of Douglas was 
 a friend of his own parents, and had noticed him even 
 in his infancy at Bath. John Home now inhabited a 
 villa at no great distance from Edinburgh, and there, 
 all through his young days, Scott was a frequent guest. 
 Nor must it be forgotten that his uncle, Dr. Rutherford, 
 inherited much of the general accomplishments, as well 
 as the professional reputation of his father and that it 
 was beneath that roof he saw, several years before this, 
 Dr. Cartwright, then in the enjoyment of some fame as a 
 poet In this family, indeed, he had more than one kind 
 ind strenuous encourager of his early literary tastes, as 
 will be shown abundantly when we reach certain relics 
 of his correspondence with his mother s sister. Dr. 
 Rutherford s good-natured remonstrances with him, as 
 a boy, for reading at breakfast, are well remembered, 
 and will remind my reader of a similar trait in the 
 juvenile manners both of Burns and Byron ; nor was 
 
170 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 this habit entirely laid aside even in Scott s advanced 
 age. 
 
 If he is quite accurate in referring his first acquaint 
 ance with the Highlands to his fifteenth year, this inci 
 dent also belongs to the first season of his apprenticeship. 
 His father had, among a rather numerous list of Highland 
 clients, Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle, an enthusi 
 astic Jacobite, who had survived to recount, in secure 
 and vigorous old age, his active experiences in the insur 
 rections both of 1715 and 1745. He had, it appears, 
 attracted Walter s attention and admiration at a very 
 early date ; for he speaks of having " seen him in arms " 
 and heard him "exult in the prospect of drawing his 
 claymore once more before he died," when Paul Jones 
 threatened a descent on Edinburgh ; which transaction 
 occurred in September 1779. Invernahyle, as Scott 
 adds, was the only person who seemed to have retained 
 possession of his cool senses at the period of that dis 
 graceful alarm, and offered the magistrates to collect as 
 many Highlanders as would suffice for cutting off any 
 part of the pirate s crew that might venture, in quest of 
 plunder, into a city full of high houses and narrow lanes, 
 and every way well calculated for defence. The eager 
 delight with which the young apprentice now listened to 
 the tales of this fine old man s early days, produced an 
 invitation to his residence among the mountains ; and to 
 his excursion he probably devoted the few weeks of an 
 autumnal vacation whether in 1786 or 1787, it is of 
 jo great consequence to ascertain. 
 
 In the Introduction to one of his Novels he has pre 
 served a vivid picture of his sensations when the valt 
 of Perth first burst on his view, in the course of his prog, 
 to Invernahyle, and the description has made class*- 
 
INVEKNAHYLE. 171 
 
 cal ground of the Wicks of Baiglie, the spot from which 
 that beautiful landscape was surveyed. " Childish won 
 der, indeed," he says,. " was an ingredient in my delight, 
 for I was not above fifteen years old, and as this had 
 been the first excursion which I was permitted to make 
 on a pony of my own, I also experienced the glow of in 
 dependence, mingled with that degree of anxiety which 
 the most conceited boy feels when he is first abandoned 
 to his own undirected counsels. I recollect pulling up 
 the reins, without meaning to do so, and gazing on the 
 scene before me as if I had been afraid it would shift, 
 like those in a theatre, before I could distinctly observe 
 its different parts, or convince myself that what I saw 
 was real. Since that hour, the recollection of that inimi 
 table landscape has possessed the strongest influence over 
 my mind, and retained its place as a memorable thing, 
 while much that was influential on my own fortunes has 
 fled from my recollection." So speaks the poet ; and 
 vho will not recognise his habitual modesty, in thus 
 undervaluing, as uninfluential in comparison with some 
 affair of worldly business, the ineffaceable impression 
 thus stamped on the glowing imagination of his boy 
 hood? 
 
 I need not quote the numerous passages scattered over 
 his writings, both early and late, in which he dwells with 
 fond affection on the chivalrous character of Invernahyle 
 the delight with which he heard the veteran describe 
 his broadsword duel with Rob Roy his campaigns with 
 Mar and Charles Edward and his long seclusion (as 
 pictured in the story of Bradwardine) within a rocky 
 cave situated not far from his own house, while it was 
 garrisoned by a party of English soldiers, after the battle 
 tf Culloden. Here, too, still survived the trusty henchman 
 
172 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 who had attended the chieftain in many a bloody field 
 and perilous escape, the same " grim-looking old High 
 lander " who was in the act of cutting down Colonel 
 Whitefoord with his Lochaber axe at Prestonpans when 
 his master arrested the blow an incident to which In- 
 vernahyle owed his life, and we are indebted for another 
 of the most striking pages in Waverley. 
 
 I have often heard Scott mention some curious partic 
 ulars of his first visit to the remote fastness of one of 
 these Highland friends ; but whether he told the story of 
 Invernahyle, or of one of his own relations of the Clan 
 Campbell, I do not recollect ; I rather think the latter 
 was the case. On reaching the brow of a bleak emi 
 nence overhanging the primitive tower and its tiny patch 
 of cultivated ground, he found his host and three sons, 
 and perhaps half-a-dozen attendant gillies, all stretched 
 half asleep in their tartans upon the heath, with guns and 
 dogs, and a profusion of game about them ; while in the 
 courtyard, far below, appeared a company of women, 
 actively engaged in loading a cart with manure. The 
 stranger was not a little astonished when he discovered, 
 on descending from the height, that among these indus 
 trious females were the laird s own lady, and two or three 
 of her daughters ; but they seemed quite unconscious of 
 laving been detected in an occupation unsuitable to their 
 rank retired presently to their "bowers," and when 
 they re -appeared in other dresses, retained no traces of 
 their morning s work, except complexions glowing with a 
 radiant freshness, for one evening of which many a high 
 bred beauty would have bartered half her diamonds. 
 He found the young ladies not ill informed, and exceed 
 ingly agreeable ; and the song and the dance seemed tc 
 form the invariable termination of their busy days. I 
 
HIGHLAND EXCURSIONS. 173 
 
 must not forget his admiration at the principal article of 
 this laird s first course ; namely, a gigantic haggis, borne 
 into the hall in a wicker basket by two half-naked Celts, 
 while the piper strutted fiercely behind them, blowing a 
 tempest of dissonance. 
 
 These Highland visits were repeated almost every 
 summer for several successive years, and perhaps even 
 the first of them was in some degree connected with his 
 professional business. At all events, it was to his allotted 
 task of enforcing the execution of a legal instrument 
 against some Maclarens, refractory tenants of Stewart of 
 Appin, brother-in-law to Invernahyle, that Scott owed 
 his introduction to the scenery of the Lady of the Lake. 
 " An escort of a sergeant and six men," he says, " was 
 obtained from a Highland regiment lying in Stirling, and 
 the author, then a writer s apprentice, equivalent to the 
 honourable situation of an attorney s clerk, was invested 
 with the superintendence of the expedition, with direc 
 tions to see that the messenger discharged his duty fully, 
 and that the gallant sergeant did not exceed his part 
 by committing violence or plunder. And thus it hap 
 pened, oddly enough, that the author first entered the 
 romantic scenery of Loch Katrine, of which he may 
 perhaps say he has somewhat extended the reputa 
 tion, riding in all the dignity of danger, with a front 
 and rear guard, and loaded arms. The sergeant was ab 
 solutely a Highland Sergeant Kite, full of stories of Rob 
 Roy and of himself, and a very good companion. We 
 experienced no interruption whatever, and when we 
 came to Invernenty, found the house deserted. We took 
 up our quarters for the night, and used some of the vict 
 uals which we found tbere. The Maclarens, who prob 
 ably had never thought of any serious opposition, went 
 
174 LII E OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to America, where, having had some slight share in re 
 moving them from their paupera regna, I sincerely hope 
 they prospered." * 
 
 That he entered with ready zeal into such professional 
 business as inferred Highland expeditions with comrades 
 who had known Rob Roy, no one will think strange ; but 
 more than one of his biographers allege, that in the ordi 
 nary indoor fagging of the chamber in George s Square, 
 he was always an unwilling, and rarely an efficient as 
 sistant. Their addition, that he often played chess with 
 one of his companions in the office, and had to conceal 
 the board with precipitation when the old gentleman s 
 footsteps were heard on the staircase, is, I do not doubt, 
 true ; and we may remember along with it his own insin 
 uation that his father was sometimes poring in his secret 
 nook over Spottiswoode or Wodrow, when his appren 
 tices supposed him to he deep in Dirleton s Doubts, or 
 Stair s decisions. But the Memoir of 1808, so candid 
 indeed more than candid as to many juvenile irregu 
 larities, contains no confession that supports the broad 
 assertion to which I have alluded ; nor can I easily be 
 lieve, that with his affection for his father, and that sense 
 of duty which seems to have been inherent in his char 
 acter, and, lastly, with the evidence of a most severe 
 training in industry which the habits of his after-life pre 
 sented, it is at all deserving of serious acceptation. His 
 nere handwriting, indeed, continued, during the whole of 
 his prime, to afford most striking and irresistible proof 
 bow completely he must have submitted himself for some 
 very considerable period to the mechanical discipline of 
 his father s office. It spoke to months after months of thia 
 humble toil, as distinctly as the illegible scrawl of Lord 
 * Introduction to Rob Roy. 
 
APPRENTICESHIP. 1?0 
 
 Byron did to his self-mastership from the hour that he 
 left Harrow. There are some little technical tricks, such 
 as no gentleman who has not been subjected to a similar 
 regimen ever can fall into, which he practised invariably 
 while composing his poetry, which appear not unfre- 
 quently on the MSS. of his best novels, and which now 
 and then dropt instinctively from his pen, even in the 
 private letters and diaries of his closing years. I allude 
 particularly to a sort of flourish at the bottom of the 
 page, originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a 
 safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between 
 the legitimate text and the attesting signature. He was 
 quite sensible that this ornament might as well be dis 
 pensed with ; and his family often heard him mutter, 
 after involuntarily performing it, "There goes the old 
 shop again ! " 
 
 I dwell on this matter, because it was always his fa 
 vourite tenet, in contradiction to what he called the cant 
 of sonnetteers, that there is no necessary connexion be 
 tween genius and an aversion or contempt for any of the 
 common duties of life ; he thought, on the contrary, that 
 to spend some fair portion of every day in any matter of 
 fact occupation, is good for the higher faculties them 
 selves hi the upshot. In a word, from beginning to end, 
 he piqued himself on being a man of business ; and did 
 with one sad and memorable exception whatever 
 the ordinary course of things threw in his way, in ex 
 actly the business-like fashion which might have been ex- 
 3cted from the son of a thoroughbred old Clerk to the 
 Signet, who had never deserted his father s profession. 
 
 In the winter of 1788, however, his apprentice habits 
 were exposed to a new danger; and from that date I 
 6elieve them to have undergone a considerable change 
 
176 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 He was then sent to attend the lectures of the Professor 
 of Civil Law in the University, this course forming part 
 of the usual professional education of Writers to the 
 Signet, as well as of Advocates. For some time his 
 companions, when in Edinburgh, had been chiefly, almost 
 solely, his brother apprentices and the clerks in his 
 father s office. He had latterly seen comparatively little 
 even of the better of his old High School friends, such 
 as Fergusson and Irving for though both of these also 
 were writer s apprentices, they had been indentured to 
 other masters, and each had naturally formed new inti 
 macies within his own chamber. The Civil Law class 
 brought him again into daily contact with both Irving 
 and Fergusson, as well as others of his earlier acquaint 
 ance of the higher ranks ; but it also led him into the 
 society of some young gentlemen previously unknown to 
 him, who had from the outset been destined for the Bar, 
 and whose conversation, tinctured with certain prejudices 
 natural to scions of what he calls in Redgauntlet the 
 Scottish noblesse de la robe, soon banished from his mind 
 every thought of ultimately adhering to the secondary 
 branch of the law. He found these future barristers 
 cultivating general literature, without the least apprehen 
 sion that such elegant pursuits could be regarded by any 
 one as interfering with the proper studies of their pro 
 fessional career; justly believing, on the contrary, that 
 for the higher class of forensic exertion some acquaint 
 ance with almost every branch of science and letters is 
 a necessary preparative. He contrasted their liberal as 
 pirations, and the encouragement which these received 
 in their domestic circles, with the narrower views which 
 predominated in his own home ; and resolved to gratify 
 his ambition by adopting a most precarious walk in life 
 
WILLIAM CLERK OF ELDIN. 177 
 
 instead oi adhering to that in which he might have 
 counted with perfect security on the early attainment 
 of pecuniary independence. This resolution appears to 
 have been foreseen by his father, long before it was an 
 nounced in terms ; and the handsome manner in which 
 the old gentleman conducted himself upon the occasion, 
 is remembered with dutiful gratitude in the preceding 
 autobiography. 
 
 The most important of these new alliances was the 
 intimate friendship which he now formed with Mr. John 
 Irving s near relation, William Clerk of Eldin, of whose 
 powerful talents and extensive accomplishments we shall 
 hereafter meet with many enthusiastic notices. It was 
 in company with this gentleman that he entered the 
 debating societies described in his Memoir ; through him 
 he soon became linked in the closest intimacy with 
 George Cranstoun (now Lord Corehouse), George Aber- 
 cromby (now Lord Abercromby), John James Edmon- 
 stone * of Newton (whose mother was sister of Sir Ralph 
 Abercromby), Patrick Murray of Simprim, Sir Patrick 
 Murray of Ochtertyre, and a group of other young men, 
 all high in birth and connexion, and all remarkable in 
 early life for the qualities which afterwards led them to 
 eminent station, or adorned it. The introduction to their 
 several families is alluded to by Scott as having opened 
 to him abundantly certain advantages, which no one 
 could have been more qualified to improve, but from 
 which he had hitherto been in great measure debarred 
 in consequence of the retired habits of his parents. 
 
 Mr. Clerk says, that he had been struck from the first 
 day he entered the Civil Law class-room with something 
 add and remarkable in Scott s appearance : but what this 
 * Mr. Edmonstone died 19th April, 1840. 
 
 VOL. I. 12 
 
178 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 something was, he cannot now recall, but he remembers 
 telling his companion some time afterwards, that he 
 thought he looked like a hautboy player. Scott was 
 amused with this notion, as he had never touched a 
 musical instrument of any kind ; but I fancy his friend 
 had been watching a certain noticeable but altogether in 
 describable play of the upper lip when in an abstracted 
 mood. He rallied Walter, he says, during one of their 
 first evening walks together, on the slovenliness of his 
 dress : he wore a pair of corduroy breeches, much glazed 
 by the rubbing of his staff, which he immediately flour 
 ished and said, " they be good enough for drinking in 
 let us go and have some oysters in the Covenant Close." 
 
 Convivial habits were then indulged among the young 
 men of Edinburgh, whether students of law, solicitors, or 
 barristers, to an extent now happily unknown ; and this 
 anecdote recalls some striking hints on that subject which 
 occur in Scott s brief autobiography. That he partook 
 profusely in the juvenile bacchanalia of that day, and 
 continued to take a plentiful share in such jollities down 
 to the time of his marriage, are facts worthy of being 
 distinctly stated ; for no man in mature life was more 
 habitually averse to every sort of intemperance. He 
 could, when I first knew him, swallow a great quantity 
 of wine without being at all visibly disordered by it ; but 
 nothing short of some very particular occasion could ever 
 induce him to put this strength of head to a trial ; and I 
 have heard him many times utter words which no one in 
 the days of his youthful temptation can be the worse for 
 remembering : " Depend upon it, of all vices drinking 
 is the most incompatible with greatness." 
 
 The liveliness of his conversation the strange vari- 
 ity of his knowledge and above all, perhaps, the por 
 
SEA EXCURSIONS. 170 
 
 tentous tenacity of his memory riveted more and more 
 Clerk s attention, and commanded the wonder of all his 
 new allies ; but of these extraordinary gifts Scott him 
 self appeared to be little conscious ; or at least he im 
 pressed them all as attaching infinitely greater conse 
 quence (exactly as had been the case with him in the 
 days of the Cowgate Port and the kittle nine-steps) to 
 feats of personal agility and prowess. William Clerk s 
 brother, James, a midshipman in the navy, happened to 
 come home from a cruise in the Mediterranean shortly 
 after this acquaintance began, and Scott and the sailor 
 became almost at sight " sworn brothers." In order to 
 complete his time under the late Sir Alexander Coch- 
 rane, who was then on the Leith station, James Clerk 
 obtained the command of a lugger, and the young friends 
 often made little excursions to sea with him. " The first 
 time Scott dined on board," says William Clerk, "we 
 met before embarking at a tavern in Leith it was a 
 large party, mostly midshipmen, and strangers to him, 
 and our host introducing his landsmen guests said, My 
 brother you know, gentlemen ; as for Mr. Scott, mayhap 
 you may take him for a poor lamiter, but he is the first 
 to begin a row, and the last to end it ; which eulogium 
 he confirmed with some of the expletives of Tom Pipes." * 
 When, many years afterwards, Clerk read The Pirate, he 
 was startled by the resurrection of a hundred traits of 
 the table-talk of this lugger ; but the author has since 
 traced some of the most striking passages in that novel to 
 his recollection of the almost childish period when he 
 
 * "Dinna steer him," saya Hobbie Elliot; "ye may think Elshie s 
 but a lamiter, but I warrant ye, grippie for grippie, he ll gar the blue 
 blood spin frae your nails his hand s like a smi^ s vice." Elact 
 Dwarf Waverley Novels, vol. ix. Edition 1829. 
 
180 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 hung on his own brother Robert s stories about Rodney s 
 battles and the haunted keys of the West Indies. 
 
 One morning Scott called on Clerk, and, exhibiting his 
 stick all cut and marked, told him he had been attacked 
 in the streets the night before by three fellows, against 
 whom he had defended himself for an hour. " By Shrews 
 bury clock ? " said his friend. " No," said Scott, smiling, 
 " by the Tron." But thenceforth, adds Mr. Clerk, and 
 for twenty years after, he called his walking stick by the 
 name of " Shrewsbury." 
 
 ^ With these comrades Scott now resumed, and pushed 
 to a much greater extent, his early habits of wandering 
 over the country in quest of castles and other remains of 
 antiquity, his passion for which derived a new impulse 
 from the conversation of the celebrated John Clerk of 
 Eldin,* the father of his friend. William Clerk well re 
 members his father telling a story which was introduced 
 in due time in The Antiquary. While he was visiting 
 his grandfather, Sir John Clerk, at Dumcrieff, in Dum 
 fries-shire, many years before this time, the old Baronet 
 carried some English virtuosos to see a supposed Roman 
 camp ; and on his exclaiming at a particular spot, " This 
 I take to have been the Praetorium," a herdsman, who 
 stood by, answered, " Prsetorium here Prsetorium there, 
 I made it wi a flaughter spade." f Many traits of the 
 elder Clerk were, his son has no doubt, embroidered on 
 the character of George Constable in the composition of 
 Jonathan Oldbuck. The old gentleman s enthusiasm for 
 antiquities was often played on by these young friends, 
 but more effectually by his eldest son, John Clerk (Lord 
 Eldin), who, having a great genius for art, used to amuse 
 
 * Author of the famous Essay on dividing the Line in Sea-fights. 
 f Compare "The Antiquary," vol. i. 
 
WILLIAM CLEKK, ETC. 181 
 
 himself with manufacturing mutilated heads, which, after 
 being buried for a convenient time in the ground, were 
 accidentally discovered in some fortunate hour, and re 
 ceived by the laird with great honour as valuable acces 
 sions to his museum.* 
 
 On a fishing excursion to a loch near Howgate, among 
 the Moorfoot Hills, Scott, Clerk, Irving, and Abercromby 
 spent the night at a little public-house kept by one Mrs 
 Margaret Dods. When St. Ronan s Well was published, 
 Clerk, meeting Scott in the street, observed, " That s an 
 odd name ; surely I have met with it somewhere before." 
 Scott smiled, said, " Don t you remember Howgate ? " 
 and passed on. The name alone, however, was taken 
 from the Howgate hostess. 
 
 At one of their drinking bouts of those days, William 
 Clerk, Sir P. Murray, Edmonstone, and Abercromby, 
 being of the party, the sitting was prolonged to a very 
 late hour, and Scott fell asleep. When he awoke, his 
 friends succeeded in convincing him that he had sung a 
 song in the course of the evening, and sung it extremely 
 well. How must these gentlemen have chuckled when 
 they read Frank Osbaldi stone s account of his revels in 
 the old hall ! " It has even been reported by maligners 
 that I sung a song while under this vinous influence ; but 
 as I remember nothing of it, and never attempted to turn 
 a tune in all my life, either before or since, I would 
 willingly hope there is no actual foundation for the 
 calumny." f 
 
 * The most remarkable of these antique heads was so highly appre 
 ciated by another distinguished connoisseur, the late Earl of Buchan, 
 that he carried it off from Mr. Clerk s mnseum, and presented it to the 
 Scottish Society of Antiquaries in whose collection, no doubt, it may 
 Mill be admired. 
 
 f Rob Roy Waverley Novels, vol. vii. 
 
182 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 On one of his first long walks with Clerk and others 
 of the same set, their pace, being about four miles an 
 hour, was found rather too much for Scott, and he offered 
 to contract for three, which measure was thenceforth 
 considered as the legal one. At this rate they often con 
 tinued to wander from five in the morning till eight in 
 the evening, halting for such refreshment at mid-day aa 
 any village alehouse might afford. On many occasions, 
 however, they had stretched so far into the country, that 
 they were obliged to be absent from home all night ; and 
 though great was the alarm which the first occurrence of 
 this sort created in George s Square, the family soon got 
 accustomed to such things, and little notice was taken, 
 even though Walter remained away for the better part 
 of a week. I have heard him laugh heartily over the 
 recollections of one protracted excursion, towards the 
 close of which the party found themselves a long day s 
 walk thirty miles, I think from Edinburgh, without 
 a single sixpence left among them. "We were put to 
 our shifts," said he ; " but we asked every now and then 
 at a cottage-door for a drink of water ; and one or two 
 of the good-wives, observing our worn-out looks, brought 
 forth milk in place of water so with that, and hips and 
 *iaws, we came in little the worse." His father me* him 
 with some impatient questions as to what he had jeen 
 living on so long, for the old man well knew how scantily 
 his pocket was supplied. " Pretty much like the young 
 ravens," answered he ; "I only wished I had been as 
 good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in 
 The Vicar of Wakefield. If I had his art, I should like 
 nothing better than to tramp like him from cottage to 
 cottage over the world." "I doubt," said the grave 
 Clerk to the Signet, " I greatly doubt, sir, you were born 
 
DEBATING CLUBS. 183 
 
 for nae better than a gangrel scrape gut" Some allu 
 sions to reproaches of this kind occur in the " Memoir ; " 
 and we shall find others in letters subsequent to his 
 admission at the bar.* 
 
 The debating club formed among these young friends 
 at this era of their studies, was called The Literary 
 Society ; and is not to be confounded with the more cele 
 brated Speculative Society, which Scott did not join for 
 two years later. At the Literary he spoke frequently, 
 and very amusingly and sensibly, but was not at all 
 numbered among the most brilliant members. He had a 
 world of knowledge to produce ; but he had not acquired 
 the art of arranging it to the best advantage in a con 
 tinued address ; nor, indeed, did he ever, I think, except 
 under the influence of strong personal feeling, even when 
 years and fame had given him full confidence in himself, 
 exhibit upon any occasion the powers of oral eloquence. 
 His antiquarian information, however, supplied many an 
 interesting feature in these evenings of discussion. He 
 had already dabbled in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse 
 Sagas : in his Essay on Imitations of Popular Poetry, he 
 alludes to these studies as having facilitated his acquisi 
 tion of German : But he was deep especially in Fordun 
 and Wyntoun, and all the Scotch chronicles; and his 
 friends rewarded him by the honourable title of Duns 
 Scotus. 
 
 A smaller society, formed with less ambitious views, 
 
 * After the cautious father had had further opportunity of observing 
 his son s proceedings, his wife happened one night to express some 
 anxiety on thi protracted absence of Walter and his brother Thomas. 
 " My dear Annie," said the old man, " Tom is with Walter this time; 
 and have you not yet perceived that wherever Walter goes, he is pretty 
 jure to find his bread buttered on both sides? " From Mrs. 
 Scott. - 1839. 
 
184 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 originated in a ride to Penny cuik, the seat of the head 
 of Mr. Clerk s family, whose elegant hospitalities are 
 recorded in the Memoir. This was called, by way of 
 excellence, The Club, and I believe it is continued under 
 the same name to this day. Here, too, Walter had hia 
 sobriquet ; and his corduroy breeches, I presume, not 
 being as yet worn out it was Colonel Grogg.* 
 
 Meantime he had not broken up his connexion with 
 Rosebank ; he appears to have spent several weeks in 
 the autumn, both of 1788 and 1789, under his uncle s 
 roof; and it was, I think, of his journey thither, in the 
 last named year, that he used to tell an anecdote, which I 
 shall here set down how shorn, alas ! of all the acces 
 saries that gave it life when he recited it. Calling, before 
 he set out, on one of the ancient spinsters of his family, 
 
 * " The members of The Club used to meet on Friday evenings in a 
 room in Carrubber s Close, from which some of them usually adjourned 
 to sup at an oyster tavern in the same neighbourhood. In after life, 
 those of them who chanced to be in Edinburgh dined together twice 
 every year, at the close of the winter and summer sessions of the Law 
 Courts ; and during thirty years, Sir Walter was very rarely absent on 
 these occasions. It was also a rule, that when any member received an 
 appointment or promotion, he should give a dinner to his old associ 
 ates ; and they had accordingly two such dinners from him one whec 
 he became Sheriff of Selkirkshire, and another when he was named 
 Clerk of Session. The original members were, in number, nineteen 
 viz. Sir Walter Scott, Mr. William Clerk, Sir A. Fergusson, Mr. James 
 Edmonstone, Mr. George Abercromby (Lord Abercromby), Mr. D. 
 Boyle (now Lord Justice-Clerk), Mr. James Glassford (Advocate), Mr. 
 James Fergusson (Clerk of Session), Mr. David Monypenny (Lord 
 Pitmilly), Mr. Eobert Davidson (Professor of Law at Glasgow), Sir 
 William Rae, Bart., Sir Patrick Murray, Bart., David Douglas (Lord 
 Reston), Mr. Murray of Simprin, Mr. Monteith of Closeburn, Mr. 
 Archibald Miller (son of Professor Miller), Baron Reden, a Hanoverian; 
 the Honourable Thomas Douglas, afterwards Earl of Selkirk, and 
 John Irving. Except the five whose names are underlined, these origi 
 nal members are all still alive." Letter from Mr. Irving, dated 29tf 
 September 1836. 
 
ROSEBANK 1788. 185 
 
 to enquire if she had any message for Kelso, she retired, 
 and presently placed in his hands a packet of some bulk 
 and weight, which required, she said, very particular 
 attention. He took it without examining the address, 
 and carried it in his pocket next day, not at all to the 
 lightening of a forty miles ride in August. On his 
 rrival, it turned out to contain one of the old lady s 
 pattens, sealed up for a particular cobbler in Kelso, and 
 accompanied with fourpence to pay for mending it, and 
 special directions that it might be brought back to her by 
 the same economical conveyance. 
 
 It will be seen from the following letter, the earliest 
 of Scott s writing that has fallen into my hands, that pro 
 fessional business had some share in this excursion to 
 Kelso ; but I consider with more interest the brief allu 
 sion to a day at Sandy-Knowe : 
 
 " To Mrs. Scott, George Square, Edinburgh. 
 " (With a parcel) 
 
 "Rosebank, 5th Sept. 1788. 
 
 " Dear Mother, I was favoured with your letter, and send 
 you Anne s stockings along with this : I would have sent them 
 last week, but had some expectations of a private opportunity. 
 I have been very happy for this fortnight ; we have some plan 
 or other for every day. Last week my uncle, my cousin Wil 
 liam,* and I, rode to Smailholm, and from thence walked to 
 feandy-Knowe Craigs, where we spent the whole day, and 
 made a very hearty dinner by the side of the Orderlaw Well, 
 on some cold beef and bread and cheese : we had also a small 
 case-bottle of rum to make grog with, which we drank to the 
 Sandy-Knowe bairns, and all their connexions. This jaunt 
 gave me much pleasure, and had I time, I would give you a 
 more full account of it. 
 
 * The present Laird of Raeburn. 
 
186 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " The fishing has been hitherto but indifferent, and I fear I 
 shall not be able to accomplish my promise with regard to the 
 wild ducks. I was out on Friday, and only saw three. I may 
 probably, however, send you a hare, as my uncle has got a 
 present of two greyhounds from Sir H. MacDougall, and as he 
 has a licence, only waits till the corn is off the ground to com 
 mence coursing. Be it known to you, however, I am not alto 
 gether employed in amusements, for I have got two or three 
 clients besides my uncle, and am busy drawing tacks and con 
 tracts, not, however, of marriage. I am in a fair way of 
 making money, if I stay here long. 
 
 " Here I have written a pretty long letter, and nothing in 
 it ; but you know writing to one s friends is the next thing to 
 seeing them. My love to my father and the boys, from, Dear 
 Mother, your dutiful and affectionate son, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT/ 
 
 It appears from James Ballantyne s memoranda^ that 
 having been very early bound apprentice to a solicitor in 
 Kelso, he had no intercourse with Scott during the three 
 or four years that followed their companionship at the 
 school of Lancelot Whale ; but Ballantyne was now sent 
 to spend a winter in Edinburgh, for the completion of 
 his professional education, and in the course of his at 
 tendance on the Scots-law class, became a member of a 
 young Teviotdale club, where Walter Scott seldom failed 
 to make his appearance. They supped together, it 
 seems, once a-month ; and here, as in the associations 
 above mentioned, good fellowship was often pushed be 
 yond the limits of modern indulgence. The strict inti 
 macy between Scott and Ballantyne was not at this time 
 renewed their avocations prevented it, but the lat 
 ter was no uninterested observer of his old comrade s 
 bearing on this new scene. " Upon all these occasions," 
 he says, "one of the principal features of his character 
 
JAMES BALLANTYNE. 187 
 
 was displayed as conspicuously as I believe it ever was 
 at any later period. This was the remarkable ascen 
 dency he never failed to exhibit among his young com 
 panions, and which appeared to arise from their involun 
 tary and unconscious submission to the same firmness of 
 understanding, and gentle exercise of it, which produced 
 the same effects throughout his after life. Where there 
 was always a good deal of drinking, there was of course 
 now and then a good deal of quarrelling. But three 
 words from Walter Scott never failed to put all such 
 propensities to quietness." 
 
 Mr. Ballantyne s account of his friend s peace-making 
 exertions at this club may seem a little at variance with 
 some preceding details. There is a difference, however, 
 between encouraging quarrels in the bosom of a convivial 
 party, and taking a fair part in a row between one s own 
 party and another. But Ballantyne adds, that at The 
 Teviotdale, Scott was always remarkable for being the 
 most temperate of the set ; and if the club consisted 
 chiefly of persons, like Ballantyne himself, somewhat in 
 ferior to Scott in birth and station, his carefulness both 
 of sobriety and decorum at their meetings was but 
 another feature of his unchanged and unchangeable 
 character qualis ab incepto. 
 
 At one of the many merry suppers of this time, Wal 
 ter Scott had said something, of which, on recollecting 
 himself next morning, he was sensible that his friend 
 Clerk might have reason to complain. He sent him ac 
 cordingly ft note apologetical, which has by some accident 
 been preserved, and which I am sure every reader will 
 agree with me in considering well worthy of preserva 
 tion. In it Scott contrives to make use of both his own 
 club designations, and addresses his friend by another of 
 
188 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the same order, which Clerk had received in consequence 
 of comparing himself on some forgotten occasion to Sir 
 John Brute in the play. This characteristic document 
 is as follows: 
 
 " To William Clerk, Esq. 
 
 " Dear Baronet, I am sorry to find that our friend Colo 
 nel Grogg has behaved with a very undue degree of vehe 
 mence in a dispute with you last night, occasioned by what 1 
 am convinced was a gross misconception of your expressions. 
 As the Colonel, though a military man, is not too haughty to 
 acknowledge an error, he has commissioned me to make his 
 apology as a mutual friend, which I am convinced you will 
 accept from yours ever, 
 
 " DUNS SCOTUS." 
 
 " Given at Castle Duns, 
 " Monday." 
 
 I should perhaps have mentioned sooner, that when 
 first Duns Scotus became the Baronets daily companion 
 this new alliance was observed with considerable jealousy 
 by some of his former inseparables of the writing office. 
 At the next annual supper of the clerks and apprentices, 
 the gaudy of the chamber, this feeling showed itself in 
 various ways, and when the cloth was drawn, Walter 
 rose and asked what was meant. " "Well," said one of 
 the lads, " since you will have it out, you are cutting your 
 old friends for the sake of Clerk and some more of these 
 dons that look down on the like of us." " Gentlemen," 
 answered Scott, " I will never cut any man unless I de 
 tect him in scoundrelism ; but I know not what right any 
 of you have to interfere with my choice of my company. 
 If any one thought I had injured him, he would have 
 done well to ask an explanation in a more private man 
 ner. As it is, I fairly own, that though I like many of 
 
EARLY CORRESPONDENCE. 189 
 
 you very much, and have long done so, I think ^Villiam 
 Clerk well worth you all put together." The senior in 
 the chair was wise enough to laugh, and the evening 
 passed off without further disturbance. 
 
 As one effect of his office education, Scott soon began 
 to preserve in regular files the letters addressed to him ; 
 and from the style and tone of such letters, as Mr. 
 Southey observes in his Life of Cowper, a man s charac 
 ter may often be gathered even more surely than from 
 those written by himself. The first series of any consid 
 erable extent in his collection, includes letters dated as 
 far back as 1786, and proceeds, with not many interrup 
 tions, down beyond the period when his fame had been 
 established. I regret, that from the delicate nature of 
 the transactions chiefly dwelt upon in the earlier of these 
 communications, I dare not make a free use of them ; but 
 I feel it my duty to record the strong impression they 
 have left on my own mind of high generosity of affec 
 tion, coupled with calm judgment, and perseverance in 
 well-doing, on the part of the stripling Scott. To these 
 indeed every line in the collection bears pregnant testi 
 mony. A young gentleman, born of good family, and 
 heir to a tolerable fortune, is sent to Edinburgh College, 
 and is seen partaking, along with Scott, through several 
 apparently happy and careless years, of the studies and 
 amusements of which the reader may by this time have 
 formed an adequate notion. By degrees, from the usual 
 licence of his equal comrades, he sinks into habits of a 
 looser description becomes reckless, contracts debts, 
 irritates his own family almost beyond hope of reconcil 
 iation, is virtually cast off by them, runs away from Scot 
 land, forms a marriage far below his condition in a remote 
 part of the sister kingdom and, when the poor girl has 
 
190 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 made him a father, then first begins to open his eyes to 
 the full consequences of his mad career. He appeals to 
 Scott, by this time in his eighteenth year, " as the truest 
 and noblest of friends," who had given him "the earliest 
 and the strongest warnings," had assisted him " the most 
 generously throughout all his wanderings and distresses," 
 and will not now abandon him in his " penitent lowliness 
 of misery," the result of his seeing " virtue and inno 
 cence involved in the punishment of his errors." I find 
 Scott obtaining the slow and reluctant assistance of his 
 own careful father, who had long before observed this 
 youth s wayward disposition, and often cautioned his son 
 against the connexion, to intercede with the unfortu 
 nate wanderer s family, and procure, if possible, some 
 mitigation of their sentence. The result is, that he is 
 furnished with the scanty means of removing himself to 
 a distant colony, where he spends several years in the 
 drudgery of a very humble occupation, but by degrees 
 establishes for himself a new character, which commands 
 the anxious interest of strangers ; and I find these 
 strangers, particularly a benevolent and venerable cler 
 gyman, addressing, on his behalf, without his privacy, the 
 young person, as yet unknown to the world, whom the 
 object of their concern had painted to them as " uniting 
 the warm feelings of youth with the sense of years " 
 whose hair he had, " from the day he left England, worn 
 aext his heart." Just at the time when this appeal 
 reached Scott, he hears that his exiled friend s father has 
 died suddenly, and after all intestate ; he has actually 
 been taking steps to ascertain the truth of the case at the 
 moment when the American despatch is laid on his table 
 I leave the reader to guess with what pleasure Scott ha& 
 to communicate the intelligence that his repentant and 
 
EARLY CORRESPONDENCE. 191 
 
 reformed friend may return to take possession of his in 
 heritance. The letters before me contain touching pic 
 tures of their meeting of Walter s first visit to the 
 ancient hall, where a happy family are now assembled 
 and of the affectionately respectful sense which his friend 
 retained ever afterwards of all that he had done for him 
 in the season of his struggles. But what a grievous loss 
 is Scott s part of this correspondence ! I find the com 
 rade over and over again expressing his admiration of 
 the letters in which Scott described to him his early tours 
 both in the Highlands and the Border dales : I find him 
 prophesying from them, as early as 1789, " one day your 
 pen will make you famous," and already, in 1790, 
 urging him to concentrate his ambition on a "history 
 of the clans." * 
 
 This young gentleman appears to have had a decided 
 turn for literature ; and though in his earlier epistles he 
 makes no allusion to Scott as ever dabbling in rhyme, he 
 often inserts verses of his own, sorae of which are not 
 without merit. There is a long letter in doggrel, dated 
 1788, descriptive of a ramble from Edinburgh to Car 
 lisle of which I may quote the opening lines, as a sam 
 ple of the simple habits of these young people : 
 
 " At four in the morning, I won t be too sure, 
 Yet, if right I remember me, that was the hour, 
 When with Fergusson, Ramsay, and Jones, sir, and you, 
 From Auld Reekie I southward my route did pursue. 
 But two of the dogs (yet God bless them, I said) 
 Grew tired, and but set me half way to Lasswade, 
 While Jones, you, and I, Wat, went on without nutter, 
 And at Symonds s feasted on good bread and butter; 
 Where I, wanting a sixpence, you lugged out a shilling, 
 And paid for me too, though I was most unwilling. 
 
 * All Scott s letters to the friend he~e alluded to are said to have 
 Derished hi an accidental fire. 
 
192 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 We parted be sure I was ready to snivel 
 Jones and you to go home I to go to the devil." 
 
 In a letter of later date, describing the adventurer s 
 captivation with the cottage maiden whom he afterwards 
 married, there are some lines of a very different .tamp. 
 This couplet at least seems to me exquisite: 
 
 " Lowly beauty, dear friend, beams with primitive graca, 
 And tis innocence self plays the rogue in her face." 
 
 I find in another letter of this collection and it is 
 among the first of the series the following passage : 
 " Your Quixotism, dear Walter, was highly character 
 istic. From the description of the blooming fair, as she 
 appeared when she lowered her manteau vert, I am hope 
 ful you have not dropt the acquaintance. At least I am 
 certain some of our more rakish friends would have been 
 glad enough of such an introduction." This hint I can 
 not help connecting with the first scene of The Lady 
 Green Mantle in Redgauntlet ; but indeed I could easily 
 trace many more coincidences between these letters and 
 that novel, though at the same time I have no sort of 
 doubt that William Clerk was, in the main, Darsie Lati- 
 mer, while Scott himself unquestionably sat for his own 
 picture in young Alan Fairford. 
 
 The allusion to " our more rakish friends " is in keep- 
 jig with the whole strain of this juvenile correspondence. 
 Throughout there occurs no coarse or even jocular sug 
 gestion as to the conduct of Scott in that particular, as to 
 which most youths of his then age are so apt to lay up 
 stores of self-reproach. In this season of hot and impet 
 uous blood he may not have escaped quite blameless, but 
 I have the concurrent testimony of all the most ultimate 
 Among his surviving associates, that he was remarkably 
 
THE LADY GREEN MANTLE. 193 
 
 free from such indiscretions ; that while his high sense 
 of honour shielded him from the remotest dream of tam 
 pering with female innocence, he had an instinctive deli 
 cacy about him which made him recoil with utter disgust 
 from low and vulgar debaucheries. His friends, I have 
 heard more than one of them confess, used often to rally 
 him on the coldness of his nature. By degrees they dis 
 covered that he had, from almost the dawn of the pas 
 sions, cherished a secret attachment, which continued, 
 through all the most perilous stage of life, to act as a 
 romantic charm in safeguard of virtue. This (how 
 ever he may have disguised the story by mixing it up with 
 the Quixotic adventure of the damsel in the Green Man 
 tle) this was the early and innocent affection to which 
 we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet, but 
 of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and of Rokeby. In all 
 of these works the heroine has certain distinctive feat 
 ures, drawn from one and the same haunting dream of 
 his manly adolescence. 
 
 It was about 1790, according to Mr. William Clerk, 
 that Scott was observed to lay aside that carelessness, not 
 to say slovenliness, as to dress, which used to furnish mat 
 ter for joking at the beginning of their acquaintance. He 
 now did himself more justice in these little matters, be 
 came fond of mixing in general female society, and, as 
 his friend expresses it, " began to set up for a squire of 
 dames." 
 
 His personal appearance at this time was not unen- 
 gaging. A lady of high rank, who well remembers him 
 in the Old Assembly Rooms, says, " Young Walter Scott 
 was a comely creature/ He had outgrown the sallowness 
 of early ill health, and had a fresh brilliant complexion. 
 His eyes were clear, open, and well set, with a changefuJ 
 
 VOL- I. 13 
 
94 OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 radiance, to which teeth of the most perfect regularity 
 and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble ex- 
 pjinse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole aspect 
 a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His 
 smile was always delightful ; and I can easily fancy the 
 peculiar intermixture of tenderness and gravity, with 
 playful innocent hilarity and humour in the expression, 
 as being well calculated to fix a fair lady s eye. His 
 figure, excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those 
 days have been eminently handsome ; tall, much above 
 the usual standard, it was cast in the very mould of a 
 young Hercules; the head set on with singular grace, 
 the throat and chest after the truest model of the antique, 
 the hands delicately finished ; the whole outline that of 
 extraordinary vigour, without as yet a touch of clumsiness. 
 When he had acquired a little facility of manner, his con 
 versation must have been such as could have dispensed 
 with any exterior advantages, and certainly brought swift 
 forgiveness for the one unkindness of nature. I have 
 heard him, in talking of this part of his life, say, with an 
 arch simplicity of look and tone which those who were 
 familiar with him can fill in for themselves " It was a 
 proud night with me when I first found that a pretty 
 young woman could think it worth her while to sit and 
 talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of the ball 
 room, while all the world were capering in our view." 
 I believe, however, that the "pretty young woman" 
 here specially alluded to had occupied his attention long 
 before he ever appeared in the Edinburgh Assembly 
 Rooms, or any of his friends took note of him as " setting 
 up for a squire of dames." I have been told that their 
 acquaintance began in the Greyfriars churchyard, where 
 fain beginning to fall one Sunday as the congregation 
 
FIRST LOVE. 195 
 
 were dispersing, Scott happened to offer his umbrella, 
 and the tender being accepted, so escorted her to her res 
 idence, which proved to be at no great distance from his 
 own.* To return from church together had, it seems, 
 grown into something like a custom, before they met in 
 society, Mrs. Scott being of the party. It then appeared 
 that she and the lady s mother had been companions in 
 their youth, though, both living secludedly, they had 
 scarcely seen each other for many years ; and the two 
 matrons now renewed their former intercourse. But no 
 acquaintance appears to have existed between the fathers 
 of the young people, until things had advanced in appear 
 ance farther than met the approbation of the good Clerk 
 to the Signet. 
 
 Being aware that the young lady, who was very highly 
 connected, had prospects of fortune far above his son s, 
 the upright and honourable man conceived it his duty to 
 give her parents warning that he observed a degree of 
 intimacy which, if allowed to go on, might involve the 
 parties in future pain and disappointment. He had heard 
 his son talk of a contemplated excursion to the part of the 
 country in which his neighbour s estates lay, and not 
 doubting that Walter s real object was different from that 
 tfhich he announced, introduced himself with a frank 
 statement that he wished no such affair to proceed 
 without the express sanction of those most interested in 
 he happiness of persons as yet too young to calculate 
 consequences for themselves. The northern Baronet had 
 .heard nothing of the young apprentice s intended excur- 
 
 * In one of his latest articles for the Quarterly Keview, Scott ob 
 serves kt There have been instances of love-tales being favourably 
 received in England, when told under an umbrella, and in the middle 
 of a shower." Miscellaneous Prose Wo*ks t vol. xviii. 
 
196 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Bion, and appeared to treat the whole business very 
 lightly. He thanked Mr. Scott for his scrupulous atten 
 tion but added, that he believed he was mistaken ; and 
 this paternal interference, which Walter did not hear of 
 till long afterwards, produced no change in his relations 
 with the object of his growing attachment. 
 
 I have neither the power nor the wish to give in detail 
 the sequel of this story. It is sufficient to say, that after 
 he had through several long years nourished the dream 
 of an ultimate union with this lady, his hopes terminated 
 in her being married to a gentleman of the highest char 
 acter, to whom some affectionate allusions occur in one of 
 the greatest of his works, and who lived to act the part 
 of a most generous friend to his early rival throughout 
 the anxieties and distresses of 1826 and 1827. I have 
 said enough for my purpose which was only to render 
 intelligible a few allusions in the letters which I shall by 
 and by have to introduce ; but I may add, that I have no 
 doubt this unfortunate passion, besides one good effect 
 already adverted to, had a powerful influence in nerving 
 Scott s mind for the sedulous diligence with which he 
 pursued his proper legal studies, as described in his 
 Memoir, during the two or three years that preceded 
 bis call to the Bar. 
 
EOSEBANK. 197 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Illustrations continued Studies for the Bar Excursion to 
 Northumberland Letter on Flodden Field Call to the 
 Bar. 
 
 1790-1792. 
 
 THE two following letters may sufficiently illustrate 
 the writer s everyday existence in the autumn of 1790. 
 The first, addressed to his fidus Achates, has not a few 
 indications of the vein of humour from which he after 
 wards drew so largely in his novels ; and indeed, even in 
 his last days, he delighted to tell the story of the Jedburgh 
 bailies boots. 
 
 To William Clerk, Esq., at John Clerk s, Esq. of Eldin, 
 Prince s Street, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Rosebank, 6th August 1790. 
 
 " Dear William, Here am I, the weather, according to 
 your phrase, most bitchiferous ; the Tweed, within twenty 
 yards of the window at which I am writing, swelled from bank 
 to brae, and roaring like thunder. It is paying you but a poor 
 compliment to tell you I waited for such a day to perform my 
 promise of writing, but you must consider that it is the point 
 here to reserve such within-doors employment as we think 
 most agreeable for bad weather, which in the country always 
 wants something to help it away. In fair weather we are far 
 from wanting amusement, which at present is my business ; on 
 the contrary, every fair day has some plan of pleasure annexed 
 
198 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to it, in so much that I can hardly believe I have been here 
 above two days, so swiftly does the time pass away. You will 
 ask how it is employed ? Why, negatively, I read no civil law. 
 Heineccius and his fellow worthies have ample time to gather 
 a venerable coat of dust, which they merit by their dulness. 
 As to my positive amusements, besides riding, fishing, and the 
 other usual sports of the country, I often spend an hour or two 
 in the evening in shooting herons, which are numerous on thia 
 part of the river. To do this I have no farther to go than the 
 bottom of our garden, which literally hangs over the river. 
 When you fire at a bird, she always crosses the river, and 
 when again shot at with ball, usually returns to your side, and 
 will cross in this way several times before she takes wing. 
 This furnishes fine sport; nor are they easily shot, as you 
 never can get very near them. The intervals between their 
 appearing is spent very agreeably in eating gooseberries. 
 
 " Yesterday was St. James s Fair, a day of great business. 
 There was a great show of black cattle I mean of ministers ; 
 the narrowness of their stipends here obliges many of them to 
 enlarge their incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. 
 This, in my opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor can 
 the farmer be supposed to entertain any great reverence for 
 the ghostly advice of a pastor (they literally deserve the 
 epithet) who perhaps the day before overreached him in a 
 bargain. I would not have you to suppose there are no c x- 
 ceptions to this character, but it would serve most of them. I 
 had been fishing with my uncle, Captain Scott, on the Teviot, 
 and returned through the ground where the Fair is kept. The 
 servant was waiting there with our horses, as we were to ride 
 he water. Lucky it was that it was so ; for just about that 
 time the magistrates of Jedburgh, who preside there, began 
 their solemn procession through the Fair. For the greater 
 dignity upon this occasion, they had a pair of boots among 
 three men i. e., as they ride three in a rank, the outer legs 
 of those personages who formed the outside, as it may be 
 called, of the procession, were each clothed in a boot. This, 
 ind several other incongruous appearances, were thrown ir 
 
ROSEBANK 1790. 199 
 
 the teeth of those cavaliers by the Kelso populace, and, by the 
 assistance of whisky, parties were soon inflamed to a very 
 tight battle, one of that kind which, for distinction sake, is 
 called royal. It was not without great difficulty that we extri 
 cated ourselves from the confusion ; and had we been on foot, 
 we might have been trampled down by these fierce Jed- 
 burghians, who charged like so many troopers. We were 
 spectators of the combat from an eminence, but peace waa 
 soon after restored, which made the older warriors regret the 
 effeminacy of the age, as, regularly, it ought to have lasted till 
 night. Two lives were lost, I mean of horses ; indeed, had you 
 seen them, you would rather have wondered that they were 
 able to bear their masters to the scene of action, than that 
 they could not carry them off.* 
 
 " I am ashamed to read over this sheet of nonsense, so 
 excuse inaccuracies. Remember me to the lads of the Liter- 
 a.*y, those of the club in particular. I wrote Irving. Remem 
 ber my most respectful compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Clerk 
 and family, particularly James ; when you write, let me know 
 how he did when you heard of him. Imitate me in writing a 
 long letter, but not in being long in writing it. Direct to me 
 at Miss Scott s, Garden, Kelso. My letters lie there for me, 
 as it saves their being sent down to Rosebank. The carrier 
 puts up at the Grassmarket, and goes away on Wednesday 
 forenoon. Yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The next letter is dated from a house at which I have 
 
 * Mr. Andrew Shortrede (onejof a family often mentioned in these 
 Memoirs) says, in a letter of November 1838 " The joke of the one 
 fair of boots to three pair of legs, was so unpalatable to the honest 
 burghers of Jedburgh, that they have suffered the ancient privilege of 
 1 riding the Fair, as it was called (during which ceremony the inhabi 
 tants of Kelso were compelled to shut up their shops as on a holiday), 
 rt) fall into disuse. Huoy, the runaway forger, a native of Kelso, 
 availed himself of the calumny in a clever squib on the subject : 
 
 The outside man had each a boot, 
 The three had but a pair. " 
 
200 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 often seen the writer in his latter days. Kippilaw, situ 
 ated about five or six miles behind Abbotsford, on the 
 high ground between the Tweed and the Water of Ayle, 
 is the seat of an ancient laird of the clan Kerr, but was 
 at this time tenanted by the family of Walter s brother- 
 apprentice, James Ramsay, who afterwards realized a 
 fortune in the civil service of Ceylon. 
 
 " To William Clerk, Esq. 
 
 "Kippilaw, Sept. 3, 1790. 
 
 " Dear Clerk, I am now writing from the country habi 
 tation of our friend Ramsay, where I have been spending a 
 week as pleasantly as ever I spent one in my life. Imagine a 
 commodious old house, pleasantly situated amongst a knot of 
 venerable elms, in a fine sporting, open country, and only two 
 miles from an excellent water for trouts, inhabited by two of 
 the best old ladies (Ramsay s aunts), and three as pleasant 
 young ones (his sisters) as any person could wish to converse 
 with and you will have some idea of Kippilaw. James and 
 I wander about, fish, or look for hares, the whole day, and at 
 night laugh, chat, and play round games at cards. Such is the 
 fatherland in which I have been living for some days past, and 
 which I leave to-night or to-morrow. This day is very bad 
 notwithstanding which, James has sallied out to make some 
 calls, as he soon leaves the country. I have a great mind to 
 trouble him with the care of this. 
 
 " And now for your letter, the receipt of which I have itot, 
 I think, yet acknowledged, though I am much obliged to you 
 for it. I dare say you would relish your jaunt to Penny cuick 
 very much, especially considering the solitary desert of Edin 
 burgh, from which it relieved you. By the by, know, O thou 
 devourer of grapes, who contemnest the vulgar gooseberry, 
 tfiat thou art not singular in thy devouring nee tarn aversus 
 equos sol jungit db urbe (Kelsoniana scilicet) my uncle being 
 the lawful possessor of a vinery measuring no less than twenty- 
 
KIPPILA W 1790. 2 
 
 four feet by twelve, the contents of which come often in my 
 way ; and, according to the proverb, that enough is as good as 
 a feast, are equally acceptable as if they came out of the most 
 extensive vineyard in France. I cannot, however, equal your 
 boast of breakfasting, dining, and supping on them. As for 
 the civilians* peace be with them, and may the dust lie 
 light upon their heads they deserve this prayer in return 
 for those sweet slumbers which their benign influence in 
 fuses into their readers. I fear I shall too soon be forced to 
 disturb them, for some of our family being now at Kelso, I am 
 under the agonies lest I be obliged to escort them into town. 
 The only pleasure I shall reap by this is that of asking you 
 how you do, and, perhaps, the solid advantage of completing 
 our studies before the College sits down. Employ, therefore, 
 your mornings in slumber while you can, for soon it will be 
 chased from your eyes. I plume myself on my sagacity with 
 regard to C. J. Fox.f I always foretold you would tire of him 
 a vile brute. I have not yet forgot the narrow escape of 
 my fingers. I rejoice at James s J intimacy with Miss Menzies. 
 She promised to turn out a fine girl, has a fine fortune, and 
 could James get her, he might sing, I ll go no more to sea, to 
 sea. Give my love to him when you write. God preserve 
 us, what a scrawl ! says one of the ladies just now, in admira 
 tion at the expedition with which I scribble. Well I was 
 never able in my life to do any thing with what is called 
 gravity and deliberation. 
 
 " I dined two days ago tete a tete with Lord Buchan. Heard 
 a history of all his ancestors whom he has hung round hia 
 chimney-piece. From counting of pedigrees, good Lord de 
 liver us ! He is thinking of erecting a monument to Thomson. 
 He frequented Dryburgh much in my grandfather s time. It 
 will be a handsome thing. As to your scamp of a boy, I saw 
 nothing of him; but the face is enough to condemn there, 
 
 * Books on Civil Law. 
 
 f A tame fox of Mr. Clerk s, which he soo&. dismissed. 
 
 J Mr. James Clerk, R. N. 
 
202 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 I have seen a man flogg d for stealing spirits on the sole in 
 formation of his nose. Remember me respectfully to your 
 family. 
 
 " Believe me yours affectionately, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 After his return from the scene of these merry doings, 
 he writes as follows to his kind uncle. The reader will 
 see that, in the course of the preceding year, he had an 
 nounced his early views of the origin of what is called 
 the feudal system, in a paper read before the Literary 
 Society. He, in the succeeding winter, chose the same 
 subject for an essay, submitted to Mr. Dugald Stewart, 
 whose prelections on ethics he was then attending. Some 
 time later he again illustrated the same opinions more at 
 length in a disquisition before the Speculative Society; 
 and, indeed, he always adhered to them. One of the last 
 historical books he read, before leaving Abbotsford for 
 Malta in 1831, was Colonel Tod s interesting account of 
 Rajasthan ; and I well remember the delight he expressed 
 on finding his views confirmed, as they certainly are in 
 a very striking manner, by the philosophical soldier s 
 details of the structure of society in that remote region 
 of the East. 
 
 " To Captain Robert Scott, Roselank, Kelso. 
 
 " Edinburgh, Sept. 30, 1790. 
 
 "Dear Uncle, We arrived here without any accident 
 about five o clock on Monday evening. The good weather 
 made our journey pleasant. I have been attending to your 
 commissions here, and find that the last volume of Dodsley s 
 Annual Register published is that for 1787, which I was about 
 to send you; but the bookseller I frequent had not one in 
 boards, though he expects to procure one for me. There is 9 
 
ESSAY ON THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, ETC. 203 
 
 new work of the same title and size, on the same plan, which, 
 being published every year regularly, has almost cut out Dods- 
 ley s, so that this last is expected to stop altogether. You will 
 let me know if you would wish to have the new work, which 
 is a good one, will join very well with those volumes of Dods- 
 ley s which you already have, and is published up to the pres 
 ent year. Byron s Narrative is not yet published, but you 
 shall have it whenever it comes out. 
 
 " Agreeable to your permission, I send you the scroll copy 
 of an essay on the origin of the feudal system, written for the 
 Literary Society last year. As you are kind enough to inter 
 est yourself in my style and manner of writing, I thought you 
 might like better to see it in its original state, than one on the 
 polishing of which more time had been bestowed. You will 
 see that the intention and attempt of the essay is principally 
 to controvert two propositions laid down by the writers on the 
 subject : 1st, That the system was invented by the Lom 
 bards ; and, 2dly, that its foundation depended on the king s 
 being acknowledged the sole lord of all the lands in the coun 
 try, which he afterwards distributed to be held by military 
 tenures. I have endeavoured to assign it a more general 
 origin, and to prove that it proceeds upon principles common 
 to all nations when placed in a certain situation. I am afraid 
 the matter will but poorly reward the trouble you will find 
 in reading some parts. I hope, however, you will make out 
 enough to enable you to favour me with your sentiments upon 
 its faults. There is none whose advice I prize so high, for 
 there is none in whose judgment I can so much confide, or 
 who has shown me so much kindness. 
 
 " I also send, as amusement for an idle half hour, a copy of 
 the regulations of our Society, some of which will, I think, be 
 favoured with your approbation. 
 
 " My mother and sister join in compliments to aunt and you, 
 &nd also in thanks for the attentions and hospitality which 
 \hey experienced at Kosebank. And I am ever your affec 
 tionate nephew, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
204 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " P. S. If you continue to want a mastiff, I think I can 
 procure you one of a good breed, and send him by the car 
 rier." 
 
 While attending Mr. Dugald Stewart s class, in the 
 winter of 1790-91, Scott produced, in compliance with 
 the usual custom of ethical students, several essays be 
 sides that to which I have already made an allusion, and 
 which was, I believe, entitled, " On the Manners and 
 Customs of the Northern Nations." But this essay it 
 was that first attracted, in any particular manner, his 
 Professor s attention. Mr. Robert Ainslie,* well known 
 as the friend and fellow-traveller of Burns, happened to 
 attend Stewart the same session, and remembers his say 
 ing, ex cathedra, " The author of this paper shows much 
 knowledge of his subject, and a great taste for such re- 
 search es." Scott became, before the close of the session, 
 a frequent visitor in Mr. Stewart s family, and an affec 
 tionate intercourse was maintained between them through 
 their after-lives. 
 
 Let me here set down a little story which most of his 
 friends must have heard him tell of the same period. 
 While attending Dugald Stewart s lectures on moral 
 philosophy, Scott happened to sit frequently beside a 
 modest and diligent youth, considerably his senior, and 
 obviously of very humble condition. Their acquaintance 
 soon became rather intimate, and he occasionally made 
 this new friend the companion of his country walks, but 
 i s to his parentage and place of residence he always pre 
 served total silence. One day towards the end of the 
 session, as Scott was returning to Edinburgh from a soli 
 tary ramble, his eye was arrested by a singularly vener* 
 
 * Mr. Ainslie died at Edinburgh, llth April 1838, in his 73d year. 
 
DUGALD STEWART S CLASS. 20 
 
 able Bluegown, a beggar of the Edie Ochiltiee order, 
 who stood propped on his stick, with his hat in his hand, 
 but silent and motionless, at one of the outskirts of the 
 city. Scott gave the old man what trifle he had in his 
 pocket, and passed on his way. Two or three times 
 afterwards the same thing happened, and he had begun 
 to consider the Bluegown as one who had established a 
 claim on his bounty : when one day he fell in with him 
 as he was walking with his humble student. Observing 
 some confusion in his companion s manner as he saluted 
 his pensioner, and bestowed the usual benefaction, he 
 could not help saying, after they had proceeded a few 
 yards further, " Do you know anything to the old man s 
 discredit ? " Upon which the youth burst into tears, and 
 cried, " no, sir, God forbid ! but I am a poor wretch 
 to be ashamed to speak to him he is my own father. 
 He has enough laid by to serve for his own old days, but 
 he stands bleaching his head in the wind, that he may get 
 the means of paying for my education." Compassion 
 ating the young man s situation, Scott soothed his weak 
 ness, and kept his secret, but by no means broke off the 
 acquaintance. Some months had elapsed before he again 
 met the Bluegown it was in a retired place, and the 
 old man begged to speak a word with him. u I find, sir," 
 he said, " that you have been very kind to my Willie- 
 He had often spoke of it before I saw you together. 
 Will you pardon such a liberty, and give me the honoui 
 and pleastire of seeing you under my poor roof? To 
 morrow is Saturday ; will you come at two o clock ? Wil 
 lie has not been very well, and it would do him meikle 
 good to see your face." His curiosity, besides better 
 feelings, was touched, and he accepted this strange in 
 vitation. The appointed hour found him within sighf 
 
206 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of a sequestered little cottage, near St. Leonard s the 
 hamlet where he has placed the residence of his David 
 Deans. His fellow-student, pale and emaciated from re 
 cent sickness, was seated on a stone bench by the door, 
 looking out for his coming, and introduced him into a not 
 untidy cabin, where the old man, divested of his profes 
 sional garb, was directing the last vibrations of a leg of 
 mutton that hung by a hempen cord before the fire. The 
 mutton was excellent so were the potatoes and whis 
 key ; and Scott returned home from an entertaining con 
 versation, in which, besides telling many queer stories of 
 his own life and he had seen service in his youth 
 the old man more than once used an expression, which 
 was long afterwards put into the mouth of Dominie 
 Sampson s mother : " Please God, I may live to see my 
 bairn wag his head in a pulpit yet." 
 
 Walter could not help telling all this the same night to 
 his mother, and added, that he would fain see his poor 
 friend obtain a tutor s place in some gentleman s family. 
 " Dinna speak to your father about it," said the good 
 lady ; " if it had been a shoulder he might have thought 
 less, but he will say the jigot was a sin. I ll see what I 
 can do." Mrs. Scott made her inquiries in her own way 
 among the Professors, and having satisfied herself as to 
 the young man s character, applied to her favourite min 
 ister, Dr. Erskine, whose influence soon procured such a 
 situation as had been suggested for him, in the north of 
 Scotland. " And thenceforth," said Sir Waited, " I lost 
 sight of my friend bufc let us hope he made out his 
 curriculum at Aberdeen, and is now wagging his head 
 where the fine old carle wished to see him." * 
 
 * The reader will find a story not unlike this in the Introduction t* 
 the " Antiquary," 1830. When I first read that note, I asked him why 
 
THE SPECULATIVE SOCIETY. 207 
 
 On the 4th January 1791, Scott was admitted a mem 
 ber of The Speculative Society, where it had, long before, 
 been the custom of those about to be called to the Bar, 
 and those who after assuming the gown were left in pos 
 session of leisure by the solicitors, to train or exercise 
 themselves in the arts of elocution and debate. Fro 
 time to time each member produces an essay, and hia 
 treatment of his subject is then discussed by the conclave. 
 Scott s essays were, for November 1791, "On the Origin 
 of the Feudal System ; " for the 14th February 1792, 
 " On the Authenticity of Ossian s Poems ; " and on the 
 llth December of the same year, he read one "On the 
 Origin of the Scandinavian Mythology." The selection 
 of these subjects shows the course of his private studies 
 and predilections ; but he appears, from the minutes, to 
 have taken his fair share in the ordinary debates of the 
 Society, and spoke, in the spring of 1791, on these 
 questions, which all belong to the established text-book 
 for juvenile speculation in Edinburgh : " Ought any 
 permanent support to be provided for the poor ? " 
 " Ought there to be an established religion ? " " Is at 
 tainder and corruption of blood ever a proper punish 
 ment ? " " Ought the public expenses to be defrayed by 
 levying the amount directly upon the people, or is it 
 expedient to contract national debt for that purpose?" 
 " Was the execution of Charles I. justifiable ? " " Should 
 the slave-trade be abolished ? " In the next session, pre 
 vious to his call to the Bar, he spoke in the debates of 
 which these were the theses : u Has the belief in a 
 
 Ae had altered so many circumstances from the usual oral edition of 
 his anecdote. "Nay," said he, "both stories maybe true, and why 
 should I be always lugging in myself, when what happened to another 
 >f our class would serve equally well for the purpose I had in view? 
 .. regretted the kg of mutton. 
 
208 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 future state been of advantage to mankind, or is it ever 
 likely to be so ? " " Is it for the interest of Britain to 
 maintain what is called the balance of Europe ? " 
 and again on the eternal question as to the fate of 
 King Charles I., which, by the way, was thus set up for 
 re-discussion on a motion by Walter Scott. 
 
 He took, for several winters, an ardent interest in this 
 society. Very soon after his admission (18th January 
 1791), he was elected their librarian : and in the Novem 
 ber following, he became also their secretary and treas 
 urer ; all which appointments indicate the reliance placed 
 on his careful habits of business, the fruit of his chamber 
 education. The minutes kept in his handwriting attest 
 the strict regularity of his attention to the small affairs 
 literary and financial, of the club ; but they show also, 
 as do all his early letters, a strange carelessness in spell- 
 ing. His constant good temper softened the asperities 
 of debate; while his multifarious lore, and the quaint 
 humour with which he enlivened its display, made him 
 more a favourite as a speaker than some whose powers 
 of rhetoric were far above his. 
 
 Lord Jeffrey remembers being struck, the first night 
 he spent at the Speculative, with the singular appearance 
 of the secretary, who sat gravely at the bottom of the 
 table in a huge woollen night-cap ; and when the presi 
 dent took the chair, pleaded a bad toothache as his apol 
 ogy for coming into that worshipful assembly in such a 
 " portentous machine." He read that night an essay on 
 ballads, which so much interested the new member, that 
 he requested to be introduced to him. Mr. Jeffrey called 
 on him next evening, and found him " in a small den, on 
 the sunk floor of his father s house in George s Square, 
 surrounded with dingy books," from which they ad 
 
BROUGHTON S SAUCER. 209 
 
 journed to a tavern, and supped together. Such was 
 the commencement of an acquaintance, which by degrees 
 ripened into friezidship, between the two most distin 
 guished men of letters whom Edinburgh produced in 
 their time. I may add here the description of that early 
 ten, with which I am favoured by a lady of Scott s fam- 
 .ly : " Walter had soon begun to collect out-of-the-way 
 things of all sorts. He had more books than shelves ; a 
 small painted cabinet, with Scotch and Roman coins in 
 it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochaber axe, given 
 him by old Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print 
 of Prince Charlie ; and Broughton s Saucer was hooked 
 up against the wall below it." Such was the germ of 
 the magnificent library and museum of Abbotsford ; and 
 such were the " new realms " in which he, on taking 
 possession, had arranged his little paraphernalia about 
 him " with all the feelings of novelty and liberty." 
 Since those days, the habits of life in Edinburgh, as else 
 where, have undergone many changes : and the " con 
 venient parlour," in which Scott first showed Jeffrey 
 his collections of minstrelsy, is now, in all probability, 
 thought hardly good enough for a menial s sleeping 
 room. 
 
 But I have forgotten to explain Broughton s Saucer. 
 We read of Mr. Saunders Fairford, that though " an 
 elder of the kirk, and of course zealous for King George 
 nd the Government," yet, having "many clients and 
 connexions of business among families of opposite polit 
 ical tenets, he was particularly cautious to use all the 
 conventional phrases which the civility of the time had 
 devised as an admissible mode of language betwixt the 
 two parties : Thus he spoke sometimes of the Cheva 
 lier, but never either of the Prince, which would hav? 
 VOL. i, 14 
 
210 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 been sacrificing his own principles, or of the Pretender, 
 which would have been offensive to those of others : 
 Again, he usually designated the Rebellion as the affair 
 of 1745, and spoke of any one engaged in it as a person 
 who had been out at a certain period so that, on the 
 whole, he was much liked and respected on all sides," * 
 All this was true of Mr. Walter Scott, W. S. ; but I 
 have often heard his son tell an anecdote of him, which 
 he dwelt on with particular satisfaction, as illustrative of 
 the man, and of the difficult time through which he had 
 lived. 
 
 Mrs, Scott s curiosity was strongly excited one au 
 tumn by the regular appearance, at a certain hour every 
 evening, of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully 
 muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately ushered 
 into her husband s private room, and commonly remained 
 with him there until long after the usual bed-time of this 
 orderly family. Mr. Scott answered her repeated inqui 
 ries with a vagueness which irritated the lady s feelings 
 more and more ; until, at last, she could bear the thing 
 no longer ; but one evening, just as she heard the bell 
 ring as for the stranger s chair to carry him off, she made 
 her appearance within the forbidden parlour with a sal 
 ver in her hand, observing, that she thought the gentle 
 men had sat so long, they would be the better of a dish 
 of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some for 
 their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished 
 appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady, and 
 accepted a cup ; but her husband knit his brows, and 
 refused very coldly to partake the refreshment. A mo 
 ment afterwards the visitor withdrew and Mr. Scott 
 lifting up the window-sash, took the cup, which he had 
 * Redgauntlet, vol. i, 
 
BROUGHTON S SAUCER. 211 
 
 left empty on the table, and tossed it out upon the pave 
 ment. The lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to 
 silence by her husband s saying, " I can forgive your 
 little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. I 
 may admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons 
 wholly unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. 
 Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray 
 of BroughtonV 
 
 This was the unhappy man who, after attending 
 Prince Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout the 
 greater part of his expedition, condescended to redeem 
 his own life and fortune by bearing evidence against the 
 noblest of his late master s adherents, when 
 
 " Pitied by gentle hearts Kilmarnock died 
 The brave, Balmerino, were on thy side." 
 
 When confronted with Sir John Douglas of Kelhead 
 (ancestor of the Marquess of Queensberry), before the 
 Privy Council in St. James s, the prisoner was asked, 
 " Do you know this witness ? " " Not I," answered 
 Douglas ; " I once knew a person who bore the designa 
 tion of Murray of Broughton but that was a gentle 
 man and a man of honour, and one that could hold up 
 his head!" 
 
 The saucer belonging to Broughton s tea-cup had been 
 preserved; and Walter, at a very early period, made 
 prize of it. One can fancy young Alan Fairford point 
 ing significantly to the relic, when Mr. Saunders was 
 vouchsafing him one of his customary lectures about 
 listening with unseemly sympathy to " the blawing, 
 bleezing stories which the Hieland gentlemen told of 
 those troublous times. * * 
 
 * Redgauntlet, vol i. 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The following letter is the only one of the autumn of 
 1791 that has reached my hands. It must be read with 
 particular interest for its account of Scott s first visit to 
 Flodden field, destined to be celebrated seventeen years 
 afterwards in the very noblest specimen of his num 
 bers : 
 
 " To William Clerk, Esq. Prince s Street, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Northumberland, 26th Aug. 1791. 
 
 " Dear Clerk, Behold a letter from the mountains ; for 1 
 am very snugly settled here, in a farmer s house, about six miles 
 from Wooler, in the very centre of the Cheviot hills, in one 
 of the wildest and most romantic situations which your imag 
 ination, fertile upon the subject of cottages, ever suggested. 
 And what the deuce are you about there ? methinks I hear 
 you say. Why, sir, of all things in the world drinking 
 goat s whey not that I stand in the least need of it, but my 
 uncle having a slight cold, and being a little tired of home, 
 asked me last Sunday evening if I would like to go with him 
 to Wooler, and I answering in the affirmative, next morning s 
 sun beheld us on our journey, through a pass in the Cheviots, 
 upon the back of two special nags, and man Thomas behind 
 with a portmanteau, and two fishing-rods fastened across his 
 back, much in the style of St. Andrew s Cross. Upon reach 
 ing Wooler we found the accommodations so bad that we were 
 forced to use some interest to get lodgings here, where we are 
 most delightfully appointed indeed. To add to my satisfac 
 tion, we are amidst places renowned by the feats of former 
 days ; each hill is crowned with a tower, or camp, or cairn, 
 and in no situation can you be near more fields of battle : 
 Flodden, Otterburn, Chevy Chase, Ford Castle, Chillingham 
 Castle, Copland Castle, and many another scene of blood, are 
 within the compass of a forenoon s ride. Out of the brooks 
 with which these hills are intersected, we pull trouts of half a 
 yard in length, as fast as we did the perches from the pond at 
 Pennycuick, and we are in the very country of muirfowl. 
 
LETTER ON FLODDEN FIELD. 213 
 
 " Often as I have wished for your company, 1 never did it 
 more earnestly than when I rode over Flodden Edge. I know 
 your taste for these things, and could have undertaken to de 
 monstrate, that never was an affair more completely bungled 
 than that day s work was. Suppose one army posted upon 
 the face of a hill, and secured by high grounds projecting on 
 each flank, with the river Till in front, a deep and still river, 
 winding through a very extensive valley called Milfield Plain, 
 and the only passage over it by a narrow bridge, which the 
 Scots artillery, from the hill, could in a moment have demol 
 ished. Add, that the English must have hazarded a battle 
 while their troops, which were tumultuously levied, remained 
 together ; and that the Scots, behind whom the country was 
 open to Scotland, had nothing to do but to wait for the attack 
 as they were posted. Yet did two thirds of the army, actu 
 ated by the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, rush down and 
 give an opportunity to Stanley to occupy the ground they had 
 quitted, by coming over the shoulder of the hill, while the 
 other third, under Lord Home, kept their ground, and having 
 seen their king and about 10,000 of their countrymen cut to 
 pieces, retired into Scotland without loss. For the reason of 
 the bridge not being destroyed while the English passed, I 
 refer you to Pitscottie, who narrates at large, and to whom I 
 give credit for a most accurate and clear description, agreeing 
 perfectly with the ground. 
 
 " My uncle drinks the whey here, as I do ever since I un 
 derstood it was brought to his bedside every morning at six, 
 by a very pretty dairy-maid. So much for my residence : all 
 the day we shoot, fish, walk and ride ; dine and sup upon fish 
 struggling from the stream, and the most delicious heath-fed 
 mutton, barn-door fowls, poys,* milk-cheese, &c., all in perfec 
 tion and so much simplicity resides among these hills, that a 
 pen, which could write at least, was not to be found about the 
 house, though belonging to a considerable farmer, till I shot 
 the crow with whose quill I write this epistle. I wrote to 
 Irving before leaving Kelso. Poor fellow ! I am sure his sis- 
 
 * Pies. 
 
214 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ter s death must have hurt him much ; though he makes no 
 noise about feelings, yet still streams always run deepest. 1 
 sent a message by him to Edie,* poor devil, adding my mite 
 of consolation to him in his affliction. I pity poor .******, 
 who is more deserving of compassion, being his first offence. 
 Write soon, and as long as the last ; you will have Perthshire 
 news, I suppose, soon. Jamie s adventure diverted me much, 
 I read it to my uncle, who being long in the India service, was 
 affronted. Remember me to James when you write, and to 
 all your family and friends in general. I send this to Kelso 
 you may address as usual ; my letters will be forwarded 
 adieu au revoir, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 With the exception of this little excursion, Scott ap 
 pears to have been nailed to Edinburgh during this au 
 tumn, by that course of legal study, in company with 
 Clerk, on which he dwells in his Memoir with more sat 
 isfaction than on any other passage in his early life. He 
 copied out twice, as the Fragment tells us, his notes of 
 those lectures of the eminent Scots Law professor (Mr. 
 Hume), which he speaks of in such a high strain of eu 
 logy ; and Mr. Irving adds, that the second copy, being 
 fairly finished and bound into volumes, was presented to 
 his father. The old gentleman was highly gratified with 
 this performance, not only as a satisfactory proof of his 
 son s assiduous attention to the law professor, but inas 
 much as the lectures afforded himself "very pleasant 
 reading for leisure hours." 
 
 Mr. Clerk assures me, that nothing could be more 
 exact (excepting as to a few petty circumstances intro 
 duced for obvious reasons) than the resemblance of the 
 Mr. Saunders Fairford of Redgauntlet to his friend s 
 father : " He was a man of business of the old school 
 * Sir A. Fergusson. 
 
SCOTS LAW LECTURES. 215 
 
 moderate in his charges, economical, and even niggardly 
 in his expenditure ; strictly honest in conducting his own 
 affairs and those of his clients ; but taught by long expe 
 rience to be wary and suspicious in observing the mo 
 tions of others. Punctual as the clock of St. Giles 
 tolled nine " (the hour at which the Court of Session 
 meets), " the dapper form of the hale old gentleman was 
 seen at the threshold of the court hall, or at farthest, at 
 the head of the Back Stairs " (the most convenient ac 
 cess to the Parliament House from George s Square), 
 " trimly dressed in a complete suit of snuff-coloured 
 brown, with stockings of silk or woollen, as suited the 
 weather ; a bob wig and a small cocked hat ; shoes 
 blacked as Warren would have blacked them ; silver 
 shoe-buckles, and a gold stock-buckle. His manners 
 corresponded with his attire, for they were scrupulously 
 civil, and not a little formal .... On the whole, he 
 was a man much liked and respected, though his friends 
 would not have been sorry if he had given a dinner more 
 frequently, as his little cellar contained some choice old 
 wine, of which, on such rare, occasions, he was no nig 
 gard. The whole pleasure of this good old-fashioned 
 man of method, besides that which he really felt in the 
 discharge of his own daily business, was the hope to see 
 his son attain what in the father s eyes was the proudest 
 of all distinctions the rank and fame of a well-em 
 ployed lawyer. Every profession has its peculiar hon 
 ours, and his mind was constructed upon so limited and 
 exclusive a plan, that he valued nothing save the objects 
 ot ambition which his own presented. He would have 
 shuddered at his son s acquiring the renown of a hero, 
 and laughed with scorn at the equally barren laurels of 
 literature ; it was by the path of the Law alone that he 
 
El 6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 was desirous to see him rise to eminence ; and the prob 
 abilities of success or disappointment, were the thoughts 
 of his father by day, and his dream by night." * 
 
 It is easy to imagine the original of this portrait; writ 
 ing to one of his friends, about the end of June 1792 
 " I have the pleasure to tell you that my son has passed 
 his private Scots-Law examinations with good approba 
 tion a great relief to my mind, especially as worthy 
 Mr. Pest t told me in my ear, there was no fear of the 
 * callant, as he familiarly called him, which gives me 
 great heart. His public trials, which are nothing in com 
 parison, save a mere form, are tc take place, by order of 
 the Honourable Dean of Faculty, j on Wednesday first, 
 and on Friday he puts on the gown, and gives a bit 
 chack of dinner to his friends and acquaintances, as is 
 the custom. Your company will be wished for there by 
 more than him. P. S. His thesis is, on the title, De 
 periculo et commodo rei venditce, and is a very pretty 
 piece of Latinity." 
 
 And all things passed in due order, even as they are 
 figured. The real Darsie was present at the real Alan 
 Fairford s "bit chack of dinner," and the old Clerk of 
 the Signet was very joyous on the occasion. Scott s 
 thesis was, in fact, on the Title of the Pandects, Concern 
 ing the disposal of the dead bodies of Criminals. It was 
 dedicated, I doubt not by the careful father s advice, to 
 his friend and neighbour in George s Square, the coarsely 
 
 * Redgauntlet, vol. i. 
 
 f It has been suggested that Pest is a misprint for Peat. Taere was 
 an elderly practitioner of the latter name, with whom Mr. Fairford must 
 have been well acquainted 1839. 
 
 J The situation of Dean of Faculty was filled in 1792 by the Hon 
 ourable Henry Erskine, of witty and benevolent memory. 
 
 Itedgauntlet, vol. i. 
 
CALL TO THE BAR. 217 
 
 humorous, but acute and able, and still well-remembered, 
 Macqueen of Braxfield, then Lord Justice-Clerk (or 
 President of the Supreme Criminal Court) of Scotland.* 
 I have often heard both Alan and Darsie laugh over 
 their reminiscences of the important day when they " put 
 on the gown." After the ceremony was completed, and 
 they had mingled for some time with the crowd of barris 
 ters in the Outer Court, Scott said to his comrade, mimick 
 ing the air and tone of a Highland lass waiting at the 
 Cross of Edinburgh to be hired for the harvest work 
 " We ve stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, and de il 
 a ane has speered our price." Some friendly solicitor, 
 however, gave him a guinea fee before the Court rose ; 
 and as they walked down the High Street together, he 
 said to Mr. Clerk, in passing a hosier s shop " This is 
 a sort of a wedding-day, Willie ; I think I must go in 
 and buy me a new night-cap." He did so accordingly ; 
 perhaps this was Lord Jeffrey s "portentous machine." 
 His first fee of any consequence, however, was expended 
 on a silver taper-stand for his mother, which the old lady 
 used to point to with great satisfaction, as it stood on her 
 chimney-piece five-and-twenty years afterwards. 
 
 * An eminent annotator observes on this passage: " The praise of 
 Lord Braxfield s capacity and acquirement is perhaps rather too slight. 
 He was a very good lawyer, and a man of extraordinary sagacity, and 
 fci quickness and sureness of apprehension resembled Lord Kenyon, ae 
 ireN as in his ready use of his profound knowledge of law." 1839. 
 
218 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 First Expedition into Liddesdale Study of German Polit* 
 cal Trials, fyc. Specimen of Law Papers Burger s Lenori 
 translated Disappointment in Love. 
 
 1792-1796. 
 
 SCOTT was called to the Bar only the day before the 
 closing of the session, and he appears to have almost im 
 mediately escaped to the country. On the 2d of August 
 I find his father writing, "I have sent the copies of 
 your thesis as desired ; " and on the 15th he addressed to 
 him at Rosebank a letter, in which there is this para 
 graph, an undoubted autograph of Mr. Saunders Fair- 
 ford, anno cetatis sixty-three : 
 
 " Dear Walter, .... I am glad that your expedition to 
 the west proved agreeable. You do well to warn your mother 
 against Ashestiel. Although I said little, yet I never thought 
 that road could be agreeable ; besides, it is taking too wide a 
 circle. Lord Justice-Clerk is in town attending the Bills.* He 
 called here yesterday, and inquired very particularly for you. 
 I told him where you was, and he expects to see you at Jed" 
 burgh upon the 21st. He is to be at Mellerstain f on the 20th, 
 
 * The Judges then attended in Edinburgh in rotation during the 
 intervals of term, to take care of various sorts of business which could 
 not brook delay, bills of injunction, &c. 
 
 f The beautiful seat of the Baillies of Jerviswood, in Berwickshire 
 few miles below Dryburgh. 
 
LETTER FROM HIS FATHER. 219 
 
 and will be there all night. His Lordship said, in a very pleas 
 ant manner, that something might cast up at Jedburgh to 
 give you an opportunity of appearing, and that he would insist 
 upon it, and that in future he meant to give you a share of the 
 criminal business in this Court, all which is very kind. I told 
 his Lordship that I had dissuaded you from appearing at Jed- 
 burgh, but he said I was wrong in doing so, and I therefore 
 leave the matter to you and him. / think it is probable he will 
 breakfast with Sir H. H. MacDougall on the 2lst, on his way 
 to Jedburgh." * * * 
 
 This last quiet hint, that the young lawyer might as 
 well be at Makerstoun (the seat of a relation) when His 
 Lordship breakfasted there, and of course swell the train 
 of His Lordship s little procession into the county town, 
 seems delightfully characteristic. I think I hear Sir 
 Walter himself lecturing me, when in the same sort of 
 situation, thirty years afterwards. He declined, as one 
 of the following letters will show, the opportunity of 
 making his first appearance on this occasion at Jedburgh. 
 He was present, indeed, at the Court during the assizes, 
 but " durst not venture." His accounts to "William Clerk 
 of his vacation amusements, and more particularly of his 
 second excursion to Northumberland, will, I am sure, in 
 terest every reader : 
 
 To William Clerk, Esq., Advocate, Prince s Street, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Eosebank, 10th Sept. 1792. 
 
 Dear William, Taking the advantage of a very indiffer 
 ent day, which is likely to float away a good deal of corn, and 
 of my father s leaving this place, who will take charge of thig 
 scroll, I sit down to answer your favour. I find you have 
 been, like myself, taking advantage of the good weather to 
 look around you a little, and congratulate you upon the pleas- 
 
220 LIFE .OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ure you must have received from your jaunt with Mr. Rus 
 sell.* I apprehend, though you are silent on the subject, that 
 your conversation was enlivened by many curious disquisition? 
 of the nature of undulating exhalations. I should. have bowed 
 before the venerable grove of oaks at Hamilton with as much 
 respect as if I had been a Druid about to gather the sacred 
 mistletoe. I should hardly have suspected your host Sir Wil 
 liam f of having been the occasion of the scandal brought upon 
 the library and Mr. Gibb J by the introduction of the Cabinet 
 des Fees, of which I have a volume or two here. I am happy 
 to think there is an admirer of snug things in the administra 
 tion of the library. Poor Linton sf misfortune, though I 
 cannot say it surprises, yet heartily grieves me. I have no 
 doubt he will have many advisers and animadverters upon the 
 naughtiness of his ways, whose admonitions will be forgot upon 
 the next opportunity. 
 
 " I am lounging about the country here, to speak sincerely, 
 as idle as the day is long. Two old companions of mine, 
 brothers of Mr. Walker of Wooden, having come to this coun 
 try, we have renewed a great intimacy. As they live directly 
 upon the opposite bank of the river, we have signals agreed 
 upon by which we concert a plan of operations for the day. 
 They are both officers, and very intelligent young fellows, and 
 what is of some consequence, have a brace of fine greyhounds. 
 Yesterday forenoon we killed seven hares, so you may see how 
 plenty the game is with us. I have turned a keen duck 
 shooter, though my success is not very great ; and when wad- 
 
 * Mr. Russell, surgeon, afterwards Professor of Clinical Surgery at 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 t Sir William Miller (Lord Glenlee.) 
 
 J Mr. Gibb was the Librarian of the Faculty of Advocates. 
 
 Clerk, Abercromby, Scott, Fergusson, and others, had occasional 
 boating excursions from Leith to Inchcolm, Inchkeith, &c. On one of 
 these their boat was neared by a Newhaven one Fergusson, at the 
 moment, was standing up talking ; one of the Newhaven fishermen 
 taking him for a brother of his own craft, bawled out, " Linton, you 
 fang bitch, is that you? " From that day Adam Fergusson s cogno 
 men among his friends of The Club was LINTON. 
 
LETTER *Rv.5I ROSEBANK. 221 
 
 hig through the mosses upon this errand, accoutred with the 
 long gun, a jacket, musquito trowsers, and a rough cap, I 
 might well pass for one of my redoubted moss-trooper progeni 
 tors, Walter Fire-the-Braes,* or rather Willie wi the Bolt- 
 Foot. 
 
 " For about^doors amusement, I have constructed a seat in 
 a large tree, which spreads its branches horizontally over the 
 Tweed. This is a favourite situation of mine for reading, 
 especially in a day like this, when the west wind rocks the 
 branches on which I am perched, and the river rolls its waves 
 below me of a turbid blood colour. I have, moreover, cut an 
 embrasure, through which I can fire upon the gulls, herons, 
 and cormorants, as they fly screaming past my nest. To crown 
 the whole, I have carved an inscription upon it in the ancient 
 Roman taste. I believe I shall hardly return into town, bar 
 ring accidents, sooner than the middle of next month, perhaps 
 not till November. Next week, weather permitting, is destined 
 for a Northumberland expedition, in which I shall visit some 
 parts of that country which I have not yet seen, particularly 
 about Hexham. Some days ago I had nearly met with a 
 worse accident than the tramp I took at Moorfoot ; f for hav 
 ing bewildered myself among the Cheviot hills, it was nearly 
 nightfall before I got to the village of Hownam, and the passes 
 with which I was acquainted. You do not speak of being in 
 Perthshire this season, though I suppose you intend it. I sup 
 pose we, that is, nous autres, $ are at present completely dis- 
 
 " Compliments to all who are in town, and best respects to 
 your own family, both in Prince s Street and at Eldin. 
 Believe me ever most sincerely yours, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 * Walter Scott of Synton (elder brother of Bolt-Foot, the first Baron 
 f Harden) was thus designated. He greatly distinguished himself iu 
 the battle of Melrose, A. D. 1526. 
 
 f This alludes to being lost in a fishing excursion. 
 
 J The companions of The Club. 
 
222 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To William Clerk, Esq. 
 
 " Rosebank, 30th Sept. 1792. 
 
 Dear William, I suppose this will find you flourishing 
 like a green bay-tree on the mountains of Perthshire, and in 
 full enjoyment of all the pleasures of the country. All that J 
 envy you is the noctes ccenceque deum, which, I take it for 
 granted, you three merry men will be spending together, while 
 I am poring over Bartholine in the long evenings, solitary 
 enough ; for, as for the lobsters, as you call them, I am sep 
 arated from them by the Tweed, which precludes evening 
 meetings, unless in fine weather and full moons. I have had 
 an expedition through Hexham and the higher parts of North 
 umberland, which would have delighted the very cockles of 
 your heart, not so much on account of the beautiful romantic 
 appearance of the country, though that would have charmed 
 you also, as because you would have seen more Roman inscrip 
 tions built into gate-posts, barns, &c., than perhaps are to be 
 found in any other part of Britain. These have been all dug 
 up from the neighbouring Roman wall, which is still in many 
 places very entire, and gives a stupendous idea of the persever 
 ance of its founders, who carried such an erection from sea to 
 sea, over rocks, mountains, rivers, and morasses. There are 
 several lakes among the mountains above Hexham, well worth 
 going many miles to see, though their fame is eclipsed by their 
 neighbourhood to those of Cumberland. They are surrounded 
 by old towers and castles, in situations the most savagely ro 
 mantic ; what would I have given to have been able to take 
 effect-pieces from some of them ! Upon the Tyne, about Hex- 
 ham, the country has a different aspect, presenting much of 
 the beautiful, though less of the sublime. I was particularly 
 charmed with the situation of Beaufront, a house belonging to 
 a mad sort of genius, whom, I am sure, I have told you some 
 stories about. He used to call himself the Noble Errington, 
 but of late has assumed the title of Duke of Hexham. Hard 
 by the town is the field of battle where the forces of Queen 
 
LETTER FROM ROSEBANK. 223 
 
 Margaret were defeated by those of the House of York, a blow 
 which the Red Rose never recovered during the civil wars. 
 The spot where the Duke of Somerset and the northern 
 nobility of the Lancastrian faction were executed after the 
 battle is still called Dukesfield. The inhabitants of this coun- 
 tiy speak an odd dialect of the Saxon, approaching nearly 
 that of Chaucer, and have retained some customs peculiar to 
 themselves. They are the descendants of the ancient Danes, 
 chased into the fastnesses of Northumberland by the severity 
 of William the Conqueror. Their ignorance is surprising to a 
 Scotchman. It is common for the traders in cattle, which 
 business is carried on to a great extent, to carry all letters 
 received in course of trade to the parish church, where the 
 clerk reads them aloud after service, and answers them accord 
 ing to circumstances. 
 
 "We intended to visit the lakes in Cumberland, but our 
 jaunt was cut short by the bad weather. I went to the circuit 
 at Jedburgh, to make my bow to Lord J. Clerk, and might 
 have had employment, but durst not venture. Nine of the 
 Dunse rioters were condemned to banishment, but the ferment 
 continues violent in the Merse. Kelso races afforded little 
 sport Wishaw * lost a horse which cost him 500, and 
 foundered irrecoverably on the course. At another time I 
 shall quote George Buchanan s adage of a fool and his 
 money, but at present labour under a similar misfortune; 
 my Galloway having yesterday thought proper (N.B., without 
 a rider) to leap over a gate, and being lamed for the present. 
 This is not his first faux-pas, for he jumped into a water with 
 me on his back when in Northumberland, to the imminent 
 danger of my life. He is, therefore, to be sold (when re 
 covered), and another purchased. This accident has occasioned 
 you the trouble of reading so long an epistle, the day being 
 Sunday, and my uncle, the captain, busily engaged with your 
 father s naval tactics, is too seriously employed to be an agree- 
 
 * William Hamilton of Wishaw, who afterwards established his 
 claim to the peerage of Belhaven. 
 
224 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCO1T. 
 
 able companion. Apropos (des bottes) I am sincerely sorry 
 to hear that James is still unemployed, but have no doubt a 
 time will come round when his talents will have an opportunity 
 of being displayed to his advantage. I have no prospect of 
 seeing my cliere adorable till winter, if then. As for you, I 
 pity you not, seeing as how you have so good a succedaneum 
 in M. G. ; and, on the contrary, hope, not only that Edmon- 
 Btone may roast you, but that Cupid may again (as erst) fry 
 you on the gridiron of jealousy for your infidelity. Compli 
 ments to our right trusty and well-beloved Linton and Jean 
 Jacques.* If you write, which, by the way, I hardly have the 
 conscience to expect, direct to my father s care, who will for 
 ward your letter. I have quite given up duck-shooting for the 
 season, the birds being too old, and the mosses too deep and 
 cold. I have no reason to boast of my experience or success 
 in the sport, and for my own part, should fire at any distance 
 under eighty or even ninety paces, though above forty-five I 
 would reckon it a coup dese spere, and as the bird is beyond 
 measure shy, you may be sure I was not very bloody. Believe 
 me, deferring, as usual, our dispute till another opportunity, 
 always sincerely yours, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " P.S. I believe, if my pony does not soon recover, that 
 misfortune, with the bad weather, may send me soon to 
 town." 
 
 It was within a few days after Scott s return from his 
 excursion to Hexham, that, while attending the Michael 
 mas head-court, as an annual county-meeting is called, 
 at Jedburgh, he was introduced, by an old companion, 
 Charles Kerr of Abbotrule, to Mr. Robert Shortreed, 
 that gentleman s near relation, who spent the greater 
 part of his life in the enjoyment of much respect as 
 Sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire. Scott had been ex 
 pressing his wish to visit the then wild and inaccessible 
 * John James Edmonstone. 
 
LIDDESDALE. 1792. 22<J 
 
 district of Liddesdale, particularly with a view to exam 
 ine the ruins of the famous castle of Hermitage, and to 
 pick up some of the ancient riding ballads, said to be 
 still preserved among the descendants of the moss-troop 
 ers, who had followed the banner of the Douglasses, 
 when lords of that grim and remote fastness. Mr. Short- 
 reed had many connexions in Liddesdale, and knew its 
 passes well, and he was pointed out as the very guide the 
 young advocate wanted. They started, accordingly, in 
 a day or two afterwards, from Abbotrule ; and the laird 
 meant to have been of the party ; but " it was well for 
 him," said Shortreed, " that he changed his mind for 
 he could never have done as we did." * 
 
 During seven successive years Scott made a raid, as 
 he called it, into Liddesdale, with Mr. Shortreed for his 
 guide ; exploring every rivulet to its source, and every 
 ruined peel from foundation to battlement. At this time 
 no wheeled carriage had ever been seen in the district 
 the first, indeed, that ever appeared there was a gig, 
 driven by Scott himself for a part of his way, when on 
 the last of these seven excursions. There was no inn or 
 public-house of any kind in the whole valley ; the trav 
 ellers passed from the shepherd s hut to the minister s 
 manse, and again from the cheerful hospitality of the 
 manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead ; 
 gathering, wherever they went, songs and tunes, and oc 
 casionally more tangible relics of antiquity 3ven such 
 
 * I am obliged to Mr. John Elliot Shortreed, a son of Scott s early 
 friend, for some memoranda of his father s conversations on this sub 
 ject. These notes were written in 1824; and I shall make several 
 quotations from them. I had, however, many opportunities of hearing 
 Mr. Shortreed s stories from his own lips, having often been under his 
 hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter, who to the last ahvayi 
 was his old friend s guest when business took him to Jedburgh. 
 
 VOL. i. 15 
 
226 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " a rowth of auld nicknackets " as Burns ascribes to Cap 
 tain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much of the 
 materials of his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border;" 
 and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living 
 manners of these unsophisticated regions, which consti 
 tutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his 
 prose works. But how soon he had any definite object 
 before him in his researches, seems very doubtful. " He 
 was makin himsell a the time," said Mr. Shortreed ; 
 " but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years 
 had passed : At first he thought o little, I dare say, but 
 the queerness and the fun." 
 
 "In those days," says the Memorandum before me, 
 " advocates were not so plenty at least about Liddes- 
 dale ; " and the worthy Sheriff-substitute goes on to de 
 scribe the sort of bustle, not unmixed with alarm, pro 
 duced at the first farm-house they visited (Willie Elliot s 
 at Millburnholm), when the honest man was informed of 
 the quality of one of his guests. When they dismounted, 
 accordingly, he received Mr. Scott with great ceremony, 
 and insisted upon himself leading his horse to the stable. 
 Shortreed accompanied Willie, however, and the latter, 
 after taking a deliberate peep at Scott, " out-by the edge 
 of the door-cheek," whispered, " Weel, Robin, I say, de il 
 hae me if I s be a bit feared for him now ; he s just a 
 cliield like ourselves, I think." Half-a-dozen dogs of all 
 degrees had already gathered round " the advocate," and 
 his way of returning their compliments had set Willie 
 Elliot at once at his ease. 
 
 According to Mr. Shortreed, this good-man of Mill 
 burnholm was the great original of Dandie Dinmont. 
 As he seems to have been the first of these upland sheep- 
 farmers that Scott ever visited, there can be little doubt 
 
LIDDESDALE. 227 
 
 that he sat for some parts of that inimitable portraiture 
 and it is certain that the James Davidson, who carried 
 the name of Dandie to his grave with him, and whose 
 thoroughbred deathbed scene is told in the Notes to Guy 
 Mannering, was first pointed out to Scott by Mr. Short- 
 reed himself, several years after the novel had established 
 the man s celebrity all over the Border ; some accidental 
 report about his terriers, and their odd names, having 
 alone been turned to account in the original composition 
 of the tale. But I have the best reason to believe that 
 the kind and manly character of Dandie, the gentle and 
 delicious one of his wife, and some at least of the most 
 picturesque peculiarities of the menage at Charlieshope, 
 were filled up from Scott s observation, years after this 
 period, of a family, with one of whose members he had, 
 through the best part of his life, a close and affectionate 
 connexion. To those who were familiar with him, I 
 have perhaps already sufficiently indicated the early 
 home of his dear friend, William Laidlaw, among " the 
 braes of Yarrow." 
 
 They dined at Millburnholm, and after having lingered 
 over Willie Elliot s punch-bowl, until, in Mr. Shortreed s 
 phrase, they were " half-glowrin," mounted their steeds 
 again, and proceeded to Dr. Elliot s at Cleughhead, 
 where ("for," says my Memorandum, "folk were na 
 very nice in those days ") the two travellers slept in one 
 and the same bed as, indeed, seems to have been the 
 case with them throughout most of their excursions in 
 this primitive district. This Dr. Elliot had already a 
 large MS. collection of the ballads Scott was in quest 
 of; and finding how much his guest admired his acqui 
 sitions, thenceforth exerted himself, for several years, 
 frith redoubled diligence, in seeking out the living depos- 
 
8 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 itaries of such lore among the darker recesses of the 
 mountains. " The Doctor," says Mr. Shortreed, " would 
 have gane through fire and water for Sir Walter, when 
 he ance kenned him." 
 
 Next morning they seem to have ridden a long way, 
 for the express purpose of visiting one " auld Thomas a* 
 Twizzlehope," another Elliot, I suppose, who was cele 
 brated for his skill on the Border pipe, and in particular 
 for being in possession of the real lilt of Dick o 1 the Cow. 
 Before starting, that is, at six o clock, the ballad-hunters 
 had, " just to lay the stomach, a devilled duck or twae, 
 and some London porter." Auld Thomas found them, 
 nevertheless, well disposed for " breakfast " on their ar 
 rival at Twizzlehope ; and this being over, he delighted 
 them with one of the most hideous and unearthly of all 
 the specimens of "riding music," and, moreover, with 
 considerable libations of whisky-punch, manufactured in 
 a certain wooden vessel, resembling a very small milk- 
 pail, which he called " Wisdom," because it " made " 
 only a few spoonfuls of spirits though he had the art 
 of replenishing it so adroitly, that it had been celebrated 
 for fifty years as more fatal to sobriety than any bowl in 
 the parish. Having done due honour to " Wisdom," 
 they again mounted, and proceeded over moss and moor 
 to some other equally hospitable master of the pipe. 
 " Eh me," says Shortreed, " sic an endless fund o hu 
 mour and drollery as he then had wi him ! Never ten 
 yards but we were either laughing or roaring and sing 
 ing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited him- 
 BeF to every body ! He aye did as the lave did ; never 
 made himsel the great man, or took ony airs in the com 
 pany. I ve seen him in a moods in these jaunts, grav<j 
 and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk (this, how 
 
LIDDESDALE. 229 
 
 ever, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare) but, 
 drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He looked 
 excessively heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he 
 was never out o gude-humour." 
 
 On reaching, one evening, some Charlieshope or other 
 (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, they found 
 a kindly reception as usual ; but to their agreeable sur 
 prise, after some days of hard living, a measured and 
 orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon after sup 
 per, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had been 
 produced, a young student of divinity, who happened to 
 be in the house, was called upon to take the " big ha 
 Bible," in the good old fashion of Burns s Saturday 
 Night ; and some progress had been already made in the 
 service, when the goodman of the farm, whose " ten 
 dency," as Mr. Mitchell says, " was soporific," scandal 
 ized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from 
 his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian excla 
 mation of " By , here s the keg at last ! " and iu 
 
 tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herds 
 men, whom, on hearing a day before of the advocate s 
 approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smug 
 gler s haunt, at some considerable distance, in quest of a 
 supply of run brandy from the Solway Frith. The pious 
 " exercise " of the household was hopelessly interrupted. 
 With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby enter 
 tainment, this jolly Elliot, or Armstrong, had the welcome 
 "keg mounted on the table without a moment s delay, and 
 gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued 
 carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the 
 party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him 
 in company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic 
 with infinite humour the sudden outburst of his old host, 
 
230 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 _ . , * 
 
 on hearing the clatter of horses feet, which he knew to 
 indicate the arrival of the keg the consternation of the 
 dame and the rueful despair with which the young 
 clergyman closed the book. 
 
 r- " It was in that same season, I think," says Mr. Short- 
 reed, " that Sir Walter got from Dr. Elliot the large old 
 border war-horn, which ye may still see hanging in the 
 armoury at Abbotsford. How great he was when he was 
 made master o that! I believe it had been found in 
 Hermitage Castle and one of the Doctor s servants 
 had used it many a day as a grease-horn for his scythe, 
 before they discovered its history. When cleaned out, it 
 was never a hair the worse the original chain, hoop, 
 and mouth-piece of steel, were all entire, just as you now 
 see them. Sir Walter carried it home all the way from 
 Liddesdale to Jedburgh, slung about his neck like Johnny 
 Gilpin s bottle, while I was intrusted with an ancient 
 bridle-bit, which we had likewise picked up. 
 
 * The feint o pride na pride had he ... 
 A lang kail-gully hung down by his side, 
 And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had he, 
 
 and meikle and sair we routed on t, and hotched and 
 blew, wi micht and main. O what pleasant days ! And 
 then a the nonsense we had cost us naething. We never 
 put hand in pocket for a week on end. Toll-bars there 
 were none and indeed I think our haill charges were a 
 feed o corn to our horses m the gangin and comin at 
 Kiccartoun mill." 
 
 It is a pity that we have no letters of Scott s describing 
 this first raid into Liddesdale ; but as he must have left 
 Kelso for Edinburgh very soon after its conclusion, he 
 probably chose to be the bearer of his own tidings. At 
 tny rate, the wonder perhaps is, not that we should hav 
 
NOTE-BOOKS OF 1792. 231 
 
 BO few letters of this period, as that any have been re 
 covered. " I ascribe the preservation of my little hand 
 ful," says Mr. Clerk, to a sort of instinctive prophetic 
 sense of his future greatness." 
 
 I have found, however, two note-books, inscribed 
 " Walter Scott, 1792," containing a variety of scrap 
 and hints which may help us to fill up our notion of his 
 private studies during that year. He appears to have 
 used them indiscriminately. We have now an extract 
 from the author he happened to be reading ; now a mem 
 orandum of something that had struck him in conversa 
 tion ; a fragment of an essay ; transcripts of favourite 
 poems ; remarks on curious cases in the old records of 
 the Justiciary Court ; in short, a most miscellaneous col 
 lection, in which there is whatever might have been 
 looked for, with perhaps the single exception of original 
 verse. One of the books opens with : " Vegtam s Kvitha, 
 or The Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bar- 
 tholine, and the English poetical version of Mr. Gray ; 
 with some account of the death of Balder, both as nar 
 rated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the 
 Northern historians Auctore Gualtero Scott" The 
 Norse original, and the two versions, are then tran 
 scribed; and the historical account appended, extending 
 to seven closely written quarto pages, was, I doubt not, 
 read before one or other of his debating societies. Next 
 comes a page, headed " Pecuniary Distress of Charles the 
 First," and containing a transcript of a receipt for some 
 plate lent to the King in 1643. He then copies Lang- 
 horne s Owen of Carron ; the verses of Canute, on pass 
 ing Ely ; the lines to a cuckoo, given by Warton as the 
 oldest specimen of English verse ; a translation " by a 
 gentleman, in Devonshire," of the death-song of Regner 
 
232 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Lodbrog; and the beautiful quatrain omitted in Gray j 
 elegy, 
 
 * There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, &c. 
 
 After this we have an Italian canzonet, on the praises of 
 blue eyes (which were much in favour at this time) ; 
 several pages of etymologies from Ducange ; some more 
 of notes on the Morte Arthur ; extracts from the books 
 of Adjournal, about Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of 
 Branxome of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and her hus 
 band, " Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, called Wicked 
 Wat ; " other extracts about witches and fairies ; various 
 couplets from Hall s Satires ; a passage from Albania ; 
 notes on the Second Sight, with extracts from Aubrey 
 and Glanville ; a " List of Ballads to be discovered or 
 recovered ; " extracts from Guerin de Montglave ; and 
 after many more similar entries, a table of the Mseso- 
 Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Runic alphabets with a fourth 
 section, headed German, but left blank. But enough per 
 haps of this record. 
 
 In November 1792, Scott and Clerk began their reg 
 ular attendance at the Parliament House, and Scott, to 
 use Mr. Clerk s words, " by and by crept into a tolerable 
 share of such business as may be expected from a writer s 
 connexion." By this we are to understand that he was 
 employed from time to time by his father, and probably a 
 few other solicitors, in that dreary everyday taskwork, 
 chiefly of long written informations, and other papers for 
 the Court, on which young counsellors of the Scotch Bar 
 were then expected to bestow a great deal of trouble for 
 very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely a 
 chance of finding reserved for their hands any matter that 
 could elicit the display of superior knowledge of under- 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 235 
 
 standing. He had also his part in the cases of persons 
 suing in forma pauperis ; but how little important those 
 that came to his share were, and how slender was the 
 impression they had left on his mind, we may gather 
 from a note on Redgauntlet, wherein he signifies hia 
 doubts whether he really had ever been engaged in what 
 he has certainly made the cause celebre of Poor Peter 
 Peebles. 
 
 But he soon became as famous for his powers of story 
 telling among the lawyers of the Outer-House, as he had 
 been among the companions of his High- School days. 
 The place where these idlers mostly congregated was 
 called, it seems, by a name which sufficiently marks the 
 date it was the Mountain. Here, as Roger North says 
 of the Court of King s Bench in his early day, " there 
 was more news than law ; " here hour after hour 
 passed away, week after week, month after month, and 
 year after year, in the interchange of light-hearted merri 
 ment among a circle of young men, more than one of 
 whom, in after times, attained the highest honours of the 
 profession. Among the most intimate of Scott s daily 
 associates from this time, and during all his subsequent 
 attendance at the Bar, were, besides various since-emi 
 nent persons that have been already named, the first 
 legal antiquary of our time in Scotland, Mr. Thomas 
 Thomson, and William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kined- 
 ler. Mr. Clerk remembers complaining one morning on 
 finding the group convulsed with laughter, that Duns 
 Scotus had been forestalling him in a good story, which 
 he had communicated privately the day before adding, 
 moreover, that his friend had not only stolen, but dis 
 guised it. "Why," answered he, skilfully waiving the 
 main charge, " this is always the way with the Baro 
 
234 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 net. He is continually saying that I change his stories, 
 whereas in fact I only put a cocked hat on their heads, 
 and stick a cane into their hands to make them fit for 
 going into company." 
 
 The German class, of which we have an account in 
 one of the Prefaces of 1830, was formed before the 
 Christmas of 1792, and it included almost all these 
 loungers of the Mountain. In the essay now referred to 
 Scott traces the interest excited in Scotland on the sub 
 ject of German literature to a paper read before the 
 Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the 21st of April 1788, 
 by the author of the Man of Feeling. "The literary 
 persons of Edinburgh," he says, " were then first made 
 aware of the existence of works of genius in a language 
 cognate with the English, and possessed of the same 
 manly force of expression ; they learned at the same 
 time that the taste which dictated the German composi 
 tions was of a kind as nearly allied to the English as 
 their language : those who were from their youth accus 
 tomed to admire Shakspeare and Milton, became ac 
 quainted for the first time with a race of poets, who had 
 the same lofty ambition to spurn the flaming boundaries 
 of the universe, and investigate the realms of Chaos and 
 Old Night ; and of dramatists, who, disclaiming the pe 
 dantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of occasional 
 improbabilities and extravagance, to present life on the 
 stage in its scenes of wildest contrast, and in all its 
 boundless variety of character Their fictitious nar 
 ratives, their ballad poetry, and other branches of their 
 literature, which are particularly apt to bear the stamp 
 of the extravagant and the supernatural, began also to 
 occupy the attention of the British literati. In Edin 
 burgh, where the remarkable coincidence between the 
 
GERMAN STUDIES. 235 
 
 German language and the Lowland Scottish encouraged 
 young men to approach this newly-discovered spring of 
 literature, a class was formed of six or seven intimate 
 friends, who proposed to make themselves acquainted 
 with the German language. They were in the habit of 
 being much together, and the time they spent in this 
 new study was felt as a period of great amusement. 
 One source of this diversion was the laziness of one of 
 their number, the present author, who, averse to the 
 necessary toil of grammar, and the rules, was in the 
 practice of fighting his way to the knowledge of the Ger 
 man by his acquaintance with the Scottish and Anglo- 
 Saxon dialects, and of course frequently committed blun 
 ders which were not lost on his more accurate and more 
 studious companions." The teacher, Dr. Willich, a medi 
 cal man, is then described as striving with little success 
 to make his pupils sympathize in his own passion for the 
 " sickly monotony " and " affected ecstasies " of Gessner s 
 Death of Abel ; and the young students, having at length 
 acquired enough of the language for their respective pur 
 poses, as selecting for their private pursuits, some the 
 philosophical treatises of Kant, others the dramas of 
 Schiller and Goethe. The chief, if not the only Kantist 
 of the party, was, I believe, John Macfarlan of Kirkton ; 
 among those who turned zealously to the popular BeJles 
 Lettres of Germany were, with Scott, his most intimate 
 friends of the period, William Clerk, William Erskine, 
 and Thomas Thomson. 
 
 These studies were much encouraged by the example, 
 and assisted by the advice, of an accomplished person, 
 considerably Scott s superior in standing, Alexander Fra- 
 aer Tytler, afterwards a Judge of the Court of Session 
 by the title of Lord Woodhouselee. His version of 
 
236 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Schiller s Robbers was one of the earliest from the Ger- 
 man theatre, and no doubt stimulated his young friend to 
 his first experiments in the same walk. 
 
 The contemporary familiars of those days almost all 
 survive ; but one, and afterwards the most intimate of 
 them all, went before him ; and I may therefore hazard 
 in this place a few words on the influence which he exer 
 cised at this critical period on Scott s literary tastes and 
 studies. William Erskine was the son of an Episcopalian 
 clergyman in Perthshire, of a good family, but far from 
 wealthy. He had received his early education at Glas 
 gow, where, while attending the college lectures, he was 
 boarded under the roof of Andrew Macdonald, the author 
 of Vimonda, who then officiated as minister to a small 
 congregation of Episcopalian nonconformists. From this 
 unfortunate but very ingenious man, Erskine had de 
 rived, in boyhood, a strong passion for old English litera 
 ture, more especially the Elizabethan dramatists ; which, 
 however, he combined with a far livelier relish for the 
 classics of antiquity than either Scott or his master ever 
 possessed. From the beginning, accordingly, Scott had 
 in Erskine a monitor who entering most warmly into 
 his taste for national lore the life of the past and 
 the bold and picturesque style of the original English 
 school was constantly urging the advantages to be 
 derived from combining with its varied and masculine 
 breadth of delineation such attention to the minor graces 
 of arrangement and diction as might conciliate the fastid 
 iousness of modern taste. Deferring what I may have 
 to say as to Erskine s general character and manners, 
 until I shall have approached the period when I myself 
 had the pleasure of sharing his acquaintance, I introduct 
 the general bearing of his literary opinions thus early 
 
WILLIAM EKSKINE. 237 
 
 because I conceive there is no doubt that his companion 
 ship was, even in those days, highly serviceable to Scott 
 as a student of the German drama and romance. Di 
 rected, as he mainly was in the ultimate determination 
 of his literary ambition, by the example of their great 
 founders, he appears to have run at first no trivial hazard 
 of adopting the extravagances, both of thought and lan 
 guage, which he found blended in their works with such 
 a captivating display of genius, and genius employed on 
 subjects so much in unison with the deepest of his own 
 juvenile predilections. His friendly critic wa? just as 
 well as delicate ; and unmerciful severity as to the min 
 gled absurdities and vulgarities of German det; 11 com 
 manded deliberate attention from one who admii ed not 
 less enthusiastically than himself the genuine sui limity 
 and pathos of his new favourites. I could, I b< lieve, 
 name one other at least among Scott s fellow-stv dents 
 of the same time, whose influence was combined in this 
 matter with Erskine ? but his was tLa: wiiica continued 
 to be exerted the longest, and always in the same direc 
 tion. That it was not accompanied with entire success, 
 the readers of the Doom of Devorgoil, to say nothing of 
 minor blemishes in far better works, must acknowledge. 
 
 These German studies divided Scott s attention with 
 the business of the courts of law, on which he was at 
 least a regular attendant during the winter of 1792-3. 
 
 In March, when the Court rose, he proceeded into 
 Galloway) where he had not before been, in order to 
 make himself acquainted with the persons and localities 
 mixed up with the case of a certain Rev. Mr. M Naught, 
 minister of Girthon, whose trial, on charges of habitual 
 irunkenness, singing of lewd and profane songs, dancing 
 and toying at a penny-wsdding with a " sweetie wife * 
 
238 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 (that is, an itinerant vender of gingerbread, &c.), and 
 moreover of promoting irregular marriages as a justice 
 of the peace, was about to take place before the Genera* 
 Assembly of the Kirk. 
 
 As his " Case for M Naught," dated May 1793, is the 
 first of his legal papers that I have discovered, and con 
 tains several characteristic enough turns, I make no apol 
 ogy for introducing a few extracts : 
 
 " At the head of the first class of offences stands the extraor 
 dinary assertion, that, being a Minister of the Gospel, the re 
 spondent had illegally undertaken the office of a justice of 
 peace. It is, the respondent believes, the first time that ever 
 the undertaking an office of such extensive utility was stated 
 as a crime ; for he humbly apprehends, that by conferring the 
 office of a justice of the peace upon clergymen, their influence 
 may, in the general case, be rendered more extensive among 
 their parishioners, and many trifling causes be settled by them, 
 which might lead the litigants to enormous expenses, and be 
 come the subject of much contention before other courts. The 
 duty being only occasional, and not daily, cannot be said to in 
 terfere with those of their function ; and their education, and 
 presumed character, render them most proper for the office. 
 It is indeed alleged, that the act 1584, chap. 133, excludes 
 clergymen from acting under a commission of the peace. This 
 act, however, was passed at a time when it was of the highest 
 importance to the Crown to wrench from the hands of the 
 clergy the power of administering justice in civil cases, which 
 had, from the ignorance of the laity, been enjoyed by them 
 almost exclusively. During the whole reign of James VI., as 
 is well known to the Reverend Court, such a jealousy subsisted 
 betwixt the Church and the State, that those who were at 
 the head of the latter endeavoured, by every means in their 
 power, to diminish the influence of the former. At present, 
 when these dissensions happily no longer subsist, the law, ai 
 far as regards the office of justice of the peace, appears to have 
 
CASE OF M NAUGHT. 239 
 
 fellen into disuse, and the respondent conceives that any min 
 ister is capable of acting in that, or any other judicial capacity, 
 provided it is of such a nature as not to withdraw much of his 
 time from what the statute calls the comfort and edification of 
 the flock committed to him. Further, the act 1584 is virtually 
 repealed by the statute 6th Anne, c. 6, sect. 2, which makes 
 the Scots law on the subject of justices of the peace the same 
 with that of England, where the office is publicly exercised by 
 the clergy of all descriptions. 
 
 * * * * a Another branch of the accusation against the 
 defender as a justice of peace, is the ratification of irregular 
 marriages. The defender must here also call the attention 
 of his reverend brethren and judges to the expediency of his 
 conduct. The girls were usually with child at the time the 
 application was made to the defender. In this situation, the 
 children born out of matrimony, though begot under promise 
 of marriage, must have been thrown upon the parish, or per 
 haps murdered in infancy, had not the men been persuaded 
 to consent to a solemn declaration of betrothment, or private 
 marriage, emitted before the defender as a justice of peace. 
 The defender himself, commiserating the situation of such 
 women, often endeavoured to persuade their seducers to do 
 them justice : and men frequently acquiesced in this sort of 
 marriage, when they could by no means have been prevailed 
 upon to go through the ceremonies of proclamation of banns, 
 pr the expense and trouble of a public wedding. The decla- 
 i ation of a previous marriage was sometimes literally true ; 
 sometimes a fiction voluntarily emitted by the parties them 
 selves, under the belief that it was the most safe way of con 
 stituting a private marriage de presenti. The defender had 
 been induced, from the practice of other justices, to consider 
 the receiving these declarations, whether true or false, as a 
 part of his duty, which he could not decline, even had he been 
 willing to do so. Finally, the defender must remind the 
 Venerable Assembly, that he acted upon these occasions as a 
 justice of peace, which brings him oack to the point from 
 which he set out, viz. that the Reverend Court are utterly in- 
 
240 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 competent to take cognizance of his conduct in that character, 
 which no sentence that they can pronounce could give or take 
 away. 
 
 " The second grand division of the libel against the defender 
 refers to his conduct as a clergyman and a Christian. He was 
 charged in the libel with the most gross and vulgar behaviour, 
 with drunkenness, blasphemy, and impiety; yet all the evi 
 dence which the appellants have been able to bring forward 
 tends only to convict him of three acts of drunkenness during 
 the course of fourteen years : for even the Presbytery, severe 
 as they have been, acquit him quoad ultra. But the attention 
 of the Reverend Court is earnestly entreated to the situation of 
 the defender at the time, the circumstances which conduced 
 to his imprudence, and the share which some of those had in 
 occasioning his guilt, who have since been most active in per 
 secuting and distressing him on account of it. 
 
 " The defender must premise, by observing, that the crime 
 of drunkenness consists not in a man s having been in that 
 situation twice or thrice in his life, but in the constant and 
 habitual practice of the vice ; the distinction between ebrius 
 and ebriosus being founded in common sense, and recognised 
 by law. A thousand cases may be supposed, in which a man, 
 without being aware of what he is about, may be insensibly 
 led on to intoxication, especially in a country where the vice is 
 unfortunately so common, that upon some occasions a man 
 may go to excess from a false sense of modesty, or a fear of 
 disobliging his entertainer. The defender will not deny, that 
 after losing his senses upon the occasions, and in the manner 
 to be afterwards stated, he may have committed improprieties 
 arhieh fill him with sorrow and regret : but he hopes, that in 
 oase he shall be able to show circumstances which abridge and 
 palliate the guilt of his imprudent excess, the Venerable Court 
 will consider these improprieties as the effects of that excess 
 Dniy, and not as arising from any radical vice in his temper or 
 disposition. When a man is bereft of his judgment by the in 
 fluence of wine, and commits any crime, he can only be said to 
 be morally culpable, in proportion to the impropriety of the 
 
CASE OF M NAUGHT. 241 
 
 excess he has committed, and not in proportion to the magni 
 tude of its evil consequences. In a legal view, indeed, a man 
 must be held as answerable and punishable for such a crime, 
 precisely as if he had been in a state of sobriety ; but his crime 
 is, in a moral light, comprised in the origo mali, the drunkenness 
 only. His senses being once gone, he is no more than a human 
 machine, as insensible of misconduct, in speech and action, as 
 a parrot or an automaton. This is more particularly the case 
 with respect to indecorums, such as the defender is accused of; 
 for a man can no more be held a common swearer, or a habit 
 ual talker of obscenity, because he has been guilty of using such 
 expressions when intoxicated, than he can be termed an idiot, 
 because, when intoxicated, he has spoken nonsense. If, there 
 fore, the defender can extenuate the guilt of his intoxication, 
 he hopes that its consequences will be numbered rather among 
 his misfortunes than faults ; and that his Reverend Brethren 
 will consider him, while in that state, as acting from a mechani 
 cal impulse, and as incapable of distinguishing between right 
 and wrong. For the scandal which his behaviour may have 
 occasioned, he feels the most heartfelt sorrow, and will submit 
 with penitence and contrition to the severe rebuke which the 
 Presbytery have decreed against him. But he cannot think 
 that his unfortunate misdemeanour, circumstanced as he was, 
 merits a severer punishment. He can show, that pains were 
 at these times taken to lead him on, when bereft of his senses, 
 >o subjects which were likely to call forth improper or indecent 
 expressions. The defender must further urge, that not being 
 originally educated for the church, he may, before he assumed 
 the sacred character, have occasionally permitted himself free- 
 tbins of expression which are reckoned less culpable among the 
 laity. Thus he may, during that time, have learned the songs 
 which he is accused of singing, though rather inconsistent with 
 his clerical character. What, then, was more natural, than 
 that, when thrown off his guard by the assumed conviviality 
 and artful solicitations of those about hin>, former improper 
 habits, though renounced during his thinking moments, might 
 VOL. i. 16 
 
242 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 assume the reins of his imagination, when his situation ren 
 dered him utterly insensible of their impropriety ? 
 
 **** The Venerable Court will now consider how far 
 three instances of ebriety, and their consequences, should ruin 
 at once the character and the peace of mind of the unfortunate 
 defender, and reduce him, at his advanced time of life, about 
 sixty years, together with his aged parent, to a state of beg 
 gary. He hopes his severe sufferings may be considered as 
 some atonement for the improprieties of which he may have 
 beer guilty ; and that the Venerable Court will, in their judg 
 ment, remember mercy. 
 
 " In respect whereof, &c. 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 This argument (for which he received five guineas) 
 was sustained by Scott in a speech of considerable length 
 at the bar of the Assembly. It was far the most impor 
 tant business in which any solicitor had as yet employed 
 him, and The Club mustered strong in the gallery. He 
 began in a low voice, but by degrees gathered more con 
 fidence ; and when it became necessary for him to analyse 
 the evidence touching a certain penny-wedding, repeated 
 some very coarse specimens of his client s alleged con 
 versation, in a tone so bold and free, that he was called 
 to order with great austerity by one of the leading mem 
 bers of the Venerable Court. This seemed to confuse 
 him not a little ; so when, by and by, he had to recite a 
 etanza of one of M Naught s convivial ditties, he breathed 
 it out in a faint and hesitating style : whereupon, think 
 ing he needed encouragement, the allies in the gallery 
 astounded the Assembly by cordial shouts of hear ! hear ! 
 encore ! encore ! They were immediately turned out- 
 and Scott got through the rest of his harangue very littlt 
 to his own satisfaction. 
 
CASE OF M NAUGHT. 243 
 
 He believed, in a word, that he had made a complete 
 failure, and issued from the Court in a melancholy mood. 
 At the door he found Adam Fergusson waiting to inform 
 him that the brethren so unceremoniously extruded from 
 the gallery had sought shelter in a neighbouring tavern, 
 where they hoped he would join them. He complied 
 with the invitation, but seemed for a long while incapa 
 ble of enjoying the merriment of his friends. " Come, 
 Duns" cried the Baronet, "cheer up, man, and fill 
 another tumbler ; here s ****** going to give us 
 The Tailor" " Ah ! " he answered, with a groan, " the 
 tailor was a better man than me, sirs ; for he didna ven 
 ture ben until he kenned the way" A certain comical 
 old song, which had, perhaps, been a favourite with the 
 minister of Girthon 
 
 " The tailor he came here to sew, 
 And weel he kenn d the way o t," &c. 
 
 was, however, sung and chorussed ; and the evening 
 ended in the full jollity of High Jinks. 
 
 Mr. M Naught was deposed from the ministry, and his 
 young advocate has written out at the end of the printed 
 papers on the case two of the songs which had been al 
 leged in the evidence. They are both grossly indecent. 
 It is to be observed, that the research he had made with 
 a view to pleading this man s cause, carried him, for the 
 first, and I believe for the last time, into the scenery of 
 his Guy Mannering ; and I may add, that several of the 
 names of the minor characters of the novel (that of 
 M* Gujffog, for example) appear in the list of witnesses 
 for and against his client. 
 
 If the preceding autumn forms a remarkable point in 
 Scott s history, as first introducing him to the manners 
 
244 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of the wilder Border country, the summer which followed 
 left traces of equal importance. He gave the greater 
 part of it to an excursion which much extended his 
 knowledge of Highland scenery and character; and in 
 particular furnished him with the richest stores, which 
 he afterwards turned to account in one of the most beau 
 tiful of his great poems, and in several, including the 
 first, of his prose romances. 
 
 Accompanied by Adam Fergusson, he visited on this 
 occasion some of the finest districts of Stirlingshire and 
 Perthshire; and not in the precursory manner of his 
 more boyish expeditions, but taking up his residence for 
 a week or ten days in succession at the family residences 
 of several of his young allies of the Mountain, and from 
 thence familiarizing himself at leisure with the country 
 and the people round about. In this way he lingered 
 some time at Tullibody, the seat of the father of Sir 
 Ralph Abercromby, and grandfather of his friend Mr. 
 George Abercromby (now Lord Abercromby) ; and 
 heard from the old gentleman s own lips the narrative 
 of a journey which he had been obliged to make, shortly 
 after he first settled in Stirlingshire, to the wild retreat 
 of Rob Roy. The venerable laird told how he was re 
 ceived by the cateran " with much courtesy," in a cavern 
 exactly such as that of Bean Lean ; dined on collops cut 
 from some of his own cattle, which he recognised hang 
 ing by their heels from the rocky roof beyond ; and re 
 turned in all safety, after concluding a bargain of black 
 mail in virtue of which annual payment Rob Roy 
 guaranteed the future security of his herds against, not 
 his own followers merely, but all freebooters whatever. 
 Scott next visited his friend Edmonstone, at Newton, a 
 beautiful seat close to the ruins of the once magnificent 
 
HIGHLAND EXCURSION 1793. 245 
 
 Castle of Doune, and heard another aged gentleman s 
 vivid recollections of all that happened there when John 
 Hume, the author of Douglas, and other Hanoverian 
 prisoners, escaped from the Highland garrison in 1745.* 
 Proceeding towards the sources of the Teith, he was re 
 ceived for the first time under a roof which, in subse 
 quent years, he regularly revisited, that of another of his 
 associates, Buchanan, the young Laird of Cambusmore. 
 It was thus that the scenery of Loch Katrine came to be 
 so associated with " the recollection of many a dear 
 friend and merry expedition of former days," that to 
 compose the Lady of the Lake was " a labour of love, 
 and no less so to recall the manners and incidents intro 
 duced." t It was starting from the same house, when 
 the poem itself had made some progress, that he put to 
 the test the practicability of riding from the banks of 
 Loch Vennachar to the Castle of Stirling within the 
 brief space which he had assigned to Fitz-James s Grey 
 Bayard, after the duel with Roderick Dhu ; and the 
 principal landmarks in the description of that fiery prog 
 ress are so many hospitable mansions, all familiar to him 
 at the same period Blairdrummond, the residence of 
 Lord Kaimes ; Ochtertyre, that of John Ramsay, the 
 scholar and antiquary (now best remembered for his kind 
 and sagacious advice to Burns) ; and " the lofty brow of 
 ancient Kier," the splendid seat of the chief family of the 
 name of Stirling ; from which, to say nothing of remoter 
 objects, the prospect has, on one hand, the rock of " Snow- 
 don," and in front the field of Bannockburn. 
 
 Another resting place was Craighall, in Perthshire, 
 the seat of the Rattrays, a family related to Mr. Clerk, 
 
 * Waverley, vol. ii. 
 
 t Introduction to The Lady of the Lake. 1830. 
 
246 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 who accompanied him. From the position of this strik 
 ing place, as Mr. Clerk at once perceived, and as the 
 author afterwards confessed to him, that of the Tully- 
 Veolan was very faithfully copied ; though in the descrip 
 tion of the house itself, and its gardens, many features 
 were adopted from Bruntsfield and Ravelstone.* Mr, 
 Clerk has told me that he went through the first chapters 
 of Waverley without more than a vague suspicion of the 
 new novelist ; but that when he read the arrival at Tully- 
 Veolan, his suspicion was at once converted into certainty, 
 and he handed the book to a common friend of his and 
 the author s, saying " This is Scott s and I ll lay a bet 
 you ll find such and such things in the next chapter." I 
 hope Mr. Clerk will forgive me for mentioning the par 
 ticular circumstance that first flashed the conviction on 
 his mind. In the course of a ride from Craighall they 
 had both become considerably fagged and heated, and 
 Clerk, seeing the smoke of a clachan a little way before 
 them, ejaculated " How agreeable if we should here 
 fall in with one of those signposts where a red lion pre 
 dominates over a punch-bowl ! " The phrase happened 
 to tickle Scott s fancy he often introduced it on sim 
 ilar occasions afterwards and at the distance of twenty 
 years Mr. Clerk was at no loss to recognise an old ac 
 quaintance in the " huge bear " which " predominates " 
 Dver the stone basin in the courtyard of Baron Brad- 
 sardine. 
 
 I believe the longest stay he made this autumn was at 
 Meigle in Forfarshire, the seat of Patrick Murray of 
 Simprim, a gentleman whose enthusiastic passion for an 
 tiquities, and especially military antiquities, had pecu 
 liarly endeared him both to Scott and Clerk. Here 
 * Waverley, vol. i. 
 
MEIGLE. 247 
 
 Adam Fergusson, too, was of the party ; and I have 
 often heard them each and all dwell on the thousand 
 scenes of adventure and merriment which diversified that 
 visit. In the village churchyard, close beneath Mr. Mur 
 ray s gardens, tradition still points out the tomb of Queen 
 Guenever ; and the whole district abounds in objects of 
 historical interest. Amidst them they spent their wan 
 dering days, while their evenings passed in the joyous 
 festivity of a wealthy young bachelor s establishment, or 
 sometimes under the roofs of neighbours less refined 
 than their host, the Balmawhapples of the Braes of 
 Angus. From Meigle they made a trip to Dunottai 
 Castle, the ruins of the huge old fortress of the Earls 
 Marischall, and it was in the churchyard of that place 
 that Scott then saw for the first and last time Pe 
 ter Paterson, the living Old Mortality. He and Mr. 
 Walker, the minister of the parish, found the poor man 
 refreshing the epitaphs on the tombs of certain Camero- 
 nians who had fallen under the oppressions of James the 
 Second s brief insanity. Being invited into the manse 
 after dinner to take a glass of whisky punch, " to which 
 he was supposed to have no objections," he joined the 
 minister s party accordingly ; but " he was in bad hu 
 mour," says Scott, " and, to use his own phrase, had no 
 freedom for conversation. His spirit had been sorely 
 vexed by hearing, in a certain Aberdonian kirk, the 
 psalmody directed by a pitch-pipe or some similar instru 
 ment, which was to Old Mortality the abomination of 
 abominations." 
 
 It was also while he had his headquarters at Meigle at 
 Jiis time, that Scott visited for the first time Glammis, 
 tne residence of the Earls of Strathmore, by far the 
 noblest specimen of the real feudal castle, entire and 
 
248 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 perfect, that had as yet come under his inspection. What 
 its aspect was when he first saw it, and how grievously 
 he lamented the change it had undergone when he revis 
 ited it some years afterwards, he has recorded in one of 
 the most striking passages that I think ever came from 
 his pen. Commenting, in his Essay on Landscape Gar 
 dening (1828), on the proper domestic ornaments of the 
 Castle Pleasaunce, he has this beautiful burst of lamen 
 tation over the barbarous innovations of the Capability 
 men : " Down went many a trophy of old magnificence, 
 courtyard, ornamented enclosure, fosse, avenue, barbican, 
 and every external muniment of battled wall and flank 
 ing tower, out of the midst of which the ancient dome, 
 rising high above all its characteristic accompaniments, 
 and seemingly girt round by its appropriate defences, 
 which again circled each other in their different grada 
 tions, looked, as it should, the queen and mistress of the 
 surrounding country. It was thus that the huge old 
 tower of Glammis, whose birth tradition notes not, 
 once showed its lordly head above seven circles (if I 
 remember aright) of defensive boundaries, through which 
 the friendly guest was admitted, and at each of which a 
 suspicious person was unquestionably put to his answer. 
 A disciple of Kent had the cruelty to render this splen 
 did old mansion (the more modern part of which was the 
 work of Inigo Jones) more parkish, as he was pleased 
 to call it ; to raze all those exterior defences, and bring 
 his mean and paltry gravel-walk up to the very door 
 from which, deluded by the name, one might have imag 
 ined Lady Macbeth (with the form and features of Sid 
 dons) issuing forth to receive King Duncan. It is thirty 
 years and upwards since I have seen Glammis, but I 
 have not yet forgotten or forgiven the atrocity which, 
 
GLAMMIS. 249 
 
 jnder pretence of improvement, deprived that lordly 
 place of its appropriate accompaniments, 
 
 Leaving an ancient dome and towers like these 
 Beggar d and outraged. " * 
 
 The night he spent at the yet unprofaned Glammis in 
 1793 was, as he elsewhere says, one of the " two periods 
 distant from each other " at which he could recollect ex 
 periencing " that degree of superstitious awe which his 
 countrymen call eerie." "The heavy pile," he writes, 
 " contains much in its appearance, and in the traditions 
 connected with it, impressive to the imagination. It was 
 the scene of the murder of a Scottish King of great an 
 tiquity not indeed the gracious Duncan, with whom 
 the name naturally associates itself, but Malcolm II. It 
 contains also a curious monument of the peril of feudal 
 times, being a secret chamber, the entrance of which, by 
 the law or custom of the family, must only be known to 
 three persons at once, namely, the Earl of Strathmore, 
 his heir-apparent, and any third person whom they may 
 take into their confidence. The extreme antiquity of the 
 building is vouched by the thickness of the walls, and 
 the wild straggling arrangement of the accommodation 
 within doors. As the late Earl seldom resided at Glam 
 mis, it was when I was there but half furnished, and that 
 with mov cables of great antiquity, which, with the pieces 
 of chivalric armour hanging on the walls, greatly con 
 tributed to the general effect of the wnole. After a very 
 hospitable reception from the late Peter Proctor, senes 
 chal of the castle, I was conducted to my apartment in a 
 distant part of the building. I must own, that when I 
 heard door after door shut, after my conductor had re- 
 * Wordsworth s Sonnet on Neidpath Castle. 
 
250 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tired, I began to consider myself as too far from the liv 
 ing, and somewhat too near the dead. We had passed 
 through what is called the King s Room, a vaulted apart 
 ment, garnished with stag s antlers and other trophies of 
 the chase, and said by tradition to be the spot of Mal 
 colm s murder, and I had an idea of the vicinity of the 
 castl 3 chapel. In spite of the truth of history, the whole 
 nighi scene in Macbeth s Castle rushed at once upon me, 
 and struck my mind more forcibly than even when I 
 have seen its terrors represented by John Kemble and 
 his inimitable sister. In a word, I experienced sensa 
 tions which, though not remarkable for timidity or super 
 stition, did not fail to affect me to the point of being 
 disagreeable, while they were mingled at the same time 
 with a strange and indescribable sort of pleasure, the 
 recollection of which affords me gratification at this 
 moment." * 
 
 He alludes here to the hospitable reception which had 
 preceded the mingled sensations of this eerie night ; but 
 one of his notes on Waverley touches this not unimpor 
 tant part of the story more distinctly ; for we are there 
 informed, that the silver bear of Tully-Veolan, " the po- 
 culum potatorium of the valiant baron," had its prototype 
 at Glammis a massive beaker of silver, double gilt, 
 moulded into the form of a lion, the name and bearing 
 of the Earls of Strathmore, and containing about an 
 English pint of wine. " The author," he says, " ought 
 perhaps to be ashamed of recording that he had the hon 
 our of swallowing the contents of the lion ; and the recol 
 lection of the feat suggested the story of the Bear of 
 Bradwardine." 
 
 From this pleasant towr, so rich in its results, Scot 
 * Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 398. 
 
JEDBURGH ASSIZES. 251 
 
 returned in time to attend the autumnal assizes at Jed- 
 burgh, on which occasion he made his first appearance as 
 counsel in a criminal court ; and had the satisfaction of 
 helping a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape 
 through some of the meshes of the law. " You re a 
 lucky scoundrel," Scott whispered to his client, when the 
 verdict was pronounced. " I m just o your mind," quoth 
 the desperado, " and I ll send ye a maukin * the morn, 
 man." I am not sure whether it was at these assizes or 
 the next in the same town, that he had less success in 
 the case of a certain notorious housebreaker. The man, 
 however, was well aware that no skill could have baffled 
 the clear evidence against him, and was, after his fashion, 
 grateful for such exertions as had been made in his be 
 half. He requested the young advocate to visit him 
 once more before he left the place. Scott s curiosity in 
 duced him to accept this invitation, and his friend, as 
 soon as they were alone together in the condemned cell, 
 said "I am very sorry, sir, that I have no fee to offer 
 you so let me beg your acceptance of two bits of ad 
 vice which may be useful perhaps when you come to 
 have a house of your own. I am done with practice, 
 you see, and here is my legacy. Never keep a large 
 watchdog out of doors we can always silence them 
 cheaply indeed if it be a dog, tis easier than whistling 
 but tie a little tight yelping terrier within ; and sec 
 ondly, put no trust in nice, clever, gimcrack locks the 
 only thing that bothers us is a huge old heavy one, no 
 matter how simple the construction, and the ruder and 
 rustier the key, so much the better for the housekeeper." 
 I remember hearing him tell this story some thirty years 
 after at a Judges dinner at Jedburgh, and he summed it 
 * i. e. a hare- 
 
252 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 up with a rhyme " Aj, ay, my lord," (I think he ad 
 dressed his friend Lord Meadowbank) 
 
 " Yelping terrier, rusty key, 
 Was Walter Scott s best Jeddart fee. " 
 
 At these, or perhaps the next assizes, he was also 
 eounsel in an appeal case touching a cow which his client 
 had sold as sound, but which the court below (the sheriff) 
 had pronounced to have what is called the cliers a dis 
 ease analogous to glanders in a horse. In opening his 
 case before Sir David Rae, Lord Eskgrove, Scott stoutly 
 maintained the healthiness of the cow, who, as he said, 
 had merely a cough. " Stop there," quoth the judge ; 
 " I have had plenty of healthy kye in my time, but I 
 never heard of ane of them coughing. A coughin cow ! 
 that will never do. Sustain the sheriff s judgment, 
 and decern." 
 
 A day or two after this, Scott and his old companion 
 were again on their way into Liddesdale, and "just," 
 says the Shortreed Memorandum, " as we were passing 
 by Singdon, we saw a grand herd o cattle a feeding by 
 the roadside, and a fine young bullock, the best in the 
 whole lot, was in the midst of them, coughing lustily. 
 * Ah, said Scott, what a pity for my client that old 
 Eskgrove had not taken Singdon on his way to the town. 
 That bonny creature would have saved us 
 
 4 A Daniel come to judgment, yea a Daniel; 
 wise young judge, how I do honour thee ! " 
 
 " To PathcJc Murray of Simprim, Esq., Meigle. 
 
 " Rosebank, near Kelso, Sept. 13, 1793. 
 
 " Dear Murray, I would have let fly an epistle at you long 
 ere this, had I not known I should have some difficulty in hit 
 
ROSEBANK SEPTEMBER 1793. 253 
 
 ting so active a traveller, who may in that respect be likened 
 unto a bird of passage. Were you to follow the simile through 
 out, I might soon expect to see you winging your way to the 
 southern climes, instead of remaining to wait the approach of 
 winter in the colder regions of the north. Seriously, I have 
 been in weekly hopes of hearing of your arrival in the Merse, 
 and have been qualifying myself by constant excursions to be 
 your Border Cicerone. 
 
 " As the facetious Linton will no doubt make one of your 
 party, I have got by heart for his amusement a reasonabl 
 number of Border ballads, most of them a little longer than 
 Chevy Chase, which I intend to throw in at intervals, just frj 
 way of securing my share in the conversation. As for yov , 
 as I know your picturesque turn, I can be in this country f, 
 no loss how to cater for your entertainment, especially if you 
 would think of moving before the fall of the leaf. I believe 
 with respect to the real To Kalon, few villages can surpass 
 that near which I am now writing ; and as to your rivers, it is 
 part of my creed that the Tweed and Teviot yield to none in 
 the world, nor do I fear that even in your eyes, which have 
 been feasted on classic ground, they will greatly sink in com 
 parison with the Tiber or Po. Then for antiquities, it is true 
 we have got no temples or heathenish fanes to show ; but if 
 substantial old castles and ruined abbeys will serve in their 
 stead, they are to be found in abundance. So much for Linton 
 and you. As for Mr. Robertson,* I don t know quite so well 
 how to bribe him. We had indeed lately a party of strollers 
 here, who might in some degree have entertained him, L e. in 
 case he felt no compassion for the horrid and tragical murders 
 which they nightly committed, but now, Alas, Sir ! the play 
 ers be gone. 
 
 " I am at present very uncertain as to my own motions, but 
 
 * Dr. Robertson was tutor to the Laird of Simprim, and afterwards 
 minister of Meigle a man of great worth, and an excellent scholar. 
 [n his younger days he was fond of the theatre, and encouraged and 
 directed Simprim, Grogg, Linton cf Co. in their histrionic diversions. 
 F1839.J 
 
254 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 I still hope to be northwards again before the commencement 
 of the session, which (d n it) is beginning to draw nigher 
 than I could wish. I would esteem myself greatly favoured by 
 a few lines informing me of your motions when they are set 
 tled ; since visiting you, should I go north, or attending you if 
 you come this way, are my two grand plans of amusement. 
 
 " What think you of our politics now ? Had I been within 
 reach of you, or any of the chosen, I suspect the taking of 
 Valenciennes would have been sustained as a reason for ex 
 amining the contents of t other bottle, which has too often 
 Buffered for slighter pretences. I have little doubt, however, 
 that by the time we meet in glory (terrestrial glory, I mean) 
 Dunkirk will be an equally good apology. Adieu, my good 
 friend; remember me kindly to Mr. Robertson, to Linton, 
 and to the Baronet. I understand both these last intend 
 seeing you soon. I am very sincerely yours, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The winter of 1793-4 appears to have been passed 
 like the preceding one : the German class resumed their 
 sittings; Scott spoke in his debating club on the ques 
 tions of Parliamentary Reform and the Inviolability of 
 the Person of the First Magistrate, which the circum 
 stances of the time had invested with extraordinary in 
 terest, and in both of which he no doubt took the side 
 adverse to the principles of the English, and the practice 
 of the French Liberals. His love-affair continued on ex 
 actly the same footing as before ; and for the rest, like 
 the young heroes in Redgauntlet, he " swept the boards 
 of the Parliament House with the skirts of his gown ; 
 laughed, and made others laugh ; drank claret at Bayle s, 
 Fortune s, and Walker s, and eat oysters in the Covenant 
 Close." On his desk " the new novel most in repute lay 
 snugly intrenched beneath Stair s Institute, or an open 
 rolume of Decisions ; " and his dressing-table was life 
 
WINTER OF 1793-4. 255 
 
 tered with "old play-bills, letters respecting a meeting 
 of the Faculty, Rules of the Speculative, Syllabus of 
 Lectures all the miscellaneous contents of a young 
 advocate s pocket, which contains every thing but briefs 
 and bank-notes." His professional occupation was still 
 very slender; but he took a lively interest in the pro 
 ceedings of the criminal court, and more especially in 
 those arising out of the troubled state of the public 
 feeling as to politics. 
 
 In the spring of 1794 I find him writing to his friends 
 in Roxburghshire with great exultation about the " good 
 spirit " manifesting itself among the upper classes of the 
 citizens of Edinburgh, and above all, the organization of 
 a regiment of volunteers, in which his brother Thomas, 
 now a fine active young man, equally handsome and high- 
 spirited, was enrolled as a grenadier, while, as he remarks, 
 his own " unfortunate infirmity " condemned him to be " a 
 mere spectator of the drills." In the course of the same 
 year, the plan of a corps of volunteer light horse was 
 started ; and, if the recollection of Mr. Skene be accurate, 
 the suggestion originally proceeded from Scott himself, 
 who certainly had a principal share in its subsequent 
 success. He writes to his uncle at Rosebank, requesting 
 him to be on the look-out for a " strong gelding, such as 
 would suit a stalwart dragoon ; " and intimating his inten 
 tion to part with his collection of Scottish coins, rather 
 than not be mounted to his mind. The corps, however, 
 was not organized for some time ; and in the meanwhile 
 he had an opportunity of displaying his zeal in a manner 
 which Captain Scott by no means considered as so re 
 spectable. 
 
 A party of Irish medical students began, towards the 
 end of April, to make themselves remarkable in the 
 
256 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Edinburgh Theatre, where they mustered in a par tic* 
 ular corner of the pit, and lost no opportunity of insulting 
 the loyalists of the boxes, by calling for revolutionary 
 tunes, applauding every speech that could bear a seditious 
 meaning, and drowning the national anthem in howls and 
 hootings. The young Tories of the Parliament House 
 resented this license warmly, and after a succession of 
 minor disturbances, the quarrel was put to the issue of a 
 regular trial by combat. Scott was conspicuous among 
 the juvenile advocates and solicitors who on this grand 
 night assembled in front of the pit, armed with stout 
 cudgels, and determined to have God save the King not 
 only played without interruption, but sung in full chorus 
 by both company and audience. The Irishmen were 
 ready at the first note of the anthem. They rose, clap 
 ped on their hats, and brandished their shillelahs ; a stern 
 battle ensued, and after many a head had been cracked, 
 the loyalists at length found themselves in possession of 
 the field. Tn writing to Simprim a few days afterwards, 
 Scott says " You will be glad to hear that the affair 
 of Saturday passed over without any worse consequence 
 to the Loyalists than that five, including your friend and 
 humble servant Colonel Grogg, have been bound over to 
 the peace, and obliged to give bail for their good behav 
 iour, which, you may believe, was easily found. The said 
 Colonel had no less than three broken heads laid to his 
 charge by as many of the Democrats." Alluding to Sim- 
 prim s then recent appointment as Captain in the Perth 
 shire Fencibles (Cavalry), he adds " Among my own 
 military (I mean mock-military) achievements, let me 
 not fail to congratulate you and the country on the real 
 character you have agreed to accept. Remember, in 
 case of real action, I shall beg the honour of admission 
 to your troop as a volunteer." 
 
PLAYHOUSE RIOT 1794. 257 
 
 One of the theatrical party, Sir Alexander Wood, 
 tfhose notes lie before me, says "Walter was cer 
 tainly our Coryphgeus, and signalized himself splendidly 
 in this desperate fray; and nothing used afterwards to 
 afford him more delight than dramatizing its incidents. 
 Some of the most efficient of our allies were persons pre 
 viously unknown to him, and of several of these whom 
 he had particularly observed, he never lost sight after 
 wards. There were, I believe, cases in which they owed 
 most valuable assistance in life to his recollection of the 
 playhouse row" To this last part of Sir Alexander s tes 
 timony I can also add mine ; and I am sure my worthy 
 friend, Mr. Donald M Lean, W. S., will gratefully con 
 firm it. When that gentleman became candidate for 
 some office in the Exchequer, about 1822 or 1823, and 
 Sir Walter s interest was requested on his behalf, 
 " To be sure ! " said he ; " did not he sound the charge 
 upon Paddy? Can I ever forget Donald s Sticks by 
 Gt?"* 
 
 On the 9th May 1794, Charles Kerr of Abbotrule 
 writes to him "I was last night at Rosebank, and your 
 uncle told me he had been giving you a very long and 
 very sage lecture upon the occasion of these Edinburgh 
 squabbles ; I am happy to hear they are now at an end. 
 They were rather of the serious cast, and though you en 
 countered them with spirit and commendable resolution, 
 I, with your uncle, should wish to see your abilities con 
 spicuous on another theatre." The same gentleman, in 
 his next letter (June 3d), congratulates Scott on having 
 " seen his name in the newspaper," viz. as counsel for 
 
 * According to a friendly critic, one of the Liberals exclaimed, as 
 the row was thickening, " Jtfo Blows ! " and Donald, suiting the ac 
 tion to the word, responded, "Plows by ! " 1839. 
 
 VOL. i. 17 
 
258 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 another Roxburghshire laird, by designation Bedruh. 
 Such, no doubt, was Abbotrule s "other theatre." 
 
 Scott spent the long vacation of this year chiefly in 
 Roxburghshire, but again visited Keir, Cambusmore, and 
 others of his friends in Perthshire, and came to Edin 
 burgh, early in September, to be present at the trials of 
 Watt and Downie, on a charge of high treason. Watt 
 seems to have tendered his services to Government as a 
 spy upon the Society of the Friends of the People in 
 Edinburgh, but ultimately, considering himself as under 
 paid, to have embraced, to their wildest extent, the 
 schemes he had become acquainted with in the course 
 of this worthy occupation ; and he, and one Downie a 
 mechanic, were now arraigned as having taken a promi 
 nent part in the organizing of a plot for a general rising 
 in Edinburgh, to seize the Castle, the Bank, the persons 
 of the Judges, and proclaim a Provisional Republican 
 Government ; all which was supposed to have been ar 
 ranged in concert with the Hardies, Thelwalls, Holcrofts, 
 and so forth, who were a few weeks later brought to trial 
 in London for an alleged conspiracy to " summon dele 
 gates to a National Convention, with a view to subvert 
 the Government, and levy war upon the King." The 
 English prisoners were acquitted, but Watt and Downie 
 were not so fortunate. Scott writes as follows to hia 
 aunt, Miss Christian Rutherford, then at Ashestiel, in 
 Selkirkshire : 
 
 " Advocates Library, 5th Sept. 1794. 
 
 " My dear Miss Christy will perceive, from the date of this 
 epistb, that I have accomplished my purpose of coming to 
 town to be present at the trial of the Edinburgh traitors. 1 
 arrr id here on Monday evening from Kelso, and was presen 
 
POLITICAL TRIALS 1794. 259 
 
 at Watt s trial on Wednesday, which displayed to the public 
 the most atrocious and deliberate plan of villany which has 
 occurred, perhaps, in the annals of Great Britain. I refer you 
 for particulars to the papers, and shall only add, that the 
 equivocations and perjury of the witnesses (most of them 
 being accomplices in what they called the great plan) set the 
 abilities of Mr. Anstruther, the King s counsel, in the most 
 striking point of view. The patience and temper with which 
 he tried them on every side, and screwed out of them the evi 
 dence they were so anxious to conceal, showed much knowl 
 edge of human nature ; and the art with which he arranged 
 the information he received, made the trial, upon the whole, 
 the most interesting I ever was present at. Downie s trial is 
 just now going forwards over my head ; but as the evidence 
 is just the same as formerly brought against Watt, is not so 
 interesting. You will easily believe that on Wednesday my 
 curiosity was too much excited to retire at an early hour, and, 
 indeed, I sat in the Court from seven in the morning till two 
 the next morning ; but as I had provided myself with some 
 cold meat and a bottle of wine, I contrived to support the 
 fatigue pretty well. It strikes me, upon the whole, that the 
 plan of these miscreants might, from its very desperate and 
 improbable nature, have had no small chance of succeeding, 
 at least as far as concerned cutting off the soldiers, and obtain 
 ing possession of the banks, besides shedding the blood of the 
 most distinguished inhabitants. There, I think, the evil must 
 have stopped, unless they had further support than has yet 
 appeared. Stocks was the prime mover of the whole, and 
 the person who supplied the money ; and our theatrical dis 
 turbances are found to have formed one link of the chain. 
 So, I have no doubt, Messrs. Stocks, Burk, &c., would have 
 found out a new way of paying old debts. The people are 
 perfectly quiescent upon this grand occasion, and seem to in 
 terest themselves very little in the fate of their soi-disant 
 friends. The Edinburgh vomnteers make a respectable and 
 formidable appearance already. They are exercised four 
 hours almost every day, with all the rigour of military dis- 
 
260 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 cipline. The grenadier company consists entirely of men 
 above six feet. So much for public news. 
 
 " As to home intelligence you know that my mother anc 
 Anne had projected, a jaunt to Inverleithen ; fate, however, 
 had dsstined otherwise. The intended day of departure was 
 ushered in by a most complete deluge, to which, and the con 
 sequent disappointment, our proposed travellers did not submit 
 with that Christian meekness which might have beseemed. In 
 ghort, both within and without doors, it was a devil of a day. 
 The second was like unto it. The third day came a post, a 
 killing post,* and in the shape of a letter from this fountain 
 of health, informed us no lodgings were to be had there ; so, 
 whatever be its virtues, or the grandeur attending a journey 
 to its streams, we might as well have proposed to visit the 
 river Jordan, or the walls of Jericho. Not so our heroic John ; 
 he has been arrived here for some time (much the same as 
 when he went away), and has formed the desperate resolution 
 of riding out with me to Kelso to-morrow morning. I have 
 stayed a day longer, waiting for the arrival of a pair of new 
 boots and buckskin &cs., in which the soldier is to be equipt. 
 I ventured to hint the convenience of a roll of diaculum plais- 
 ter, and a box of the most approved horseman-salve, in which 
 recommendation our doctor I warmly joined. His impatience 
 for the journey has been somewhat cooled by some inclination 
 yesterday displayed by his charger (a pony belonging to 
 Anne) to lay his warlike rider in the dust a purpose he had 
 nearly effected. He next mounted Queen Mab, who treated 
 him with little more complaisance, and, in carters phrase, 
 would neither hap nor wynd till she got rid of him. Seriously, 
 however, if Jack has not returned covered with laurels, a crop 
 which the Rock J no longer produces, he has brought back all 
 his own good-nature, and a manner considerably improved, so 
 
 * " The third day comes a frost, a killing frost." 
 
 K. Henry VIII. 
 t Dr. Rutherford. 
 
 J Captain John Scott had been for some time with his regiment at 
 Gibraltar. 
 
LETTER TO MISS RUTHERFORD. 261 
 
 lhat he is at times very agreeable company. Best love to Misa 
 R., Jean, and Anne (I hope they are improved at the battle 
 dore), and the boys, not forgetting my friend Archy, though 
 least not last in my remembrance. Best compliments to the 
 Colonel.* I shall remember with pleasure Ashestiel hospital 
 ity, and not without a desire to put it to the proof next year. 
 Adieu, ma chere amie. When you write, direct to Rosebank, 
 and I shall be a good boy, and write you another sheet of non 
 sense soon. All friends here well. Ever yours affectionately, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The letter, of which the following is an extract, must 
 have been written in October or November Scott hav 
 ing been in Liddesdale, and again in Perthshire, during 
 the interval. It is worth quoting for the little domestic 
 allusions with which it concludes, and which every one 
 who has witnessed the discipline of a Presbyterian family 
 of the old school, at the time of preparation for the Com 
 munion, will perfectly understand. Scott s father, though 
 on particular occasions he could permit himself, like 
 Saunders Fairford, to play the part of a good Amphyt- 
 ryon, was habitually ascetic in his habits. I have heard 
 his son tell, that it was common with him, if any one 
 observed that the soup was good, to taste it again, and 
 say, " Yes, it is too good, bairns," and dash a tumbler 
 of cold water into his plate. It is easy, therefore, to 
 magine with what rigidity he must have enforced the 
 ultra- Catholic severities which marked, in those days, 
 the yearly or half-yearly retreat of the descendants of 
 John Knox. 
 
 " To Miss Christian Rutherford, Ashestiel 
 
 " Previous to my ramble, I stayed a single day in town, to 
 mtness the exit of the ci-devant Jacobin, Mr. Watt. It was a 
 
 * Colonel Russell of Ashestiel, married to a sister of Scott s mother 
 
262 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 very solemn scene, but the pusillanimity of the unfortunate 
 victim was astonishing, considering the boldness of his nefari 
 ous plans. It is matter of general regret that his associate 
 Downie should have received a reprieve, which, I understand, 
 is now prolonged for a second month, I suppose to wait the 
 issue of the London trials. Our volunteers are now completely 
 embodied, and notwithstanding the heaviness of their dress, 
 have a martial and striking appearance. Their accuracy in 
 firing and manoeuvring excites the surprise of military gentle 
 men, who are the best judges of their merit in that way. Tom 
 is very proud of the grenadier company, to which he belongs, 
 which has indisputably carried off the palm upon all public 
 occasions. And now, give me leave to ask you whether the 
 approaching winter does not remind you of your snug parlour 
 in George s Street? Do you not feel a little uncomfortable 
 when you see 
 
 how bleak and bare 
 He wanders o er the heights of Yair f 
 
 Amidst all this regard for your accommodation, don t suppose 
 I am devoid of a little self-interest when I press your speedy 
 return to Auld Reekie, for I am really tiring excessively to 
 see the said parlour again inhabited. Besides that, I want the 
 assistance of your eloquence to convince my honoured father 
 that nature did not mean me either for a vagabond or travel 
 ling merchant, when she honoured me with the wandering pro 
 pensity lately so conspicuously displayed. I saw D r - yesterday, 
 who is well. I did not choose to intrude upon the little lady, 
 this being sermon week ; for the same reason we are looking 
 very religious and very sour at home. However, it is with 
 some folk selon les regies, that in proportion as they are pure 
 themselves, they are entitled to render uncomfortable those 
 whom they consider as less perfect. Best love to Miss R., 
 cousins and friends in general, and believe me ever most sin 
 cerely yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 In July 1795, a young lad, James Niven by name 
 
LAW PAPER 1795. 263 
 
 who had served for some time with excellent character 
 on board a ship of war, and been discharged in conse 
 quence of a wound which disabled one of his hands, had 
 the misfortune, in firing off a toy cannon in one of the 
 narrow wynds of Edinburgh, to kill on the spot David 
 Knox, one of the attendants of the Court of Session ; a 
 button, or some other hard substance, having been acci 
 dentally inserted with his cartridge. Scott was one of 
 his counsel when he was arraigned for murder, and had 
 occasion to draw up a written argument or information 
 for the prisoner, from which I shall make a short quota 
 tion. Considered as a whole, the production seems both 
 crude and clumsy, but the following passages have, I 
 think, several traces of the style of thought and language 
 which he afterwards made familiar to the world : 
 
 " Murder, * he writes, " or the premeditated slaughter of a 
 citizen, is a crime of so deep and scarlet a dye, that there is 
 scarce a nation to be found in which it has not, from the ear 
 liest period, been deemed worthy of a capital punishment. 
 4 He who sheddeth man s blood, by man shall his blood be 
 shed, is a general maxim which has received the assent of all 
 times and countries. But it is equally certain, tha* even the 
 rude legislators of former days soon perceived, that the death 
 of one man may be occasioned by another, without the slayer 
 himself being the proper object of the lex talionis. Such an 
 accident may happen either by the carelessness of the killer, 
 or through that excess and vehemence of passion to which 
 humanity is incident. In either case, though blameable, h^ 
 ought not to be confounded with the cool and deliberate assas 
 sin, and the species of criminality attaching it^-lf to those acts 
 has been distinguished by the term dolus, in opposition to the 
 milder term culpa. Again, there may be a third species of 
 homic : de, in which the perpetrator being the innocent and un 
 fortunate cause of casual misfortune, becomes rather au objec* 
 of compassion than punishment. 
 
264 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Admitting there may have been a certain degree of culpa* 
 bility in the panel s conduct, still there is one circumstance 
 which pleads strongly in his favour, so as to preclude all 
 presumption of dole. This is the frequent practice, whether 
 proper or improper, of using this amusement in the streets. It 
 is a matter of public notoriety, that boys of all ages and d^ 
 Bcriptions are, or at least till the late very proper proclamation 
 of the magistrates were, to be seen every evening in almost 
 every corner of this city, amusing themselves with fire-arms 
 and small cannons, and that without being checked or inter 
 fered with. When the panel, a poor ignorant raw lad, lately 
 discharged from a ship of war certainly not the most proper 
 school to learn a prudent aversion to unlucky or mischievous 
 practices observed the sons of gentlemen of the first respect 
 ability engaged in such amusements, unchecked by their par 
 ents or by the magistrates, surely it can hardly be expected 
 that he should discover that in imitating them in so common a 
 practice, he was constituting himself hostis humani generis, a 
 wretch the pest and scourge of mankind. 
 
 " There is, no doubt, attached to every even the most inno 
 cent of casual slaughter, a certain degree of blame, inasmuch 
 as almost every tiling of the kind might have been avoided had 
 the slayer exhibited the strictest degree of diligence. A well- 
 known and authentic story will illustrate the proposition. A 
 young gentleman, just married to a young lady of whom he 
 was passionately fond, in affectionate trifling presented at her 
 a pistol, of which he had drawn the charge some days before. 
 The lady, entering into the joke, desired him to fire : he did so, 
 ani shot her dead ; the pistol having been again charged by 
 Uis servant without his knowledge. Can any one read this 
 fctory, and feel any emotion but that of sympathy towards the 
 unhappy husband ? Can they ever connect the case with an 
 idea of punishment ? Yet, divesting it of these interesting 
 jircumstances which act upon the imagination, it is precisely 
 that of the panel at your Lordships bar ; and though no one 
 will pretend to say that such a homicide is other than casual, 
 vet there is not the slightest question but it might have been 
 
LAW PAPER 1795. 265 
 
 avoided had the killer taken the precaution of examining his 
 piece. But this is not the degree of culpa which can raise a 
 misfortune to the pitch of a crime. It is only an iastance that 
 no accident can take place without its afterwards being dis 
 covered that the chief actor might have avoided committing it, 
 had he been gifted with the spirit of prophecy, or with such an 
 extreme degree of prudence as is almost equally rare. 
 
 " In the instance of shooting at butts, or at a bird, the per 
 son killed must have been somewhat in the line previous tc 
 the discharge of the shot, otherways it could never have come 
 near him. The shooter must therefore have been guilty culpce 
 levis sen leoissimce in firing while the deceased was in such a 
 situation. In like manner, it is difficult to conceive how death 
 should happen in consequence of a boxing or wrestling match, 
 without some excess upon the part of the killer. Nay, in the 
 exercise of the martial amusements of our forefathers, even by 
 royal commission, should a champion be slain in running his 
 barriers, or performing his tournament, it could scarcely hap 
 pen without some culpa seu levis seu levissima on the part of 
 his antagonist. Yet all these are enumerated in the English 
 law-books as instances of casual homicide only ; and we may 
 therefore safely conclude, that by the law of the sister country 
 a slight degref of blame will not subject the slayer per infor- 
 tunium to the penalties of culpable homicide. 
 
 " Guilt, as an object of punishment, has its origin in the 
 mind and intention of the actor ; and therefore, where that ia 
 wanting, there is no proper object of chastisement. A mad- 
 jaan, for example, can no more properly be said to be guilty 
 of murder than the sword with which he commits it, both 
 being equally incapable of intending injury. In the present 
 case, in like manner, although it ought no doubt to be matter 
 of deep sorrow and contrition to,the panel that his folly should 
 have occasioned the loss of life to a fellow-creature ; yet as 
 Miat folly car neither be termed malice, nor yet doth amount 
 to a gross negligence, he ought rather to be pitied than con 
 demned. The fact done can never be recalled, and it rests with 
 four Lordships to consider the case of this unfortunate young 
 
266 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 man, who has served his country in an humble though useful 
 station, deserved such a character as is given him in the 
 letter of his officers, and been disabled in that service. You 
 will best judge how (considering he has suffered a confinement 
 of six months) he can in humanity be the object of further or 
 severer punishment, for a deed of which his mind at least, if 
 not his hand, is guiltless. When a case is attended with some 
 nicety, your Lordships will allow mercy to incline the balance 
 of justice, well considering with the legislator of the east, It 
 ia better ten guilty should escape than that one innocent man 
 should perish in his innocence. " 
 
 The young sailor was acquitted. 
 
 To return for a moment to Scott s love-affair. I find 
 him writing as follows, in March 1795, to his cousin, 
 William Scott, now Laird of Raeburn, who was then in 
 the East Indies : " The lady you allude to has been in 
 town all this winter, and going a good deal into public, 
 which has not in the least altered the meekness of her 
 manners. Matters, you see, stand just as they did." 
 
 To another friend he writes thus, from Rosebank, on 
 the 23d of August 1795 : 
 
 " It gave me the highest satisfaction to find, by the receipt 
 of your letter of the 14th current, that you have formed pre 
 cisely the same opinion with me, both with regard to the inter 
 pretation of s letter as highly flattering and favour 
 able, and to the mode of conduct I ought to pursue for, after 
 all, what she has pointed out is the most prudent line of con 
 duct for us both, at least till better days, which, I think myself 
 now entitled to suppose, she, as well as I myself, will look for 
 ward to with pleasure. If you were surprised at reading the 
 important billet, you may guess how agreeably I was so at 
 receiving it ; for I had, to anticipate disappointment, strug 
 gled to suppress every rising gleam of hope ; and it would 
 be very difficult to describe the mixed feelings her letter 
 occasioned, which, entre nous, terminated in a very hearty fit 
 
LETTER FROM ROSEBANK. 267 
 
 af crying. I read over her epistle about ten times a-day, and 
 always with new admiration of her generosity and candour 
 and as often take shame to myself for the mean suspicions, 
 which, after knowing her so long, I could listen to, while en 
 deavouring to guess how she would conduct herself. To tell 
 you the truth, I cannot but confess that my amour propre, 
 which one would expect should have been exalted, has suffered 
 not a little upon this occasion, through a sense of my own un- 
 worthiness, pretty similar to that which afflicted Linton upon 
 sitting down at Keir s table. I ought perhaps to tell you, 
 what indeed you will perceive from her letter, that I was 
 always attentive, while consulting with you upon the subject 
 of my declaration, rather to under than over-rate the extent 
 of our intimacy. By the way, I must not omit mentioning 
 the respect in which I hold your knowledge of the fair sex, 
 and your capacity of advising in these matters, since it cer 
 tainly is to your encouragement that I owe the present situa 
 tion of my affairs. I wish to God, that, since you have acted 
 as so useful an auxiliary during my attack, which has suc 
 ceeded in bringing the enemy to terms, you would next sit 
 down before some fortress yourself, and were it as impregnable 
 as the rock of Gibraltar, I should, notwithstanding, have the 
 highest expectations of your final success. Not a line from 
 poor Jack What can he be doing ? Moping, I suppose, 
 about some watering-place, and deluging his guts with specifics 
 of every kind or lowering and snorting in one corner of a 
 post-chaise, with Kennedy, as upright and cold as a poker, 
 stuck into the other. As for Linton, and Crab, I anticipate 
 with pleasure their marvellous adventures, in the course of 
 which Dr. Black s self-denying ordinance will run a shrewd 
 thance of being neglected.* They will be a source of fun for 
 the winter evening conversations. Methinks I see the pair 
 ipon the mountains of Tipperary John with a beard of 
 
 * Crab was the nickname of a friend who had accompanied Fergus- 
 on this summer on an Irish tour. Dr. Black, celebrated for his dis 
 coveries in chemistry, was Adam Fergusson s uncle ; and had, it seems, 
 given the young travellers a strong admonition touching the danger* 
 f Irish hospitality. 
 
268 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 three inches, united and blended with his shaggy black lock?, 
 an ellwand-looking cane with a gilt head in his hand, an* 1 a 
 bundle in a handkerchief over his shoulder, exciting the cupid 
 ity of every Irish raparee who passes him, by his resemblance 
 to a Jew pedlar who has sent forward his pack Linton, tired 
 of trailing his long legs, exalted in state upon an Irish garron, 
 without stirrups, and a halter on its head, tempting every one 
 
 to ask 
 
 Who is that upon the pony, 
 So long, so lean, so raw, so bony 1 * 
 
 calculating, as he moves along, the expenses of the salt 
 horse and grinning a ghastly smile, when the hollow voice 
 of his fellow-traveller observes God ! Adam, if ye gang on 
 at this rate, the eight shillings and sevenpence halfpenny will 
 never carry us forward to my uncle s at Lisburn. Enough 
 of a thorough Irish expedition. 
 
 " We have a great marriage towards here Scott of Har 
 den, and a daughter of Count Bruhl, the famous chess-player, 
 a lady of sixteen quarters, half-sister to the Wyndhams. I 
 wish they may come down soon, as we shall have fine racket 
 ing, of which I will, probably, get my share. I think of being 
 in town sometime next month, but whether for good and all, 
 or only for a visit, I am not certain. O for November ! Our 
 meeting will be a little embarrassing one. How will she look, 
 &c. &c. &c., are the important subjects of my present conjec 
 tures how different from what they were three weeks ago ! 
 I give you leave to laugh when I tell you seriously, I had be- 
 grira to dwindle, peak, and pine, upon the subject but now, 
 after the charge I have received, it were a shame to resemble 
 Pharaoh s lean kine. If good living and plenty of exercise 
 oan avert that calamity, I am in little danger of disobedience, 
 and so, to conclude classically, 
 
 " Dicite lo pcean, et lo bis dicite pcean ! 
 " Jubeo te bene valere, 
 
 " GUALTERUS SCOTT.** 
 
 * These lines are part of a song on Little-tony i. e. the Parliamen 
 tary orator Littleton. They are quoted in Bos well s Life of Johnson 
 originally published in 1791. 
 
TRANSLATION OF LENORE. 269 
 
 I have had much hesitation about inserting the preced 
 ing letter, but could not make up my mind to omit what 
 seems to me a most exquisite revelation of the whole 
 character of Scott at this critical period of his history, 
 both literary and personal ; more especially of his 
 habitual effort to suppress, as far as words were con 
 cerned, the more tender feelings, which were in no heart 
 deeper than in his. 
 
 It must, I think, have been, while he was indulging his 
 vagabond vein, during the autumn of 1795, that Mrs. 
 Barbauld paid her visit to Edinburgh, and entertained a 
 party at Mr. Dugald Stewart s, by reading Mr. William 
 Taylor s then unpublished version of Burger s Lenore. 
 In the essay on Imitation of Popular Poetry, the reader 
 nas a full account of the interest with which Scott heard, 
 some weeks afterwards, a friend s imperfect recollections 
 of this performance ; the anxiety with which he sought 
 after a copy of the original German ; the delight with 
 which he at length perused it ; and how, having just been 
 reading the specimens of ballad poetry introduced into 
 Lewis s Romance of The Monk, he called to mind the 
 early facility of versification which had lain so long in 
 abeyance, and ventured to promise his friend a rhymed 
 translation of Lenore from his own pen. The friend in 
 question was Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of 
 Purgstall, the sister of his friend George Cranstoun, late 
 Lord Corehouse. He began the task, he tells us, after 
 supper, and did not retire to bed until he had finished it, 
 having by that time worked himself into a state of excite 
 ment which set sleep at defiance. 
 
 Next morning, before breakfast, he carried his MS. to 
 Miss Cranstoun, who was not only delighted but aston 
 ished at it ; for I have seen a letter of hers to a common 
 
270 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 friend in the country, in which she says " Upon my 
 word, Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet some 
 thing of a cross I think between Burns and Gray." The 
 same day he read it also to his friend Sir Alexander 
 Wood, who retains a vivid recollection of the high strain 
 of enthusiasm into which he had been exalted by dwelling 
 on the wild unearthly imagery of the German bard. " He 
 read it over to me," says Sir Alexander, " in a very slow 
 and solemn tone, and after we had said a few words about 
 its merits, continued to look at the fire silent and musing 
 for some minutes, until he at length burst out with I 
 wish to Heaven I could get a skull and two cross-bones/ " 
 Wood said, that if Scott would accompany him to the 
 house of John Bell, the celebrated surgeon, he had no 
 doubt this wish might be easily gratified. They went 
 thither accordingly on the instant ; Mr. Bell smiled on 
 hearing the object of their visit, and pointing to a closet, 
 at the corner of his library, bade Walter enter and choose. 
 From a well-furnished museum of mortality, he selected 
 forthwith what seemed to him the handsomest skull and 
 pair of cross-bones it contained, and wrapping them in 
 his handkerchief, carried the formidable bundle home 
 to George s Square. The trophies were immediately 
 mounted on the top of his little bookcase ; and when 
 Wood visited him, after many years of absence from this 
 country, he found them in possession of a similar position 
 n his dressing-room at Abbotsford. 
 
 All this occurred in the beginning of April 1796. A 
 few days afterwards, Scott went to pay a visit at a 
 country house, where he expected to meet the " lady of 
 his love." Jane Anne Cranstoun was in the secret of his 
 attachment, and knew, that however doubtful might be 
 Miss s feeling on that subject, she had a high 
 
KING S BIRTHDAY 1796. 271 
 
 admiration of Scott s abilities, and often corresponded 
 with him on literary matters ; so, after he had left Edin 
 burgh, it occurred to her that she might perhaps forward 
 his views in this quarter, by presenting him in the char 
 acter of a printed author. William Erskine being called 
 into her councils, a few copies of the ballad were forth 
 with thrown off in the most elegant style, and one, richly 
 bound and blazoned, followed Scott in the course of a few 
 iays to the country. The verses were read and approved 
 of, and Miss Cranstoun at least flattered herself that he 
 had not made his first appearance in types to no pur 
 pose.* 
 
 I ought to have mentioned before, that in June 1795 
 he was appointed one of the curators of the Advocates 
 Library, an office always reserved for those members of 
 the Faculty who have the reputation of superior zeal in 
 literary affairs. He had for colleagues David Hume, the 
 Professor of Scots Law, and Malcolm Laing, the histo 
 rian ; and his discharge of his functions must have given 
 satisfaction, for I find him further nominated, in March 
 1796, together with Mr. Robert Hodgson Cay an ac 
 complished gentleman, afterwards Judge of the Admi 
 ralty Court in Scotland to " put the Faculty s cabinet 
 of medals in proper arrangement." 
 
 On the 4th of June 1796 (the birthday of George 
 III.), there seems to have been a formidable riot in 
 Edinburgh, and Scott is found again in the front. On 
 the 5th, he writes as follows to his aunt, Christian 
 Rutherford, who was then in the north of Scotland, and 
 had meant to visit, among other places, the residence of 
 the u chere adorable." 
 
 * This story was told by the Countess of Purgstall on her death- bed 
 lo Captain Basil Hall. See his Schloss Rainfeld, p. 333. 
 
272 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 5th June 1796. 
 
 " Ma Chere Amie, Nothing doubting that your curiosity 
 will be upon the tenters to hear the wonderful events of the 
 long-expected 4th of June, I take the pen to inform you that 
 not one worth mentioning has taken place. Were 1 inclined 
 to prolixity, I might, indeed, narrate at length how near a 
 thousand gentlemen (myself among the number) offered their 
 services to the magistrates to act as constables for the preserva 
 tion of the peace how their services were accepted wLat 
 fine speeches were made upon the occasion how they were 
 furnished with pretty painted brown batons how they were 
 assembled in the aisle of the New Church, and treated with 
 claret and sweetmeats how Sir John Whiteford was chased 
 by the mob, and how Tom, Sandy Wood, and I rescued him, 
 and dispersed his tormentors a beaux coups de batons how the 
 Justice-Clerk s windows were broke by a few boys, and how a 
 large body of constables and a press-gang of near two hundred 
 men arrived, and were much disappointed at finding the coast 
 entirely clear ; with many other matters of equal importance, 
 but of which you must be contented to remain in ignorance 
 till you return to your castle. Seriously, everything, with the 
 exception of the very trifling circumstances above mentioned, 
 was perfectly quiet much more so than during any King s 
 birthday I can recollect. That very stillness, however, shows 
 that something is brewing among our friends the Democrats, 
 which they will take their own time of bringing forward. By 
 lie wise precautions of the magistrates, or rather of the pro 
 vost, and the spirited conduct of the gentlemen, I hope their 
 designs will be frustrated. Our association meets to-night, 
 when we are to be divided into districts according to the place 
 of our abode, places of rendezvous and captains named ; so that, 
 upon the hoisting of a flag on the Tron-steeple, and ringing out 
 all the large bells, we can be on duty in less than five minuter 
 t am sorry to say that the complexion of the town seems to 
 justify all precautions of this kind. I hope we shall demean 
 mrselves as quiet and peaceable magistrates ; and intend, fo? 
 
LOVE-AFFAIR. 273 
 
 the purpose of learning the duties of my new office, to con dili 
 gently the instructions delivered to the watch by our brother 
 Dogberry, of facetious memory. So much for information. 
 By way of inquiry, pray let me know that is, when you find 
 any idle hour how you accomplished the perilous passage 
 of her Majestie s Ferry without the assistance and escort of 
 your preux-chevalier, and whether you will receive them on 
 your return how Miss R. and you are spending your time, 
 whether stationary or otherwise above all, whether you have 
 been at ******, and all the &cs. &cs. which the question 
 involves. Having made out a pretty long scratch, which, as 
 Win Jenkins says, will take you some time to decipher, I shall 
 only inform you farther, that I shall tire excessively till you 
 return to your shop. I beg to be remembered to Miss Kerr, 
 and in particular to La Belle Jeanne. Best love to Miss 
 Rutherford ; and believe me ever, my dear Miss Christy, sin 
 cerely and affectionately your WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 During the autumn of 1796 he visited again his fa 
 vourite haunts in Perthshire and Forfarshire. It was in 
 the course of this tour that he spent a day or two at 
 Montrose with his old tutor Mitchell, and astonished and 
 grieved that worthy Presbyterian by his zeal about 
 witches and fairies.* The only letter of his, written 
 during this expedition, that I have recovered, was ad 
 dressed to another of his clerical friends one by no 
 means of Mitchell s stamp Mr. Walker, the minister 
 of Dunnottar, and it is chiefly occupied with an account 
 of his researches at a vitrified fort, in Kincardineshire, 
 commonly called Lady FenellcCs Castle, and, according 
 to tradition, the scene of the murder of Kenneth III. 
 While in the north, he visited also the residence of the 
 lady who had now for so many years been the object 
 f his attachment ; and that his reception was not ade- 
 
 * See ante, p. 5/. 
 VOL. i. 18 
 
274 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 quate to his expectations, may be gathered pretty clearly 
 from some expressions in a letter addressed to him when at 
 Montrose by his friend and confidante, Miss Cranstoun : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Post-Office, Montrose. 
 
 " Dear Scott, Far be it from me to affirm that there are 
 no diviners in the land. The voice of the people and the 
 voice of God are loud in their testimony. Two years ago, 
 when I was in the neighbourhood of Montrose, we had re 
 course for amusement one evening to chiromancy, or, as the 
 vulgar say, having our fortunes read ; and read mine were in 
 such a sort, that either my letters must have been inspected, 
 or the devil was by in his own proper person. I never men 
 tioned the circumstance since, for obvious reasons ; but now 
 that you are on the spot, I feel it my bounden duty to conjure 
 you not to put your shoes rashly from off your feet, for you 
 are not standing on holy ground. 
 
 " I bless the gods for conducting your poor dear soul safely 
 to Perth. When I consider the wilds, the forests, the lakes, 
 the rocks and the spirits in which you must have whispered 
 to then startled echoes, it amazeth me how you escaped. Had 
 you but dismissed your little squire and Earwig,* and spent a 
 few days as Orlando would have done, all posterity might have 
 profited by it ; but to trot quietly away, without so much as 
 one stanza to despair never talk to me of love again 
 never, never, never ! I am dying for your collection of ex 
 ploits. When will you return ? In the meantime, Heaven 
 speed you ! Be sober, and hope to the end. 
 
 " William Taylor s translation of your ballad is published, 
 and so inferior, that I wonder we could tolerate it. Du- 
 gald Stewart read yours to * * * * the other day. When he 
 came to the fetter dance,f he looked up, and poor ***** 
 
 * A servant-boy and pony. 
 
 t " Dost fear? dost fear ? The moon shines clear: 
 
 Dost fear to ride with me ? 
 Hurrah ! hurrah ! the dead can ride ! 
 4 Oh, William, let them be ! 
 
LOVE-AFFAIR. 275 
 
 was siting with his hands nailed to his knees, and the big 
 tears rolling down his innocent nose in so piteous a manner, 
 that Mr. Stewart could not help bursting out a-laughing. An 
 angry man was *****. I have seen another edition, too, 
 but it is below contempt. So many copies make the ballad 
 famous, so that every day adds to your renown. 
 
 " This here place is very, very dull. Erskine is in London ; 
 my dear Thomson at Daily ; Macfarlan hatching Kant and 
 George * Fountainhall.f I have nothing more to tell you, but 
 that I am most affectionately yours. Many an anxious thought 
 I have about you. Farewell. J. A. C." 
 
 The affair in which this romantic creature took so 
 lively an interest, was now approaching its end. It was 
 known, before this autumn closed, that the lady of his 
 vows had finally promised her hand to his amiable rival 
 
 " See there ! see there ! What yonder swings 
 
 And creaks mid whistling rain ? 
 Gibbet and steel, the accursed wheel, 
 A murderer in his chain. 
 
 " Hollo ! thou felon, follow here, 
 
 To bridal bed we ride; 
 And thou shalt prance a fetter dance 
 Before me and my bride. 
 
 " And hurry, hurry ! clash, clash, clash 1 
 
 The wasted form descends ; 
 And fleet as wind, through hazel bush, 
 The wild career attends. 
 
 " Tramp, tramp ! along the land they rode; 
 
 Splash, splash ! along the sea ; 
 The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, 
 The flashing pebbles flee." 
 
 * George Cranstoun, late Lord Corehonse. 
 t Decisions by Lord Fountainhall. 
 
$76 LIFE OF SIR WAXTRR SCOTT. 
 
 and. when the fact was announced, some of those wlw 
 anew Scott the best, appear to have entertained very 
 serious apprehensions as to the effect which the disap- 
 nent might have upon his feelings. For example, 
 one of those brothers of tat Ifamtaut wrote as fol 
 lows to another of them, on the 12th October 1796 : 
 
 * Mr. marries Miss . This is not good news, 
 
 I always dreaded there was some self-deception on the 
 part of our romantic friend, and I now shudder at the 
 violence of his most irritable and ungovernable mind. 
 Who is it that says, * Men have died, and worms have 
 aatoo them, but not for LOTK ? I hope sincerely it may 
 be verified on this occasion." 
 
 Scott had, however, in all likelihood, digested his 
 agony daring the solitary ride in the Highlands to which 
 Miss Cranstoun s last letter alludes, 
 
 Talking of this story with Lord Kinedder, I once 
 asked him whether Scott never made it the subject of 
 verses at the period. His own confession, that, even 
 during the time when he had laid aside the habit of ver- 
 gnrfctrrmj btt did ana^Hm^ commit u a sonnet on a mis 
 tress s eyebrow," had not then appeared. Lord Kinedder 
 answered. - O yes, he made many little stanzas about 
 the lady, and he sometimes showed them to Cranstoun, 
 Clerk, and myself but we really thought them in gen 
 eral very poor. Two things of the kind, however, have 
 been preserved and one of them was done just after 
 the conclusion of the business." He then took down a 
 fnhuiie. of the English Minstrelsy, and pointed out to me 
 sane lines On a Violet, which had not at that time been 
 included in Scott s collected works. Lord Kinedder read 
 them over in his usual impressive, though not quite 
 jnaffected, manner, and said * I remember well, that 
 
LOrr-AFT AJE. . 7 7 
 
 when I fir* aw theie, I told hoi they were hi* be* 
 but lie had touched them up afterwards." 
 
 * TW riofct in far p**w0l tovr, 
 
 - -. 
 * Tboogi finr far gow *T zve tee 
 
 I r* tees aa 
 Mote Mreet thnw^i 
 
 : . . . , - - . : . - 
 
 Kie yet the mm. be pt UK MOVIT, 
 
 . " 
 
 : -.-.-. - . . 
 
 In tnrning orcr * rohmie of M8u jmMia y I ha^e fbond 
 copy of Tersea, whidi, from the hand, Seott had evi- 
 dently written down within the last ten jean of his fife. 
 They are headed "To Time^by a Lady;" bot cer 
 tain initials on the baek fatiafy me, diat the mthuici 
 wa- no other than die object of his first paaqion.* I 
 think I mri^t be paidoned for tran*eribin<r the lines which 
 had dwelt so long on hi* memory -leavh!^ it to the 
 reader s fency to picture the mood of mind in -ariiieh the 
 fingers of a grey-haired man may bare traced such a 
 relic of his yomhfal dreams : 
 
 .---.: --- - 
 
 .": 
 
 V . - 
 
 
 
 . .-.- -."-,;-.-..-:..: 
 
 . 
 
 - .- .: :-.:_..,.,:. 
 
278 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Tis thine the wounded soul to heal 
 
 That hopeless bleeds from sorrow s smart, 
 From stern misfortune s shaft to steal 
 The barb that rankles in the heart. 
 
 " What though with thee the roses fly, 
 
 And jocund youth s gay reign is o er; 
 Though dimm d the lustre of the eye, 
 And hope s vain dreams enchant no more? 
 
 " Yet in thy train come dove-eyed peace, 
 Indifference with her heart of snow ; 
 At her cold couch, lo ! sorrows cease, 
 No thorns beneath her roses grow. 
 
 " haste to grant thy suppliant s prayer, 
 
 To me thy torpid calm impart; 
 Rend from my brow youth s garland fair, 
 
 But take the thorn that s in my heart. 
 
 tt Ah ! why do fabling poets tell 
 
 That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind? 
 Why feign thy course of joy the knell, 
 And call thy slowest pace unkind? 
 
 To me thy tedious feeble pace 
 
 Comes laden with the weight of years; 
 With sighs I view morn s blushing face, 
 And hail mild evening with my tears." 
 
 I venture to recall here to the reader s memory th 
 opening of the twelfth chapter of Peveril of the Peak, 
 written twenty-six years after the date of this youthful 
 disappointment. 
 
 Ah me ! for aught that ever I could read; 
 
 Could ever hear by tale or history, 
 
 The course of true love never did run smooth ! 
 
 Midsummer NighVs Dream. 
 
 " The celebrated passage which we have prefixed to 
 this chapter, has, like most observations of the same 
 
LOVE-AFFAIR. 279 
 
 author, its foundation in real experience. The period at 
 which love is formed for the first time, and felt most 
 strongly, is seldom that at which there is much prospect 
 of its being brought to a happy issue. The state of arti 
 ficial society opposes many complicated obstructions to 
 early marriages ; and the chance is very great, that suet 
 obstacles prove insurmountable. In fine, there are few 
 men who do not look back in secret to some period of 
 their youth, at which a sincere and early affection was 
 repulsed or betrayed, or became abortive from opposing 
 circumstances. It is these little passages of secret his 
 tory, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, 
 scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or the most 
 advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to 
 a tale of true love." 
 
280 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Publication of Ballads after Burger Scott Quarter-Master of 
 the Edinburgh Light-horse Excursion to Cumberland 
 Gilsland Wells Miss Carpenter Marriage. 
 
 1796-1797. 
 
 REBELLING, as usual, against circumstances, Scott 
 seems to have turned with renewed ardour to his lit 
 erary pursuits ; and in that same October, 1796, he was 
 " prevailed on," as he playfully expresses it, " by the re 
 quest of friends, to indulge his own vanity, by publishing 
 the translation of Lenore, with that of the Wild Hunts 
 man, also from Burger, in a thin quarto." The little vol 
 ume, which has no author s name on the title-page, was 
 printed for Manners and Miller of Edinburgh. The first 
 named of these respectable publishers had been a fellow- 
 student in the German class of Dr. Willich ; and this 
 circumstance probably suggested the negotiation. It was 
 conducted by William Erskine, as appears from his post 
 script to a letter addressed to Scott by his sister, who, 
 before it reached its destination, had become the wife of 
 Mr. Campbell Colquhoun of Clathick and Killermont 
 in after-days Lord Advocate of Scotland. This was 
 another of Scott s dearest female friends. The humble 
 home which she shared with her brother during his early 
 struggles at the Bar, had been the scene of many of his 
 
BALLADS FROM BURGER. 281 
 
 happiest hours; and her letter affords such a pleasing 
 idea of the warm affectionateness of the little circle, that 
 I cannot forbear inserting it : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Rosebank, Kelso. 
 
 " Monday Evening. 
 
 " If it were not that etiquette and I were constantly at war, 
 I should think myself very blameable in thus trespassing 
 against one of its laws; but as it is long since I forswore 
 its dominion, I have acquired a prescriptive right to act as I 
 will and I shall accordingly anticipate the station of a ma 
 tron in addressing a young man. 
 
 " I can express but a very, very little of what I feel, and 
 shall ever feel, for your unintermitting friendship and atten 
 tion. I have ever considered you as a brother, and shall now 
 think myself entitled to make even larger claims on your con 
 fidence. Well do I remember the dark conference we lately 
 held together ! The intention of unfolding my own future fate 
 was often at my lips. 
 
 " I cannot tell you my distress at leaving this house, wherein 
 I have enjoyed so much real happiness, and giving up the ser 
 vice of so gentle a master, whose yoke was indeed easy. I 
 will therefore only commend him to your care as the last be 
 quest of Mary Anne Erskine, and conjure you to continue to 
 each other through all your pilgrimage as you have commenced 
 it. May every happiness attend you ! Adieu ! 
 
 " Your most sincere friend and sister, 
 
 "M. A. E." 
 
 Mr. Erskine writes on the other page " The poems 
 are gorgeous, but I have made no bargain with any book 
 seller. I have told M. and M. that I won t be satisfied 
 with indemnity, but an offer must be made. They will 
 be out before the end of the week." On what terms the 
 publication really took place, I know not. 
 
282 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 It has already been mentioned, that Scott owed his 
 copy of Burger s works to the young lady of Harden, 
 whose marriage occurred in the autumn of 1795. She 
 was daughter of Count Briihl of Martkirchen, long Saxon 
 ambassador at the Court of St. James s, by his wife Alme- 
 ria, Countess-Dowager of Egremont. The young kins 
 man was introduced to her soon after her arrival at Mer- 
 toun, and his attachment to German studies excited her 
 attention and interest. Mrs. Scott supplied him with 
 many standard German books, besides Burger ; and the 
 gift of an Adelung s dictionary from his old ally, George 
 Constable (Jonathan Oldbuck), enabled him to master 
 their contents sufficiently for the purposes of translation. 
 The ballad of the Wild Huntsman appears to have been 
 executed during the month that preceded his first publi 
 cation ; and he was thenceforth engaged in a succession 
 of versions from the dramas of Meier and Iffland, several 
 of which are still extant in his MS., marked 1796 and 
 1797. These are all in prose like their originals ; but 
 he also versified at the same time some lyrical fragments 
 of Goethe, as, for example, the Morlachian Ballad, 
 
 " What yonder glimmers so white on the mountain," 
 
 and the song from Claudina von Villa Bella. He con 
 sulted his friend at Mertoun on all these essays ; and I 
 have often heard him say, that, among those many " obli 
 gations of a distant date which remained impressed on his 
 memory, after a life spent in a constant interchange of 
 friendship and kindness," he counted not as the least, the 
 lady s frankness in correcting his Scotticisms, and more 
 especially his Scottish rhymes. 
 
 His obligations to this lady were indeed various ; but 
 I doubt, after all, whether these were the most important. 
 
MRS. SCOTT OF HARDEN. 283 
 
 He used to say, that she was the first woman of real 
 fashion that took him up ; that she used the privileges of 
 her sex and station in the truest spirit of kindness ; set 
 him right as to a thousand little trifles, which no one else 
 would have ventured to notice ; and, in short, did for him 
 what no one but an elegant woman can do for a young 
 man, whose early days have been spent in narrow and 
 provincial circles. " When I first saw Sir Walter," she 
 writes to me, " he was about four or five-and-twenty, but 
 looked much younger. He seemed bashful and awkward ; 
 but there were from the first such gleams of superior 
 sense and spirit in his conversation, that I was hardly 
 surprised when, after our acquaintance had ripened a 
 little, I felt myself to be talking with a man of genius. 
 He was most modest about himself, and showed his little 
 pieces apparently without any consciousness that they 
 could possess any claim on particular attention. Nothing 
 so easy and good-humoured as the way in which he re 
 ceived any hints I might offer, when he seemed to be 
 tampering with the King s English. I remember partic 
 ularly how he laughed at himself, when I made him take 
 notice that * the little two dogs, in some of his lines, did 
 not please an English ear accustomed to the two little 
 dogs/" 
 
 Nor was this the only person at Mertoun who took a 
 lively interest in his pursuits. Harden entered into all 
 the feelings of his beautiful bride on this subject ; and his 
 mother, the Lady Diana Scott, daughter of the last Earl 
 of Marchmont, did so no less. She had conversed, in her 
 early days, with the brightest ornaments of the cycle of 
 Queen Anne, and preserved rich stores of anecdote, well 
 calculated to gratify the curiosity and excite the ambition 
 of a young enthusiast in literature. Lady Diana soon 
 
284 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 appreciated the minstrel of the clan ; and, surviving to 
 a remarkable age, she had the satisfaction of seeing him 
 at the height of his eminence the solitary person who 
 could give the author of Marmion personal reminiscences 
 of Pope.* 
 
 On turning to James Ballantyne s Memorandum (already 
 quoted), I find an account of Scott s journey from Rose- 
 bank to Edinburgh, in the November after the Ballads 
 from Biirger were published, which gives an interesting 
 notion of his literary zeal and opening ambition at this 
 remarkable epoch of his life. Mr. Ballantyne had settled 
 in Kelso as a solicitor in 1795 ; but, not immediately ob 
 taining much professional practice, time hung heavy on 
 his hands, and he willingly listened, in the summer of 
 1796, to a proposal of some of the neighbouring nobility 
 and gentry respecting the establishment of a weekly 
 newspaper, f in opposition to one of a democratic ten 
 dency, then widely circulated in Roxburghshire and the 
 other Border counties. He undertook the printing and 
 editing of this new journal, and proceeded to London, in 
 order to engage correspondents and make other neces 
 sary preparations. While thus for the first time in the 
 metropolis, he happened to meet with two authors, whose 
 reputations were then in full bloom; namely, Thomas 
 Holcroft and William Godwin, the former, a popular 
 dramatist and novelist; the latter, a novelist of far 
 greater merit, but " still more importantly distinguished," 
 says the Memorandum before me, " by those moral, legal, 
 political, and religious heterodoxies, which his talents 
 
 * Mr. Scott of Harden s right to the peerage of Polwarth, as repre 
 senting, through his mother, the line of Marchmont, was allowed bj 
 the House of Lords in 1835. 
 
 t The Kelso Mail. 
 
JAMES BALLANTiTNE. 285 
 
 enabled him to present to the world in a very captivating 
 manner. His Caleb Williams had then just come out, 
 and occupied as much public attention as any work has 
 done before or since." " Both these eminent persons," 
 Ballantyne continues, " I saw pretty frequently ; and 
 being anxious to hear whatever I could tell about the 
 literary men in Scotland, they both treated me with re 
 markable freedom of communication. They were both 
 distinguished by the clearness of their elocution, and very 
 full of triumphant confidence in the truth of their systems. 
 They were as willing to speak, therefore, as I could be to 
 hear ; and as I put my questions with all the fearlessness 
 of a very young man, the result was, that I carried away 
 copious and interesting stores of thought and information : 
 that the greater part of what I heard was full of error, 
 never entered into my contemplation. Holcroft at this 
 time was a fine-looking, lively man, of green old age, 
 somewhere about sixty. Godwin, some twenty years 
 younger, was more shy and reserved. As to me, my 
 delight and enthusiasm were boundless." 
 
 After returning home, Ballantyne made another jour- 
 aey to Glasgow for the purchase of types ; and on enter 
 ing the Kelso coach for this purpose " It would not be 
 easy," says he, " to express my joy on finding that Mr. 
 Scott was to be one of my partners in the carriage, the 
 only other passenger being a fine, stout, muscular, old 
 Quaker. A very few miles re-established us on our 
 ancient footing. Travelling not being half so speedy 
 then as it is now, there was plenty of leisure for talk, and 
 Mr. Scott was exactly what is called the old man. He 
 abounded, as in the days of boyhood, in legendary lore, 
 and had now added to the stock, as his recitations showed, 
 many of those fine ballads whi-h afterwards composed 
 
286 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the Minstrelsy. Indeed, I was more delighted with him 
 than ever ; and, by way of reprisal, I opened on him my 
 London budget, collected from Holcroft and Godwin. I 
 doubt if Boswell ever showed himself a more skilful 
 Reporter than I did on this occasion. Hour after hour 
 passed away, and found my borrowed eloquence still flow 
 ing, and my companion still hanging on my lips with un 
 wearied interest. It was customary in those days to 
 break the journey (only forty miles) by dining on the 
 road, the consequence of which was, that we both became 
 rather oblivious ; and after we had re-entered the coach, 
 the worthy Quaker felt quite vexed and disconcerted with 
 the silence which had succeeded so much conversation. 
 * I wish, said he, my young friends, that you would 
 cheer up, and go on with your pleasant songs and tales 
 as before: they entertained me much. And so," says 
 Ballantyne, " it went on again until the evening found us 
 in Edinburgh ; and from that day, until within a very 
 short time of his death a period of not less than five- 
 and-thirty years I may venture to say that our inter 
 course never flagged." 
 
 The reception of the two ballads had, in the meantime, 
 been favourable, in his own circle at least. The many 
 inaccuracies and awkwardnesses of rhyme and diction to 
 which he alludes in republishing them towards the close 
 of his life, did not prevent real lovers of poetry from see 
 ing that no one but a poet could have transfused the 
 daring imagery of the German in a style so free, bold, 
 masculine, and full of life ; but, wearied as all such 
 readers had been with that succession of feeble, flimsy, 
 lackadaisical trash which followed the appearance of the 
 Reliques by Bishop Percy, the opening of such a new 
 vein of popular poetry as these verses revealed, would 
 
BALLADS FROM BURGER. 287 
 
 have been enough to produce lenient critics tor far in 
 ferior translations. Many, as we have seen, sent forth 
 copies of the Lenore about the same time ; and some of 
 these might be thought better than Scott s in particular 
 passages ; but, on the whole, it seems to have been felt 
 and acknowledged by those best entitled to judge, that he 
 deserved the palm. Meantime, we must not forget that 
 Scotland had lost that very year the great poet Burns, 
 her glory and her shame. It is at least to be hoped 
 that a general sentiment of self-reproach, as well as of 
 sorrow, had been excited by the premature extinction of 
 such a light ; and, at all events, it is agreeable to know 
 that they who had watched his career with the most 
 affectionate concern, were among the first to hail the 
 promise of a more fortunate successor. Scott found on 
 his table, when he reached Edinburgh, the following let 
 ters from two of Burns s kindest and wisest friends : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. Advocate, George s Square. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, I beg you will accept of my best thanks 
 for the favour you have done me by sending me four copies of 
 vour beautiful translations. I shall retain two of them, as 
 Mrs. Stewart and I both set a high value on them as gifts from 
 the author. , The other two I shall take the earliest opportu 
 nity of transmitting to a friend in England, who, I hope, may 
 be instrumental in making their merits more generally known 
 at the time of their first appearance. In a few weeks, I am 
 fully persuaded they will engage public attention to the utmost 
 extent of your wishes, without the aid of any recommendation 
 whatever. I ever am, Dear Sir, yours most truly, 
 
 " DUGALD STEWART. * 
 
 "Canongate, Wednesday Evening." 
 
288 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 " Dear Sir, On my return from Cardross, where I had 
 been for a week, I found yours of the 14th, which had surely 
 loitered by the way. I thank you most cordially for your 
 present. I meet with little poetry nowadays that touches my 
 heart ; but your translations excite mingled emotions of pity 
 and terror, insomuch, that I would not wish any person of 
 weaker nerves to read William and Helen before going to bed. 
 Great must be the original, if it equals the translation in en 
 ergy and pathos. One would almost suspect you have used as 
 much liberty with Burger as Macpherson was suspected of 
 doing with Ossian. It is, however, easier to backspeir you. 
 Sober reason rejects the machinery as unnatural ; it reminds 
 me, however, of the magic of Shakspeare. Nothing has a 
 finer effect than the repetition of certain words, that are 
 echoes to the sense, as much as the celebrated lines in Homer 
 about the rolling up and falling down of the stone : Tramp, 
 tramp ! splash, splash ! is to me perfectly new ; and much of 
 the imagery is nature. I should consider this muse of yours 
 (if you carry the intrigue far) more likely to steal your heart 
 from the law than even a wife. I am, Dear Sir, your most 
 obedient, humble servant, Jo. RAMSAY." 
 
 " Ochtertyre, 30th Nov. 1796." 
 
 Among other literary persons at a distance, I may 
 mention George Chalmers, the celebrated antiquary, with 
 whom he had been in correspondence from the beginning 
 of this year, supplying him with Border ballads for the 
 illustration of his researches into Scotch history. This 
 gentleman had been made acquainted with Scott s large 
 eollections in that way, by a common friend. Dr. Somer- 
 ville, minister of Jedburgh, author of the History of 
 Queen Anne ; * and the numerous MS. copies commu 
 
 * Some extracts from this venerable person s unpublished Memoirs 
 of his own Life, have been kindly sent to me by his son, the well- 
 
BALLADS FROM BURGER. 289 
 
 oicated to him in consequence, were recalled in the 
 course of 1799, when the plan of the "Minstrelsy" 
 began to take shape. Chalmers writes in great trans 
 ports about Scott s versions ; but weightier encourage 
 ment came from Mr. Taylor of Norwich, himself the 
 first translator of the Lenore. 
 
 " I need not tell you, sir," he writes, " with how much eager 
 ness I opened your volume with how much glow I followed 
 the Chase or with how much alarm I came to William and 
 Helen. Of the latter I will say nothing ; praise might seem 
 hypocrisy criticism envy. The ghost nowhere makes his 
 appearance so well as with you, or his exit so well as with Mr. 
 Spenser. I like very much the recurrence of 
 
 The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, 
 The flashing pebbles flee ; 
 
 but of William and Helen I had resolved to say nothing. Let 
 me return to the Chase, of which the metric stanza style pleases 
 me entirely; yet I think a few passages written in too ele 
 vated a strain for the general spirit of the poem. This age 
 leans too much to the Darwin style. Mr. Percy s Lenore owes 
 its coldness to the adoption of this ; and it seems peculiarly in 
 congruous in the ballad where habit has taught us to expect 
 simplicity. Among the passages too stately and pompous, I 
 should reckon 
 
 The mountain echoes startling wake 
 And for devotion s choral swell 
 Exchange the rude discordant noise 
 
 k wwn physician of Chelsea College ; from which it appears that the 
 reverend doctor, and, more particularly still, his wife, a lady of remark- 
 able talent and humour, had formed a high notion of Scott s future 
 eminence at a very early period of his life. Dr. S. survived to a great 
 old age, preserving his faculties quite entire, and I have spent many 
 pleasant hours under his hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter 
 Scott. We heard him preach an excellent circuit sermon when he was 
 ipwards of ninety-two, and at the Judges dinner afterwards he was 
 *"nong the gayest of the company r 
 VOL. i. 19 
 
290 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Fell Famine marks the maddening throng 
 With cold Despair s averted eye, 
 
 and perhaps one or two more. In the twenty-first stanza, I 
 prefer Burger s trampling the corn into chaff and dust, to youi 
 more metaphorical, and therefore less picturesque, destruc 
 tive sweep the field along. In the thirtieth, On whirlwind s 
 pinions swiftly borne, to me seems less striking than the still 
 disapparition of the tumult and bustle the earth has opened, 
 and he is sinking with his evil genius to the nether world 
 as he approaches, dump/ rauscht es wie ein femes Meer it 
 should be rendered, therefore, not by Save what a distant 
 torrent gave, but by some sounds which shall necessarily ex 
 cite the idea of being hell-sprung the sound of simmering 
 seas of fire pinings of goblins damned or some analogous 
 noise. The forty-seventh stanza is a very great improvement 
 of the original. The profanest blasphemous speeches need not 
 have been softened down, as in proportion to the impiety of 
 the provocation increases the poetical probability of the final 
 punishment. I should not have ventured upon these criticisms, 
 if I did not think it required a microscopic eye to make any, 
 and if I did not on the whole consider the Chase as a most 
 spirited and beautiful translation. I remain (to borrow in 
 another sense a concluding phrase from the Spectator), your 
 constant admirer, 
 
 "W. TAYLOR, Jun." 
 " Norwich, 14th Dec. 1796." 
 
 The anticipations of these gentlemen, that Scott s ver 
 sions would attract general attention in the south, were 
 not fulfilled. He himself attributes this to the contempo 
 raneous appearance of so many other translations from 
 Lenore. " In a word," he says, " my adventure, where 
 eo many pushed off to sea, proved a dead loss, and a great 
 part of the edition was condemned to the service of the 
 irunkmaker. This failure did not operate in any un- 
 
JAMES MACKEAN. 291 
 
 pleasant degree either on my feelings or spirits. I was 
 coldly received by strangers, but my reputation began 
 rather to increase among my own friends, and on the 
 whole I was more bent to show the world that it had 
 neglected something worth notice, than to be affronted 
 by its indifference ; or rather, to speak candidly, I fecund 
 pleasure in the literary labours in which I had almost by 
 accident become engaged, and laboured less in the hope 
 of pleasing others, though certainly without despair of 
 doing so, than in a pursuit of a new and agreeable 
 amusement to myself." * 
 
 On the 12th of December Scott had the curiosity to 
 witness the trial of one James Mackean, a shoemaker, 
 for the murder of Buchanan, a carrier, employed to con 
 vey money weekly from the Glasgow bank to a manufac 
 turing establishment at Lanark. Mackean invited the 
 carrier to spend the evening in his house ; conducted 
 family worship in a style of much seeming fervour ; and 
 then, while his friend was occupied, came behind him, 
 and almost severed his head from his body by one stroke 
 of a razor. I have heard Scott describe the sanctimoni 
 ous air which the murderer maintained during his trial 
 preserving throughout the aspect of a devout person, 
 who believed himself to have been hurried into his accu 
 mulation of crime by an uncontrollable exertion of dia 
 bolical influence ; and on his copy of the " Life of James 
 Mackean, executed 25th January 1797," I find the fol- 
 owing marginal note : 
 
 " I went to see this wretched man when under sen 
 tence of death, along with my friend, Mr. William Clerk, 
 advocate. His great anxiety was to convince us that his 
 diabolical murder was committed from a sudden impulse 
 * Remarks on Popular Poetry. 1830. 
 
292 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of revengeful and violent passion, not from deliberate de 
 sign of plunder. But the contrary was manifest from the 
 accurate preparation of the deadly instrument a razor 
 strongly lashed to an iron bolt and also from the evi 
 dence on the trial, from which it seems he had invited his 
 victim to drink tea with him on the day he perpetrated 
 the murder, and that this was a reiterated invitation. 
 Mackean was a good-looking elderly man, having a thin 
 face and clear grey eye ; such a man as may be ordina 
 rily seen beside a collection-plate at a seceding meeting 
 house, a post which the said Mackean had occupied in his 
 day. All Mackean s account of the murder is apocryphal. 
 Buchanan was a powerful man, and Mackean slender. It 
 appeared that the latter had engaged Buchanan in writ 
 ing, then suddenly clapped one hand on his eyes, and 
 struck the fatal blow with the other. The throat of the 
 deceased was cut through his handkerchief to the back 
 bone of the neck, against which the razor was hacked in 
 several places." 
 
 In his pursuit of his German studies, Scott acquired, 
 about this time, a very important assistant in Mr. Skene 
 of Rubislaw, in Aberdeenshire a gentleman considera 
 bly his junior, who had just returned to Scotland from a 
 residence of several years in Saxony, where he had ob 
 tained a thorough knowledge of the language, and accu 
 mulated a better collection of German books than any to 
 which Scott had, as yet, found access. Shortly after Mr 
 Skene s arrival in Edinburgh, Scott requested to be intro 
 duced to him by a mutual friend, Mr. Edmonstone of 
 Newton ; and their fondness for the same literature, with 
 Scott s eagerness to profit by his new acquaintance s 
 superior attainment in it, thus opened an intercourse 
 which general similarity of tastes, and I venture to add, 
 
MR. SKENE OF RUBISLAW. 293 
 
 in many of the most important features of character, soon 
 ripened into the familiarity of a tender friendship " An 
 intimacy," Mr. Skene says, in a paper before me, "of 
 which I shall ever think with so much pride a friend 
 ship so pure and cordial as to have been able to with 
 stand all the vicissitudes of nearly forty years, without 
 ever having sustained even a casual chill from unkind 
 thought or word." Mr. Skene adds " During the 
 whole progress of his varied life, to that eminent station 
 which he could not but feel he at length held in the esti 
 mation, not of his countrymen alone, but of the whole 
 world, I never could perceive the slightest shade of vari 
 ance from that simplicity of character with which he im 
 pressed me on the first hour of our meeting." 
 
 Among the common tastes which served to knit these 
 friends together, was their love of horsemanship, in 
 which, as in all other manly exercises, Skene highly 
 excelled ; and the fears of a French invasion becoming 
 every day more serious, their thoughts were turned with 
 corresponding zeal to the project of organizing a force of 
 mounted volunteers in Scotland. " The London Light- 
 horse had set the example," says Mr. Skene ; " but in 
 truth it was to Scott s ardour that this force in the North 
 owed its origin. Unable, by reason of his lameness, to 
 serve amongst his friends on foot, he had nothing for it 
 but to rouse the spirit of the moss-trooper, with which he 
 readily inspired all who possessed the means of substi 
 tuting the sabre for the musket." 
 
 On the 14th February, 1797, these friends and many 
 more met and drew up an offer to serve as a body of vol 
 unteer cavalry in Scotland ; which offer being trans 
 mitted through the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord-Lieutenant 
 of Mid-Lothian, was accepted by Government. The or- 
 
294 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ganization of the corps proceeded rapidly ; they extended 
 their offer to serve in any part of the island in case of 
 invasion ; and this also being accepted, the whole ar 
 rangement was shortly completed ; when Charles Mait- 
 land of Rankeillor was elected Major- Commandant ; 
 (Sir) William Rae of St. Catharine s, Captain ; James 
 Gordon of Craig, and George Robinson of Clermiston, 
 Lieutenants ; (Sir) William Forbes of Pitsligo, and 
 James Skene of Rubislaw, Cornets ; Walter Scott, Pay 
 master, Quartermaster, and Secretary ; John Adams, Ad 
 jutant. But the treble duties thus devolved on Scott 
 were found to interfere too severely with his other avoca 
 tions, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore relieved him 
 soon afterwards from those of paymaster. 
 
 " The part of quartermaster," says Mr. Skene, " was 
 purposely selected for him, that he might be spared the 
 rough usage of the ranks ; but, notwithstanding his in 
 firmity, he had a remarkably firm seat on horseback, and 
 in all situations a fearless one : no fatigue ever seemed 
 too much for him, and his zeal and animation served to 
 sustain the enthusiasm of the whole corps, while hi* 
 ready * mot a rire kept up, in all, a degree of good- 
 humour and relish for the service, without which the toil 
 and privations of long daily drills would not easily have 
 been submitted to by such a body of gentlemen. At 
 3very interval of exercise, the order, sit at ease, was the 
 ignal for the quartermaster to lead the squadron to mer 
 riment ; every eye was intuitively turned on * Earl Wal 
 ter, as he was familiarly called by his associates of 
 that date, and his ready joke seldom failed to raise the 
 ready laugh. He took his full share in all the labours 
 and duties of the corps, had the highest pride in its 
 progress and proficiency, and was such a trooper himself 
 
EDINBURGH LIGHT-HOUSE. 2U5 
 
 as only a very powerful frame of body and the warmest 
 zeal in the cause could have enabled any one to be. But 
 his habitual good-humour was the great charm, and at the 
 daily mess (for we all dined together when in quarters) 
 that reigned supreme." 
 
 Earl Walter s first charger, by the way, was a tall and 
 powerful animal, named Lenore. These daily drills ap 
 pear to have been persisted in during the spring and 
 summer of 1797 ; the corps spending moreover some 
 weeks in quarters at Musselburgh. The majority of the 
 troop having professional duties to attend to, the ordinary 
 hour for drill was five in the morning ; and when we re 
 flect, that after some hours of hard work in this way, 
 Scott had to produce himself regularly in the Parliament 
 Blouse with gown and wig, for the space of four or 
 five hours at least, while his chamber practice, though 
 still humble, was on the increase and that he had 
 found a plentiful source of new social engagements in his 
 troop connexions it certainly could have excited no 
 surprise had his literary studies been found suffering 
 total intermission during this busy period. That such 
 was not the case, however, his correspondence and note 
 books afford ample evidence. 
 
 He had no turn, at this time of his life, for early ris 
 ing ; so that the regular attendance at the morning drills 
 was of itself a strong evidence of his military zeal ; but 
 he must have, in spite of them, and of all other circum 
 stances, persisted in what was the usual custom of all his 
 earlier life, namely, the devotion of the best hours of the 
 night to solitary study. In general, both as a young man, 
 and in more advanced age, his constitution required a 
 good allowance of sleep, and he, on principle, indulged in 
 *tj saying, "he was but half a man if he had not full 
 
296 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 seven hours of utter unconsciousness ; " but his whole 
 mind and temperament were, at this period, in a state 
 of most fervent exaltation, and spirit triumphed over 
 matter. His translation of Steinberg s Otho of Wit- 
 telsbach. is marked " 1796-7 ; " from which, I con 
 clude, it was finished in the latter year. The volume 
 containing that of Meier s " Wolfred of Dromberg, a 
 drama of Chivalry," is dated 1797; and, I think, the 
 reader will presently see cause to suspect, that though 
 not alluded to in his imperfect note-book, these tasks 
 must have been accomplished in the very season of the 
 daily drills. 
 
 The letters addressed to him in March, April, and 
 June, by Kerr of Abbotrule, George Chalmers, and his 
 uncle at Rosebank, indicate his unabated interest in the 
 \/ collection of coins and ballads ; and I shall now make a 
 few extracts from his private note-book, some of which 
 will at all events amuse the survivors of the Edinburgh 
 Light-Horse : 
 
 "March 15, 1797. Read Stanfield s trial, and the 
 conviction appears very doubtful indeed. Surely no one 
 could seriously believe, in 1688. that the body of the 
 murdered bleeds at the touch of the murderer, and I see 
 little else that directly touches Philip Stanfield. He was 
 a very bad character, however ; and tradition says, that 
 having insulted Welsh, the wild preacher, one day in his 
 early life, the saint called from the pulpit that God had 
 revealed to him that this blasphemous youth would die in 
 the sight of as many as were then assembled. It was 
 believed at the time that Lady Stanfield had a hand in 
 the assassination, or was at least privy to her son s plans ; 
 but I see nothing inconsistent with the old gentleman 9 
 
NOTE-BOOK 1797. 297 
 
 having committed suicide.* The ordeal of touching the 
 corpse was observed in Germany. They call it iar- 
 recht. 
 
 "March 27. 
 
 The friers of Fail 
 
 Gat never owre hard eggs, or owre thin kale ; 
 For they made their eggs thin wi butter, 
 And their kale thick wi bread. 
 And the friers of Fail they made gude kale 
 On Fridays when they fasted ; 
 They never wanted gear enough 
 As lang as their neighbours lasted. 
 
 " Fairy-rings. N.B. Delrius says the same appear 
 ance occurs wherever the witches have held their Sab- 
 battu 
 
 *- J"or the ballad of * Willie s lady/ compare Apuleius, 
 lib. i. p. 33 
 
 " April 20. The portmanteau to contain the follow 
 ing articles: 2 shirts; 1 black handkerchief; 1 night 
 cap, woollen ; 1 pair pantaloons, blue ; 1 flannel shirt 
 with sleeves ; 1 pair flannel drawers ; 1 waistcoat ; 1 pair 
 worsted stockings or socks. 
 
 " In the slip, in cover of portmanteau, a case with 
 shaving-things, combs, and a knife, fork, and spoon ; a 
 German pipe and tobacco-bag, flint, and steel ; pipe-clay 
 and oil, with brush for laying it on ; a shoe-brush ; a pair 
 of shoes or hussar-boots ; a horse-picker, and other loose 
 articles. 
 
 " Belt with the flap and portmanteau, currycomb, brush, 
 and mane-comb, with sponge. 
 
 " Over the portmanteau, the blue overalls, and a spare 
 
 * See particulars of Stanfield s case in Lord FouutainhaH s Chrono 
 logical Notes of Scottish Affairs, 1680-1701, edited by Sir Walter 
 Bcott. 4to, Edinburgh, 1822. Pp. 233-236. 
 
298 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 jacket for stable ; a small horse-sheet, to cover the horse s 
 back with, and a spare girth or two. 
 
 " In the cartouche-box, screw-driver and picker for 
 pistol, with three or four spare flints. 
 
 "The horse-sheet may be conveniently folded below 
 the saddle, and will save the back in a long march or bad 
 weather. Besides the holster, two forefeet shoes.* 
 
 " May 22. Apuleius, lib. ii Anthony-a- 
 
 Wood Mr. Jenkinson s name (now Lord Liver 
 pool) being proposed as a difficult one to rhyme to, a 
 lady present hit off this verse extempore. N.B. Both 
 father and son (Lord Hawkesbury) have a peculiarity of 
 
 vision : 
 
 Happy Mr. Jenkinson, 
 Happy Mr. Jenkinson, 
 I m sure to you 
 Your lady s true, 
 For you have got a winking son. 
 " 23. Delrius. . . . 
 
 " 24. I, John Bell of Brackenbrig, lies under this stane ; 
 Four of my sons laid it on my wame. 
 I was man of my meat, and master of my wife, 
 And lived in mine ain house without meikle strife. 
 
 * Some of Scott s most intimate friends at the Bar, partly, no doubt, 
 from entertaining political opinions of another caste, were by no means 
 disposed to sympathize with the demonstrations of his military enthu 
 siasm at this period. For example, one of these gentlemen thus writes 
 to another in April 1797 : "By the way, Scott is become the merest 
 trooper that ever was begotten by a drunken dragoon on his trull in a 
 hay-loft. Not an idea crosses his mind, or a word his lips, that hag 
 
 not an allusion to some d d instrument or evolution of the Cavalry 
 
 Draw your swords by single files to the right of front to the 
 left wheel charge ! After all, he knows little more about wheels 
 and charges than I do about the wheels of Ezekiel, or the King of 
 Pelew about charges of horning on six days date. I saw them charge 
 on Leith Walk a few days ago, and I can assure you it was by na 
 means orderly proceeded. Clerk and I are continually obliged to open 
 a six-pounder upon him in self-defence, but in spite of a temporary 
 lonfusion, he soon rallies and returns to the attack." 
 
NOTE-BOOK 1797. 299 
 
 Gif thou be st a better man in thy time than I was in mine, 
 Tak this stane off my wame, and lay it upon thine. 
 
 u 25. Meric Casaubon on Spirits 
 
 a 26. There saw we learned Maroe s golden tombe ; 
 The way he cut an English mile in length 
 Thorow a rock of stone in one night s space. 
 
 " Christopher Marlowe s Tragicall History of Dr. 
 Faustus a very remarkable thing. Grand subject 
 
 end grand Copied Prophecy of Merlin from 
 
 Mr. Clerk s MS. 
 
 " 27. Read Everybody s Business is Nobody s Busi 
 ness, by Andrew Moreton. This was one of Defoe s 
 many aliases like his pen, in parts 
 
 To Cuthbert, Car, and Collingwood, to Shafto and to Hall; 
 To every gallant generous heart that for King James did fall. 
 
 "28. .... Anthony-a-Wood Plain Proof of 
 
 the * True Father and Mother of the Pretended Prince 
 of Wales, by W. Fuller. This fellow was pilloried for 
 
 a forgery some years later Began Nathan der 
 
 Weise. 
 
 " June 29. Read Introduction to a Compendium on 
 Brief Examination, by W. S. viz. William Stafford 
 though it was for a time given to no less a W. S. than 
 William Shakspeare. A curious treatise the Politi 
 cal Economy of the Elizabethan Day worth reprint 
 ing 
 
 " July 1. Read Discourse of Military Discipline, by 
 Captain Barry a very curious account of the famous 
 Low Countries armies full of military hints worth 
 note Anthony Wood again. 
 
 " 3. Nathan der Weise Delrius 
 
 "5. Geutenberg s Braut begun. 
 
 6. The Bride again. Delrius." 
 
800 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The note-book from which I have been copying ig 
 chiefly filled with extracts from Apuleius and Anthony-a- 
 Wood most of them bearing, in some way, on the sub 
 ject of popular superstitions. It is a pity that many 
 leaves have been torn out ; for if unmutilated, the record 
 would probably have enabled one to guess whether he 
 had already planned his " Essay on Fairies." 
 
 I have mentioned his business at the Bar as increasing 
 at the same time. His fee-book is now before me, and it 
 shows that he made by his first year s practice 24 3s.; 
 by the second, 57 15s. ; by the third, 84 4s.; by the 
 fourth, 90 ; and in his fifth year at the Bar that is, 
 from November 1796 to July 1797 144 10s.; of 
 which 50 were fees from his father s chamber. 
 
 His friend, Charles Kerr of Abbotrule, had been resid 
 ing a good deal about this time in Cumberland : indeed, 
 he was so enraptured with the scenery of the lakes, as to 
 take a house in Keswick with the intention of spending 
 half of all future years there. His letters to Scott 
 (March, April, 1797) abound in expressions of wonder 
 that he should continue to devote so much of his vaca 
 tions to the Highlands of Scotland, " with every crag 
 and precipice of which," says he, " I should imagine you 
 would be familiar by this time ; nay, that the goats them 
 selves might almost claim you for an acquaintance ; 
 while another district lay so near him, at least as well 
 qualified " to give a swell to the fancy." 
 
 After the rising of the Court of Session in July, Scott 
 accordingly set out on a tour to the English lakes, ac 
 companied by his brother John, and Adam Fergusson 
 Their first stage was Halyards in Tweeddale, then in 
 habited by his friend s father, the philosopher and his 
 torian ; and they staid there for a day or two, in tha 
 
TOUR TO THE LAKES. 30x 
 
 course of which Scott had his first and only interview 
 with David Ritchie, the original of his Black Dwarf.* 
 Proceeding southwards, the tourists visited Carlisle, Pen- 
 rith, the vale of the Earaont, including Mayburgh and 
 Brougham Castle, Ulswater and Windermore ; and at 
 length fixed their head-quarters at the then peaceful and 
 sequestered little watering place of Gilsland, making ex 
 cursions from thence to the various scenes of romantic 
 interest which are commemorated in The Bridal of 
 Triermain, and otherwise leading very much the sort of 
 life depicted among the loungers of St. Ronan s Well. 
 Scott was, on his first arrival in Gilsland, not a little 
 engaged with the beauty of one of the young ladies 
 lodged under the same roof with him ; and it was on 
 occasion of a visit in her company to some part of the 
 Roman Wall that he indited his lines 
 
 " Take these flowers, which, purple waving, 
 On the ruined rampart grew," &c. f 
 
 But this was only a passing glimpse of flirtation. A 
 week or so afterwards commenced a more serious affair. 
 
 Riding one day with Fergusson, they met, some miles 
 from Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on horseback, 
 whom neither of them had previously remarked, and 
 whose appearance instantly struck both so much, that 
 they kept her in view until they had satisfied themselves 
 that she also was one of the party at Gilsland. The 
 same evening there was a ball, at which Captain Scott 
 produced himself in his regimentals, and Fergusson also 
 
 * See the Introduction to this Novel in the edition of 1830. 
 
 t I owe this circumstance to the recollection of Mr. Claud Russell, 
 accountant in Edinburgh, who was one of the party. Previously I 
 had always supposed these verses to have been inspired by Miss Car 
 penter. 
 
302 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 thought proper to be equipped in the uniform of the Ed 
 inburgh Volunteers. There was no little rivalry among 
 the young travellers as to who should first get presented 
 to the unknown beauty of the morning s ride ; but though 
 both the gentlemen in scarlet had the advantage of being 
 darling partners, their friend succeeded in handing the 
 fair stranger to supper and such was his first introduc 
 tion to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter. 
 
 Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich 
 in personal attractions ; " a form that was fashioned as 
 light as a fay s ; " a complexion of the clearest and light 
 est olive ; eyes large, deep-set and dazzling, of the finest 
 Italian brown ; and a profusion of silken tresses, black as 
 the raven s wing; her address hovering between the 
 reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman who has not 
 mingled largely in general society, and a certain natural 
 archness and gaiety that suited well with the accompani 
 ment of a French accent. A lovelier vision, as all who 
 remember her in the bloom of her days have assured me, 
 could hardly have been imagined; and from that hour 
 the fate of the young poet was fixed. 
 
 She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a 
 devoted royalist, who held an office under Government,* 
 and Charlotte Volere, his wife. She and her only brother, 
 Charles Charpentier, had been educated in the Protestant 
 eligion of their mother ; and when their father died, 
 which occurred in the beginning of the Revolution, Ma 
 dame Charpentier made her escape with her children, first 
 to Paris, and then to England, where they found a warm 
 
 
 
 * In several deeds which I have seen, M. Charpentier is designed 
 "Ecuyer du Roi;" one of those purchaseable ranks peculiar to th 
 latter stages of the old French Monarchy. What the post he held was* 
 I never heard. 
 
GILSLAND MISS CARPENTER. 303 
 
 friend and protector in the late Marquis of Do fvnshire, 
 who had, in the course of his travels in France, formed 
 an intimate acquaintance with the family, and, indeed, 
 spent some time under their roof. M. Charpentier had, 
 in his first alarm as to the coming Revolution, invested 
 4000 in English securities part in a mortgage upon 
 Lord Downshire s estates. On the mother s death, which 
 occurred soon after her arrival in London, this nobleman 
 took on himself the character of sole guardian to her 
 children ; and Charles Charpentier received in due time, 
 through his interest, an appointment in the service of the 
 East-India Company, in which he had by this time risen 
 to the lucrative situation of commercial resident at Sa 
 lem. His sister was now making a little excursion, under 
 the care of the lady who had superintended her educa 
 tion, Miss Jane Nicolson, a daughter of Dr. Nicolson, 
 Dean of Exeter, and grand-daughter of William Nic- 
 olson, Bishop of Carlisle, well known as the editor of 
 "The English Historical Library." To some connex 
 ions which the learned prelate s family had ever since his 
 time kept up in the diocese of Carlisle, Miss Carpenter 
 owed the direction of her summer tour. 
 
 Scott s father was now in a very feeble state of health, 
 which accounts for his first announcement of this affair 
 being made in a letter to his mother ; it is undated ; 
 but by this time the young lady had left Gilsland for 
 Carlisle, where she remained until her destiny was 
 settled. 
 
 " To Mrs. Scott, George s Square, Edinburgh. 
 
 " My Dear Mother, I should very ill deserve the care and 
 affection with which you have ever regarded me, were I to 
 neglect my duty so far as to omit consulting my father and you 
 
804 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in the most important step which I can possibly take in life, 
 and upon the success of which my future happiness must de 
 pend. It is with pleasure I think that I can avail myself of 
 your advice and instructions in an affair of so great impor 
 tance as that which I have at present on my hands. You will 
 probably guess from this preamble, that I am engaged in a 
 matrimonial plan, which is really the case. Though my ac 
 quaintance with the young lady has not been of long standing, 
 this circumstance is in some degree counterbalanced by the in 
 timacy in which we have lived, and by the opportunities which 
 that intimacy has afforded me of remarking her conduct and 
 sentiments on many different occasions, some of which were 
 rather of a delicate nature, so that in fact I have seen more 
 of her during the few weeks we have been together, than I 
 could have done after a much longer acquaintance, shackled 
 by the common forms of ordinary life. You will not expect 
 from me a description of her person for which I refer you 
 to my brother, as also for a fuller account of all the circum 
 stances attending the business than can be comprised in the 
 compass of a letter. Without flying into raptures, for I must 
 assure you that my judgment as well as my affections are con 
 sulted upon this occasion without flying into raptures, then, 
 I may safely assure you, that her temper is sweet and cheerful, 
 her understanding good, and, what I know will give you pleas 
 ure, her principles of religion very serious. I have been very 
 explicit with her upon the nature of my expectations, and she 
 thinks she can accommodate herself to the situation which I 
 should wish her to hold in society as my wife, which, you will 
 easily comprehend, I mean should neither be extravagant nor 
 degrading. Her fortune, though partly dependent upon her 
 brother, who is high in office at Madras, is very considerable 
 at present 500 a-year. This, however, we must, in some 
 degree, regard as precarious I mean to the full extent ; and 
 indeed, when you know her, you will not be surprised that I 
 regard this circumstance chiefly because it removes those pru 
 dential considerations which would otherwise render our uniov 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 305 
 
 impossible for the present. Betwixt her income and my own 
 professional exertions, I have little doubt we will be enabled 
 to hold the rank in society which my family and situation 
 entitle me to fill. 
 
 My dear mother, I cannot express to you the anxiety I 
 have that you will not think me flighty nor inconsiderate in 
 his business. Believe me, that experience, in one instance 
 you cannot fail to know to what I allude is too recent to 
 permit my being so hasty in my conclusions as the warmth of 
 my temper might have otherwise prompted. I am also most 
 anxious that you should be prepared to show her kindness, 
 which I know the goodness of your own heart will prompt, 
 more especially when I tell you that she is an orphan, without 
 relations, and almost without friends. Her guardian is J 
 should say was, for she is of age, Lord Downshire, to whom I 
 must write for his consent, a piece of respect to which he 
 is entitled for his care of her, and there the matter rests at 
 present. I think I need not tell you that if I assume the new 
 character which I threaten, I shall be happy to find that ia 
 that capacity I may make myself more useful to my brothers, 
 and especially to Anne, than I could in any other. On the 
 other hand, I shall certainly expect that my friends will en 
 deavour to show every attention in their power to a woman 
 who forsakes for me prospects much more splendid than what 
 I can offer, and who comes into Scotland without a single 
 friend but myself. I find I could write a great deal more 
 upon this subject, but as it is late, and as I must write to my 
 father, I shall restrain myself. I think (but you are best 
 judge) that in the circumstances in which I stand, you should 
 write to her, Miss Carpenter, under cover to me at Carlisle. 
 
 " Write to me very fully upon this important subject 
 send me your opinion, your advice, and above all, your bless- 
 ing ; you will see the necessity of not delaying a minute in 
 doing so, and in keeping this business strictly private, till you 
 hear farther from me, since you are not ignorant that even 
 it this advanced period, an objection on the part of Lord 
 
806 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Downshire, or many other accidents, may intervene ; in which 
 case, I should little wish my disappointment to be public. 
 " Believe me, my Dear Mother, 
 
 " Ever your dutiful and affectionate son, 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Scott remained in Cumberland until the Jedburgh as 
 sizes recalled him to his legal duties. On arriving ia 
 that town, he immediately sent for his friend Shortreed, 
 whose memorandum records that the evening of the 30th 
 September 1797 was one of the most joyous he ever 
 spent. " Scott," he says, " was sair beside himself about 
 Miss Carpenter; we toasted her twenty times over 
 and sat together, he raving about her, until it was one in 
 the morning." He soon returned to Cumberland; and 
 the following letters will throw light on the character 
 and conduct of the parties, and on the nature of the 
 difficulties which were presented by the prudence and 
 prejudices of the young advocate s family connexions. 
 It appears, that at one stage of the business, Scott had 
 seriously contemplated leaving the Bar at Edinburgh, 
 and establishing himself with his bride (I know not in 
 what capacity) in one of the colonies. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Carlisle, October 4, 1797. 
 
 " It is only an hour since I received Lord Downshire s let 
 ter. You will say, I hope, that I am indeed very good to 
 write so soon, but I almost fear that all my goodness can never 
 carry me through all this plaguy writing. Lord Downshire 
 will be happy to hear from you. He is the very best mar 
 on earth his letter is kind and affectionate, and full of ad 
 vice, much in the style of your last. I am to consult most 
 carefully my heart. Do you believe I did not do it when 1 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 307 
 
 gave you my consent ? It is true, I don t like to reflect on 
 that subject. I am afraid. It is very awful to think it is for 
 life. How can I ever laugh after such tremendous thoughts ? 
 I believe never more. I am hurt to find that your friends 
 don t think the match a prudent one. If it is not agreeable 
 to them all, you must then forget me, for I have too much 
 pride to think of connecting myself in a family were I not 
 equal to them. Pray, my dear sir, write to Lord D. immedi 
 ately explain yourself to him as you would to me, and he 
 will, I am sure, do all he can to serve us. If you really love 
 me, you must love him, and write to him as you would to a 
 friend. 
 
 " Adieu, au plaisir de vous revoir bientot. 
 
 C. C." 
 
 " To Rolert Shortreed, Esq., Sheriff-substitute, Jedburgh. 
 
 " Selkirk, 8th October, 1797. 
 
 " Dear Bob, This day a long train of anxieties was put 
 an end to by a letter from Lord Downshire, couched in the 
 most flattering terms, giving his consent to my marriage with 
 ois ward. I am thus far on my way to Carlisle only for a 
 visit because, betwixt her reluctance to an immediate mar 
 riage, and the imminent approach of the session, I am afraid 
 I shall be thrown back to the Christmas holidays. I shall be 
 home in about eight days. 
 
 " Ever yours, sincerely, 
 
 " W. SCOTT." 
 
 " To Miss Christian Rutherford, Ashestiel, by Selkirk. 
 
 u Has it never happened to you, my dear Miss Christy, in 
 the course of your domestic economy, to meet with a drawer 
 stuffed so very, so extremely full, that it was very difficult to 
 pull it open, however desirous you might be to exhibit its 
 contents ? In case this miraculous event has ever taken 
 place, you may somewhat conceive from thence the cause of 
 .my silence, which has really proceeded from my having a 
 
308 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 very great deal to communicate ; so much so, that 1 really 
 hardly know how to begin. As for my affection and friend 
 Bhip for you, believe me sincerely, they neither slumber DOT 
 sleep, and it is only your suspicions of their drowsiness which 
 incline me to write at this period of a business highly inter 
 esting to me, rather than when I could have done so with 
 something like certainty Hem ! Hem ! It must come out at 
 once I am in a very fair way of being married to a very ami 
 able young woman, with whom I formed an attachment in the 
 course of my tour. She was born in France her parents 
 were of English extraction the name Carpenter. She was 
 left an orphan early in life, and educated in England, and is 
 at present under the care of a Miss Nicolson, a daughter of 
 the late Dean of Exeter, who was on a visit to her relations 
 in Cumberland. Miss Carpenter is of age, but as she lies 
 under great obligations to the Marquis of Downshire, who was 
 her guardian, she cannot take a step of such importance with 
 out his consent and I daily expect his final answer upon 
 the subject. Her fortune is dependent, in a great measure, 
 upon an only and very affectionate brother. He is Commer 
 cial Resident at Salem in India, and has settled upon her an 
 annuity of 500. Of her personal accomplishments I shall 
 only say, that she possesses very good sense, with uncommon 
 good temper, which I have seen put to most severe trials. I 
 must bespeak your kindness and friendship for her. You may 
 easily believe I shall rest very much both upon Miss K and 
 you for giving her the carte de pays, when she comes to Edin 
 burgh. I may give you a hint that there is no romance in her 
 composition and that, though born in France, she has the 
 sentiments and manners of an Englishwoman, and does not 
 like to be thought otherwise. A very slight tinge in her pro 
 nunciation is all which marks the foreigner. She is at present 
 at Carlisle, where I shall join her as soon as our arrangements 
 are finally made. Some difficulties have occurred in settling 
 matters with my father, owing to certain prepossessions which 
 you can easily conceive his adopting. One main article wa 
 the uncertainty of her provision, which has been in part re- 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 309 
 
 moved by the safe arrival of her remittances for this year, 
 with assurances of their being regular and even larger in 
 future, her brother s situation being extremely lucrative. 
 Another objection was her birth : " Can any good thing 
 come out of Nazareth ? " but as it was birth merely and solely, 
 this has been abandoned. You will be more interested about 
 other points regarding her, and I can only say that though 
 our acquaintance was shorter than ever I could have thought 
 of forming such a connexion upon it was exceedingly close, 
 and gave me full opportunities for observation and if I had 
 parted with her, it must have been for ever, which both par 
 ties began to think would be a disagreeable thing. She has 
 conducted herself through the whole business with so much 
 propriety as to make a strong impression in her favour upon 
 the minds of my father and mother, prejudiced as they were 
 against her, from the circumstances I have mentioned. We 
 shall be your neighbours in the New Town, and intend to 
 live very quietly ; Charlotte will need many lessons from 
 Miss R. in housewifery. Pray show this letter to Miss R. 
 with my very best compliments. Nothing can now stand in 
 the way except Lord Down shire, who may not think the 
 match a prudent one for Miss C. ; but he will surely think 
 her entitled to judge for herself at her age, in what she would 
 wish to place her happiness. She is not a beauty, by any 
 means, but her person and face are very engaging. She is 
 a brunette ; her manners are lively, but when necessary, she 
 can be very serious. She was baptized and educated a Prot 
 estant of the Church of England. I think I have now said 
 enough upon this subject. Do not write till you hear from 
 me again, which will be when all is settled. I wish this im 
 portant event may hasten your return to town. I send a 
 goblin story, with best compliments to the misses, and ever 
 *m, yours affectionately, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
510 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " THE ERL-KING.* 
 
 The Erl-King is a goblin that haunts the Black Forest in Thuringia. 
 To be read by a candle particularly long in the snuff.) 
 
 0, who rides by night thro the woodland so wild ? 
 It is the fond father embracing his child; 
 And close the boy nestles within his loved arm, 
 To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm. 
 
 * father, see yonder ! see yonder ! he says ; 
 
 * My boy, upon what dost thou fearfully gaze ? 
 
 * O, tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud. 
 No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud. 
 
 C The Erl-King speaks.) 
 
 0, come and go with me, thou loveliest child ; 
 By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled; 
 My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy, 
 And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy. 
 
 * 0, father, my father, and did you not hear 
 The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear ? 
 
 * Be still, my heart s darling my child, be at ease ; 
 It was but the wild blast as it sung thro the trees. 
 
 Erl-King. 
 
 wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy ? 
 My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy; 
 She shall bear thee so lightly thro wet and thro wild, 
 And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child. 
 
 father, my father, and saw you not plain 
 
 The Erl-King s pale daughter glide past thro the rain? * 
 
 yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon ; 
 
 It was the grey willow that danced to the moon. 
 
 Erl-King. 
 
 * Oh come and go with me, no longer delay, 
 Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away. 
 
 * Oh father I Oh father ! now, now keep your hold, 
 The Erl-King has seized me his grasp is so cold! * 
 
 * From the German of Goethe. 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 311 
 
 Sore trembled the father; he spurr d thro the wild, 
 Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child ; 
 He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread, 
 But, clasp d to his bosom, the infant was dead! " 
 
 " You see I have not altogether lost Vhe faculty of rhyming, 
 assure you, there is no small impudence in attempting a ver- 
 rion of that ballad, as it has been translated by Lewis. All 
 good things be with you. W. S." 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh. 
 
 " London, October 15, 1797. 
 
 " Sir, I received your letter with pleasure, instead of con 
 sidering it as an intrusion. One thing more being fully stated, 
 would have made it perfectly satisfactory, namely, the sort of 
 income you immediately possess, and the sort of maintenance 
 Miss Carpenter, in case of your demise, might reasonably ex 
 pect. Though she is of an age to judge for herself in the 
 choice of an object that she would like to run the race of life 
 with, she has referred the subject to me. As her friend and 
 guardian, I in duty must try to secure her happiness, by en 
 deavouring to keep her comfortable immediately, and to pre 
 vent her being left destitute, in casB of any unhappy contin 
 gency. Her good sense and good education are her chief 
 fortune ; therefore, in the worldly way of talking, she is not 
 entitled to much. Her brother, who was also left under my 
 care at an early period, is excessively fond of her ; he has no 
 person to think of but her as yet ; and will certainly be ena 
 bled to make her very handsome presents, as he is doing very 
 well in India, where I sent him some years ago, and where he 
 bears a very high character, I am happy to say. I do not 
 throw out this to induce you to make any proposal beyond 
 what prudence and discretion recommend ; but I hope I shall 
 hear from you by return of post, as 1 may be shortly called out 
 of town to some distance. As children are in general the con 
 sequence of an happy union, I should wish to know what may 
 be your thoughts or wishes upon that subject. I trust you 
 
312 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 will not think me too particular ; indeed I am sure you will 
 not, when you consider that I am endeavouring to secure the 
 happiness and welfare of an estimable young woman whom 
 you admire and profess to be partial and attached to, and for 
 whom I have the highest regard, esteem, and respect. 
 " I am, Sir, your obedient humble servant, 
 
 " DOWNSHIRE." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " Carlisle, Oct. 22. 
 
 " Your last letter, my dear sir, contains a very fine train of 
 perhaps, and of so many pretty conjectures, that it is not flat 
 tering you to say you excel in the art of tormenting yourself. 
 As it happens, you are quite wrong in all your suppositions. I 
 have been waiting for Lord D. s answer to your letter, to give 
 a full answer to your very proper inquiries about my family. 
 Miss Nicolson says, that when she did offer to give you some 
 information, you refused it and advises me now to wait for 
 Lord D. s letter. Don t believe I have been idle ; I have been 
 writing very long letters to him, and all about you. How can 
 you think that I will give an answer about the house until I 
 hear from London ? that is quite impossible ; and I believe 
 you are a little out of your senses to imagine I can be in Edin 
 burgh before the twelfth of next month. O, my dear sir, no 
 you must not think of it this great while. I am much flat 
 tered by your mother s remembrance ; present my respectful 
 compliments to her. You don t mention your father in your 
 last anxious letter I hope he is better. 1 am expecting 
 every day to hear from my brother. You may tell your uncle 
 he is commercial resident at Salem. He will find the name 
 of Charles C. in his India list. My compliments to Captain 
 Scott. Sans adieu, C. C." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 "Carlisle, Oct. 25. 
 
 " Indeed, Mr. Scott, I am by no means pleased with all this 
 writing. I have told you how much I dislike it, and yet you 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 313 
 
 ttill persist in asking me to write, and that by return of post. 
 O, you really are quite out of your senses. I should not have 
 Indulged you in that whim of yours, had you not given me 
 that hint that my silence gives an air of mystery. I have no 
 reason that can detain me in acquainting you that my father 
 and mother were French, of the name of Charpentier ; he had 
 a place under government; their residence was at Lyons, 
 where you would find on inquiries that they lived in good re 
 pute and in very good style. I had the misfortune of losing 
 my father before I could know the value of such a parent. 
 At his death we were left to the care of Lord D., who was his 
 very great friend ; and very soon after I had the affliction of 
 losing my mother. Our taking the name of Carpenter was on 
 my brother s going to India, to prevent any little difficulties 
 that might have occurred. I hope now you are pleased. 
 Lord D. could -have given you every information, as he has 
 been acquainted with all my family. You say you almost 
 love him; but until your almost comes to a quite, I cannot 
 love you. Before I conclude this famous epistle, I will 
 give you a little hint that is, not to put so many must in 
 your letters it is beginning rather too soon; and another 
 thing is, that I take the liberty not to mind them much, but I 
 expect you mind me. You must take care of yourself; you 
 must think of me, and believe me yours sincerely, C. C." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 Carlisle, Oct. 26. 
 
 " I have only a minute before the post goes, to assure you, 
 iny dear sir, of the welcome reception of the stranger.* The 
 very great likeness to a friend of mine will endear him to me ; 
 he shall be my constant companion, but I wish he could give 
 me an answer to a thousand questions I have to make one 
 in particular, what reason have you for so many fears you 
 express ? Have your friends changed ? Pray let me know 
 
 * A miniature of Scott. 
 
314 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the truth they perhaps don t like me being French. Do 
 write immediately let it be in better spirits. Et croyez- 
 moi toujours votre sincere C. C." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " October 31st. 
 
 " . . . . All your apprehensions about your friends make me 
 very uneasy. At your father s age, prejudices are not easily 
 overcome old people have, you know, so much more wisdom 
 and experience, that we must be guided by them. If he has 
 an objection on my being French, I excuse him with all my 
 heart, as I don t love them myself. O how all these things 
 plague me ! when will it end ? And to complete the mat 
 ter, you talk of going to the West Indies. I am certain your 
 father and uncle say you are a hot heady young man, quite 
 mad, and I assure you I join with them ; and I must believe, 
 that when you have such an idea, you have then determined 
 to think no more of me. I begin to repent of having accepted 
 your picture. I will send it back again, if you ever think 
 again about the West Indies. Your family then would love me 
 very much to forsake them for a stranger, a person who does 
 not possess half the charms and good qualities that you imagine. 
 I think I hear your uncle calling you a hot heady young man. 
 I am certain of it, and I am generally right in my conjectures. 
 What does your sister say about it ? I suspect that she thinks 
 on the matter as I should do, with fears and anxieties for thr 
 happiness of her brother. If it be proper, and you think it 
 would be acceptable, present my best compliments to your 
 mother ; and to my old acquaintance Captain Scott I beg to 
 be remembered. This evening is the first ball don t you 
 wish to be of our party ? I guess your answer it would 
 give me infinite pleasure. En attendant le plaisir de voui 
 revoir, je suis toujours votre constante 
 
 " CHARLOTTE." 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 315 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " The Castle, Hartford, October 29, 1797. 
 
 1 Sir, I received the favour of your letter. It was so 
 manly, honourable, candid, and so full of good sense, that I 
 think Miss Carpenter s friends cannot in any way object to the 
 union you propose. Its taking place, when or where, will de 
 pend upon herself, as I shall write to her by this night s post. 
 Any provision that may be given to her by her brother, you 
 will have settled upon her and her children ; and I hope, with 
 all my heart, that every earthly happiness may attend you 
 both. I shall be always happy to hear it, and to subscribe 
 myself your faithful friend and obedient humble servant, 
 
 " DOWNSHIRE." 
 
 (On the same sheet.) 
 
 "Carlisle, Nov. 4. 
 
 "Last night I received the enclosed for you from Lord 
 Downshire. If it has your approbation, I shall be very glad 
 to see you as soon as will be convenient. I have a thousand 
 things to tell you ; but let me beg of you not to think for some 
 time of a house. I am sure I can convince you of the propri 
 ety and prudence of waiting until your father will settle things 
 more to your satisfaction, and until I have heard from my 
 brother. You must be of my way of thinking. Adieu. 
 
 " C. C." 
 
 Scott obeyed this summons, and I suppose remained in Car 
 lisle until the Court of Session met, which is always on the 
 12th of November. 
 
 To W. Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh. 
 
 11 Carlisle, Nov. 14th. 
 
 " Your letter never could have come in a more favourable 
 moment. Anything you could have said would have been 
 well received. You surprise me much at the regret you 
 you had of leaving Carlisle. Indeed, I can t believe 
 
316 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 it was on my account, I was so uncommonly stupid. I don t 
 know what could be the matter with me, I was so very low, 
 and felt really ill : it was even a trouble to speak. The set 
 tling of our little plans all looked so much in earnest that 
 J began reflecting more seriously than I generally do, or ap 
 prove of. I don t think that very thoughtful people ever caa 
 be happy. As this is my maxim, adieu to all thoughts. I 
 have made a determination of being pleased with everything, 
 and with everybody in Edinburgh ; a wise system for happi 
 ness, is it not ? I enclose the lock. I have had almost all my 
 hair cut off. Miss Nicolson has taken some, which she sends 
 to London to be made to something, but this you are not to 
 know of, as she intends to present it to you. ****** J 
 am happy to hear of your father s being better pleased as to 
 money matters ; it will come at last ; don t let that trifle dis 
 turb you. Adieu, Monsieur. J ai 1 honneur d etre votre tres 
 humble et tres " Obeissante C. C." 
 
 " Carlisle, Nov. 27th. 
 
 " You have made me very triste all day. Pray never more 
 complain of being poor. Are you not ten times richer than I 
 am ? Depend on yourself and your profession. I have no 
 doubt you will rise very high, and be a great rich man, but we 
 should look down to be contented with our lot, and banish all 
 disagreeable thoughts. We shall do very well. I am very 
 sorry to hear you have such a bad head. I hope I shall nurse 
 away all your aches. I think you write too much. When I 
 am mistress I shall not allow it. How very angry I should be 
 with you if you were to part with Lenore. Do you really be 
 lieve I should think it an unnecessary expense where your 
 health and pleasure can be concerned ? I have a better opin 
 ion of you, and I am very glad you don t give up the cavalry, 
 as 1 love anything that is stylish. Don t forget to find a stand 
 for the old carriage, as I shall like to keep it, in case we 
 should have to go any journey; it is so much more CDnvenient 
 than the post-chaises, and will do very well till we can keep 
 vwr carriage. W7iat an idea of yours was that to mention 
 
MISS CARPENTER. 317 
 
 where you wish to have your bones laid I If you were married, 
 I should think you were tired of me. A very pretty compli 
 ment before marriage. I hope sincerely that I shall not live to 
 gee that day. If you always have those cheerful thoughts, 
 how very pleasant and gay you must be. 
 
 " Adieu, my dearest friend. Take care of yourself if you 
 love me, as I have no wish that you should visit that beautiful 
 and romantic scene, the burying-place. Adieu, once more, 
 and believe that you are loved very sincerely by 
 
 " C. C." 
 
 " Dec. 10th. 
 
 " If I could but really believe that my letter gave you only 
 half the pleasure you express, I should almost think, my dear 
 est Scott, that I should get very fond of writing merely for the 
 pleasure to indulge you that is saying a great deal. I hope 
 you are sensible of the compliment I pay you, and don t expect 
 I shall always be so pretty behaved. You may depend on me, 
 my dearest friend, for fixing as early a day as I possibly can ; 
 and if it happens to be not quite so soon as you wish, you must 
 not be angry with me. It is very unlucky you are such a bad 
 housekeeper as I am no better. I shall try. I hope to 
 have very soon the pleasure of seeing you, and to tell you how 
 much I love you; but I wish the first fortnight was over. 
 With all my love, and those sort of pretty things adieu. 
 
 " CHARLOTTE. * 
 
 " P. S. Etudiez votre Franfais. Remember you are to 
 teach me Italian in return, but I shall be but a stupid 
 scholar. Aimez Charlotte" 
 
 " Carlisle, Dec 14th. 
 
 ****** "I heard last night from my friends in London, 
 and I shall certainly have the deed this week. I will send it 
 to you directly; but not to lose so much time as you have 
 oeen reckoning, I will prevent any little delay that might hap 
 pen by the post, by fixing already next Wednesday for your 
 
818 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 coming here, and on Thursday the 21st Oh, my dear Scott, 
 on that day I shall be yours for ever. C. C." 
 
 " P. Arrange it so that we shall see none of your family 
 the night of our arrival. I shall be so tired, and such a fright, 
 I should not be seen to advantage.* 
 
 To these extracts I may add the following from the 
 first leaf of an old black-letter Bible at Abbotsford: 
 
 " Secundum morem majorum h<zc de familid Gualten 
 Scott, Jurisconsulti Edinensis, in librum hunc sacrum 
 manu sud conscripta sunt. 
 
 " Gualterus Scott, filius Gualteri Scott et Anna Ruther 
 ford, natus erat apud Edinam I5mo die Augusti, A. D. 
 1771. 
 
 " Socius Facultatis Juridicce Edinensis receptus erat 
 llmo die Julii, A. D. 1792. 
 
 " In ecclesiam Sanctce Maries apud Carlisle, uxorem 
 duxit Margaretam Gharlottam Carpenter, filiam quondam 
 Joannis Charpentier et Charlotte Volere, Lugdunensem, 
 2todie Decembris 1797."* 
 
 * The account in the text of Miss Carpenter s origin has been, I am 
 aware, both spoken and written of as an uncandid one : it had been 
 expected that even in 1837 I would not pass in silence a rumour of 
 * arly prevalence, which represented her and her brother as children of 
 Lord Downshire by Madame Charpentier. I did not think it neces 
 sary to allude to this story while any of Sir Walter s own children 
 were living; and I presume it will be sufficient for me to say now, that 
 neither I, nor, I firmly believe, any one of them, ever heard either from 
 8k Walter, or from his wife, or from Miss Nicolson (who survived 
 them both) the slightest hint as to the rumour in question. There is 
 not an expression in the preserved correspondence between Scott, the 
 young lady, and the Marquis, that gives it a shadow of countenance. 
 Lastly, Lady Scott always kept hanging by her bedside, and repeatedly 
 kissed in her dying moments, a miniature of her father which is now 
 in my hands ; and it is the well-painted likeness of a handsome gentle 
 man but I am assured the features have no resemblance to Lord 
 Dpwnshire or any of the Hill family. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 

 &RA*>SL 
 
 ik 
 
 UNIVERSITY) 
 
 / 
 
 >^ 
 
MEMOIES OF THE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARl, 
 
MEMOIRS 
 
 OP THE 
 
 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Early Married Life Lasswade Cottage Monk Lewis 
 Translation of Goetz von Berlichingen, published Visit to 
 London House of Aspen Death of Scotfs Father 
 First Original Ballads Glenfinlas, fyc. Metrical Frag 
 ments Appointment to the Sheriffship of Selkirkshire. 
 
 1798-1799. 
 
 SCOTT carried his bride to a lodging in George Street* 
 Edinburgh ; a house which he had taken in South Castle 
 Street not being quite prepared for her reception. The 
 first fortnight, to which she had looked with such anxiety, 
 was, I believe, more than sufficient to convince her hus 
 band s family that, however rashly he had formed the 
 connexion, she had the sterling qualities of a good wife,. 
 Notwithstanding the little leaning to the pomps and van 
 ities of the world, which her letters have not concealed, 
 she had made up her mind to find her happiness in better 
 things ; and so long as their circumstances continued nar 
 row, no woman could have conformed herself to them 
 with more of good feeling and good sense. Some habits, 
 new in the quiet domestic circles of Edinburgh citizens, 
 did not escape criticism ; and in particular, I have heard 
 herself, in her most prosperous days, laugh heartily at 
 
O LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the remonstrances of her George Street landlady, when 
 it was discovered that the southron lodger chose to sit 
 usually, and not on high occasions merely, in her draw 
 ing-room, on which subject the mother-in-law was dis 
 posed to take the thrifty old-fashioned dame s side. 
 
 I cannot fancy that Lady Scott s manners or ideas could 
 ever have amalgamated very well with those of her hus 
 band s parents ; but the feeble state of the old gentleman s 
 health prevented her from seeing them constantly ; and 
 without any affectation of strict intimacy, they soon were, 
 and always continued to be, very good friends. Anne 
 Scott, the delicate sister to whom the Ashestiel Memoir 
 alludes so tenderly, speedily formed a warm and sincere 
 attachment for the stranger ; but death, in a short time, 
 carried off that interesting creature, who seems to have 
 had much of her brother s imaginative and romantic tem 
 perament, without his power of controlling it. 
 
 Mrs. Scott s arrival was welcomed with unmingled de 
 light by the brothers of the Mountain. The two ladies, 
 who had formerly given life and grace to their society, 
 were both recently married. We have seen Miss Ers- 
 kine s letter of farewell ; and I have before me another 
 not less affectionate, written when Miss Cranstoun gave 
 her hand (a few months later) to Godfrey Wenceslaus, 
 Count of Purgstall, a nobleman of large possessions in 
 Styria, who had been spending some time in Edinburgh. 
 Scott s house in South Castle Street (soon after ex 
 changed for one of the same sort in North Castle Street, 
 which he purchased, and inhabited down to 1826) be 
 came now to the Mountain what Cranstoun s and Ers- 
 kine s had been while their accomplished sisters remained 
 with them. The officers of the Light Horse, too, estab 
 lished a club among themselves, supping once a-week at 
 each other s houses in rotation. The young lady thus 
 
EDINBURGH 1798. 
 
 found two somewhat different, but both highly agreeable 
 circles ready to receive her with cordial kindness ; and 
 the evening hours passed in a round of innocent gaiety, 
 all the arrangements being conducted in a simple and in 
 expensive fashion, suitable to young people whose days 
 were mostly laborious, and very few of their purses 
 heavy. Scott and Erskine had always been fond of the 
 theatre ; the pretty bride was passionately so and I 
 doubt if they ever spent a week in Edinburgh without 
 indulging themselves in this amusement. But regular 
 dinners and crowded assemblies were in those years quite 
 unthought of. Perhaps nowhere could have been found 
 a society on so small a scale including more of vigorous 
 intellect, varied information, elegant tastes, and real vir 
 tue, affection, and mutual confidence. How often have I 
 heard its members, in the midst of the wealth and honours 
 which most of them in due season attained, sigh over the 
 recollection of those humbler days, when love and am 
 bition were young and buoyant and no difference of 
 opinion was able to bring even a momentary chill over 
 the warmth of friendship. 
 
 " You will imagine," writes the Countess Purgstall to Scott, 
 from one of her Styrian castles, " how my heart burnt within 
 me, my dear, dear friend, while I read your thrice-welcome 
 letter. Had all the gods and goddesses, from Saturn to La 
 Liberte, laid their heads together, they could not have present 
 ed me with anything that so accorded with my fondest wishes. 
 To have a conviction that those I love are happy, and don t 
 forget me ! I have no way to express my feelings they come 
 in a flood and destroy me. Could my George but light on 
 another Charlotte, there would be but one crook left in my 
 ot * to wit, that Reggersburg does not serve as a vista for 
 
 * A long-popular manual of Presbyterian Theology is entitled, " The 
 Crook in the Lot: " the author s name, Thomas Boston, Minister of 
 Ettrick. 
 
10 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the Parliament Square.* Would some earthquake engulf the 
 vile tract between, or the spirit of our rock introduce me to 
 Jack the Giant-Queller s shoemaker ; Lord, Lord, how delight 
 ful ! Could I choose, I should just for the present patronise 
 the shoemaker, and then the moment I got you all snug in this 
 old hall, steal the shoes, and lock them away till the indigna 
 tion of the Lord passes by poor Old England ! Earl Walter 
 would play the devil with me, but his Charlotte s smiles would 
 speak thanks ineffable, and the angry clouds pass as before the 
 sun in his strength. How divinely your spectre scenes would 
 come in here ! Surely there is no vanity in saying that earth 
 has no mountains like ours. O, how delightful to see the lady 
 that is blessed with Earl Walter s love, and that had mind 
 enough to discover the blessing. Some kind post, I hope, will 
 soon tell me that your happiness is enlarged, in the only way 
 it can be enlarged, for you have no chance now I think of 
 taking Buonaparte prisoner. What sort of a genius will he be, 
 is a very anxious speculation indeed ; whether the philosopher, 
 the lawyer, the antiquary, the poet, or the hero will prevail 
 the spirit whispers unto me a happy melange of the two last 
 he will lisp in numbers, and kick at la Nourrice. On his arri 
 val, present my fondest wishes to his honour, and don t, pray, 
 give him a name out of your list of round-table knights, but 
 some simple Christian appellation from the House of Harden. 
 And is it then true, my God, that Earl Walter is a Benedick, 
 and that I am in Styria ? Well, bless us all, prays the sepa 
 rated from her brethren, J. A. P.* 
 " Hainfeld, July 20, 1798." 
 
 Another extract from the Family Bible may close this 
 
 * The ancient castle of Reggersburg (if engravings may be trusted, 
 one of the most magnificent in Germany) was the chief seat of the 
 Purgstalls. In situation and extent it seems to resemble the castle of 
 Stirling. The Countess writes thus, about the same time, to another 
 of the Mountain: "As for Scott and his sweet little wife, I consider 
 ihem as a sort of papa and mamma to you all, and am happy the godi 
 have ordered it so." 
 
LASSWADE 1798. 1 
 
 letter -^ " M. 0. Scott puerum edidit \Uo die Octobris 
 1798, qui postero die obiit apud Edinburgum" 
 
 In the summer of this year Scott had hired a pretty 
 cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six miles from 
 Edinburgh, and there, as the back of Madame de P. s 
 letter shows, he received it from the hands of Professor 
 Stewart. It is a small house, but with one room of good 
 dimensions, which Mrs. Scott s taste set off to advantage 
 at very humble cost a paddock or two and a garden 
 (commanding a most beautiful view) in which Scott de 
 lighted to train his flowers and creepers. Never, I have 
 heard him say, was he prouder of his handiwork than 
 when he had completed the fashioning of a rustic arch 
 way, now overgrown with hoary ivy, by way of orna 
 ment to the entrance from the Edinburgh road. In this 
 retreat they spent some happy summers, receiving the 
 visits of their few chosen friends from the neighbouring 
 city, and wandering at will amidst some of the most ro 
 mantic scenery that Scotland can boast Scott s dearest 
 haunt in the days of his boyish ramblings. They had 
 neighbours, too, who were not slow to cultivate their ac 
 quaintance. With the Clerks of Pennycuick, with Mac 
 kenzie the Man of Feeling, who then occupied the charm 
 ing villa of Auchendinny, and with Lord Woodhouselee, 
 Scott had from an earlier date been familiar ; and it was 
 while at Lasswade that he formed intimacies, even more 
 important in their results, with the noble families of Mel 
 ville and Buccleuch, both of whom have castles in the 
 game valley. 
 
 " Sweet are the paths, passing sweet, 
 
 By Esk s fair streams that run, 
 O er airy steep, thro copsewood deep 
 Impervious to the sun; 
 
12 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " From that fair dome where suit is paid 
 
 By blast of bugle free,* 
 To Auchendinny s hazel shade, 
 And haunted Wooclhouselee. 
 
 " Who knows not Melville s beechy grove, 
 
 And Roslin s rocky glen; 
 Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, 
 And classic Hawthornden ? " 
 
 Another verse reminds us that 
 
 " There the rapt poet s step may rove; " 
 
 and it was amidst these delicious solitudes that he did 
 produce the pieces which laid the imperishable founda 
 tions of all his fame. It was here, that when his warm 
 heart was beating with young and happy love, and his 
 whole mind and spirit were nerved by new motives for 
 exertion it was here, that in the ripened glow of man 
 hood he seems to have first felt something of his real 
 strength, and poured himself out in those splendid orig 
 inal ballads which were at once to fix his name. 
 
 I must, however, approach these more leisurely. When 
 William Erskine was in London in the spring of this 
 year, he happened to meet in society with Matthew Greg 
 ory Lewis, M. P. for Hindon, whose romance of The 
 Monk, with the ballads which it included, had made for 
 him, in those barren days, a brilliant reputation. This 
 good-natured fopling, the pet and plaything of certain 
 fashionable circles, was then busy with that miscellany 
 which at length came out in 1801, under the name of 
 Tales of Wonder, and was beating up in all quarters 
 for contributions. Erskine showed Lewis, Scott s ver 
 sions of Lenore and the Wild Huntsman ; and when he 
 
 * Pennycuick. 
 
" MONK LEWIS " 1798. 13 
 
 mentioned that his friend had other specimens of the 
 German diablerie in his portfolio, the collector anxiously 
 requested that Scott might be enlisted in his cause. The 
 brushwood splendour of " The Monk s " fame, 
 
 " The false and foolish fire that s whiskt about 
 By popular air, and glares, and then goes out," * 
 
 had a dazzling influence among the unknown aspirants 
 of Edinburgh ; and Scott, who was perhaps at all times 
 rather disposed to hold popular favour as the surest test 
 of literary merit, and who certainly continued through 
 life to over-estimate all talents except his own, consid 
 ered this invitation as a very flattering compliment. He 
 immediately wrote to Lewis, placing whatever pieces he 
 had translated and imitated from the German Volkslieder 
 at his disposal. The following is the first of Lewis s let 
 ters to him that has been preserved it is without date, 
 but marked by Scott " 1798." 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. Advocate, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Sir, I cannot delay expressing to you how much I feel 
 obliged to you, both for the permission to publish the ballads 
 J requested, and for the handsome manner in which that per 
 mission was granted. The plan I have proposed to myself, is 
 to collect all the marvellous ballads which I can lay hands 
 upon. Ancient as well, as modern will be comprised in my 
 design ; and I shall even allow a place to Sir Gawaine s Foul 
 Ladye, and the Ghost that came to Margaret s door and tirled 
 at the pin. But as a ghost or a witch is a sine-qua-non ingre 
 dient in all the dishes of which I mean to compose my hob 
 goblin repast, I am afraid the Lied von Treue does not come 
 within the plan. With regard to the romance in Claudina 
 von Villa Bella, if I am not mistaken, it is only a fragment 
 
 * Oldham. 
 
14 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 in the original ; but, should you have finished it, you will 
 oblige me much by letting me have a copy of it, as well as 
 of the other marvellous traditionary ballads you were so goot 
 as to offer me. 
 
 " Should you be in Edinburgh when I arrive there, I shall 
 request Erskine to contrive an opportunity for my returning 
 my personal thanks. Meanwhile, I beg you to believe me 
 your most obedient and obliged M. G. LEWIS." 
 
 When Lewis reached Edinburgh, he met Scott accord 
 ingly, and the latter told Allan Cunningham, thirty years 
 afterwards, that he thought he had never felt such elation 
 as when the " Monk " invited him to dine with him for 
 the first time at his hotel. Since he gazed on Burns in 
 his seventeenth year, he had seen no one enjoying, by 
 general consent, the fame of a poet ; and Lewis, what 
 ever Scott might, on maturer consideration, think of his 
 title to such fame, had certainly done him no small ser 
 vice ; for the ballads of " Alonzo the Brave and the 
 Fair Imogine," and " Durandarte," had rekindled effect 
 ually in bis breast the spark of poetical ambition. Lady 
 Charlotte Campbell (now Bury), always distinguished by 
 her passion for elegant letters, was ready, " in pride of 
 rank, in beauty s bloom," to do the honours of Scotland 
 to the "Lion of Mayfair;" and I believe Scott s first 
 introduction to Lewis took place at one of her Lady 
 ship s parties. But they met frequently, and, among 
 other places, at Dalkeith as witness one of Scott s 
 marginal notes, written in 1825, on Lord Byron s Diary 
 " Poor fellow," says Byron, " he died a martyr to hii 
 new riches of a second visit to Jamaica. 
 
 that is, 
 
 I d give the lands of Deloraine 
 Dark Musgrave were alive again 
 
MONK LEWIS 1798. 15 
 
 * I would give many a sugar-cane 
 Monk Lewis were alive again. " 
 
 To which Scott adds : "I would pay my share ! how 
 few friends one has whose faults are only ridiculous. 
 Flis visit was one of humanity to ameliorate the condi- 
 aon of his slaves. He did much good by stealth, and 
 was a most generous creature .... Lewis was fonder 
 of great people than he ought to have been, either as a 
 man of talent or as a man of fashion. He had always 
 dukes and duchesses in his mouth, and was pathetically 
 fond of any one that had a title. You would have sworn 
 he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had lived 
 all his life in good society .... Mat had queerish eyes 
 they projected like those of some insects, and were 
 flattish on the orbit. His person was extremely small 
 and boyish he was indeed the least man I ever saw, 
 to be strictly well and neatly made. I remember a pic 
 ture of him by Saunders being handed round at Dalkeith 
 House. The artist had ingeniously flung a dark folding- 
 mantle around the form, under which was half-hid a dag 
 ger, a dark lantern, or some such cut-throat appurtenance; 
 with all this the features were preserved and ennobled. 
 It passed from hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke 
 of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice affirm that 
 it was very like, said aloud, Like Mat Lewis ! Why 
 that picture s like a MAN ! He looked, and lo, Mat 
 Lewis s head was at his elbow. This boyishness went 
 through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled 
 child, but a child of high imagination ; and so he wasted 
 himself on ghost-stories and German romances. He 
 had the finest ear for rhythm I ever met with finer 
 than Byron s." 
 
 During Lewis s stay in Scotland this year, he spent a 
 
16 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 day or two with Scott at Musselburgh, where the 
 manry corps were in quarters. Scott received him 
 his lodgings, under the roof of an ancient dame, who 
 afforded him much amusement by her daily colloquies 
 with the tishwomen the Mucklebackets of the place. 
 His delight in studying the dialect of these people is 
 well remembered by the survivors of the cavalry, and 
 rr>ust have astonished the stranger dandy. While walk- / 
 ing about before dinner on one of these days, Mr. Skene s 
 recitation of the German Kriegslied, " Der Abschied s 
 Tag ist da" (the day of departure is come), delighted 
 both Lewis and the Quarter-Master ; and the latter pro 
 duced next morning that spirited little piece in the same 
 measure, which, embodying the volunteer ardour of the 
 time, was forthwith adopted as the troop-song of the 
 Edinburgh Light-Horse.* 
 
 In January 1799, Mr. Lewis appears negotiating with 
 a bookseller, named Bell, for the publication of Scott s 
 version of Goethe s Tragedy, " Goetz von Berlichingen 
 of the Iron Hand." Bell seems finally to have pur 
 chased the copy-right for twenty-five guineas, and twenty- 
 five more to be paid in case of a second edition which 
 was never called for until long after the copy-right had 
 expired. Lewis writes, "I have made him distinctly 
 understand, that, if you accept so small a sum, it will be 
 only because this is your first publication." The edition 
 of " Lenore " and the "Yager," in 1796, had been com 
 pletely forgotten ; and Lewis thought of those ballads ex 
 actly as if they had been MS. contributions to his own 
 Tales of Wonder, still lingering on the threshold of the 
 press. The Goetz appeared accordingly, with Scott s 
 name on the title-page, in the following February 
 * See Poetical Works (Edition 1841), p. 604. 
 
GOETZ OF BERLICHINGEN 1799. 
 
 In March 1799, he carried his wife to London, this 
 being the first time that he had seen the metropolis since 
 the days of his infancy. The acquaintance of Lewis 
 served to introduce him to some literary and fashionable 
 society, with which he was much amused ; but his great 
 anxiety was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and 
 Westminster Abbey, and to make some researches among 
 the MSS. of the British Museum. He found his Goetz 
 spoken of favourably, on the whole, by the critics of the 
 time ; but it does not appear to have attracted general 
 attention. The truth is, that, to have given Goethe any 
 thing like a fair chance with the English public, his first 
 drama ought to have been translated at least ten years 
 before. The imitators had been more fortunate than the 
 master, and this work, which constitutes one of the most 
 important landmarks in the history of German literature, 
 had not come even into Scott s hands, until he had famil 
 iarized himself with the ideas which it first opened, in 
 the feeble and puny mimicries of writers already forgot 
 ten. He readily discovered the vast gulf which sepa 
 rated Goethe from the German dramatists on whom he 
 had heretofore been employing himself; but the public 
 in general drew no such distinctions, and the English 
 Goetz was soon afterwards condemned to oblivion, 
 through the unsparing ridicule showered on whatever 
 bore the name of German play, by the inimitable cari 
 cature of The Rovers. 
 
 The tragedy of Goethe, however, has in truth nothing 
 in common with the wild absurdities against which Can 
 ning and Ellis levelled the arrows of their wit. It is a 
 broad, bold, free, and most picturesque delineation 8f real 
 characters, manners, and events ; the first fruits, in a 
 word, of that passionate admiration for Shakspeare, to 
 
18 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 which all that is excellent in the recent imaginative liter 
 ature of Germany must be traced. With what delight 
 must Scott have found the scope and manner of our 
 Elizabethan drama revived on a foreign stage at the call 
 of a real master ! with what double delight must he have 
 seen Goethe seizing for the noblest purposes of art, men 
 and modes of life, scenes, incidents, and transactions, all 
 claiming near kindred with those that had from boyhood 
 formed the chosen theme of his own sympathy and re 
 flection ! In the baronial robbers of the Rhine, stern, 
 bloody, and rapacious, but frank, generous, and, after 
 their fashion, courteous in their forays upon each oth 
 er s domains, the besieged castles, the plundered herds, 
 the captive knights, the browbeaten bishop, and the baf 
 fled liege-lord, who vainly strove to quell all these turbu 
 lences Scott had before him a vivid image of the life 
 of his own and the rival Border clans, familiarized to 
 him by a hundred nameless minstrels. If it be doubtful 
 whether, but for Percy s Reliques, he would ever have 
 thought of editing their Ballads, I think it not less so, 
 whether, but for the Ironhanded Goetz, it would ever 
 have flashed upon his mind, that in the wild traditions 
 which these recorded, he had been unconsciously assem 
 bling materials for more works of high art than the 
 longest life could serve him to elaborate. , 
 
 As the version of the Goetz has at length been in 
 cluded in Scott s poetical works, I need not make it the 
 subject of more detailed observation here. The reader 
 who turns to it for the first time will be no less struck 
 than I was under similar circumstances a dozen years ago, 
 with the many points of resemblance between the tone 
 and spirit of Goethe s delineation, and that afterwards 
 adopted by the translator in some of the most remark 
 
GOETZ OP BERLICHINGEN 1799. 19 
 
 able of his original works. One example, however, may 
 be forgiven : 
 
 M A loud alarm, with shouts and firing SELBISS is borne in wounded 
 by two Troopers. 
 
 Selbiss. Leave me here, and hasten to Goetz. 
 
 1st Trooper. Let us stay you need our aid. 
 
 Sel. Get one of you on the watch-tower, and tell me how it goes. 
 
 1st Troop. How shall I get up ? 
 
 2rf Trojp. Get upon my shoulder; you can then reach the ruined 
 part. 
 
 1st Troop. ( On the tower.) Alas! Alas! 
 
 Sel. What seest thou ? 
 
 Troop. Your cavaliers fly to the hill. 
 
 Sel. Hellish cowards! I would that they stood, and that I had a 
 ball through my head ! Ride one of you at full speed Curse and 
 thunder them back to the field! Seest thou Goetz? 
 
 Troop. I see the three black feathers in the midst of the tumult. 
 
 Sel. Swim, brave swimmer I lie here. 
 
 Troop. A white plume! Whose is that? 
 
 Sel. The Captain. 
 
 Troop. Goetz gallops upon him Crash down he goes. 
 
 Sel. The Captain? 
 
 Troop. Yes. 
 
 Sel. Bravo ! bravo ! 
 
 Troop. Alas ! Alas ! I see Goetz no more. 
 
 Sel. Then die, Selbiss ! 
 
 Troop. A dreadful tumult where he stood. George s blue plumt 
 ranishes too. 
 
 Sel. Climb higher ! Seest thou Lerse ? 
 
 Troop. No everything is in confusion. 
 
 Sel. No further come down tell me no more. 
 
 Troop. I cannot Bravo ! I see Goetz. 
 
 Sel. On horseback ? 
 
 Troop. Ay, ay high on horseback victory ! they fly ! 
 
 Sel The Imperialists? 
 
 Troop. Standard and all Goetz behind them he has it he 
 \>*s it!" 
 
 The first hint of this (as of what not in poetry ?) may 
 be found in the Iliad where Helen points out the per- 
 
20 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 sons of the Greek heroes, to old Priam seated on the 
 walls of Troy ; and Shak spear e makes some use of the 
 same idea in his Julius Caesar. But who does not recog 
 nise in Goethe s drama the true original of the death- 
 scene of Marmion, and the storm in Ivanhoe? 
 
 Scott executed about the same time his " House of 
 Aspen," rather a rifacimento than a translation from one 
 of the minor dramatists that had crowded to partake the 
 popularity of Goetz of the Ironhand. It also was sent 
 to Lewis in London, where having first been read and 
 much recommended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Esten. 
 it was taken up by Kemble, and I believe actually put 
 in rehearsal for the stage. If so, the trial did not en 
 courage further preparation, and the notion was aban 
 doned. Discovering the play thirty years after among 
 his papers, Scott sent it to one of the literary almanacks 
 (the Keepsake of 1829.) In the advertisement he says, 
 * he had lately chanced to look over these scenes with 
 feelings very different from those of the adventurous 
 period of his literary life during which they were writ 
 ten, and yet with such, perhaps, as a reformed libertine 
 might regard the illegitimate production of an early 
 amour." He adds, " there is something to be ashamed 
 of, certainly ; but after all, paternal vanity whispers that 
 the child has some resemblance to the father." This 
 piece being also now included in the general edition of 
 his works, I shall not dwell upon it here. It owes its 
 \paost effective scenes to the Secret Tribunal, which fouii- 
 lain of terror had first been disclosed by Goethe, and 
 had by this time lost much of its effect through the 
 * clumsy alacrity " of a hundred followers. Scott s scenes 
 are interspersed with some lyrics, the numbers of which 
 at least, are worthy of attention. One has the metre 
 
DEATH OF HIS FATHER- 1799. 21 
 
 ind not a little of the spirit, of the boat-song of Roderick 
 Dhu and Clan Alpin : 
 
 " Joy to the victors, the sons of old Aspen, 
 Joy to the race of the battle and scar ! 
 Glory s proud garland triumphantly grasping, 
 Generous in peace, and victorious in war. 
 
 Honour acquiring, 
 
 Valour inspiring, 
 Bursting resistless through foemen they go, 
 
 War axes wielding, 
 
 Broken ranks yielding, 
 Till from the battle proud Roderick retiring, 
 Yields hi wild rout the fair palm to his foe." 
 
 Another is the first draft of " the Maid of Toro ; " and 
 perhaps he had forgotten the more perfect copy of that 
 song, when he sent the original to the Keepsake. 
 
 I incline to believe that the House of Aspen was writ 
 ten after Scott s return from London ; but it has been 
 mentioned in the same page with the Goetz, to avoid any 
 recurrence to either the German or the Germanized 
 dramas. His return was accelerated by the domestic ca 
 lamity which forms the subject of the following letter: 
 
 " To Mrs. Scott, George s Square, Edinburgh. 
 
 " London, 19th April 1799. 
 
 "My Dear Mother, I cannot express the feelings with 
 which I sit down to the discharge of my present melancholy 
 duty, nor how much I regret the accident which has removed 
 me from Edinburgh, at a time, of all others, when I should 
 have wished to administer to your distress all the consolation 
 which sympathy and affection could have afforded. Your 
 own principles of virtue and religion will, however, I well 
 know, be your best support in this heaviest of human afflic 
 tions. The removal of my regretted parent from this earthly 
 
22 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOT I. 
 
 cene, is to him, doubtless, the happiest change, if the firmest 
 integrity and the best spent life can entitle us to judge of the 
 state of our departed friends. When we reflect upon this, we 
 ought almost to suppress the selfish feelings of regret that he 
 was not spared to us a little longer, especially when we con 
 sider that it was not the will of Heaven that he should share 
 the most inestimable of its earthly blessings, such a portion 
 of health as might have enabled him to enjoy his family. To 
 my dear father, then, the putting off this mortal mask was 
 happiness, and to us who remain, a lesson so to live that we 
 also may have hope in our latter end; and with you, my 
 dearest Mother, remain many blessings and some duties, a 
 grateful recollection of which will, I am sure, contribute to 
 calm the current of your affliction. The affection and atten 
 tion which you have a right to expect from your children, and 
 which I consider as the best tribute we can pay to the mem 
 ory of the parent we have lost, will also, I am sure, contribute 
 its full share to the alleviation of your distress. The situation 
 of Charlotte s health, in its present delicate state, prevented 
 me from setting off directly for Scotland, when I heard that 
 immediate danger was apprehended. I am now glad I did 
 not do so, as I could not with the utmost expedition have 
 reached Edinburgh before the lamented event had taken 
 place. The situation of my affairs must detain me here for 
 a few days more ; the instant I can I will set off for Scotland. 
 I need not tell you not even to attempt to answer this letter 
 such an exertion would be both unnecessary and improper. 
 John or Tom will let me know how my sister and you do. .1 
 am, ever, dear Mother, your dutiful and affectionate son, 
 
 " W. S." 
 
 " P.S. Permit me, my dear Madam, to add a line to 
 Scott s letter, to express to you how sincerely I feel for your 
 loss, and how much I regret that I am not near you to try by 
 the most tender care to soften the pain that so great a misfor 
 tune must inflict on you and on all those who had the happi- 
 
DEATH OF HIS FATHER. 3 
 
 ness of being connected with him. I hope soon to have the 
 pleasure of returning to you, and to convince you of the sin 
 cere affection of your daughter, M. C. 8." 
 
 The death of this worthy man, in his 70th year, after 
 a long series of feeble health and suffering, was an event 
 which could only be regarded as a great deliverance to 
 himself. He had had a succession of paralytic attacks, 
 under which, mind as well as body had by degrees been 
 laid quite prostrate. When the first Chronicles of the 
 Canongate appeared, a near relation of the family said to 
 me "I had been out of Scotland for some time, and 
 did not know of my good friend s illness, until I reached 
 Edinburgh, a few months before his death. Walter car 
 ried me to visit him, and warned me that I should see a 
 great change. I saw the very scene that is here painted 
 of the elder Croftangry s sickroom not a feature differ 
 ent poor Anne Scott, the gentlest of creatures, was 
 treated by the fretful patient precisely like this niece." * 
 
 I have lived to see the curtain rise and fall once more 
 on a like scene. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Scott continued to manage his father s 
 business. He married early ; he was in his circle of 
 society extremely popular ; and his prospects seemed fair 
 in all things. The property left by the old gentleman 
 was less than had been expected, but sufficient to make 
 ample provision for his widow, and a not inconsiderable 
 addition to the resources of those among whom the re 
 mainder was divided. 
 
 Scott s mother and sister, both much exhausted with 
 their attendance on a protracted sickbed, and the latter 
 already in the first stage of the malady which in 
 
 * See Chronicles Waverley Novels, vol. xli. p. 13. 
 
24 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 years more carried her also to her grave, spent the great- 
 er part of the following summer and autumn in his cot 
 tage at Lasswade. 
 
 There he was now again labouring assiduously in the 
 service of Lewis s " hobgoblin repast," and the specimens 
 of his friend s letters on his contributions, as they were 
 successively forwarded to London, which were printed by 
 way of appendix to the Essay on Imitations of the An 
 cient Ballad, in 1830,* may perhaps be sufficient for the 
 reader s curiosity. The versions from Burger were, in 
 consequence of Lewis s remarks, somewhat corrected; 
 and, indeed, although Scott speaks of himself as having 
 paid no attention "at the time" to the -lectures of his 
 " martinet in rhymes and numbers " " lectures which 
 were," he adds, " severe enough, but useful eventually, as 
 forcing on a young and careless versifier criticisms abso 
 lutely necessary to his future success " it is certain 
 that his memory had in some degree deceived him when 
 he used this language, for, of all the false rhymes and 
 Scotticisms which Lewis had pointed out in these " lec 
 tures," hardly one appears in the printed copies of the 
 ballads contributed by Scott to the Tales of Wonder. 
 
 As to his imperfect rhymes of this period, I have no 
 doubt he owed them to his recent zeal about collecting 
 the ballads of the Border. He had, in his familiarity 
 with compositions so remarkable for merits of a higher 
 crder, ceased to be offended, as in the days of his devo 
 tion to Langhorne and Mickle he would probably have 
 been, with their loose and vague assonances, which are 
 often, in fact, not rhymes at all ; a license pardonable 
 enough in real minstrelsy, meant to be chanted to moss 
 
 * See Poetical Works (1841), p. 569. 
 
FIRST ORIGINAL BALLADS 1799. 25 
 
 troopers with the accompanying tones of the war-pipe, 
 but certainly not worthy of imitation in verses written for 
 the eye of a polished age. Of this carelessness as to 
 rhyme, we see little or nothing in our few specimens of 
 his boyish verse, and it does not occur, to any extent that 
 has ever been thought worth notice, in his great works. 
 
 But Lewis s collection did not engross the leisure of 
 this summer. It produced also what Scott justly calls 
 his " first serious attempts in verse ; " and of these, the 
 earliest appears to have been the Glenfinlas. Here the 
 scene is laid in the most favourite district of his favourite 
 Perthshire Highlands ; and the Gaelic tradition on which 
 it is founded was far more likely to draw out the secret 
 strength of his genius, as well as to arrest the feelings of 
 his countrymen, than any subject with which the stores 
 of German diablerie could have supplied him. It has 
 been alleged, however, that the poet makes a German 
 use of his Scottish materials ; that the legend, as briefly 
 told in the simple prose of his preface, is more affecting 
 than the lofty and sonorous stanzas themselves ; that the 
 vague terror of the original dream loses, instead of gain 
 ing, by the expanded elaboration of the detail. There 
 may be something in these objections : but no man can 
 pretend to be an impartial critic of the piece which first 
 awoke his own childish ear to the power of poetry and 
 the melody of verse. 
 
 The next of these compositions was, I believe, the Eve 
 of St. John, in which Scott repeoples the tower of Smail- 
 holm, the awe-inspiring haunt of his infancy ; and here 
 \ie touches, for the first time, the one superstition which 
 can still be appealed to with full and perfect effect ; the 
 dnly one which lingers in minds long since weaned from 
 qll sympathy with the machinery of witches and goblins 
 
26 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 And surely this mystery was never touched with more 
 thrilling skill than in that noble ballad. It is the first of 
 his original pieces, too, in which he uses the measure 
 of his own favourite Minstrels ; a measure which the 
 monotony of mediocrity had long and successfully been 
 labouring to degrade, but in itself adequate to the expres 
 sion of the highest thoughts, as well as the gentlest emo 
 tions ; and capable, in fit hands, of as rich a variety of 
 music as any other of modern times. This was written 
 at Mertoun-house in the autumn of 1799. Some dilapi 
 dations had taken place in the tower of Smailholm, and 
 Harden, being informed of the fact, and entreated with 
 needless earnestness by his kinsman to arrest the hand 
 of the spoiler, requested playfully a ballad, of which 
 Smailholm should be the scene, as the price of his assent. 
 The stanza in which the groves of Mertoun are alluded 
 to, has been quoted in a preceding page. 
 
 Then came The Grey Brother, founded on another 
 superstition, which seems to have been almost as ancient 
 as the belief in ghosts ; namely, that the holiest service 
 of the altar cannot go on in the presence of an unclean 
 person a heinous sinner unconfessed and unabsolved. 
 The fragmentary form of this poem greatly heightens 
 the awfulness of its impression ; and in construction and 
 metre, the verses which really belong to the story appear 
 to me the happiest that have ever been produced ex 
 pressly in imitation of the ballad of the middle age. In 
 the stanzas, previously quoted, on the scenery of the Esk, 
 however beautiful in themselves, and however interesting 
 now as marking the locality of the composition, he must 
 be allowed to have lapsed into another strain, and pro 
 duced a pannus purpureus which interferes with and 
 nars the general texture. 
 
BOTHWELL CASTLE 1799. 27 
 
 He wrote at the same period the fine chivalrous ballad 
 entitled The Fire-King, in which there is more than 
 enough to make us forgive the machinery. 
 
 It was in the course of this autumn that he first visited 
 Bothwell Castle, the seat of Archibald Lord Douglas, 
 who had married the Lady Frances Scott, sister tc 
 Henry Duke of Buccleuch ; a woman whose many ami 
 able virtues were combined with extraordinary strength 
 of mind, and who had, from the first introduction of the 
 young poet at Dalkeith, formed high anticipations of his 
 future career. Lady Douglas was one of his dearest 
 friends through life; and now, under her roof, he im 
 proved an acquaintance (begun also at Dalkeith) with 
 one whose abilities and accomplishments not less qualified 
 her to estimate him, and who still survives to lament the 
 only event that could have interrupted their cordial con 
 fidence the Lady Louisa Stuart, daughter of the cel 
 ebrated John Earl of Bute. These ladies, who were 
 sisters in mind, feeling, and affection, he visited among 
 scenes the noblest and most interesting that all Scotland 
 can show alike famous hi history and romance ; and 
 he was not unwilling to make Bothwell and Blantyre the 
 subject of another ballad. His purpose was never com 
 pleted. I think, however, the reader will not complain 
 of my introducing the fragment which I have found 
 among his papers. 
 
 " When fruitful Clydesdale s apple-bowers 
 
 Are mellowing in the noon ; 
 When sighs round Pembroke s ruin d towers 
 The sultry breath of June ; 
 
 " When Clyde, despite his sheltering wood, 
 
 Must leave his channel dry; 
 And vainly o er the limpid flood 
 The angler guides his fly; 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 "If chance by Bothwell s lovely braes 
 
 A wanderer thou hast been, 
 Or hid thee from the summer s blaze 
 In Blantyre s bowers of green, 
 
 " Full where the copsewood opens wild 
 
 Thy pilgrim step hath staid, 
 Where Bothwell s towers in ruins piled 
 O erlook the verdant glade; 
 
 " And many a tale of love and fear 
 Hath mingled with the scene 
 Of Bothwell s banks that bloom d so dear 
 And Bothwell s bonny Jean. 
 
 "0, if with rugged minstrel lays 
 
 Unsated be thy ear, 
 And thou of deeds of other days 
 Another tale wilt hear, 
 
 " Then all beneath the spreading beech 
 
 Flung careless on the lea, 
 The Gothic muse the tale shall teach 
 Of Bothwell s sisters three. 
 
 ** Wight Wallace stood on Deckmont head, 
 
 He blew his bugle round, 
 Till the wild bull in Cadyow wood 
 Has started at the sound. 
 
 " St. George s cross, o er Bothwell hung, 
 
 Was waving far and wide, 
 
 And from the lofty turret flung 
 
 Its crimson blaze on Clyde; 
 
 u And rising at the bugle blast 
 
 That marked the Scottish foe, 
 Old England s yeomen muster d fast, 
 And bent the Norman bow. 
 
 " Tall in the midst Sir Aylmer rose, 
 
 Proud Pembroke s Earl was he 
 While" 
 
THE SHEPHERD S TALE 1799. 29 
 
 One morning, during his visit to Bothwell, was spent 
 on an excursion to the ruins of Craignethan Castle, 
 the seat, in former days, of the great Evandale branch 
 of the house of Hamilton, but now the property of Lord 
 Douglas ; and the poet expressed such rapture with the 
 scenery, that his hosts urged him to accept, for his life 
 time, the use of a small habitable house, enclosed within 
 the circuit of the ancient walls. This offer was not at 
 once declined; but circumstances occurred before the 
 end of the year, which rendered it impossible for him 
 to establish his summer residence in Lanarkshire. The 
 castle of Craignethan is the original of his " Tillietud- 
 lem."* 
 
 Another imperfect ballad, in which he had meant to 
 blend together two legends familiar to every reader of 
 Scottish history and romance, has been found in the same 
 portfolio, and the handwriting proves it to be of the same 
 early date. Though long and very unfinished, it con 
 tains so many touches of his best manner that I cannot 
 withhold 
 
 THE SHEPHERD S TALE. 
 
 And ne er but once, my son, he says, 
 
 Was yon sad cavern trod, 
 In persecution s iron days, 
 
 When the land was left by God. 
 
 From Bewlie bog, with slaughter red, 
 
 A wanderer hither drew, 
 And oft he stopt and turned his head, 
 
 As by fits the night wind blew; 
 
 * The name Tittietudlem was no doubt taken from that of the ravine 
 under the old castle of Lanark which town is near Craignethan 
 This ravine is called Gillytudlem. 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 For trampling round by Cheviot edge 
 
 Were heard the troopers keen, 
 And frequent from the Whitelaw ridge 
 
 The death-shot flashed between. 
 
 The moonbeams through the misty shower 
 
 On yon dark cavern fell; 
 Through the cloudy night the snow gleamed white, 
 
 Which sunbeam ne er could quell. 
 
 " Yon cavern dark is rough and rude, 
 
 And cold its jaws of snow; 
 But more rough and rude are the men of blood, 
 
 That hunt my life below; 
 
 " Yon spell-bound den, as the aged tell, 
 
 Was hewn by demon s hands; 
 But I had lourd* melle with the fiends of hell, 
 
 Than with Clavers and his band." 
 
 He heard the deep-mouthed bloodhound bark, 
 
 He heard the horses neigh, 
 He plunged him in the cavern dark, 
 
 And downward sped his way. 
 
 Now faintly down the winding path 
 
 Came the cry of the faulting hound, 
 And the muttered oath of baulked wrath 
 
 Was lost in hollow sound. 
 
 He threw him on the flinted floor, 
 
 And held his breath for fear; 
 He rose and bitter cursed his foes, 
 
 As the sounds died on his ear. 
 
 " O bare thine arm, thou battling Lord, 
 
 For Scotland s wandering band; 
 Dash from the oppressor s grasp the sword, 
 
 And sweep him from the land ! 
 
 * Lourd ; t. e. liefer rather. 
 
THE SHEPHERD S TALE 1799. 31 
 
 " Forget not thou thy people s groans 
 
 From dark Dunnotter s tower, 
 Mix d with the seafowl s shrilly moans, 
 
 And ocean s bursting roar! 
 
 " O in fell Clavers hour of pride, 
 
 Even in his mightiest day, 
 As bold he strides through conquest s tide, 
 
 stretch him on the clay ! 
 
 " His widow and his little ones, 
 
 may their tower of trust 
 Remove its strong foundation stones, 
 
 And crush them in the dust ! " 
 
 " Sweet prayers to me," a voice replied, 
 
 " Thrice welcome, guest of mine I " 
 And glimmering on the cavern side, 
 
 A light was seen to shine. 
 
 An aged man, in amice brown, 
 
 Stood by the wanderer s side, 
 By powerful charm, a dead man s arm 
 
 The torch s light supplied. 
 
 From each stiff finger stretched upright, 
 
 Arose a ghastly flame, 
 That waved not in the blast of night 
 
 Which through the cavern came. 
 
 O deadly blue was that taper s hue, 
 
 That flamed the cavern o er, 
 But more deadly blue was the ghastly hue 
 
 Of his eyes who the taper bore. 
 
 He laid on his head a hand like lead, 
 
 As heavy, pale, and cold: 
 " Vengeance be thine, thou guest of mine 
 
 If thy heart be firm and bold. 
 
 "But if faint thy heart, and caitiff fear 
 
 Thy recreant sinews know, 
 The mountain erne thy heart shall tear, 
 
 Thy nerves the hooded crow." 
 
32 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The wanderer raised him undismayd; 
 
 " My soul, by dangers steeled, 
 Is stubborn as my border blade, 
 
 Which never knew to yield. 
 
 " And if thjr power can speed the hour 
 
 Of vengeaxice on my foes, 
 Theirs be the fate, from bridge and gate 
 
 To feed the hooded crows." 
 
 The Brownie looked him in the face, 
 
 And his colour fled with speed 
 "I fear me," quoth he, " uneath it will be 
 
 To match thy word and deed. 
 
 " In ancient days when English bands 
 
 Sore ravaged Scotland fair, 
 The sword and shield of Scottish land 
 
 Was valiant Halbert Kerr. 
 
 " A warlock loved the warrior well, 
 
 Sir Michael Scott by name, 
 And he sought for his sake a spell to make, 
 
 Should the Southern foemen tame: 
 
 " Look thou, he said, from Cessford head, 
 
 As the July sun sinks low, 
 And when glimmering white on Cheviot s height 
 
 Thou shalt spy a wreath of snow, 
 The spell is complete which shall bring to thy feel 
 
 The haughty Saxon foe. 
 
 " For many a year wrought the wizard here, 
 
 In Cheviot s bosom low, 
 Till the spell was complete, and in July s heat 
 
 Appeared December s snow; 
 But Cessford s Halbert never came 
 
 The wondrous cause to know. 
 
 "For years before in Bowden aisle 
 
 The warrior s bones had lain, 
 And after short while, by female guile, 
 
 Sir Michael Scott was slain. 
 
THE SHEPHERD S TALE 1799. 33 
 
 " But me and my brethren in this cell 
 
 His mighty charms retain, 
 4nd he that can quell the powerful spell 
 
 Shall o er broad Scotland reign." 
 
 He led him through an iron door 
 
 And up a winding stair, 
 And in wild amaze did the wanderer gaze 
 
 On the sight which opened there. 
 
 Through the gloomy night flashed ruddy light, 
 
 A thousand torches glow; 
 The cave rose high, like the vaulted sky, 
 
 O er stalls in double row. 
 
 In every stall of that endless hall 
 
 Stood a steed in barbing bright; 
 At the foot of each steed, all armed save the head, 
 
 Lay stretched a stalwart knight. 
 
 In each mailed hand was a naked brand ; 
 
 As they lay on the black bull s hide, 
 jach visage stern did upwards turn, 
 
 With eyeballs fixed and wide. 
 
 A launcegay strong, full twelve ells long, 
 
 By every warrior hung ; 
 At each pommel there, for battle yare, 
 
 A Jed wood axe was slung. 
 
 The casque hung near each cavalier; 
 
 The plumes waved mournfully 
 At every tread which the wanderer made 
 
 Through the hall of Gramarye ; 
 
 The ruddy beam of the torches gleam 
 
 That glared the warriors on, 
 Reflected light from armour bright, 
 
 In noontide splendour shone. 
 
 And onward seen in lustre sheen, 
 
 Still lengthening on the sight, 
 Through the boundless hall, stood steeds in stall, 
 
 And by each lay a sable knight. 
 VOU II. 3 
 
34 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Still as the dead lay each horseman dread, 
 And moved nor limb nor tongue ; 
 
 Each steed stood stiff as an earthfast cliff, 
 Nor hoof nor bridle rung. 
 
 No sounds through all the spacious hall 
 
 The deadly still divide, 
 Save where echoes aloof from the vaulted roof 
 
 To the wanderer s step replied. 
 
 At length before his wondering eyes, 
 
 On an iron column borne, 
 Of antique shape, and giant size, 
 
 Appear d a sword and horn. 
 
 " Now choose thee here," quoth his leader, 
 
 " Thy venturous fortune try ; 
 Thy wo and weal, thy boot and bale 
 
 In yon brand and bugle lie." 
 
 To the fatal brand he mounted his hand, 
 But his soul did quiver and quail ; 
 
 The life-blood did start to his shuddering heart, 
 And left him wan and pale. 
 
 The brand he forsook, and the horn he took 
 
 To say a gentle sound ; 
 But so wild a blast from the bugle brast, 
 
 That the Cheviot rock d around. 
 
 From Forth to Tees, from seas to seas, 
 
 The awful bugle rung ; 
 On Carlisle wall, and Berwick withal, 
 
 To arms the warders sprung. 
 
 With clank and clang the cavern rang, 
 The steeds did stamp and neigh ; 
 
 And loud was the yell as each warrior fell 
 Sterte up with hoop and cry. 
 
 " Wo, wo," they cried, " thou caitiff coward 
 
 That ever thou wert born ! 
 Why drew ye not the knightly sword 
 
 Before ye blew the horn ? " 
 
THE SHEPHERD S TALE 1799. 35 
 
 The morning on the mountain shone, 
 
 And on the bloody ground 
 Hurled from the cave with shiver d bone, 
 
 The mangled wretch was found. 
 
 And still beneath the cavern dread, 
 
 Among the glidders gray, 
 A shapeless stone with lichens spread 
 
 Marks where the wanderer lay. 
 
 The reader may be interested by comparing with this 
 ballad the author s prose version of part of its legend, as 
 given in one of the last works of his pen. He says, in 
 the Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 1830 : 
 " Thomas of Ercildowne, during his retirement, has been 
 supposed, from time to time, to be levying forces to take 
 the field in some crisis of his country s fate. The story 
 has often been told, of a daring horse-jockey having sold 
 a black horse to a man of venerable and antique appear 
 ance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon 
 hills, called the Lucken-hare, as the place where, at twelve 
 o clock at night, he should receive the price. He came, 
 his money was paid in ancient coin, and he was invited 
 by his customer to view his residence. The trader in 
 horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment 
 through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a 
 horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally 
 still at the charger s feet. All these men, said the wiz 
 ard in a whisper, * will awaken at the battle of Sheriff- 
 muir. At the extremity of this extraordinary depot hung 
 a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the 
 horse-dealer as containing the means of dissolving the 
 spell. The man in confusion took the horn and attempted 
 te wind it. The horses instantly started in their stalls, 
 Stamped, and shook their bridles, the men arose and 
 
6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 clashed their armor, and the mortal, terrified at the tu 
 mult he had excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A 
 voice like that of a giant, louder even than the tumult 
 around, pronounced these words : 
 
 Wo t the coward that ever he was born, 
 That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn. 
 
 A whirlwind expelled the horse-dealer from the cavern, 
 the entrance to which he could never again find. A moral 
 might be perhaps extracted from the legend, namely, that 
 ii is best to be armed against danger before bidding it 
 defiance." 
 
 One more fragment, in another style, and I shall have 
 exhausted this budget. I am well aware that the intro 
 duction of such things will be considered by many as of 
 questionable propriety ; but on the whole, it appears to 
 me the better course to omit nothing by which it is in my 
 power to throw light on this experimental period. 
 
 " Go sit old Cheviot s crest below, 
 And pensive mark the lingering snow 
 
 In all his scaurs abide, 
 And slow dissolving from the hill 
 In many a sightless, soundless rill, 
 
 Feed sparkling Bowmont s tide. 
 
 " Fair shines the stream by bank and lea, 
 As wimpling to the eastern sea 
 
 She seeks Till s sullen bed, 
 Indenting deep the fatal plain, 
 Where Scotland s noblest, brave in vain, 
 
 Around their monarch bled. 
 
 ** And westward hills on hills you see, 
 Even as old Ocean s mightiest sea 
 Heaves high her waves of foam, 
 
KERR OF ABBOTRULE OCTOBER 1799. 37 
 
 Dark and snow-ridged from Cutsfeld s wold 
 To the proud foot of Cheviot roll d, 
 Earth s mountain billows come." 
 ***** 
 
 Notwithstanding all these varied essays, and the charms 
 of the distinguished society into which his reputation had 
 already introduced him, Scott s friends do not appear to 
 have as yet entertained the slightest notion that literature 
 was to be the main business of his life. A letter of Kerr 
 of Abbotrule congratulates him on his having had more 
 to do at the autumnal assizes of Jedburgh this year than 
 on any former occasion, which intelligence he seems him 
 self to have communicated with no feeble expressions of 
 satisfaction. " I greatly enjoy this," says Kerr. " Go on ; 
 and with your strong sense and hourly ripening knowl 
 edge, that you must rise to the top of the tree in the Par 
 liament House in due season, I hold as certain as that 
 Murray died Lord Mansfield. But don t let many an 
 Ovid,* or rather many a Burns (which is better), be lost 
 in you. I rather think men of business have produced 
 as good poetry in their by-hours as the professed regu 
 lars ; and I don t see any sufficient reason why Lord 
 President Scott should not be a famous poet (in the vaca 
 tion time), when we have seen a President Montesquieu 
 step so nobly beyond the trammels in the Esprit des Loix, 
 I suspect Dryden would have been a happier man had he 
 had your profession. The reasoning talents visible in his 
 verses, assure me that he would have ruled in Westmin 
 ster Hall as easily as he did at Button s, and he might have 
 found time enough besides for every thing that one really 
 
 * How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast ; 
 How many Martials werB in Pnlt ney lost. 
 
 Dunciad, b. iv. v. 170 
 
38 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 honours his memory for." This friend appears to have 
 entertained, in October 1799, the very opinion as to the 
 profession of literature on which Scott acted through life. 
 Having again given a week to Liddesdale, in company 
 with Mr. Shortreed, he spent a few days at Rosebank, 
 and was preparing to return to Edinburgh for the winter, 
 when James Ballantyne called on him one morning, and 
 begged him to supply a few paragraphs on some legal 
 question of the day for his newspaper. Scott complied ; 
 and carrying his article himself to the printing-office, took 
 with him also some of his recent pieces, designed to appear 
 in Lewis s collection. With these, especially, as his Mem 
 orandum says, the " Morlachian fragment after Goethe," 
 Ballantyne was charmed, and he expressed his regret that 
 Lewis s book was so long in appearing. Scott talked 
 of Lewis with rapture ; and, after reciting some of his 
 stanzas, said "I ought to apologize to you for having 
 troubled you with anything of my own when I had 
 things like this for your ear." "I felt at once," says 
 Ballantyne, " that his own verses were far above what 
 Lewis could ever do, and though, when I said this, he 
 dissented, yet he seemed pleased with the warmth of my 
 approbation." At parting, Scott threw out a casual obser 
 vation, that he wondered his old friend did not try to get 
 some little booksellers work, " to keep his types in play 
 during the rest of the week." Ballantyne answered, that 
 such an idea had not before occurred to him that he 
 had no acquaintance with the Edinburgh " trade ; " but, 
 if he had, his types were good, and he thought he could 
 afford to work more cheaply than town-printers. Scott, 
 " with his good-humoured smile," said " You had better 
 try what you can do. You have been praising my little 
 ballads ; suppose you print off a dozen copies or so of aa 
 
SHERIFF OF SELKIRK DECEMBER 1799. 39 
 
 many as will make a pamphlet, sufficient to let my Edin 
 burgh acquaintances judge of your skill for themselves." 
 Ballantyne assented ; and I believe exactly twelve copies 
 of William and Ellen, The Fire-King, The Chase, and a 
 few more of those pieces, were thrown off accordingly, 
 with the title (alluding to the long delay of Lewis s col- 
 
 ection) of " Apology for Tales of Terror 1799." Thi8 
 first specimen of a press, afterwards so celebrated, pleased 
 Scott ; and he said to Ballantyne "I have been for 
 years collecting old Border ballads, and I think I could, 
 with little trouble, put together such a selection from them 
 as might make a neat little volume, to sell for four or five 
 shillings. I will talk to some of the booksellers about it 
 when I get to Edinburgh, and if the thing goes on, you 
 shall be the printer." Ballantyne highly relished the pro 
 posal ; and the result of this little experiment changed 
 wholly the course of his worldly fortunes, as well as of 
 his friend s. 
 
 Shortly after the commencement of the Winter Session, 
 the office of Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant 
 by the death of an early ally of Scott s, Andrew Plum- 
 mer of Middlestead, a scholar and antiquary, who had 
 entered with zeal into his ballad researches, and whose 
 name occurs accordingly more than once in the notes to 
 the Border Minstrelsy. Perhaps the community of their 
 tastes may have had some part in suggesting to the Duke 
 
 f Buccleuch, that Scott might fitly succeed Mr. Plum- 
 mer in the magistrature. Be that as it might, his Grace s 
 influence was used with the late Lord Melville, who, in 
 those days, had the general control of the Crown patron 
 age in Scotland, and his Lordship was prepared to look 
 favourably on Scott s pretensions to some office of this 
 description. Though neither the Duke nor this able 
 
40 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Minister were at all addicted to literature, they had both 
 Been Scott frequently under their own roofs, and been 
 pleased with his manners and conversation ; and he had 
 by this time come to be on terms of affectionate intimacy 
 with some of the younger members of either family, 
 The Earl of Dalkeith (afterwards Duke Charles of Buc 
 cleuch), and his brother Lord Montagu, had been partic 
 ipating, with kindred ardour, in the military patriotism 
 of the period, and had been thrown into Scott s society 
 under circumstances well qualified to ripen acquaintance 
 into confidence. The Honourable Robert Dundas, eldest 
 son of the statesman whose title he has inherited, had 
 been one of Scott s companions in the High School ; and 
 he, too, had been of late a lively partaker in the business 
 of the yeomanry cavalry ; and, last not least, Scott always 
 remembered with gratitude the strong intercession on this 
 occasion of Lord Melville s nephews, Robert Dundas of 
 Arniston, then Lord Advocate, and afterwards Chief 
 Baron of the Exchequer in Scotland, and the Right 
 Honourable William Dundas, then Secretary to the 
 Board of Control, and now Lord Clerk Register. 
 
 His appointment to the Sheriffship bears date 16th 
 December 1799. It secured him an annual salary of 
 300 ; an addition to his resources which at once re 
 lieved his mind from whatever degree of anxiety he 
 might have felt in considering the prospect of an increas 
 ing family, along with the ever precarious chances of a 
 profession, in the daily drudgery of which it is impossible 
 to suppose that he ever could have found much pleasure.* 
 
 * " My profession and I came to stand nearly upon the footing 
 which honest Slender consoled himself on having established with 
 Mistress Anne Page : There was no great love between us at th 
 beginning, and it pleased heaven to decrease it on farther acquaint 
 ance. " Introduction to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1830. 
 
SHERIFF OF SELKIRK DECEMBER 1799. 41 
 
 The duties of the office were far from heavy ; the district, 
 small, peaceful, and pastoral, was in great part the prop 
 erty of the Duke of Buccleuch ; and he turned with re 
 doubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of 
 the best of which belonged to this very district of his fa 
 vourite Border those " tales," which, as the Dedication 
 of the Minstrelsy expresses it, had " in elder times cele 
 brated the prowess and cheered the halls " of his noble 
 patron s ancestors. 
 
12 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Border Minstrelsy in Preparation Richard Heler~> 
 John Leyden William Laidlaw James Hogg Corre 
 spondence with George Ellis Publication of the Two First 
 Volumes of the Border Minstrelsy. 
 
 1800-1802. 
 
 JAMES BALLANTYNE, in his Memorandum, after men 
 tioning his ready acceptance of Scott s proposal to print 
 the Minstrelsy, adds "I do not believe, that even at 
 this time, he seriously contemplated giving himself much 
 to literature." I confess, however, that a letter of his, 
 addressed to Ballantyne in the spring of 1800, inclines 
 me to question the accuracy of this impression. After 
 alluding to an intention which he had entertained, in con 
 sequence of the delay of Lewis s collection, to publish an 
 edition of the ballads contained in his own little volume, 
 entitled " Apology for Tales of Terror," he goes on to 
 detail plans for the future direction of his printer s career, 
 which were, no doubt, primarily suggested by the friendly 
 interest he took in Ballantyne s fortunes ; but there are 
 some hints which, considering what afterwards did take 
 place, lead me to suspect, that even thus early the writer 
 contemplated the possibility at least of being himself very 
 intimately connected with the result of these air-drawB 
 schemes. The letter is as follows : 
 
LETTER TO BALLANTYNE APRIL 1800. 43 
 
 " To Mr. J. Ballantyne, Kelso Mail Office, Kelso. 
 
 " Castle Street, 22d April 1800. 
 
 * Dear Sir, I have your favour, since the receipt of which 
 ome things have occurred which induce me to postpone my 
 intention of publishing my ballads, particularly a letter from a 
 friend, assuring me that The Tales of Wonder are actually 
 in the printer s hand. In this situation I endeavour to strength 
 en my small stock of patience, which has been nearly exhausted 
 by the delay of this work, to which (though for that reason 
 alone) I almost regret having promised assistance. I am still 
 resolved to have recourse to your press for the Ballads of the 
 Border, which are in some forwardness. 
 
 " I have now to request your forgiveness for mentioning a 
 plan which your friend Gillon and I have talked over together 
 with a view as well to the public advantage as to your individ 
 ual interest. It is nothing short of a migration from Kelso to 
 this place, which I think might be effected upon a prospect of 
 a very flattering nature. 
 
 " Three branches of printing are quite open in Edinburgh, 
 all of which I am well convinced you have both the ability 
 and inclination to unite in your person. The first is that of an 
 editor of a newspaper, which shall contain something of an 
 uniform historical deduction of events, distinct from the far 
 rago of detached and unconnected plagiarisms from the Lon 
 don paragraphs of * The Sun. Perhaps it might be possible 
 (and Gillon has promised to make inquiry about it) to treat 
 with the proprietors of some established paper suppose the 
 Caledonian Mercury and we would all struggle to obtain 
 for it some celebrity. To this might be added a Monthly 
 Magazine, and Caledonian Annual Register, if you will ; 
 for both of which, with the excellent literary assistance which 
 Edinburgh at present affords, there is a fair opening. The 
 next object would naturally be the execution of Session 
 papers, the best paid work which a printer undertakes, and 
 of which, I dare say, you would soon have a considerable 
 hare ; for a* you make it your business to superintend the 
 
44 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 proofs yourself, your education and abilities would insure you 
 employers against the gross and provoking blunders which thf 
 poor composers are often obliged to subrmf, to. The publica 
 tion of works, either ancient or moderw, opens a third fail- 
 field for ambition. The only gentleman wto attempts any 
 thing in that way is in very bad health , nor can I, at any 
 rate, compliment either the accuracy or tne execution of hu 
 press. I believe it is well understood, vtiac with equal atten 
 tion an Edinburgh press would have superior advantages ever 
 to those of the metropolis ; and though I would not advise 
 launching into that line at once, yet it. would be easy to fee* 
 your way by occupying your press in this manner on vacanf , 
 days only. 
 
 " It appears to me that such a plan, ) udiciously adopted an* 
 diligently pursued, opens a fair road to an ample fortune. In 
 the meanwhile, the Kelso Mail mii^u be so arranged as tu 
 be still a source of some advantage to ,you ; and I dare say, ii 1 
 wanted, pecuniary assistance might be procured to assist you 
 at the outset, either upon terms of a stiare or otherwise ; but j 
 refer you for particulars to Joseph, iiu whose room I am no*i 
 assuming the pen, for reasons too digressing to be declarer , 
 but at which you will readily guess. I hope, at all events 
 you will impute my interference to anytning rather than aa 
 impertinent intermeddling with your concerns on the part of, 
 Dear Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The Joseph Gillon here named was a solicitor of some 
 eminence ; a man of strong abilities and genuine wit and 
 humour, for whom Scott, as well as Ballantyne, had a 
 warm regard.* The intemperate habits alluded to at the 
 close of Scott s letter gradually undermined his business, 
 his health, and his character ; and he was glad, on leav 
 
 * Calling on him one day in his writing office, Scott said, " Why 
 Joseph, this place is as hot as an oven." " Well," quoth Gillon, " and 
 \sn t it here that I make mv bread? " 
 
HEBER 1800. 45 
 
 ing Edinburgh, which became quite necessary some years 
 afterwards, to obtain a humble situation about the House 
 of Lords in which he died.* The answer of Ballan- 
 tyne has not been preserved. 
 
 To return to the " Minstrelsy." Scott found able as 
 sistants in the completion of his design. Richard Heber 
 (long Member of Parliament for the University of Ox 
 ford) happened to spend this winter in Edinburgh, and 
 was welcomed, as his talents and accomplishments en 
 titled him to be, by the cultivated society of the place. 
 "With Scott his multifarious learning, particularly his pro 
 found knowledge of the literary monuments of the middle 
 ages, soon drew him into habits of close alliance ; the 
 stores of his library, even then extensive, were freely laid 
 open, and his own oral commentaries were not less valu 
 able. But through him Scott made acquaintance with a 
 person still more qualified to give him effectual aid in 
 this undertaking ; a native of the Border from infancy, 
 like himself, an enthusiastic lover of its legends, and who 
 had already saturated his mind with every species of lore 
 that could throw light upon these relics. 
 
 Few who read these pages can be unacquainted with 
 the leading facts in the history of John Leyden. Few 
 tan need to be reminded that this extraordinary man, 
 torn in a shepherd s cottage in one of the wildest valleys 
 of Roxburghshire, and of course almost entirely self-edu 
 cated, had, before he attained his nineteenth year, con- 
 jbunded the doctors of Edinburgh by the portentous mass 
 
 * The poet casually meeting Joseph in the streets, on one of his 
 visits to London, expressed his regret at having lost his society in 
 Edinburgh ; Joseph responded by a quotation from the Scotch Metrical 
 
 Version of the Psalms 
 
 " rather in 
 
 The Lord s house would I keep a door, 
 Than dwell in tents of sin " 
 
46 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 f his acquisitions in almost every department of learn 
 ing. He had set the extremest penury at utter defiance, 
 or rather he had never been conscious that it could 
 operate as a bar; for bread and water, and access to 
 books and lectures, comprised all within the bound of his 
 wishes ; and thus he toiled and battled at the gates of 
 science after science, until his unconquerable persever 
 ance carried everything before it; and yet with this 
 monastic abstemiousness and iron hardness of will, per 
 plexing those about him by manners and habits in which 
 it was hard to say whether the moss-trooper or the school 
 man of former days most prevailed, he was at heart a 
 poet. 
 
 Archibald Constable, in after-life, one of the most emi 
 nent of British publishers, was at this period the keeper 
 of a small book-shop, into which few but the poor stu 
 dents of Leyden s order had hitherto found their way. 
 Heber, in the course of his bibliomaniacal prowlings, dis 
 covered that it contained some of 
 
 " The small old volumes, dark with tarnished gold," 
 
 which were already the Delilahs of his imagination ; and, 
 moreover, that the young bookseller had himself a strong 
 taste for such charmers. Frequenting the place accord 
 ingly, he observed with some curiosity the barbarous 
 aspect and gestures of another daily visitant, who came 
 not to purchase, evidently, but to pore over the more 
 recondite articles of the collection often balanced for 
 hours on a ladder with a folio in his hand, like Dominie 
 Sampson. The English virtuoso was on the look-out for 
 flny books or MSS. that might be of use to the editor of 
 the projected " Minstrelsy," and some casual colloquy led 
 to the discovery that this unshorn stranger was, amidst 
 
HEBER-LEYDEN 1800. 47 
 
 ,he endless labyrinth of his lore, a master of legend 
 and tradition an enthusiastic collector and most skilful 
 expounder of these very Border ballads in particular. 
 Scott heard with much interest Heber s account of his 
 odd acquaintance, and found, when introduced, the person 
 whose initials, affixed to a series of pieces in verse, chiefly 
 translations from Greek, Latin, and the northern lan 
 guages, scattered, during the last three or four years, 
 over the pages of the " Edinburgh Magazine," had often 
 much excited his curiosity, as various indications pointed 
 out the Scotch Border to be the native district of this 
 unknown " J. L." 
 
 These new friendships led to a great change in Ley- 
 den s position, purposes, and prospects. He was pres 
 ently received into the best society of Edinburgh, where 
 his strange, wild uncouthness of demeanour does not seem 
 to have at all interfered with the general appreciation of 
 his genius, his gigantic endowments, and really amiable vir 
 tues. Fixing his ambition on the East, where he hoped 
 to rival the achievements of Sir William Jones, he at 
 length, about the beginning of 1802, obtained the promise 
 of some literary appointment in the East India Com 
 pany s service ; but when the time drew near, it was dis 
 covered that the patronage of the season had been ex 
 hausted, with the exception of one surgeon-assistant s 
 commission which had been with difficulty secure, 
 for him by Mr. William Dundas ; who, moreover, was 
 obliged to inform him, that if he accepted it, he must be 
 qualified to pass his medical trials within six months. 
 This news, which would have crushed any other man s 
 hopes to the dust, was only a welcome fillip to the ardour 
 of Leyden. He that same hour grappled with a new 
 science, in full confidence that whatever ordinary men 
 
48 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 could do in three or four years, his energy could accom 
 plish in as many months ; took his degree accordingly in 
 the beginning of 1803, having just before published his 
 beautiful poem, the Scenes of Infancy ; sailed to India 
 raised for himself, within seven short years, the reputa 
 tion of the most marvellous of Orientalists ; and died, in 
 the midst of the proudest hopes, at the same age with 
 Burns and Byron, in 1811. 
 
 But to return : Leyden was enlisted by Scott in the 
 service of Lewis, and immediately contributed a ballad, 
 called The Elf-King, to the Tales of Terror. Those 
 highly-spirited pieces, The Gout of Keildar, Lord Soulis, 
 and The Mermaid, were furnished for the original de 
 partment of Scott s own collection : and the Dissertation 
 on Fairies, prefixed to its second volume, " although ar 
 ranged and digested by the editor, abounds with instances 
 of such curious reading as Leyden only had read, and 
 was originally compiled by him ; " but not the least of 
 his labours was in the collection of the old ballads them 
 selves. When he first conversed with Ballantyne on the 
 subject of the proposed work, and the printer signified 
 his belief that a single volume of moderate size would 
 be sufficient for the materials, Leyden exclaimed 
 " Dash it, does Mr. Scott mean another thin thing like 
 Goetz of Berlichingen ? I have more than that in my 
 head myself: we shall turn out three or four such vol 
 umes at least." He went to work stoutly in the realiza 
 tion of these wider views. " In this labour, says Scott, 
 " he was equally interested by friendship for the editor, 
 and by his own patriotic zeal for the honour of the Scot 
 tish borders ; and both may be judged of from the fol 
 lowing circumstance. An interesting fragment had been 
 obtained of an ancient historical ballad ; but the remain 
 
JOHN LEYDEN. 49 
 
 fler, to the great disturbance of the editor and his coad 
 jutor, was not to be recovered. Two days afterwards, 
 while the editor was sitting with some company after 
 dinner, a sound was heard at a distance like that of the 
 whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of the 
 vessel which scuds before it. The sounds increased as 
 they approached more near ; and Leyden (to the great 
 astonishment of such of the guests as did not know him) 
 burst into the room, chanting the desiderated ballad with 
 the most enthusiastic gesture, and all the energy of what 
 he used to call the saw-tones of his voice. It turned out 
 that he had walked between forty and fifty miles and 
 back again, for the sole purpose of visiting an old person 
 who possessed this precious remnant of antiquity. * * 
 
 Various allusions to the progress of Ley den s fortunes 
 will occur in letters to be quoted hereafter. I may refer 
 the reader, for further particulars, to the biographical 
 sketch by Scott from which the preceding anecdote is 
 taken. Many tributes to his memory are scattered over 
 his friend s other works, both prose and verse ; and, above 
 all, Scott did not forget him when exploring, three years 
 after his death, the scenery of his " Mermaid : " 
 
 " Scarba s isle, -whose tortured shore 
 Still rings to Corrivrekan s roar, 
 
 And lonely Colonsay ; 
 Scenes sung by him who sings no more : 
 His bright and brief career is o er, 
 
 And mute his tuneful strains ; 
 Quench d is his lamp of varied lore, 
 That loved the light of song to pour; 
 A distant and a deadly shore 
 
 Has Leyden s cold remains! " t 
 
 * Essay on the Life of Leyden Scott s Miscellaneous Prose Works 
 f Lord of the Isles, Canto iv. st. 11. 
 VOL. ii. 4 
 
50 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 During the years 1800 and 1801, the Minstrelsy 
 formed its editor s chief occupation a labour of love 
 truly, if ever such there was; but neither this nor his 
 sheriffship interfered with his regular attendance at the 
 Bar, the abandonment of which was all this while as far 
 as it ever had been from his imagination, or that of any 
 of his friends. He continued to have his summer head 
 quarters at Lasswade ; and Mr. (now Sir John) Stoddart, 
 who visited him there in the course of his Scottish tour,* 
 dwells on " the simple unostentatious elegance of the 
 cottage, and the domestic picture which he there contem 
 plated a man of native kindness and cultivated talent, 
 passing the intervals of a learned profession amidst 
 scenes highly favourable to his poetic inspirations, not in 
 churlish and rustic solitude, but in the daily exercise of 
 the most precious sympathies as a husband, a father, and 
 a friend." His means of hospitality were now much 
 enlarged, and the cottage, on a Saturday and Sunday at 
 least, was seldom without visitors. 
 
 Among other indications of greater ease in his cir 
 cumstances, which I find in his letter-book, he writes to 
 Heber, after his return to London in May 1800, to re 
 quest his good offices on behalf of Mrs. Scott, who had 
 " set her heart on a phaeton, at once strong, and low, and 
 handsome, and not to cost more than thirty guineas ; 
 which combination of advantages Heber seems to have 
 found by no means easy of attainment. The phaeton 
 was, however, discovered; and its springs must soon 
 have been put to a sufficient trial, for this was " the first 
 wheeled carriage that ever penetrated into Liddesdale " 
 namely, in August 1800. The friendship of the Buc- 
 cleuch family now placed better means of research at his 
 
 * The account of this Tour was published in 1801. 
 
LAIDLAW HOGG. 51 
 
 disposal, and Lord Dalkeith had taken special care that 
 there should be a band of pioneers in waiting for his 
 orders when he reached Hermitage. 
 
 Though he had not given up Lasswade, his sheriffship 
 now made it necessary for him that he should be fre 
 quently in Ettrick Forest. On such occasions he took 
 up his lodgings in the little inn at Clovenford, a favourite 
 fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to Selkirk. 
 From this place he could ride to the county town when 
 ever business required his presence, and he was also 
 within a few miles of the vales of Yarrow and Ettrick, 
 where he obtained large accessions to his store of ballads. 
 It was in one of these excursions that, penetrating be 
 yond St. Mary s lake, he found a hospitable reception at 
 the farm of Blackhouse, situated on the Douglas-burn, 
 then tenanted by a remarkable family, to which I have 
 already made allusion that of William Laidlaw. He 
 was then a very young man, but the extent of his ac 
 quirements was already as noticeable as the vigour and 
 originality of his mind ; and their correspondence, where 
 " Sir " passes, at a few bounds, through " Dear Sir," and 
 " Dear Mr. Laidlaw," to " Dear Willie," shews how 
 speedily this new acquaintance had warmed into a very 
 tender affection. Laidlaw s zeal about the ballads was 
 repaid by Scott s anxious endeavours to get him removed 
 from a sphere for which, he writes, " it is no flattery to 
 say that you are much too good." It was then, and always 
 continued to be, his opinion, that his friend was particu 
 larly qualified for entering with advantage on the study 
 of the medical profession ; but such designs, if Laidlaw 
 himself ever took them up seriously were not ultimately 
 persevered in ; and I question whether any worldly suc 
 cess could, after all, have overbalanced the retrospect of 
 
52 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 an honourable life spent happily in the open air of na 
 ture, amidst scenes the most captivating to the eye of 
 genius, and in the intimate confidence of, perhaps, the 
 greatest of contemporary minds. 
 
 James Hogg spent ten years of his life in the service 
 of Mr. Laidlaw s father, but he had passed into that of 
 another sheep farmer in a neighbouring valley before 
 Scott first visited Blackhouse. William Laidlaw and 
 Hogg were, however, the most intimate of friends, and 
 the former took care that Scott should see, without delay, 
 one whose enthusiasm about the minstrelsy of the Forest 
 was equal to his own, and whose mother, then an aged 
 woman, though she lived many years afterwards, was 
 celebrated for having by heart several ballads in a more 
 perfect form than any other inhabitant of the vale of 
 Ettrick. The personal history of James Hogg must 
 have interested Scott even more than any acquisition of 
 that sort which he owed to this acquaintance with, per 
 haps, the most remarkable man that ever wore the maud 
 of a shepherd. But I need not here repeat a tale which 
 his own language will convey to the latest posterity. 
 Under the garb, aspect, and bearing of a rude peasant 
 and rude enough he was in most of these things, even 
 after no inconsiderable experience of society Scott 
 found a brother poet, a true son of nature and genius, 
 hardly conscious of his powers. He had taught himself 
 to write by copying the letters of a printed book as he 
 lay watching his flock on the hill-side, and had probably 
 reached the utmost pitch of his ambition when he first 
 found that his artless rhymes could touch the heart of 
 the ewe-milker who partook the shelter of his mantle 
 duri ig the passing storm. As yet his naturally kind 
 and r? "iple character had not been exposed to any of 
 
GEORGE ELLIS 1801. 53 
 
 the dangerous flatteries of the world ; his heart was 
 pure his enthusiasm buoyant as that of a happy child ; 
 and well as Scott knew that reflection, sagacity, wit, and 
 wisdom, were scattered abundantly among the humblest 
 rangers of these pastoral solitudes, there was here a 
 depth and a brightness that filled him with wonder, com 
 bined with a quaintness of humour, and a thousand little 
 touches of absurdity, which afforded him more entertain 
 ment, as I have often heard him say, than the best com 
 edy that ever set the pit in a roar. 
 
 Scott opened in the same year a correspondence with 
 the venerable Bishop of Dromore, who seems, however, 
 to have done little more than express a warm interest in 
 an undertaking so nearly resembling that which will ever 
 keep his own name in remembrance. He had more suc 
 cess in his applications to a more unpromising quarter 
 namely, with Joseph Kitson, the ancient and virulent 
 assailant of Bishop Percy s editorial character. This 
 narrow-minded, sour, and dogmatical little word-catcher 
 had hated the very name of a Scotsman, and was utterly 
 incapable of sympathizing with any of the higher views 
 of his new correspondent. Yet the bland courtesy of 
 Scott disarmed even this half-crazy pedant ; and he com 
 municated the stores of his really valuable learning in a 
 manner that seems to have greatly surprised all who had 
 hitherto held any intercourse with him on antiquarian 
 topics. It astonished, above all, the late amiable and 
 elegant George Ellis, whose acquaintance was about the 
 same time opened to Scott through their common friend 
 Heber. Mr. Ellis was now busily engaged in collecting 
 the materials for his charming works, entitled Specimens 
 af Ancient English Poetry, and Specimens of Ancient 
 English "Romance. The correspondence between him 
 
54 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and Scott soon came to be constant. They met person 
 ally, not long after the correspondence had commenced, 
 conceived for each other a cordial respect and affection, 
 and continued on a footing of almost brotherly intimacy 
 ever after. To this valuable alliance Scott owed, among 
 other advantages, his early and ready admission to the 
 acquaintance and familiarity of Ellis s bosom friend, his 
 coadjutor in the Anti-jacobin, and the confidant of all 
 his literary schemes, the late illustrious statesman, Mr. 
 Canning. 
 
 The first letter of Scott to Ellis is dated March 27, 
 1801, and begins thus : " Sir, as I feel myself highly 
 flattered by your inquiries, I lose no time in answering 
 them to the best of my ability. Your eminence in the 
 literary world, and the warm praises of our mutual friend 
 Heber, had made me long wish for an opportunity of being 
 known to you. I enclose the first sheet of Sir Tristrem, 
 that you may not so much rely upon my opinion as upon 
 that which a specimen of the style and versification may 
 enable your better judgment to form for itself. . . . These 
 pages are transcribed by Leyden, an excellent young man, 
 of uncommon talents, patronised by Heber, and who is 
 of the utmost assistance to my literary undertakings." 
 
 As Scott s edition of Sir Tristrem did not appear until 
 May 1804, and he and Leyden were busy with the Bor 
 der Minstrelsy when his correspondence with Ellis com 
 menced, this early indication of his labours on the former 
 work may require explanation. The truth is, that both 
 Scott and Leyden, having eagerly arrived at the belief, 
 from which neither of them ever permitted himself to 
 falter, that the " Sir Tristrem " of the Auchinleck MS. 
 was virtually, if not literally, the production of Thomas 
 Jie Rhymer, laird of Ercildoune in Berwickshire, wh* 
 
LETTERS TO ELLIS 1801. 
 
 flourished at the close of the thirteenth century the 
 original intention had been to give it, not only a place, 
 but a very prominent one, in the Minstrelsy of the Scot 
 tish Border. The doubts and difficulties which Ellis 
 suggested, however, though they did not shake Scott in 
 his opinion as to the parentage of the romance, induced 
 researches which occupied so much time, and gave birth 
 to notes so bulky, that he eventually found it expedient 
 first to pass it over in the two volumes of the Minstrelsy 
 which appeared in 1802, and then even in the third, which 
 followed a year later ; thus reserving Tristrem for a sep 
 arate publication, which did not take place until after 
 Leyden had sailed for India. 
 
 I must not swell these pages by transcribing the entire 
 correspondence of Scott and Ellis, the greater part of 
 which consists of minute antiquarian discussion which 
 could hardly interest the general reader ; but I shall give 
 such extracts as seem to throw light on Scott s personal 
 history during this period. 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 " Lasswade Cottage, 20th April 1801. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, I should long ago have acknowledged your 
 instructive letter, but I have been wandering about in the wilds 
 of Liddesdale and Ettrick Forest, in search of additional mate 
 rials for the Border Minstrelsy. I cannot, however, boast much 
 of my success. One of our best reciters has turned religious 
 in his later days, and finds out that old songs are unlawful. If 
 so, then, as Falstaff says, is many an acquaintance of mine 
 damned. I now send you an accurate analysis of Sir Tristrem. 
 Philo-Tomas, whoever he was, must surely have been an 
 Englishman ; when his hero joins oattle with Moraunt, h 
 
 exclaims 
 
 God help Tristrem the Knight, 
 Be fought for Inglci-ndS 
 
56 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 This strain of national attachment would hardly have pro 
 ceeded from a Scottish author, even though he had laid hia 
 scene in the sister country. In other respects the language 
 appears to be Scottish, and certainly contains the essence of 
 
 Tomas s work You shall have Sir Otuel in a week 
 
 or two, and I shall be happy to compare your Romance of 
 Merlin with our Arthur and Merlin, which is a very good 
 poem, and may supply you with some valuable additions. . . . 
 
 I would very fain lend your elephant * a lift, but I 
 
 fear I can be of little use to you. I have been rather an 
 
 *This phrase will be best explained by an extract from a letter 
 addressed by Sir Walter Scott, on the 12th February 1830, to Wil 
 liam Brockedon, Esq., acknowledging that gentleman s courtesy in 
 sending him a copy of the beautiful work entitled " Passes of the 
 Alps:" 
 
 " My friend the late George Ellis, one of the most accomplished schol 
 ars, and delightful companions whom I have ever known, himself a 
 great geographer on the most extended and liberal plan, used to tell 
 me an anecdote of the eminent antiquary General Melville, who was 
 crossing the Alps, with Livy and other historical accounts in his post- 
 chaise, determined to follow the route of Hannibal. He met Ellis, I 
 forget where at this moment, on the western side of that tremendous 
 ridge, and pushed onwards on his journey after a day spent with his 
 brother antiquary. After journeying more slowly than his friend, Ellis 
 was astonished to meet General Melville coming back. What is the 
 matter, my dear friend? how come you back on the journey you had 
 so much at heart? Alas ! said Melville, very dejectedly, I would 
 have got on myself well enough, but I could not get my elephants over 
 the pass. He had, in idea, Hannibal with his train of elephants in 
 his party. It became a sort of by-word between Ellis and me ; and in 
 assisting each other during a close correspondence of some years, we 
 talked of a lift to the elephants. 
 
 " You, Sir, have put this theoretical difficulty at an end, and show 
 how, without bodily labour, the antiquary may traverse the Alps with 
 his elephants, without the necessity of a retrograde movement. la 
 giving a distinct picture of so interesting a country as Switzerland, so 
 peculiar in its habits, and its history, you have added a valuable chap 
 ter to the history of Europe, in which the Alpine regions make so dis 
 tinguished a figure. Accept my best congratulations on achieving s- 
 interesting a task." 
 
LETTERS TO ELLIS 1801. 57 
 
 observer of detached facts respecting antiquities, than a regu 
 lar student. At the same time, I may mention one or two 
 circumstances, were it but to place your elephant upon a tor 
 toise. From Selkirkshire to Cumberland, we have a ditch and 
 bulwark of great strength, called the Catrail, running north 
 and south, and obviously calculated to defend the western side 
 of the island against the inhabitants of the eastern half. Within 
 this bulwark, at Drummelzier, near Peebles, we find the grave 
 of Merlin, the account of whose madness and death you will 
 find in Fordun. The same author says he was seized with his 
 madness during a dreadful battle on the Liddle, which divides 
 Cumberland from Scotland. All this seems to favour your in 
 genious hypothesis, that the sway of the British Champion 
 [Arthur] extended over Cumberland and Strathcluyd, as 
 well as Wales. Ercildoune is hardly five miles from the 
 Catrail. ..... 
 
 " Leyden has taken up a most absurd resolution to go to 
 Africa on a journey of discovery. Will you have the good 
 ness to beg Heber to write to him seriously on so ridiculous a 
 plan, which can promise nothing either pleasant or profitable. 
 I am certain he would get a church in Scotland with a little 
 patience and prudence, and it gives me great pain to see a 
 valuable young man of uncommon genius and acquirements 
 fairly throw himself away. Yours truly, 
 
 " W. SCOTT." 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 " Musselburgh, llth May 1801. 
 
 "I congratulate you upon the health of your ele 
 phants as an additional mouthful of provender for them, 
 pray observe that the tale of Sir Gawain s Foul Ladie, in 
 Percy s Reliques, is originally Scaldic, as you will see in the 
 history of Hrolfe Kraka, edited bv Torfaeus from the ancient 
 Sagas regarding that prince. I think I could give you some 
 more crumbs of information were I at home; but I am at 
 present discharging the duties of quartermaster to a regiment 
 
58 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of volunteer cavalry an office altogether inconsistent with 
 romance ; for where do you read that Sir Tristrem weighed 
 out hay and corn ; that Sir Lancelot du Lac distributed bil 
 lets ; or that any Knight of the Round Table condescended to 
 higgle about a truss of straw ? Such things were left for our 
 degenerate days, when no warder sounds his horn from the 
 barbican as the preux chevalier approaches to claim hospital 
 ity. Bugles indeed we have ; but it is only to scream us out 
 of bed at five in the morning hospitality such as the senes 
 chals of Don Quixote s castles were wont to offer him and 
 all to troopers, to whom, for valour eke and courtesy, Major 
 Sturgeon* himself might yield the palm. In the midst of 
 this scene of motley confusion, I long, like the hart for water- 
 brooks, for the arrival of your grande opus. The nature of 
 your researches animates me to proceed in mine (though of a 
 much more limited and local nature), even as iron sharpeneth 
 iron. I am in utter despair about some of the hunting terms 
 in Sir Tristrem. There is no copy of Lady Juliana Ber- 
 ners work f in Scotland, and I would move heaven and earth 
 to get a sight of it. But as I fear this is utterly impossible, I 
 must have recourse to your friendly assistance, and communi- 
 sate a set of doubts and queries, which, if any man in Eng- 
 iand can satisfy, I am well assured it must be you. You may 
 therefore expect, in a few days, another epistle. Meantime I 
 must invoke the spirit of Nimrod." 
 
 " Edinburgh, 10th June 1801. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, A heavy family misfortune, the loss of an 
 only sister in the prime of life, has prevented, for some time, 
 my proposed communication regarding the hunting terms of 
 Sir Tristrem. I now enclose the passage, accurately copied, 
 with such explanations as occur to myself, subject always to 
 your correction and better judgment I have as yet 
 
 * See Foote s farce of The Mayor of Garrat. 
 
 f " The Boke of St. Albans " first printed in 1486 reprinted bj 
 Mr Haslewood in 1810. 
 
LETTP:RS TO ELLIS 1801. 59 
 
 had only a glance of The Specimens. Thomson, to whom 
 Heber intrusted them, had left them to follow him from Lon 
 don in a certain trunk, which has never yet arrived. I should 
 have quarrelled with him excessively for making so little al 
 lowance for my impatience, had it not been that a violent epi 
 demic fever, to which I owe the loss already mentioned, has 
 threatened also to deprive me, in his person, of one of my 
 dearest friends, and the Scottish literary world of one of its 
 most promising members. 
 
 " Some prospect seems to open for getting Leyden out to 
 India, under the patronage of Mackintosh, who goes as chief 
 of the intended academical establishment at Calcutta. That 
 he is highly qualified for acting a distinguished part in any 
 literary undertaking, will be readily granted ; nor do I think 
 Mr. Mackintosh will meet with many half so likely to be use 
 ful in the proposed institution. The extent and versatility of 
 his talents would soon raise him to his level, even although he 
 were at first to go out in a subordinate department. If it be 
 in your power to second his application, I rely upon Heber s 
 interest with you to induce you to do so." 
 
 "Edinburgh, 13th July 1801. 
 
 . ..." I am infinitely obliged to you, indeed, for your in 
 terference in behalf of our Leyden, who, I am sure, will do 
 credit to your patronage, and may be of essential service to 
 the proposed mission. What a difference from broiling him 
 self, or getting himself literally broiled, in Africa. Que dia- 
 ble vouloit-il faire dans cette galere ? . . . His brother is a 
 fine lad, and is likely to enjoy some advantages which ho 
 wanted I mean by being more early introduced into society. 
 \ have intermitted his transcript of Merlin, and set him to 
 work on * Otuel, of which I send a specimen." 
 
 " Edinburgh, 7th December 1801. 
 
 " My literary amusements havp of late been much 
 
 retarded and interrupted, partly by professional avocations, 
 nd partly by removing to a house newly furnished, where it 
 
60 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 will be some time before I can get my few books put into 
 order, or clear the premises of painters and workmen ; not to 
 mention that these worthies do not nowadays proceed upon 
 the plan of Solomon s architects, whose saws and hammers 
 were not heard, but rather upon the more ancient system of 
 the builders of Babel. To augment this confusion, my wife 
 has fixed upon this time as proper to present me with a fine 
 chopping boy, whose pipe, being of the shrillest, is heard amid 
 the storm, like a boatswain s whistle in a gale of wind. These 
 various causes of confusion have also interrupted the labours 
 of young Leyden on your behalf; but he has again resumed 
 the task of transcribing * Arthour, of which I once again 
 transmit a part. I have to acknowledge, with the deepest 
 sense of gratitude, the beautiful analysis of Mr. Douce s Frag 
 ments, which throws great light upon the romance of Sir Tris- 
 trem. In arranging that, I have anticipated your judicious 
 hint, by dividing it into three parts, where the story seems 
 naturally to pause, and prefixing an accurate argument, refer 
 ring to the stanzas as numbered. 
 
 " I am glad that Mrs. Ellis and you have derived any amuse 
 ment from the House of Aspen. It is a very hurried dramatic 
 sketch ; and the fifth act, as you remark, would require a total 
 revisal previous to representation or publication. At one time 
 I certainly thought, with my friends, that it might have ranked 
 well enough by the side of the Castle Spectre, Bluebeard, and 
 the other drum and trumpet exhibitions of the day ; but the 
 * Plays of the Passions * have put me entirely out of conceit 
 with my Germanized brat ; and should I ever again attempt 
 dramatic composition, I would endeavour after the genuine 
 
 old English model The publication of The Com 
 
 playnt f is delayed. It is a work of multifarious lore. I am 
 truly anxious about Ley den s Indian journey, which seems to 
 
 * The first volume of Joanna Baillie s " Plays of the Passions " 
 appeared in 1798. Vol. II. followed in 1802. 
 
 t "The Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548; with a Prelimi 
 nary Dissertation and Glossary, by John Leyden," was published b 
 Constable in January 1802. 
 
LETTERS TO ELLIS 1801. 6 
 
 hang fire. Mr. William Dundas was so good as to promise me 
 his interest to get him appointed Secretary to the Institu 
 tion ; * but whether he has succeeded or not, I have not yet 
 learned. The various kinds of distress under which literary 
 men, I mean such as have no other profession than letters, 
 must labour, in a commercial country, is a great disgrace to 
 society. I own to you I always tremble for the fate of genius 
 when left to its own exertions, which, however powerful, are 
 usually, by some bizarre dispensation of nature, useful to every 
 one but themselves. If Heber could learn by Mackintosh, 
 whether anything could be done to fix Leyden s situation, and 
 what sort of interest would be most likely to succeed, his 
 
 friends here might unite every exertion in his favour 
 
 Direct Castle Street, as usual ; my new house being 
 
 in the same street with my old dwelling." 
 
 " Edinburgh, 8th January 1802. 
 
 ..." Your favour arrived just as I was sitting down to write 
 to you, with a sheet or two of King Arthur. I fear, from a 
 letter which I have received from Mr. William Dundas, that 
 the Indian Establishment is tottering, and will probably fall. 
 Leyden has therefore been induced to turn his mind to some 
 other mode of making his way to the East ; and proposes 
 taking his degree as a physician and surgeon, with the hope 
 of getting an appointment in the Company s service as sur 
 geon. If the Institution goes forward, his having secured this 
 step will not prevent his being attached to it ; at the same 
 time that it will afford him a provision independent of what 
 seems to be a very precarious establishment. Mr. Dundas 
 has promised to exert himself. ... I have just returned from 
 the hospitable halls of Hamilton, where I have spent the 
 Christmas." .... 
 
 " 14th February 1802. 
 
 " I have been silent, but not idle. The transcript of King 
 Arthur is at length finished, being a fragment of about 7000 
 
 * A proposed Institution for purposes of Education at Calcutta. 
 
62 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 lines. Let me know how I shall transmit a parcel containing 
 it, with the Complaynt and the Border Ballads, of which I 
 expect every day to receive some copies. I think you will 
 be disappointed in the Ballads. I have as yet to.uched very 
 little on the more remote antiquities of the Border, which, 
 indeed, my songs, all comparatively modern, did not lead me 
 to discuss. Some scattered herbage, however, the elephants 
 may perhaps find. By the way, you will not forget to notice 
 the mountain called Arthur s Seat, which overhangs this city. 
 When I was at school, the tradition ran that King Arthur 
 occupied as his throne a huge rock upon its summit, and that 
 he beheld from thence some naval engagement upon the Frith 
 of Forth. I am pleasantly interrupted by the post ; he brings 
 me a letter from William Dundas, fixing Leyden s appoint 
 ment as an assistant-surgeon to one of the India settlements 
 which, is not yet determined; and another from my printer, 
 a very ingenious young man, telling me, that he means to 
 escort the Minstrelsy up to London in person. I shall, 
 therefore, direct him to transmit my parcel to Mr. Nicol." ... 
 
 " 2d March 1802. 
 
 " I hope that long ere this you have received the Ballads, 
 and that they have afforded you some amusement. I hope, 
 also, that the threatened third volume will be more interesting 
 to Mrs. Ellis than the dry antiquarian detail of the two first 
 could prove. I hope, moreover, that I shall have the pleasure 
 of seeing you soon, as some circumstances seem not so much 
 to call me to London, as to furnish me with a decent apology 
 for coming up some time this spring ; and I long particularly 
 to say, that I know my friend Mr. Ellis by sight as well a? 
 intimately. I am glad you have seen the Marquess of Lorn, 
 whom I have met frequently at the house of his charming 
 sister, Lady Charlotte Campbell, whom, I am sure, if you are 
 acquainted with her, you must admire as much as I do. Her 
 Grace of Gordon, a great admirer of yours, spent some days 
 here lately, and, like Lord Lorn, was highly entertained with 
 an account of our friendship a la distance. I do not, nor did 
 
HAMILTON PALACE 1801. 
 
 I ever, intend to fob you off with twenty or thirty lines of the 
 second part of Sir Guy. Young Leyden has been much en 
 gaged with his studies, otherwise you would have long since 
 received what I now send, namely, the combat between Guy 
 and Colbronde, which I take to be the cream of the romance. 
 .... If I do not come to London this spring, I will find a 
 safe opportunity of returning Lady Juliana Berners, with my 
 very best thanks for the use of her reverence s work." 
 
 The preceding extracts are picked out of letters, mostly 
 very long ones, in which Scott discusses questions of an- i / 
 tiquarian interest, suggested sometimes by Ellis, and 
 sometimes by the course of his own researches among 
 the MSS. of the Advocates Library. The passages 
 which I have transcribed appear sufficient to give the 
 reader a distinct notion of the tenor of Scott s life 
 while his first considerable work was in progress through 
 the press. In fact, they place before us in a vivid light 
 the chief features of a character which, by this time, 
 was completely formed and settled which had passed 
 unmoved through the first blandishments of worldly ap 
 plause, and which no subsequent trials of that sort could 
 ever shake from its early balance : His calm delight 
 in his own pursuits the patriotic enthusiasm which 
 mingled with all the best of his literary efforts ; his 
 modesty as to his own general merits, combined with a 
 certain dogged resolution to maintain his own first view 
 of a subject, however assailed ; his readiness to interrupt 
 his own tasks by any drudgery by vhich he could assist 
 those of a friend ; his steady and determined watchful 
 ness over the struggling fortunes of young genius and 
 worth. 
 
 The reader has seen that he s^ent the Christmas of 
 1801 at Hamilton Palace, in Lanarkshire. To Lady 
 
64 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Anne Hamilton he had been introduced by her friend, 
 Ladj Charlotte Campbell, and both the late and the 
 present Dukes of Hamilton appear to have partaken 
 of Lady Anne s admiration for Glenfinlas, and the Eve 
 of St. John. A morning s ramble to the majestic ruins 
 of the old baronial castle on the precipitous banks of 
 the Evan, and among the adjoining remains of the pri 
 meval Caledonian forest, suggested to him a ballad, not 
 inferior in execution to any that he had hitherto produced, 
 and especially interesting as the first in which he grap 
 ples with the world of picturesque incident unfolded in 
 the authentic annals of Scotland. With the magnificent 
 localities before him, he skilfully interwove the daring 
 assassination of the Regent Murray by one of the clans 
 men of " the princely Hamilton." Had the subject been 
 taken up in after years, we might have had another Mar- 
 mion or Heart of Mid-Lothian ; for in Cadyow Castle we 
 have the materials and outline of more than one of the 
 noblest of ballads. 
 
 About two years before this piece began to be handed 
 about in Edinburgh, Thomas Campbell had made his ap 
 pearance there, and at once seized a high place in the 
 literary world by his " Pleasures of Hope." Among the 
 most eager to welcome him had been Scott ; and I find 
 the brother-bard thus expressing himself concerning the 
 MS. of Cadyow : 
 
 " The verses of Cadyow Castle are perpetually ringing 
 in my imagination 
 
 Where, mightiest of the beasts of chase 
 
 That roam in woody Caledon, 
 Crashing the forest in his race, 
 
 The mountain bull comes thundering on * 
 
THE MINSTRELSY PUBLISHED 1802. 65 
 
 and the arrival of Hamilton, when 
 
 * Reeking from the recent deed, 
 
 He dashed his carbine on the ground. 
 
 I have repeated these lines so often on the North Bridge 
 that the whole fraternity of coachmen know me by tongue 
 as I pass. To be sure, to a mind in sober, serious street- 
 walking humour, it must bear an appearance of lunacy 
 when one stamps with the hurried pace and fervent shake 
 of the head, which strong, pithy poetry excites." 
 
 Scott finished Cadyow Castle before the last sheets of 
 the second volume of his Minstrelsy had passed through 
 the press; but "the two volumes," as Ballantyne says, 
 " were already full to overflowing ; " so it was reserved 
 for the " threatened third." The two volumes appeared * 
 in the course of January 1802, from the respectable house 
 of Cadell and Davies, in the Strand ; and, owing to the 
 cold reception of Lewis s Tales of Wonder, which had 
 come forth a year earlier, these may be said to have first 
 introduced Scott as an original writer to the English 
 public. 
 
 In his Remarks on the Imitation of Popular Poetry, 
 he says : " Owing to the failure of the vehicle I had 
 chosen, my first efforts to present myself before the 
 public as an original writer proved as vain as those by 
 which I had previously endeavoured to distinguish my 
 self as a translator. Like Lord Home, however, at the 
 Battle of Flodden, I did so far well, that I was able to 
 stand and save myself"; and amidst the general depreci 
 ation of the Tales of Wonder, my small share of the 
 obnoxious publication was dismissed without censure, and 
 in some cases obtained praise from the critics. The con 
 sequences of my escape made me naturally more daring 
 
 VOL. II. 5 
 
66 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and I attempted in my own name, a collection of ballads 
 of various kinds, both ancient and modern, to be con 
 nected by the common tie of relation to the Border dis 
 tricts in which I had collected them. The edition was 
 curious, as being the first example of a work printed by 
 my friend and schoolfellow, Mr. James Ballantyne, who 
 at that period was editor of a provincial paper. When 
 the book came out, the imprint, Kelso, was read with 
 wonder by amateurs of typography, who had never heard 
 of such a place, and were astonished at the example of 
 handsome printing which so obscure a town had pro 
 duced. As for the editorial part of the task, my attempt 
 to imitate the plan and style of Bishop Percy, observing 
 only more strict fidelity concerning my originals, was 
 favourably received by the public." 
 
 The first edition of volumes I. and II. of the Minstrelsy 
 consisted of eight hundred copies, fifty of which were on 
 large paper. One of the embellishments was a view of 
 Hermitage castle, the history of which is rather curious. 
 Scott executed a rough sketch of it during the last of his 
 " Liddesdale raids " with Shortreed, standing for that 
 purpose for an hour or more up to his middle in the 
 Bnow. Nothing can be ruder than the performance, 
 which I have now before me ; but his friend William 
 Clerk made a better drawing from it ; and from his, a 
 
 \iird and further improved copy was done by Hugh 
 Williams, the elegant artist, afterwards known as " Greek 
 Williams." * Scott used to say, the oddest thing of all 
 was, that the engraving, founded on the labours of three 
 draugh tsmen, one of whom could not draw a straight line, 
 and the two others had never seen the place meant to be 
 represented, was nevertheless pronounced by the natives 
 
 * Mr. Williams s Travels in Italy and Greece were published in 1820 
 
THE MINSTRELSY LETTER FROM ELLIS. 67 
 
 of Liddesdale to give a very fair notion of the ruins of 
 Hermitage. 
 
 The edition was exhausted in the course of the year, 
 and the terms of publication having been that Scott 
 should have half the clear profits, his share was exactly 
 78 10. a sum which certainly could not have repaid 
 him for the actual expenditure incurred in the collection 
 of his materials. Messrs. Cadell and Davies, however, 
 complained, and probably with good reason, that a prema 
 ture advertisement of a " second and improved edition " 
 had rendered some copies of the first unsaleable, i 
 
 I shall transcribe the letter in which Mr. George Ellis 
 acknowledges the receipt of his copy of the book : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. Advocate, Castle Street, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Sunning Hill, March 5, 1802. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, The volumes are arrived, and I have been 
 devouring them, not as a pig does a parcel of grains (by which 
 simile you will judge that I must be brewing, as indeed I am), 
 putting in its snout, shutting its eyes, and swallowing as fast as 
 it can without consideration but as a schoolboy does a piece 
 of gingerbread ; nibbling a little bit here, and a little bit there, 
 smacking his lips, surveying the number of square inches which 
 still remain for his gratification, endeavouring to look it into 
 larger dimensions, and making at every mouthful a tacit vow 
 to protract his enjoyment by restraining his appetite. Now, 
 therefore but no ! I must first assure you on the part of 
 Mrs. E., that if you cannot, or will not come to England soon, 
 she must gratify her curiosity and gratitude, by setting off for 
 Scotland, though at the risk of being tempted to pull capa 
 with Mrs. Scott when she arrives at the end of her journey. 
 Next, I must request you to convey to Mr. Leyden my verv 
 sincere acknowledgment for his part of the precious parcel. 
 How truly vexatious that such a man should embark, not for 
 *he fines Atticse, but for those of Asia ; that he genius of 
 
38 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Scotland, Instead of a poor Complaint, and an address in the 
 style of Navis, quas tibi creditum debes Yirgilmm reddas 
 incolumem, precor, should not interfere to prevent his loss. I 
 wish to hope that we should, as Sterne says, * manage these 
 matters better in England ; but now, as regret is unavailing, 
 to the main point of my letter. 
 
 " You will not, of course, expect that I should as yet give 
 you anything like an opinion, as a critic, of your volumes : first 
 because you have thrown into my throat a cate of such magni 
 tude that Cerberus, who had three throats, could not have 
 swallowed a third part of it without shutting his eyes ; and 
 secondly, because, although I have gone a little farther than 
 George Nicol the bookseller, who cannot cease exclaiming, 
 * What a beautiful book ! and is distracted with jealousy of 
 your Kelso Buhner, yet, as I said before, I have not been able 
 yet to digest a great deal of your Border Minstrelsy. I have, 
 however, taken such a survey as satisfies me that your plan is 
 neither too comprehensive nor too contracted ; that the parts 
 are properly distinct; and that they are (to preserve the 
 painter s metaphor) made out just as they ought to be. Your 
 introductory chapter is, I think, particularly good ; and 1 was 
 much pleased, although a little surprised, at finding that it was 
 made to serve as a recueil des pieces justificatives to your view 
 of the state of manners among your Borderers, which I venture 
 to say will be more thumbed than any part of the volume. 
 
 " You will easily believe that I cast many an anxious loot 
 for the annunciation of Sir Tristrem, and will not be sui 
 prised that I was at first rather disappointed at not finding any 
 thing like a solemn engagement to produce him to the world 
 within some fixed and limited period. Upon reflection, how 
 ever, I really think you have judged wisely, and that you have 
 best promoted the interests of literature, by sending, as the 
 \arbinger of the Knight of Leonais, a collection which must 
 form a parlour-window book in every house in Britain which 
 contains a parlour and a window. I am happy to find my old 
 favourites in their natural situation indeed in the only 
 iituation which can enable a Southern reader to estimate theh 
 
THE MINSTRELSY MISS SEWARD. 69 
 
 Herits. You remember what somebody said of the Prince de 
 Conde s army during the wars of the Fronde, viz. " that it 
 would be a very fine army whenever it came of age." Of the 
 Murrays and Armstrongs of your Border Ballads, it might be 
 said that they might grow, when the age of good taste should 
 arrive, to a Glenfmlas or an Eve of St. John. Leyden s addi 
 tional poems are also very beautiful. I meant, at setting oat, 
 a few simple words of thanks, and behold I have written a 
 letter ; but no matter I shall return to the charge after a 
 more attentive perusal. Ever yours very faithfully, 
 
 " G. ELLIS/ 
 
 I might fill many pages by transcribing similar letters 
 from persons of acknowledged discernment in this branch 
 of literature. John Duke of Roxburgh is among the 
 number, and he conveys also a complimentary message 
 from the late Earl Spencer ; Pinkerton issues his decree 
 of approbation as ex cathedra ; Chalmers overflows with 
 heartier praise ; and even Joseph Ritson extols his pres 
 entation copy as " the most valuable literary treasure in 
 his possession." There follows enough of female admira 
 tion to have been dangerous for another man ; a score of 
 fine ladies contend who shall be the most extravagant in 
 encomium and as many professed blue stockings come 
 ^fter ; among, or rather above the rest, Anna Seward, 
 " the Swan of Lichfield," who laments that her " bright 
 luminary," Darwin, does not survive to partake her rap 
 tures ; observes, that " in the Border Ballads the first 
 strong rays of the Delphic orb illuminate Jellon Graeme;" 
 and concludes with a fact indisputable, but strangely ex 
 pressed, viz. that " the Lady Anne Bothwell s Lament, 
 Cowdenknowes, &c. &c., climatically preceded the treas 
 ures of Burns, and the consummate Glenfmlas and Eve 
 of St. John." Scott felt as acutely as any malevolent 
 
70 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 critic the pedantic affectations of Miss Seward s episto 
 lary style, but in her case sound sense as well as vigorous 
 ability had unfortunately condescended to an absurd dis 
 guise ; he looked below it, and was far from confounding 
 her honest praise with the flat superlatives either of 
 wordy parrots or weak enthusiasts. 
 
THE MINSTRELSY VOL. III. 71 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Preparation of Volume III. of the Minstrelsy and oj Sir 
 Tristrem Correspondence with Miss Seward and Mr. Ellis 
 Ballad of the Reiver s Wedding Commencement of the 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel Visit to London and Oxford 
 Completion of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 1802-1803. 
 
 THE approbation with which the first two volumes of 
 the Minstrelsy were received, stimulated Scott to fresh 
 diligence in the preparation of a third ; while " Sir Tris 
 trem " it being now settled that this romance should 
 form a separate volume was transmitted, without de 
 lay, to the printer at Kelso. As early as March 30th, 
 1802, Ballantyne, who had just returned from London, 
 writes thus: 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Castle Street, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Dear Sir, By to-morrow s Fly I shall send the remain, 
 ing materials for Minstrelsy, together with three sheets of 
 Sir Tristrem. ... I shall ever think the printing the Scottish 
 Minstrelsy one of the most fortunate circumstances of my life. 
 I have gained, not lost by it, in a pecuniary light ; and the 
 prospects it has been the means of opening to me, may ad 
 vantageously influence my future destiny. I can never be 
 sufficiently grateful for the interest you unceasingly take in 
 my welfare. Your query respecting Edinburgh, I am yet at a 
 
72 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 loss to answer. To say truth, the expenses I have incurred 
 In my resolution to acquire a character for elegant printing, 
 whatever might be the result, cramp considerably my present 
 exertions. A short time, I trust, will make me easier, and I 
 shall then contemplate the road before me with a steady eye. 
 One thing alone is clear that Kelso cannot be my abiding 
 place for aye ; sooner or later, emigrate I must and will ; but, 
 at all events, I must wait till my plumes are grown. I am, 
 Dear Sir, your faithful and obliged J. B." 
 
 On learning that a third volume of the Minstrelsy was 
 in progress, Miss Seward forwarded to the Editor "Rich 
 Auld Willie s Farewell," a Scotch ballad of her own 
 manufacture, meaning, no doubt, to place it at his dis 
 posal, for the section of " Imitations." His answer (dated 
 Edinburgh, June 29, 1802), after many compliments to 
 the Auld Willie, of which he made the use that had been 
 intended, proceeds as follows : 
 
 "I have some thoughts of attempting a Border ballad in 
 the comic manner ; but I almost despair of bringing it wel 1 
 out. A certain Sir William Scott, from whom I am descended > 
 was ill-advised enough to plunder the estate of Sir Gideon 
 Murray of Elibank, ancestor to the present Lord Elibank. 
 The marauder was defeated, seized, and brought in fetters 
 to the castle of Elibank, upon the Tweed. The Lady Mur 
 ray (agreeably to the custom of all ladies in ancient tales) 
 was seated on the battlements, and descried the return of her 
 husband with his prisoners. She immediately inquired what 
 he meant to do with the young Knight of Harden, which was 
 the petit litre of Sir William Scott. Hang the robber, as 
 suredly, was the answer of Sir Gideon. What ! answered 
 the lady, hang the handsome young knight of Harden, when 
 J have three ill-favoured daughters unmarried ! No, no, Sir 
 G deon, we ll force him to marry our Meg. Now tradition 
 ? rs, that Meg Murray was the ugliest woman in the foul 
 
LETTERS TO MISS SEWARD 1802. 73 
 
 tounties, and that she was called, in the homely dialect of 
 the time, meikle-moutlied Meg (I will riot affront you by an ex 
 planation.)* Sir Gideon, like a good husband and tender 
 father, entered into his wife s sentiments, and proffered to Sir 
 William the alternative of becoming his son-in-law, or deco 
 rating with his carcase the kindly gallows of Elibank. The 
 lady was so very ugly, that Sir William, the handsomest man 
 of his time, positively refused the honour of her hand. Three 
 days were allowed him to make up his mind ; and it was not 
 until he found one end of a rope made fast to his neck, and 
 the other knitted to a sturdy oak bough, that his resolution 
 gave way, and he preferred an ugly wife to the literal noose. 
 It is said, they were afterwards a very happy couple. She/ 
 had a curious hand at pickling the beef which he stole ; and, 
 marauder as he was, he had little reason to dread being 
 twitted by the pawky gowk. This, either by its being per 
 petually told to me when young, or by a perverted taste for 
 such anecdotes, has always struck me as a good subject for a 
 comic ballad, and how happy should I be were Miss Seward 
 to agree in opinion with me. 
 
 " This little tale may serve for an introduction to some ob 
 servations I have to offer upon our popular poetry. It will at 
 least so far disclose your correspondent s weak side, as to in 
 duce you to make allowance for my mode of arguing. Much 
 of its peculiar charm is indeed, I believe, to be attributed 
 solely to its locality. A very commonplace and obvious epi 
 thet, when applied to a scene which we have been accustomed 
 to view with pleasure, recalls to us not merely the local sce- 
 uery, but a thousand little nameless associations, which we 
 are unable to separate or to define. In some verses of that 
 eccentric but admirable poet, Coleridge, he talks of 
 
 An old rude tale that suited well 
 The ruins wild and hoary. 
 
 * It is commonly said that all Meg s descendants have inherited 
 itmething of her characteristic feature. The poet certainly was no 
 exception to the rule. 
 
74 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 1 think there are few who have not been in some degree 
 touched with this local sympathy. Tell a peasant an ordi 
 nary tale of robbery and murder, and perhaps you may fail 
 to interest him ; but to excite his terrors, you assure him it 
 happened on the very heath he usually crosses, or to a man 
 whose family he has known, and you rarely meet such a mere 
 image of Humanity as remains entirely unmoved. I suspect it 
 is pretty much the same with myself, and many of my country 
 men, who are charmed by the effect of local description, and 
 sometimes impute that effect to the poet, which is produced by 
 the recollections and associations which his verses excite. Why 
 else did Sir Philip Sydney feel that the tale of Percy and 
 Douglas moved him like the sound of a trumpet ? or why is it 
 that a Swiss sickens at hearing the famous Ranz des Vaches, 
 to which the native of any other country would have listened 
 for a hundred days, without any other sensation than ennui ? 
 I fear our poetical taste is in general much more linked with 
 our prejudices of birth, of education, and of habitual thinking, 
 than our vanity will allow us to suppose ; and that, let the 
 point of the poet s dart be as sharp as that of Cupid, it is the 
 wings lent it by the fancy and prepossessions of the gentle 
 reader which carry it to the mark. It may appear like great 
 egotism to pretend to illustrate my position from the reception 
 which the productions of so mere a ballad-monger as myself 
 have met with from the public ; but I cannot help observing 
 that all Scotchmen prefer the Eve of St. John to Glenfinlas, 
 and most of my English friends entertain precisely an opposite 
 opinion. ... I have been writing this letter by a paragraph 
 at a time for about a month, this being the season when we 
 are most devoted to the 
 
 * Drowsy bench and babbling hall. 
 " I have the honour," &c. &c 
 
 Miss Seward, in her next letter, offers an apology foi 
 not having sooner begged Scott to place her name among 
 
LETTERS TO MISS SEWARD 1802. 75 
 
 Jhe subscribers to his third volume. His answer is in 
 these words : 
 
 " Lasswade, Jnly 1802. 
 
 " I am very sorry to have left you under a mistake about my 
 third volume. The truth is, that highly as I should feel my 
 self flattered by the encouragement of Miss Seward s name, 
 cannot, in the present instance, avail myself of it, as the Bal 
 lads are not published by subscription. Providence having, I 
 suppose, foreseen that my literary qualifications, like those of 
 many more distinguished persons, might not, par hazard, sup 
 port me exactly as I would like, allotted me a small patrimony, 
 which, joined to my professional income, and my appointments 
 in the characteristic office of Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, serves 
 to render my literary pursuits more a matter of amusement 
 than an object of emolument. With this explanation, I hope 
 you will honour me by accepting the third volume as soon as 
 published, which will be in the beginning of next year, and I 
 also hope, that under the circumstances, you will hold me 
 acquitted of the silly vanity of wishing to be thought a gen- 
 tleman-authar. 
 
 " The ballad of the Reiver s Wedding is not yet written, 
 but I have finished one of a tragic cast, founded upon the 
 death of Eegent Murray, who was shot in Linlithgow, by 
 James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. The following verses 
 contain the catastrophe, as told by Hamilton himself to his 
 chief and his kinsmen : 
 
 With hackbut bent, &c. &c. 
 * * * * * 
 
 " This Bothwellhaugh has occupied such an unwarrantable 
 proportion of my letter, that I have hardly time to tell you 
 how much I join in your admiration of Tarn o Shanter, which 
 I verily believe to be inimitable, both in the serious and ludi 
 crous parts, as well as the singularly happy combination of 
 ooth. I request Miss Seward to believe/ &c. 
 
76 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The " Reiver s Wedding " never was completed, but 
 I have found two copies of its commencement, and I shall 
 make no apologies for inserting here what seems to have 
 been the second one. It will be seen that he had meant 
 to mingle with Sir William s capture, Auld Wat s Foray 
 of the Bassened Bull, and the Feast of Spurs ; and that, 
 I know not for what reason, Lochwood, the ancient for 
 tress of the Johnstones in Annandale, has been substi 
 tuted for the real locality of his ancestor s drum-head 
 Wedding Contract : 
 
 THE REIVER S WEDDING. 
 
 will ye hear a mirthful bourd? 
 
 Or will ye hear of courtesie ? 
 Or will ye hear how a gallant lord 
 
 Was wedded to a gay ladye ? 
 
 " Ca out the kye," quo the village herd, 
 
 As he stood on the knowe, 
 " Ca this ane s nine and that ane s ten, 
 
 And bauld Lord William s cow." 
 
 " Ah ! by my sooth," quoth WiUiam then, 
 
 " And stands it that way now, 
 When knave and churl have nine and ten, 
 
 That the Lord has but his cow? 
 
 " I swear by the light of the Michaelmas moon 
 
 And the might of Mary high, 
 And by the edge of my braidsword brown, 
 
 They shall soon say Harden s kye." 
 
 He took a bugle frae his side, 
 
 With names carved o er and o er 
 Full many a chief of meikle pride, 
 
 That Border bugle bore * 
 
 * This celebrated horn is still in the possession of Lord Pol worth 
 
THE REIVER S WEDDING 1802 77 
 
 He blew a note baith sharp and hie, 
 
 Till rock and water rang around 
 Three score of mosstroopers and three 
 
 Have mounted at that bugle sound. 
 
 The Michaelmas moon had entered then, 
 
 And ere she wan the full, 
 Ye might see by her light in Harden glen 
 
 A bow o kye and a bassened bull. 
 
 And loud and loud in Harden tower 
 The quaigh gaed round wi meikle glee; 
 
 For the English beef was brought in bower, 
 And the English ale flowed merrJie. 
 
 And mony a guest from Teviotside 
 
 And Yarrow s Braes were there; 
 Was never a lord in Scotland wide 
 
 That made more dainty fare. 
 
 They ate, they laugh d, they sang and quaff d, 
 
 Till nought on board was seen, 
 When knight and squire were boune to dine, 
 
 But a spur of silver sheen. 
 
 Lord William has ta en his berry brown steed 
 
 A sore shent man was he ; 
 " Wait ye, my guests, a little speed 
 
 Weel feasted ye shall be." 
 
 He rode him down by Falsehope burn, 
 
 His cousin dear to see, 
 With him to take a riding turn 
 
 Wat-draw-the-sword was he. 
 
 And when he came to Falsehope glen, 
 
 Beneath the trysting tree, 
 On the smooth green was carved plain,* 
 
 " To Lochwood bound are we." 
 
 "At Linton, in Roxburghshire, there is a crrcle of stones surround 
 ing a smooth plot of turf, called tne Tryst, or place of appointment, 
 which tradition avers to have been the rendezvous of the neighbour- 
 
78 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " if they be gane to dark Lochwood 
 
 To drive the Warden s gear, 
 Betwixt our names, I ween, there s feud: 
 
 I ll go and have my share: 
 
 For little reck I for Johnstone s feud, 
 
 The Warden though he be." 
 So Lord William is away to dark Lochwood. 
 
 With riders barely three. 
 
 The Warden s daughters in Lochwood sate, 
 
 Were all both fair and gay, 
 All save the Lady Margaret, 
 
 And she was wan and wae. 
 
 The sister, Jean, had a full fair skin, 
 
 And Grace was bauld and braw ; 
 But the leal-fast heart her breast within 
 
 It weel was worth them a . 
 
 Her father s pranked her sisters twa 
 
 With meikle joy and pride; 
 But Margaret maun seek Dundrennan s wa 
 
 She ne er can be a bride. 
 
 On spear and casque by gallants gent 
 
 Her sisters scarfs were borne, 
 But never at tilt or tournament 
 
 Were Margaret s colours worn. 
 
 Her sisters rode to Thirlestane bower, 
 
 But she was left at hame 
 To wander round the gloomy tower, 
 
 And sigh young Harden s name. 
 
 " Of all the knights, the knight most fair, 
 
 From Yarrow to the Tyne," 
 Soft sighed the maid, " is Harden s heir, 
 
 But ne er can he be mine; 
 
 ing warriors. The name of the leader was cut in the turf, and thf 
 arrangement of the letters announced to his followers the course whicJJi 
 ne had taken." Introduction to the Minstrelsy. 
 
"AULD MAITLAND" 1802. 79 
 
 " Of all the maids, the foulest maid 
 
 From Teviot to the Dee, 
 Ah! " sighing sad, that lady said, 
 
 " Can ne er young Harden s be " - - 
 
 She looked up the briery glen, N. 
 
 And up the mossy brae, 
 And she saw a score of her father s men 
 
 Yclad in the Johnstone grey. 
 
 fast and fast they downwards sped 
 
 The moss and briers among, 
 And in the midst the troopers led 
 
 A shackled knight along. 
 
 As soon as the autumn vacation set Scott at liberty, he 
 proceeded to the Borders with Leyden. " We have just 
 concluded," he tells Ellis on his return to Edinburgh, 
 " an excursion of two or three weeks through my juris 
 diction of Selkirkshire, where, in defiance of mountains, 
 rivers, and bogs damp and dry, we have penetrated the 
 very recesses of Ettrick Forest, to which district if I 
 ever have the happiness of welcoming you, you will be 
 convinced that I am truly the sheriff of the * cairn and 
 the scaur. In the course of our grand tour, besides the 
 risks of swamping and breaking our necks, we encoun 
 tered the formidable hardships of sleeping upon peat- 
 stacks, and eating mutton slain by no common butcher, 
 but deprived of life by the judgment of God, as a coro 
 ner s inquest would express themselves. I have, how 
 ever, not only escaped safe * per varies casus, per tot 
 discrimina rerum/ but returned loaded with the treasures 
 of oral tradition. The principal result of our inquiries 
 has been a complete and perfect copy of Maitland with 
 his Auld Berd Graie, referred to by Douglas in hif 
 
80 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Palice of Honour, along with John the Reef and othei 
 popular characters, and celebrated also in the poems from 
 Maitland MS. You may guess the surprise of Leyden 
 and myself when this was presented to us, copied down 
 from the recitation of an old shepherd, by a country 
 farmer, and with no greater corruptions than might be 
 supposed to be introduced by the lapse of time, and the 
 ignorance of reciters. I don t suppose it was originally 
 composed later than the days of Blind Harry. Many 
 of the old words are retained, which neither the reciter 
 nor the copier understood. Such are the military en 
 gines sowies, springwalls (springalds), and many others. 
 Though the poetical merit of this curiosity is not strik 
 ing, yet it has an odd energy and dramatic effect." 
 
 A few weeks later, he thus answers Ellis s inquiries as to 
 the progress of the Sir Tristrem : " The worthy knight 
 is still in embryo, though the whole poetry is printed. 
 The fact is, that a second edition of the Minstrelsy has 
 been demanded more suddenly than I expected, and has 
 occupied my immediate attention. I have also my third 
 volume to compile and arrange; for the Minstrelsy is 
 now to be completed altogether independent of the preux 
 chevalier, who might hang heavy upon its skirts. I as 
 sure you my Continuation is mere doggrel, not poetry 
 it is argued in the same division with Thomas s own pro 
 duction, and therefore not worth sending. However, you 
 may depend on having the whole long before publication. 
 I have derived much information from Turner : he com 
 bines the knowledge of the Welsh and northern author! 
 ties, and, in despite of a most detestable Gibbonism, his 
 book is interesting.* I intend to study the Welsh triads 
 
 * The first part of Mr. Sharon Turner s History of the Ang-lo-Sax- 
 ms was published in 1799 ; the second in 1801. 
 
JOSEPH KITSON 1802. 81 
 
 before I finally commit myself on the subject of Border 
 
 poetry As for Mr. Ritson, he and I still continue 
 
 on decent terms ; and, in truth, he makes patte de velours ; 
 but I dread I shall see * a whisker first and then a claw 
 stretched out against my unfortunate lucubrations. Bal- 
 lantyne, the Kelso printer, who has a book of his in hand, 
 groans in spirit over the peculiarities of his orthography, 
 which, sooth to say, hath seldom been equalled since the 
 days of Elphinstone, the ingenious author of the mode 
 of spelling according to the pronunciation, which he 
 aptly termed Propriety ascertained in her Picture. I 
 fear the remark of Festus to St. Paul might be more 
 justly applied to this curious investigator of antiquity, 
 and it is a pity such research should be rendered useless 
 by the infirmities of his temper. I have lately had from 
 him a copie of Ye litel wee Mon, of which I think I 
 can make some use. In return, I have sent him a sight 
 of Auld Maitland, the original MS. If you are curious, 
 I dare say you may easily see it. Indeed, I might easily 
 send you a transcribed copy, but I wish him to see it 
 in puris naturalibus" 
 
 Ritson had visited Lasswade in the course of this au 
 tumn, and his conduct had been such as to render the 
 precaution here alluded to very proper in the case of one 
 who, like Scott, was resolved to steer clear of the feuds 
 and heartburnings that gave rise to such scandalous 
 scenes among the other antiquaries of the day. Leyden 
 met Ritson at the cottage, and, far from imitating his 
 host s forbearance, took a pleasure of tormenting the 
 half-mad pedant by every means in his power. Among 
 other circumstances, Scott delighted to detail the scene 
 that occurred when his two uncouth allies first met at 
 Dinner. Well knowing Ritson s holy horror of all animal 
 
82 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 food, Ley den complained that the joint on the table waa 
 overdone. " Indeed, for that matter," cried he, " meat 
 can never be too little done, and raw is best of all." He 
 Bent to the kitchen accordingly for a plate of literally raw 
 beef, and manfully ate it up, with no sauce but the exqui 
 site ruefulness of the Pythagorean s glances. 
 
 Mr. Robert Pierce Gillies, a gentleman of the Scotch 
 bar, well known, among other things, for some excellent 
 translations from the German, was present at the cottage 
 another day, when Ritson was in Scotland. He has de 
 scribed the whole scene in the second section of his 
 " Recollections of Sir Walter Scott," a set of papers 
 in which many inaccurate statements occur, but which 
 convey, on the whole, a lively impression of the persons 
 introduced.* " In approaching the cottage," he says, " I 
 was struck with the exceeding air of neatness that pre 
 vailed around. The hand of tasteful cultivation had 
 been there, and all methods employed to convert an ordi 
 nary thatched cottage into a handsome and comfortable 
 abode. The doorway was in an angle formed by the 
 original old cabin and the additional rooms which had 
 been built to it. In a moment I had passed through the 
 lobby, and found myself in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Scott, and Mr. William Erskine. At this early period, 
 Scott was more like the portrait by Saxon, engraved for 
 the first edition of the Lady of the Lake, than to any 
 subsequent picture. He retained in features and form 
 an impress of that elasticity and youthful vivacity, which 
 he used to complain wore off after he was forty, and by 
 his own account was exchanged for the plodding heavi 
 ness of an operose student. He had now, indeed, some- 
 
 * These papers appeared in Eraser s Magazine for September, No- 
 feinber, and December 1835, and January 1836. 
 
 
LASSWADE 1802. b3 
 
 what of a boyish gaiety of look, and in person was tall, 
 glim, and extremely active. On my entrance, he was 
 seated at a table near the window, and occupied in tran 
 scribing from an old MS. volume into his commonplace 
 book. As to costume, he was carelessly attired in a 
 widely-made shooting-dress, with a coloured handker 
 chief round his neck ; the very antithesis of style usually 
 adopted either by student or barrister. Hah ! he ex- 
 claimed, welcome, thrice welcome ! for we are just pro 
 posing to have lunch, and then a long, long walk through 
 wood and wold, in which I am sure you will join us. 
 But no man can thoroughly appreciate the pleasure of 
 such a life who has not known what it is to rise spiritless 
 in a morning, and daidle out half the day in the Parlia 
 ment House, where we must all compear within anothei 
 fortnight ; then to spend the rest of one s time in apply 
 ing proofs to condescendences, and hauling out papers to 
 bamboozle judges, most of whom are daized enough al 
 ready. What say you, Counsellor Erskine ? Come 
 alia guerra rouse, and say whether you are for a walk 
 to-day. Certainly, in such fine weather I don t see 
 what we can propose better. It is the last I shall see of 
 the country this vacation. l Nay, say not so, man ; we 
 shall all be merry twice and once yet before the evil days 
 arrive. I ll tell you what I have thought of this half- 
 hour : it is a plan of mine to rent a cottage and a cab 
 bage-garden not here, but somewhere farther out of 
 town, and never again, after this one session, to enter the 
 Parliament House. And you ll ask Ritson, perhaps/ 
 said Scott, * to stay with you, and help to consume the 
 cabbages. Rest assured we shall both sit on the bench 
 one day ; but, heigho ! we shall both have become very 
 old and philosophical by that time. Did you not ex- 
 
84 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 pect Lewis here this morning ? Lewis, 1 venture to 
 say, is not up yet, for he dined at Dalkeith yesterday, and 
 of course found the wine very good. Beside, you know, I 
 have entrusted him with Finetta till his own steed gets 
 well of a sprain, and he could not join our walking ex 
 cursion. I see you are admiring that broken sword, 
 he added, addressing me, and your interest would in 
 crease if you knew how much labour was required to 
 bring it into my possession. In order to grasp that 
 mouldering weapon, I was obliged to drain the well at 
 the Castle of Dunnottar. But it is time to set out ; and 
 here is one friend (addressing himself to a large dog) 
 who is very impatient to be in the field. He tells me 
 he knows where to find a hare in the woods of Mavis- 
 bank. And here is another (caressing a terrier), who 
 longs to have a battle with the weazels and water-rats, 
 and the foumart that wons near the caves of Gorthy : so 
 let us be off. " 
 
 Mr. Gillies tells us, that in the course of their walk to 
 Rosslyn, Scott s foot slipped, as he was scrambling tow 
 ards a cave on the edge of a precipitous bank, and that, 
 " had there been no trees in the way, he must have been 
 killed, but midway he was stopped by a large root of 
 hazel, when, instead of " struggling, which would have 
 made matters greatly worse, he seemed perfectly resigned 
 to his fate, and slipped through the tangled thicket till he 
 lay flat on the river s brink. He rose in an instant from 
 his recumbent attitude, and with a hearty laugh called 
 out, Now, let me see who else will do the like. He 
 scrambled up the cliff with alacrity, and entered the cave, 
 where we had a long dialogue." 
 
 Even after he was an old and hoary man, he continu 
 ally encountered such risks with the same recklessness. 
 
R1TSON LEYDEN. 8 
 
 The extraordinary strength of his hands and arms was 
 his great reliance in all such difficulties, and if he could 
 Bee anything to lay hold of, he was afraid of no leap, 
 or rather hop, that came in his way. Mr. Gillies says, 
 that when they drew near the famous chapel of Rosslyn, 
 Erskine expressed a hope that they might, as habitual 
 visitors, escape hearing the usual endless story of the 
 Billy old woman that showed the ruins ; but Scott an 
 swered, " There is a pleasure in the song which none 
 but the songstress knows, and by telling her we know 
 it all already, we should make the poor devil unhappy." 
 
 On their return to the cottage, Scott inquired for the 
 learned cabbage-eater, meaning Ritson, who had been 
 expected to dinner. " Indeed," answered his wife, " you 
 may be happy he is not here, he is so very disagreeable. 
 Mr. Leyden, I believe, frightened him away." It turned 
 out that it was even so. When Ritson appeared, a round 
 of cold beef was on the luncheon-table, and Mrs. Scott, 
 forgetting his peculiar creed, offered him a slice. " The 
 antiquary, in his indignation, expressed himself in such 
 outrageous terms to the lady, that Leyden first tried to 
 correct him by ridicule, and then, on the madman grow 
 ing more violent, became angry in his turn, till at last 
 he threatened, that if he were not silent, he would thraw 
 his neck. Scott shook his head at this recital, wlrch 
 Leyden observing, grew vehement in his own justifica 
 tion. Scott said not a word in reply, but took up a 
 large bunch of feathers fastened to a stick, denominated 
 a duster, and shook it about the student s ears, till he 
 laughed then changed the subject." 
 
 All this is very characteristic of the parties. Scott s 
 playful aversion to dispute was a trait in his mind and 
 manners that could alone have enabled him to make use 
 
86 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 at one and the same time, and for the same purpose, of 
 two such persons as Ritson and Leyden. 
 
 To return to Ellis. In answer to Scott s letter last 
 quoted, he urged him to make Sir Tristrem volume 
 fourth of the Minstrelsy. " As to his hanging heavy 
 on hand," says he, " I admit, that as a separate publica 
 tion he may do so, but the Minstrelsy is now established 
 as a library book, and in this bibliomaniac age, no one 
 would think it perfect without the preux chevalier, if you 
 avow the said chevalier as your adopted son. Let him, 
 at least, be printed in the same size and paper, and then 
 I am persuaded our booksellers will do the rest fast 
 enough, upon the credit of your reputation." Scott re 
 plies (November), that it is now too late to alter the 
 fate of Sir Tristrem. " Longman, of Paternoster Row, 
 has been down here in summer, and purchased the 
 copyright of the Minstrelsy. Sir Tristrem is a sepa 
 rate property, but will be on the same scale in point 
 of size." 
 
 The next letter introduces to Ellis s personal acquaint 
 ance Leyden, who had by this time completed his medi 
 cal studies, and taken his degree as a physician. In 
 it Scott says, " At length I write to you per favour of 
 John Leyden. I presume Heber has made you suf 
 ficiently acquainted with this original (for he is a true 
 one), and therefore I will trust to your own kindness, 
 should an opportunity occur of doing him any service 
 in furthering his Indian plans. You will readily judge, 
 from conversing with him, that with a very uncommon 
 stock of acquired knowledge, he wants a good deal of 
 another sort of knowledge which is only to be gleaned 
 from an early intercourse with polished society. But he 
 dances his bear with a good confidence, and the beai 
 
ELLIS LETDEN. 87 
 
 is a very good-natured and well-conditioned animal. 
 All his friends are much interested about him, as the 
 qualities both of his heart and head are very uncommon." 
 He adds " My third volume will appear as soon after 
 the others as the despatch of the printers will admit 
 Some parts will, I think, interest you ; particularly the 
 preservation of the entire Auld Maitland by oral tradi 
 tion, probably from the reign of Edward II. or III. As I 
 have never met with such an instance, I must request you 
 to inquire all about it of Leyden, who was with me when I 
 received my first copy. In the third volume I intend to 
 publish Oadyow Castle, a historical sort of a ballad upon 
 the death of the Regent Murray, and besides this, a long 
 poem of my own. It will be a kind of romance of Bor 
 der chivalry, in a light-horseman sort of stanza." 
 
 He appears to have sent a copy of Cadyow Castle by 
 Leyden, whose reception at Mr. Ellis s villa, near Wind 
 sor, is thus described in the next letter of the correspond 
 ence : " Let me thank you," says Ellis, " for your 
 poem, which Mrs. E. has not received, and which, indeed, 
 I could not help feeling glad, in the first instance (though 
 we now begin to grow very impatient for it), that she did 
 not receive. Leyden would not have been your Ley 
 den if he had arrived like a careful citizen, with all his 
 packages carefully docketed in his portmanteau. If on 
 the point of leaving for many years, perhaps for ever, his 
 country and the friends of his youth, he had not deferred 
 to the last, and till it was too late, all that could be easily 
 done, and that stupid people find time to do if he had 
 not airived with all his ideas perfectly bewildered and 
 tired to death, and sick and without any settled plans 
 for futurity, or any accurate recollection of the past we 
 should have felt much more disappointed than we were 
 
88 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 by the non* arrival of your poem, which he assured us he 
 remembered to have left somewhere or other, and there 
 fore felt very confident of recovering. In short, his 
 whole air and countenance told us, I am come to be 
 one of your friends; and we immediately took b l oa at 
 his word." 
 
 By the " romance of Border chivalry," which was de 
 signed to form part of the third volume of the Minstrelsy, 
 the reader is to understand the first draught of The Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel; and the author s desciiption of it as 
 being " in a light-horseman sort of stanza," was probably 
 suggested by the circumstances under which the greater 
 part of that original draught was composed. He has told 
 us, in his Introduction of 1830, that the poem originated 
 in a request of the young and lovely Countess of Dal- 
 keith, that he would write a ballad on the legend of Gil- 
 pin Horner : that he began it at Lasswade, and read the 
 opening stanzas, as soon as they were written, to his 
 friends, Erskine and Cranstoun : that their reception of 
 these was apparently so cold as to discourage him, and 
 disgust him with what he had done ; but that finding, a 
 few days afterwards, that the stanzas had nevertheless 
 excited their curiosity, and haunted their memory, he was 
 encouraged to resume the undertaking. The scene and 
 date of this resumption 1 owe to the recollection of the 
 then Cornet of the Edinburgh light-horse. While the 
 troop were on permanent duty at Musselburgh, in the 
 autumnal recess of 1802, the Quarter-master, during 
 a charge on Portobello sands, received a kick of a 
 horse, which confined him for three days to his lodgings. 
 Mr. Skene found him busy with his pen ; and he pro 
 duced before these three days expired the first canto of 
 the Lay, very nearly, if his friend s memory may be 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS JANUARY 1803. 89 
 
 trusted, in the state in which it was ultimately published, 
 That the whole poem was sketched and filled in with ex 
 traordinary rapidity, there can be no difficulty in believ 
 ing. He himself says (in the Introduction of 1830) 5 that 
 after he had once got fairly into the vein, it proceeded at 
 the rate of about a canto in a week. The Lay, however, 
 like the Tristrem, soon outgrew the dimensions which he 
 had originally contemplated ; the design of including it in 
 the third volume of the Minstrelsy was of course aban 
 doned ; and it did not appear until nearly three years 
 after that fortunate mishap on the beach of Portobello. 
 
 To return to Scott s correspondence : it shows that 
 Ellis had, although involved at the time in serious family 
 afflictions, exerted himself strenuously and effectively in 
 behalf of Leyden; a service which Scott acknowledges 
 most warmly. His friend writes, too, at great length, 
 about the completion of the Minstrelsy, urging, in partic 
 ular, the propriety of prefixing to it a good map of the 
 Scottish Border " for, in truth," he says, " I have 
 never been able to find even Ercildoune on any map in 
 my possession." The poet answers (January 30, 1803) 
 " The idea of a map pleases me much, but there are 
 two strong objections to its being prefixed to this edition. 
 First, we shall be out in a month, within which time it 
 would be difficult, I apprehend, for Mr. Arrowsmith, la 
 bouring under the disadvantages which I am about t< 
 mention, to complete the map. Secondly, you are to 
 know that I am an utter stranger to geometry, surveying, 
 and all such inflammatory branches of study, as Mrs. 
 Malaprop calls them. My education was unfortunately 
 interrupted by a long indisposition, which occasioned my 
 residing for about two years in the country with a good 
 maiden aunt, who permitted and encouraged me to run 
 
90 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 about the fields, as wild as any buck that ever fled from 
 the face of man. Hence my geographical knowledge is 
 merely practical, and though I think that in the South 
 country, I could be a guide worth ony twa that may in 
 Liddesdale be found, yet I believe Hobby Noble, or Kin- 
 mont Willie, would beat me at laying down a map. 1 
 have, however, sense enough to see that our mode of ex 
 ecuting maps in general is anything but perfect. The 
 country is most inaccurately defined, and had your Gen 
 eral (Wade) marched through Scotland by the assistance 
 of Ainslie s map, his flying artillery would soon have 
 stuck fast among our morasses, and his horse broke their 
 knees among our cairns. Your system of a bird s-eye 
 view is certainly the true principle." He goes on to 
 mention some better maps than Ellis seemed to have con 
 sulted, and to inform him where he may discover Ercil- 
 doune, under its modern form of Earlston, upon the river 
 Leader ; and concludes, " the map then must be deferred 
 until the third edition, about which, I suppose, Longman 
 thinks courageously." He then adds "I am almost 
 glad Cadyow Castle is miscarried, as I have rather lost 
 conceit of it at present, being engaged on what I think 
 will be a more generally interesting legend. I have 
 called it the Lay of the Last Minstrel/ and put it in the 
 mouth of an old bard, who is supposed to have survived 
 all his brethren, and to have lived down to 1690. The 
 thing itself will be very long, but I would willingly have 
 Bent you the Introduction, had you been still in possession 
 of your senatorial privilege ; but double postage would 
 be a strange innovation on the established price of bal 
 lads, which have always sold at the easy rate of one half 
 penny." 
 
 I must now give part of a letter in which Ley den re- 
 
VERSES BY LETDEN JANUARY 1803. 91 
 
 curs to the kindness, and sketches the person and man 
 ners of George Ellis, in a highly characteristic fashion. 
 He says to Scott (January 25, 1803) You were, no 
 doubt, surprised, my dear sir, that I gave you so litfle in 
 formation about my movements ; but it is only this day 
 T have been able to speak of them with any precision. 
 Fuch is the tardiness in everything connected with the 
 India House, that a person who is present in the char 
 acter of spectator is quite amazed ; but if we consider it 
 as the centre of a vast commercial concern, in comparison 
 of which Tyre and Sidon, and the Great Carthage itself, 
 must inevitably dwindle into huckster shops, we are in 
 duced to think of them with more patience. Even yet 
 I cannot answer you exactly being very uncertain 
 whether I am to sail on the 18th of next month, or the 
 23th. 
 
 " Now shal i telen to ye, i wis, 
 Of that kind Squeyere Ellis, 
 
 That wonnen in this cite" ; 
 Courtess he is, by God almizt! 
 That he nis nought ymaked knizt 
 
 It is the more pitie. 
 
 2. 
 
 He konnen better eche glewe 
 Than I konnen to ye shewe, 
 
 Baith maist and least. 
 So wel he wirketh in eche thewe 
 That where he commen, I tell ye trewe 
 He is ane welcome guest. 
 
 * His eyen graye as glas ben, 
 And his looks ben alto kene, 
 Loveliche to paramour. 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Brown as acorn ben his faxe, 
 His face is thin as bettel axe 
 That dealeth dintis doure. 
 
 * His wit ben both keene and sharpe, 
 To knizt or dame that carll can carps 
 
 Either in hall or bower; 
 And had I not this squeyere yfonde, 
 I had been at the se-gronde, 
 
 Which had been great doloure. 
 
 5. 
 
 " In him Ich finden non other euil, 
 Save that his nostril so doth snivel 
 
 It is not myche my choice. 
 But than his wit ben so perquire, 
 That thai who can his carpynge hew 
 Thai thynke not of his voice. 
 
 * To speake not of his gentel dame 
 Ich wis it war bothe sin and shame 
 
 Lede is not to layne ; 
 She is a ladye of sich pryce 
 To leven in that dame s service 
 
 Meni wer fill fain. 
 
 7. 
 
 " Hir wit is fill kene and queynt, 
 And hir stature smale and gent, 
 
 Semeleche to be scene ; 
 Annes, hondes, and fingres smale, 
 Of pearl beth eche fingre nale ; 
 She mizt be ferys Quene. 
 
 8. 
 
 * That lady she wil giv a scarf 
 To him that wold ykillen a dwarf 
 
 Churle of Paynim kinde ; 
 
 That dwarf he is so fell of mode, 
 
 Tho ye shold drynk his hert blode, 
 
 Gode wold ze never finde. 
 
LETTER FROM LEYDEN APRIL 1803. 
 
 " That dwarf he ben beardless and bare 
 And weaselblowen ben al his hair, 
 
 Like an ympe or elfe ; 
 And in this world beth al and hale 
 Ben nothynge that he loveth an dele 
 
 Safe his owen selfe " 
 
 The fourth of these verses refers to the loss of the 
 Hindostan, in which ship Leyden, but for Mr. Ellis a 
 interference, must have sailed, and which foundered in 
 the Channel. The dwarf is, of course, Bitson. 
 
 After various letters of the same kind, I find one, 
 dated Isle of Wight, April the 1st (1803), the morning 
 before Leyden finally sailed. " I have been two days 
 on board," he writes, " and you may conceive what an 
 excellent change I made from the politest society of 
 London to the brutish skippers of Portsmouth. Our 
 crew consists of a very motley party; but there are 
 some of them very ingenious, and Robert Smith, Syd 
 ney s brother, is himself a host. He is almost the most 
 powerful man I have met with. My money concerns 
 I shall consider you as trustee of; and all remittances, 
 as well as dividends from Longman, will be to your di- 
 lection. These, I hope, we shall soon be able to adjust 
 very accurately. Money may be paid, but kindness 
 never. Assure your excellent Charlotte, whom I shall 
 over recollect with affection and esteem, how much I 
 regret that I did not see her before my departure, and 
 Bay a thousand pretty things, for which my mind is too 
 much agitated, being in the situation of Coleridge s devil 
 and his grannam, expecting and hoping the trumpet to 
 blow. * And now, my dear Scott, adieu. Think of me 
 
 * This is a line of Coleridge s jew cFesprit on Mackintosh. 
 
94 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 with indulgence, and be certain, that wherever, and in 
 whatever situation, John Leyden is, his heart is un 
 changed by place, and his soul by time." 
 
 This letter was received by Scott, not in Edinburgh, 
 but in London. He had hurried up to town as soon as 
 the Court of Session rose for the spring vacation, in 
 hopes of seeing his friend once more before he lef 
 England ; but he came too late. He had, however 
 done his part : he had sent Leyden 50, through Messrs. 
 Longman, a week before ; and on the back of that bill 
 there is the following memorandum : " Dr. Leyden s 
 total debt to me 150 ; he also owes 50 to my 
 uncle." 
 
 He thus writes to Ballantyne, on the 21st April 
 1803: "I have to thank you for the accuracy with 
 which the Minstrelsy is thrown off. Longman and 
 Rees are delighted with the printing. Be so good as 
 to disperse the following presentation copies, with From 
 the Editor on each : 
 
 James Hogg, Ettrick House, care of Mr. Oliver, Ha- 
 wick by the carrier a complete set. 
 
 Thomas Scott (my brother), ditto. 
 
 Colin Mackenzie, Esq., Prince s Street, third volume 
 only. 
 
 Mrs. Scott, George Street, ditto. 
 
 Dr. Rutherford, York Place, ditto. 
 
 Captain Scott, Rosebank, ditto. 
 
 I mean all these to be ordinary paper. Send one set 
 fine paper to Dalkeith House, addressed to the Duchess 
 Another, by the Inverary carrier, to Lady Charlotte 
 Campbell; the remaining ten, fine paper, with any of 
 Vol. III. which may be on fine paper, to be sent to me 
 
LONDON APRIL 1803. 
 
 6y sea. I think they will give you some eclat here, 
 where printing is so much valued. I have settled about 
 printing an edition of the Lay, 8vo. with vignettes, pro 
 vided I can get a draughtsman whom I think well of. 
 We may throw off a few superb in quarto. To the 
 Minstrelsy I mean this note to be added, by way of ad 
 vertisement : In the press, and will speedily be pub 
 lished, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, by Walter Scott, 
 Esq., Editor of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 Also, Sir Tristrem, a Metrical Romance, by Thomas of 
 Ercildoune, called the Rhymer, edited from an ancient 
 MS., with an Introduction and Notes, by Walter Scott, 
 Esq. Will you cause such a thing to be appended in 
 your own way and fashion?" 
 
 This letter is dated "No. 15, Piccadilly West," he 
 and Mrs. Scott being there domesticated under the roof 
 of the late M. Charles Dumergue, a man of very su 
 perior abilities and of excellent education, well known 
 as surgeon -dentist to the royal family who had been 
 intimately acquainted with the Charpentiers in his own 
 early life in France, and had warmly befriended Mrs. 
 Scott s mother on her first arrival in England. M. 
 Dumergue s house was, throughout the whole period of 
 the emigration, liberally opened to the exiles of his na 
 tive country ; nor did some of the noblest of those un 
 fortunate refugees scruple to make a free use of his 
 purse, as well as of his hospitality. Here Scott met 
 much highly interesting French society, and until a child 
 of his own was established in London, he never thought 
 of taking up his abode anywhere else, as often as he had 
 occasion to be in town. 
 
 The letter is addressed to "Mr. James Ballantyne, 
 printer, Abbey-hill, Edinburgh ; " which shows, that be* 
 
96 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 fore the third volume of the Minstrelsy passed through 
 the press, the migration recommended two years earlier 
 had at length taken place. " It was about the end of 
 1802," says Ballantyne in his Memorandum, " that I 
 closed with a plan so congenial to my wishes. I re 
 moved, bag and baggage, to Edinburgh, finding accom 
 modation for two presses, and a proof one, in the pre 
 cincts of Holyrood-house, then deriving new lustre and 
 interest from the recent arrival of the royal exiles of 
 France. In these obscure premises some of the most 
 beautiful productions of what we called The Border 
 Press were printed." The Memorandum states, that 
 Scott having renewed his hint as to pecuniary assist 
 ance, as soon as the printer found his finances straitened, 
 " a liberal loan was advanced accordingly." Of course 
 Scott s interest was constantly exerted in procuring 
 employment, both legal and literary, for his friend s 
 types. 
 
 Heber, and Mackintosh, then at the height of his rep 
 utation as a conversationist, and daily advancing also at 
 the Bar, had been ready to welcome Scott in town as old 
 friends ; and Rogers, William Stewart Rose, and several 
 other men of literary eminence, were at the same time 
 added to the list of his acquaintance. His principal 
 object, however having missed Leyden was to pe 
 ruse and make extracts from some MSS. in the library 
 of John Duke of Roxburghe, for the illustration of the 
 Tristrem ; and he derived no small assistance in other 
 researches of the like kind from the collections which the 
 indefatigable and obliging Douce placed at his disposal 
 Having completed these labours, he and Mrs. Scott went, 
 with Heber and Douce, to Sunninghill, where they spent 
 a happy week, and Mr. and Mrs. Ellis heard the first tw 
 
LONDON AND OXFORD MAY 1803. 97 
 
 w three cantos of the Lay of the Last Minstrel read 
 under an old oak in Windsor Forest. 
 
 I should not omit to say, that Scott was attended on 
 this trip by a very large and fine bull-terrier, by name 
 Camp, and that Camp s master, and mistress too, were 
 delighted by finding that the Ellises cordially sympa 
 thized in their fondness for this animal, and indeed for 
 all his race. At parting, Scott promised to send one 
 of Camp s progeny, in the course of the season, to Sun- 
 ninghill. 
 
 From thence they proceeded to Oxford, accompanied 
 by Heber ; and it was on this occasion, as I believe, that 
 Scott first saw his friend s brother, Reginald, in afterdays 
 the apostolic Bishop of Calcutta. He had just been de 
 clared the successful competitor for that year s poetical 
 prize, and read to Scott at breakfast, in Brazen Nose 
 College, the MS. of his "Palestine." Scott observed 
 that, in the verses on Solomon s Temple, one striking 
 circumstance had escaped him, namely, that no tools 
 were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few 
 minutes to the corner of the room, and returned with the 
 beautiful lines, 
 
 " No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, 
 Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. 
 Majestic silence," &c.* 
 
 After inspecting the University and Blenheim, under 
 she guidance of the Hebers, Scott returned to London, as 
 appears from the following letter to Miss Seward, who 
 had been writing to him on the subject of her projected 
 biography of Dr. Darwin* The conclusion and date are 
 lost : 
 
 * See " Life of Bishop Heber, by his Widow," edition 1830, vol. i 
 t>. 30. 
 
 VOL. II. 7 
 
98 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " I have been for about a fortnight in this huge and bustling 
 metropolis, when I am agreeably surprised by a packet from 
 Edinburgh, containing Miss Seward s letter. I am truly happy 
 at the information it communicates respecting the life of Dr. 
 Darwin, who could not have wished his fame and character in 
 trusted to a pen more capable of doing them ample, and, above 
 all, discriminating justice. Biography, the most interesting 
 perhaps of every species of composition, loses all its interest 
 with me, when the shades and lights of the principal character 
 are not accurately and faithfully detailed ; nor have I much 
 patience with such exaggerated daubing as Mr. Hayley has 
 bestowed upon poor Cowper. I can no more sympathize with 
 a mere eulogist, than I can with a ranting hero upon the stage ; 
 and it unfortunately happens that some of our disrespect is apt, 
 rather unjustly, to be transferred to the subject of the pane 
 gyric in the one case, and to poor Cato in the other. Unap 
 prehensive that even friendship can bias Miss Seward s duty 
 to the public, I shall wait most anxiously for the volume her 
 kindness has promised me. 
 
 " As for my third volume, it was very nearly printed when I 
 left Edinburgh, and must, I think, be ready for publication in 
 about a fortnight, when it will have the honour of travelling to 
 Lichfield. I doubt you will find but little amusement in it, as 
 there are a good many old ballads, particularly those of * the 
 Covenanters, which, in point of composition, are mere drivel 
 ling trash. They are, however, curious in an historical point 
 of view, and have enabled me to slide in a number of notes 
 about that dark and bloody period of Scottish history. There 
 is a vast convenience to an editor in a tale upon which, without 
 the formality of adapting the notes very precisely to the shape 
 and form of the ballad, he may hang on a set like a herald s 
 coat without sleeves, saving himself the trouble of taking meas 
 ure, and sending forth the tale of ancient time, ready equipped 
 from the Monmouth Street warehouse of a commonplace book. 
 Cadyow Castle is to appear in volume third. 
 
 " 1 proceeded thus far about three weeks ago, and 
 
 lhame to tell, have left my epistle unfinished ever since ; yet I 
 
LONDON AND OXFORD MAY 1803. 9 
 
 nave not been wholly idle, about a fortnight of that period 
 having been employed as much to my satisfaction as any 
 similar space of time during my life. I was, the first week of 
 that fortnight, with my invaluable friend George Ellis, and 
 spent the second week at Oxford, which I visited for the first 
 time. I was peculiarly fortunate in having for my patron at 
 Oxford, Mr. Heber, a particular friend of mine, who is inti 
 mately acquainted with all, both animate and inanimate, that 
 is worth knowing at Oxford. The time, though as much as I 
 could possibly spare, has, I find, been too short to convey to 
 me separate and distinct ideas of all the variety of wonders 
 which I saw. My memory only at present furnishes a grand 
 but indistinct picture of towers, and chapels, and oriels, and 
 vaulted halls, and libraries, and paintings. I hope, in a little 
 time, my ideas will develope themselves a little more distinctly, 
 otherwise I shall have profited little by my tour. I was much 
 flattered by the kind reception and notice I met with from 
 some of the most distinguished inhabitants of the halls of Isis, 
 which was more than such a truant to the classic page as my 
 self was entitled to expect at the source of classic learning. 
 
 " On my return, I find an apologetic letter from my printer, 
 saying the third volume will be despatched in a day or two. 
 There has been, it seems, a meeting among the printers 
 devils ; also among the paper-makers. I never heard of 
 authors striking work, as the mechanics call it, until their 
 masters the booksellers should increase their pay ; but if such 
 a combination could take place, the revolt would now be 
 general in all branches of literary labour. How much sincere 
 satisfaction would it give me could I conclude this letter (as I 
 once hoped), by saying I should visit Lichfield, and pay my 
 personal respects to my invaluable correspondent in my way 
 northwards ; but as circumstances render this impossible, I 
 shall depute the poetry of the olden time in the editor s stead. 
 My Romance is not yet finished. I prefer it much to any 
 thing I have done of the kind." .... 
 
 He was in Edint urgh by the middle of May ; and thus 
 
100 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 returns to his view of Oxford in a letter to his friend at 
 Sunninghill : 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq., frc. frc. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 25th May 1803. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, .... I was equally delighted with that 
 venerable seat of learning, and flattered by the polite atten 
 tion of Heber s friends. I should have been enchanted to have 
 spent a couple of months among the curious libraries. What 
 stores must be reserved for some painful student to bring for 
 ward to the public ! Under the guidance and patronage of 
 our good Heber, I saw many of the literary men of his Alma 
 Mater, and found matters infinitely more active in every de 
 partment than I had the least previous idea of. Since I 
 returned home, my time has been chiefly occupied in profes 
 sional labours ; my truant days spent in London having thrown 
 me a little behind ; but now, I hope, I shall find spare moments 
 to resume Sir Tristrem and the Lay, which has acquired 
 additional value in my estimation from its pleasing you. How 
 often do Charlotte and I think of the little paradise at Sun 
 ninghill and its kind inhabitants ; and how do we regret, like 
 Dives, the gulf which is placed betwixt us and friends, with 
 whom it would give us such pleasure to spend much of our 
 tune. It is one of the vilest attributes of the best of all possible 
 worlds, that it contrives to split and separate and subdivide 
 everything like congenial pursuits and habits, for the paltry 
 purpose, one would think, of diversifying every little spot with 
 a share of its various productions. I don t know why the 
 human and vegetable departments should differ so excessively. 
 Oaks and beeches, and ashes and elms, not to mention cab 
 bages and turnips, are usually arrayed en masse ; but where 
 do we meet a town of antiquaries, a village of poets, or a ham 
 let of philosophers ? But, instead of fruitless lamentations, we 
 fincerely hope Mrs. Ellis and you will unrivet yourselves from 
 your forest, and see how the hardy blasts of our mountains wiH 
 tuit you for a change of climate The new edition 
 
THE MINSTRELSY OOMP^ETEjD lfcO& / 101 
 
 vf i Minstrelsy is published here, but not in London as yet, 
 owing to the embargo on our shipping. An invasion is ex 
 pected from Flushing, and no measures of any kind taken to 
 prevent or repel it. Yours ever faithfully, 
 
 "W. SCOTT." 
 
 This letter enclosed a sheet of extracts from Fordun, 
 in Scott s handwriting ; the subject being the traditional 
 marriage of one of the old Counts of Anjou with a female 
 demon, by which the Scotch chronicler accounts for all 
 the crimes and misfortunes of the English Plantagenets. 
 
 Messrs. Longman s new edition of the first two volumes 
 of the Minstrelsy consisted of 1000 copies of volume 
 third there were 1500. A complete edition of 1250 
 copies followed in 1806 ; a fourth, also of 1250, in 1810; 
 a fifth, of 1500, in 1812 ; a sixth, of 500, in 1820 ; and 
 since then it has been incorporated in various successive 
 editions of Scott s Collected Poetry to the extent of 
 at least 15,000 copies more. Of the Continental and 
 American editions I can say nothing, except that they 
 have been very numerous. The book was soon trans 
 lated into German, Danish, and Swedish ; and, the struc 
 ture of those languages being very favourable to the 
 undertaking, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border has 
 thus become widely naturalized among nations them 
 selves rich in similar treasures of legendary lore. Of 
 the extraordinary accuracy and felicity of the German 
 version of Schubart, Scott has given some specimens in 
 the last edition which he himself superintended that 
 of 1830. 
 
 He speaks, in the Essay to which I have referred, as 
 if the first reception of the Minstrelsy on the south of the 
 1 veed had been cold. " The curiosity of the English," 
 he says, : was not much awakened by poems in the rude 
 
J02 -LIFE OF e-JH WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 garb of antiquity, accompanied with notes referring to the 
 obscure feuds of barbarous clans, of whose very names 
 civilized history was ignorant." In writing those beau 
 tiful Introductions of 1830, however, Scott, as I have 
 already had occasion to hint, trusted entirely to his rec 
 ollection of days long since gone by, and he has accord 
 ingly let fall many statements, which we must take witl 
 some allowance. His impressions as to the reception 
 of the Minstrelsy were different, when, writing to his 
 brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, on the 3d March 1803, 
 for the purpose of introducing Ley den, he said "I have 
 contrived to turn a very slender portion of literary talents 
 to some account, by a publication of the poetical antiqui 
 ties of the Border, where the old people had preserved 
 many ballads descriptive of the manners of the country 
 during the wars with England. This trifling collection 
 was so well received by a discerning public, that, after 
 receiving about 100 profit for the first edition, which 
 my vanity cannot omit informing you went off in six 
 months, I have sold the copyright for 500 more." This 
 13 not the language of disappointment ; and thtvigh the 
 edition of 1803 did not move off quite so rapidly as the 
 first, and the work did not perhaps attract much notice 
 beyond the more cultivated students of literature, until 
 the Editor s own genius blazed out in full splendour in the 
 Lay, and thus lent general interest to whatever was con 
 nected with his name, I suspect there never was much 
 ground for accusing the English public of regarding the 
 Minstrelsy with more coldness than the Scotch the 
 population of the Border districts themselves being, of 
 course, excepted. Had the sale of the original edition 
 been chiefly Scotch, I doubt whether Messrs. Longman 
 vould have so readily offered 500, in those days of the 
 
MINSTRELSY OF THE BORDER. 103 
 
 trade a large sum, for the second. Scott had become 
 habituated, long before 1830, to a scale of bookselling 
 transactions, measured by which the largest editions and 
 copy-monies of his own early days appeared insignificant ; 
 but the evidence seems complete that he was well con 
 tented at the time. 
 
 He certainly had every reason to be so as to the im 
 pression which the Minstrelsy made on the minds of 
 those entitled to think for themselves upon such a sub 
 ject. The ancient ballads in his collection, which had 
 never been printed at all before, were in number forty- 
 three ; and of the others most of which were in fact 
 all but new to the modern reader it is little to say that 
 his editions were superior in all respects to those that had 
 preceded them. He had, I firmly believe, interpolated 
 hardly a line or even an epithet of his own ; but his dil 
 igent zeal had put him in possession of a variety of cop 
 ies in different stages of preservation ; and to the task of 
 selecting a standard text among such a diversity of ma 
 terials, he brought a knowledge of old manners and 
 phraseology, and a manly simplicity of taste, such as 
 had never before been united in the person of a poetical 
 antiquary. From among a hundred corruptions he seized, 
 with instinctive tact, the primitive diction and imagery ; 
 and produced strains in which the unbroken energy of 
 half-civilized ages, their stern and deep passions, their 
 daring adventures and cruel tragedies, and even their 
 rude wild humour, are reflected with almost the bright 
 ness of a Homeric mirror, interrupted by hardly a blot 
 of what deserves to be called vulgarity, and totally free 
 from any admixture of artificial sentimentalism. As a 
 picture of manners, the Scottish Minstrelsy is not sur 
 passed, if equalled, by any similar body of poetry pre 
 
104 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 served in any other country ; and it unquestionably owes 
 its superiority in this respect over Percy s Reliques, to 
 the Editor s conscientious fidelity, on the one hand, which 
 prevented the introduction of anything new to his pure 
 taste, on the other, in the balancing of discordant recita 
 tions. His introductory essays and notes teemed with 
 curious knowledge, not hastily grasped for the occasion, 
 but gradually gleaned and sifted by the patient labour of 
 years, and presented with an easy, unaffected propriety 
 and elegance of arrangement and expression, which it 
 may be doubted if he ever materially surpassed in the 
 happiest of his imaginative narrations. I well remember, 
 when Waverley was a new book, and all the world were 
 puzzling themselves about its authorship, to have heard 
 the Poet of " The Isle of Palms " exclaim impatiently 
 " I wonder what all these people are perplexing them 
 selves with : have they forgotten the prose of the Min 
 strelsy?" Even had the Editor inserted none of his own 
 verse, the work would have contained enough, and more 
 than enough, to found a lasting and graceful reputation. 
 
 It is not to be denied, however, that the Minstrelsy of 
 the Scottish Border has derived a very large accession of 
 interest from the subsequent career of its Editor. One 
 of the critics of that day said that the book contained 
 " the elements of a hundred historical romances ;" and 
 this critic was a prophetic one. No person who has not 
 gone through its volumes for the express purpose of com 
 paring their contents with his great original works, can 
 have formed a conception of the endless variety of inci 
 dents and images now expanded and emblazoned by his 
 mature art, of which the first hints may be found either 
 in the text of those primitive ballads, or in the notes, 
 which the happy rambles of his youth had gathered to 
 
MINSTRELSY OF THE BORDER. 105 
 
 gether for their illustration. In the edition of the Min 
 strelsy published since his death, not a few such instances 
 are pointed out ; but the list might have been extended 
 far beyond the limits which such an addition allowed. 
 The taste and fancy of Scott appear to have been formed 
 as early as his moral character ; and he had, before he 
 passed the threshold of authorship, assembled about him, 
 in the uncalculating delight of native enthusiasm, almost 
 all the materials on which his genius was destined to 
 be employed for the gratification and instruction of the 
 world. 
 
106 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Contributions to the Edinburgh Review Progress of the Trifr 
 trem and of the Lay of the Last Minstrel Visit of 
 Wordsworth Publication of " Sir Tristrem." 
 
 1803-1804. 
 
 SHORTLY after the complete " Minstrelsy " issued from 
 the press, Scott made his first appearance as a reviewer. 
 The Edinburgh Review had been commenced in October 
 1802, under the superintendence of the Rev. Sydney 
 Smith, with whom, during his short residence in Scot 
 land, he had lived on terms of great kindness and famil 
 iarity. Mr. Smith soon resigned the editorship to Mr. 
 Jeffrey, who had by this time been for several years 
 among the most valued of Scott s friends and companions 
 at the bar ; and, the new journal being far from commit 
 ting itself to violent politics at the outset, he appreciated 
 the brilliant talents regularly engaged in it far too highly, 
 not to be well pleased with the opportunity of occasion 
 ally exercising his pen in its service. His first contribu 
 tion was an article on Southey s Amadis of Gaul, included 
 in the number for October 1803. Another, on Sibbald s 
 Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, appeared in the same num 
 ber ; a third, on Godwin s Life of Chaucer ; a fourth, 
 n Ellis s Specimens of Ancient English Poetry : and a 
 
MUSSELBURGH 1803. 107 
 
 fifth, on the Life and "Works of Chatterton, followed in 
 the course of 1804.* 
 
 During the summer of 1803, however, his chief liter 
 ary labour was still on the Tristrem ; and I shall pres 
 ently give some further extracts from his letters to Ellis, 
 which w r ill amply illustrate the spirit in which he contin 
 ued his researches about the Seer of Ercildoune, and the 
 interruptions which these owed to the prevalent alarm of 
 French invasion. Both as Quartermaster of the Edin 
 burgh Light-horse, and as Sheriff of The Forest, he had 
 a full share of responsibility in the warlike arrangements 
 to which the authorities of Scotland had at length been 
 roused ; nor were the duties of his two offices considered 
 as strictly compatible by Francis Lord Napier, then Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Selkirkshire ; for I find several letters in 
 which his Lordship complains that the incessant drills 
 and musters of Musselburgh and Portobello prevented 
 the Sheriff from attending county meetings held at Sel 
 kirk in the course of this summer and autumn, for the 
 purpose of organizing the trained bands of the Forest, 
 on a scale hitherto unattempted. Lord Napier strongly 
 urges the propriety of his resigning his connexion with 
 the Edinburgh troop, and fixing his summer residence 
 somewhere within the limits of his proper jurisdiction ; 
 nay, he goes so far as to hint, that if these suggestions 
 should be neglected, it must be his duty to state the case 
 to the Government. Scott could not be induced (least 
 of all by a threat), while the fears of invasion still pre 
 vailed, to resign his place among his old companions of 
 
 * Scott s contributions to our periodical literature have been, with 
 some trivial exceptions, included in the recent collection of his Miscel 
 laneous Prose Writings. 
 
108 LIFE OF SIK WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " the voluntary band ; " but he seems to have presently 
 acquiesced in the propriety of the Lord-Lieu tenant s 
 advice respecting a removal from Lasswade to Ettrick 
 Forest. 
 
 The following extract is from a letter written at Mus- 
 selburgh during this summer or autumn : 
 
 "Miss Seward s acceptable favour reaches me in a place, 
 and at a time, of great bustle, as the corps of voluntary cav 
 alry to which I belong is quartered for a short time in this vil 
 lage, for the sake of drilling and discipline. Nevertheless, had 
 your letter announced the name of the gentleman who took 
 the trouble of forwarding it, I would have made it my business 
 to find him out, and to prevail on him, if possible, to spend a 
 day or two with us in quarters. We are here assuming a very 
 military appearance. Three regiments of militia, with a for 
 midable park of artillery, are encamped just by us. The Ed 
 inburgh troop, to which I have the honour to be quartermaster, 
 consists entirely of young gentlemen of family, and is, of 
 course, admirably well mounted and armed. There are other 
 four troops in the regiment, consisting of yeomanry, whose iron 
 faces and muscular forms announce the hardness of the climate 
 against which they wrestle, and the powers which nature has 
 given them to contend with and subdue it. These corps have 
 been easily raised in Scotland, the farmers being in general a 
 high-spirited race of men, fond of active exercises, and patient 
 of hardship and fatigue. For myself, I must own that to one 
 who has, like myself, la tete un pen exaltee, the * pomp and 
 circumstance of war gives, for a time, a very poignant and 
 pleasing sensation. The imposing appearance of cavalry, in 
 particular, and the rush which marks their onset, appear to me 
 to partake highly of the sublime. Perhaps I am the more 
 attached to this sort of sport of swords, because my health 
 requires much active exercise, and a lameness contracted in 
 childhood renders it inconvenient for me to take it otherwise 
 
LETTER TO MISS SEWARD. 109 
 
 than on horseback. I have, too, a hereditary attachment to 
 the animal not, I natter myself, of the common jockey cast, 
 but because I regard him as the kindest and most generous of 
 the subordinate tribes. I hardly even except the dogs ; at 
 least they are usually so much better treated, that compassion 
 for the steed should be thrown into the scale when we weigh 
 their comparative merits. My wife (a foreigner) never sees a 
 horse ill-used without asking what that poor horse has done in 
 his state of pre-existence ? I would fain hope they have been 
 carters or hackney-coachmen, and are only experiencing a re 
 tort of the ill-usage they have formerly inflicted. What think 
 you?" 
 
 It appears that Miss Seward had sent Scott some ob 
 scure magazine criticism on his " Minstrelsy," in which 
 the censor had condemned some phrase as naturally sug 
 gesting a low idea. The lady s letter not having been 
 preserved, I cannot explain farther the sequel of that 
 from which I have been quoting. Scott says, how 
 ever 
 
 " I am infinitely amused with your sagacious critic. God 
 wot, I have often admired the vulgar subtlety of such minds 
 as can with a depraved ingenuity attach a mean or disgusting 
 sense to an epithet capable of being otherwise understood, and 
 more frequently, perhaps, used to express an elevated idea. 
 In many parts of Scotland the word virtue is limited entirely 
 to industry ; and a young divine who preached upon the moral 
 beauties of virtue was considerably surprised at learning that 
 the whole discourse was supposed to be a panegyric upon a 
 particular damsel who could spin fourteen spindles of yarn in 
 the course of a week. This was natural ; but your literary 
 critic has the merit of going very far a-field to fetch home his 
 degrading association." 
 
 To return to the correspondence with Ellis Scott 
 
110 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 writes thus to him in July "I cannot pretend imme 
 diately to enter upon the serious discussion which you 
 propose respecting the age of * Sir Tristrem ; but yet, 
 as it seems likely to strip Thomas the Prophet of the 
 honours due to the author of the English Tristrem, I 
 cannot help hesitating before I can agree to your theory ; 
 and here my doubt lies. Thomas of Ercildoune, 
 called the Rhymer, is a character mentioned by almost 
 every Scottish historian, and the date of whose existence 
 is almost as well known as if we had the parish register. 
 Now, his great reputation, and his designation of Rymour, 
 could only be derived from his poetical performances; 
 and in what did these consist excepting in the Romance 
 of Sir Tristrem, mentioned by Robert de Brunne ? I 
 hardly think, therefore, we shall be justified in assuming 
 the existence of an earlier Thomas, who would be, in 
 fact, merely the creature of our system. I own I am 
 not prepared to take this step, if I can escape otherwise 
 from you and M. de la Ravaillere and thus I will try 
 it. M. de la R. barely informs us that the history of Sir 
 Tristrem was known to Chretien de Troys in the end of 
 the twelfth century, and to the King of Navarre in the 
 beginning of the thirteenth. Thus far his evidence goes, 
 and I think not one inch farther for it does not estab 
 lish the existence either of the metrical romance, as you 
 suppose, or of the prose romance, as M. de la R. much 
 more erroneously supposes, at that very early period. If 
 the story of Sir Tristrem was founded in fact, and if, 
 which I have all along thought, a person of this name 
 really swallowed a dose of cantharides intended to stim 
 ulate the exertions of his uncle, a petty monarch of 
 Cornwall, and involved himself of course in an intrigue 
 with his aunt, \ hese facts must have taken place during 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS JULY 1803. Ill 
 
 i very early period of English history, perhaps about the 
 time of the Heptarchy. Now, if this be once admitted, 
 it is clear that the raw material from which Thomas 
 wove his web, must have been current long before his 
 day, and I am inclined to think that Chretien and the 
 King of Navarre refer, not to the special metrical ro 
 mance contained in Mr. Douce s fragments, but to the 
 general story of Sir Tristrem, whose love and misfor 
 tunes were handed down by tradition as a historical fact. 
 There is no difficulty in supposing a tale of this kind to 
 have passed from the Armoricans, or otherwise, into the 
 mouths of the French ; as, on the other hand, it seems to 
 have been preserved among the Celtic tribes of the Bor 
 der, from whom, in all probability, it was taken by their 
 neighbour, Thomas of Ercildoune. If we suppose, there 
 fore, that Chretien and the King allude only to the gen 
 eral and well-known story of Tristrem, and not to the 
 particular edition of which Mr. Douce has some fragments 
 (and I see no evidence that any such special allusion 
 to these fragments is made) it will follow that they may 
 be as late as the end of the thirteenth century, and that 
 the Thomas mentioned in them may be the Thomas of 
 whose existence we have historical evidence. In short, 
 the question is, shall Thomas be considered as a land 
 mark by which to ascertain the antiquity of the frag 
 ments, or shall the supposed antiquity of the fragments 
 oe held a sufficient reason for supposing an earlier 
 Thomas ? For aught yet seen, I incline to my former 
 opinion, that those fragments are coeval with the ipsissi- 
 mm Thomas. I acknowledge the internal evidence, of 
 which you are so accurate a judge, weighs more with 
 me than the reference to the King of Navarre ; but, 
 after alJ, the extreme difficulty of judging of style, so 
 
112 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 as to bring us within sixty or seventy years, m^st 
 be fully considered. Take notice, I have never plead 
 ed the matter so high as to say, that the Auchinleck 
 MS. contains the very words devised by Thomas the 
 Rhymer. On the contrary, I have always thought it one 
 of the spurious copies in queint Inglis, of which Robert 
 de Brunne so heavily complains. But this will take 
 little from the curiosity, perhaps little from the antiquity, 
 of the romance. Enough of Sir T. for the present. 
 How happy it will make us if you can fulfil the expec 
 tation you hold out of a northern expedition. Whether 
 in the cottage or at Edinburgh, we will be equally happy 
 to receive you, and show you all the lions of our vicinity. 
 Charlotte is hunting out music for Mrs. E., but I intend 
 to add Johnson s collection, which, though the tunes are 
 simple, and often bad sets, contains much more original 
 Scotch music than any other." 
 
 About this time, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, and their friend 
 Douce, were preparing for a tour into the North of Eng 
 land ; and Scott was invited and strongly tempted to join 
 them at various points of their progress, particularly at 
 the Grange, near Rotherham, in Yorkshire, a seat of the 
 Earl of Emngham. But he found it impossible to escape 
 again from Scotland, owing to the agitated state of the 
 couiitry. On returning to the cottage from an excur 
 sion to his Sheriffship, he thus resumes : 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 "Lasswade, August 27, 1803. 
 
 " Dear Ellis, My conscience has been thumping me as hard 
 as if it had studied under Mendoza, for letting your kind 
 favour remain so long unanswered. Nevertheless, in this it is, 
 like Launcelot Gobbo s, but a hard kind of conscience, as it 
 
BETTER TO ELLIS 1803. 118 
 
 must know how much I have been occupied with Armies of 
 Reserve, and Militia, and Pikemen, and Sharpshooters, who 
 are to descend from Ettrick Forest to the confusion of all 
 invaders. The truth is, that this country has for once experi 
 enced that the pressure of external danger may possibly pro 
 duce internal unanimity ; and so great is the present military 
 zeal, that I really wish our rulers would devise some way of 
 calling it into action, were it only on the economical principle 
 of saving so much good courage from idle evaporation. I am 
 interrupted by an extraordinary accident, nothing less than a 
 volley of small shot fired through the window, at which my 
 wife was five minutes before arranging her flowers. By 
 Camp s assistance, who run the culprit s foot like a Liddes- 
 dale bloodhound, we detected an unlucky sportsman, whose 
 awkwardness and rashness might have occasioned very serious 
 mischief so much for interruption. To return to Sir Tris- 
 trem. As for Mr. Thomas s name, respecting which you state 
 some doubts,* I request you to attend to the following particu 
 lars : In the first place, surnames were of very late intro 
 duction into Scotland, and it would be difficult to show that 
 they became in general a hereditary distinction, until after the 
 time of Thomas the Rhymer ; previously they were mere per 
 sonal distinctions peculiar to the person by whom they were 
 borne, and dying along with him. Thus the children of Alan 
 Durward were not called Dunoard, because they were not Osti- 
 am, the circumstance from which he derived the name. When 
 the surname was derived from property, it became naturally 
 hereditary at a more early period, because the distinction ap 
 plied equally to the father and the son. The same happenec 
 with patronymics, both because the name of the father is usually 
 given to the son ; so that Walter Fitzwalter would have been my 
 son s name in those times as well as my own ; and also because 
 a cian often takes a sort of generaJ patronymic from one com 
 mon ancestor, as Macdonald, &c. &c. But though these 
 
 * Mr. Ellis had hinted that "Rymer might not more necessarily indi 
 cate an actual poet, than the name of Taylor does in modern times an 
 actual knight of the thimble." 
 
114 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 classes of surnames become hereditary at an early period, yet, 
 in the natural course of things, epithets merely personal are 
 much longer of becoming a family distinction.* But I do not 
 trust, by any means, to this general argument ; because the 
 charter quoted in the Minstrelsy contains written evidence, 
 that the epithet of Rymour was peculiar to our Thomas, and 
 was dropped by his son, who designs himself simply, Thomas 
 of Erceldoune, son of Thomas the Rymour of Erceldoune ; 
 which I think is conclusive upon the subject. In all this 
 discussion, I have scorned to avail myself of the tradition 
 of the country, as well as the suspicious testimony of Boece, 
 Dempster, &c., grounded probably upon that tradition, which 
 uniformly affirms the name of Thomas to have been Learmont 
 or Leirmont, and that of the Rhymer a personal epithet. This 
 circumstance may induce us, however, to conclude that some 
 of his descendants had taken that name certain it is that 
 his castle is called Leirmont s Tower, and that he is as well 
 known to the country people by that name, as by the appel 
 lation of the Rhymer. 
 
 * The whole of this subject has derived much illustration from the 
 recent edition of the "Ragman s Roll," a contribution to the Banna- 
 tyne Club of Edinburgh by two of Sir Walter Scott s mos t esteemed 
 friends, the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam and Sir Samuel Shepherd. 
 That record of the oaths of fealty tendered to Edward I., during his 
 Scotch usurpation, furnishes, indeed, very strong confirmation of the 
 views which the Editor of " Sir Tristrem " had thus early adopted con 
 cerning the origin of surnames in Scotland. The landed gentry, over 
 most of the country, seem to have been generally distinguished by the 
 surnames still borne by their descendants it is wonderful how little 
 the land seems to have changed hands in the course of so many centu 
 ries. But the towns people have, with few exceptions, designations 
 apparently indicating the actual trade of the individual ; and in many 
 instances, there is distinct evidence that the plan of transmitting such 
 names had not been adopted ; for example, Thomas the Tailor is de 
 scribed as son of Thomas the Smith, or vice versa. The chief magis 
 trates of the burghs appear, however, to have been, in most cases 
 younger sons of the neighbouring gentry, and have of course their 
 hereditary designations. This singular document, so often quoted and 
 referred to, was never before printed in extenso. 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS 1803. 115 
 
 " Having cleared up this matter, as I think, to every one s 
 iatisfaction, unless to those resembling not Thomas himself, 
 but his namesake the Apostle, I have, secondly, to show that 
 my Thomas is the Tomas of Douce s MS. Here I must again 
 refer to the high and general reverence in which Thomas ap 
 pears to have been held, as is proved by Robert de Brunne ; 
 but above all, as you observe, to the extreme similarity be 
 twixt the French and English poems, with this strong circum 
 stance, that the mode of telling the story approved by the 
 French minstrel, under the authority of his Tomas, is the very 
 mode in which my Thomas has told it. Would you desire 
 better sympathy? 
 
 " I lately met by accident a Cornish gentleman, who had 
 taken up his abode in Selkirkshire for the sake of fishing 
 and what should his name be but Caerlion? You will not 
 doubt that this interested me very much. He tells me that 
 there is but one family of the name in Cornwall, or as far as 
 ever he heard, anywhere else, and that they are of great an 
 tiquity. Does not this circumstance seem to prove that there 
 existed in Cornwall a place called Caerlion, giving name to 
 that family ? Caerlion would probably be Castrum Leonense, 
 the chief town of Liones, which in every romance is stated to 
 have been Tristrem s country, and from which he derived his 
 surname of Tristrem de Liones. This district, as you notice in 
 the notes on the Fabliaux, was swallowed up by the sea. I 
 need not remind you that all this tends to illustrate the Caer- 
 lioun mentioned by Tomas, which I always suspected to be a 
 very different place from Caerlion on Uske which is no sea 
 port. How I regret the number of leagues which prevented 
 my joining you and the sapient Douce, and how much ancient 
 lore I have lost. Where I have been, the people talked more 
 of the praises of Ryno and Fillan (not Ossian s heroes, but two 
 Forest greyhounds which I got in a present) than, I verily 
 believe, they would have done of the prowesses of Sir Tris- 
 fcrem, or of Esplandian, had either of them appeared to lead 
 on the levy en masse. Yours ever, 
 
 " W. SCOTT." 
 
116 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Ellis says in reply 
 
 "My dear Scott, I must begin by congratulating you on 
 Mrs. Scott s escape ; Camp, if he had had no previous title to 
 immortality, would deserve it, for his zeal and address in de 
 tecting the stupid marksman, who, while he took aim at a bird 
 on a tree, was so near shooting your fair bird in bower. If 
 there were many such shooters, it would become then a suffi 
 cient excuse for the reluctance of Government to furnish arms 
 indifferently to all volunteers. In the next place, I am glad 
 to hear that you are disposed to adopt my channel for trans 
 mitting the tale of Tristrem to Chretien de Troye. The more 
 I have thought on the subject, the more I am convinced that 
 the Normans, long before the Conquest, had acquired from the 
 Britons of Armorica a considerable knowledge of our old Brit 
 ish fables, and that this led them, after the Conquest, to in 
 quire after such accounts as were to be found in the country 
 where the events are supposed to have taken place. I am sat 
 isfied, from the internal evidence of Geoffrey of Monmouth s 
 History, that it must have been fabricated in Bretagne, and 
 that he did, as he asserts, only translate it. Now, as Marie, 
 who lived about a century later, certainly translated also from 
 the Breton a series of lays relating to Arthur and his knights, 
 it will follow that the first poets who wrote in France, such as 
 Chretien, &c., must have acquired their knowledge of our tra 
 ditions from Bretagne. Observe, that the pseudo-Turpin, who 
 is supposed to have been anterior to Geoffrey, and who, on 
 that supposition, cannot have borrowed from him, mentions, 
 among Charlemagne s heroes, Hoel (the hero of Geoffrey also), 
 4 de quo canitur cantilena usque ad hodiernum diem. Now, 
 if Thomas was able to establish his story as the most authentic, 
 even by the avowal of the French themselves, and if the sketch 
 of that story was previously known, it must have been be 
 cause he wrote in the country which his hero was supposed to 
 have inhabited ; and on the same grounds the Norman min- 
 gtrels here, and even their English successors, were allowed to 
 fill up, with as many circumstances as they thought proper 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH ELLIS 1803. 117 
 
 the tales of which the Armorican Bretons probably furnished 
 the first imperfect outline. 
 
 " What you tell me about your Cornish fisherman is very 
 curious; and I think with you that little reliance is to be placed 
 on our Welsh geography and that Caerlion on Uske is by no 
 means the Caerlion of Tristrem. Few writers or readers have 
 hitherto considered sufficiently, that from the moment when 
 Hengist first obtained a settlement in the Isle of Thanet, that 
 settlement became England, and all the rest of the country 
 became Wales ; that these divisions continued to represent 
 different proportions of the island at different periods ; but 
 that Wales, during the whole Heptarchy, and for a long time 
 after, comprehended the whole western coast very nearly from 
 Cornwall to Dunbretton ; and that this whole tract, of which 
 the eastern frontier may be easily traced for each particular 
 period, preserved most probably to the age of Thomas a com 
 munity of language, of manners, and traditions. 
 
 " As your last volume announces your Lay, as well as Sir 
 Tristrem, as in the press, I begin, in common with all your 
 friends, to be uneasy about the future disposal of your time. 
 Having nothing but a very active profession, and your military 
 pursuits, and your domestic occupations, to think of, and Ley- 
 den having monopolized Asiatic lore, you will presently be 
 quite an idle man ! You are, however, still in time to learn 
 Erse, and it is, I am afraid, very necessary that you should do 
 so, in order to stimulate my laziness, which has hitherto made 
 o progress whatever in Welsh. 
 
 " Your ever faithful, G. E. 
 
 " P. S. Is Camp married yet ? " 
 
 Ellis had projected some time before this an edition of 
 the Welsh MaUnogion* in which he was to be assisted 
 by Mr. Owen, the author of the " Welsh and English 
 Dictionary," " Cambrian Biography," &c. 
 
 * The Mabinogion have at last been transla f ed, and are now in the 
 course of publication, in a very beautiful form, by the Lp t (? y Charlott* 
 Uuest. [1839.] 
 
ti8 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " I am very sorry," Scott says (September 14), " that you 
 jlag over those wild and interesting tales. I hope, if you will 
 not work yourself (for which you have so little excuse, having 
 both the golden talents and the golden leisure necessary for 
 study), you will at least keep Owen to something that is 
 rational I mean to iron horses, and magic cauldrons, and 
 Bran the Blessed, with the music of his whole army upon his 
 shoulders, and, in short, to something more pleasing and profit 
 able than old apophthegms, triads, and blessed burdens of 
 the womb of the isle of Britain. Talking of such burdens 
 Camp has been regularly wedded to a fair dame in the neigh 
 bourhood ; but notwithstanding the Italian policy of locking the 
 lady in a stable, she is suspected of some inaccuracy ; but we 
 suspend judgment, as Othello ought in all reason to have done, 
 till we see the produce of the union. As for my own employ 
 ment, I have yet much before me ; and as the beginning of let 
 ting out ink is like the letting out of water, I daresay I shall 
 go on scribbling one nonsense or another to the end of the 
 chapter. People may say this and that of the pleasure of 
 fame or of profit as a motive of writing. I think the only 
 pleasure is in the actual exertion and research, and I would 
 no more write upon any other terms than I would hunt merely 
 to dine upon hare-soup. At the same time, if credit and profit 
 came unlocked for, I would no more quarrel with them than 
 with the soup. I hope this will find you and Mrs. Ellis safely 
 and pleasantly settled. 
 
 " By the way, while you are in his neighbourhood, I hope 
 you will not fail to inquire into the history of the valiant Moor 
 of Moorhall and the Dragon of Wantley. As a noted bur 
 lesque upon the popular romance, the ballad has some curiosity 
 and merit. Ever yours, W. S." 
 
 Mr. Ellis received this letter where Scott hoped it 
 would reach him, at the s^at of Lord Effingham ; and 
 lie answers, on the 3d of October 
 
 " The beauty of this part of the country is such as to indem 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH ELLIS 1803. 119 
 
 aif) die traveller for a few miles of very indifferent road, and 
 the tedious process of creeping up and almost sliding down a 
 succession of high hills ; and in the number of picturesque 
 landscapes by which we are encompassed, the den of the 
 dragon which you recommended to our attention is the most 
 superlatively beautiful and romantic. You are, I suppose 
 aware that this same den is the very spot from whence Lad^ 
 Mary Wortley Montague wrote many of her early letters 
 and it seems that an old housekeeper, who lived there till last 
 year, remembered to have seen her, and dwelt with great 
 pleasure on the various charms of her celebrated mistress ; so 
 that its wild scenes have an equal claim to veneration from the 
 admirers of wit and gallantry, and the far-famed investigators 
 of remote antiquity. With regard to the original Dragon, 1 
 have met with two different traditions. One of these (which 
 I think is preserved by Percy) states him to have been a 
 wicked attorney, a relentless persecutor of the poor, who was 
 at length, fortunately for his neighbours, ruined by a law-suit 
 which he had undertaken against his worthy and powerful 
 antagonist Moor of Moorhall. The other legend, which is cur 
 rent in the Wortley family, states him to have been a most 
 formidable drinker, whose powers of inglutition, strength of 
 stomach, and stability of head, had procured him a long series 
 of triumphs over common visitants, but who was at length 
 fairly drunk dead by the chieftain of the opposite moors. It 
 must be confessed that the form of the den, a cavern cut in 
 the rock, and very nearly resembling a wine or ale cellar, 
 tends to corroborate this tradition ; but I am rather tempted 
 to believe that both the stories were invented apres coup, and 
 that the supposed dragon was some wolf or other destructive 
 animal, who was finally hunted down by Moor of Moorhall, 
 after doing considerable mischief to the flocks and herds of his 
 superstitious neighbours. 
 
 " The present house appears to have grown to its even now 
 moderate size by successive additions to a very small loggt 
 (lodge), built by a gentle knight, Sir Thomas Wortley/ IL 
 the time of Henry VIII., for the pleasure, as an old inscrip- 
 
120 LIFE OF SIK WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tion in the present scullery testifies, of listening to the Hartea 
 bell. Its site is on the side of a very high rocky hill, covered 
 with oaks (the weed of the country), and overhanging the 
 river Don, which in this place is little more than a mountain 
 torrent, though it becomes navigable a few miles lower at 
 Sheffield. A great part of the road from hence (which is 
 eeven miles distant) runs through forest ground, and I have 
 no doubt that the whole was at no distant period covered with 
 wood, because the modern improvements of the country, the 
 result of flourishing manufactories, have been carried on almost 
 within our own tune in consequence of the abundance of coal 
 which here breaks out in many places even on the surface. On 
 the opposite side of the river begin almost immediately the 
 extensive moors which strike along the highest land of York 
 shire and Derbyshire, and following the chain of hills, prob 
 ably communicated not many centuries ago with those of Nor 
 thumberland, Cumberland, and Scotland. I therefore doubt 
 whether the general face of the country is not better evidence 
 as to the nature of the monster than the particular appearance 
 of the cavern ; and am inclined to believe that Moor of Moor- 
 hall was a hunter of wild beasts, rather than of attorneys or 
 hard drinkers. 
 
 " You are unjust in saying that I flag over the Mabinogion 
 I have been very constantly employed upon my preface, and 
 was proceeding to the last section when I set off for this place 
 so you see I am perfectly exculpated, and all over as white 
 as snow. Anne being a true aristocrat, and considering purity 
 of blood as essential to lay the foundation of all the virtues 
 she expects to call out by a laborious education of a true son 
 of Camp she highly approves the strict and even prudish 
 severity with which you watch over the morals of his bride, 
 ind expects you, inasmuch as all the good knights she has read 
 of have been remarkable for their incomparable beauty, not 
 to neglect that important requisite in selecting her future 
 guardian. We possess a vulgar dog (a pointer), to whom it 
 is intended to commit the charge of our house during our al> 
 sence, and to whom I mean to give orders to repel by force any 
 
WOKTLEY-HALL OCTOBER 1803- 121 
 
 attempts of our neighbours during the times that I shall be 
 occupied in preparing hare-soup ; but Fitz-Camp will be her 
 companion, and she trusts that you will strictly examine him 
 while yet a varlet, and only send him up when you think him 
 likely to become a true knight. Adieu mille choses. 
 
 G. E." 
 
 Scott tells Ellis in reply (October 14), that he was 
 " infinitely gratified with his account of Wortley Lodge 
 and the Dragon," and refers him to the article " Kem- 
 pion," in the Minstrelsy, for a similar tradition respecting 
 an ancestor of the noble house of Somerville. The 
 reader can hardly need to be reminded that the gentle 
 knight, Sir Thomas Wortley s, love of hearing the deer 
 bell was often alluded to in Scott s subsequent writings. 
 He goes on to express his hope, that next summer will 
 be a " more propitious season for a visit to Scotland. 
 The necessity of the present occasion," he says, " has 
 kept almost every individual, however insignificant, to 
 his post. God has left us entirely to our own means 
 of defence, for we have not above one regiment of the 
 line in all our ai>oient kingdom. In the mean while, 
 we are doing the best we can to prepare ourselves for 
 $. contest, which, perhaps, is not far distant. A beacon 
 light, communicating with that of Edinburgh Castle, is 
 just erecting in front of our quiet cottage. My field 
 equipage is ready, and I want nothing but a pipe and a 
 schnurbartchen to convert me into a complete hussar.* 
 Charlotte, ^.th the infantry (of the household troops, I 
 
 * Schnurbartchen is German for mustachio. It appears from a page 
 of an early note-book previously transcribed, that Scott had been 
 sometimes a smoker of tobacco in the first days of his light-horse 
 manship. He had laid aside the habit at the time when this letter 
 was written; but he twice again resumed i, though he never carried 
 die indulgence to any excess. 
 
122 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 mean), is to beat her retreat into Ettrick Forest, where, 
 if the Tweed is in his usual wintry state of flood, she 
 may weather out a descent from Ostend. Next year I 
 hope all this will be over, and that not only I shall have 
 the pleasure of receiving you in peace and quiet, but 
 also of going with you through every part of Caledonia, 
 in which you can possibly be interested. Friday se en- 
 night our corps takes the field for ten days for the 
 second time within three months which may explain 
 the military turn of my epistle. 
 
 " Poor Ritson is no more. All his vegetable soups 
 and puddings have not been able, to avert the evil day, 
 which, I understand, was preceded by madness. It must 
 be worth while to inquire who has got his MSS., I 
 mean his own notes and writings. The Life of Arthur, 
 for example, must contain many curious facts and quo 
 tations, which the poor defunct had the power of assem 
 bling to an astonishing degree, without being able to com 
 bine anything like a narrative, or even to deduce one 
 useful inference witness his Essay on Romance and 
 Minstrelsy, which reminds one of a heap of rubbish, 
 which had either turned out unfit for the architect s pur 
 pose, or beyond his skill to make use of. The ballads 
 he had collected in Cumberland and Northumberland, 
 too, would greatly interest me. If they have fallen into 
 the hands of any liberal collector, I dare say I might be 
 indulged with a sight of them. Pray inquire about this 
 matter. 
 
 " Yesterday Charlotte and I had a visit which we owe 
 to Mrs. E. A rosy lass, the sister of a bold yeoman 
 in our neighbourhood, entered our cottage, towing in a 
 monstrous sort of bull-dog, called emphatically Cerberus, 
 whom she came on the part of her brother to beg oui 
 
LASSWADE OCTOBER 1803. 123 
 
 acceptance of, understanding we were anxious to have a 
 Bon of Camp. Cerberus was no sooner loose (a pleasure 
 which, I suspect, he had rarely enjoyed,) than his father 
 (suppose) and he engaged in a battle which might have 
 been celebrated by the author of the Unnatural Com 
 bat, and which, for aught I know, might have turned 
 out a combat a I outrance, if I had not interfered with 
 a horse-whip, instead of a baton, as juge de Camp. Th 
 odds were indeed greatly against the stranger knight 
 two fierce Forest greyhounds having arrived, and, con 
 trary to the law of arms, stoutly assailed him. I hope 
 to send you a puppy instead of this redoubtable Cer 
 berus. Love to Mrs. E. W. S." 
 
 After giving Scott some information about Ritson s 
 literary treasures, most of which, as it turned out, had 
 been disposed of by auction shortly before his death, 
 Mr. Ellis (10th November) returns to the charge about 
 Tristrem and True Thomas. "You appear," he says, 
 " to have been for some time so military, that I am 
 afraid the most difficult and important part of your 
 original plan, viz. your History of Scottish poetry, will 
 again be postponed, and must be kept for some future 
 publication. I am, at this moment, much in want of two 
 such assistants as you and Leyden. It seems to me, that 
 if I had some local knowledge of that wicked Ettrick 
 Forest, I could extricate myself tolerably but as it is, 
 although I am convinced that my general idea is tolera 
 bly just, I am unable to guide my elephants in that quiet 
 and decorous step-by-step march which the nature of 
 such animals requires through a country of which I 
 don t know any of the roads. My comfort is, that you 
 cannot publish Tristrem without a preface, that you 
 ?an t write one without giving me some assistance, and 
 
124 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that you must finish the said preface long before I go to 
 press with my Introduction." 
 
 This was the Introduction to Ellis s " Specimens of 
 Ancient English Romances," in which he intended to 
 prove, that as Valentia was, during several ages, the ex 
 posed frontier of Roman Britain towards the unsubdued 
 tribes of the North, and as two whole legions were ac 
 cordingly usually quartered there, while one besides suf 
 ficed for the whole southern part of the island, the man 
 ners of Valentia, which included the district of Ettrick 
 Forest, must have been greatly favoured by the con 
 tinued residence of so many Roman troops. "It is 
 probable, therefore," he says, in another letter, " that the 
 civilisation of the northern part became gradually the 
 most perfect. That country gave birth, as you have 
 observed, to Merlin, and to Aneurin, who was proba 
 bly the same as the historian Gildas. It seems to have 
 given education to Taliessin it was the country of Bede 
 and Adonnan." 
 
 I shall not quote more on this subject, as the reader 
 may turn to the published essay for Mr. Ellis s matured 
 opinions respecting it. To return to his letter of No 
 vember 10th 1803, he proceeds: "And now let me 
 ask you about the Lay of the Last Minstrel. That, I 
 think, may go on as well in your tent, amidst the clang 
 of trumpets and the dust of the field, as in your quiet 
 cottage perhaps indeed still better nay, I am not 
 sure whether a real invasion would not be, as far as your 
 poetry is concerned, a thing to be wished." 
 
 It was in the September of this year that Scott first 
 *aw Wordsworth. Their common acquaintance, Stod- 
 dart, had so often talked of them to each other, tha/ 
 
WORDSWORTH SEPTEMBER 1803. 125 
 
 they met as if they had not been strangers ; and they 
 parted friends. 
 
 Mr. and Miss Wordsworth had just completed that 
 tour in the Highlands, of which so many incidents have 
 since been immortalized, both in the poet s verse and in 
 the hardly less poetical prose of his sister s Diary. On 
 the morning of the 17th of September, having left their 
 carriage at Rosslyn, they walked down the valley to 
 Lasswade, and arrived there before Mr. and Mrs. Scott 
 had risen. " We were received," Mr. Wordsworth has 
 told me, " with that frank cordiality which, under what 
 ever circumstances I afterwards met him, always marked 
 his manners ; and, indeed, I found him then in every 
 respect except, perhaps, that his animal spirits were 
 somewhat higher precisely the same man that you 
 knew him in later life ; the same lively, entertaining 
 conversation, full of anecdote, and averse from disquisi 
 tion ; the same unaffected modesty about himself; the 
 same cheerful and benevolent and hopeful views of man 
 and the world. He partly read and partly recited, 
 sometimes in an enthusiastic style of chant, the first 
 four cantos of the Lay of the Last Minstrel ; and the 
 novelty of the manners, the clear picturesque descrip 
 tions, and the easy glowing energy of much of the verse, 
 greatly delighted me." 
 
 After this he walked with the tourists to Rosslyn, and 
 promised to meet them in two days at Melrose. The 
 night before they reached Melrose they slept at the little 
 quiet inn of Clovenford, where, on mentioning his name, 
 they were received with all sorts of attention and kind 
 ness, the landlady observing that Mr. Scott, " who 
 was a very clever gentleman," was an old friend of the 
 house, and usually spent a good deal of time there during 
 
126 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the fishing season ; but, indeed, says Mr. Wordsworth, 
 " wherever we named him, we found the word acted as 
 an open sesamum ; and I believe, that in the character 
 of the Sheriff s friends, we might have counted on a 
 hearty welcome under any roof in the Border country." 
 
 He met them at Melrose on the 19th, and escorted 
 them through the Abbey, pointing out all its beauties, 
 and pouring out his rich stores of history and tradition. 
 They then dined and spent the evening together at the 
 inn ; but Miss Wordsworth observed that there was some 
 difficulty about arranging matters for the night, "the 
 landlady refusing to settle anything until she had ascer 
 tained from the Sheriff himself that he had no objection 
 to sleep in the same room with William 1 Scott was 
 thus far on his way to the Circuit Court at Jedburgh, in 
 his capacity of Sheriff, and there his new friends again 
 joined him ; but he begged that they would not enter the 
 court, " for," said he, " I really would not like you to see 
 the sort of figure I cut there." They did see him casu 
 ally, however, in his cocked hat and sword, marching 
 in the Judge s procession to the sound of one cracked 
 trumpet, and were then not surprised that he should 
 have been a little ashamed of the whole ceremonial. He 
 introduced to them his friend William Laidlaw, who was 
 attending the court as a juryman, and who, having read 
 some of Wordsworth s verses in a newspaper, was ex 
 ceedingly anxious to be of the party, when they explored 
 at leisure, all the law-business being over, the beautiful 
 valley of the Jed, and the ruins of the Castle of Fernie- 
 herst, the original fastness of the noble family of Lothiaa 
 The grove of stately ancient elms about and below the 
 ruin was seen to great advantage in a fine, grey, breezy 
 Hutumnal afternoon ; and Mr. Wordsworth happened to 
 
WORDSWORTH SEPTEMBER 1803. 127 
 
 Bay, " What life there is in trees ! " " How different," 
 said Scott, " was the feeling of a very intelligent young 
 lady, born and bred in the Orkney Islands, who lately 
 came to spend a season in this neighbourhood ! She told 
 me nothing in the mainland scenery had so much dis 
 appointed her as woods and trees. She found them so 
 dead and lifeless, that she could never help pining after 
 the eternal motion and variety of the ocean. And so 
 back she has gone, and I believe nothing will ever tempt 
 her from the wind-swept Orcades again." 
 
 Next day they all proceeded together up the Teviot to 
 Hawick, Scott entertaining his friends with some legend 
 or ballad connected with every tower or rock they passed. 
 He made them stop for a little to admire particularly a 
 scene of deep and solemn retirement, called Home s Pool, 
 from its having been the daily haunt of a contemplative 
 schoolmaster, known to him in his youth ; and at Kirk- 
 ton he pointed out the little village schoolhouse, to which 
 his friend Leyden had walked six or eight miles every 
 day across the moors, "when a poor barefooted boy." 
 From Hawick, where they spent the night, he led them 
 next morning to the brow of a hill, from which they could 
 see a wide range of the Border mountains, Uuberslaw, 
 the Carter, and the Cheviots ; and lamented that neither 
 their engagements nor his own would permit them to 
 make at this time an excursion into the wilder glens of 
 Liddesdale, " where," said he, " I have strolled so often 
 and so long, that I may say I have a home in every farm 
 house." " And, indeed," adds Mr. Wordsworth, " where- 
 ever we went with him, he seemed to know everybody, 
 =md everybody to know and like him." Here they 
 parted the Wordsworths to pursue their journey home 
 ward by Eskdale he to return to Lasswade. 
 
128 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The impression on Mr. Wordsworth s mind wa,;, that 
 on the whole he attached much less importance to his 
 literary labours or reputation than to his bodily sports, 
 exercises, and social amusements ; and yet he spoke of 
 his profession as if he had already given up almost all 
 hope of rising by it ; and some allusion being made to its 
 profits, observed that " he was sure he could, if he chose, 
 get more money than he should ever wish to have from 
 the booksellers." * 
 
 This confidence in his own literary resources appeared 
 to Mr. Wordsworth remarkable the more so, from the 
 careless way in which its expression dropt from him. As 
 to his despondence concerning the Bar, I confess his fee- 
 book indicates much less ground for such a feeling than 
 I should have expected to discover there. His practice 
 brought him, as we have seen, in the session of 1796-7, 
 144 10s. ; its proceeds fell down, in the first year of his 
 married life, to 79 17s. ; but they rose again *in 1798-9, 
 to 135 9s. ; amounted, in 1799-1800, to 129 13s. ; in 
 1800-1, to 170; in 1801-2, to 202 12s.; and in the 
 session that had just elapsed (which is the last included 
 in the record before me), to 228 18s. 
 
 On reaching his cottage in Westmoreland, Wordsworth 
 addressed a letter to Scott, from which I must quote a 
 few sentences. It is dated Grasmere, October 16, 1803. 
 " We had a delightful journey home, delightful weather, 
 and a sweet country to travel through. We reached our 
 little cottage in high spirits, and thankful to God for all 
 his bounties. My wife and child were both well, and as 
 I need not say, we had all of us a happy meeting 
 
 * I have drawn up the account of this meeting from my recollection 
 artly of Mr. Wordsworth s conversation partly from that of hii 
 ister s charming " Diary," which he was so kind as to read over \A 
 ne on the 16th May 1836. 
 
WORDSWORTH OCTOBER 1803. 129 
 
 We passed Branxholme your Branxholme, we sup 
 posed about four miles on this side of Ha wick. It 
 looks better in your poem than in its present realities. 
 The situation, however, is delightful, and makes amends 
 for an ordinary mansion. The whole of the Teviot and 
 the pastoral steeps about Mosspaul pleased us exceed 
 ingly. The Esk below Langholm is a delicious river, 
 and we saw it to great advantage. We did not omit 
 noticing Johnnie Armstrong s Keep ; but his hanging 
 place, to our great regret, we missed. We were, indeed, 
 most truly sorry that we could not have you along with 
 us into Westmoreland. The country was in its full 
 glory the verdure of the valleys, in which we are so 
 much superior to you in Scotland, but little tarnished by 
 the weather, and the trees putting on their most beautiful 
 looks. My sister was quite enchanted, and we often said 
 to each other, What a pity Mr. Scott is not with us ! ... 
 I had the pleasure of seeing Coleridge and Southey at 
 Keswick last Sunday. Southey, whom I never saw 
 much of before, I liked much : he is very pleasant in his 
 manner, and a man of great reading in old books, poetry, 
 chronicles, memoirs, &c. &c., particularly Spanish and 
 
 Portuguese My sister and I often talk of the happy 
 
 days that we spent in your company. Such things do 
 not occur often in life. If we live we shall meet again ; 
 that is my consolation when I think of these things. 
 Scotland and England sound like division, do what ye 
 can ; but we really are but neighbours, and if you were 
 no farther off, and in Yorkshire, we should think so. 
 Farewell. God prosper you, and all that belongs to you. 
 Your sincere friend, for such I will call myself, though 
 *low to use a word of such solemn meaning to any one, 
 W. WORDSWORTH." 
 
 VOL. H. 9 
 
130 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The poet then transcribes his noble Sonnet on Neid- 
 path Castle, of which Scott had, it seems, requested a 
 copy. In the MS. it stands somewhat differently from 
 the printed edition ; but in that original shape Scott al 
 ways recited it, and few lines in the language were more 
 frequently in his mouth. 
 
 I have already said something of the beginning of 
 Scott s acquaintance with " the Ettrick Shepherd." 
 Shortly after their first meeting, Hogg, coming into Ed 
 inburgh with a flock of sheep, was seized with a sudden 
 ambition of seeing himself in type, and he wrote out that 
 same night " Willie and Katie," and a few other ballads, 
 already famous in the Forest, which some obscure book 
 seller gratified him by printing accordingly ; but they 
 appear to have attracted no notice beyond their original 
 sphere. Hogg then made an excursion into the High 
 lands, in quest of employment as overseer of some ex 
 tensive sheep-farm ; but, though Scott had furnished him 
 with strong recommendations to various friends, he re 
 turned without success. He printed an account of his 
 travels, however, in a set of letters in the Scots Maga 
 zine, which, though exceedingly rugged and uncouth, had 
 abundant traces of the native shrewdness and genuine 
 poetical feeling of this remarkable man. These also 
 failed to excite attention ; but, undeterred by such disap 
 pointments, the Shepherd no sooner read the third vol 
 ume of the " Minstrelsy," than he made up his mind that 
 the Editor s " Imitations of the Ancients " were by no 
 means what they should have been. " Immediately," he 
 says, in one of his many Memoirs of himself, " I chose a 
 number of traditional facts, and set about imitating the 
 manner of the ancients myself." These imitations he 
 transmitted to Scott, who warmly praised the many strik 
 
THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD 1803. 131 
 
 ing beauties scattered over their rough surface. The 
 next time that Hogg s business carried him to Edin 
 burgh, he waited upon Scott, who invited him to dinner 
 in Castle Street, in company with William Laidlaw, who 
 happened also to be in town, and some other admirers of 
 the rustic genius. When Hogg entered the drawing- 
 room, Mrs. Scott, being at the time in a delicate state of 
 health, was reclining on a sofa. The Shepherd, after 
 being presented, and making his best bow, forthwith took 
 possession of another sofa placed opposite to hers, and 
 stretched himself thereupon at all his length ; for, as he 
 said afterwards, " I thought I could never do wrong to 
 copy the lady of the house." As his dress at this period 
 was precisely that in which any ordinary herdsman at 
 tends cattle to the market, and as his hands, moreover, 
 bore most legible marks of a recent sheep-smearing, the 
 lady of the house did not observe with perfect equanim 
 ity the novel usage to which her chintz was exposed. 
 The Shepherd, however, remarked nothing of all this 
 dined heartily and drank freely, and, by jest, anecdote, 
 and song, afforded plentiful merriment to the more civ 
 ilized part of the company. As the liquor operated, 
 his familiarity increased and strengthened ; from " Mr. 
 Scott," he advanced to " Sherra," and thence to " Scott," 
 " Walter," and " Wattie," until, at supper, he fairly 
 convulsed the whole party by addressing Mrs. Scott as 
 Charlotte." 
 
 The collection entitled " The Mountain Bard " was 
 eventually published by Constable, in consequence of 
 Scott s recommendation, and this work did at last afford 
 Hogg no slender share of the popular reputation for 
 jvliich he had so long thirsted. It is not my business, 
 aowever, to pursue the details of his story. What I 
 
132 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 havt written was only to render intelligible the following 
 letter : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Castle Street, Edinburgh. 
 u Ettrick-House, December 24, 1803. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Scott, I have been very impatient to hear 
 from you. There is a certain affair of which you and I talked 
 a little in private, and which must now be concluded, tha 
 naturally increaseth this. 
 
 " I am afraid that I was at least half-seas over the night I 
 was with you, for I cannot, for my life, recollect what passed 
 when it was late ; and, there being certainly a small vacuum 
 in my brain, which, when empty, is quite empty, but is some 
 times supplied with a small distillation of intellectual matter 
 this must have been empty that night, or it never could 
 have been taken possession of by the fumes of the liquor so 
 easily. If I was in the state in which I suspect that I was, I 
 must have spoke a very great deal of nonsense, for which I 
 beg ten thousand pardons. I have the consolation, however, 
 of remembering that Mrs. Scott kept in company all or most 
 of the time, which she certainly could not have done, had I 
 been very rude. I remember, too, of the filial injunction you 
 gave at parting, cautioning me against being ensnared by the 
 loose women in town. I am sure I had not reason enough left 
 at that time to express either the half of my gratitude for the 
 kind hint, or the utter abhorrence I inherit at those seminaries 
 of lewdness. 
 
 " You once promised me your best advice in the first lawsuit 
 in which I had the particular happiness of being engaged. I 
 am now going to ask it seriously in an affair, in which, I am 
 sure, we will both take as much pleasure. It is this : I have 
 as many songs beside me, which are certainly the worst of 
 my productions, as will make about one hundred pages close 
 printed, and about two hundred, printed as the Minstrelsy is. 
 Now, although I will not proceed without your consent and 
 idvice, yet I would have you to understand that I expect it 
 
THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD 1803. 133 
 
 And have the scheme much at heart at present. The first 
 thing that suggested it, was their extraordinary repute in Et- 
 trick and its neighbourhood, and being everlastingly plagued 
 with writing copies, and promising scores which I never meant 
 to perform. As my last pamphlet was never known, save to a 
 few friends, I wish your advice what pieces of it are worth 
 preserving. The Pastoral I am resolved to insert, as I am 
 k Sandy Tod. As to my manuscripts, they are endless ; and 
 as I doubt you will disapprove of publishing them wholesale, 
 and letting the good help off the bad, I think you must trust 
 to my discretion in the selection of a few. I wish likewise to 
 know if you think a graven image on the first leaf is any rec 
 ommendation ; and if we might front the songs with a letter 
 to you, giving an impartial account of my manner of life and 
 education, and, which if you pleased to transcribe, putting He 
 for I. Again, there is no publishing a book without a patron, 
 and I have one or two in my eye, and of which I will, with my 
 wonted assurance to you, give you the most free choice. The 
 first is Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Sheriff-depute of Ettrick 
 Forest, which, if permitted, I will address you in a dedication 
 singular enough. The next is Lady Dalkeith, which, if you 
 approved of, you must become the Editor yourself; and I shall 
 give you my word for it, that neither word nor sentiment in it 
 shall offend the most delicate ear. You will not be in the 
 least jealous, if, alongst with my services to you, I present my 
 kindest compliments to the sweet little lady whom you call 
 Charlotte. As for Camp and Walter (I beg pardon for this 
 pre-eminence), they will not mind them if I should exhaust 
 my eloquence in compliments. Believe me, Dear Walter, 
 vour most devoted servant, JAMES HOGG." 
 
 The reader will, I doubt not, be particularly amused 
 with one of the suggestions in this letter ; namely, that 
 Scott should transcribe the Shepherd s narrative in fore 
 of his life and education, and merely putting " He " for 
 I," adopt it as his own composition. James, however. 
 
134 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 would have had no hesitation about offering a similar sug 
 gestion either to Scott, or Wordsworth, or Byron, at any 
 period of their renown. To say nothing about modesty, 
 his notions of literary honesty were always exceedingly 
 loose ; but, at the same time, we must take into account 
 his peculiar notions, or rather no notions, as to the proper 
 limits of a joke. 
 
 Literature, like misery, makes men acquainted with 
 strange bed-fellows. Let us return from the worthy 
 Shepherd of Ettrick to the courtly wit and scholar of 
 Sunninghill. In the last quoted of his letters, he ex 
 presses his fear that Scott s military avocations might 
 cause him to publish the Tristrem unaccompanied by his 
 " Essay on the History of Scottish Poetry." It is need 
 less to add that no such Essay ever was completed ; but 
 I have heard Scott say that his plan had been to begin 
 with the age of Thomas of Ercildoune, and bring the 
 subject down to his own, illustrating each stage of his 
 progress by a specimen of verse imitating every great 
 master s style, as he had done that of the original Sir 
 Tristrem in his "Conclusion" Such a series of pieces 
 from his hand would have been invaluable, merely as 
 bringing out in a clear manner the gradual divarication 
 of the two great dialects of the English tongue ; but see 
 ing by his " Verses on a Poacher," written many years 
 after this, in professed imitation of Crabbe, with what 
 happy art he could pour the poetry of his own mind into 
 the mould of another artist, it is impossible to doubt that 
 we have lost better things than antiquarian illumination 
 by the non-completion of a design in which he should 
 have embraced successively the tone and measure of 
 Douglas, Dunbar, Lindesay, Montgomerie, Hamilton 
 Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns. 
 
SIR TRISTREM 1804. 135 
 
 The Tristrem was now far advanced at press. He saya 
 to Ellis, on the 19th March 1804 "As I had a world 
 of things to say to you, I have been culpably, but most 
 naturally silent. When you turn a bottle with its head 
 downmost, you must have remarked that the extreme im 
 patience of the contents to get out all at once greatly im 
 pedes their getting out at all. I have, however, been 
 forming the resolution of sending a grand packet with Sir 
 Tristrem, who will kiss your hands in about a fortnight. 
 I intend uncastrated copies for you, Heber, and Mr. 
 Douce, who, I am willing to hope, will accept this mark 
 of my great respect and warm remembrance of his kind 
 ness while in London. Pray send me without delay the 
 passage referring to Thomas in the French k Hornchild. 
 Far from being daunted with the position of the enemy, 
 I am resolved to carry it at the point of the bayonet, and, 
 like an able general, to attack where it would be difficult 
 to defend. Without metaphor or parable, I am deter 
 mined, not only that my Tomas shall be the author of 
 Tristrem, but that he shall be the author of Hornchild 
 also. I must, however, read over the romance, before I 
 can make my arrangements. Holding, with Bitson, that 
 the copy in his collection is translated from the French, I 
 do not see why we should not suppose that the French 
 had been originally a version from our Thomas. The date 
 does not greatly frighten me, as I have extended Thomas 
 of Ercildoune s life to the three-score and ten years of the 
 Psalmist, and consequently removed back the date of 
 .Sir Tristrem to 1250. The French translation might 
 be written for that matter within a few days after Thom 
 as s work was completed and I can allow a few years. 
 He lived on the Border, already possessed by Norman 
 families, and in the vicinity of Northumberland, where 
 
13 G LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 there were many more. Do you think the minstrels of 
 the Percies, the Vescies, the Morells, the Grais, and the 
 De Vaux, were not acquainted with honest Thomas, their 
 next door neighbour, who was a poet, and wrote excellent 
 tales and, moreover, a laird, and gave, I dare be sworn> 
 good dinners ? and would they not anxiously translate, 
 for the amusement of their masters, a story like Horn- 
 child, so intimately connected with the lands in which 
 they had settled ? And do you not think, from the whole 
 structure of Hornchild, however often translated and re 
 translated, that it must have been originally of northern 
 extraction ? I have not time to tell you certain suspicions 
 I entertain that Mr. Douce s^ fragments are the work of 
 one Raoull de Beauvais, who flourished about the middle 
 of the thirteenth century, and for whose accommodation 
 principally I have made Thomas, to use a military phrase, 
 dress backwards for ten years." 
 
 All this playful language is exquisitely characteristic 
 of Scott s indomitable adherence to his own views. But 
 his making Thomas dress backwards and resolving 
 that, if necessary, he shall be the author of Hornchild, as 
 well as Sir Tristrem may perhaps remind the reader 
 of Don Quixote s method of repairing the headpiece 
 which, as originally constructed, one blow had sufficed to 
 demolish : " Not altogether approving of his having 
 broken it to pieces with so much ease, to secure himself 
 from the like danger for the future, he made it over again, 
 fencing it with small bars of iron within, in such a man 
 ner, that he rested satisfied of its strength and, without 
 caring to make a fresh experiment on it, he approved and 
 looked upon it as a most excellent helmet" 
 
 Ellis having made some observations on Scott s article 
 / aon Godwin s Life of Chaucer, which implied a notion 
 
SIR TRISTREM 1804. 137 
 
 that he had formed a regular connexion with the Edin 
 burgh Review, he in the same letter says "I quite 
 agree with you as to the general conduct of the Review, 
 which savours more of a wish to display than to instruct ; 
 but as essays, many of the articles are invaluable, and 
 the principal conductor is a man of very acute and uni 
 versal talent. I am not regularly connected with the 
 work, nor have I either inclination or talents to use the 
 critical scalping knife, unless as in the case of Godwin, 
 where flesh and blood succumbed under the temptation. 
 I don t know if you have looked into his tomes, of which 
 a whole edition has vanished I was at a loss to know 
 how, till I conjectured that, as the heaviest materials to 
 be come at, they have been sent on the secret expedition, 
 planned by Mr. Phillips and adopted by our sapient Gov 
 ernment, for blocking up the mouth of our enemy s har 
 bours. They should have had my free consent to take 
 Phillips and Godwin, and all our other lumber, literary 
 and political, for the same beneficial purpose. But in 
 general, I think it ungentlemanly to wound any person s 
 feelings through an anonymous publication, unless where 
 conceit or false doctrine strongly calls for reprobation. 
 Where praise can be conscientiously mingled in a larger 
 proportion than blame, there is always some amusement 
 in throwing together our ideas upon the works of our fel 
 low-labourers, and no injustice in publishing them. Or 
 such occasions, and in our way, I may possibly, once or 
 twice a-year, furnish my critical friends with an article." 
 " Sir Tristrem " was at length published on the 2d of 
 May 1804, by Constable, who, however, expected so little 
 popularity for the work that the edition consisted only of 
 150 copies. These were sold at a high price (two guin 
 as), otherwise they would not have been enough to covei 
 
138 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the expenses of paper and printing. Mr. Ellis, and Scott s 
 other antiquarian friends, were much dissatisfied with 
 these arrangements ; but I doubt not that Constable was 
 a better judge than any of them. The work, however, 
 partook in due time of the favour attending its editor s 
 name. In 1806, 750 copies were called for ; and 1000 
 in 1811. After that time Sir Tristrem was included in 
 the collective editions of Scott s poetry ; but he had never 
 parted with the copyright, merely allowing his general 
 publishers to insert it among his other works, whenever 
 they chose to do so, as a matter of courtesy. It was not 
 a performance from which he had ever anticipated any 
 pecuniary profit, but it maintained at least, if it did not 
 raise, his reputation in the circle of his fellow-antiqua 
 ries ; and his own Conclusion, in the manner of the origi 
 nal romance must always be admired as a remarkable 
 specimen of skill and dexterity. 
 
 As to the arguments of the Introduction, I shall not in 
 this place attempt any discussion.* Whether the story 
 of Tristrem was first told in Welsh, Armorican, French, 
 or English verse, there can : I think, be no doubt that it 
 had been told in verse, with such success as to obtain very 
 general renown, by Thomas of Ercildoune, and that the 
 copy edited by Scott was either the composition of one 
 who had heard the old Rhymer recite his lay, or the iden 
 tical lay itself. The introduction of Thomas s name in 
 the third person, as not the author, but the author s au 
 thority, appears to have had a great share in convincing 
 Scott that the Auchinleck MS. contained not the orig- 
 
 * The critical reader will find all the learning on the subject brought 
 together with much ability in the Preface to " The Poetical Romances 
 of Tristan, in French, in Anglo-Norman, and in Greek, composed in 
 the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Edited by Franc/sque Mi 
 the!, 1 2 vols. London, 1835. 
 
SIR TRISTREM 1804. 139 
 
 mal, but the copy of an English admirer and contempo 
 rary. This point seems to have been rendered more 
 doubtful by some quotations in the recent edition of War- 
 ton s History of English Poetry ; but the argument de 
 rived from the enthusiastic exclamation " God help Sir 
 Tristrem the knight he fought for England," still 
 remains ; and stronger perhaps even than that, in the 
 opinion of modern philologists, is the total absence of 
 any Scottish or even Northumbrian peculiarities in the 
 diction. 
 
 All this controversy may be waived here. Scott s 
 object and delight was to revive the fame of the Rhymer, 
 whose traditional history he had listened to while yet an 
 infant among the crags of Smailholme. He had already 
 celebrated him in a noble ballad ; * he now devoted a 
 volume to elucidate a fragment supposed to be substan 
 tially his work ; and we shall find that thirty years after, 
 when the lamp of his own genius was all but spent, it 
 could still revive and throw out at least some glimmer 
 ings of its original brightness at the name of Thomas 
 of Ercildoune.t 
 
 See Poetical Works (Edition 1841), pp. 572-581. 
 T Compare the Fifth Chapter of Castle Dangerous. Waverley NOT- 
 ik 
 
140 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Removal to Ashestiel Death of Captain Robert Scott 
 Mungo Park Completion and Publication of the Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel. 
 
 1804-1805. 
 
 IT has been mentioned, that in the course of the pre 
 ceding summer, the Lord-Lieutenant of Selkirkshire com 
 plained of Scott s military zeal as interfering sometimes 
 with the discharge of his shrieval functions, and took 
 occasion to remind him, that the law, requiring every 
 Sheriff to reside at least four months in the year within 
 his own jurisdiction, had not hitherto been complied with. 
 It appears that Scott received this communication with 
 some displeasure, being conscious that no duty of any im 
 portance had ever been neglected by him ; well knowing 
 that the law of residence was not enforced in the cases of 
 ttany of his brother sheriffs ; and, in fact, ascribing his 
 Lord-Lieutenant s complaint to nothing but a certain 
 nervous fidget as to all points of form, for which that 
 respectable nobleman was notorious, as well became, 
 perhaps, an old High Commissioner to the General As 
 sembly of the Kirk. Scott, however, must have been 
 found so clearly in the wrong, had the case been sub 
 mitted to the Secretary of State, and Lord Napier con 
 ducted the correspondence with such courtesy, never 
 failing to allege as a chief argument the pleasure which 
 
ASHESTIEL 1804. 141 
 
 it would afford himself and the other gentlemen of Sel 
 kirkshire to have more of their Sheriff s society, that, 
 while it would have been highly imprudent to persist, 
 there could be no mortification in yielding. He flattered 
 himself that his active habits would enable him to main 
 tain his connexion with the Edinburgh Cavalry as usual ; 
 and, perhaps, he also flattered himself, that residing for 
 the summer in Selkirkshire would not interfere more 
 seriously with his business as a barrister, than the oc 
 cupation of the cottage at Lasswade had hitherto done. 
 While he was seeking about, accordingly, for some 
 " lodge in the Forest," his kinsman of Harden suggested 
 that the tower of Auld Wat might be refitted, so as to 
 serve his purpose; and he received the proposal with 
 enthusiastic delight. On a more careful inspection of the 
 localities, however, he became sensible that he would be 
 practically at a greater distance from county business of 
 all kinds at Harden, than if he were to continue at Lass- 
 wade. Just at this time, the house of Ashestiel, situated 
 on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from 
 Selkirk, became vacant by the death of its proprietor, 
 Colonel Russell, who had married a sister of Scott s 
 mother, and the consequent dispersion of the family. 
 The young laird of Ashestiel, his cousin, was then in 
 India ; and the Sheriff took a lease of the house and 
 grounds, with a small farm adjoining. On the 4th May, 
 two days after the Tristrem had been published, he says 
 to Ellis "I have been engaged in travelling backwards 
 and forwards to Selkirkshire upon little pieces of business, 
 just important enough to prevent my doing anything to 
 purpose. One great matter, however, I have achieved, 
 which is, procuring myself a place of residence, which 
 will save me these teasing migrations in future, so that 
 
142 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 though I part with my sweet little cottage 011 the banks 
 of the Esk, you will find me * this summer in the very 
 centre of the ancient Reged, in a decent farm-house over 
 hanging the Tweed, and situated in a wild pastoral coun 
 try" And again, on the 19th, he thus apologizes for not 
 having answered a letter of the 10th : " For more than 
 a month my head was fairly tenanted by ideas, which, 
 though strictly pastoral and rural, were neither literary 
 nor poetical. Long sheep and short sheep, and tups and 
 gimmjrs, and hogs and dinmonts, had made a perfect 
 sheepfold of my understanding, which is hardly yet 
 cleared of them.* I hope Mrs. Ellis will clap a bridle 
 on her imagination. Ettrick Forest boasts finely shaped 
 hills and clear romantic streams ; but, alas ! they are 
 bare, to wildness, and denuded of the beautiful natural 
 
 * Describing his meeting with Scott in the summer of 1801, James 
 Hogg- says " During the sociality of the evening, the discourse ran 
 eery much on the different breeds of sheep, that curse of the commu 
 nity of Ettrick Forest. The original black-faced Forest breed being 
 always called the short sheep, and the Cheviot breed the long sheep, the 
 lisputes at that period ran very high about the practicable profits of 
 jach. Mr. Scott, who had come into that remote district to preserve 
 what fragments remained of its legendary lore, was rather bored with 
 Everlasting questions of the long and the short sheep. So at length, 
 putting on his most serious, calculating face, he turned to Mr. Waller 
 Bryden, 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. Bryden, who, in 
 the simplicity of his heart, neither perceived the quiz nor the reproof, 
 fell to answer with great sincerity. It s the woo [wool], sir it s the 
 woo that makes the difference. The lang sheep ha e the short woo , 
 and the short sheep ha e the lang thing, and these are just kind o 
 names we gi e them, like. Mr. Scott could not preserve his grave 
 ace of strict calculation: it went gradually awry, and a hearty 
 yuffaw" [i. e. horselaugh] "followed. When I saw the very same 
 words repeated near the beginning of the Black Dwarf, how could 
 I be mistaken of the author?" Autobiography prefixed to HOGG I 
 AUrive Tales. 
 
ASHEST1EL 1804. 14fl 
 
 wood with which they were formerly shaded. It is rnoi 
 tifying to see that, though wherever the sheep are ex 
 cluded, the copse has immediately sprung up in abun 
 dance, so that enclosures only are wanting to restore thf 
 wood wherever it might be useful or ornamental, yef 
 hardly a proprietor has attempted to give it fair play for 
 a resurrection. . . . You see we reckon positively on yoi 
 the more because our arch-critic Jeffrey tells me thai 
 he met you in London, and found you still inclined for t 
 northern trip. All our wise men in the north are re 
 joiced at the prospect of seeing George Ellis. If you 
 delay your journey till July, I shall then be free of the 
 Courts of Law, and will meet you upon the Border, af 
 whatever side you enter." 
 
 The business part of these letters refers to Scott s 
 brother Daniel, who, as he expresses it, " having been 
 bred to the mercantile line, had been obliged by some un 
 toward circumstances, particularly an imprudent connex 
 ion with an artful woman, to leave Edinburgh for Liv 
 erpool, and now to be casting his eyes towards Jamaica." 
 Scott requests Ellis to help him if he can, by introduc 
 ing him to some of his own friends or agents in that 
 island ; and Ellis furnishes him accordingly with letters 
 to Mr. Blackburne, a friend and brother proprietor, who 
 appears to have paid Daniel Scott every possible atten 
 tion, and soon provided him with suitable employment 
 on a healthy part of his estates. But the same low 
 tastes and habits which had reduced the unfortunate 
 ^oung man to the necessity of expatriating himself, re* 
 curred after a brief season of penitence and order, and 
 ixmtinued until he had accumulated great affliction upon 
 all his family. 
 
 On the 10th of June 1804, died, at his seat of Rose- 
 
144 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 bank, Captain Robert Scott, the affectionate uncle whose 
 name has often occurred in this narrative.* " He was," 
 says his nephew to Ellis, on the 18th, " a man of univer 
 sal benevolence and great kindness towards his friends, 
 and to me individually. His manners were so much 
 tinged with the habits of celibacy as to render them 
 peculiar, though by no means unpleasingly so, and his 
 profession (that of a seaman) gave a high colouring to 
 the whole. The loss is one which, though the course 
 of nature led me to expect it, did not take place at 
 last without considerable pain to my feelings. The ar 
 rangement of his affairs, and the distribution of his small 
 fortune among his relations, will devolve in a great meas 
 ure upon me. He has distinguished me by leaving me 
 a beautiful little villa on the banks of the Tweed, with 
 every possible convenience annexed to it, and about thir 
 ty acres of the finest land in Scotland. Notwithstanding, 
 however, the temptation that this bequest offers, I con 
 tinue to pursue my Reged plan, and expect to be settled 
 at Ashestiel in the course of a month. Rosebank is sit 
 uated so near the village of Kelso as hardly to be suffi 
 ciently a country residence ; besides, it is hemmed in by 
 hedges and ditches, not to mention Dukes and Lady Dow 
 agers, which are bad things for little people. It is ex 
 pected to sell to great advantage. I shall buy a mountain 
 farm with the purchase-money, and be quite the Laird of 
 the Cairn and the Scaur." 
 
 Scott sold Rosebank in the course of the year for 
 5000 ; his share (being a ninth) of his uncle s other 
 
 * In the obituary of the Scots Magazine for this month I find : 
 Universally regretted, Captain Robert Scott of Rosebank, a gentle 
 man whose life afforded an uniform example of unostentatious charity 
 vid extensive benevolence." 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS. 145 
 
 property, amounted, I believe, to about 500 ; and he 
 had besides a legacy of 100 in his quality of trustee. 
 This bequest made an important change in his pecuniary 
 position, and influenced accordingly the arrangements of 
 his future life. Independently of practice at the Bar, 
 and of literary profits, he was now, with his little pat 
 rimony, his Sheriffship, and about 200 per annum aris 
 ing from the stock ultimately settled on his wife, in 
 possession of a fixed revenue of nearly, if not quite, 
 1000 a-year. 
 
 On the 1st of August he writes 10 Ellis from Ashestiel 
 " Having had only about a hundred and fifty things 
 to do, I have scarcely done anything, and yet could not 
 give myself leave to suppose that I had leisure to write 
 letters. 1st, I had this farm-house to furnish from sales, 
 from brokers shops, and from all manner of hospitals 
 for incurable furniture. 2dly, I had to let my cottage 
 on the banks of the Esk. 3dfy, I had to arrange mat 
 ters for the sale of Rosebank. 4thly, I had to go into 
 parters with our cavalry, which made a very idle fort 
 night in the midst of all this business. Last of all, I 
 had to superintend a removal, or what we call a flitting, 
 which, of all bores under the cope of Heaven, is bore 
 the most tremendous. After all these storms, we are 
 now most comfortably settled, and have only to regret 
 deeply our disappointment at finding your northern 
 march blown up. We had been projecting about twen 
 ty expeditions, and were pleasing ourselves at Mrs. 
 Ellis s expected surprise on finding herself so totally 
 built in by mountains as I am at the present writing 
 hereof. We are seven miles from kirk and market, 
 We rectify the last inconvenience by killing our own 
 \nutton and poultry ; and as to the former, finding there 
 VOL. n. 10 
 
146 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 was some chance of my family turning pagans, \ liave 
 adopted the goodly practice of reading prayers every 
 Sunday, to the great edification of my household. Think 
 of this, you that have the happiness to be within two 
 steps of the church, and commiserate those who dwell 
 in the wilderness. I showed Charlotte yesterday the 
 Oatrail, and told her that to inspect that venerable mon 
 ument was one main object of your intended journey to 
 Scotland. She is of opinion that ditches must be more 
 scarce in the neighbourhood of Windsor Forest than she 
 had hitherto had the least idea of." 
 
 Ashestiel will be visited by many for his sake, as long 
 as Waverley and Marmion are remembered. A more 
 beautiful situation for the residence of a poet could not 
 be conceived. The house was then a small one, but, 
 compared with the cottage at Lasswade, its accommoda 
 tions were amply sufficient. You approached it through 
 in old-fashioned garden, with holly hedges, and broad, 
 green, terrace walks. On one side, close under the win 
 dows, is a deep ravine, clothed with venerable trees, down 
 which a mountain rivulet is heard, more than seen, in its 
 progress to the Tweed. The river itself is separated 
 from the high bank on which the house stands only by 
 a narrow meadow of the richest verdure. Opposite, and 
 all around, are the green hills. The valley there is nar 
 row, and the aspect in every direction is that of perfect 
 pastoral repose. The heights immediately behind are 
 thDse which divide the Tweed from the Yarrow ; and 
 the latter celebrated stream lies within an easy ride, in 
 the course of which the traveller passes through a va 
 riety of the finest mountain scenery in the south of 
 Scotland. No town is within seven miles but Selkirk, 
 tfhich was then still smaller and quieter than it is now 
 
ASHESTIEL JAMES HOGG. 147 
 
 there was hardly even a gentleman s family within \ isit- 
 ing distance, except at Yair, a few miles lower on the 
 Tweed, the ancient seat of the Pringles of Whytbank, 
 and at Bowhill, between the Yarrow and Ettrick, where 
 the Earl of Dalkeith used occasionally to inhabit a small 
 shooting-lodge, which has since grown into a magnificent 
 ducal residence. The country all around, with here and 
 there an insignificant exception, belongs to the Buccleuch 
 estate ; so that, whichever way he chose to turn, the bard 
 of the clan had ample room and verge enough, and all 
 appliances to boot, for every variety of field sport that 
 might happen to please his fancy ; and being then in the 
 prime vigour of manhood, he was not slow to profit by 
 these advantages. Meantime, the concerns of his own 
 little farm, and the care of his absent relation s woods, 
 gave him healthful occupation in the intervals of the 
 chase ; and he had long, solitary evenings for the unin 
 terrupted exercise of his pen ; perhaps, on the whole, 
 better opportunities of study than he had ever enjoyed 
 before, or was to meet with elsewhere in later days. 
 
 When he first examined Ashestiel, with a view to 
 being his cousin s tenant, he thought of taking home 
 James Hogg to superintend the sheep-farm, and keep 
 watch over the house also during the winter. I am 
 not able to tell exactly in what manner this proposal 
 fell to the ground. In January 1804, the Shepherd 
 writes to him: "I have no intention of waiting for 
 so distant a prospect as that of being manager of your 
 farm, though I have no doubt of our joint endeavour 
 proving successful, nor yet of your willingness to em 
 ploy me in that capacity. His grace the Duke of Buc- 
 xleuch hath at present a farm vacant in Eskdale, and I 
 have been importuned by friends to get a letter from 
 
148 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 you and apply for it. You can hardly be conscious 
 what importance your protection hath given me already, 
 not only in mine own eyes, but even in those of othei s. 
 You might write to him, or to any of the family you are 
 best acquainted with, stating that such and such a char 
 acter was about leaving his native country for want of 
 a residence in the farming line." I am very doubtful 
 Sf Scott however willing to encounter the risk of em 
 ploying Hogg as his own grieve or bailiff would have 
 felt himself justified at this, or indeed at any time, in 
 recommending him as the tenant of a considerable farm 
 on the Duke of Buccleuch s estate. But I am also quite 
 at a loss to comprehend how Hogg should have conceived 
 it possible, at this period, when he certainly had no cap* 
 ital whatever, that the Duke s Chamberlain should agree 
 to accept him for a tenant, on any attestation, however 
 strong, as to the excellence of his character and inten 
 tions. Be that as it may, if Scott made the application 
 which the Shepherd suggested, it failed. So did a ne 
 gotiation which he certainly did enter upon about the 
 same time with the late Earl of Caernarvon (then Lord 
 Porchester), through that nobleman s aunt, Mrs. Scott of 
 Harden, with the view of obtaining for Hogg the situa 
 tion of bailiff on one of his Lordship s estates in the west 
 of England ; and such, I believe, was the result of sev 
 eral other attempts of the same kind with landed propri 
 etors nearer home. Perhaps the Shepherd had already 
 set his heart so much on taking rank as a farmer in hia 
 own district, that he witnessed the failure of any such ne 
 gotiations with indifference. As regards the management 
 rf Ashestiel, I find no trace of that proposal having ever 
 been renewed. 
 
 In truth, Scott had hardly been a week in possession 
 
MUNGO PARK 1804 1-49 
 
 of his new domains, before he made acquaintance with a 
 character much better suited to his purpose than James 
 Hogg ever could have been. I mean honest Thomas 
 Purdie, his faithful servant his affectionately devoted 
 humble friend from this time until death parted them. 
 Tom was first brought before him, in his capacity of 
 Sheriff, on a charge of poaching, when the poor fellow 
 gave such a touching account of his circumstances, 
 a wife, and I know not how many children, depending 
 on his exertions work scarce and grouse abundant, 
 and all this with a mixture of odd sly humour, that 
 the Sheriff s heart was moved. Tom escaped the pen 
 alty of the law was taken into employment as shep 
 herd, and showed such zeal, activity, and shrewdness in 
 that capacity, that Scott never had any occasion to re 
 pent of the step he soon afterwards took, in promoting 
 him to the position which had been originally offered to 
 James Hogg. 
 
 It was also about the same time that he took into his 
 service as coachman Peter Mathieson, brother-in-law to 
 Thomas Purdie, another faithful servant, who never af 
 terwards left him, and still survives his kind master. 
 Scott s awkward management of the little phaeton had 
 exposed his wife to more than one perilous overturn, 
 before he agreed to set up a close carriage, and call in the 
 assistance of this steady charioteer. 
 
 During this autumn Scott formed the personal acquaint 
 ance of Mungo Park, the celebrated victim of African 
 discovery. On his return from his first expedition, Park 
 endeavoured to establish himself as a medical practitioner 
 in the town of Ha wick, but the drudgeries of that calling 
 in such a district soon exhausted his ardent temper, and 
 he was now living in seclusion in his native cottage at 
 
150 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Fowlsheils on the Yarrow, nearly opposite Newark Cas 
 tie. His brother, Archibald Park (then tenant of a 
 large farm on the Buccleuch estate), a man remarkable 
 for strength both of mind and body, introduced the trav 
 eller to the Sheriff. They soon became much attached 
 to each other ; and Scott supplied some interesting an 
 ecdotes of their brief intercourse, to Mr. Wishaw, the 
 editor of Park s posthumous Journal, with which I shall 
 blend a fev> minor circumstances, gathered from him in 
 conversation long afterwards. " On one occasion," he 
 says, " the traveller communicated to him some very 
 remarkable adventures which had befallen him in Af 
 rica, but which he had not recorded in his book." On 
 Scott s asking the cause of this silence, Mungo answered, 
 " That in all cases where he had information to commu 
 nicate, which he thought of importance to the public, 
 he had stated the facts boldly, leaving it to his readers 
 to give such credit to his statements as they might ap 
 pear justly to deserve ; but that he would not shock their 
 faith, or render his travels more marvellous, by introduc 
 ing circumstances, which, however true, were of little 
 or no moment, as they related solely to his own personal 
 adventures and escapes." This reply struck Scott as 
 highly characteristic of the man; and though strongly 
 tempted to set down some of these marvels for Mr. 
 Wishaw s use, he on reflection abstained from doing so, 
 holding it unfair to record what the adventurer had de 
 liberately chosen to suppress hi his own narrative. He 
 confirms the account given by Park s biographer, of his 
 cold and reserved manners to strangers ; and in partic 
 ular, of his disgust with the indirect questions which curi 
 ous visitors would often put to him upon the subject of 
 his travels. " This practice," said Mungo, " exposes ma 
 
MUNGO PARK 1804. 151 
 
 to two risks ; either that I may not understand the ques 
 tions meant to be put, or that my answers to them may 
 be misconstrued ; " and he contrasted such conduct with 
 the frankness of Scott s revered friend, Dr. Adam Fer- 
 gusson, who, the very first day the traveller dined with 
 him at Hallyards, spread a large map of Africa on the 
 table, and made him trace out his progress thereupon, 
 inch by inch, questioning him minutely as to every step 
 he had taken. " Here, however," says Scott, " Dr. F. 
 was using a privilege to which he was well entitled by 
 his venerable age and high literary character, but which 
 could not have been exercised with propriety by any 
 common stranger." 
 
 Calling one day at Fowlsheils, and not finding Park 
 at home, Scott walked in search of him along the banks 
 of the Yarrow, which in that neighbourhood passes over 
 various ledges of rock, forming deep pools and eddies 
 between them. Presently he discovered his friend stand 
 ing alone on the bank, plunging one stone after another 
 into the water, and watching anxiously the bubbles as 
 they rose to the surface. " This," said Scott, " appears 
 but an idle amusement for one who has seen so much 
 stirring adventure." " Not so idle, perhaps, as you sup 
 pose," answered Mungo : " This was the manner in 
 which I used to ascertain the depth of a river in Africa 
 before I ventured to cross it judging whether the at 
 tempt would be safe, by the time the bubbles of air took 
 to ascend." At this time Park s intention of a second 
 expedition had never been revealed to Scott ; but he 
 instantly formed the opinion that these experiments on 
 Yarrow were connected with some such purpose. 
 
 His thoughts had always continued to be haunted with 
 Africa. He told Scott, that whenever he awoke sud- 
 
152 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 denly in the night, owing to a nervous disorder with 
 which he was troubled, he fancied himself still a pris 
 oner in the tent of Ali ; but when the poet expressed 
 some surprise that he should design again to revisit 
 those scenes, he answered, that he would rather brave 
 Africa and all its horrors, than wear out his life in long 
 and toilsome rides over the hills of Scotland, for which 
 the remuneration was hardly enough to keep soul and 
 body together. 
 
 Towards the end of the autumn, when about to quit 
 his country for the last time, Park paid Scott a farewell 
 visit, and slept at Ashestiel. Next morning his host 
 accompanied him homewards over the wild chain of 
 hills between the Tweed and the Yarrow. Park talked 
 much of his new scheme, and mentioned his determina 
 tion to tell his family that he had some business for a day 
 or two in Edinburgh, and send them his blessing from 
 thence, without returning to take leave. He had mar 
 ried, not long before, a pretty and amiable woman ; and 
 when they reached the Williamhope ridge, " the autum 
 nal mist floating heavily and slowly down the valley of 
 the Yarrow," presented to Scott s imagination " a striking 
 emblem of the troubled and uncertain prospect which his 
 undertaking afforded." He remained, however, unshaken, 
 and at length they reached the spot at which they had 
 agreed to separate. A small ditch divided the moor from 
 the road, and, in going over it, Park s horse stumbled, and 
 nearly fell. " I am afraid, Mungo," said the Sheriff, 
 " that is a bad omen." To which he answered, smiling, 
 "Freits (omens) follow those who look to them." With 
 this expression Muugo struck the spurs into his horse, 
 and Scott never saw him again. His parting proverb, 
 by the way, was probably suggested by one of the Border 
 
LAI OF THE LAST MINS1HEL. 153 
 
 ballads, in which species of lore he was almost as great a 
 proficient as the Sheriff himself ; for we read in " Edom 
 o Gordon," - 
 
 " Them look to freits, my master dear, 
 Then freits will follow them." 
 
 I must not omit that George Scott, the unfortunate 
 companion of Park s second journey, was the son of a 
 tenant on the Buccleuch estate, whose skill in drawing 
 having casually attracted the Sheriff s attention, he was 
 recommended by him to the protection of the family, and 
 by this means established in a respectable situation in the 
 Ordnance department of the Tower of 1 jondon ; but the 
 stories of his old acquaintance Mungo Park s discoveries, 
 had made such an impression on his fancy, that nothing 
 could prevent his accompanying him on the fatal expedi 
 tion of 1805. 
 
 The brother of Mungo Park remained in Scott s neigh 
 bourhood for some years, and was frequently his compan 
 ion in his mountain rides. Though a man of the most 
 dauntless temperament, he was often alarmed at Scott s 
 reckless horsemanship. " The de il s in ye, Sherra/ he 
 would say ; " ye ll never halt till they bring you hame 
 with your feet foremost." He rose greatly in favour, in 
 consequence of the gallantry with which he assisted the 
 Sheriff in seizing a gipsy, accused of murder, from amidst 
 a group of similar desperadoes, on whom they had come 
 unexpectedly in a desolate part of the country. 
 
 To return to The Lay of the Last Minstrel : Ellis, 
 understanding it to be now nearly ready for the press, 
 writes to Scott, urging him to set it forth with some en 
 graved illustrations if possible, after Flaxman, whose 
 splendid designs from Homer had shortly before made 
 their appearance. He answers, August 21 " I ohould 
 
154 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 have liked very much to have had appropriate embellish 
 merits. Indeed, we made some attempts of the kind, but 
 they did not succeed. I should fear Flaxman s genius is 
 too classic to stoop to body forth my Gothic Borderers. 
 "Would there not be some risk of their resembling the 
 antique of Homer s heroes, rather than the iron race of 
 Salvator? After all, perhaps, nothing is more difficult 
 than for a painter to adopt the author s ideas of an imag 
 inary character, especially when it is founded on tradi 
 tions to which the artist is a stranger. I should like at 
 least to be at his elbow when at work. I wish very 
 much I could have sent you the Lay while in MS., tc 
 have had the advantage of your opinion and corrections. 
 But Ballantyne galled my kibes so severely during an 
 unusual fit of activity, that I gave him the whole story in 
 
 a sort of pet both with him and with it I have 
 
 lighted upon a very good amanuensis for copying such 
 matters as the Lay le Frain, &c. He was sent down 
 here by some of the London booksellers in a half-starved 
 state, but begins to pick up a little. ... I am just about 
 to set out on a grand expedition of great importance to 
 my comfort in this place. You must know that Mr. 
 Plummer, my predecessor in this county, was a good an 
 tiquary, and left a valuable collection of books, which he 
 entailed with the estate, the first successors being three 
 of his sisters, at least as old and musty as any Caxton or 
 Wynkyn de Worde in his library. Now I must contrive 
 to coax those watchful dragons to give me admittance 
 into this garden of the Hesperides. I suppose they 
 trouble the volumes as little as the dragon did the golden 
 pippins ; but they may not be the more easily soothed on 
 that account. However, I set out on my quest like a 
 preux chwalier, taking care to leave Camp, for dirtying 
 
ASHESTIKL 1804. 155 
 
 the carpet, and to carry the greyhounds with me, -whose 
 appearance will indicate that hare soup may be forthcom 
 ing in due season. By the way, did I tell you that Fitz- 
 Camp is dead, and another on the stocks ? As our stu 
 pid postman might mistake jReged, address, as per date, 
 Ashestiel, Selkirk, by Berwick." 
 
 I believe the spinsters of Sunderland Hall proved very 
 generous dragons ; and Scott lived to see them succeeded 
 in the guardianship of Mr. Plummer s literary treasures 
 by an amiable young gentleman of his own name and 
 family. The half-starved amanuensis of this letter was 
 Henry Weber, a laborious German, of whom we shall 
 hear more hereafter. With regard to the pictorial em 
 bellishments contemplated for the first edition of the Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel, I believe the artist in whose de- 
 cigns the poet took the greatest interest was Mr. Mas- 
 querier, now of Brighton, with whom he corresponded at 
 some length on the subject ; but his distance from that 
 ingenious gentleman s residence was inconvenient, and 
 the booksellers were probably impatient of delay, when 
 the MS. was once known to be in the hands of the 
 printer. 
 
 There is a circumstance which must already have 
 struck such of my readers as knew the author in his lat 
 ter days, namely, the readiness with which he seems to 
 have communicated this poem, in its progress, not only 
 to his own familiar friends, but to new and casual ac 
 quaintances. We shall find him following the same 
 course with his Marmion but not, I think, with any 
 of his subsequent works. His determination to consult 
 the movements of his own mind alone in the conduct of 
 his pieces, was probably taken before he began the Lay ; 
 and he soon resolved to trust for the detection of minof 
 
156 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 inaccuracies to two persons only James Ballantyne and 
 William Erskine. The printer was himself a man of 
 considerable literary talents : his own style had the incu 
 rable faults of pomposity and affectation, but his eye for 
 more venial errors in the writings of others was quick, 
 and, though his personal address was apt to give a stran 
 ger the impression of insincerity, he was in reality an 
 honest man, and conveyed his mind on such matters with 
 equal candour and delicacy during the whole of Scott s 
 brilliant career. In the vast majority of instances he 
 found his friend acquiesce at once in the propriety of his 
 suggestions ; nay, there certainly were cases, though rare, 
 in which his advice to alter things of much more conse 
 quence than a word or a rhyme, was frankly tendered, 
 and on deliberation adopted by Scott. Mr. Erskine was 
 the referee whenever the poet hesitated about taking the 
 hints of the zealous typographer; and his refined taste 
 and gentle manners rendered his critical alliance highly 
 valuable. With two such faithful friends within his 
 reach, the author of the Lay might safely dispense 
 with sending his MS. to be revised even by George 
 Ellis. 
 
 Before he left Ashestiel for the winter session, the 
 printing of the poem had made considerable progress. 
 Ellis writes to him on the 10th November, complain- 
 mg of bad health, and adds " Tu quid agis ? I sup 
 pose you are still an inhabitant of Reged, and being 
 there, it is impossible that your head should have been 
 solely occupied by the ten thousand cares which you are 
 likely to have in common with other mortals, or even by 
 the Lay, which must have been long since completed, but 
 must have started during the summer new projects suf 
 ficient to employ the lives of half-a-dozen patriarchs, 
 
LITERARY FEUD. 157 
 
 Pray tell me all about it, for as the present state of my 
 frame precludes me from mucj activity, I want to enjoy 
 that of my friends." Scott answers from Edinburgh : 
 " I fear you fall too much into the sedentary habits inci 
 dent to a literary life, like my poor friend Plummer, who 
 used to say that a walk from the parlour to the garden 
 once a-day was sufficient exercise for any rational being, 
 and that no one but a fool or a fox-hunter would take 
 more. I wish you could have had a seat on Hassan s 
 tapestry, to have brought Mrs. Ellis and you soft and 
 fair to Ashestiel, where, with farm mutton at 4 p. M., 
 and goat s whey at 6 A. M., I think we could have re-es 
 tablished as much embonpoint as ought to satisfy a poeti 
 cal antiquary. As for my country amusements, I have 
 finished the Lay, with which and its accompanying notes 
 the press now groans ; but I have started nothing except 
 some scores of hares, many of which my gallant grey 
 hounds brought to the ground." 
 
 Ellis had also touched upon a literary feud then raging 
 between Scott s allies of the Edinburgh Review, and the 
 late Dr. Thomas Young, illustrious for inventive genius, 
 displayed equally in physical science and in philologi 
 cal literature. A northern critic, whoever he was, had 
 treated with merry contempt certain discoveries in natu 
 ral philosophy and the mechanical arts, more especially 
 that of the undulating theory of light, which ultimately 
 conferred on Young s name one of its highest distinctions. 
 " He had been for some time," says Ellis, " lecturer at 
 the Royal Institution ; and having determined to publish 
 his lectures, he had received from one of the booksellers 
 the offer of 1000 for the copyright. He was actually 
 preparing for the press, when the bookseller came to hin^ 
 and told him that the ridicule thrown by the Edinburgh 
 
158 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Review on some papers of his in the Philosophical Trans 
 actions, had so frightened the whole trade that he must 
 request to be released from his bargain. This conse 
 quence, it is true, could not have been foreseen by the 
 reviewer, who, however, appears to have written from 
 feelings of private animosity; and I still continue to 
 think, though I greatly admire the good taste of the lit 
 erary essays, and the perspicuity of the dissertations on 
 political economy, that an apparent want of candour is 
 too generally the character of a work which, from its 
 independence on the interests of booksellers, might have 
 been expected to be particularly free from this defect." 
 Scott rejoins "I am sorry for the very pitiful catas 
 trophe of Dr. Young s publication, because, although I am 
 altogether unacquainted with the merits of the contro 
 versy, one must always regret so very serious a conse 
 quence of a diatribe. The truth is, that these gentlemen 
 reviewers ought often to read over the fable of the boys 
 and frogs, and should also remember it is much more easy 
 to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose. 
 While on this subject, I kiss the rod of my critic in the 
 Edinburgh, on the subject of the price of Sir Tristrem ; 
 it was not my fault, however, that the public had it not 
 cheap enough, as I declined taking any copy-money, or 
 share in the profits ; and nothing, surely, was as reason 
 able a charge as I could make." 
 
 On the 30th December he resumes " The Lay is 
 now ready, and will probably be in Longman and Rees s 
 hands shortly after this comes to yours. I have charged 
 them to send you a copy by the first conveyance, and 
 shall be impatient to know whether you think the entire 
 piece corresponds to that which you have already seen, 
 I would also fain send a copy to Gifford, by way of intro 
 
LETTER FROM ELLIS. 159 
 
 duction. My reason is that I understand he is about to 
 publish an editiou of Beaumont and Fletcher, and I 
 think I could offer him the use of some miscellaneous 
 notes, which T made long since on the margin of their 
 works.* Besides, I have a good esteem of Mr. Gifford 
 as a manly English poet, very different from most of our 
 modern versifiers. We are so fond of Reged, that we 
 are just going to set out for our farm in the middle of a 
 snow-storm ; all that we have to comfort ourselves with 
 is, that our march has been ordered with great military 
 talent a detachment of minced pies and brandy having 
 preceded us. In case we are not buried in a snow- 
 wreath, our stay will be but short. Should that event 
 happen, we must wait the thaw." 
 
 Ellis, not having as yet received the new poem, an 
 swers, on the 9th January 1805 "I look daily and 
 with the greatest anxiety for the Last Minstrel of 
 which I still hope to see a future edition decorated with 
 designs a la Flaxman, as the Lays of Homer have 
 already been. I think you told me that Sir Tristrem 
 had not excited much sensation in Edinburgh. As I 
 have not been in London this age, I can t produce the 
 contrary testimony of our metropolis. But I can pro 
 duce one person, and that one worth a considerable num 
 ber, who speaks of it with rapture, and says, * I am only 
 sorry that Scott has not (and I am sure he has not) told 
 us the whole of his creed on the subject of Tomas, and 
 the other early Scotch Minstrels. I suppose he was 
 
 * It was his Massinger that Gifford had at this time in hand. His 
 Ben Jonson followed, and then his Ford. Some time later, he pro 
 jected editions, both of Beaumont and Fletcher, and of Shakspeare: 
 but, to the fijrievous misfortune of literature, died without having com 
 pleted either of them. We shall see presently what became of Scott s 
 Notes on Beaumont, and Fletcher. 
 
160 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 afraid of the critics, and determined to say very little 
 more than he was able to establish by incontestable 
 proofs. I feel infinitely obliged to him for what he has 
 told us, and I have no hesitation in saying that I con 
 sider Sir T. as by far the most interesting wcrk that has 
 as yet been published on the subject of our earliest poets 
 and, indeed, such a piece of literary antiquity as no one 
 could have, a priori, supposed to exist. This is Frere 
 our ex-ambassador for Spain, whom you would delight 
 to know, and who would delight to know you. It is re 
 markable that you were, I believe, the most ardent of all 
 the admirers of his old English version of the Saxon 
 Ode ; * and he is, per contra, the warmest panegyrist of 
 your Conclusion, which he can repeat by heart, and 
 affirms to be the very best imitation of old English at 
 present existing. I think I can trust you for having 
 concluded the Last Minstrel with as much spirit as it 
 was begun if you have been capable of anything un 
 worthy of your fame amidst the highest mountains of 
 Reged, there is an end of all inspiration." 
 
 Scott answers " Frere is so perfect a master of the 
 ancient style of composition, that I would rather have his 
 
 * " I have only met, in my researches into these matters," says Scott 
 in 1830, " with one poem, which, if it had heen produced as ancient, 
 could not have been detected on internal evidence. It is the War Song 
 upon the Victory at Brunnanburgh, translated from the Anglo-Saxon 
 into Anglo-Norman, by the Eight Hon. John Hookham Frere. See 
 Ellis s Specimens of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. p. 32. The accom 
 plished editor tell us, that this very singular poem was intended as an 
 imitation of the style and language of the fourteenth century, and was 
 written during the controversy occasioned by the poems attributed to 
 Rowley. Mr. Ellis adds The reader will probably hear with soma 
 surprise, that this singular instance of critical ingenuity was the com 
 position of an Eton schoolboy. " Essay on Imitations of the Ancient 
 Ballad, p. 19. 
 
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 161 
 
 suffrage than that of a whole synod of your vulgar anti 
 quaries. The more I think on our system of the origin 
 of Romance, the more simplicity and uniformity it seems 
 to possess ; and though I adopted it late and with hesita 
 tion, I believe I shall never see cause to abandon it. Yet 
 I am awar3 of the danger of attempting to prove, where 
 proof* are but scanty, and probable suppositions must be 
 placed in lieu of them. I think the Welsh antiquaries 
 have considerably injured their claims to confidence, by 
 attempting to detail very remote events with all the ac 
 curacy belonging to the facts of yesterday. You will 
 hear one of them describe you the cut of Llywarch Hen s 
 beard, or the whittle of Urien Reged, as if he had 
 trimmed the one, or cut his cheese with the other. 
 These high pretensions weaken greatly our belief in the 
 Welsh poems, which probably contain real treasures. 
 Tis a pity some sober-minded man will not take the 
 trouble to sift the wheat from the chaff, and give us a 
 good account of their MSS. and traditions. Pray, what 
 is become of the Mabinogion? It is a proverb, that 
 children and fools talk truth, and I am mistaken if even 
 the same valuable quality may not sometimes be ex 
 tracted out of the tales made to entertain both. I pre 
 sume, while we talk of childish and foolish tales, that 
 the Lay is already with you, although, in these points, 
 Long-manum est errare. Pray inquire for your copy." 
 
 In the first week of January 1805, "The Lay" was 
 published ; and its success at once decided that literature 
 should form the main business of Scott s life. 
 
 In his modest Introduction of 1830, he had himself 
 told us all that he thought the world would ever desire to 
 know of the origin and progress of this his first great 
 original production. The present Memoir, however haa 
 
 VOL. II. 11 
 
162 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 already included many minor particulars, for which 1 
 believe no student of literature will reproach the com 
 piler. I shall not mock the reader with many words as 
 to the merits of a poem which has now kept its place for 
 nearly a third of a century ; but one or two additional 
 remarks on the history of the composition may be par 
 doned. 
 
 It is curious to trace the small beginnings and gradual 
 development of his design. The lovely Countess of 
 Dalkeith hears a wild rude legend of Border diablerie, 
 and sportively asks him to make it the subject of a bal 
 lad. He had been already labouring in the elucidation 
 of the " quaint Inglis " ascribed to- an ancient seer and 
 bard of the same district, and perhaps completed his own 
 sequel, intending the whole to be included in the third 
 volume of the Minstrelsy. He assents to Lady Dal- 
 keith s request, and casts about for some new variety 
 of diction and rhyme, which might be adopted without 
 impropriety in a closing strain for the same collection. 
 Sir John Stoddart s casual recitation, a year or two be 
 fore, of Coleridge s unpublished Christabel, had fixed the 
 music of that noble fragment in his memory ; and it 
 occurs to him, that by throwing the story of Gilpin Hor- 
 ner into somewhat of a similar cadence, he might produce 
 such an echo of the later metrical romance, as would 
 serve to connect his Conclusion of the primitive Sir Tris- 
 trem with his imitations of the common popular ballad in 
 tho Gray Brother and Eve of St. John. A single scene 
 of feudal festivity in the hall of Branksome, disturbed by 
 some pranks of a nondescript goblin, was probably all 
 that he contemplated ; but his accidental confinement 
 in the midst of a volunteer camp gave him leisure to 
 meditate his theme to the sound of the bugle ; and 
 
LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 163 
 
 luddenly there flashes on him the idea of extending hia 
 simple outline, so as to embrace a vivid panorama of that 
 old Border life of war and tumult, and all earnest pas 
 sions, with which his researches on the " Minstrelsy " 
 had by degrees fed his imagination, until every the mi 
 nutest feature had been taken home and realized with 
 unconscious intenseness of sympathy ; so that he had won 
 for himself in the past, another world, hardly less com 
 plete or familiar,J;han the present. Erskine or Cranstoun 
 suggests that he would do well to divide the poem into 
 cantos, and prefix to each of them a motto explanatory 
 of the action, after the fashion of Spenser in the Faery 
 Queen. He pauses for a moment and the happiest 
 conception of the framework of a picturesque narrative 
 that ever occurred to any poet one that Homer might 
 have envied the creation of the ancient harper, starts 
 to life. By such steps did the " Lay of the Last Min 
 strel " grow out of the " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor 
 der." 
 
 A word more of its felicitous machinery. It was at 
 Bowhill that the Countess of Dalkeith requested a ballad 
 on Gilpin Homer. The ruined castle of Newark closely 
 adjoins that seat, and is now indeed included within its 
 pleasance. Newark had been the chosen residence of 
 the first Duchess of Buccleuch, and he accordingly shad 
 ows out his own beautiful friend in the person of her 
 lord s ancestress, the last of the original stock of that 
 great house ; himself the favoured inmate of Bowhill, 
 introduced certainly to the familiarity of its circle in con 
 sequence of his devotion to the poetry of a bypast age, in 
 that of an aged minstrel, u the last of all the race," seek 
 ing shelter at the gate of Newark, in days when many an 
 adherent of the fallen cause of Stewart, his own bearded 
 
164 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ancestor, who had fought at KilliekranMe, among the rest, 
 owed their safety to her who 
 
 " In pride of power, in beauty s bloom, 
 Had wept o er Monmouth s bloody tomb-" 
 
 The arch allusions which run through all these Intro* 
 ductions, without in the least interrupting the truth and 
 graceful pathos of their main impression, seem to me ex 
 quisitely characteristic of Scott, whose delight and pride 
 was to play with the genius which nevertheless mastered 
 him at will. For, in truth, what is it that gives to all his 
 works their unique and marking charm, except the match 
 less effect which sudden effusions of the purest heart- 
 blood of nature derive from their being poured out, to 
 all appearance involuntarily, amidst diction and sentiment 
 cast equally in the mould of the busy world, and the 
 seemingly habitual desire to dwell on nothing but what 
 might be likely to excite curiosity, without too much dis 
 turbing deeper feelings, in the saloons of polished life ? 
 Such outbursts come forth dramatically in all his writings -, 
 but in the interludes and passionate parentheses of -the 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel we have the poet s own inner 
 soul and temperament laid bare and throbbing before us. 
 Even here, indeed, he has a mask, and he trusts it but 
 fortunately it is a transparent one. 
 
 Many minor personal allusions have been explained in 
 the notes to the last edition of the " Lay." It was hardly 
 necessary even then to say that the choice of the hero 
 had been dictated by the poet s affection for the living 
 descendants of the Baron of Cranstoun ; and now 
 .lone who have perused the preceding pages can doubt 
 that he had dressed out his Margaret of Branksome in 
 the form and features of his own first love. This poem 
 may be considered as the " bright consummate flower * 
 
LAY OP THE LAST MINSTREL. 1G5 
 
 in which all the dearest dreams of his youthful fancy 
 had at length found expansion for their strength, spirit, 
 tenderness, and beauty. 
 In the closing lines 
 
 " Hush d is the harp the Minstrel gone; 
 And did he wander forth alone ? 
 Alone, in indigence and age, 
 To linger out his pilgrimage ? 
 No ! close beneath proud Newark s tower 
 Arose the Minstrel s humble bower," &c. 
 
 in these charming lines he has embodied what was, at 
 the time when he penned them, the chief day-dream of 
 Ashestiel. From the moment that his uncle s death 
 placed a considerable sum of ready money at his com 
 mand, he pleased himself, as we have seen, with the idea 
 of buying a mountain farm, and becoming not only the 
 " sheriff " (as he had in former days delighted to call 
 himself), but " the laird of the cairn and the scaur." 
 While he was " labouring poucement at the Lay " (as in 
 one of his letters he expresses it), during the recess of 
 1804, circumstances rendered it next to certain that the 
 small estate of Broadmeadows, situated just over against 
 the ruins of Newark, on the northern bank of the Yar 
 row, would soon be exposed to sale ; and many a time 
 did he ride round it in company with Lord and Lady 
 Dalkeith, 
 
 " When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill," 
 
 surveying the beautiful little domain with wistful 
 *nd anticipating that 
 
 " There would he sing achievement high 
 And circumstance of chivalry, 
 Till the rapt traveller would stay, 
 Forgetful of the closing day ; 
 
66 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 And noble youths, the strain to hear, 
 Forget the hunting of the deer ; 
 And Yarrow, as he rolled along, 
 Bear burden to the Minstrel s song." 
 
 I consider it as, in one point of view, the greatest mis* 
 fortune of his life that this vision was not realized ; but 
 the success of the poem itself changed " the spirit of his 
 dream." The favour which it at once attained had not 
 been equalled in the case of any one poem of considera 
 ble length during at least two generations : it certainly 
 had not been approached in the case of any narrative 
 poem since the days of Dryden. Before it was sent to 
 the press it had received warm commendation from the 
 ablest and most influential critic of the time ; but when 
 Mr. Jeffrey s reviewal appeared, a month after publica 
 tion, laudatory as its language was, it scarcely came up 
 to the opinion which had already taken root in the public 
 mind. It, however, quite satisfied the author ; and were 
 I at liberty to insert some letters which passed between 
 them in the course of the summer of 1805, it would be 
 seen that their feelings towards each other were those of 
 mutual confidence and gratitude. Indeed, a severe domes 
 tic affliction which about this time befell Mr. Jeffrey, 
 called out the expression of such sentiments on both sides 
 in a very touching manner. 
 
 I abstain from transcribing the letters which conveyed 
 to Scott the private opinions of persons themselves emi 
 nently distinguished in poetry ; but I think it just to 
 gtate, that I have not discovered in any of them no, 
 not even in those of Wordsworth or Campbell a strain 
 of approbation higher on the whole than that of the chief 
 professional reviewer of the period. When the happy 
 days of youth are over, even the most genial and gener 
 
LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 167 
 
 ous of minds are seldom able to enter into the strains 
 of a new poet with that full and open delight which he 
 awakens in the bosoms of the rising generation about 
 him. Their deep and eager sympathies have already 
 been drawn upon to an extent of which the prosaic part 
 of the species can never have any conception ; and when 
 the fit of creative inspiration has subsided, they are apt 
 to be rather cold critics even of their own noblest appeals 
 to the simple primary feelings of their kind. Miss Aw 
 ard s letter, on this occasion, has been since included in 
 the printed collection of her correspond* nee ; but per 
 haps the reader may form a sufficient notion of its tenor 
 from the poet s answer which, at all events, he will be 
 amused to compare with the Introduction of 1830 : 
 
 " To Miss Seward, Lichfeld. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 21st March 1805. 
 
 " My Dear Miss Seward, I am truly happy that you found 
 any amusement in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. It has great 
 faults, of which no one can be more sensible than I am myself. 
 Above all, it is deficient in that sort of continuity which a 
 story ought to have, and which, were it to write again, I would 
 endeavour to give it. But I began and wandered forward, 
 like one in a pleasant country, getting to the top of one hill to 
 see a prospect, and to the bottom of another to enjoy a shade ; 
 and what wonder if my course has been devious and desultory, 
 and many of my excursions altogether unprofitable to the ad 
 vance of my journey ? The Dwarf Page is also an excres 
 cence, and I plead guilty to all the censures concerning him. 
 The truth is, he has a history, and it is this : The story of 
 Gilpin Horner was told by an old gentleman to Lady Dalkeith, 
 and she, much diverted with his actually believing so grotesque 
 a tale, insisted that I should make it into a Border ballad. I 
 don t know if ever you saw my lovely chieftainess if you 
 lave, you must be aware that it is impossible for any one to 
 
18 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 refuse her request, as she has more of the angel in face and 
 temper than any one alive ; so that if she had asked me to 
 write a ballad on a broomstick, I must have attempted it. I 
 began a few verses, to be called the Goblin Page ; and they 
 lay long by me, till the applause of some friends whose judg 
 ment I valued induced me to resume the poem ; so on I wrote, 
 knowing no more than the man in the moon how I was to end. 
 At length the story appeared so uncouth, that I was fain to 
 put it into the mouth of my old Minstrel lest the nature of 
 it should be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of set 
 ting up a new school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to 
 imitate the old. In the process of the romance, the page, in 
 tended to be a principal person in the work, contrived (from 
 the baseness of his natural propensities I suppose) to slink 
 down stairs into the kitchen, and now he must e en abide 
 there. 
 
 "I mention these circumstances to you, and to any one 
 whose applause I value, because I am unwilling you should 
 suspect me of trifling with the public in malice prepense. As 
 to the herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay much at 
 tention to them ; for, as they do not understand what I call 
 poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, 
 many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, 
 who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, 
 and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The 
 sixth canto is altogether redundant ; for the poem should cer 
 tainly have closed with the union of the lovers, when the in 
 terest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do ? I had 
 my book and my page still on my hands, and must get rid of 
 them at all events. Manage them as I would, their catas 
 trophe must have been insufficient to occupy an entire canto ; 
 so I was fain to eke it out with the songs of the minstrels. I 
 will now descend from the confessional, which I think I have 
 occupied long enough for the patience of my fair confessor. I 
 &m happy you are disposed to give me absolution, notwith- 
 gtanding all my sins. 
 
 * T Ve have a new poet come forth amongst us Jamef 
 
ELLIS AND FRERE ON THE LAY. 169 
 
 Graham, author of a poem called the Sabbath, which I admire 
 very much. If I can find an opportunity, I will send you a 
 copy. Your affectionate humble servant, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. Ellis does not seem to have written at any length 
 on the subject of the Lay, until he had perused the arti 
 cle in the Edinburgh Review. He then says " Though 
 I had previously made up my mind, or rather perhaps 
 because I had done so, I was very anxious to compare 
 my sentiments with those of the Edinburgh critic, and I 
 found that in general we were perfectly agreed, though 
 there are parts of the subject which we consider from 
 very different points of view. Frere, with whom I had 
 not any previous communication about it, agrees with 
 me ; and trusting very much to the justice of his poeti 
 cal feelings, I feel some degree of confidence in my own 
 judgment though in opposition to Mr. Jeffrey, whose 
 criticism I admire upon the whole extremely, as being 
 equally acute and impartial, and as exhibiting the fairest 
 judgment respecting the work that could be formed by 
 the mere assistance of good sense and general taste, with 
 out that particular sort of taste which arises from the 
 study of romantic compositions. 
 
 " What Frere and myself think, must be stated in the 
 shape of a hypercriticism that is to say, of a review 
 of the reviewer. We say that the Lay of the Last Min- 
 etrel is a work sui generis, written with the intention of 
 exhibiting what our old romances do indeed exhibit in 
 point of fact, but incidentally, and often without the wish, 
 or rather contrary to the wish of the author ; viz. the 
 manners of a particular age ; and that therefore, if it 
 does this truly, and is at the same time capable of keep- 
 uig the steady attention of the reader, it is so far perfect, 
 
170 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 This is also a poem, and ought therefore to contain a 
 great deal of poetical merit. This indeed it does by the 
 admission of the reviewer, and it must be admitted that 
 he has shown much real taste in estimating the most beau 
 tiful passages ; but he finds fault with many of the lines 
 as careless, with some as prosaic, and contends that the 
 story is not sufficiently full of incident, and that one of 
 the incidents is borrowed from a merely local supersti 
 tion, &c. &c. To this we answer 1st, That if the Lay 
 were intended to give any idea of the Minstrel composi 
 tions, it would have been a most glaring absurdity to 
 have rendered the poetry as perfect and uniform as the 
 works usually submitted to modern readers and as in 
 telling a story, nothing, or very little, would be lost, 
 though the merely connecting part of the narrative were 
 in plain prose, the reader is certainly no loser by the in 
 correctness of the smaller parts. Indeed, who is so une 
 qual as Dryden ? It may be said, that he was not inten 
 tionally so but to be very smooth is very often to be 
 tame ; and though this should be admitted to be a less 
 important fault than inequality in a common modern 
 poem, there can be no doubt with respect to the necessity 
 of subjecting yourself to the latter fault (if it is one) in 
 an imitation of an ancient model. 2c?, Though it is nat 
 urally to be expected that many readers will expect an 
 almost infinite accumulation of incidents in a romance, 
 this is only because readers in general have acquired all 
 their ideas on the subject from the prose romances, which 
 commonly contained a farrago of metrical stories. The 
 only thing essential to a romance was, that it should be 
 believed by the hearers. Not only tournaments, but bat 
 tles, are indeed accumulated in some of our ancient ro- 
 raances, because tradition had of course ascribed to every 
 
ELLIS AND FKERE ON THE LAY. 171 
 
 great conqueror a great number of conquests, and the 
 minstrel would have been thought deficient, if, in a war 
 like age, he had omitted any military event. But in 
 other respects a paucity of incident is the general char 
 acteristic of our minstrel poems. 3c?, With respect to 
 the Goblin Page, it is by no means necessary that the su 
 perstition on which this is founded should be universally 
 or even generally current. It is quite sufficient that it 
 should exist somewhere in the neighbourhood of the 
 castle where the scene is placed ; and it cannot fairly be 
 required, that because the goblin is mischievous, all his 
 tricks should be directed to the production of general 
 evil. The old idea of goblins seems to have been, that 
 they were essentially active, and careless about the mis 
 chief they produced, rather than providentially malicious. 
 " We therefore (i. e. Frere and myself ) dissent from 
 all the reviewer s objections to these circumstances in the 
 narrative ; but we entertain some doubts about the pro 
 priety of dwelling so long on the Minstrel songs in the 
 last canto. I say we doubt, because we are not aware of 
 your having ancient authority for such a practice ; but 
 though the attempt was a bold one, inasmuch as it is not 
 usual to add a whole canto to a story which is already 
 finished, we are far from wishing that you had left it un- 
 attempted. I must tell you the answer of a philosopher 
 (Sir Henry Englefield) to a friend of his who was criti 
 cising the obscurity of the language used in the Minstrel. 
 * I read little poetry, and often am in doubt whether I 
 exactly understand the poet s meaning; but I found, after 
 reading the Minstrel three times, that I understood it all 
 perfectly. Three times ? replied his friend. Yes, 
 certainly ; the first time I discovared that there was a 
 great deal of meaning in it ; a second would have cleared 
 
172 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 it all up, but that I was run away with by the beautiful 
 passages, which distracted my attention ; the third time I 
 skipped over these, and only attended to the scheme and 
 structure of the poem, with which I am delighted. At 
 this conversation I was present, and though I could not 
 help smiling at Sir Henry s mode of reading poetry, was 
 pleased to see the degree of interest which he took in 
 the narrative." 
 
 Mr. Morritt informs me, that he well remembers the 
 dinner where this conversation occurred, and thinks Mr. 
 Ellis has omitted in his report the best thing that Sir 
 Harry Englefield said, in answer to one of the Dii Mi- 
 norum Gentium, who made himself conspicuous by the 
 severity of his censure on the verbal inaccuracies and 
 careless lines of The Lay. " My dear sir," said the 
 Baronet, " you remind me of a lecture on sculpture, 
 which M. Falconet delivered at Rome, shortly after com 
 pleting the model of his equestrian statue of Czar Peter, 
 now at Petersburg. He took for his subject the celebrat 
 ed horse of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitol, and pointed 
 out as many faults in it as ever a jockey did in an ani 
 mal he was about to purchase. But something came over 
 him, vain as he was, when he was about to conclude the 
 harangue. He took a long pinch of snuff, and eyeing his 
 own faultless model, exclaimed with a sigh Cependant, 
 Messieurs, il faut avouer que cette vilaine bete la est vi 
 , et que la mienne est morte" 
 
 To return to Ellis s letter, I fancy most of my readers 
 agree with me in thinking that Sir Henry Engle- 
 field s method of reading and enjoying poetry waa more 
 to be envied than smiled at ; and in doubting whether 
 posterity will ever dispute about the " propriety " of the 
 Canto which includes the Ballad of Rosabelle and tha 
 
LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 173 
 
 Requiem of Melrose. The friendly hypercritics seem, I 
 confess, to have judged the poem on principles not less 
 pedantic, though of another kind of pedantry, than those 
 which induced the critic to pronounce that its great pre 
 vailing blot originated in " those local partialities of the 
 author," which had induced him to expect general interest 
 and sympathy for such personages as his " Johnstones, 
 Elliots, and Armstrongs." " Mr. Scott," said Jeffrey, 
 " must either sacrifice his Border prejudices, or offend his 
 readers in the other parts of the empire." It might have 
 been answered by Ellis or Frere, that these Border clans 
 figured after all on a scene at least as wide as the Troad ; 
 and that their chiefs were not perhaps inferior, either in 
 rank or power, to the majority of the Homeric kings ; 
 but even the most zealous of its admirers among the pro 
 fessed literators of the day would hardly have ventured 
 to suspect that the Lay of the Last Minstrel might have 
 no prejudices to encounter but their own. It was des 
 tined to charm not only the British empire, but the whole 
 civilized world ; and had, in fact, exhibited a more Ho 
 meric genius than any regular epic since the days of 
 Homer. 
 
 " It would be great affectation," says the Introduction 
 of 1830, "not to own that the author expected some suc 
 cess from the Lay of the Last Minstrel. The attempt to 
 return to a more simple and natural poetry was likely to 
 be welcomed, at a time when the public had become tired 
 of heroic hexameters, with all the buckram and binding 
 that belong to them in modern days. But whatever might 
 have been his expectations, whether moderate or unreason- 
 ible, the result left them far behind ; for among those who 
 smiled on the adventurous minstrel were numbered the 
 great names of William Pitt and Charles Fox. Neither 
 
174 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 was the extent of the sale inferior to the character of the 
 judges who received the poem with approbation. Up 
 wards of 30,000 copies were disposed of by the trade ; 
 and the author had to perform a task difficult to human 
 vanity, when called upon to make the necessary deduc 
 tions from his own merits, in a calm attempt to accoun 
 for its popularity." 
 
 Through what channel or in what terms Fox made 
 known his opinion of the Lay, I have failed to ascertain. 
 Pitt s praise, as expressed to his niece, Lady Hester Stan 
 hope, within a few weeks after the poem appeared, was 
 repeated by her to Mr. William Stewart Rose, who, of 
 course, communicated it forthwith to the author ; and not 
 long after, the Minister, in conversation with Scott s early 
 friend the Right Hon. William Dundas, signified that it 
 would give him pleasure to find some opportunity of ad 
 vancing the fortunes of such a writer. " I remember," 
 writes this gentleman, " at Mr. Pitt s table in 1805, the 
 Chancellor asked me about you and your then situation, 
 and after I had answered him, Mr. Pitt observed - He 
 can t remain as he is, and desired me to look to it. 
 He then repeated some lines from the Lay, describing the 
 old harper s embarrassment when asked to play, and said 
 This is a sort of thing which I might have expected 
 in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being 
 given in poetry. " * 
 
 It is agreeable to know that this great statesman and 
 accomplished scholar awoke at least once from his sup 
 posed apathy as to the elegant literature of his own time. 
 
 The poet has under-estimated even the patent and tan 
 gible evidence of his success. The first edition of the 
 
 * Letter dated April 25th, 1818, and indorsed by Scott, " William 
 Vundas a very kind letter. 11 
 
LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 175 
 
 Lay was a magnificent quarto, 750 copies ; but this was 
 soon exhausted, and there followed an octavo impressioi 
 of 1500 ; in 1806, two more, one of 2000 copies, another 
 of 2250 ; in 1807, a fifth edition, of 2000, and a sixth, of 
 3000; in 1808, 3550; in 1809, 3000 a small edition 
 in quarto (the ballads and lyrical pieces being then an 
 nexed to it) and another octavo edition of 3250 ; in 
 1811, 3000; in 1812, 3000; in 1816, 3000; in 1823, 
 1000. A fourteenth impression of 2000 foolscap ap 
 peared in 1825 ; and besides all this, before the end of 
 1836, 11,000 copies had gone forth in the collected edi 
 tions of his poetical works. Thus, nearly forty-four 
 thousand copies had been disposed of in this country, 
 and by the legitimate trade alone, before he superin 
 tended the edition of 1830, to which his biographical 
 introductions were prefixed. In the history of British 
 Poetry nothing had ever equalled the demand for the 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel. 
 
 The publishers of the first edition were Longman and 
 Co. of London, and Archibald Constable and Co. of Ed 
 inburgh; which last house, however, had but a small share 
 in the adventure. The profits were to be divided equally 
 between the author and his publishers ; and Scott s moiety 
 was 169 6s. Messrs. Longman, when a second edi 
 tion was called for, offered 500 for the copyright ; this 
 was accepted, but they afterwards, as the Introduction 
 says, u added 100 in their own unsolicited kindness. It 
 was handsomely given to supply the loss of a fine horse 
 which broke down suddenly while the author was riding 
 with one of the worthy publishers." This worthy pub 
 lisher was Mr. Owen Rees, and the gallant steed, to 
 vhom a desperate leap in the coursing-field proved fa 
 tal, was, I believe, Captain, the immediate successor of 
 
176 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Lenore, as Scott s charger in the volunteer cavalry ; Cap 
 tain was replaced by Lieutenant. The author s whole 
 share, then, in the profits of the Lay, came to 769 6s. 
 Mr. Rees visit to Ashestiel occurred in the autumn. 
 The success of the poem had already been decisive ; and 
 fresh negotiations of more kinds than one were at this 
 time in progress between Scott and various booksellers 
 houses, both of Edinburgh and London. 
 
PARTNERSHIP WITH BALL ANT YNE. 177 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Partnership with James Ballantyne Literary Projects Edi 
 tion of the British Poets Edition of the Ancient English 
 Chronicles, 8fc. fyc. Edition of Dryden undertaken Earl 
 Moira Commander of the Forces in Scotland Sham Bat 
 tles Articles in the Edinburgh Review Commencement 
 of Waverley Letter on Ossian Mr. Skene s Reminis 
 cences of Ashestiel Excursion to Cumberland Alarm 
 of Invasion Visit of Mr. Southey Correspondence on 
 Dryden with Ellis and Wordsworth. 
 
 1805. 
 
 MR. BALLANTYNE, in his Memorandum, says, that 
 very shortly after the publication of the Lay, he found 
 himself obliged to apply to Mr. Scott for an advance of 
 money ; his own capital being inadequate for the busi 
 ness which had been accumulated on his press, in con 
 sequence of the reputation it had acquired for beauty 
 and correctness of execution. Already, as we have 
 seen, Ballantyne had received " a liberal loan ; " " and 
 now," says he, " being compelled, maugre all delicacy, 
 to renew my application, he candidly answered that he 
 was not quite sure that it would be prudent for him to 
 comply, but in order to evince his entire confidence in 
 me, he was willing to make a suitable advance to be 
 admitted as a third-sharer of my business." In truth, 
 tJcott now embarked in Ballantyne s concern almost the 
 
 VOL. II. 12 
 
178 LIFE OF Silt WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 whole of the capital which he had a few months before 
 designed to invest in the purchase of Broadmeadows. 
 Dis aliter visum. 
 
 I have, many pages back, hinted my suspicion that he 
 had formed some distant notion of such an alliance, as 
 early as the date of Ballantyne s projected removal from 
 Kelso to Edinburgh ; and his Introduction to the Lay, 
 in 1830, appears to leave little doubt that the hope o/ 
 ultimately succeeding at the Bar had waxed very faint, 
 before the third volume of the Minstrelsy was brought 
 out in 1803. When that hope ultimately vanished al 
 together, perhaps he himself would not have found i* 
 easy to tell. The most important of men s opinions, 
 views, and projects, are sometimes taken up in so very 
 gradual a manner, and after so many pauses of hesita 
 tion and of inward retractation, that they themselves 
 are at a loss to trace in retrospect all the stages through 
 which their minds have passed. We see plainly that 
 Scott had never been fond of his profession, but that, 
 conscious of his own persevering diligence, he ascribed 
 his scanty success in it mainly to the prejudices of the 
 Scotch solicitors against employing, in weighty causes 
 at least, any barrister supposed to be strongly imbued 
 with the love of literature ; instancing the career of 
 his friend Jeffrey as almost the solitary instance within 
 his experience of such prejudices being entirely over 
 come. Had Scott, to his strong sense and dexterous 
 ingenuity, his well-grounded knowledge of the jurispru 
 dence of his country, and his admirable industry, added 
 a brisk and ready talent for debate and declamation, I 
 can have no doubt that his triumph over the prejudices 
 alluded to would have been as complete as Mr. Jeffrey s 
 nor in truth do I much question that, had one really 
 
PARTNERSHIP WITH BALLANTYNE. 179 
 
 great and interesting case been submitted no his sole 
 care and management, the result would have been to 
 place his professional character for skill and judgment, 
 and variety of resource, on so firm a basis, that even 
 his rising celebrity as a man of letters could not have 
 seriously disturbed it. Nay, I think it quite possible, 
 that had he been intrusted with one such case after his 
 reputation was established, and he had been compelled 
 to do his abilities some measure of justice in his own 
 secret estimate, he might have displayed very consid 
 erable powers even as a forensic speaker. But no 
 opportunities of this engaging kind having ever been 
 presented to him after he had persisted for more than 
 ten years in sweeping the floor of the Parliament House, 
 without meeting with any employment but what would 
 have suited the dullest drudge, and seen himself termly 
 and yearly more and more distanced by contemporaries 
 for whose general capacity he could have had little re 
 spect while, at the same time, he already felt his 
 own position in the eyes of society at large to have been 
 signally elevated in consequence of his extra-professional 
 exertions it is not wonderful that disgust should have 
 gradually gained upon him, and that the sudden blaze 
 and tumult of renown which surrounded the author of 
 the Lay should have at last determined him to concen 
 trate all his ambition on the pursuits which had alone 
 brought him distinction. It ought to be mentioned, that 
 the business in George s Square, once extensive and lu 
 crative, had dwindled away in the hands of his brother 
 Thomas, whose varied and powerful talents were unfor 
 tunately combined with some tastes by no means favour 
 able to the successful prosecution of his prudent father s 
 vocation ; so that very possibly even the humble employ- 
 
180 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ment of which, during his first years at the Bar, Scott 
 had at least a sure and respectable allowance, was by this 
 time much reduced. I have not his fee-books of later 
 date than 1803 : it is, however, my impression from the 
 whole tenor of his conversation and correspondence, thai 
 after that period he had not only not advanced as a pro 
 fessional man, but had been retrograding in nearly the 
 same proportion that his literary reputation advanced. 
 
 We have seen that, before he formed his contract with 
 Ballantyne, he was in possession of such a fixed income 
 as might have satisfied all his desires, had he not found 
 his family increasing rapidly about him. Even as that 
 was, with nearly if not quite 1000 per annum, he might 
 perhaps have retired not only from the Bar, but from 
 Edinburgh, and settled entirely at Ashestiel or Broad- 
 meadows, without encountering what any man of hi* 
 station and habits ought to have considered as an impru 
 dent risk. He had, however, no wish to cut himself off 
 from the busy and intelligent society to which he had 
 been hitherto accustomed ; and resolved not to leave the 
 Bar until he should have at least used his best efforts 
 for obtaining, in addition to his Shrievalty, one of those 
 Clerkships of the Supreme Court at Edinburgh, which are 
 usually considered as honourable retirements for advo 
 cates who, at a certain standing, finally give up all hopes 
 of reaching the dignity of the Bench. " I determined, 
 hs says, " that literature should be my staff but not my 
 crutch, and that the profits of my literary labour, how 
 ever convenient otherwise, should not, if I could help it, 
 become necessary to my ordinary expenses. Upon such 
 a post an author might hope to retreat, without any per 
 ceptible alteration of circumstances, whenever the time 
 should arrive that the public grew weary of his endea? 
 
PARTNERSHIP WITH BALL ANT YNK. 181 
 
 ours to please, or he himself should tire of the pen. I 
 possessed so many friends capable of assisting me in this 
 object of ambition, that I could hardly over-rate my own 
 prospects of obtaining the preferment to which I limited 
 my wishes ; and, in fact, I obtained, in no long period, 
 the reversion of a situation which completely met them." * 
 
 The first notice of this affair that occurs in his corre 
 spondence, is in a note of Lord Dalkeith s, February the 
 2d, 1805, in which his noble friend says " My father 
 desires me to tell you that he has had a communication 
 with Lord Melville within these few days, and that he 
 thinks your business is in a good train, though not cer 
 tain" I consider it as clear, then, that he began his 
 negotiations concerning a seat at the clerk s table im 
 mediately after the Lay was published ; and that their 
 commencement had been resolved upon in the strictest 
 connexion with his embarkation in the printing concern 
 of James Ballantyne and Company. Such matters are 
 seldom speedily arranged ; but we shall find him in pos 
 session of his object before twelve months had elapsed. 
 
 Meanwhile, his design of quitting the Bar was divulged 
 to none but those immediately necessary for the purposes 
 of his negotiation with the Government ; and the nature 
 of his connexion with the printing company remained, I 
 believe, not only unknown, but for some years wholly un 
 suspected, by any of his daily companions except Mr. 
 Ersldne. 
 
 The forming of this 3ommercial connexion was one of 
 the most important steps in Scott s life. He continued 
 bound by it during twenty years, and its influence on his 
 literary exertions and his worldly fortunes was productive 
 of much good and not a little evil. Its effects were in 
 * Introduction to the Lay of the Last Minstrel 1830. 
 
182 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 truth so mixed and balanced during the vicissitudes of a 
 long and vigorous career, that I at this moment doubt 
 whether it ought, on the whole, to be considered with 
 more of satisfaction or of regret. 
 
 With what zeal he proceeded in advancing the views 
 of the new copartnership, his correspondence bears ample 
 evidence. The brilliant and captivating genius, now ac 
 knowledged universally, was soon discovered by the lead 
 ing booksellers of the time to be united with such abun 
 dance of matured information in many departments, and, 
 above all, with such indefatigable habits, as to mark him 
 out for the most valuable workman they could engage for 
 the furtherance of their schemes. He had, long before 
 this, cast a shrewd and penetrating eye over the field of 
 literary enterprise, and developed in his own mind the 
 outlines of many extensive plans, which wanted nothing 
 but the command of a sufficient body of able subalterns to 
 be carried into execution with splendid success. Such of 
 these as he grappled with in his own person were, with 
 rare exceptions, carried to a triumphant conclusion; but 
 the alliance with Ballantyne soon infected him with the 
 proverbial rashness of mere mercantile adventure 
 while, at the same time, his generous feelings for other 
 men of letters, and his characteristic propensity to over 
 rate their talents, combined to hurry him and his friends 
 into a multitude of arrangements, the results of which 
 were often extremely embarrassing, and ultimately, in 
 the aggregate, all but disastrous. It is an old saying, 
 that wherever there is a secret there must be something 
 wrong ; and dearly did he pay the penalty for the mys 
 tery in which he had chosen to involve this transaction. 
 It was his rule, from the beginning, that whatever he 
 wrote or edited must be printed at that press ; and had 
 
PARTNERSHIP WITH BALLANTYNE. 183 
 
 he catered for it only as author and sole editor, all had 
 been well ; but had the booksellers known his direct pe 
 cuniary interest in keeping up and extending the occupa 
 tion of those types, they would have taken into account 
 his lively imagination and sanguine temperament, as well 
 as his taste and judgment, and considered, far more delib 
 erately than they too often did, his multifarious recom 
 mendations of new literary schemes, coupled though these 
 were with some dim understanding that, if the Ballantyne 
 press were employed, his own literary skill would be at 
 his friend s disposal for the general superintendence of 
 the undertaking. On the other hand, Scott s suggestions 
 were, in many cases, perhaps in the majority of them, 
 conveyed through Ballantyne, whose habitual deference 
 to his opinion induced him to advocate them with enthu 
 siastic zeal ; and the printer, who had thus pledged his 
 personal authority for the merits of the proposed scheme, 
 must have felt himself committed to the bookseller, and 
 could hardly refuse with decency to take a certain share 
 of the pecuniary risk, by allowing the time and method 
 of his own payment to be regulated according to the em 
 ployer s convenience. Hence, by degrees, was woven a 
 web of entanglement from which neither Ballantyne nor 
 his adviser had any means of escape, except only in that 
 indomitable spirit, the mainspring of personal industry 
 altogether unparalleled, to which, thus set in motion, the 
 world owes its most gigantic monument of literary genius 
 The following is the first tetter I have found of Scott 
 to his PARTNER. The Mr. Foster mentioned in the be 
 ginning of it was a literary gentleman who had proposed 
 to take on himself a considerable share in the annotation 
 of some of the new editions then on the carpet among 
 others, one of Dryden. 
 
184 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To Mr. James Ballantyne, Printer, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Ashestiel, April 12th, 805. 
 
 " Dear Ballantyne, I have duly received your two favour* 
 also Foster s. He still howls about the expense of printing, 
 but I think we shall finally settle. His argument is that you 
 print too fine, alias too dear. I intend to stick to my answer 
 that 1 know nothing of the matter ; but that settle it how you 
 and he will, it must be printed by you, or can be no concern 
 of mine. This gives you an advantage in driving the bargain. 
 As to everything else, I think we shall do, and I will endeav 
 our to set a few volumes agoing on the plan you propose. 
 
 " I have imagined a very superb work. What think you 
 of a complete edition of British Poets, ancient and modern ? 
 Johnson s is imperfect and out of print ; so is Bell s, which is a 
 Lilliputian thing ; and Anderson s, the most complete in point 
 of number, is most contemptible in execution both of the 
 editor and printer. There is a scheme for you ! At least a 
 hundred volumes, to be published at the rate of ten a-year. I 
 cannot, however, be ready till midsummer. If the booksellers 
 will give me a decent allowance per volume, say thirty guineas, 
 I shall hold myself well paid on the writing hand. This is a 
 dead secret. 
 
 " I think it quite right to let Doig * have a share of Thorn- 
 sen ; f but he is hard and slippery, so settle your bargain fast 
 and firm no loop-holes ! I am glad you have got some 
 elbow-room at last. Cowan will come to, or we will find some 
 fit place in time. If not, we must build necessity has no law. 
 I see nothing to hinder you from doing Tacitus with your cor 
 rectness of eye, and I congratulate you on the fair prospect 
 before us. When you have time, you will make out a list of 
 the debts to be discharged at Whitsunday, that we may see 
 what cash we shall have in bank. Our book-keeping may be 
 rery simple an accurate cash-book and ledger is all that it 
 
 * A bookseller in Edinburgh. 
 
 t A projected edition of the "Works of the author of the Seasons. 
 
LITERARY PROJECTS. 185 
 
 necessary ; and I think I know enough of the matter to assist 
 at making the balance sheet. 
 
 "In short, with the assistance of a little cash I have no 
 doubt things will go on a merveille. If you could take a little 
 pleasuring, I wish you could come here and see us in all the 
 glories of a Scottish spring. Yours truly, 
 
 " W. SCOTT." 
 
 Scott opened forthwith his gigantic scheme of the Brit 
 ish Poets to Constable, who entered into it with eager 
 ness. They found presently that Messrs. Cadell and 
 Davies, and some of the other London publishers, had a 
 similar plan on foot, and after an unsuccessful negocia- 
 tion with Mackintosh, were now actually treating with 
 Campbell for the Biographical prefaces. Scott proposed 
 that the Edinburgh and London houses should join in the 
 adventure, and that the editorial task should be shared 
 between himself and his brother poet. To this both 
 Messrs. Cadell and Mr. Campbell warmly assented ; but 
 the design ultimately fell to the ground, in consequence 
 of the booksellers refusing to admit certain works which 
 both Scott and Campbell insisted upon. Such, and from 
 analogous causes, has been the fate of various similar 
 schemes both before and since. But the public had no 
 trivial compensation upon the present occasion, since the 
 failure of the original project led Mr. Campbell to pre 
 pare for the press those " Specimens of English Poetry " 
 which he illustrated with sketches of biography and crit 
 ical essays, alike honourable to his learning and taste ; 
 while Scott, Mr. Foster ultimately standing off, took on 
 himself the whole burden of a new edition, as well as 
 biography, of Dryden. The body of booksellers mean 
 while combined in what they still called a general edition 
 of the English Poets, under the superintendence of one 
 
186 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of their own Grub-street vassals, Mr. Alexander Chal 
 iners. 
 
 Precisely at the time when Scott s poetical ambition 
 had been stimulated by the first outburst of universal 
 applause, and when he was forming those engagements 
 with Ballantyne which involved so large an accession of 
 literary labours, as well as of pecuniary cares and respon 
 sibilities, a fresh impetus was given to the volunteer 
 mania in Scotland, by the appointment of the late Earl of 
 Moira (afterwards Marquis of Hastings) to the chief mil- 
 itary command in that part of the empire. The Earl had 
 married, the year before, a Scottish Peeress, the Count 
 ess of Loudon, and entered with great zeal into her sym 
 pathy with the patriotic enthusiasm of her countrymen. 
 Edinburgh was converted into a camp : independently of 
 a large garrison of regular troops, nearly 10,000 fencibles 
 and volunteers were almost constantly under arms. The 
 lawyer wore his uniform under his gown ; the shopkeeper 
 measured out his wares in scarlet ; in short, the citizens 
 of all classes made more use for several months of the 
 military than of any other dress ; and the new com- 
 mander-in-chief consulted equally his own gratification 
 and theirs, by devising a succession of manoeuvres which 
 presented a vivid image of the art of war conducted on a 
 large and scientific scale. In the sham battles and sham 
 sieges of 1805, Craigmillar, Gilmerton, Braidhills, and 
 other formidable positions in the neighbourhood of Edin 
 burgh, were the scenes of many a dashing assault and 
 resolute defence ; and occasionally the spirits of the mock 
 combatants English and Scotch, or Lowland and High 
 land became so much excited that there was some diffi 
 culty in preventing the rough mockery of warfare from 
 passing into its realities. The Highlanders, in particular 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS 1805. 187 
 
 were very hard to be dealt with ; and once, at least, Lord 
 Moira was forced to alter at the eleventh hour his pro 
 gramme of battle, because a battalion of kilted fencibles 
 could not or would not understand that it was their duty 
 to be beat. Such days as these must have been more 
 nobly spirit-stirring than even the best specimens of the 
 fox-chase. To the end of his life, Scott delighted to recall 
 the details of their countermarches, ambuscades, charges, 
 and pursuits, and in all of these his associates of the 
 Light-Horse agree that none figured more advanta 
 geously than himself. Yet these military interludes seem 
 only to have whetted his appetite for closet work. In 
 deed, nothing but a complete publication of his letters 
 could give an adequate notion of the facility with which 
 he already combined the conscientious magistrate, the 
 martinet quartermaster, the speculative printer, and the 
 ardent lover of literature for its own sake. A few speci 
 mens must suffice. 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 " Edinburgh, May 26, 1805. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, Your silence has been so long and opin- 
 ionative, that I am quite authorized, as a Border ballad-monger, 
 to address you with a Sleep you, or wake you ? What has 
 become of the Romances, which I have expected as anx 
 iously as my neighbours around me have watched for the rain, 
 which was to bring the grass, which was to feed the new-calved 
 cows, and to as little purpose, for both Heaven and you 
 have obstinately delayed your favours. After idling away the 
 spring months at Ashestiel, I am just returned to idle away 
 the summer here, and I have lately \ighted upon rather an 
 interesting article in your way, If you will turn to Barbour s 
 Bruce (Pinkerton s edition, p. 66\ you will find that the Lord 
 if Lorn, seeing Bruce covering the retreat of his followers, 
 
188 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 compares him to Gow MacMorn (Macpherson s Gaul the sou 
 of Morni.) This similitude appears to Barbour a disparage 
 ment, and he says, the Lord of Lorn might more mannerly 
 have compared the king to Gadefeir de Lawryss, who was 
 with the mighty Duke Betys when he assailed the forayers in 
 Gadderis, and who in the retreat did much execution among 
 the pursuers, overthrowing Alexander and Thelomier and 
 Danklin, although he was at length slain; and here, says 
 Barbour, the resemblance fails. Now, by one of those 
 chances which favour the antiquary once in an age, a sin 
 gle copy of the romance alluded to has been discovered, con 
 taining the whole history of this Gadefeir, who had hitherto 
 been a stumbling-block to the critics. The book was printed 
 by Arbuthnot, who flourished at Edinburgh in the seventeenth 
 century. It is a metrical romance, called The Buik of the 
 Most Noble and Vauliant Conquerour, Alexander the Grit. 
 The first part is called the Foray of Gadderis, an incident sup 
 posed to have taken place while Alexander was besieging 
 Tyre ; Gadefeir is one of the principal champions, and after 
 exerting himself in the manner mentioned by Barbour, un 
 horsing the persons whom he named, he is at length slain by 
 Emynedus, the Earl-Marshal of the Macedonian conqueror. 
 The second part is called the Avowis of Alexander, because it 
 introduces the oaths which he and others made to the peacock 
 in the chalmer of Venus, and gives an account of the mode 
 in which they accomplished them. The third is the Great 
 Battell of Effesoun, in which Porus makes a distinguished fig 
 ure. This you are to understand is not the Porus of India, but 
 one of his sons. The work is in decided Scotch, and adds 
 something to our ancient poetry, being by no means despica 
 ble in point of composition. The author says he translated it 
 from the Franch, or Romance, and that he accomplished his 
 work in 1438-9. Barbour must therefore have quoted from 
 the French Alexander, and perhaps his praises of the work 
 excited the Scottish translator. Will you tell me what you 
 think of all this, and whether any transcripts will be of use to 
 you ? I am pleased with the accident of its casting up, and 
 
KLLIS S ANSWER. 189 
 
 hope it may prove the forerunner of more discoveries in the 
 dusty and ill-arranged libraries of our country gentlemen. 
 
 " I hope you continue to like the Lay. I have had a flat 
 tering assurance of Mr. Fox s approbation, mixed with a 
 censure of my eulogy on the Viscount of Dundee. Although 
 my Tory principles prevent my coinciding with his political 
 opinions, I am very proud of his approbation in a literary 
 sense. 
 
 " Charlotte joins me, &c. &c. W. S." 
 
 In his answer Ellis says 
 
 "Longman lately informed me that you have projected a 
 General Edition of our Poets. I expressed to him my anx 
 iety that the booksellers, who certainly can ultimately sell 
 what they please, should for once undertake something cal 
 culated to please intelligent readers, and that they should 
 confine themselves to the selection of paper, types, &c. (which 
 they possibly may understand), and by no means interfere 
 with the literary part of the business, which, if popularity 
 be the object, they must leave exclusively to you. I am talk 
 ing, as you perceive, about your plan, without knowing its 
 extent, or any of its details ; for these, therefore, I will wait 
 after confessing that, much as I wish for a corpus poetarum, 
 edited as you would edit it, I should like still better another 
 Minstrel Lay by the Last and best Minstrel ; and the general 
 demand for the poem seems to prove that the public are of 
 my opinion. If, however, you don t feel disposed to take a 
 second ride on Pegasus, why not undertake something far less 
 infra dig. than a mere edition of our poets ? Why not under 
 take what Gibbon once undertook an edition of our histo 
 rians ? I have never been able to look at a volume of the 
 Benedictine edition of the early French historians without 
 
 Mr. Ellis appears to have communicated all his notions 
 on this subject to Messrs. Longman, for Scott writes to 
 
*90 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Ballantyne (Ashestiel, September 5), "I have had a 
 risk from Rees yesterday. He is anxious about a corpus 
 kistoriarum, or full edition of the Chronicles of England, 
 an immense work. I proposed to him beginning with 
 Holinshed, and I think the work will be secured for 
 your press. I congratulate you on Clarendon, which, 
 under Thomson s direction, will be a glorious publica 
 tion." * 
 
 The printing office in the Canongate was by this time 
 in very great request ; and the letter I have been quot 
 ing contains evidence that the partners had already found 
 it necessary to borrow fresh capital on the personal 
 security, it need not be added, of Scott himself. He 
 says "As I have full confidence in your applying the 
 accommodation received from Sir "William Forbes in the 
 most convenient and prudent manner, I have no hesita 
 tion to return the bonds subscribed as you desire. This 
 will put you in cash for great matters." 
 
 But to return. To Ellis himself he says 
 
 " I have had booksellers here in the plural number. You 
 have set little Rees s head agog about the Chronicles, which 
 would be an admirable work, but should, I think, be edited by 
 an Englishman who can have access to the MSS. of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, as one cannot trust much to the correctness 
 of printed copies. I will, however, consider the matter, so far 
 as a decent edition of Holinshed is concerned, in case my time 
 is not otherwise taken up. As for the British Poets, my plan 
 was greatly too liberal to stand the least chance of being 
 adopted by the trade at large, as I wished them to begin with 
 Chaucer. The fact is, I never expected they would agree to 
 it. The Benedictines had an infinite advantage over us in 
 that esprit du corps which led them to set labour and expense 
 
 * An edition of Clarendon had been, it seems, contemplated by 
 8i;ott s friend Mr. Thomas Thomson. 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS. 191 
 
 at, defiance, when the honour of the order was at stake, 
 Would to God your English Universities, with their huge 
 endowments and the number of learned men to whom they 
 give competence and leisure, would but imitate the monks in 
 their literary plans ! My present employment is an edition of 
 John Dryden s Works, which is already gone to press. As for 
 riding on Pegasus, depend upon it, I will never again cross 
 him in a serious way, unless I should by some strange accident 
 -eside so long in the Highlands, and make myself master of 
 their ancient manners, so as to paint them with some degree 
 of accuracy in a kind of companion to the Minstrel Lay. . . . 
 ... I am interrupted by the arrival of two gentil bachelors, 
 whom, like the Count of Artois, I must despatch upon some 
 adventure till dinner time. Thank Heaven, that will not be 
 difficult, for although there are neither dragons nor boars in 
 the vicinity, and men above six feet are not only scarce, but 
 pacific in their habits, yet we have a curious breed of wild-cats 
 who have eaten all Charlotte s chickens, and against whom 1 
 have declared a war at outrance, in which the assistance of 
 these gentes demoiseaux will be fully as valuable as that of Don 
 Quixote to Pentalopin with the naked arm. So, if Mrs. Ellr 
 takes a fancy for cat-skin fur, now is the time." 
 
 Already, then, he was seriously at work on Dryden 
 During the same summer, he drew up for the Edinburgh 
 Review an admirable article on Todd s edition of Spen 
 ser ; another on Godwin s Fleetwood ; a third, on the 
 Highland Society s Report concerning the Poems of Os- 
 sian ; a fourth, on Johnes s Translation of Froissart ; a 
 fifth, on Colonel Thornton s Sporting Tour ; and a sixth, 
 on some cookery books the two last being excellent 
 specimens of his humour. He had, besides, a constant 
 succession of minor cares in the superintendence of mul- 
 \ifarious works passing through the Ballantyne press. 
 But there is yet another important item to be included 
 in the list of his literary labours of this period. The 
 
192 LIFE OF Sill WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 General Preface to his Novels informs us, that " about 
 1805 " he wrote the opening chapters of Waverley ; and 
 the second title, Tis Sixty Tears Since, selected, as he 
 says, " that the actual date of publication might corre 
 spond with the period in which the scene was laid," leaves 
 no doubt that he had begun the work so early in 1805 aa 
 to contemplate publishing it before Christmas.* He adds, 
 in the same page, that he was induced, by the favourable 
 reception of the Lady of the Lake, to think of giving 
 some of his recollections of Highland scenery and cus 
 toms in prose ; but this is only one instance of the in 
 accuracy as to matters of date which pervades all those 
 delightful Prefaces. The Lady of the Lake was not 
 published until five years after the first chapters of Wa 
 verley were written ; its success, therefore, could have 
 had no share in suggesting the original design of a High 
 land novel, though no doubt it principally influenced him 
 to take up that design after it had been long suspended, 
 And almost forgotten. Thus early, then, had Scott med 
 itated deeply such a portraiture of Highland manners 
 fes might " make a sort of companion " to that of the 
 old Border life in the " Minstrel Lay ; " and he had 
 probably begun and suspended his Waverley, before he 
 expressed to Ellis his feeling that he ought to reside 
 ibr some considerable time in the country to be delin 
 eated, before seriously committing himself in the execu 
 tion of such a task. 
 
 " Having proceeded," he says, " as far as I think the 
 seventh chapter, I showed my work to a critical friend, 
 whose opinion was unfavourable ; and having then some 
 
 * I have ascertained, since this page was written, that a small part 
 of the MS. of Waverley is on paper bearing the watermark of 1805 
 .he rest on paper of 1813. 
 
WAVERLEY BEGUN 1805. l93 
 
 poetical reputation, I was unwilling to risk the loss of it 
 by attempting a new style of composition. I, therefore, 
 then threw aside the work I had commenced, without 
 either reluctance or remonstrance. I ought to add, that 
 though my ingenuous friend s sentence was afterwards 
 reversed, on an appeal to the public, it cannot be consid 
 ered as any imputation on his good taste ; for the speci 
 men subjected to his criticism did not extend beyond the 
 departure of the hero for Scotland, and consequently had 
 not entered upon the part of the story which was finally 
 found most interesting." A letter to be quoted under the 
 year 1810 will, I believe, satisfy the reader that the first 
 critic of the opening chapters of Waverley was William 
 Erskine. 
 
 The following letter must have been written in the 
 course of this autumn. It is in every respect a very 
 interesting one ; but I introduce it here as illustrating 
 the course of his reflections on Highland subjects in 
 general, at the time when the first outlines both of the 
 Lady of the Lake and Waverley must have been float 
 ing about in his mind : 
 
 " To Miss Seward, Lichfteld. 
 
 "Ashestiel, [1805.] 
 
 "My Dear Miss Seward, You recall me to some very 
 pleasant feelings of my boyhood, when you ask my opinion of 
 Ossian. His works were first put into my hands by old Dr. 
 Blacklock, a blind poet, of whom you may have heard ; he 
 was the worthiest and kindest of human beings, and particu 
 larly delighted in encouraging the pursuits, and opening the 
 minds, of the young people by whom he was surrounded. I, 
 though at the period of our intimacy a very young boy, was 
 fortunate enough to attract his notice and kindness ; and if I 
 have been at all successful in the paths of literary pursuit, I 
 
 VOL. II. 13 
 
194 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 am sure I owe much of that success to the books with which 
 he supplied me, and his own instructions. Ossian and Spenser 
 were two books which the good old bard put into my hands, 
 and which I devoured rather than perused. Their tales were 
 for a long time so much my delight, that I could repeat with 
 out remorse whole Cantos of the one and Duans of the other; 
 and wo to the unlucky wight who undertook to be my auditor, 
 for in the height of my enthusiasm I was apt to disregard all 
 hints that my recitations became tedious. It was a natural 
 consequence of progress in taste, that my fondness for these 
 authors should experience some abatement. Ossian s poems, 
 in particular, have more charms for youth than for a more ad 
 vanced stage. The eternal repetition of the same ideas and 
 imagery, however beautiful in themselves, is apt to pall upon 
 a reader whose taste has become somewhat fastidious; and, 
 although I agree entirely with you that the question of their 
 authenticity ought not to be confounded with that of their lit 
 erary merit, yet scepticism on that head takes away their 
 claim for indulgence as the productions of a barbarous and 
 remote age; and, what is perhaps more natural, it destroys 
 that feeling of reality which we should otherwise combine with 
 our sentiments of admiration. As for the great dispute, I 
 should be no Scottishman if I had not very attentively consid 
 ered it at some period of my studies ; and, indeed, I have gone 
 some lengths in my researches, for I have beside me transla 
 tions of some twenty or thirty of the unquestioned originals 
 of Ossian s poems. After making every allowance for the dis 
 advantages of a literal translation, and the possible debasement 
 which those now collected may have suffered in the great and 
 violent change which the Highlands have undergone since the 
 researches of Macpherson, I am compelled to admit that incal 
 culably the greater part of the English Ossian must be ascribed 
 to Macpherson himself, and that his whole introductions, notes, 
 &c. &c. are an absolute tissue of forgeries. 
 
 " In all the ballads I ever saw or could hear of, Fin and 
 Ossin are described as natives of Ireland, although it is not 
 tmusual for the reciters sturdily to maintain that this is a cor- 
 
ASHESTIEL 1805. 195 
 
 ruption of the text. In point of merit, I do not think these 
 Gaelic poems much better than those of the Scandinavian 
 Scalds ; they are very unequal, often very vigorous and point 
 ed, often drivelling and crawling in the very extremity of 
 tenuity. The manners of the heroes are those of Celtic sav 
 ages ; and I could point out twenty instances in which Mac- 
 pherson has very cunningly adopted the beginning, the names, 
 and the leading incidents, &c. of an old tale, and dressed it up 
 with all those ornaments of sentiment and sentimental man 
 ners, which first excite our surprise, and afterwards our doubt 
 of its authenticity. The Highlanders themselves, recognising 
 the leading features of tales they had heard in infancy, with 
 here and there a tirade really taken from an old poem, were 
 readily seduced into becoming champions for the authenticity 
 of the poems. How many people, not particularly addicted 
 to poetry, who may have heard Chevy-Chase in the nursery 
 or at school, and never since met with the ballad, might be 
 imposed upon by a new Chevy- Chase, bearing no resemblance 
 to the old one, save in here and there a stanza or an incident ? 
 Besides, there is something in the severe judgment passed on 
 my countrymen that if they do not prefer Scotland to 
 truth, they will always prefer it to inquiry. When once the 
 Highlanders had adopted the poems of Ossian as an article of 
 national faith, you would far sooner have got them to disavow 
 the Scripture than to abandon a line of the contested tales. 
 Only they all allow that Macpherson s translation is very un 
 faithful, and some pretend to say inferior to the original ; by 
 which they can only mean, if they mean anything, that they 
 miss the charms of the rhythm and vernacular idiom, which 
 pleases the Gaelic natives ; for in the real attributes of poetry, 
 Macpherson s version is far superior to any I ever saw of the 
 fragments which he seems to have used. 
 
 " The Highland Society have lately set about investigating, 
 or rather, I should say, collecting materials to defend, the 
 authenticity of Ossian. Those researches have only proved 
 that there were no real originals using that word as is com 
 monly understood to be found for them. The oldest tale 
 
196 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 they have found seems to be that of Darthula ; but it is per 
 fectly different, both in diction and story, from that of Mac- 
 pherson. It is, however, a beautiful specimen of Celtic poetry, 
 and shows that it contains much which is worthy of preserva 
 tion. Indeed how should it be otherwise, when we know that, 
 till about fifty years ago, the Highlands contained a race of 
 hereditary poets ? Is it possible to think, that, among perhaps 
 many hundreds, who for such a course of centuries have 
 founded their reputation and rank on practising the art of 
 poetry, in a country where the scenery and manners gave 
 such effect and interest and imagery to their productions, there 
 should not have been some who attained excellence ? In 
 searching out those genuine records of the Celtic Muse, and 
 preserving them from oblivion, with all the curious information 
 which they must doubtless contain, I humbly think our High 
 land antiquaries would merit better of their country, than by 
 confining their researches to the fantastic pursuit of a chimera. 
 " I am not to deny that Macpherson s inferiority in other 
 compositions is a presumption that he did not actually compose 
 these poems. But we are to consider his advantage when on 
 his own ground. Macpherson was a Highlander, and had his 
 imagination fired with the charms of Celtic poetry from his 
 very infancy. We know, from constant experience, that most 
 Highlanders, after they have become complete masters of Eng 
 lish, continue to think in their own language ; and it is to me 
 demonstrable that Macpherson thought almost every word of 
 Ossian in Gaelic, although he wrote it down in English. The 
 specimens of his early poetry which remain are also deeply 
 tinged with the peculiarities of the Celtic diction and charao- 
 ,er ; so that, in fact, he might be considered as a Highland 
 poet, even if he had not left us some Earse translations (or 
 originals of Ossian) unquestionably written by himself. These 
 circumstances gave a great advantage to him in forming the 
 ityle of Ossian, which, though exalted and modified according 
 to Macpherson s own ideas of modern taste, is in great part 
 cut upon the model of the tales of the Sennachies and Bards, 
 In the translation of Homer, he not only lost these advantages 
 
ASHESTIEL 1805. 197 
 
 out the circumstances on which they were founded were a 
 great detriment to his undertaking ; for although such a dress 
 was appropriate and becoming for Ossian, few people cared to 
 see their old Grecian friend disguised in a tartan plaid and 
 philabeg. In a word, the style which Macpherson had formed, 
 however admirable in a Highland tale, was not calculated for 
 translating Homer ; and it was a great mistake in him, excited, 
 however, by the general applause his first work received, to 
 suppose that there was anything homogeneous betwixt his own 
 ideas and those of Homer. Macpherson, in his way, was cer 
 tainly a man of high talents, and his poetic powers as honour 
 able to his country, as the use which he made of them, and I 
 fear his personal character in other respects, was a discredit 
 to it. 
 
 " Thus I have given you with the utmost sincerity my creed 
 on the great national question of Ossian ; it has been formed 
 after much deliberation and inquiry. I have had for some 
 time thoughts of writing a Highland poem, somewhat in the 
 style of the Lay, giving as far as I can a real picture of what 
 that enthusiastic race actually were before the destruction of 
 their patriarchal government. It is true, I have not quite the 
 same facilities as in describing Border manners, where I am, 
 as they say, more at home. But to balance my comparative 
 deficiency in knowledge of Celtic manners, you are to consider 
 that I have from my youth delighted in all the Highland tra 
 ditions which I could pick up from the old Jacobites who used 
 to frequent my father s house ; and this will, I hope, make 
 some amends for my having less immediate opportunities of 
 ^esearch than in the Border tales. 
 
 " Agreeably to your advice, I have actually read over Madoc 
 a second time, and I confess have seen much beauty which 
 escaped me in the first perusal. Yet (which yet, by the way, 
 is almost as vile a monosyllable as but) I cannot feel quite the 
 interest I would wish to do. The difference of character 
 wliich you notice, reminds me of what by Ben Jonson and 
 other old comedians were called humours, which consisted 
 rather in the personification of some individual passion or pro* 
 
198 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 pensity, than of an actual individual man. Also, I cannot 
 give up my objection, that what was strictly true of Columbus 
 becomes an unpleasant falsehood when told of some one else. 
 Suppose I was to write a fictitious book of travels, I should 
 certainly do ill to copy exactly the incidents which befel 
 Mungo Park or Bruce of Kinnaird. What was true of them 
 would incontestably prove at once the falsehood and plagiarism 
 of my supposed journal. It is not but what the incidents are 
 natural but it is their having already happened, which 
 strikes us when they are transferred to imaginary persons. 
 Could any one bear the story of a second city being taken 
 by a wooden horse? 
 
 " Believe me, I shall not be within many miles of Lichfield 
 without paying my personal respects to you ; and yet I should 
 not do it in prudence, because I am afraid you have formed a 
 higher opinion of me than I deserve : you would expect to see 
 a person who had dedicated himself much to literary pursuits, 
 and you would find me a rattle-sculled half-lawyer, half-sports 
 man, through whose head a regiment of horse has been exer 
 cising since he was five years old ; half-educated half-crazy, 
 as his friends sometimes tell him ; half everything, but entirely 
 Miss Se ward s much obliged, affectionate, and faithful servant, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 His correspondence shows how largely he was exert 
 ing himself all this while in the service of authors less 
 fortunate than himself. James Hogg, among others, con 
 tinued to occupy from time to time his attention ; and he 
 assisted regularly and assiduously throughout this and 
 the succeeding year Mr. Robert Jameson, an industrious 
 and intelligent antiquary, who had engaged in editing a 
 collection of ancient popular ballads before the third 
 volume of the Minstrelsy appeared, and who at length 
 published his very curious work in 1807. Meantime, 
 Ashestiel, in place of being less resorted to by literary 
 strangers than Lasswade cottage had been, shared abun 
 
ASHESTIEL 1805. 199 
 
 3antly in the fresh attractions of the Lay, and " booksell 
 ers in the plural number " were preceded and followed 
 by an endless variety of enthusiastic " gentil bachelors," 
 whose main temptation from the south had been the hope 
 of seeing the Borders in company with their Minstrel. 
 He still writes of himself as " idling away his hours ; " 
 he had already learned to appear as if he were doing so 
 to all who had no particular right to confidence respect 
 ing the details of his privacy. 
 
 But the most agreeable of all his visitants were his 
 own old familiar friends, and one of these has furnished 
 me with a sketch of the autumn life of Ashestiel, of 
 which I shall now avail myself. Scott s invitation was 
 in these terms : 
 
 " To James Skene, Esq. of Rubislaw. 
 
 " Ashestiel, 18th August 1805. 
 
 " Dear Skene, I have prepared another edition of the 
 Lay, 1500 strong, moved thereunto by the faith, hope, and 
 
 charity of the London booksellers If you could, in 
 
 the interim, find a moment to spend here, you know the way, 
 and the ford is where it was ; which, by the way, is more than 
 I expected after Saturday last, the most dreadful storm of 
 thunder and lightning I ever witnessed. The lightning broke 
 repeatedly in our immediate vicinity, i. e. betwixt us and the 
 Peel wood. Charlotte resolved to die in bed like a good 
 Christian. The servants said it was the preface to the end of 
 the world, and I was the only person that maintained my char 
 acter for stoicism, which I assure you had some merit, as I had 
 no doubt that we were in real danger. It was accompanied with 
 a flood so tremendous, that I would have given five pounds you 
 had been here to make a sketch of it The little Glenkinnon 
 brook was impassable for all the next day, and indeed I have 
 been obliged to send all hands to repair the ford, which waa 
 converted into a deep pool. Believe me ever yours affection 
 *tely, W. S." 
 
200 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Mr. Skene says 
 
 " I well remember the ravages of the storm and flood de 
 scribed in this letter. The ford of Ashestiel was never a good 
 one, and for some time after this it remained not a little peril 
 ous. He was himself the first to attempt the passage on his 
 favourite black horse Captain, who had scarcely entered the 
 river when he plunged beyond his depth, and had to swim to 
 the other side with his burden. It requires a good horseman 
 to swim a deep and rapid stream, but he trusted to the vigour 
 of his steady trooper, and in spite of his lameness kept his seat 
 manfully. A cart bringing a new kitchen range (as I believe 
 the grate for that service is technically called) was shortly 
 after upset in this ugly ford. The horse and cart were with 
 difficulty got out, but the grate remained for some time in the 
 middle of the stream to do duty as a horse-trap, and furnish 
 subject for many a good joke when Mrs. Scott happened to 
 complain of the imperfection of her kitchen appointments." 
 
 Mr. Skene soon discovered an important change which 
 had recently been made in his friend s distribution of his 
 time. Previously it had been his custom, whenever 
 professional business or social engagements occupied the 
 middle part of his day, to seize some hours for study 
 after he was supposed to have retired to bed. His phy 
 sician suggested that this was very likely to aggravate 
 his nervous headaches, the only malady he was subject 
 to in the prime of his manhood ; and, contemplating with 
 steady eye a course not only of unremitting but of in 
 creasing industry, he resolved to reverse his plan, and 
 carried his purpose into execution with unflinching en 
 ergy. In short, he had now adopted the habits in which, 
 with very slender variation, he ever after persevered 
 when in the country. He rose by five o clock, lit his 
 own fire when the season required one, and shaved and 
 dressed with great delil eration for he was a very mar 
 
ASHESTIEL 1805. 201 
 
 *net as to all but the mere coxcombries of the toilet, not 
 abhorring effeminate dandyism itself so cordially as the 
 slightest approach to personal slovenliness, or even those 
 "bed-gown and slipper tricks," as he called them, in 
 which literary men are so apt to indulge. Arrayed in 
 his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he meant to use till 
 dinner time, he was seated at his desk by six o clock, all 
 his papers arranged before him in the most accurate or 
 der, and his books of reference marshalled around him 
 on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay watching 
 his eye, just beyond the line of circumvallation. Thus, 
 by the time the family assembled for breakfast between 
 nine and ten, he had done enough (in his own language) 
 " to break, the neck of the day s work." After breakfast, a 
 couple of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, 
 and by noon he was, as he used to say, " his own man." 
 When the weather was bad, he would labour incessantly 
 all the morning ; but the general rule was to be out and on 
 horseback by one o clock at the latest ; while, if any more 
 distant excursion had been proposed over night, he was 
 ready to start on it by ten ; his occasional rainy days of 
 unintermitted study forming, as he said, a fund in his 
 favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for accom 
 modation whenever the sun shone with special bright 
 ness. 
 
 It was another rule, that every letter he received 
 should be answered that same day. Nothing else could 
 have enabled him to keep abreast with the flood of com 
 munications that in the sequel put his good nature to the 
 severest test but already the demands on him in this 
 way also were numerous ; and he included attention to 
 them among the necessary business which must be de- 
 tpatched before he had a right to close his writing-box, 01 
 
202 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 as he phrased it, "to say, out damned spot, and be a 
 gentleman." In turning over his enormous mass of cor 
 respondence, I have almost invariably found some indi 
 cation that, when a letter had remained more than a day 
 or two unanswered, it had been so because he found oc 
 casion for inquiry or deliberate consideration. 
 
 I ought not to omit, that in those days Scott was far 
 too zealous a dragoon not to take a principal share in the 
 stable duty. Before beginning his desk-work in the 
 morning, he uniformly visited his favourite steed, and 
 neither Captain nor Lieutenant, nor the Lieutenant s 
 .successor, Brown Adam (so called after one of the heroes 
 of the Minstrelsy), liked to be fed except by him. The 
 latter charger was indeed altogether intractable in other 
 hands, though in his the most submissive of faithful allies. 
 The moment he was bridled and saddled, it was the 
 custom to open the stable door as a signal that his master 
 expected him, when he immediately trotted to the side of 
 the leaping-on-stone, of which Scott from his lameness 
 found it convenient to make use, and stood there, silent 
 and motionless as a rock, until he was fairly in his 
 seat, after which he displayed his joy by neighing tri 
 umphantly through a brilliant succession of curvettings. 
 Brown Adam never suffered himself to be backed but by 
 his master. He broke, I believe, one groom s arm and 
 another s leg in the rash attempt to tamper with his 
 dignity. 
 
 Camp was at this time the constant parlour dog. He 
 was very handsome, very intelligent, and naturally very 
 fierce, but gentle as a lamb among the children. As for 
 the more locomotive Douglas and Percy, he kept one 
 window of his study open, whatever might be the state 
 of the weather, that they might leap out and in as the 
 
ASHESTIEL 1805. 203 
 
 fancy moved them. He always talked to Camp as if he 
 understood what was said and the animal certainly did 
 understand not a little of it ; in particular, it seemed as if 
 he perfectly comprehended on all occasions that his master 
 considered him as a sensible and steady friend the grey 
 hounds as volatile young creatures whose freaks must bo 
 borne with. 
 
 " Every day," says Mr. Skene, " we had some hours of 
 coursing with the greyhounds, or riding at random over the 
 hills, or of spearing salmon in the Tweed by sunlight : which 
 last sport, moreover, we often renewed at night by the help of 
 torches. This amusement of burning the water, as it is called, 
 was not without some hazard ; for the large salmon generally 
 lie in the pools, the depths of which it is not easy to estimate 
 with precision by torchlight, so that not unfrequently, when 
 the sportsman makes a determined thrust at a fish apparently 
 within reach, his eye has grossly deceived him, and instead of 
 the point of the weapon encountering the prey, he finds him 
 self launched with corresponding vehemence heels over head 
 into the pool, both spear and salmon gone, the torch thrown 
 out by the concussion of the boat, and quenched in the stream, 
 while the boat itself has of course receded to some distance. I 
 remember the first time I accompanied our friend, he went 
 right over the gunwale in this manner, and had I not acciden 
 tally been close at his side, and made a successful grasp at the 
 gkirt of his jacket as he plunged overboard, he must at least 
 have had an awkward dive for it. Such are the contingencies 
 of burning the water. The pleasures consist in being pene 
 trated with cold and wet, having your shins broken against 
 the stones in the dark, and perhaps mastering one fish out of 
 every twenty you take aim at." 
 
 In all these amusements, but particularly in the 
 ing of the water, Scott s most regular companion at this 
 time was John Lord Somerville, who united with many 
 
204 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 higher qualities a most enthusiastic love for such sports, 
 and consummate address in the prosecution of them. 
 This amiable nobleman then passed his autumns at his 
 pretty seat of Alwyn, or the Pavilion, situated on the 
 Tweed, some eight or nine miles below Ashestiel. They 
 interchanged visits almost every week ; and Scott did not 
 fail to profit largely by his friend s matured and well- 
 known skill in every department of the science of rura 
 economy. He always talked of him, in particular, as his 
 master in the art of planting. 
 
 The laird of Rubislaw seldom failed to spend a part 
 of the summer and autumn at Ashestiel, as long as Scott 
 remained there, and during these visits they often gave a 
 wider scope to their expeditions. 
 
 " Indeed," says Mr. Skene, " there are few scenes at all 
 celebrated either in the history, tradition, or romance of 
 the Border counties, which we did not explore together in the 
 course of our rambles. We traversed the entire vales of the 
 Yarrow and Ettrick, with all their sweet tributary glens, and 
 never failed to find a hearty welcome from the farmers at 
 whose houses we stopped, either for dinner or for the night. 
 He was their chief-magistrate, extremely popular in that 
 official capacity; and nothing could be more gratifying thaia 
 the frank and hearty reception which everywhere greeted our 
 arrival, however unexpected. The exhilarating air of the 
 mountains, and the healthy exercise of the day, secured our 
 relishing homely fare, and we found inexhaustible entertain 
 ment in the varied display of character which the affability of 
 the Sheriff drew forth on all occasions in genuine breadth and 
 purity. The beauty of the scenery gave full employment to 
 my pencil, with the free and frequent exercise of which he 
 never seemed to feel impatient. He was at all times ready 
 and willing to alight when any object attracted my notice, and 
 used to seat himself beside me on the brae, to con over some 
 ballad appropriate to the occasion, or narrate the tradition of 
 
ASHESTIEL 1805. MR. SKENE. 205 
 
 itie glen sometimes, perhaps, to note a passing idea in his 
 pocket-book; but this was rare, for in general he relied with 
 confidence on the great storehouse of his memory. And much 
 amusement we had, as you may suppose, in talking over the 
 difierent incidents, conversations, and traits of manners that 
 had occurred at the last hospitable fireside where we had 
 mingled with the natives. Thus the minutes glided awa^ 
 until my sketch was complete, and then we mounted again 
 with fresh alacrity. 
 
 " These excursions derived an additional zest from the un 
 certainty that often attended the issue of our proceedings ; for, 
 following the game started by the dogs, our unfailing com 
 rades, we frequently got entangled and bewildered among the 
 hills, until we had to trust to mere chance for the lodging of 
 the night. Adventures of this sort were quite to his taste, and 
 the more for the perplexities which on such occasions befell 
 our attendant squires, mine a lanky Savoyard his a portly 
 Scotch butler both of them uncommonly bad horsemen, and 
 both equally sensitive about their personal dignity, which the 
 ruggedness of the ground often made it a matter of some dif 
 ficulty for either of them to maintain, but more especially for 
 my poor foreigner, whose seat resembled that of a pair of com 
 passes astride. Scott s heavy lumbering beaujfetier had pro 
 vided himself against the mountain showers with a huge cloak, 
 which, when the cavalcade were at gallop, streamed at full 
 stretch from his shoulders, and kept flapping in the other s 
 face, who, having more than enough to do in preserving hia 
 own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any time to 
 control the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and 
 pesting at the sacre manteau, in language happily unintelligible 
 to its wearer. Now and then some ditch or turf-fence ren 
 dered it indispensable to adventure on a leap, arid no farce 
 could have been more amusing than the display of politeness 
 which then occurred between these worthy equestrians, each 
 courteously declining in favour of his friend the honour of the 
 first experiment, the horses fretting impatient beneath them, 
 and the dogs clamouring encouragement. The horses gener- 
 
206 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ally terminated the dispute by renouncing allegiance, and 
 springing forward without waiting the pleasure of the riders, 
 who had to settle the matter with their saddles as they best 
 could. 
 
 " One of our earliest expeditions was to visit the wild sce 
 nery of the mountainous tract above Moffat, including the cas 
 cade of the Grey Mare s Tail, and the dark tarn called Loch 
 Skene In our ascent to the lake we got completely bewil 
 dered in the thick fog which generally envelopes the rugged 
 features of that lonely region ; and, as we were groping 
 through the maze of bogs, the ground gave way, and down 
 went horse and horsemen pell-mell into a slough of peaty mud 
 and black water, out of which, entangled as we were with our 
 plaids and floundering nags, it was no easy matter to get ex 
 tricated. Indeed, unless we had prudently left our gallant 
 Bteeds at a farm-house below, and borrowed hill ponies for 
 the occasion, the result might have been worse than laugha 
 ble. As it was, we rose like the spirits of the bog, covered 
 cap-a-pie with slime, to free themselves from which, our wily 
 ponies took to rolling about on the heather, and we had noth 
 ing for it but following their example. At length, as we 
 approached the gloomy loch, a huge eagle heaved himself from 
 the margin and rose right over us, screaming his scorn of the 
 intruders ; and altogether it would be impossible to picture any 
 thing more desolately savage than the scene which opened, as 
 if raised by enchantment on purpose to gratify the poet s eye ; 
 thick folds of fog rolling incessantly over the face of the inky 
 waters, but rent asunder now in one direction, and then in 
 another so as to afford us a glimpse of some projecting rook 
 or naked point of land, or island bearing a few scraggy stumps 
 of pine and then closing again in universal darkness upon 
 the cheerless waste. Much of the scenery of Old Mortality 
 was drawn from that day s ride. 
 
 " It was also in the course of this excursion that we encoun 
 tered that amusing personage introduced into Guy Mannering 
 as Tod Gabbie, though the appellation by which he was 
 known in the neighbourhood was Tod Willie. He was one 
 
ASHESTIEL MR. SKENE. 207 
 
 x>f those itinerants who gain a subsistence among the moorland 
 farmers by relieving them of foxes, polecats, and the like dep 
 redators a half-witted, stuttering, and most original creature. 
 
 " Having explored all the wonders of Moffatdale, we turned 
 ourselves towards Blackhouse Tower, to visit Scctt s worthy 
 acquaintances the Laidlaws, and reached it after a long and 
 ntricate ride, having been again led off our course by the 
 greyhounds, who had been seduced by a strange dog that 
 joined company, to engage in full pursuit upon the track of 
 what we presumed to be either a fox or a roe-deer. The 
 chase was protracted and perplexing, from the mist that 
 skirted the hill tops; but at length we reached the scene 
 of slaughter, and were much distressed to find that a stately 
 old he-goat had been the victim. He seemed to have fought a 
 stout battle for his life, but now lay mangled in the midst of 
 his panting enemies, who betrayed, on our approach, strong 
 consciousness of delinquency and apprehension of the lash, 
 which was administered accordingly to soothe the manes of the 
 luckless Capricorn though, after all, the dogs were not so 
 much to blame in mistaking his game flavour, since the fogs 
 must have kept him out of view till the last moment. Our 
 visit to Blackhouse was highly interesting; the excellent 
 old tenant being still in life, and the whole family group pre 
 senting a perfect picture of innocent and simple happiness, 
 while the animated, intelligent, and original conversation of 
 our friend William was quite charming. 
 
 " Sir Adam Fergusson and the Ettrick Shepherd were of 
 the party that explored Loch Skene and hunted the unfor 
 tunate he-goat. 
 
 " I need not tell you that Saint Mary s Loch, and the Locli 
 of the Lowes, were among the most favourite scenes of out 
 excursions, as his fondness for them continued to his last days, 
 and we have both visited them many times together in his 
 company. I may say the same of the Teviot and the Aill, 
 Borthwick-water, and the lonely towers of Buccleuch and 
 Harden, Minto, Roxburgh, Gilnockie, &c. I think it was 
 either in 1305 or 1806 that I first explored the Borthwick 
 
208 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 with him, when on our way to pass a week at Langholm with 
 Lord and Lady Dalkeith, upon which occasion the otter-hunt, 
 so well described in Guy Mannering, was got up by our noble 
 host ; and I can never forget the delight with which Scott 
 observed the enthusiasm of the high-spirited yeomen, who had 
 assembled in multitudes to partake the sport of their dear 
 young chief, well mounted, and dashing about from rock to 
 rock with a reckless ardour which recalled the alacrity of 
 their forefathers in following the Buccleuchs of former days 
 through adventures of a more serious order. 
 
 " Whatever the banks of the Tweed, from its source to its 
 termination, presented of interest, we frequently visited ; and 
 I do verily believe there is not a single ford in the whole 
 course of that river which we have not traversed together, 
 He had an amazing fondness for fords, and was not a little 
 adventurous in plunging through, whatever might be the state 
 of the flood, and this even though there happened to be a 
 bridge in view. If it seemed possible to scramble through, he 
 scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford ; 
 and it is to be remarked, that most of the heroes of his tales 
 seem to have been endued with similar propensities even the 
 White Lady of Avenel delights in the ford. He sometimes 
 even attempted them on foot, though his lameness interfered 
 considerably with his progress among the slippery stones. 
 Upon one occasion of this sort I was assisting him through the 
 Ettrick, and we had both got upon the same tottering stone in 
 the middle of the stream, when some story about a kelpie 
 occurring to him, he must needs stop and tell it with all his 
 usual vivacity and then laughing heartily at his own joke, 
 he slipped his foot, or the stone shuffled beneath him, and 
 down he went headlong into the pool, pulling me after him. 
 We escaped, however, with no worse than a thorough drench 
 ing and the loss of his stick, which floated down the river, and 
 he was as ready as ever for a similar exploit before his clothes 
 were half dried upon his back." 
 
 About this time Mr. and Mrs. Scott made a short ex 
 cursion to the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland 
 
EXCURSION TO CUMBERLAND 1805. 209 
 
 and visited some of their finest scenery, in company with 
 Mr. Wordsworth. I have found no written narrative of 
 this little tour, but I have often heard Scott speak with 
 enthusiastic delight of the reception he met with in the 
 humble cottage which his brother poet then inhabited on 
 the banks of Grasmere ; and at least one of the days they 
 spent together was destined to furnish a theme for the 
 verse of each, namely, that which they gave to the ascent 
 of Helvellyn, where, in the course of the preceding 
 spring, a young gentleman having lost his way and 
 perished by falling over a precipice, his remains were 
 discovered, three months afterwards, still watched by " a 
 faithful terrier-bitch, his constant attendant during fre 
 quent rambles among the wilds." * This day they were 
 accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, who was also 
 a true poet and might have been one of the greatest 
 of poets had he chosen ; and I have heard Mr. Words 
 worth say, that it would be difficult to express the feel 
 ings with which he, who so often had climbed Helvellyn 
 alone, found himself standing on its summit with two 
 such men as Scott and Davy. 
 
 After leaving Mr. Wordsworth, Scott carried his wife 
 to spend a few days at Gilsland, among the scenes where 
 they had first met ; and his reception by the company at 
 the wells was such as to make him look back with some 
 thing of regret, as well as of satisfaction, to the change 
 
 * See notice prefixed to the song 
 
 "I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn," &c 
 in SCOTT S Poetical Works, edit. 1841, p. 629 ; and compare the lines 
 
 " Inmate of a mountain dwelling, 
 
 Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed 
 From the watch-towers of Helvellyn, 
 Awed, delighted, and amaze 1," &c. 
 
 Wordsworth s Poetical Works, 8vo. edi*. vol. Hi. p. 9 
 VOL. ii. 14 
 
210 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that had occurred in his circumstances since 1797. They 
 were, however, enjoying themselves much there, when he 
 received intelligence which induced him to believe that a 
 French force was about to land in Scotland : the alarm 
 indeed had spread far and wide ; and a mighty gathering 
 of volunteers, horse and foot, from the Lothians and the 
 Border country, took place in consequence at Dalkeith. 
 He was not slow to obey the summons. He had luckily 
 chosen to accompany on horseback the carriage in which 
 Mrs. Scott travelled. His good steed carried him to the 
 spot of rendezvous, full a hundred miles from Gilsland, 
 within twenty-four hours ; and on reaching it, though, no 
 doubt to his disappointment, the alarm had already blown 
 over, he was delighted with the general enthusiasm that 
 had thus been put to the test and, above all, by the 
 rapidity with which the yeomen of Ettrick forest had 
 poured down from their glens, under the guidance of his 
 good friend and neighbour, Mr. Pririgle of Torwoodlee. 
 These fine fellows were quartered along with the Edin- 
 lurgh troop when he reached Dalkeith and Musselburgh ; 
 and after some sham battling, and a few evenings of high 
 jollity, had crowned the needless muster of the beacon 
 fires,* he immediately turned his horse again towards the 
 south, and rejoined Mrs. Scott at Carlisle. 
 
 By the way, it was during his fiery ride from Gilsland 
 to Dalkeith, on the occasion above mentioned, that he 
 composed his Bard s Incantation, first published six years 
 afterwards in the Edinburgh Annual Register : 
 
 " The forest of Glenmore is drear, 
 It is all of black pine and the dark oak tree," &c. 
 
 and the verses bear the full stamp of the feelings of 
 the moment. 
 
 * See Note " Alarm of Invasion," Antiquary, chap. xlv. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH ELLIS 1805 211 
 
 Shortly after he was re-established at Ashestiel, he 
 ivas visited there by Mr. Southey ; this being, I believe, 
 their first meeting. It is alluded to in the following let 
 ter a letter highly characteristic in more respects than 
 one : 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq., Sunninghill. 
 
 " Ashestiel, 17th October 1805. 
 
 * Dear Ellis, More than a month has glided away in this 
 busy solitude, and yet I have never sat down to answer your 
 kind letter. I have only to plead a horror of pen and ink 
 with which this country, in fine weather (and ours has been 
 most beautiful) regularly affects me. In recompense, I ride 
 walk, fish, course, eat and drink, with might and main, from 
 morning to night. I could have wished sincerely you had 
 come to Reged this year to partake her rural amusements ; 
 the only comfort I have is, that your visit would have been 
 over, and now I look forward to it as to a pleasure to come. I 
 shall be infinitely obliged to you for your advice and assistance 
 in the course of Dryden. I fear little can be procured for a 
 Life beyond what Malone has compiled, but certainly his facts 
 may be rather better told and arranged. I am at present busy 
 with the dramatic department. This undertaking will make 
 my being in London in spring a matter of absolute necessity. 
 
 " And now let me tell you of a discovery which I have 
 made, or rather which Robert Jameson has made, in copying 
 the MS. of True Thomas and the Queen of Elfland, in the 
 Lincoln cathedral. The queen, at parting, bestows the gifts 
 of harping and carping upon the .prophet, and mark his 
 eply 
 
 To harp and carp, Tomas, where so ever ye gen 
 Thomas, take tbou these with thee. 
 
 Harping, he said, ken I nane, 
 For Tong is chefe of mynstrelsie. ^ . 
 
 if pcor Ritson could contradict his own system of materialism 
 by rising from the grave to peep into this MS., he would 
 
212 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 slink back again in dudgeon and dismay. There certainly 
 cannot be more respectable testimony than that of True 
 Thomas, and you see he describes the tongue, or recitation, as 
 the principal, or at least the most dignified, part of a min 
 strel s profession. 
 
 " Another curiosity was brought here a few days ago by Mr. 
 Southey the poet, who favoured me with a visit on his way to 
 Edinburgh. It was a MS. containing sundry metrical ro 
 mances, and other poetical compositions, in the northern dialect, 
 apparently written about the middle of the 15th century. I 
 had not time to make an analysis of its contents, but some of 
 them seem highly valuable. There is a tale of Sir Gowther, 
 said to be a Breton Lay, which partly resembles the history of 
 Robert the Devil, the hero being begot in the same way ; and 
 partly that of Robert of Sicily, the penance imposed on Sir 
 Gowther being the same, as he kept table with the hounds, 
 and was discovered by a dumb lady to be the stranger knight 
 who had assisted her father the emperor in his wars. There 
 is also a MS. of Sir Isanbras ; item a poem called Sir Amadis 
 not Amadis of Gaul, but a courteous knight, who, being 
 reduced to poverty, travels to conceal his distress, and gives 
 the wreck of his fortune to purchase the rites of burial for a 
 deceased knight, who had been refused them by the obduracy 
 of his creditors. The rest of the story is the same with that 
 of Jean de Calais, in the Bibliotheque Bleue, and with a vul 
 gar ballad called the Factor s Garland. Moreover there is a 
 merry tale of hunting a hare, as performed by a set of country 
 clowns, with their mastiffs, and curs with short legs and never 
 a tail. The disgraces and blunders of these ignorant sports- 
 fien must have afforded infinite mirth at the table of a feudal 
 baron, prizing himself on his knowledge of the mysteries of 
 the chase performed by these unauthorized intruders. There 
 is also a burlesque sermon, which informs us of Peter and 
 Adam journeying together to Babylon, and how Peter asked 
 Adam a full great doubtful question, saying, Adam, Adam, 
 why didst thou eat the apple unpared ? This book belongs 
 to a lady. I would have given something valuable to hav* 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH ELLIS. 213 
 
 had a week of it. Southey commissioned me to say that he 
 intended to take extracts from it, and should be happy to copy, 
 or cause to be copied, any part that you might wish to be pos 
 sessed of; an offer which I heartily recommend to your early 
 consideration. Where dwelleth Heber the magnificent, whose 
 library and cellar * are so superior to all others in the world ? 
 I wish to write to him about Dryden. Any word lately from 
 Jamaica ? Yours truly, W. S." 
 
 Mr. Ellis, in his answer, says 
 
 " Heber will, I dare say, be of service to you in your pres 
 ent undertaking, if indeed you want any assistance, which I 
 very much doubt ; because it appears to me that the best 
 edition which could now be given of Dryden, would be one 
 which should unite accuracy of text and a handsome appear 
 ance, with good critical notes. Quoad Malone, I should 
 think Ritson himself, could he rise from the dead, would be 
 puzzled to sift out a single additional anecdote of the poet s 
 life; but to abridge Malone, and to render his narrative 
 terse, elegant, and intelligible, would be a great obligation 
 conferred on the purchasers (I will not say the readers, be 
 cause I have doubts whether they exist in the plural number) 
 of his very laborious compilation. The late Dr. Warton, you 
 may have heard, had a project of editing Dryden a la Kurd ; 
 that is to say, upon the same principle as the castrated edition 
 X Cowley. His reason was, that Dryden, having written for 
 ,~)read, became of necessity a most voluminous author, and 
 poured forth more nonsense of indecency, particularly in his 
 theatrical compositions, than almost any scribbler in that scrib 
 bling age. Hence, although his transcendent genius frequently 
 breaks out, and marks the hand of the master, his comedies 
 seem, by a tacit but general consent, to have been condemned 
 to oblivicn ; and his tragedies, being printed in such bad com 
 pany, have shared the same fate. But Dr. W. conceived that, 
 y a judicious selection of these, together with his fables and 
 
 * Ellis had mentioned, in a recent letter, Heber s buying wines to 
 ttie value of 1100 at some sale he happened to attend this autumn- 
 
234 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 prose works, it would be possible to exhibit him in a much 
 more advantageous light than by a republication of the whole 
 mass of his writings. Whether the Doctor (who, by the way, 
 was by no means scrupulously chaste and delicate, as you will 
 be aware from his edition of Pope) had taken a just view of 
 the subject, you know better than I : but I must own that the 
 announcement of a general edition of Dryden gave me some 
 little alarm. However, if you can suggest the sort of assist 
 ance you are desirous of receiving, I shall be happy to do what 
 I can to promote your views And so you are not dis 
 posed to nibble at the bait I throw out ! Nothing but a de 
 cent edition of Holinshed ? I confess that my project chiefly 
 related to the later historical works respecting this country 
 to the union of Gall, Twisden, Camden, Leibnitz, &c. &c., 
 leaving the Chronicles, properly so called, to shift for them 
 selves I am ignorant when you are to be in Edin 
 burgh, and in that ignorance have not desired Blackburn, who 
 is now at Glasgow, to call on you. He has the best practical 
 understanding I have ever met with, and I vouch that you 
 would be much pleased with his acquaintance. And so for 
 the present God bless you. G. E." 
 
 Scott s letter in reply opens thus : 
 
 " I will not castrate John Dryden. I would as soon castrate 
 my own father, as I believe Jupiter did of yore. What would 
 you say to any man who would castrate Shakspeare, or Mas- 
 ginger, or Beaumont and Fletcher ? I don t say but that it 
 may be very proper to select correct passages for the use of 
 boarding schools and colleges, being sensible no improper ideas 
 can be suggested in these seminaries, unless they are intruded 
 or smuggled under the beards and ruffs of our old dramatists. 
 But in making an edition of a man of genius s works for libra 
 ries and collections, and such I conceive a complete edition of 
 Dryden to be, I must give my author as I find him, and will 
 not tear out the page, even to get rid of the blot, little as I 
 fike it. Are not the pages of Swift, and even of Pope, larded 
 with indecency, and often of the most disgusting kind ? and da 
 
DRYDEN 1805. 215 
 
 ire not see them upon all shelves and dressing-tables, and in 
 all boudoirs ? Is not Prior the most indecent of tale-tellers, 
 not even excepting La Fontaine ? and how often do we see hia 
 works in female hands ? In fact, it is not passages of ludi 
 crous indelicacy that corrupt the manners of a people it is 
 the sonnets which a prurient genius like Master Little singa 
 virginibus puerisque it is the sentimental slang, half lewd, 
 hah methodistic, that debauches the understanding, inflames 
 the sleeping passions, and prepares the reader to give way as 
 soon as a tempter appears. At the same time, I am not at all 
 happy when I peruse some of Dryden s comedies : they are 
 very stupid, as well as indelicate ; sometimes, however, there 
 is a considerable vein of liveliness and humour, and all of them 
 present extraordinary pictures of the age in which he lived. 
 My critical notes will not be very numerous, but I hope to 
 illustrate the political poems, as Absalom and Achitophel, the 
 Hind and Panther, &c., with some curious annotations. I have 
 already made a complete search among some hundred pam 
 phlets of that pamphlet-Writing age, and with considerable suc 
 cess, as I have found several which throw light on my author. 
 I am told that I am to be formidably opposed by Mr. Crowe, 
 the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, who is also threatening an 
 edition of Dryden. I don t know whether to be most vexed 
 that some one had not undertaken the task sooner, or that 
 Mr. Crowe is disposed to attempt it at the same time with me ; 
 however, I now stand committed, and will not be crowed 
 over, if I can help it. The third edition of the Lay is now in 
 the press, of which I hope you will accept a copy, as it con 
 tains some trifling improvements or additions. They are, how 
 ever, very trifling. 
 
 " I have written a long letter to Rees, recommending an 
 edition of our historians, both Latin and English ; but I have 
 great hesitation whether to undertake much of it myself. 
 What I can, I certainly will do ; but I should feel particularly 
 ielighted if you would join forces with me, when I think we 
 might do the business to purpose. Do, Lord love you, think 
 }f this grande opus. 
 
216 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " I have not been so fortunate as to hear of Mr. Blackburn. 
 I am afraid poor Daniel has been very idly employed CVe 
 lum non animum. I am glad you still retain the purpose of 
 visiting Reged. If you live on mutton and game, we can feast 
 you ; for, as one wittily said, I am not the hare with many 
 friends, but the friend with many hares. W. S." 
 
 Mr. Ellis, in his next letter, says 
 
 " I will not disturb you by contesting any part of your in 
 genious apology for your intended complete edition of Dryden, 
 whose genius I venerate as much as you do, and whose negli 
 gences, as he was not rich enough to doom them to oblivion in 
 his own lifetime, it is perhaps incumbent on his editor to trans 
 mit to the latest posterity. Most certainly I am not so squeam 
 ish as to quarrel with him for his immodesty on any moral pre 
 tence. Licentiousness in writing, when accompanied by wit, 
 as in the case of Prior, La Fontaine, &c., is never likely to ex 
 cite any passion, because every passion is serious; and the 
 grave epistle of Eloisa is more likely to do moral mischief, and 
 convey infection to love-sick damsels, than five hundred stories 
 of Hans Carvel and Paulo Purgante ; but whatever is in point 
 of expression vulgar whatever disgusts the taste whatever 
 might have been written by any fool, and is therefore unwor 
 thy of Dryden whatever might have been suppressed, with 
 out exciting a moment s regret in the mind of any of his ad 
 mirers ought, in my opinion, to be suppressed by any editor 
 who should be disposed to make an appeal to the public taste 
 upon the subject ; because a man who was perhaps the best 
 poet and best prose writer in the language but it is fool 
 ish to say so much, after promising to say nothing. Indeed I 
 own myself guilty of possessing all his works in a very indiffer 
 ent edition, and I shall certainly purchase a better one when 
 ever you put it in my power. With regard to your competitors, 
 I feel perfectly at my ease, because I am convinced that though 
 you should generously furnish them with all the materials, thej 
 would not know how to use them : non cuivis hominum con- 
 tingit to write critical notes that any one will read." 
 
DRTDEN 1805. 217 
 
 Alluding to the regret which Scott had expi essed some 
 time before at the shortness of his visit to the libraries 
 of Oxford, Ellis says, in another of these letters : 
 
 " A library is like a butcher s shop : it contains plenty of 
 meat, but it is all raw ; no person living (Leyden s breakfast 
 was only a tour de force to astonish Ritson, and I except the 
 Abyssinians, whom I never saw) can find a meal in it, till some 
 good cook (suppose yourself) comes in and says, * Sir, I see 
 by your looks that you are hungry ; I know your taste be 
 patient for a moment, and you shall be satisfied that you have 
 an excellent appetite. " 
 
 I shall not transcribe the mass of letters which Scott 
 received from various other literary friends whose assist 
 ance he invoked in the preparation of his edition of Dry- 
 den ; but among them there occurs one so admirable, that 
 I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of introducing it, 
 more especially as the views which it opens harmonize 
 as remarkably with some, as they differ from others, of 
 those which Scott himself ultimately expressed respect 
 ing the poetical character of his illustrious author : 
 
 " Patterdale, Nov. 7, 1805. 
 
 " My Dear Scott, I was much pleased to hear of your 
 engagement with Dryden : not that he is, as a poet, any great 
 favourite of mine : I admire his talents and genius highly, 
 but his is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find 
 in Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour 
 and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear. It may seem 
 strange that I do not add to this, great command of language : 
 That he certainly has, and of such language, too, as it is most 
 desirable that a poet should possess, or rather that he should 
 not be without. But it is not language that is, in the highest 
 r<ense of the word, poetical, being neither of the imagination 
 nor of the passions ; I mean the amiable, the ennobling, or the 
 intense passions I do not mean to say that there is nothing 
 
218 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of this In Dryden, but as little, I think, as is possible, consider 
 ing how much he has written. You will easily understand my 
 meaning, when I refer to his versification of Palamon and 
 Arcite, as contrasted with the language of Chaucer. Dryden 
 had neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. 
 Whenever his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly 
 upon unpleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes 
 of classes of men or of individuals. That his cannot be the 
 language of imagination, must have necessarily followed from 
 this, that there is not a single image from nature in the 
 whole body of his works ; and in his translation from Virgil, 
 wherever Virgil can be fairly said to have his eye upon his 
 object, Dryden always spoils the passage. 
 
 " But too much of this. I am glad that you are to be his 
 editor. His political and satirical pieces may be greatly ben 
 efited by illustration, and even absolutely require it. A cor 
 rect text is the first object of an editor then such notes as 
 explain difficult or obscure passages ; and lastly, which is much 
 less important, notes pointing out authors to whom the poet 
 has been indebted, not in the fiddling way of phrase here 
 and phrase there, (which is detestable as a general practice), 
 but where he has had essential obligations either as to matter 
 or manner. 
 
 " If I can be of any use to you, do not fail to apply to me. 
 One thing I may take the liberty to suggest, which is, when 
 you come to the fables, might it not be advisable to print the 
 whole of the tales of Boccace in a smaller type in the original 
 language ? If this should look too much like swelling a book, 
 I should certainly make such extracts as would show where 
 Dryden has most strikingly improved upon, or fallen below, his 
 original. I think his translations from Boccace are the best, 
 at least the most poetical, of his poems. It is many yearg 
 since I saw Boccace, but I remember that Sigismunda is not 
 married by him to Guiscard (the names are different in 
 Boccace in both tales, I believe certainly in Theodore, &c.) 
 I think Dryden has much injured the story by the marriage 
 and degraded Sigismunda s character by it. He has- also, to 
 
DRYDEN 1805. 219 
 
 the best of my remembrance, degraded her still more by mak 
 ing her love absolute sensuality and appetite ; Dryden had no 
 other notion of the passion. With all these defects, and they 
 are very gross ones, it is a noble poem. Guiscard s answer, 
 when first reproached by Tancred, is noble in Boccace 
 nothing but this : Amor pub molto piu eke ne voi ne io possi- 
 amo. This, Dryden has spoiled. He says first very well, the 
 faults of love by love are justified, and then come four lines 
 of miserable rant, quite a la Maximin. Farewell, and believe 
 me ever your affectionate friend, 
 
 " WILLIAM WOBDSWOBTH." 
 
220 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Affair of the Clerkship of Session Letters to Ellis and Lord 
 Dalkeith Visit to London Earl Spencer and Mr. Fox 
 Caroline, Princess of Wales Joanna Baillie Appoint 
 ment as Clerk of Session Lord Melville s Trial Sony 
 on his Acquittal. 
 
 1806. 
 
 WHILE the first volumes of his Dryden were passing 
 through the press, the affair concerning the Clerkship of 
 the Court of Session, opened nine or ten months before, 
 had not been neglected by the friends on whose counsel 
 and assistance Scott had relied. In one of his Prefaces 
 of 1830, he briefly tells the issue of this negotiation, 
 which he justly describes as " an important circumstance 
 in his life, of a nature to relieve him from the anxiety 
 which he must otherwise have felt as one upon the pre 
 carious tenure of whose own life rested the principal 
 prospects of his family, and especially as one who had 
 necessarily some dependence on the proverbially capri 
 cious favour of the public." Whether Mr. Pitt s hint to 
 Mr. William Dundas, that he would willingly find an 
 opportunity to promote the interests of the author of the 
 Lay, or some conversation between the Duke of Buc- 
 cleuch and Lord Melville, first encouraged him to this 
 direction of his views, I am not able to state distinctly ; 
 Out I believe that the desire to see his fortunes placed on 
 
CLERKSHIP OF SESSION. 221 
 
 Borne more substantial basis, was at this time partaken 
 pretty equally by the three persons who had the princi 
 pal influence in the distribution of the crown patronage 
 in Scotland ; and as his object was rather to secure a 
 future than an immediate increase of official income, it 
 was comparatively easy to make such an arrangement as 
 would satisfy his ambition. George Home of Wedder- 
 burn, in Berwickshire, a gentleman of considerable liter 
 ary acquirements, and an old friend of Scott s family, had 
 now served as Clerk of Session for upwards of thirty 
 years. In those days there was no system of retiring 
 pensions for the worn-out functionary of this class, and 
 the usual method was, either that he should resign in 
 favour of a successor who advanced a sum of money ac 
 cording to the circumstances of his age and health, or for 
 a coadjutor to be associated with him in his patent, who 
 undertook the duty on condition of a division of salary. 
 Scott offered to relieve Mr. Home of all the labours of 
 his office, and to allow him, nevertheless, to retain its 
 emoluments entire during his lifetime ; and the aged 
 clerk of course joined his exertions to procure a con 
 joint-patent on these very advantageous terms. Mr. 
 Home resigned, and a new patent was drawn out accord 
 ingly ; but, by a clerical inadvertency, it was drawn out 
 solely in Scott s favour, no mention of Mr. Home being 
 inserted in the instrument. Although, therefore, the 
 Bign-manual had been affixed, and there remained noth 
 ing but to pay the fees and take out the commission, 
 Scott, on discovering this error, could not of course pro 
 ceed in the business ; since, in the event of his dying 
 before Mr. Home, that gentleman would have lost the 
 vested interest which he had stipulated to retain. A 
 pending charge of pecuniary corruption had compelled 
 
222 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Lord Melville to retire from office some time before Mr. 
 Pitt s death; and the cloud of popular obloquy under 
 which he now laboured, rendered it impossible that Scott 
 should expect assistance from the quarter to which, under 
 any other circumstances, he would naturally have turned 
 for extrication from this difficulty. He therefore, as soon 
 as the Fox and Grenville Cabinet had been nominated, 
 proceeded to London, to make in his own person such 
 representations as might be necessary to secure the issu 
 ing of the patent in the right shape. 
 
 It seems wonderful that he should ever have doubted 
 for a single moment of the result ; since, had the new 
 Cabinet been purely Whig, and had he been the most 
 violent and obnoxious of Tory partisans, neither of which 
 was the case, the arrangement had been not only virtu 
 ally, but, with the exception of an evident official blunder, 
 formally completed ; and no Secretary of State, as I must 
 think, could have refused to rectify the paltry mistake in 
 question, without a dereliction of every principle of hon 
 our. The seals of the Home Office had been placed in 
 the hands of a nobleman of the highest character more 
 over, an ardent lover of literature ; while the chief of 
 the new Ministry was one of the most generous as well 
 as tasteful of mankind ; and accordingly, when the cir 
 cumstances were explained, there occurred no hesitation 
 whatever on their parts. " I had," says Scott, " the hon 
 our of an interview with Earl Spencer, and he in the 
 most handsome manner gave directions that the commis 
 sion should issue as originally intended ; adding that, the 
 matter having received the royal assent, he regarded 
 only as a claim of justice what he would willingly have 
 done as an act of favour." He adds "I never saw 
 Mr. Fox on this or any other occasion, and never made 
 
CLERKSHIP OF SESSION. 223 
 
 Any application to him, conceiving, that in doing so, I 
 might have been supposed to express political opinions 
 different from those which I had always professed. In 
 his private capacity, there is no man to whom I would 
 have been more proud to owe an obligation had I fc>een 
 so distinguished." * 
 
 In January, 1806, however, Scott had by no means 
 measured either the character, the feelings, or the ar 
 rangements of great public functionaries, by the standard 
 with which observation and experience subsequently fur 
 nished him. He had breathed hitherto, as far as political 
 questions of all sorts were concerned, the hot atmosphere 
 of a very narrow scene and seems to have pictured to 
 himself Whitehall and Downing Street as only a wider 
 stage for the exhibition of the bitter and fanatical preju 
 dices that tormented the petty circles of the Parliament 
 House at Edinburgh ; the true bearing and scope of 
 which no man in after days more thoroughly understood, 
 or more sincerely pitied. The variation of his feelings, 
 while his business still remained undetermined, will, how 
 ever, be best collected from the correspondence about to 
 be quoted. It was, moreover, when these letters were 
 written, that he was tasting for the first time, the full cup 
 of fashionable blandishment as a London Lion ; nor will 
 the reader fail to observe how deeply, while he supposed 
 his own most important worldly interests to be in peril on 
 the one hand, and was surrounded with so many capti 
 vating flatteries on the other, he continued to sympathize 
 with the misfortunes of his early friend and patron, now 
 hurled from power, and subjected to a series of degrading 
 persecutions, from the consequences of which that lofty 
 spirit was never entirely to recover. 
 
 * Introduction to Marmion, 1830. 
 
224 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To George ELis, Esq., SunningJiill 
 
 " Edinburgh, January 25th, 1806. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, I have been too long in letting you bear 
 of me, and my present letter is going to be a very selfish one, 
 since it will be chiefly occupied by an affair of my own, in 
 which, probably, you may find very little entertainment. I 
 rely, however, upon your cordial good wishes and good advice, 
 though, perhaps, you may be unable to afford me any direct 
 assistance without more trouble than I would wish you to take 
 on my account. You must know, then, that with a view of 
 withdrawing entirely from the Bar, I had entered into a trans 
 action with an elderly and infirm gentleman, Mr. Georgs 
 Home, to be associated with him in the office which he holds 
 as one of the Principal Clerks to our Supreme Court of Ses 
 sion ; I being to discharge the duty gratuitously during his 
 life, and to succeed him at his decease. This could only be 
 carried into effect by a new commission from the crown to him 
 and me jointly, which has been issued in similar cases very 
 lately, and is in point of form quite correct. By the interest 
 of my kind and noble friend and chief, the Duke of Buc- 
 cleuch, the countenance of Government was obtained to this 
 arrangement, and the affair, as I have every reason to believe, 
 is now in the Treasury. I have written to my solicitor, Alex 
 ander Mundell, Fludyer Street, to use every despatch in hur 
 rying through the commission ; but the news of to-day giving 
 us every reason to apprehend Pitt s death, if that lamentable 
 event has not already happened,* makes me get nervous on a 
 subject so interesting to my little fortune. My political senti 
 ments have been always constitutional and open, and although 
 they were never rancorous, yet I cannot expect that the Scot 
 tish Opposition party, should circumstances bring them into 
 power, would consider me as an object of favour : nor would I 
 *,sk it at their hands. Their leaders cannot regard me with 
 malevolence, for I am intimate with many of them ; - - but they 
 must provide for the Whiggish children before they throw their 
 
 * Mr. Pitt d/ed January 23d, two days before this letter was written 
 
CLERKSHIP OF SESSION 1806. 225 
 
 >read to the Tory dogs ; and I shall not fawn on them because 
 they have in their turn the superintendence of the larder. At 
 the same time,, if Fox s friends come into power, it must be 
 with Windham s party, to whom my politics can be no excep 
 tion, if the politics of a private individual ought at any 
 time to be made the excuse for intercepting the bounty of his 
 Sovereign, when it is in the very course of being bestowed. 
 
 " The situation is most desirable, being 800 a-year, besides 
 being consistent with holding my sheriffdom; and I could 
 afford very well to wait till it opened to me by the death of 
 my colleague, without wishing a most worthy and respectable 
 man to die a moment sooner than ripe nature demanded. 
 The duty consists in a few hours labour in the forenoons 
 when the Court sits, leaving the evenings and whole vacation 
 open for literary pursuits. I will not relinquish the hope of 
 such an establishment without an effort, if jf is possible without 
 dereliction of my principles to attain the accomplishment of it. 
 As I have suffered in my professional line by addicting myself 
 to the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making, I am very 
 desirous to indemnify myself by availing myself of any prepos 
 session which my literary reputation may, however unmeritedly, 
 have created in my favour. I have found it useful when I 
 applied for others, and I see no reason why I should not try if 
 it can do anything for myself. 
 
 " Perhaps, after all, my commission may be got out before a 
 change of Ministry, if such an event shall take place, as it 
 seems not far distant. If it is otherwise, will you be so good 
 as to think and devise some mode in which my case may be 
 stated to Windham or Lord Grenville, supposing them to come 
 in ? If it is not deemed worthy of attention, I am sure I shall 
 be contented ; but it is one thing to have a right to ask a 
 favour, and another to hope that a transaction, already fully 
 completed by the private parties, and approved of by an exist 
 ing Administration, shall be permitted to take effect in favour 
 of an unoffending individual. I believe I shall see you very 
 shortly, unless I hear from Mundell that the business can be 
 done for certain without my coming up. I will not, if I can 
 
 VOL. n. 15 
 
226 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 help it, be flayed like a sheep for the benefit of some pettifog 
 ging lawyer or attorney. I have stated the matter to you 
 very bluntly ; indeed, I am not asking a favour, but, unless 
 iiy self-partiality blinds me, merely fair play. Yours ever, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 " Bath, 6th February 1806, 
 
 "My Dear Scott, You must have seen by the lists of 
 he new Ministry already published in all the papers, that, 
 although the death of our excellent Minister has been cer 
 tainly a most unfortunate event, in as far as it must tend to 
 delay the object of your present wishes, there is no cause for 
 your alarm on account of the change, excepting as far as that 
 change is very extensive, and thus perhaps much time may 
 elapse before the business of every kind which was in arrears 
 can be expedited by the new Administration. There is no 
 change of principle (as far as we can yet judge) in the new 
 Cabinet or rather the new Cabinet has no general political 
 creed. Lord Grenville, Fox, Lord Lansdowne, and Adding- 
 ton were the four nominal heads of four distinct parties, which 
 must now by some chemical process be amalgamated ; all must 
 forget, if they can, their peculiar habits and opinions, and 
 unite in the pursuit of a common object. How far this is pos 
 sible, time will show ; to what degree this motley Ministry can, 
 by their joint influence, command a majority in the House of 
 Commons ; how far they will, as a whole, be assisted by the 
 secret influence and power of the Crown ; whether, if not so 
 seconded, they will be able to appeal some time hence to the 
 people, and dissolve the Parliament all these and many 
 other questions, will receive very different answers from differ 
 ent speculators. But in the mean time it is self-evident, that 
 every individual will be extremely jealous of the patronage of 
 his individual department; that individually as well as con 
 jointly, they will be cautious of provoking enmity ; and that a 
 measure patronized by the Duke of Buccleuch is not very 
 likely to be opposed by any member of such a Cabinet 
 
CLERKSHIP OP SESSION. 227 
 
 " If, indeed, the object of your wishes were a sinecure, and 
 at the disposal of the Chancellor (Erskine), or of the President 
 of the Board of Control (Lord Minto), you might have strong 
 cause, perhaps, for apprehension ; but what you ask would suit 
 few candidates, and there probably is not one whom the Cabi 
 net, or any person in it, would feel any strong interest in oblig 
 ing to your disadvantage. But farther, we know that Lord 
 Sidmouth is in the Cabinet, so is Lord Ellenborough, and these 
 two are notoriously the King s Ministers. Now we may be 
 very sure that they, or some other of the King s friends, will 
 possess one department, which has no name, but is not the less 
 real ; namely, the supervision of the King s influence both here 
 and in Scotland. I therefore much doubt whether there is 
 any man in the Cabinet who, as Minister, has it in his power 
 to prevent your attainment of your object. Lord Melville, 
 we know, was in a great measure the representative of the 
 King s personal influence in Scotland, and I am by no means 
 sure that he is no longer so ; but be that as it may, it will, I 
 am well persuaded, continue in the hands of some one who has 
 not been forced upon his Majesty as one of his confidential 
 servants. 
 
 " Upon the whole, then, the only consolation that I can 
 confidently give you is, that what you represent as a principal 
 difficulty is quite imaginary, and that your own political prin 
 ciples are exactly those which are most likely to be serviceable 
 to you. I need not say how happy Anne and myself would be 
 to see you (we shall spend the month of March in London), 
 nor that, if you should be able to point out any means by 
 which I can be of the slightest use in advancing your interests, 
 you may employ me without reserve. I must go to the Pump- 
 room for my glass of water so God bless you. Ever truly 
 yours, , G. ELLIS." 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq., Bath. 
 
 " London, Feb. 20, 1806. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, I have your kind letter, and am infinitely 
 obliged to you for your solicitude in my behalf. I have indeed 
 
228 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 been rather fortunate, for the gale which has shattered so 
 many goodly argosies, has blown my little bark into the creek 
 for which she was bound, and left me only to lament the mis 
 fortunes of my friends. To vary the simile, while the huge 
 frigates, the Moira and Lauderdale, were fiercely combating 
 for the dominion of the Caledonian main, I was fortunate 
 enough to get on board the good ship Spencer, and leave them 
 to settle their disputes at leisure. It is said to be a violent 
 ground of controversy in the new Ministry, which of those tw 
 noble lords is to be St. Andrew for Scotland. I own I tremble 
 for the consequences of so violent a temper as Lauderdale s, 
 irritated by long-disappointed ambition and ancient feud with 
 all his brother nobles. It is a certain truth that Lord Moira 
 insists upon his claim, backed by all the friends of the late Ad 
 ministration in Scotland, to have a certain weight in that 
 country; and it is equally certain that the Hamiltons and 
 Lauderdales have struck out. So here are people who have 
 stood in the rain without doors for so many years, quarrelling 
 for the nearest place to the fire, as soon as they have set their 
 feet on the floor. Lord Moira, as he always has been, was 
 highly kind and courteous to me on this occasion. 
 
 " Heber is just come in, with your letter waving in his hand. 
 I am ashamed of all the trouble I have given you, and at the 
 same time flattered to find your friendship even equal to that 
 greatest and most disagreeable of all trials, the task of solicita 
 tion. Mrs. Scott is not with me, and I am truly concerned to 
 think we should be so near, without the prospect of meeting. 
 Truth is, I had half a mind to make a run up to Bath, merely 
 to break the spell which has prevented our meeting for these 
 two years. But Bindley,* the collector, has lent me a parcel 
 of books, which he insists on my consulting within the liberties 
 of Westminster, and which I cannot find elsewhere, so that 
 
 * James Bindley, Esq., famed for his rich accumulation of books 
 prints, and medals, held the office of a commissioner of Stamps during 
 the long period of 53 years. He died in 1818, in his 81st y ear. A. 
 Ihe sale of his library a collection of penny ballads, &c. in 8 volumes 
 oroduced 837. 
 
CLERKSHIP OF SESSION. 229 
 
 the fortnight T propose to stay will be fully occupied by exam 
 ination and extracting. How long I may be detained here is 
 very uncertain, but I wish to leave London on Saturday se en- 
 aight. Should I be so delayed as to bring my time of de 
 parture anything near that of your arrival, I will stretch my 
 furlough to the utmost, that I may have a chance of seeing 
 you. Nothing is minded here but domestic politics, and if we 
 are not clean swept, there is no want of new brooms to per 
 form that operation. I have heard very bad news of Leyden s 
 health since my arrival here such, indeed, as to give room 
 to apprehend the very worst. I fear he has neglected the pre 
 cautions which the climate renders necessary, and which no 
 man departs from with impunity. Remember me kindly and 
 respectfully to Mrs. Ellis; and believe me ever yours faith 
 fully, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 "P. S. Poor Lord Melville! how does he look? We 
 have had miserable accounts of his health in London. He was 
 the architect of my little fortune, from circumstances of per 
 sonal regard merely ; for any of my trifling literary acquisi 
 tions were out of his way. My heart bleeds when I think on 
 his situation 
 
 * Even when the rage of battle ceased, 
 The victor s soul was not appeased. " * 
 
 " To the Earl of Dalkeith. 
 
 " London, llth Feb. 1806. 
 
 "My Dear Lord, I cannot help flattering myself for 
 perhaps it is flattering myself that the noble architect of the 
 Border Minstrel s little fortune has been sometimes anxious 
 for the security of that lowly edifice, during the tempest which 
 has overturned so many palaces and towers. If I am right in 
 my supposition, it will give you pleasure to learn that, notwith- 
 Itanding some little rubs, I have been able to carry through 
 
 * These lines are from Smollett s Tears of Scotland. 
 
230 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the transaction which your Lordship sanctioned by your inliu- 
 ence and approbation, and that in a way very pleasing to my 
 own feelings. Lord Spencer, upon the nature of the transac 
 tion being explained in an audience with which he favoured 
 me, was pleased to direct the commission to be issued, as an 
 act of justice, regretting, he said, it had not been from the 
 beginning his own deed. This was doing the thing handsome 
 ly, and like an English nobleman. I have been very much 
 ffcted and caressed here, almost indeed to suffocation, but have 
 been made amends by meeting some old friends. One of the 
 kindest was Lord Somerville, who volunteered introducing me 
 to Lord Spencer, as much, I am convinced, from respect to 
 your Lordship s protection and wishes, as from a desire to serve 
 me personally. He seemed very anxious to do anything in his 
 power which might evince a wish to be of use to your protege. 
 Lord Minto was also infinitely kind and active, and his influ 
 ence with Lord Spencer would, I am convinced, have been 
 stretched to the utmost in my favour, had not Lord Spencer s 
 own view of the subject been perfectly sufficient. 
 
 " After all, a little literary reputation is of some use here. 
 I suppose Solomon, when he compared a good name to a pot 
 of ointment, meant that it oiled the hinges of the hall-doors 
 into which the possessors of that inestimable treasure wished 
 to penetrate. What a good name was in Jerusalem, a known 
 name seems to be in London. If you are celebrated for writ 
 ing verses or for slicing cucumbers, for being two feet taller or 
 two feet less than any other biped, for acting plays when you 
 should be whipped at school, or for attending schools and insti 
 tutions when you should be preparing for your grave, your 
 notoriety becomes a talisman an Open Sesame before 
 which everything gives way till you are voted a bore, and 
 discarded for a new plaything. As this is a consummation of 
 notoriety which I am by no means ambitious of experiencing, 
 I hope I shall be very soon able to shape my course northward, 
 to enjoy my good fortune at my leisure, and snap my fingers 
 at the Bar and all its works. 
 
 " There is, it is believed, a rude scuffle betwixt our late con* 
 
LONDON MARCH 1806. 231 
 
 mandfir-in-chief and Lord Lauderdale, for the patronage of 
 Scotland. If there is to be an exclusive administration, I hope 
 it will not be in the hands of the latter. Indeed, when one 
 considers, that by means of Lords Sidmouth and Ellenborough, 
 the King possesses the actual power of casting the balance be 
 twixt the five Grenvillites and four Foxites who compose the 
 Cabinet, I cannot think they will find it an easy matter to 
 force upon his Majesty any one to whom he has a personal 
 dislike. I should therefore suppose that the disposal of St. 
 Andrew s Cross will be delayed till the new Ministry is a little 
 consolidated, if that time shall ever come. There is much loose 
 gunpowder amongst them, and one spark would make a fine 
 explosion. Pardon these political effusions ; I am infected by 
 the atmosphere which I breathe, and cannot restrain my pen 
 from discussing state affairs. I hope the young ladies and my 
 dear little chief are now recovering from the hooping-cough, if 
 it has so turned out to be. If I can do anything for any of 
 the family here, you know your right to command, and the 
 pleasure it will afford me to obey. Will your Lordship be so 
 kind as to acquaint the Duke, with every grateful and respect 
 ful acknowledgment on my part, that I have this day got my 
 commission from the Secretary s office ? I dine to-day at Hol 
 land-house ; I refused to go before, lest it should be thought I 
 was soliciting interest in that quarter, as I abhor even the 
 shadow of changing or turning with the tide. 
 
 " I am ever, with grateful acknowledgment, your Lordship s 
 much indebted, faithful humble servant, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 " London, Saturday, March 3, 1806. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, I have waited in vain for the happy dis 
 solution of the spell which has kept us asunder at a distance 
 s-ess by one quarter than in general divides us ; and since I am 
 finally obliged to depart for the north to-morrow, I have only 
 to comfort myself with the hope that Bladud will infuse a 
 double influence into his tepid springs, and that you will feel 
 
232 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 emboldened, by the quantity of reinforcement which the rad 
 ical heat shall have received, to undertake your expedition to 
 the tramontane region of Reged this season. My time has 
 been spent very gaily here, and I should have liked very well 
 to have remained till you came up to town, had it not been for 
 the wife and bairns at home, whom I confess I am now anxious 
 to see. Accordingly I set off early to-morrow morning in 
 deed I expected to have done so to-day, but my companion, 
 Ballantyne, our Scottish Bodoni, was afflicted with a violent 
 diarrhoea, which, though his physician assured him it would 
 serve his health in general, would certainly have contributed 
 little to his accomplishments as an agreeable companion in a 
 post-chaise, which are otherwise very respectable. I own Lord 
 Melville s misfortunes affects me deeply. He, at least his 
 nephew, was my early patron, and gave me countenance and 
 assistance when I had but few friends. I have seen when the 
 streets of Edinburgh were thought by the inhabitants almost 
 too vulgar for Lord Melville to walk upon ; and now I fear 
 that, with his power and influence gone, his presence would 
 be accounted by many, from whom he has deserved other 
 thoughts, an embarrassment, if not something worse. All this 
 is very vile it is one of the occasions when Providence, as it 
 were, industriously turns the tapestry, to let us see the ragged 
 ends of the worsted which compose its most beautiful figures. 
 God grant your prophecies may be true, which I fear are 
 rather dictated by your kind heart than your experience of 
 political enmities and the fate of fallen statesmen. Kindest 
 compliments to Mrs. Ellis. Your next will find me in Edin 
 burgh. WALTER SCOTT. * 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 "Ashestiel, April 7, 1806. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, Were I to begin by telling you all the 
 regret I had at not finding you in London, and at being 
 obliged to leave it before your return, this very handsome 
 sheet of paper, which I intend to cover with more important 
 
ASHESTIEL APRIL 1806. 233 
 
 and interesting matters, would be entirely occupied by such 3 
 Jeremiade as could only be equalled by Jeremiah himself. 1 
 will therefore waive that subject, only assuring you that I hope 
 to be in London next spring, but have much warmer hopes of 
 seeing you here in summer. I hope Bath has been of service 
 if not so much as you expected, try easy exercise in a north 
 ward direction, and make proof of the \irtues of the Tweed 
 and Yarrow. We have been here these two days, and I have 
 been quite rejoiced to find all my dogs, and horses, and sheep, 
 and cows, and two cottages full of peasants and their children, 
 and all my other stock, human and animal, in great good 
 health we want nothing but Mrs. Ellis and you to be the 
 strangers within our gates, and our establishment would be 
 complete on the patriarchal plan. I took possession of my 
 new office on my return. The duty is very simple, consisting 
 chiefly in signing my name ; and as I have five colleagues, I 
 am not obliged to do duty except in turn, so my task is a 
 very easy one, as my name is very short. 
 
 " My principal companion in this solitude is John Dry den. 
 After all, there are some passages in his translations from 
 Ovid and Juvenal that will hardly bear reprinting, unless I 
 would have the Bishop of London * and the whole corps of 
 Methodists about my ears. I wish you would look at the pas 
 sages I mean. One is from the fourth book of Lucretius ; the 
 other from Ovid s Instructions to his Mistress. They are not 
 only double-entendres, but good plain single-entendres not 
 only broad, but long, and as coarse as the mainsail of a first- 
 rate. What to make of them I know not ; but I fear that, 
 without absolutely gelding the bard, it will be indispensable to 
 circumcise him a little by leaving out some of the most obnox 
 ious lines. Do, pray, look at the poems and decide for me 
 Have you seen my friend Tom Thomson, who is just now in 
 London V He has, I believe, the advantage of knowing you, 
 and I hope you will meet, as he understands more of old 
 books, old laws, and old history, than any man in Scotland. 
 He has lately received an aprjointment under the Lord Regis- 
 *Dr. Porteous. 
 
234 LIFE OF SIR AVALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ter of Scotland, which puts all our records under his immedi 
 ate inspection and control, and I expect many valuable discov 
 eries to be the consequence of his investigation, if he escapes 
 being smothered in the cloud of dust which his researches will 
 certainly raise about his ears. I sent your card instantly to 
 Jeffrey, from whom you had doubtless a suitable answer.* I 
 saw the venerable economist and antiquary, Macpherson, when 
 in London, and was quite delighted with the simplicity and 
 kindness of his manners. He is exactly like one of the old 
 Scotchmen whom I remember twenty years ago, before so 
 close a union had taken place between Edinburgh and Lon 
 don. The mail-coach and the Berwick smacks have done 
 more than the Union in altering our national character, some 
 times for the better and sometimes for the worse. 
 
 " I met with your friend, Mr. Canning, in town, and claimed 
 his acquaintance as a friend of yours, and had my claim al 
 lowed ; also Mr. Frere, both delightful companions, far too 
 good for politics, and for winning and losing places. When I 
 say I was more pleased with their society than I thought had 
 been possible on so short an acquaintance, I pay them a very 
 trifling compliment and myself a very great one. I had also 
 the honour of dining with a fair friend of yours at Blackheath 
 an honour which I shall very long remember. She is an en 
 chanting princess, who dwells in an enchanted palace, and I 
 cannot help thinking that her prince must labour under some 
 malignant spell when he denies himself her society. The very 
 Prince of the Black Isles, whose bottom was marble, would 
 have made an effort to transport himself to Montague House. 
 From all this you will understand I was at Montague House. 
 
 " I am quite delighted at the interest you take in poor 
 1-ord Melville. I suppose they are determined to hunt him 
 down. Indeed, the result of his trial must be ruin from the 
 expense, even supposing him to be honourably acquitted. 
 
 * Mr. Ellis had written to Mr. Jeffrey, through Scott, proposing to 
 draw up an article for the Edinburgh Review on the Annals of Com 
 merce, then recently published by Mr. David Macpherson. 
 
CAROLINE, PRINCESS OF WALES 1S06. 235 
 
 Will you, when you have time to write, let me know how that 
 matter is likely to turn ? I am deeply interested iu it; and 
 the reports here are so various, that one knows not what to 
 trust to. Even the common rumour of London is generally 
 more authentic than the from good authority of Edinburgh, 
 Besides, I am now in the wilds (alas ! I cannot say woods and 
 wilds), and hear little of what passes. Charlotte joins me in a 
 thousand kind remembrances to Mrs. Ellis ; and I am ever 
 yours most truly, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 I shall not dwell at present upon Scott s method of con 
 duct in the circumstances of an eminently popular author 
 beleaguered by the importunities of fashionable admirers : 
 his bearing, when first exposed to such influences, was ex 
 actly what it was to the end, and I shall have occasion in 
 the sequel to produce the evidence of more than one 
 deliberate observer. 
 
 Caroline, Princess of Wales, was in those days consid 
 ered among the Tories, whose politics her husband had 
 uniformly opposed, as the victim of unmerited misfortune, 
 cast aside, from the mere wantonness of caprice, by a gay 
 and dissolute voluptuary ; while the Prince s Whig asso 
 ciates had espoused his quarrel, and were already, as the 
 event showed, prepared to act, publicly as well as pri 
 vately, as if they believed her to be among the most 
 abandoned of her sex. I know not by whom Scott was 
 first introduced to her little Court at Blackheath ; but I 
 think it was probably through Mrs. Hayman, a lady of 
 her bedchamber, several of whose notes and letters occur 
 about this time in the collection of his correspondence. 
 The caieless levity of the Princess s manner was observed 
 by him, as I have heard him say, with much regret, as 
 likely to bring the purity of *ieart and mind, for which he 
 ave her credit, into suspicion. For example, when, in 
 
236 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the course of the evening, she conducted him by himself 
 to admire some flowers in a conservatory, and, the place 
 being rather dark, his lameness occasioned him to hesitate 
 for a moment in following her down some steps which she 
 had taken at a skip, she turned round, and said, with 
 mock indignation " Ah ! false and faint-hearted trou 
 badour ! you will not trust yourself with me for fear of 
 your neck!" 
 
 I find from one of Mrs. Hayman s letters, that on be 
 ing asked, at Montague House, to recite some verses of 
 his own, he replied that he had none unpublished which 
 he thought worthy of her Royal Highness s attention, 
 but introduced a short account of the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 and repeated one of the ballads of the Mountain Hard, 
 for which he was then endeavouring to procure subscrib 
 ers. The Princess appears to have been interested by 
 the story, and she affected, at all events, to be pleased 
 with the lines; she desired that her name might be 
 placed on the Shepherd s list, and thus he had at least 
 one gleam of royal patronage. 
 
 It was during the same visit to London that Scott first 
 saw Joanna Baillie, of whose Plays on the Passions he 
 had been, from their first appearance, an enthusiastic ad 
 mirer. The late Mr. Sotheby, the translator of Oberon, 
 &c. &c. was the friend who introduced him to the poetess 
 of Hampstead. Being asked very lately what impres 
 sion he made upon her at this interview "I was at 
 first," she answered, " a little disappointed, for I was 
 fresh from the Lay, and had pictured to myself an ideal 
 elegance and refinement of feature ; but I said to myself, 
 If I had been in a crowd, and at a loss what to do, I 
 should have fixed upon that face among a thousand, as 
 the sure index of the benevolence and the shrewdness 
 
CLERK OF SESSION. 237 
 
 that would and could help me in my strait. We had not 
 talked long, however, before I saw in the expressive play 
 of his countenance far more even of elegance and refine 
 ment than I had missed in its mere lines." The acquaint 
 ance thus begun, soon ripened into a most affectionate 
 intimacy between him and this remarkable woman ; and 
 thenceforth she and her distinguished brother, Dr. Mat 
 thew Baillie, were among the friends to whose intercourse 
 he looked forward with the greatest pleasure when about 
 to visit the metropolis. 
 
 I ought to have mentioned before, that he had known 
 Mr. Sotheby at a very early period of life, that amiable 
 and excellent man having been stationed for some time at 
 Edinburgh while serving his Majesty as a captain of dra 
 goons. Scott ever retained for him a sincere regard ; he 
 was always, when in London, a frequent guest at his hos 
 pitable board, and owed to him the personal acquaintance 
 of not a few of their most eminent contemporaries in va 
 rious departments of literature and art. 
 
 When the Court opened after the spring recess, Scott 
 entered upon his new duties as one of the Principal 
 Clerks of Session ; and as he continued to discharge 
 them with exemplary regularity, and to the entire satis 
 faction both of the Judges and the Bar, during the long 
 period of twenty -five years, I think it proper to tell pre 
 cisely in what they consisted, the more so because, in his 
 k etter to Ellis of the 25th January, he has himself (char 
 acteristically enough) understated them. 
 
 The Court of Session sits at Edinburgh from the 12th 
 of May to the 12th of July, and again from the 12th of 
 November, with a short interval at Christmas, to the 
 12th of March. The Judges of the Inner Court took 
 ftieir places on the Bench, in his time, every morning not 
 
238 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 later than ten o clock, and remained according to the 
 amount of business ready for despatch, but seldom for 
 less than four or more than six hours daily ; during which 
 space the Principal Clerks continued seated at a table 
 below the Bench, to watch the progress of the suits, and 
 record the decisions the cases, of all classes, being 
 equally apportioned among their number. The Court 
 of Session, however, does not sit on Monday, that day 
 being reserved for the criminal business of the High 
 Court of Justiciary ; and there is also another blank day 
 every other week, the Teind Wednesday, as it is called, 
 when the Judges are assembled for the hearing of tithe 
 questions, which belong to a separate jurisdiction, of 
 iomparatively modern creation, and having its own 
 separate establishment of officers. On the whole, then, 
 Scott s attendance in Court may be taken to have amount 
 ed, on the average, to from four to six hours daily during 
 rather less than six months out of the twelve. 
 
 Not a little of the Clerk s business in Court is merely 
 formal, and indeed mechanical ; but there are few days 
 in which he is not called upon for the exertion of his 
 higher faculties, in reducing the decisions of the Bench, 
 orally pronounced, to technical shape ; which, in a new, 
 complex, or difficult case, cannot be satisfactorily done 
 without close attention to all the previous proceedings 
 and written documents, an accurate understanding of the 
 principles or precedents on which it has been determined, 
 and a thorough command of the whole vocabulary of 
 legal forms. Dull or indolent men, promoted through 
 the mere wantonness of political patronage, might, no 
 doubt, contrive to devolve the harder part of their duty 
 apon humbler assistants : but, in general, the office had 
 been held by gentlemen of high character and attain 
 
CLERK OF SESSION. 239 
 
 nents ; and more than one among Scott s own colleagues 
 enjoyed the reputation of legal science that would have 
 done honour to the Bench. Such men, of course, prided 
 themselves on doing well whatever it was their proper 
 function to do ; and it was by their example, not that of 
 the drones who condescended to lean upon unseen and 
 irresponsible inferiors, that Scott uniformly modelled his 
 own conduct as a Clerk of Session. To do this, required, 
 of necessity, constant study of law-papers and authorities 
 at home. There was also a great deal of really base 
 drudgery, such as the authenticating of registered deeds, 
 by signature, which he had to go through out of Court ; 
 he had, too, a Shrievalty, though not a heavy one, all the 
 while upon his hands ; and, on the whole, it forms 
 one of the most remarkable features in his history, that, 
 throughout the most active period of his literary career, 
 he must have devoted a large proportion of his hours, 
 during half at least of every year, to the conscientious 
 discharge of professional duties. 
 
 Henceforth, then, when in Edinburgh, his literary 
 work was performed chiefly before breakfast ; with the 
 assistance of such evening hours as he could contrive to 
 rescue from the consideration of Court papers, and from 
 those social engagements in which, year after year, as his 
 celebrity advanced, he was of necessity more and more 
 largely involved ; and of those entire days during which 
 the Court of Session did not sit days which, by most 
 of those holding the same official station, were given to 
 relaxation and amusement. So long as he continued 
 quarter-master of the Volunteer Cavalry, of course he 
 aad, even while in Edinburgh, some occasional horse ex 
 ercise ; but, in general, his town life henceforth was in 
 f hat respect as inactive as his country life ever was the 
 
240 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 reverse. He scorned for a long while to attach any con- 
 sequence to this complete alternation of habits ; but we 
 shall find him confessing in the sequel, that it proved 
 highly injurious to his bodily health. 
 
 I may here observe, that the duties of his clerkship 
 brought him into close daily connexion with a set of gen 
 tlemen, most of whom were soon regarded by him with 
 the most cordial affection and confidence. One of his 
 new colleagues was David Hume (the nephew of the his 
 torian) whose lectures on the Law of Scotland are char 
 acterised with just eulogy in the Ashestiel Memoir, and 
 who subsequently became a Baron of the Exchequer; 
 a man as virtuous and amiable, as conspicuous for mas 
 culine vigour of intellect and variety of knowledge.* 
 Another was Hector Macdonald Buchanan of Drumma- 
 kiln, a frank-hearted and generous gentleman, not the 
 less acceptable to Scott for the Highland prejudices 
 which he inherited with the high blood of Clanranald ; at 
 whose beautiful seat of Ross Priory, on the shores of 
 Lochlomond, he was henceforth almost annually a visitor 
 a circumstance which has left many traces in the Wa- 
 verley Novels. A third (though I believe of later ap 
 pointment) with whom his intimacy was not less strict, 
 was the late excellent Sir Robert Dundas of Beechwood, 
 Bart. ; and a fourth was the friend of his boyhood, one 
 of the dearest he ever had, Colin Mackenzie of Port- 
 more. With these gentlemen s families, he and his lived 
 in such constant familiarity of kindness, that the children 
 all called their fathers colleagues uncles, and the mothers 
 
 Mr. Baron Hume died at Edinburgh, 27th July 1838, in his 82d 
 year. I had great gratification in receiving a message from the ven 
 erable man shortly before his death, conveying his warm approbatioi 
 ef these Memoirs of his friend. [1839.] 
 
CLERK OF SESSION. 241 
 
 of their little friends aunts ; and in truth, the establish 
 ment was a brotherhood. 
 
 Scott s nomination as Clerk of Session appeared in the 
 same Gazette (March 8, 1806) which announced the in 
 stalment of the Hon. Henry Erskine and John Clerk of 
 Eldin as Lord Advocate and Solicitor- General for Scot 
 land. The promotion at such a moment, of a distin 
 guished Tory, might well excite the wonder of the Par 
 liament House, and even when the circumstances were 
 explained, the inferior local adherents of the triumphant 
 cause were far from considering the conduct of their 
 superiors in this matter with feelings of satisfaction. 
 The indication of such humours was deeply resented by 
 his haughty spirit ; and he in his turn showed his irri 
 tation in a manner well calculated to extend to higher 
 quarters the spleen with which his advancement had 
 been regarded by persons wholly unworthy of his atten 
 tion. In short, it was almost immediately after a Whig 
 Ministry had gazetted his appointment to an office which 
 had for twelve months formed a principal object of his 
 ambition, that, rebelling against the implied suspicion of 
 his having accepted something like a personal obligation 
 at the hands of adverse politicians, he for the first time 
 put himself forward as a decided Tory partisan. 
 
 The impeachment of Lord Melville was among the 
 first measures of the new Government ; and personal 
 affection and gratitude graced as well as heightened the 
 zeal with which Scott watched the issue of this, in his 
 eyes, vindictive proceeding ; but, though the ex-minister s 
 iltimate acquittal was, as to all the charges involving his 
 personal honour, complete, it must now be allowed that 
 the investigation brought out many circumstances by no 
 jneans creditable to his discretion ; and the rejoicings of 
 
 VOL. II. 16 
 
242 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 his friends ought not, therefore, to have been scornfully 
 jubilant. Such they were, however at least in Edin 
 burgh ; and Scott took his share in them by inditing a 
 song, which was sung by James Ballantyne, and received 
 with clamorous applauses, at a public dinner given in 
 honour of the event on the 27th of June 1806. I regret 
 that this piece was inadvertently omitted in the late col 
 lective edition of his poetical works ; but since such is 
 the case, I consider myself bound to insert it here. 
 However he may have regretted it afterwards, he author 
 ized its publication in the newspapers of the time, and 
 my narrative would fail to convey a complete view of the 
 man if I should draw a veil over the expression, thus 
 deliberate, of some of the strongest personal feelings that 
 animated his verse. 
 
 "HEALTH TO LORD MELVILLE. 
 
 AIR CarricJcfergus. 
 Since here we are set in array round the table, 
 
 Five hundred good fellows well met in a hall. 
 Come listen, brave boys, and I ll sing as I m able 
 How innocence triumphed and pride got a fall. 
 But push round the claret 
 Come, stewards, don t spare it 
 With rapture you ll drink to the toast that I give: 
 Here, boys, 
 Off with it merrily 
 MELVILLE for ever, and long may he live ! 
 
 4 What were the Whigs doing, when boldly pursuing, 
 PITT banished Rebellion, gave Treason a string? 
 Why, they swore, on their honour, for ARTHUR O CoNNOB, 
 And fought hard for DESPARD against country and king. 
 Well, then, we knew, boys, 
 PITT and MELVILLE were true boys, 
 And the tempest was raised by the friends of Reform. 
 Ah, wo ! 
 
 Weep to his memory; 
 Low lies the pilot that weathered the storm ! 
 
SONG ON LORD MELVILLE S ACQUITTAL. 243 
 
 " And pray, don t you mind when the Blues first were raising, 
 
 And we scarcely could think the house safe o er our heads? 
 When villains and coxcombs, French politics praising, 
 Drove peace from our tables and sleep from our beds? 
 Our hearts they grew bolder 
 When musket on shoulder, 
 Stepp d forth our old Statesmen example to give. 
 Come, boys, never fear, 
 Drink the Blue grenadier 
 Here s to old HARRY, and long may he live ! 
 
 They would turn us adrift; though rely, sir, upon it 
 
 Our own faithful chronicles warrant us that 
 The free mountaineer and his bonny blue bonnet 
 Have oft gone as far as the regular s hat. 
 We laugh at their taunting, 
 For all we are wanting 
 Is licence our life for our country to give. 
 Off with it merrily, 
 Horse, foot, and artillery, 
 Each loyal Volunteer, long may he live ! 
 
 " Tis not us alone, boys the Army and Navy 
 
 Have each got a slap mid their politic pranks; 
 CORNWALLIS cashier d, that watched winters to save ye, 
 And the Cape called a bauble, unworthy of thanks. 
 But vain is their taunt, 
 No soldier shall want 
 
 The thanks that his country to valour can give : 
 Come, boys, 
 Drink it off merrily, 
 SIR DAVID and POPHAM, and long may they live ! 
 
 " And then our revenue Lord knows how they viewed it 
 
 While each petty statesman talked lofty and big; 
 But the beer-tax was weak, as if Whitbread had brewed it, 
 And the pig-iron duty a shame to a pig. 
 In vain is their vaunting, 
 Too surely there s wanting 
 What judgment, experience, and steadiness give; 
 Come, boys, 
 Drink about merrily, 
 Health to sage MELVILLE, ani long may he live! 
 
244 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Our King, too our Princess I dare not say more, sir, 
 
 May providence watch them with mercy and might! 
 While there s one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir, 
 They shall ne er want a friend to stand up for their right. 
 Be damn d he that dare not, 
 For my part, I ll spare not 
 To beauty afflicted a tribute to give : 
 Fill it up steadily, 
 Drink it off readily 
 Here s to the Princess, and long may she live ! 
 
 " And since we must not set Auld Reikie in glory, 
 
 And make her brown visage as light as her heart; * 
 Till each man illumine his own upper story, 
 
 Nor law-book nor lawyer shall force us to part. 
 In GRENVILLE and SPENCER, 
 And some few good men, sir, 
 High talents we honour, slight difference forgive; 
 But the Brewer we ll hoax, 
 Tallyho to the Fox, 
 And drink MELVILLE for ever, as long as we live ! " 
 
 This song gave great offence to the many sincere per 
 sonal friends whom Scott numbered among the upper 
 ranks of the Whigs; and, in particular, it created a 
 marked coldness towards him on the part of the accom 
 plished and amiable Countess of Rosslyn (a very inti 
 mate friend of his favourite patroness, Lady Dalkeith) 
 which, as his letters show, wounded his feelings severely, 
 the more so, I have no doubt, because a little reflec 
 tion must have made him repent not a few of its allusions. 
 He was consoled, however, by abundant testimonies of 
 Tory approbation ; and, among others, by the following 
 lote from Mr. Canning : 
 
 * The Magistrates of Edinburgh had rejected an application for 
 illumination of the town, on the arrival of the news of Lord Mel 
 ville s acquittal. 
 
POLITICS 1806. 245 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 "London, July 14, 1806. 
 
 " Dear Sir, I should not think it necessary to trouble you 
 with a direct acknowledgment of the very acceptable present 
 which you were so good as to send me through Mr. William 
 Rose, if I had not happened to hear that some of those per 
 sons who could not indeed be expected to be pleased with your 
 composition, have thought proper to be very loud and petulant 
 in the expression of their disapprobation. Those, therefore, 
 who approve and are thankful for your exertions in a cause 
 which they have much at heart, owe it to themselves, as well 
 as to you, that the expressions of their gratitude and pleasure 
 should reach you in as direct a manner as possible. I hope 
 that, in the course of next year, you are likely to afford your 
 friends in this part of the world an opportunity of repeating 
 these expressions to you in person ; and I have the honour to 
 be, Dear Sir, with great truth, your very sincere and obedient 
 servant, GEORGE CANNING." 
 
 Scott s Tory feelings appear to have been kept in a 
 very excited state during the whole of this short reign of 
 the Whigs. He then, for the first time, mingled keenly 
 in the details of county politics, canvassed electors 
 harangued meetings ; and, in a word, made himself con 
 spicuous as a leading instrument of his party more 
 especially as an indefatigable local manager, wherever 
 the parliamentary interest of the Buccleuch family was 
 in peril. But he was, in truth, earnest and serious in his 
 belief that the new rulers of the country were disposed to 
 abolish many of its most valuable institutions ; and he 
 regarded with special jealousy certain schemes of innova 
 tion with respect to the courts of law and the adminis 
 tration of justice, which were set on foot by the Crown 
 Officers for Scotland. At a debate of the Faculty of 
 
246 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Advocates on some of these propositions, he made a 
 speech much longer than any he had ever before de 
 livered in that assembly ; and several who heard it have 
 assured me, that it had a flow and energy of eloquence 
 for which those who knew him best had been quite un 
 prepared. When the meeting broke up, he walked across 
 the Mound, on his way to Castle Street, between Mr 
 Jeffrey and another of his reforming friends, who com 
 plimented him on the rhetorical powers he had been dis 
 playing, and would willingly have treated the subject- 
 matter of the discussion playfully. But his feelings had 
 been moved to an extent far beyond their apprehension : 
 he exclaimed, " No, no tis no laughing matter ; little 
 by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy 
 and undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland 
 Scotland shall remain." And so saying, he turned round 
 to conceal his agitation but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw 
 tears gushing down his cheek resting his head until he 
 recovered himself on the wall of the Mound. Seldom, if 
 ever, in his more advanced age, did any feelings obtain 
 such mastery. 
 
CRITICAL PIECES. 247 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Dryden Critical Pieces Edition of Slingsby s Memoirs, 
 fyc. Marmion begun Visit to London Ellis Rose 
 Canning Miss Seward Scott Secretary to the Commis 
 sion on Scotch Jurisprudence Letters to Southey, fyc. 
 Publication of Marmion Anecdotes The Edinburgh 
 Review on Marmion. 
 
 1806-1808. 
 
 DURING the whole of 1806 and 1807, Dryden contin 
 ued to occupy the greater share of Scott s literary hours ; 
 but in the course of the former year he found time and 
 (notwithstanding all these political bickerings) inclination 
 to draw up three papers for the Edinburgh Review ; viz. 
 one on the poems and translations of the Hon. William 
 Herbert ; a second, more valuable and elaborate, in which 
 he compared the " Specimens of Early English Ro 
 mances " by Ellis, with the " Selection of Ancient Eng 
 lish Metrical Romances " by Ritson ; and, lastly, that ex 
 quisite piece of humour, his article on the Miseries of Hu 
 man Life, to which Mr. Jeffrey added some, if not all, of 
 the Reviewers Groans with which it concludes. It was 
 in September 1806, too, that Messrs. Longman put 
 forth, in a separate volume, those of his own ballads 
 which, having been included in the Minstrelsy, were 
 already their property, togethei with a collection of his 
 * Lyrical Pieces;" for which he received 100. This 
 
248 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 publication, obviously suggested by the continued popu 
 larity of the Lay, was highly successful, seven thousand 
 copies having been disposed of before the first collective 
 editions of his poetical works appeared. He had also 
 proposed to include the House of Aspen in the same 
 volume, but on reflection, once more laid his prose 
 tragedy aside. About the same time he issued, though 
 without his name, a miscellaneous volume entitled. 
 " Original Memoirs written during the Great Civil 
 Wars ; being the Life of Sir Henry Slingsby, and 
 Memoirs of Captain Hodgson, with Notes, &c." Scott s 
 preface consists of a brief but elegant and interesting 
 biography of the gallant cavalier Slingsby ; his notes 
 are few and unimportant. This volume (by which he 
 gained nothing as editor) was put forth in October by 
 Messrs. Constable ; and in November 1806, he began 
 Marmion, the publication of which was the first impor 
 tant business of his in which that enterprising firm had a 
 primary part. 
 
 He was at this time in frequent communication with 
 several leading booksellers, each of whom would willingly 
 have engrossed his labours ; but from the moment that 
 his literary undertakings began to be serious, he seems to 
 have resolved against forming so strict a connexion with 
 any one publisher, as might at all interfere with the free 
 dom of his transactions. I think it not improbable that 
 his interests as the partner of Ballantyne may have had 
 some influence in this part of his conduct ; at all events, 
 there can be little doubt that the hope of sharing more 
 and more in the profits of Scott s original works induced 
 the competing booksellers to continue and extend their 
 patronage of the Edinburgh printer, who had been intro 
 duced to their notice as the personal friend of the most 
 
MARMION BEGUN NOVEMBER 1806. 249 
 
 rising author of the day. But, nevertheless, I can have 
 no doubt that Scott was mainly guided by his love of in 
 dependence. It was always his maaim, that no author 
 should ever let any one house fancy that they had ob 
 tained a right of monopoly over his works or, as he 
 expressed it, in the language of the Scotch feudalists, 
 "that they had completely thirled him to their mill;" 
 and through life, as we shall see, the instant he perceived 
 the least trace of this feeling, he asserted his freedom, 
 not by word, but by some decided deed, on whatever con 
 siderations of pecuniary convenience the step might make 
 it necessary for him to trample. Of the conduct of 
 Messrs. Longman, who had been principally concerned 
 in the publication of the Minstrelsy, the Lay, Sir Tris- 
 trem, and the Ballads, he certainly could have had no 
 reason to complain ; on the contrary, he has in various 
 places attested that it was liberal and handsome beyond 
 his expectation ; but, nevertheless, a negotiation which 
 they now opened proved fruitless, and ultimately they 
 had no share whatever in the second of his original works. 
 Constable offered a thousand guineas for the poem very 
 shortly after it was begun, and without having seen one 
 line of it ; and Scott, without hesitation, accepted this pro 
 posal. It may be gathered from the Introduction of 
 1830, that private circumstances of a delicate nature ren 
 dered it highly desirable for him to obtain the immediate 
 command of such a sum ; the price was actually paid 
 long before the poem was published ; and it suits very 
 well with Constable s character to suppose that his readi 
 ness to advance the money may have outstripped the cal 
 culations of more established dealers, and thus cast the 
 balance in his favour. He was not, however, so unwise 
 as to keep the whole adventure to himself. His bargain 
 
250 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 being fairly concluded, he tendered one-fourth of the 
 copyright to Mr. Miller of Albemarle Street, and another 
 to Mr. Murray, then of Fleet Street, London ; and both 
 these booksellers appear to have embraced his proposition 
 with eagerness. " I am," Murray wrote to Constable on 
 the 6th February 1807, "truly sensible of the kind re 
 membrance of me in your liberal purchase. You have 
 rendered Mr. Miller no less happy by your admission of 
 him ; and we both view it as honourable, profitable, and 
 glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem 
 by Walter Scott." The news that a thousand guineas 
 had been paid for an unseen and unfinished MS. appeared 
 in those days portentous ; and it must be allowed tha: 
 the writer who received such a sum for a performance in 
 embryo, had made a great step in the hazards, as well as 
 in the honours, of authorship. 
 
 The private circumstances which he alludes to as hav 
 ing precipitated his re-appearance as a poet were con 
 nected with his brother Thomas s final withdrawal from 
 the profession of a Writer to the Signet, which arrange 
 ment seems to have become quite necessary towards the 
 end of 1806 ; but it is extremely improbable that, in the 
 absence of any such occurrence, a young, energetic, and 
 ambitious man would have long resisted the cheering 
 stimulus of such success as had attended the Lay of tlip 
 Last Minstrel. 
 
 " I had formed," he says, " the prudent resolution to bestow 
 a little more labour than I had yet done on my productions, 
 and to be in no hurry again to announce myself as a candi 
 date for literary fame. Accordingly, particular passages of a 
 poem which was finally called Marmion were laboured with 
 * good deal of care by one by whom much care was seldoir 
 bestowed. Whether the work was worth the labour or not, 
 
MARMION 1807. 251 
 
 am no competent judge ; but I may be permitted to say, that 
 the period of its composition was a very happy one in my life ; 
 BO much so, that I remember with pleasure at this moment 
 (1830) some of the spots in which particular passages were 
 composed. It is probably owing to this that the introductions 
 to the several cantos assumed the form of familiar epistles to 
 my intimate friends, in which I alluded, perhaps more than was 
 necessary or graceful, to my domestic occupations and amuse 
 ments a loquacity which may be excused by those who re 
 member that I was still young, light-headed, and happy, and 
 that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh* 
 
 The first four of the Introductory Epistles are dated 
 Ashestiel, and they point out very distinctly some of the 
 "spots" which, after the lapse of so many years, he 
 remembered with pleasure for their connexion with par 
 ticular passages of Marmion. There is a knoll with 
 some tall old ashes on the adjoining farm of the Peel, 
 where he was very fond of sitting by himself, and it still 
 bears the name of the Sheriff s Knowe. Another fa 
 vourite seat was beneath a huge oak hard by the Tweed, 
 at the extremity of the haugh of Ashestiel. It was here, 
 that while meditating his verses, he used 
 
 " to stray, 
 
 And waste the solitary day 
 In plucking from yon fen the reed, 
 And watch it floating down the Tweed; 
 Or idly list the shrilling lay 
 With which the milkmaid cheers her way, 
 Marking its cadence rise and fail, 
 As from the field, beneath her pail, 
 She trips it down the uneven dale." 
 
 He frequently wandered far from home, however, at 
 tended only by his dog, and would return late in the 
 evening, having let hours after hours slip away among 
 * Introduction to Marmion, 1830. 
 
252 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the soi t and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow 
 creeps from her fountains. The lines, 
 
 " Oft in my mind such thoughts awake, 
 By lone Saint Mary s silent lake," &c., 
 
 paint a scene not less impressive than what Byron found 
 amidst the gigantic pines of the forest of Ravenna ; and 
 how completely does he set himself before us in the mo 
 ment of his gentler and more solemn inspiration, by the 
 closing couplet, 
 
 " Your horse s hoof-tread sounds too rude, 
 So stilly is the solitude." 
 
 But when the theme was of a more stirring order, he 
 enjoyed pursuing it over brake and fell at the full speed 
 of his Lieutenant I well remember his saying, as I rode 
 with him across the hills from Ashestiel to Newark one 
 day in his declining years " Oh, man, I had many a 
 grand gallop among these braes when I was thinking of 
 Marmion, but a trotting canny pony must serve me now." 
 His friend, Mr. Skene, however, informs me that many of 
 the more energetic descriptions, and particularly that of the 
 battle of Flodden, were struck out while he was in quar 
 ters again with his cavalry, in the autumn of 1807. "In 
 the intervals of drilling," he says, " Scott used to delight 
 in walking his powerful black steed up and down by him 
 self upon the Portobello sands, within the beating of the 
 surge ; and now and then you would see him plunge in 
 his spurs, and go off as if at the charge, with the spray 
 dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, 
 he often came and placed himself beside me, to repeat 
 the verses that he had been composing during these 
 pauses of our exercise." 
 
 He seems to have communicated fragments of the 
 
MARMION 1807. 253 
 
 poem very freely during the whole of its progress. As 
 early as the 22d February 1807, I find Mrs. Hayman 
 acknowledging, in the name of the Princess of Wales, 
 the receipt of a copy of the Introduction to Canto III., 
 in which occurs the tribute to Her Royal Highness s 
 heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena 
 a tribute so grateful to her feelings that she herself 
 shortly after sent the poet an elegant silver vase as a 
 memorial of her thankfulness. And about the same 
 time, the Marchioness of Abercorn expresses the delight 
 with which both she and her lord had read the generous 
 verses on Pitt and Fox in another of those epistles. 
 But his connexion with this noble family was no new 
 one ; for his father, and afterwards his brother Thomas, 
 had been the auditors of their Scotch rental. 
 
 In March, his researches concerning Dryden carried 
 him again to the south. During several weeks he gave 
 his day pretty regularly to the pamphlets and MSS. of 
 the British Museum, and the evening to the brilliant so 
 cieties that now courted him whenever he came within 
 their sphere. His recent political demonstrations during 
 the brief reign of the Whigs, seem to have procured for 
 him on this occasion a welcome of redoubled warmth 
 among the leaders of his own now once more victorious 
 party. " As I had," he writes to his brother-in-law, in 
 India, " contrary to many who avowed the same opin 
 ions in sunshine, held fast my integrity during the Fox- 
 ites interval of power, I found myself of course very 
 tvell with the new administration." But he uniformly 
 reserved his Saturday and Sunday either for Mr. Ellis, 
 at Sunninghill, or Lord and Lady Abercorn, at their 
 beautiful villa near Stanmore ; and the press copy of 
 Cantos I. and II. of Marmion attests that most of it 
 
254 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 reached Ballantyne in sheets, franked by the Marquis, 
 or his son-in-law, Lord Aberdeen, during April 1807. 
 
 Before he turned homeward he made a short visit to 
 his friend William Stewart Rose, at his cottage of Gun- 
 dimore, in Hampshire, and enjoyed in his company va 
 rious long rides in the New Forest, a day in the dock 
 yard of Portsmouth, and two or three more in the Isle 
 of "Wight.* Several sheets of the MS., and corrected 
 
 * I am sure I shall gratify every reader by extracting some lines 
 alluding to Scott s visit at Mr. Rose s Marine Villa, from an unpub 
 lished-poem, entitled "Gundimore," kindly placed at my disposal by 
 his host. 
 
 " Here Walter Scott has woo d the northern muse; 
 Here he with me has joyed to walk or cruise ; 
 And hence has pricked through Yten s holt, where we 
 Have called to mind how under greenwood tree, 
 Pierced by the partner of his woodland craft, 
 King Rufus fell by Tyrrell s random shaft. 
 Hence have we ranged by Celtic camps and barrows, 
 Or climbed the expectant bark, to thread the Narrows 
 Of Hurst, bound westward to the gloomy bower 
 Where Charles was prisoned in yon island tower ; 
 Or from a longer flight alighted where 
 Our navies to recruit their strength repair 
 And there have seen the ready shot and gun ; 
 Seen in red steam the molten copper run ; 
 And massive anchor forged, whose iron teeth 
 Should hold the three-decked ship when billows seethe; 
 And when the arsenal s dark stithy rang 
 With the loud hammers of the Cyclop-gang, 
 Swallowing the darkness up, have seen with wonder, 
 The flashing fire, and heard fast-following thunder. 
 Here, witched from summer sea and softer reign, 
 Foscrlo courted Muse of milder strain. 
 On these ribbed sands was Coleridge pleased to pace, 
 While ebbing seas have hummed a rolling base 
 To his rapt talk. Alas ! all these are gone, 
 4 And I and other creeping things live on. 
 The flask no more, dear Walter, shall I quaff 
 With thee, no more enjoy thy hearty laugh 
 No more shalt thou to me extend thy hand, 
 A welcome pilgrim to my father s land ! 
 
GUNDIMORE, ETC. APRIL 1807. 255 
 
 proofs of Canto III., are also under covers franked from 
 Gundimore by Mr. Rose ; and I think I must quote the 
 note which accompanied one of these detachments, as 
 showing the good-natured buoyancy of mind and temper 
 with which the Poet received in every stage of his prog 
 ress the hints and suggestions of his watchful friends, 
 Erskine and Ballantyne. The latter having animad 
 verted on the first draught of the song " Where shall 
 the Lover rest," and sketched what he thought would 
 be a better arrangement of the stanza Scott answers 
 as follows : 
 
 " Dear James, I am much obliged to you for the rhymes. 
 I presume it can make no difference as to the air if the first 
 three lines rhyme ; and I wish to know, with your leisure, if 
 it is absolutely necessary that the fourth should be out of 
 poetic rhythm, as the deserted fair one certainly is. For 
 example, would this do? 
 
 Should my heart from thee falter, 
 To another love alter 
 (For the rhyme we ll say Walter) 
 Deserting my lover. 
 
 There is here the same number of syllables, but arranged in 
 Cadence. I return the proof and send more copy. There 
 will be six Cantos. Yours truly, W. S." 
 
 Alone, such friends and comrades I deplore, 
 
 And peopled but with phantoms is the shore : 
 
 Hence have I fled my haunted beach ; yet so 
 
 Would not alike a sylvan home forego. 
 
 Though wakening fond regrets, its sere and yellow 
 
 Leaves, and sweet inland murmur, serve to mellow 
 
 And soothe the sobered sorrow they recall, 
 
 When mantled in the faded garb of fall ; 
 
 But wind and wave unlike the sighing sedge 
 
 And murmuring leaf give grief a coarser edge : 
 
 And in each howling blast my fancy hears 
 
 4 The voices of the dead, and songs of other yean, n 
 
256 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 In the first week of May we find him at Lichfield, hav 
 ing diverged from the great road to Scotland for the pur 
 pose of visiting Miss Seward. Her account of her old 
 correspondent, whom till now she had never seen, was 
 addressed to Mr. Gary, the translator of Dante ; and it 
 may interest the reader to compare it with other similar 
 sketches of earlier and later date. " On Friday last," 
 she says, " the poetically great Walter Scott came like . 
 a sunbeam to my dwelling. This proudest boast of the 
 Caledonian muse is tall, and rather robust than slender, 
 but lame in the same manner as Mr. Hayley, and in a 
 greater measure. Neither the contour of his face nor yet 
 his features are elegant; his complexion healthy, and 
 somewhat fair, without bloom. We find the singularity 
 of brown hair and eyelashes, with flaxen eyebrows ; and 
 a countenance open, ingenuous, and benevolent. When 
 seriously conversing or earnestly attentive, though his 
 eyes are rather of a lightish grey, deep thought is on 
 their lids ; he contracts his brow, and the rays of genius 
 gleam aslant from the orbs beneath them. An upper 
 lip too long prevents his mouth from being decidedly 
 handsome, but the sweetest emanations of temper and 
 heart play about it when he talks cheerfully or smiles 
 and in company he is much oftener gay than contempla 
 tive his conversation an overflowing fountain of brill 
 iant wit, apposite allusion, and playful archness while 
 on serious themes it is nervous and eloquent ; the accent 
 decidedly Scotch, yet by no means broad. On the whole , 
 no expectation is disappointed which his poetry must ex 
 cite in all who feel the power and graces of human inspi 
 ration Not less astonishing than was Johnson s 
 
 memory is that of Mr. Scott ; like Johnson, also, his reci- 
 tetion is too monotonous and violent to do justice either 
 
MR. GUTHRIE WRIGHT 1807. 257 
 
 to his own writings or those of others. The stranger 
 guest delighted us all by the unaffected charms of his 
 mind and manners. Such visits are among the most 
 high-prized honours which my writings have procured for 
 me." Miss Seward adds, that she showed him the pas 
 sage in Gary s Dante where Michael Scott occurs, and 
 that though he admired the spirit and skill of the version, 
 he confessed his inability to find pleasure in the Divina 
 Comedia. " The plan," he said, " appeared to him un 
 happy; the personal malignity and strange mode of 
 revenge presumptuous and uninteresting." 
 
 By the 12th of May he was at Edinburgh for the com 
 mencement of the summer session, and the printing of 
 Marmion seems thenceforth to have gone on at times 
 with great rapidity, at others slowly and irregularly ; the 
 latter Cantos having no doubt been merely blocked out 
 when the first went to press, and his professional avoca 
 tions, but above all, his Dryden, occasioning frequent in 
 terruptions. 
 
 Mr. Guthrie Wright, a relation and intimate friend of 
 William Erskine, who was among the familiar associates 
 of the Troop, has furnished me with some details which 
 throw light on the construction of Marmion. This gen 
 tleman, I may observe, had, through Scott s good offices, 
 succeeded his brother Thomas in the charge of the Aber- 
 corn business. " In the summer of 1807," he says, " I 
 had the pleasure of making a trip with Sir Walter to 
 Dumfries, for the purpose of meeting the late Lord Aber- 
 corn on his way with his family to Ireland. His Lord 
 ship did not arrive for two or three days after we reached 
 Dumfries, and we employed the interval in visiting 
 Sweetheart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, and some other 
 ancient buildings in the neighbourhood. I need hardly 
 
 VOL. II. 17 
 
258 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 say how much I enjoyed the journey. Every one wh 
 had the pleasure of his acquaintance knows the inex 
 haustible store of anecdote and good-humour he pos 
 sessed. He recited poetry and old legends from morn till 
 night, and in short it is impossible that anything could be 
 more delightful than his society ; but what I particularly 
 allude to is the circumstance, that at that time he was 
 writing Marmion, the three or four first cantos of which 
 he had with him, and which he was so good as read 
 to me. It is unnecessary to say how much I was 
 enchanted with them ; but as he good-naturedly asked 
 me to state any observations that occurred to me, 
 I said in joke that it appeared to me he had brought 
 his hero by a very strange route into Scotland. Why, 
 says I, did ever mortal coming from England to 
 Edinburgh go by Gifford, Crichton Castle, Borthwick 
 Castle, and over the top of Blackford Hill ? Not only 
 is it a circuitous detour, but there never was a road 
 that way since the world was created! That is a 
 most irrelevant objection, said Sir Walter ; it was my 
 good pleasure to bring Marmion by that route, for the 
 purpose of describing the places you have mentioned, and 
 the view from Blackford Hill it was his business to 
 find his road and pick his steps the best way he could. 
 But, pray, how would you have me bring him ? Not by 
 the post-road, surely, as if he had been travelling in a 
 mail-coach ? No, I replied ; there were neither post- 
 roads nor mail-coaches in those days ; but I think you 
 might have brought him with a less chance of getting in 
 to a swamp, by allowing him to travel the natural route 
 by Dunbar and the sea-coast ; and then he might have 
 tarried for a space with the famous Earl of Angus, sur- 
 named Bell-the-Cat, at his favourite residence of Tantal 
 
MR. GUTHRIE WRIGHT 1807. 259 
 
 Ion Castle, by which means you would have had not only 
 that fortress with all his feudal followers, but the Castle 
 of Dunbar, the Bass, and all the beautiful scenery of the 
 Forth, to describe. This observation seemed to strike 
 him much, and after a pause he exclaimed By Jove, you 
 are right ! I ought to have brought him that way ; and 
 he added, l but before he and I part, depend upon it he 
 shall visit Tantallon. He then asked me if I had ever 
 been there, and upon saying I had frequently, he desired 
 me to describe it, which I did ; and I verily believe it is 
 from what I then said, that the accurate description con 
 tained in the fifth canto was given at least I never 
 heard him say he had afterwards gone to visit the cas 
 tle ; and when the poem was published, I remember he 
 laughed, and asked me how I liked Tantallon." * 
 
 * Mr. Guthrie Wright, in his letter to me (Edinburgh, April 5th, 
 1837), adds " You have said a good deal about Sir Walter s military 
 career, and truly stated how much he was the life and soul of the corps, 
 and that at quarters he used to set the table in a roar. Numberless 
 anecdotes of him might be given about that time. I shall only mention 
 one. Our Adjutant, Jack Adams, was a jolly fat old fellow, a great 
 favourite, who died one day, and was buried with military honours. 
 We were all very sorrowful on the occasion had marched to the 
 Greyfriars churchyard to the Dead March in Saul, and other solemn 
 \nusic, and after having fired over the grave, were coming away but 
 there seemed to be a moment s pause as to the tune which should be 
 played by the band, when Scott said, If I might venture an opinion, 
 it should be, Ihae laid a herriri 1 in sautj and we marched off in quick 
 time to that tune accordingly. 
 
 " As an instance of the fun and good-humour that prevailed among 
 us, as well as of Sir Walter s ready wit, I may likewise mention an 
 anecdote personal to myself. My rear-rank man rode a great brute of 
 a carriage horse, over which he had not sufficient control, and which 
 therefore not unfrequently, at a charge, broke through the front rank, 
 and he could not pull him up till he had got several yards a-head of 
 the troop. One day as we were standing at ease after this had oc 
 curred, I was rather grumbling, I suppose, at one of my legs being ear 
 ned off in this unceremonious way, to the no small danger of my being 
 
EGO LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Just a year had elapsed from his beginning the poem, 
 when he penned the Epistle for Canto IV. at Ashestiel ; 
 and who, that considers how busily his various pursuits 
 and labours had been crowding the interval, can wonder 
 to be told that 
 
 " Even now, it scarcely seems a day 
 Since first I tuned this idle lay 
 A task so often laid aside 
 When leisure graver cares denied 
 That now November s dreary gale, 
 Whose voice inspired my opening tale, 
 That same November gale once more 
 Whirls the dry leaves on Yarrow shore." 
 
 The fifth Introduction was written in Edinburgh in 
 the month following ; that to the last Canto, during the 
 Christmas festivities of Mertoun-house, where, from the 
 first days of his ballad-rhyming, down to the close of his 
 life, he, like his bearded ancestor, usually spent that sea 
 son with the immediate head of the race. The bulky 
 appendix of notes, including a mass of curious anti 
 quarian quotations, must have moved somewhat slow 
 ly through the printer s hands ; but Marmion was at 
 length ready for publication by the middle of February 
 1808. 
 
 Among the "graver cares" which he alludes to as 
 having interrupted his progress in the poem, the chief 
 were, as has been already hinted, those arising from the 
 altered circumstances of his brother. These are men 
 tioned in a letter to Miss Seward, dated in August 1807. 
 The lady had, among other things, announced her pleas 
 ure in the prospect of a visit from the author of " Ma- 
 unhorsed, when Scott said, Why, Sir, I think you are most properly 
 placed in your present position, as you know it is your especial bust 
 ness to check overcharges^ alluding to my official duty, as Auditor o 
 the Court of Session, to check overcharges in bills of costs." [183,9.] 
 
AUGUST 18U. 2SJ 
 
 doc," expressed her admiration of " Master Betty, the 
 Young Roscius," and lamented the father s design of 
 placing that " miraculous boy " for three years under a 
 certain " schoolmaster of eminence at Shrewsbury." * 
 Scott says in answer 
 
 " Since I was favoured with your letter, my dear Miss Sew- 
 ard, I have brought the unpleasant transactions to which my 
 last letter alluded, pretty near to a conclusion, much more for 
 tunate than I had ventured to hope. Of my brother s credit 
 ors, those connected with him by blood or friendship showed 
 all the kindness which those ties are in Scotland peculiarly 
 calculated to produce ; and, what is here much more uncom 
 mon, those who had no personal connexion with him, or his 
 family, showed a liberality which would not have misbecome 
 the generosity of the English. Upon the whole, his affairs 
 are put in a course of management which I hope will enable 
 him to begin life anew with renovated hopes, and not entirely 
 destitute of the means of recommencing business. 
 
 " I am very happy although a little jealous withal that 
 you are to have the satisfaction of Southey s personal acquaint* 
 ance. I am certain you will like the Epic bard exceedingly 
 Although he does not deign to enter into the mere trifling in 
 tercourse of society, yet when a sympathetic spirit calls him 
 forth, no man talks with more animation on literary topics ; 
 and perhaps no man in England has read and studied so much, 
 with the same powers of making use of the information which 
 Vie is so indefatigable in acquiring. I despair of reconciling 
 you to my little friend Jeffrey, although I think I could trust 
 to his making some impression on your prepossession, were you 
 to converse with him. I think Southey does himself injustice 
 in supposing the Edinburgh Review, or any other, could have 
 sunk Madoc, even for a time. But the size and price of the 
 vork, joined to the frivolity of an age which must be treated 
 as nurses humour children, are sufficient reasons why a poem, 
 
 * See Miss Seward s Letters, vol. vi. p. 364. 
 
262 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 on so chaste a model, should not have taken immediately. We 
 know the similar fate of Milton s immortal work, in the witty 
 age of Charles II., at a time when poetry was much more fash 
 ionable than at present. As to the division of the profits, 1 
 only think that Southey does not understand the gentlemen 
 of the trade, emphatically so called, as well as I do. Without 
 any greater degree of fourberie than they conceive the long 
 practice of their brethren has rendered matter of prescriptive 
 right, they contrive to clip the author s proportion of profits 
 down to a mere trifle. It is the tale of the fox that went 
 a-hunting with the lion, upon condition of equal division of 
 the spoil ; and yet I do not quite blame the booksellers, when 
 I consider the very singular nature of their mystery. A 
 butcher generally understands something of black cattle, and 
 wo betide the jockey who should presume to exercise his pro 
 fession without a competent knowledge of horse-flesh. But 
 who ever heard of a bookseller pretending to understand the 
 commodity in which he dealt ? They are the only tradesmen 
 in the world who professedly, and by choice, deal in what is 
 called a pig in a poke. When you consider the abominable 
 trash which, by their sheer ignorance, is published every year, 
 you will readily excuse them for the indemnification which 
 they must necessarily obtain at the expense of authors of some 
 value. In fact, though the account between an individual 
 bookseller and such a man as Southey may be iniquitous 
 enough, yet I apprehend, that upon the whole the account be 
 tween the trade and the authors of Britain at large is pretty 
 fairly balanced; and what these gentlemen gain at the ex- 
 Dense of one class of writers, is lavished, in many cases, in 
 bringing forward other works of little value. I do not know 
 but this, upon the whole, is favourable to the cause of litera 
 ture. A bookseller publishes twenty books, in hopes of hitting 
 upon one good speculation, as a person buys a parcel of shares 
 in a lottery, in hopes of gaining a prize. Thus the road is 
 open to all, and if the successful candidate is a little fleeced, 
 in order to form petty prizes to console the losing adventurers, 
 dtill the cause of 1 terature is benefited, since none is excluded 
 
COMMISSION OF SCOTCH JURISPRUDENCE. 263 
 
 from the privilege of competition. This does not apologize for 
 Southey s carelessness about his interest for 
 
 his name is up, and may go 
 
 From Toledo to Madrid. 
 
 " Pray, don t trust Southey too long with Mr. White. He 
 is even more determined in his admiration of old ruins than I 
 am. You see I am glad to pick a hole in his jacket, being 
 more jealous of his personal favour in Miss Seward s eyes than 
 of his poetical reputation. 
 
 " I quite agree with you about the plan of young Betty s 
 education, and am no great idolater of the learned languages, 
 excepting for what they contain. We spend in youth that 
 time in admiring the wards of the key, which we should em 
 ploy in opening the cabinet and examining its treasures. A 
 prudent and accomplished friend, who would make instruction 
 acceptable to him for the sake of the amusement it conveys, 
 would be worth an hundred schools. How can so wonderfully 
 premature a genius, accustomed to excite interest in thou 
 sands, be made a member of a class with other boys ! " 
 
 To return to Scott s own " graver cares ** while Mar- 
 mion was in progress. Among them were those of pre 
 paring himself for an office to which he was formally 
 appointed soon afterwards, namely, that of Secretary to 
 a Parliamentary Commission for the improvement of 
 Scottish Jurisprudence. This Commission, at the head 
 of which was Sir Islay Campbell, Lord President of the 
 Court of Session, continued in operation for two or three 
 years. Scott s salary, as secretary, was a mere trifle ; 
 V>ut he had been led to expect that his exertions in this 
 capacity would lead to better things. In giving a gen 
 eral view of his affairs to his brother-in-law in India, lie 
 says " The Clerk of Session who retired to make way 
 for me, retains the appointments, while I do the duty. 
 This was rather a hard bargain, but it was made when 
 
264 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the Administration was going to pieces, and I was glau 
 to swim ashore on a plank of the wreck ; or, in a word, 
 to be provided for anyhow, before the new people came 
 in. To be sure, nobody could have foreseen that in a 
 
 year s time my friends were all to be in again 
 
 I am principally pleased with my new appointment as 
 being conferred on me by our chief law lords and King s 
 counsel, and consequently an honourable professional dis 
 tinction. The employment will be but temporary, but 
 may have consequences important to my future lot in 
 life, if I give due satisfaction in the discharge of it." He 
 appears accordingly to have submitted to a great deal of 
 miserable drudgery, in mastering beforehand the details 
 of the technical controversies which had called for legis- 
 latorial interference ; and he discharged his functions, as 
 usual, with the warm approbation of his superiors : but 
 no result followed. This is alluded to, among other 
 things, in his correspondence with Mr. Southey, during 
 the printing of Marmion. I shall now go back to ex 
 tract some of these letters ; they will not only enable the 
 reader to fill up the outline of the preceding narrative, as 
 regards Scott s own various occupations at this period, 
 but illustrate very strikingly the readiness with which, 
 however occupied, he would turn aside, whenever he saw 
 any opportunity of forwarding the pursuits and interests 
 of other literary men. 
 
 Mr. Southey had written to Scott, on the 27th Sep. 
 tember 1807, informing him that he had desired his 
 booksellers to forward a copy of Palmerin of England, 
 then on the eve of publication ; announcing also his 
 Chronicle of the Cid ; and adding, " I rejoice to heaT 
 that we are to have another Lay, and hope we may 
 Dave as many Last Lays of the Minstrel, as our an* 
 
LETTERS TO SODTHEY 1807. 
 
 cestors had Last Words of Mr. Baxter." Scott s answ v 
 was this : 
 
 " To Robert Southey, Esq. 
 
 " Ashestiel, 1st October 1807. 
 
 "My Dear Southey, It will give me the most sincere 
 pleasure to receive any token of your friendly remembrance, 
 more especially in the shape of a romance of knight-errantry. 
 You know so well how to furbish the arms of a preux cheva 
 lier, without converting him a la Tressan into a modern light 
 dragoon, that my expectations from Palmerin are very high, 
 and I have given directions to have him sent to this retreat so 
 soon as he reaches Edinburgh. The half-guinea for Hogg s 
 poems was duly received. The uncertainty of your residence 
 prevented the book being sent at the time proposed it shall 
 be forwarded from Edinburgh to the bookseller at Carlisle, 
 who will probably know how to send it safe. I hope very soon 
 to send you my Life of Dryden, and eke my last Lay (by 
 the way, the former ditty was only proposed as the lay of the 
 last Minstrel, not his last fitt.) I grieve that you have re 
 nounced the harp ; but still I confide, that, having often 
 touched it so much to the delight of the hearers, you will 
 return to it again after a short interval. As I don t much 
 admire compliments, you may believe me sincere when I tell 
 you, that I have read Madoc three times since my first cursory 
 perusal, and each time with increased admiration of the poetry. 
 But a poem whose merits are of that higher tone does not im 
 mediately take with the public at large. It is even possible 
 that during your own life and may it be as long as every 
 real lover of literature can wish you must be contented with 
 the applause of the few whom nature has gifted with the rare 
 taste for discriminating in poetry. But the mere readers of 
 verse must one day come in, and then Madoc will assume hia 
 eal place at the feet of Milton. Now this opinion of mine 
 was not that (to speak frankly) which I formed on reading 
 t)- poem at first, though I then felt much of its merit. I hope 
 
266 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 you have not, and don t mean to part with the copyright. I 
 do not think Wordsworth and you understand the bookselling 
 animal well enough, and wish you would one day try my friend 
 Constable, who would give any terms for a connexion with you. 
 I am most anxious to see the Cid. Do you know I committed 
 a theft upon you (neither of gait, kine, nor horse, nor outside 
 nor inside plenishing, such as my forefathers sought in Cumber 
 land), but of many verses of the Queen Auragua,* or howso 
 ever you spell her name ? I repeated them to a very great 
 lady (the Princess of Wales), who was so much delighted with 
 them, that I think she got them by heart also. She asked a 
 copy, but that I declined to give, under pretence I could not 
 give an accurate one ; but I promised to prefer her request to 
 you. If you wish to oblige her R. H., I will get the verses 
 transmitted to her ; if not, the thing may be passed over. 
 
 " Many thanks for your invitation to Keswick, which I hope 
 to accept, time and season permitting. Is your brother with 
 you ? if so, remember me kindly.f Where is Wordsworth, 
 and what doth he do ? I wrote him a few lines some weeks 
 ago, which I suspect never came to hand. I suppose you are 
 possessed of all relating to the Cid, otherwise I would mention 
 an old romance, chiefly relating to his banishment, which is in 
 John Frere s possession, and from which he made some lively 
 translations in a tripping Alexandrine stanza. I dare say he 
 would communicate the original, if it could be of the least use. J 
 I am an humble petitioner that your interesting Spanish bal 
 lads be in some shape appended to the Cid. Be assured they 
 will give him wings. There is a long letter written with a pen 
 like a stick. I beg my respects to Mrs. South ey, in which Mrs. 
 Scott joins ; and I am, very truly and affectionately, yours, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 * The ballad of Queen Orraca was first published in the Edinburgh 
 Annual Register for 1808. 
 
 t Dr. Henry Southey had studied at the University of Edinburgh. 
 
 } Mr. Southey introduced, in the appendix to his Chronicle of th 
 Cid, some specimens of Mr. Frere s admirable translation of the an 
 cient Poewa del Cid, to which Scott here alludes. 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY 1807. 267 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " Edinburgh, November 1807. 
 
 " My Dear Southey, I received your letter some time ago, 
 but had then no opportunity to see Constable, as I was resid 
 ing at some distance from Edinburgh. Since I came to town 
 I spoke to Constable, whom I find anxious to be connected 
 with you. It occurs to me that the only difference between 
 him and our fathers in the Row is on the principle contained 
 in the old proverb : He that would thrive must rise by Jive ; 
 He that has thriven may lye till seven. Constable would 
 thrive, and therefore bestows more pains than our fathers who 
 have thriven. I do not speak this without book, because I 
 know he has pushed off several books which had got aground 
 in the Row. But, to say the truth, I have always found ad 
 vantage in keeping on good terms with several of the trade, 
 but never suffering any one of them to consider me as a mo 
 nopoly. They are very like farmers, who thrive best at a high 
 rent ; and, in general, take most pains to sell a book that hag 
 cost them money to purchase. The bad sale of Thalaba is 
 truly astonishing ; it should have sold off in a twelvemonth at 
 farthest. 
 
 " As you occasionally review, will you forgive my suggesting 
 a circumstance for your consideration, to which you will give 
 exactly the degree of weight you please. I am perfectly cer 
 tain that Jeffrey would think himself both happy and honoured 
 in receiving any communications which you might send him, 
 choosing your books and expressing your own opinions. The 
 terms of the Edinburgh Review are ten guineas a-sheet, and 
 will shortly be advanced considerably. I question if the same 
 unpleasant sort of work is anywhere else so well compensated. 
 The only reason which occurs to me as likely to prevent your 
 affording the Edinburgh some critical assistance, is the severity 
 tf the criticisms upon Madoc and Thalaba. I do not know if 
 Shis will be at all removed by assuring you, as I can do upon 
 my honour, that Jeffrey has, notwithstanding the flippancy of 
 these articles, the most sincere respect both for your person 
 
268 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and talents. The other day I designedly led the conversation 
 on that subject, and had the same reason I always have had to 
 consider his attack as arising from a radical difference in point 
 of taste, or rather feeling of poetry, but by no means from any 
 thing approaching either to enmity or a false conception of 
 your talents. I do not think that a difference of this sort 
 should prevent you, if you are otherwise disposed to do so, 
 from carrying a proportion at least of your critical labours to a 
 much better market than the Annual.* Pray think of this, 
 and if you are disposed to give your assistance, I am positively 
 certain that I can transact the matter with the utmost delicacy 
 towards both my friends. I am certain you may add 100 
 a-year, or double the sum, to your income in this way with 
 almost no trouble; and, as times go, that is no trifle. 
 
 " I have to thank you for Palmerin, which has been my af 
 ternoon reading for some days. I like it very much, although 
 it is, I think, considerably inferior to the Amadis. But I wait 
 with double anxiety for the Cid, in which I expect to find very 
 much information as well as amusement. One discovery I 
 have made is, that we understand little or nothing of Don 
 Quixote except by the Spanish romances. The English and 
 French romances throw very little light on the subject of the 
 doughty cavalier of La Mancha. I am thinking of publishing 
 a small edition of the Morte Arthur, merely to preserve that 
 ancient record of English chivalry ; but my copy is so late as 
 1637, so I must look out for earlier editions to collate. That 
 of Caxton is, I believe, introuvable. Will you give me your 
 opinion on this project ? I have written to Mr. Frere about 
 the Spanish books, but I do not very well know if my letter 
 oas reached him. I expect to bring Constable to a point 
 respecting the poem of Hindoo Mythology.f I should esteem 
 myself very fortunate in being assisting in bringing forth a 
 twin brother of Thalaba. Wordsworth is harshly treated in 
 the Edinburgh Review, but Jeffrey gives the sonnets as much 
 
 * The Annual Review, conducted by Dr. Arthur Aikin, commence* 
 in 1802, and was discontinued in 1808. 
 t The Curse of Kehama was published by Longman and Co. in 181C 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHED 1807. 269 
 
 praise as he usually does to anybody. I made him admire the 
 gong of Lord Clifford s minstrel, which I like exceedingly myself. 
 But many of Wordsworth s lesser poems are caviare, not only to 
 the multitude, but to all who judge of poetry by the established 
 rules of criticism. Some of them, I can safely say, I like the 
 better for these aberrations ; in others they get beyond me 
 at any rate, they ought to have been more cautiously hazarded. 
 I hope soon to send you a Life of Dryden and a Lay of former 
 times. The latter I would willingly have bestowed more time 
 upon ; but what can I do ? my supposed poetical turn ruined 
 me in my profession, and the least it can do is to give me 
 eome occasional assistance instead of it. Mrs. Scott begs kind 
 compliments to Mrs. Southey, and I am always kindly yours, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. Southey, in reply to this letter, stated at length 
 certain considerations, political, moral, and critical, which 
 rendered it impossible for him to enlist himself on any 
 terms in the corps of the Edinburgh- Reviewers. In 
 speaking of his friend Wordsworth s last work, which 
 had been rather severely handled in this Review, he ex 
 presses his regret that the poet, in his magnificent sonnet 
 on Killiecrankie, should have introduced the Viscount of 
 Dundee without apparent censure of his character ; and, 
 passing to Scott s own affairs, he says " Marmion is 
 expected as impatiently by me as he is by ten thousand 
 others. Believe me, Scott, no man of real genius was 
 ever a puritanical stickler for correctness, or fastidious 
 about any faults except his own. The best artists, both 
 in poetry and painting, have produced the most. Give 
 us more lays, and correct them at leisure for after editions, 
 not laboriously, but when the amendment comes nat 
 urally and unsought for. It never does to sit down dog 
 gedly to correct." The rest, Scott s answer will suffi 
 ciently explain : 
 
270 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To Robert Souihey, Esq. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 15th December 1807. 
 
 " Dear Southey, I yesterday received your letter, ana 
 can perfectly enter into your ideas on the subject of the Re 
 view : indeed, I dislike most extremely the late strain of 
 polilics which they have adopted, as it seems> even on their 
 own showing, to be cruelly imprudent. Who ever thought he 
 did a service to a person engaged in an arduous conflict, by 
 proving to him, or attempting to prove to him, that he must 
 necessarily be beaten ? and what effect can such language 
 have but to accelerate the accomplishment of the prophecy 
 which it contains ? And as for Catholic Emancipation I am 
 not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters, nor a friend to 
 persecution ; but if a particular sect of religionists are ipso 
 facto connected with foreign politics and placed under the 
 spiritual direction of a class of priests, whose unrivalled dex 
 terity and activity are increased by the rules which detach them 
 from the rest of the world I humbly think that we may be 
 excused from intrusting to them those places in the State 
 where the influence of such a clergy, who act under the direc 
 tion of a passive tool of our worst foe, is likely to be attended 
 with the most fatal consequences. If a gentleman chooses to 
 walk about with a couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, 
 if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted 
 to exclude him from the seat next to the fire. So thinking, 
 I have felt your scruples in doing anything for the Review of 
 late. 
 
 " As for my good friend Dundee, I cannot admit his culpa 
 bility is. the extent you allege ; and it is scandalous of the 
 Sunday oard to join in your condemnation, and yet come of 
 a noble Grseme ! I admit he was tant soil pen sauvage, but 
 he was a noble savage ; and the beastly Covenanters against 
 whom he acted, hardly had any claim to be called men, unles? 
 what was founded on their walking upon their hind feet. Yov 
 ^an hardly conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of these 
 
LETTERS TO SOUTHEY 1807. 271 
 
 people, according to the accounts they have themselves pre 
 served. But I admit I had many cavalier prejudices instilled 
 into me, as my ancestor was a Killiecrankie man. 
 
 " 1 am very glad the Morte Arthur is in your hands ; it haa 
 been long a favourite of mine, and I intended to have made 
 it a handsome book, in the shape of a small antique-looking 
 quarto, with wooden vignettes of costume. I wish you would 
 not degrade him into a squat 1 2mo ; but admit the temptation 
 you will probably feel to put it into the same shape with 
 Palmerin and Amadis. If on this, or any occasion, you can 
 cast a job in the way of my friend Ballantyne, I should con 
 sider it as a particular personal favour, and the convenience 
 would be pretty near the same to you, as all your proofs must 
 come by post at any rate. If I can assist you about this mat 
 ter, command my services. The late Duke of Roxburghe 
 once showed me some curious remarks of his own upon the 
 genealogy of the Knights of the Round Table. He was a 
 curious and unwearied reader of romance, and made many 
 observations in writing ; whether they are now accessible or 
 no, I am doubtful. Do you follow the metrical or the printed 
 books in your account of the Round Table ? and would your 
 task be at all facilitated by the use of a copy of Sir Lancelot, 
 from the press of Jehan Dennis, which I have by me ? 
 
 " As to literary envy, I agree with you, dear Southey, in 
 believing it was never felt by men who had any powers of 
 their own to employ to better purpose than in crossing or jost 
 ling their companions ; and I can say with a safe conscience, 
 that I am most delighted with praise from those who convince 
 me of their good taste by admiring the genius of my contem 
 poraries. Believe me ever, Dear Southey, with best compli 
 ments to Mrs. 8., yours affectionately, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The following letter to another accomplished and at 
 tached friend, will bring us back to the completion of 
 Marmion : 
 
272 LIFE OB SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To the Right Hon. the Lady Louisa Stuart, London. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 19th January 1308. 
 
 " 1 am much flattered, Dear Lady Louisa, by your kind and 
 encouraging remembrance. Marmion is, at this instant, gasp 
 ing upon Flodden field, and there I have been obliged to leave 
 him for these few days in the death pangs. I hope I shall find 
 time enough this morning to knock him on the head with two 
 or three thumping stanzas. I thought I should have seen Lady 
 Douglas while she was at Dalkeith, but all the Clerks of Ses 
 sion (excepting myself, who have at present no salary) are 
 subject to the gout, and one of them was unluckily visited 
 with a fit on the day I should have been at the Duke s, so I 
 had his duty and my own to discharge. Pray, Lady Louisa, 
 don t look for Marmion in Hawthornden or anywhere else, 
 excepting in the too thick quarto which bears his name. As 
 to the fair *******,! beg her pardon with all my 
 heart and spirit ; but I rather think that the habit of writing 
 novels or romances, whether in prose or verse, is unfavourable 
 to rapid credulity ; at least these sort of folks know that they 
 can easily make fine stories themselves, and will be therefore 
 as curious in examining those of other folks as a cunning vint 
 ner in detecting the sophistication of his neighbour s claret by 
 the help of his own experience. Talking of fair ladies and 
 fables reminds me of Mr. Sharpe s ballads,* which I suppose 
 Lady Douglas carried with her to Bothwell. They exhibit, I 
 think, a very considerable portion of imagination, and occa 
 sionally, though not uniformly, great flow of versification. 
 There is one verse, or rather the whole description of a musi 
 cal ghost-lady sitting among the ruins of her father s tower, 
 that pleased me very much. But his language is too flowery 
 and even tawdry, and I quarrelled with a lady in the first 
 poem who yielded up her affection upon her lover showing his 
 
 * A small volume, entitled " Metrical Legends and other Poems, 
 as published in 1807 by Scott s friend Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe 
 
MARMION PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 1808. 273 
 
 white teeth. White teeth ought to be taken great care of and 
 set great store by ; but I cannot allow them to be an object of 
 passionate admiration it is too like subduing a lady s heart 
 by grinning. Grieved am I for Lady Douglas s indisposition, 
 which I hope will be short, and I am sure will be tolerable 
 with such stores of amusement around her. Last nio-ht I saw 
 
 O 
 
 all the Dalkeith family presiding in that happy scene of mixed 
 company and Babylonian confusion, the Queen s Assembly. I 
 also saw Mr. Alison there. I hope your ladyship has not re 
 nounced your intention of coming to Edinburgh for a day or 
 two, and that I shall have the honour to see you. We have 
 here a very diverting lion and sundry wild beasts ; but the 
 most meritorious is Miss Lydia White, who is what Oxonians 
 call a lioness of the first order, with stockings nineteen-times- 
 nine dyed blue, very lively, very good-humoured, and ex 
 tremely absurd. It is very diverting to see the sober Scotch 
 ladies staring at this phenomenon. I am, with great respect, 
 your ladyship s honoured and obliged WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Marmion was published on the 23d of February. The 
 letter which accompanied the presentation copy to Sun- 
 ninghill, had been preceded a few weeks before by one 
 containing an abstract of some of Weber s German re 
 searches, which were turned to account in the third edi 
 tion of Sir Tristrem ; but Mr. Ellis was at this time in a 
 very feeble state of health, and that communication had 
 elicited no reply. 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 " Edinburgh, February 23, 1808. 
 1 Sleepest thou, wakest thou, George Ellis ? 
 " Be it known that this letter is little better than a fehde 
 brief, as to the meaning of which is it not written in Wach- 
 ter s Thesaurus and the Lexicon of Adelung ? To expound 
 more vernacularly, I wrote you, I know not how long ago, a 
 swinging epistle of and concerning German Romances, with 
 VOL. ii. 18 
 
274 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Borne discoveries not of my own discovering, and other matter 
 not furiously to the present purpose. And this I caused to be 
 conveyed to you by ane gentil knizt, Sir William Forbes, knizl, 
 who assures me he left it as directed, at Sir Peter Parker s. 
 Since, to vary my style to that of the ledger, none of yours. 
 To avenge myself of this unusual silence, which is a manifest 
 usurpation of my privileges (being the worst correspondent in 
 the world, Heber excepted), I have indited to you an epistle 
 in verse, and that I may be sure of its reaching your hands, I 
 have caused to be thrown off 2000 copies thereof, that you may 
 not plead ignorance. 
 
 " This is oracular, but will be explained by perusing the In 
 troduction to the 5th canto of a certain dumpy quarto, enti 
 tled Marmion, a Tale of Flodden-field, of which I have to beg 
 your acceptance of a copy. So wonder on till time makes all 
 things plain. One thing I am sure you will admit, and that 
 is, that * the hobby-horse is not forgot ; * nay, you will see 
 I have paraded in my Introductions a plurality of hobby-horses 
 
 a whole stud, on each of which I have, in my day, been ac 
 customed to take an airing. This circumstance will also grat 
 ify our friend Douce, whose lucubrations have been my study 
 for some days.f They will, I fear, be caviare to the multitude, 
 and even to the soi-disant connoisseurs, who have never found 
 by experience what length of time, of reading, and of reflec 
 tion, is necessary to collect the archseological knowledge of 
 which he has displayed such profusion. The style would also, 
 in our Scotch phrase, thole amends, i. e. admit of improvement. 
 But his extensive and curious researches place him at the head 
 of the class of black-letter antiquaries ; and his knowledge is 
 communicated without the manifest irritation, which his con 
 temporaries have too often displayed in matters of controversy 
 
 without ostentation, and without self-sufficiency. I hope 
 the success of his work will encourage this modest and learned 
 antiquary to give us more collectanea. There are few things 
 
 * " For, 0, For, O, the hobby-horse is forgot." Hamlet. 
 t Mr. Donee s Illustrations of Shakspeare were published late it 
 
 istr. 
 
MARMION PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 1808. 275 
 
 I read with more pleasure. Charlotte joins in kindest resj ecta 
 to Mrs. Ellis. I have some hopes of being in town this spring, 
 but I fear you will be at Bath. When you have run over 
 Marmion, I hope you will remember how impatient I shall be 
 to hear your opinion sans phrase. I am sensible I run some 
 risk of being thought to fall below my former level, but those 
 that will play for the gammon must take their chance of this. I 
 am also anxious to have particular news of your health. Ever 
 yours faithfully, W. S." 
 
 The letter reached Ellis before the book; but how 
 well he anticipated the immediate current of criticism, 
 his answer will show. 
 
 " Before I have seen the stranger," he says, " and while my 
 judgment is unwarped by her seduction, I think I can venture, 
 from what I remember of the Lay, to anticipate the fluctua 
 tions of public opinion concerning her. The first decision re 
 specting the Last Minstrel was, that he was evidently the pro 
 duction of a strong and vivid mind, and not quite unworthy 
 the author of Glenfinlas and the Eve of St. John ; but that it 
 was difficult to eke out so long a poem with uniform spirit ; 
 that success generally emboldens writers to become more care 
 less in a second production ; that in short, months elapsed, 
 
 before one-tenth of our wise critics had discovered that a long 
 poem which no one reader could bring himself to lay down till 
 he had arrived at the last line, was a composition destined per 
 haps to suggest new rules of criticism, but certainly not ame 
 nable to the tribunal of a taste formed on the previous examina 
 tion of models of a perfectly different nature. That Minstrel 
 is now in its turn become a standard ; Marmion will therefore 
 be compared with this metre, and will most probably be in the 
 first instance pronounced too long, or too short, or improperly 
 divided, or &c. &c. &c., till the sage and candid critics are com 
 pelled, a second time, by the united voice of all who can read 
 at all, to confess that aut prodesse aut delectare is the only 
 real standard of poetical merit. One of my reasons for liking 
 
276 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 your Minstrel was, that the subject was purely and necessarily 
 poetical; whereas my sincere and sober opinion of all the epic 
 poems I have ever read, the Odyssey perhaps excepted, is that 
 they ought to have been written in prose ; and hence, though 
 I think with Mackintosh, that forte epos acer ut nemo Varius 
 scribit, I rejoice in your choice of a subject which cannot be 
 considered as epic, or conjure up in the memory a number of 
 fantastic rules, which, like Harpies, would spoil the banquet 
 offered to the imagination. A few days, however, will, I hope 
 enable me to write avec connaissance de cause." 
 
 I have, I believe, alluded, in a former Chapter of this 
 narrative, to a remark which occurs in Mr. Southey s 
 Life of Cowper, namely, that a man s character may be 
 judged of even more surely by the letters which his 
 friends addressed to him, than by those which he himself 
 penned ; and I cannot but think that freely as Scott s 
 own feelings and opinions were poured from his head and 
 heart to all whom he considered as worthy of a wise and 
 good man s confidence the openness and candour with 
 which the best and most sagacious of his friends wrote to 
 him about his own literary productions, will be considered 
 hereafter (when all the glories of this age shall, like him, 
 have passed away), as affording a striking confirmation 
 of the truth of the biographer s observation. It was thus, 
 for example, that Mr. Southey himself, who happened to 
 be in London when Marmion came out, expressed him- 
 belf to the author, on his return to Keswick 
 
 " Half th3 poem I had read at Heber s before my own copy 
 arrived. I went punctually to breakfast with him, and he was 
 long enough dressing to let me devour so much of it. The 
 <tory is made of better materials than the Lay, yet they are 
 not so well fitted together. As a whole, it has not pleased me 
 so much in parts, it has pleased me more. There is nothing 
 o finely conceived in your former poem as the death of Mar 
 
MARMION. 277 
 
 mion : there is nothing finer in its conception anywhere. The 
 introductory epistles I did not wish away, because, as poems, 
 they gave me great pleasure ; but I wished them at the end 
 of the volume, or at the beginning anywhere except where 
 they were. My taste is perhaps peculiar in disliking all inter 
 ruptions in narrative poetry. When the poet lets his story 
 sleep, and talks in his own person, it has to me the same sort 
 of unpleasant effect that is produced at the end of an act 
 You are alive to know what follows, and lo down comes the 
 curtain, and the fiddlers begin with their abominations. The 
 general opinion, however, is with me, in this particular in 
 stance " 
 
 I have no right to quote the rest of Mr. Southey s let 
 ter, which is filled chiefly with business of his own ; but 
 towards its close, immediately after mentioning a princely 
 instance of generosity on the part of his friend Mr. Walter 
 Savage Landor to a brother poet, he has a noble sentence, 
 which I hope to be pardoned for extracting, as equally 
 applicable to his own character and that of the man he 
 was addressing. " Great poets," says the author of 
 Thalaba, " have no envy ; little ones are full of it ! I 
 doubt whether any man ever criticised a good poem ma 
 liciously, who had not written a bad one himself." I 
 must not omit to mention, that on his way from London 
 down to Keswick, Mr. Southey had visited at Stamford 
 the late industrious antiquary Octavius Gilchrist, who 
 was also at this time one of Scott s frequent correspond 
 ents. Mr. Gilchrist writes (May 21) to Scott " South 
 ey pointed out to me a passage in Marmion, which he 
 thought finer than anything he remembered." 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth knew Scott too well not to use the 
 same masculine freedom. 
 
 44 Thank you," he says, " for Marmion. I think your end has 
 
278 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you 
 to propose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you 
 know of my notions of composition, both as to matter and 
 manner. In the circle of my acquaintance, it seems as well 
 liked as the Lay, though I have heard that in the world it is 
 not so. Had the poem been much better than the Lay, it 
 could scarcely have satisfied the public, which has too much 
 of the monster, the moral monster, in its composition. The 
 spring has burst out upon us all at once, and the vale is now 
 in exquisite beauty ; a gentle shower has fallen this morning, 
 and I hear the thrush, who has built in my orchard, singing 
 amain. How happy we should be to see you here again ! 
 Ever, my Dear Scott, your sincere friend, W. W." 
 
 I pass over a multitude of the congratulatory effusions 
 of inferior names, but must not withhold part of a letter 
 on a folio sheet, written not in the first hurry of excite 
 ment, but on the 2d of May, two months after Marmion 
 had reached Sunninghill. 
 
 " I have," says Ellis, " been endeavouring to divest myself 
 of those prejudices to which the impression on my own palate 
 would naturally give rise, and to discover the sentiments of 
 those who have only tasted the general compound, after seeing 
 the sweetmeats picked out by my comrades and myself. I 
 have severely questioned all my friends whose critical discern 
 ment I could fairly trust, and mean to give you the honest re 
 sult of their collective opinions ; for which reason, inasmuch as 
 I shall have a good deal to say, besides which, there seems to 
 be a natural connexion between foolscap and criticism, I have 
 ventured on this expanse of paper. In the first place, then, 
 all the world are agreed that you are like the elephant men 
 tioned in the Spectator, who was the greatest elephant in the 
 tvorld except himself, and consequently, that the only question 
 at issue is, whether the Lay or Marmion shall be reputed the 
 most pleasing poem in our language save and except one or 
 two of Dryden s fables. But, with respect to the two rivals. 
 
ELLIS ON MARMION. 279 
 
 I think the Lay is, on the whole, the greatest favourite. It is 
 admitted that the fable of Marmion is greatly superior that 
 it contains a greater diversity of character that it inspires 
 more interest and that it is by no means inferior in point 
 of poetical expression ; but it is contended that the incident 
 of Deloraine s journey to Melrose surpasses anything in Mar 
 mion, and that the personal appearance of the Minstrel, who, 
 though the last, is by far the most charming of all minstrels, is 
 by no means compensated by the idea of an author shorn of 
 his picturesque beard, deprived of his harp, and writing letters 
 to his intimate friends. These introductory epistles, indeed, 
 though excellent in themselves, are in fact only interruptions 
 to the fable ; and accordingly, nine out of ten have perused 
 them separately, either after or before the poem and it is 
 obvious that they cannot have produced, in either case, the 
 effect which was proposed viz. of relieving the reader s at 
 tention, and giving variety to the whole. Perhaps, continue 
 these critics, it would be fair to say that Marmion delights us 
 in spite of its introductory epistles while the Lay owes its 
 principal charm to the venerable old minstrel : the two 
 poems may be considered as equally respectable to the talents 
 of the author ; but the first, being a more perfect whole, will 
 be more constantly preferred. Now, all this may be very true 
 but it is no less true that everybody has already read Mar 
 mion more than once that it is the subject of general conver 
 sation that it delights all ages and all tastes, and that it is 
 universally allowed to improve upon a second reading. My 
 own opinion is, that both the productions are equally good in 
 their different ways : yet, upon the whole, I had rather be the 
 author of Marmion than of the Lay, because I think its spe 
 cies of excellence of much more difficult attainment. What 
 degree of bulk may be essentially necessary to the corporeal 
 part of an Epic poem, I know not ; but sure I am that the 
 Btory of Marmion might have furnished twelve books as easily 
 as six that the masterly character of Constance would not 
 have been less bewitching had it been much more minutely 
 painted and that De Wilton might have been dilated witb 
 
280 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 great ease, and even to considerable advantage; in shoit, 
 that had it been your intention merely to exhibit a spirited 
 romantic story, instead of making that story subservient to 
 the delineation of the manners which prevailed at a certain 
 period of our history, the number and variety of your charac 
 ters would have suited any scale of painting. Marmion is 
 to Deloraine what Tom Jones is to Joseph Andrews; 
 the varnish of high breeding nowhere diminishes the promi 
 nence of the features and the minion of a king is as light 
 and sinewy a cavalier as the Borderer, rather less ferocious, 
 more wicked, less fit for the hero of a ballad, and far more 
 for the hero of a regular poem. On the whole, I can sincerely 
 assure you, * sans phrase, that had I seen Marmion without 
 knowing the author, I should have ranked it with Theodore 
 and Honoria, that is to say, on the very top shelf of English 
 poetry. Now for faults." 
 
 Mr. Ellis proceeds to notice some minor blemishes, 
 which he hoped to see erased in a future copy ; but as 
 most, if not all, of these were sufficiently dwelt on by 
 the professional critics, whose strictures are affixed to the 
 poem in the last collective edition, and as, moreover, 
 Scott did not avail himself of any of the hints thus pub 
 licly, as well as privately tendered for his guidance, I 
 shall not swell my page by transcribing more of this ele 
 gant letter. The part I have given may no doubt be 
 considered as an epitome of the very highest and most 
 refined of London table-talk on the subject of Marmion, 
 during the first freshness of its popularity, and before the 
 Edinburgh Review, the only critical journal of which 
 any one in those days thought very seriously, had pro 
 nounced its verdict. 
 
 When we consider some parts of that judgment, to. 
 gether with the author s personal intimacy with the editor 
 and the aid which he had of late been affording to the 
 
EDINBURGH REVIEW ON MARMION. 281 
 
 Journal itself, it must be allowed that Mr. Jeffrey ac 
 quitted himself on this occasion in a manner highly cred 
 itable to his courageous sense of duty. The Number 
 containing the article on Marmion, was accompanied by 
 this note : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Castle Street. 
 
 " Queen Street, Tuesday. 
 
 " Dear Scott, If I did not give you credit for more mag 
 nanimity than other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely 
 venture to put this into your hands. As it is, I do it with no 
 little solicitude, and earnestly hope that it will make no differ 
 ence in the friendship which has hitherto subsisted between us. 
 I have spoken of your poem exactly as I think, and though I 
 cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased with every 
 thing I have said, it would mortify me very severely to believe 
 I had given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you 
 will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am 
 very sincerely yours, F. JEFFREY." 
 
 The reader who has the Edinburgh Review for April 
 1808, will I hope pause here and read the article as it 
 stands ; endeavouring to put himself into the situation 
 of Scott when it was laid upon his desk, together with 
 this ominous billet from the critic, who, as it happened, 
 had been for some time engaged to dine that same Tues 
 day at his table in Castle Street. I have not room to 
 transcribe the whole; but no unfair notion of its spirit 
 and tenor may be gathered from one or two of the prin 
 cipal paragraphs. After an ingenious little dissertation on 
 epic poetry in general, the reviewer says 
 
 " We are inclined to suspect that the success of the work 
 now before us will be less brilliant than that of the author s 
 former publication, though we are ourselves of opinion that 
 its intrinsic merits are nearly, if not altogether efjual ; and 
 
282 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that, if it had had the fate to be the elder born, it would have 
 inherited as fair a portion of renown as has fallen to the lot 
 of its predecessor. It is a good deal longer, indeed, and some 
 what more ambitious; and it is rather clearer, that it has 
 greater faults than that it has greater beauties though, for 
 our own parts, we are inclined to believe in both propositions. 
 It has more flat and tedious passages, and more ostentation of 
 historical and antiquarian lore : but it has also greater rich 
 ness and variety, both of character and incident; and if it haa 
 less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certain 
 ly more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and 
 busier representations of action and emotion. The place of 
 the prologuising minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the 
 epistolary dissertations which are prefixed to each book of the 
 present poem ; and the ballad-pieces and mere episodes which 
 it contains have less finish and poetical beauty ; but there is 
 more airiness and spirit in the higher delineations ; and the 
 story, if not more skilfully conducted, is at least better com 
 plicated, and extended through a wider field of adventure. 
 The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the same ; 
 a broken narrative a redundancy of minute description 
 bursts of unequal and energetic poetry and a general tone 
 of spirit and animation, unchecked by timidity or affectation, 
 and unchastened by any great delicacy of taste or elegance of 
 fancy." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " But though we think this last romance of Mr. Scott s 
 about as good as the former, and allow that it affords great 
 indications of poetical talent, we must remind our readers 
 that we never entertained much partiality for this sort of 
 composition, and ventured on a former occasion to express 
 our regret that an author endowed with such talents should 
 consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance, and in 
 the representation of manners and sentiments in which none 
 of his readers can be supposed to take much interest, except 
 the few who can judge of their exactness. To write a mod- 
 era romance of chivalry, seems to be much such a phantasy 
 
EDINBURGH REVIEW ON MARMION. 283 
 
 as to build a modern abbey or an English pagoda. For once, 
 however, it may be excused as a pretty caprice of genius ; 
 but a second production of the same sort is entitled to less 
 indulgence, and imposes a sort of duty to drive the author 
 from so idle a task, by a fair exposition of the faults which 
 are, in a manner, inseparable from its execution. His genius, 
 seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry 
 again into temporary favour. Fine ladies and gentlemen now 
 talk indeed of donjons, keeps, tabards, scutcheons, tressures, 
 caps of maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and we know not 
 what besides ; just as they did, in the days of Dr. Darwin s 
 popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, 
 and polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away, 
 and Mr. Scott should take care that a different sort of ped 
 antry does not produce the same effects." 
 
 The detailed exposition of fault follows ; and it is, I 
 am sure, done in a style on which the critic cannot now 
 reflect with perfect equanimity, any more than on the 
 lofty and decisive tone of the sweeping paragraphs by 
 which it was introduced. All this, however, I can sup 
 pose Scott to have gone through with great composure ; 
 but he must, I think, have wondered, to say the least, 
 when he found himself accused of having " throughout 
 neglected Scottish feelings and Scottish characters ! " 
 Re who had just poured out all the patriotic enthusiasm 
 of his soul in so many passages of Marmion which every 
 Scotchman to the end of time will have by heart ; painted 
 the capital, the court, the camp, the heroic old chieftains 
 of Scotland, in colours instinct with a fervour that can 
 never die ; and dignified the most fatal of her national 
 misfortunes by a celebration as loftily pathetic as ever 
 blended pride with sorrow, a battle-piece which even 
 his critic had pronounced to be the noblest save in Ho 
 mer! But not even this injustice was likely to wound 
 
284 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 him very deeply. Coming from one of the recent wit 
 nesses of his passionate agitation on the Mound, perhap^ 
 he would only smile at it. 
 
 At all events, Scott could make allowance for the pet- 
 ulancies into which men the least disposed to injure the 
 feelings of others will sometimes be betrayed, when the 
 critical rod is in their hands. He assured Mr. Jeffrey 
 that the article had not disturbed his digestion, though 
 he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would 
 agree with the opinions it expressed; and begged he 
 would come to dinner at the hour previously appointed. 
 Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was received by 
 his host with the frankest cordiality ; but had the mor 
 tification to observe that the mistress of the house, though 
 perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. 
 She, too, behaved herself with exemplary civility during 
 the dinner ; but could not help saying, in her broken Eng 
 lish, when her guest was departing, " Well, good-night, Mr. 
 Jeffrey dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Re 
 view, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well 
 for writing it." This anecdote was not perhaps worth 
 giving; but it has been printed already in an exaggerated 
 shape, so I thought it as well to present the edition which 
 I have derived from the lips of all the three persons con 
 cerned. No one, I am sure, will think the worse of any 
 i>f them for it, least of all of Mrs. Scott. She might 
 well be pardoned, if she took to herself more than her 
 own share in the misadventures as well as the successes 
 of the most affectionate of protectors. It was, I believe, 
 about this time when, as Scott has confessed, " the popu 
 larity of Marmion gave him such a heeze he had for a 
 moment almost lost his footing/ that a shrewd and sly 
 observer, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, said, wittily enough. 
 
MARMION. 285 
 
 npon leaving a brilliant assembly where the poet had 
 been surrounded by all the buzz and glare of fashiona 
 ble ecstacy "Mr. Scott always seems to me like a 
 glass, through which the rays of admiration pass with 
 out sensibly affecting it ; but the bit ot paper that lies 
 beside it will presently be in a blaze and no wcnder.** 
 I shall not, after so much of and about criticism, say 
 anything more of Marmion in this place, than that I 
 have always considered it as, on the whole, the greatest 
 of Scott s poems. There is a certain light, easy, virgin 
 charm about the Lay, which we look for in vain through 
 the subsequent volumes of his verse ; but the superior 
 strength, and breadth, and boldness both of conception 
 and execution, in the Marmion, appear to me indisputa 
 ble. The great blot, the combination of mean felony 
 with so many noble qualities in the character of the 
 hero, was, as the poet says, severely commented on at 
 the time by the most ardent of his early friends, Ley- 
 den ; but though he admitted the justice of that criticism, 
 he chose " to let the tree lie as it had fallen." He was 
 also sensible that many of the subordinate and connect 
 ing parts of the narrative are flat, harsh, and obscure 
 but would never make any serious attempt to do away 
 with these imperfections ; and perhaps they, after all, 
 Veighten by contrast the effect of the passages of high- 
 wrought enthusiasm which alone he considered, in after 
 days, with satisfaction. As for the " epistolary disserta- 
 ions," it must, I take it, be allowed that they interfered 
 with the flow of the story, when readers were turning 
 the leaves with the first ardour of curiosity ; and they 
 were not, in fact, originally intended to be interwoven 
 in any fashion with the romance of Marmion. Though 
 the author himself does not allude to, and had perhaps 
 
286 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 forgotten the circumstance when writing the Introduc 
 tory Essay of 1830 they were announced, by an ad 
 vertiBement early in 1807, as " Six Epistles from Ettrick 
 Forest," to be published in a separate volume, similar to 
 that of the Ballads and Lyrical Pieces ; and perhaps it 
 might have been better that this first plan had been ad 
 hered to. But however that may be, are there any pages, 
 among all he ever wrote, that one would be more sorry 
 he should not have written ? They are among the most 
 delicious portraitures that genius ever painted of itself, 
 buoyant, virtuous, happy genius exulting in its own 
 energies, yet possessed and mastered by a clear, calm, 
 modest mind, and happy only in diffusing happiness 
 around it. 
 
 With what gratification those Epistles were read by 
 the friends to whom they were addressed, it would be su 
 perfluous to show. He had, in fact, painted them almost 
 as fully as himself; and who might not have been proud 
 to find a place in such a gallery ? The tastes and habits 
 of six of those men, in whose intercourse Scott found the 
 greatest pleasure when his fame was approaching its me 
 ridian splendour, are thus preserved for posterity ; and 
 when I reflect with what avidity we catch at the least 
 bint which seems to afford us a glimpse of the intimate 
 . ircle of any great poet of former ages, I cannot but be 
 lieve that posterity would have held this record precious, 
 even had the individuals been in themselves far less 
 remarkable than a Rose, an Ellis, a Heber, a Skene, a 
 Marriott, and an Erskine. 
 
 Many other friends, however, have found a part in 
 these affectionate sketches ; and I doubt whether any 
 manifestation of public applause afforded the poet sc 
 tnuch pleasure as the letter in which one of these, al 
 
MA.RMION. 287 
 
 uded to in the fourth Epistle as then absent from Scot 
 land by reason of his feeble health, acknowledged the 
 emotions that had been stirred in him when he came 
 upon that unexpected page. This was Colin Mackenzie 
 of Portmore, the same who beat him in a competition of 
 rhymes at the High School, and whose ballad of Ellan- 
 donnan Castle had been introduced into the third volume 
 of the Minstrelsy. This accomplished and singular ly 
 modest man, now no more, received Marmion at Lymp- 
 stone in Devonshire. 
 
 " My dear Walter," he says, " amidst the greetings that will 
 crowd on you, I know that those of a hearty, sincere, admir 
 ing old friend will not be coldly taken. I am not going to at 
 tempt an enumeration of beauties, but I must thank you for 
 the elegant and delicate allusion in which you express your 
 friendship for myself Forbes and, above all, that sweet 
 memorial of his late excellent father.* I find I have got the 
 mal de pays, and must return to enjoy the sight and society of 
 a few chosen friends. You are not unaware of the place you 
 hold on my list, and your description of our committees f has 
 inspired me with tenfold ardour to renew a pleasure so highly 
 enjoyed, and remembered with such enthusiasm. Adieu, my 
 dear friend. Ever yours, C. M." 
 
 His next-door neighbour at Ashestiel, Mr. Pringle ot 
 Whytbank, " the long-descended lord of Yair," writes not 
 Jess touchingly on the verses in the second Epistle, where 
 bis beautiful place is mentioned, and the poet introduces 
 
 " those sportive boys, 
 Companions of Irs mountain joys" 
 
 * Mr. Mackenzie had married a daughter of Sir William Forbes of 
 Pitsligo, Bart., the biographer of Beattie. 
 
 t The supper meetings of the Cavalry Club. See Marmion } Intro* 
 1 action to Canto IV. 
 
288 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and paints the rapture with which they had heard him 
 " call Wallace rampart holy ground." " Your own be 
 nevolent heart," says the good laird, " would have enjoyed 
 the scene, could you have witnessed the countenances of 
 my little flock grouped round your book ; and perhaps 
 you would have discovered that the father, though the 
 least audible at that moment, was not the most insensible 
 tc the honour bestowed upon his children and his parent 
 stream, both alike dear to his heart. May my boys feel 
 an additional motive to act well, that they may cast no 
 discredit upon their early friend ! " 
 
 But there was one personal allusion which, almost be 
 fore his ink was dry, the poet would fain have cancelled. 
 Lord Scott, the young heir of Buccleuch, whose casual 
 absence from " Yarrow s bowers " was regretted in that 
 same epistle (addressed to his tutor, Mr. Marriott) 
 
 " No youthful baron s left to grace 
 The forest sheriff s lonely chase, 
 And ape in manly step and tone 
 The majesty of Oberon." 
 
 This promising boy had left Yarrow to revisit it no 
 more. He died a few days after Marmion was published, 
 and Scott, in writing on the event to his uncle Lord Mon 
 tagu (to whom the poem was inscribed), signified a fear 
 that these verses might now serve but to quicken the sor 
 rows of the mother. Lord Montagu answers "I have 
 been able to ascertain Lady Dalkeith s feelings in a man- 
 nsr that will, I think, be satisfactory to you, particularly 
 as it came from herself, without my giving her the pain 
 of being asked. In a letter I received yesterday, giving 
 directions about some books, she writes as follows : And 
 pray send me Marmion too this may seem odd to you. 
 
MARMION. 289 
 
 but at some moments I am soothed by things which at 
 other times drive me almost mad. " On the 7th of 
 April, Scott says to Lady Louisa Stuart " The death 
 of poor dear Lord Scott was such a stunning blow to me, 
 that I really felt for some time totally indifferent to the 
 labours of literary correction. I had very great hopes 
 from that boy, who was of an age to form, on the prin 
 ciples of his father and grandfather, his feelings tow 
 ards the numerous families who depend on them. But 
 God s will be done. I intended to have omitted the 
 lines referring to him in Marmion in the second edition ; 
 for as to adding any, I could as soon write the Iliad. 
 But I am now glad I altered my intention, as Lady Dal- 
 keith has sent for the book, and dwells with melancholy 
 pleasure on whatever recalls the memory of the poor 
 boy. She has borne her distress like an angel, as she is, 
 and always has been ; but God only can cure the wounds 
 he inflicts." 
 
 One word more as to these personal allusions. While 
 he was correcting a second proof of the passage where 
 Pitt and Fox are mentioned together, at Stanmore Pri 
 ory, in April 1807, Lord Abercorn suggested that the 
 compliment to the Whig statesman ought to be still fur 
 ther heightened, and several lines 
 
 " For talents mourn untimely lost, 
 When best employed, and wanted most" &c. * 
 
 * In place of this couplet, and the ten lines which follow it, the orig 
 inal MS- of Marmion has only the following: 
 
 " If genius high and judgment sound, 
 And wit that loved to play, n^t wound, 
 And all the reasoning powers divine, 
 To penetrate, resolve, combine, 
 Could save one mortal of the herd 
 From error Fox had never err d." 
 7OI II. 19 
 
290 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 were added accordingly. I have heard, indeed, that they 
 came from the Marquis s own pen. Ballantyne, how 
 ever, from some inadvertence, had put the sheet to press 
 before the revise, as it is called, arrived in Edinburgh, 
 and some few copies got abroad in which the additional 
 couplets were omitted. A London journal (the Morning 
 Chronicle) was stupid and malignant enough to insinuate 
 that the author had his presentation copies struck off 
 with, or without, them according as they were for 
 Whig or Tory hands. I mention the circumstance now, 
 only because I see by a letter of Heber s that Scott had 
 thought it worth his while to contradict the absurd charge 
 in the newspapers of the day. 
 
 The feelings of political partisanship find no place in 
 this poem ; but though the Edinburgh reviewers chose to 
 complain of its " manifest neglect of Scottish feelings," I 
 take leave to suspect that the boldness and energy of 
 British patriotism which breathes in so many passages, 
 may have had more share than that alleged omission in 
 pointing the pen that criticised Marmion. Scott had 
 sternly and indignantly rebuked and denounced the then 
 too prevalent spirit of anti-national despondence ; he had 
 put the trumpet to his lips, and done his part, at least, to 
 sustain the hope and resolution of his countrymen in that 
 straggle from which it was the doctrine of the Edinburgh 
 Review that no sane observer of the times could antici 
 pate anything but ruin and degradation. He must ever 
 be considered as the " mighty minstrel " of the Antigalli- 
 can war ; and it was Marmion that first announced him 
 in that character. 
 
 Be all this as it may, Scott s connexion with the Edin 
 burgh Review was now broken off; and indeed it was 
 oever renewed, except in one instance, many years after 
 
MARMION. 291 
 
 when the strong wish to serve poor Maturin shook him 
 for a moment from his purpose. The loftiest and purest 
 of human beings seldom act but under a mixture of mo 
 tives, and I shall not attempt to guess in what proportions 
 lie was swayed by aversion to the political doctrines 
 which the journal had lately been avowing with increased 
 openness by dissatisfaction with its judgments of his 
 own works or, lastly, by the feeling that, whether 
 those judgments were or were not just, it was but an idle 
 business for him to assist by his own pen the popularity 
 of the vehicle that diffused them. That he was influ 
 enced more or less by all of these considerations, appears 
 highly probable ; and I fancy I can trace some indica 
 tions of each of them in a letter with which I am fa 
 voured by an old friend of mine, a warm lover of liter 
 ature, and a sincere admirer both of Scott and Jeffrey, 
 and though numbered among the Tories in the House of 
 Commons, yet one of the most liberal section of his party, 
 who happened to visit Scotland shortly after the article 
 on Marmion appeared, and has set down his recollections 
 of the course of table-talk at a dinner where he for the 
 first time met Scott in company with the brilliant editor 
 of the Edinburgh Review : 
 
 "There were," he says, "only a few people besides 
 the two lions and assuredly I have seldom passed a 
 more agreeable day. A thousand subjects of literature, 
 antiquities, and manners, were started ; and much was I 
 struck, as you may well suppose, by the extent, correct 
 ness, discrimination, and accuracy of Jeffrey s informa 
 tion equally so with his taste, acuteness, and wit, in 
 dissecting every book, author, and tory that came in our 
 way. Nothing could surpass the variety of his knowl 
 edge, but the easy rapidity of his manner of producing it. 
 
292 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 He was then in his meridian. Scott, delighted to draw 
 him out, delighted also to talk himself, and displayed, I 
 think, even a larger range of anecdote and illustration ; 
 remembering everything, whether true or false, that was 
 characteristic or impressive ; everything that was good, 
 or lovely, or lively. It struck me that there was this 
 great difference Jeffrey, for the most part, entertained 
 us, when books were under discussion, with the detection 
 of faults, blunders, absurdities, or plagiarisms : Scott took 
 up the matter where he left it, recalled some compensat 
 ing beauty or excellence for which no credit had been 
 allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, 
 set the poor victim on his legs again. I believe it was 
 just about this time that Scott had abandoned his place 
 in Mr. Jeffrey s corps. The journal had been started 
 among the clever young society with which Edinburgh 
 abounded when they were both entering life as barris 
 ters; and Jeffrey s principal coadjutors for some time 
 were Sydney Smith, Brougham, Horner, Scott himself 
 and on scientific subjects, Playfair; but clever con 
 tributors were sought for in all quarters. Wit and fun 
 were the first desiderata, and, joined with general talent 
 and literature, carried all before them. Neutrality, or 
 something of the kind, as to party politics, seems to have 
 been originally asserted the plan being, as Scott under 
 stood, not to avoid such questions altogether, but to let 
 them be handled by Whig or Tory indifferently, if only 
 the writer could make his article captivating in point of 
 information and good writing. But it was not long before 
 Brougham dipped the concern deep in witty Whiggery; 
 ftnd it was thought at the time that some very foolish 
 neglects on the part of Pitt had a principal share in 
 making several of these brilliant young men decide on 
 
SCOTT AND JEFFREY 1808. 293 
 
 carrying over their weapons to the enemy s camp. Scott 
 was a strong Tory, nay, by family recollections and poeti 
 cal feelings of association, a Jacobite. Jeffrey, however, 
 was an early friend and thus there was a confliction 
 of feelings on both sides. Scott, as I was told, remon 
 strated against the deepening Whiggery Jeffrey al 
 leged that he could not resist the wit. Scott offered to 
 try his hand at a witty bit of Toryism but the editor 
 pleaded off, upon the danger of inconsistency. These 
 differences first cooled and soon dissolved their federa 
 tion. To return to our gay dinner. As the claret was 
 taking its rounds, Jeffrey introduced some good-natured 
 eulogy of his old supporters Sydney Smith, Brougham, 
 and Homer. Come, says Scott, you can t say too 
 much about Sydney or Brougham, but I will not admire 
 your Horner : he always put me in mind of Obadiah s 
 bull, who, although, as Father Shandy observed, he never 
 produced a calf, went through his business with such a 
 grave demeanour, that he always maintained his credit 
 in the parish ! The fun of the illustration tempted him 
 to this sally, I believe ; but Horner s talents did not lie in 
 humour, and his economical labours were totally uncon 
 genial to the mind of Scott." 
 
 I have printed this memorandum just as it came to my 
 hands ; but I certainly never understood the writer to be 
 pledging himself for the story which he gives " as he was 
 told." No person who knows anything of the character 
 and history of Mr. Jeffrey can for a moment believe that 
 he ever dreamt of regulating the political tone of his 
 Review upon such considerations as are here ascribed to 
 him. It is obvious that the light badinage of the Outer- 
 House had been misinterpreted by some matter-of-fact 
 vmbra of the Mountain. 
 
294 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with a summary of book 
 sellers accounts. Marmion was first printed in a splen 
 did quarto, price one guinea and a half. The 2000 
 copies of this edition were all disposed of in less than a 
 month, when a second of 3000 copies, in 8vo, was sent to 
 press. There followed a third and a fourth edition, each 
 of 3000, in 1809 ; a fifth of 2000, early in 1810; and a 
 sixth of 3000, in two volumes, crown 8vo, with twelve 
 designs by Singleton, before the end of that year; a 
 seventh of 4000, and an eighth of 5000 copies 8vo, in 
 1811 ; a ninth of 3000 in 1815 ; a tenth of 500, in 1820 ; 
 an eleventh of 500, and a twelfth of 2000 copies, in 
 foolscap, both in 1825. The legitimate sale in this coun 
 try, therefore, down to the time of its being included in 
 the first collective edition of his poetical works, amounted 
 to 31,000 ; and the aggregate of that sale, down to the 
 period at which I am writing (May 1836), may be stated 
 at 50,000 copies. I presume it is right for me to facili 
 tate the task of future historians of our literature by pre- 
 erving these details as often as I can. Such particulars 
 respecting many of the great works even of the last cen 
 tury, are already sought for with vain regret; and I 
 anticipate no day when the student of English civilisation 
 will pass without curiosity the contemporary reception 
 of the Tale of Flodden Field. 
 
EDITION OF DRYDEN 1808 295 
 
 CHAPTER XVH. 
 
 Edition of Dryden published and criticised by Mr. Hallam 
 Weber s Romances Editions of Queenhoo-Hall Cap 
 tain Carleton s Memoirs The Memoirs of Robert Cary, 
 Earl of Monmouth The Sadler Papers and the Somers 
 Tracts Edition of Swift begun Letters to Joanna Baillie 
 and George Ellis on the Affairs of the Peninsula John 
 Struthers James Hogg Visit of Mr. Morritt Mr. Mor- 
 ritfs Reminiscences of Ashestiel Scott s Domestic Life. 
 
 1808. 
 
 BEFORE Marmion was published, a heavy task, begun 
 earlier than the poem, and continued throughout its prog 
 ress, had been nearly completed ; and there appeared, in 
 the last week of April 1808, " The Works of John Dry- 
 den, now first collected ; illustrated with notes historical, 
 critical, and explanatory, and a Life of the Author. 
 By Walter Scott, Esq. Eighteen volumes, 8vo." This 
 was the bold speculation of William Miller of Albemarle 
 Street, London ; and the editor s fee, at forty guineas 
 the volume, was 756. The bulk of the collection, the 
 neglect into which a majority of the pieces included in it 
 had fallen, the obsoleteness of the party politics which 
 had so largely exercised the author s pen, and the inde 
 corum, not seldom running into flagrant indecency, by 
 which transcendent genius had ministered to the appe- 
 
296 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SOOT-". 
 
 tites of a licentious age, all combined to make the wium- 
 est of Scott s friends and admirers doubt whether even 
 his skill and reputation would be found sufficient to en 
 sure the success of this undertaking. It was, however, 
 better received than any one, except perhaps the courage 
 ous bookseller himself, had anticipated. The entire work 
 was reprinted in 1821 ; and more lately the Life of Dry- 
 den has been twice republished in collective editions of 
 Scott s prose miscellanies; nor, perhaps, does that class 
 of his writings include any piece of considerable extent 
 that has, on the whole, obtained higher estimation. 
 
 This edition of Dryden was criticised in the Edin 
 burgh Review for October 1808, with great ability, and, 
 on the whole, with admirable candour. The industry 
 and perspicacity with which Scott had carried through 
 his editorial researches and annotations were acknowl 
 edged in terms which, had he known the name of his 
 reviewer, must have been doubly gratifying to his feel 
 ings ; and it was confessed that, in the life of his author, 
 he had corrected with patient honesty, and filled up with 
 lucid and expansive detail, the sometimes careless and 
 often naked outline of Johnson s masterly Essay on the 
 Bame subject. It would be superfluous to quote in this 
 place a specimen of critical skill which has already en 
 joyed such wide circulation, and which will hereafter, no 
 doubt, be included in the miscellaneous prose works of 
 HALLAM. The points of political faith on which that 
 great writer dissents from the editor of Dryden, would, 
 even if I had the inclination to pursue such a discussion, 
 lead me far astray from the immediate object of these 
 pages ; they embrace questions on which the bes* and 
 wisest of our countrymen will probably continue to take 
 opposite sides, as long as our past history excites a living 
 
EDITION OP DRYDEN. 297 
 
 interest, and our literature is that of an active nation. On 
 the poetical character of Diyden I think the editor and 
 his critic will be found to have expressed substantially 
 much the same judgment ; when they appear to differ, 
 the battle strikes me as being about words rather than 
 things, as is likely to be the case when men of such 
 abilities and attainments approach a subject remote from 
 their personal passions. As might have been expected, 
 the terse and dexterous reviewer has often the better in 
 this logomachy ; but when the balance is struck, we dis 
 cover here, as elsewhere, that Scott s broad and mascu 
 line understanding had, by whatever happy hardihood, 
 grasped the very result to which others win their way 
 by the more cautious processes of logical investigation. 
 While nothing has been found easier than to attack his 
 details, his general views on critical questions have sel 
 dom, if ever, been successfully impugned. 
 
 I wish I could believe that Scott s labours had been 
 sufficient to recall Dryden to his rightful station, not in 
 the opinion of those who make literature the business or 
 chief solace of their lives for with them he had never 
 forfeited it but in the general favour of the intelligent 
 public. That such has been the case, however, the not 
 rapid sale of two editions, aided as they were by the 
 greatest of living names, can be no proof; nor have I 
 observed among the numberless recent speculations of 
 the English booksellers, a single reprint of even those 
 tales, satires, and critical essays, not to be familiar with 
 which would, in the last age, have been considered as 
 disgraceful in any one making the least pretension to 
 letters. In the hope of exciting the curiosity, at least, 
 pf some of the thousands of young persons who seem 
 to be growing up in contented ignorance of one of the 
 
298 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 greatest of our masters, I shall transcribe what George 
 Ellis whose misgivings about Scott s edition, when first 
 undertaken, had been so serious was pleased to write 
 some months after its completion : 
 
 " Claremont, 23d September 1808. 
 
 " I must confess that I took up the book with some degree 
 of trepidation, considering an edition of such a writer as on 
 every account periculosce plenum opus alece ; but as soon as I 
 became acquainted with your plan I proceeded boldly, and 
 really feel at this moment sincerely grateful to you for much 
 exquisite amusement. It now seems to me that your critical 
 remarks ought to have occurred to myself. Such a passionate 
 admirer of Dryden s fables, the noblest specimen of versifica 
 tion (in my mind) that is to be found in any modern language, 
 ought to have perused his theatrical pieces with more candour 
 than I did, and to have attributed to the bad taste of the age, 
 rather than to his own, the numerous defects by which those 
 hasty compositions are certainly deformed. 1 ought to have 
 considered that whatever Dryden wrote must, for some reason 
 or other, be worth reading; that his bombast and his indeli 
 cacy, however disgusting, were not without their use to any 
 one who took an interest in our literary history ; that in 
 short, there are a thousand reflections which I ought to have 
 made and never did make, and the result was that your Dry- 
 den was to me a perfectly new book. It is certainly painful 
 to see a race-horse in a hackney-chaise, but when one consid 
 ers that he will suffer infinitely less from the violent exertion 
 to which he is condemned, than a creature of inferior race 
 and that the wretched cock-tail on whom the same task is 
 usually imposed, must shortly become a martyr in the service, 
 one s conscience becomes more at ease, and we are enabled 
 )o enjoy Dr. Johnson s favourite pleasure of rapid motion 
 without much remorse on the score of its cruelty. Since, 
 then, your hackneyman is not furnished with a whip, and you 
 can so easily canter from post to post, go on and prosper J " 
 
EDITION OF DRYDEN. 299 
 
 To return for a moment to Scott s Biography of Dry- 
 den the only life of a great poet which he has left us, 
 and also his only detailed work on the personal fortunes 
 of one to whom literature was a profession it was 
 penned just when he had began to apprehend his own 
 destiny. On this point of view, forbidden to contempo 
 rary delicacy, we may now pause with blameless curios 
 ity. Seriously as he must have in those days been 
 revolving the hazards of literary enterprise, he could 
 not, it is probable, have handled any subject of this class 
 without letting out here and there thoughts and feelings 
 proper to his own biographer s province ; but, widely as 
 he and his predecessor may appear to stand apart as 
 regards some of the most important both of intellectual 
 and moral characteristics, they had nevertheless many 
 features of resemblance, both as men and as authors ; 
 and I doubt if the entire range of our annals could 
 have furnished a theme more calculated to keep Scott s 
 scrutinizing interest awake, than that which opened 
 on him as he contemplated step by step the career of 
 Dryden. 
 
 There are grave lessons which that story was not 
 needed to enforce upon his mind : he required no such 
 beacon to make him revolt from paltering with the dig 
 nity of woman, or the passions of youth, or insulting by 
 splenetic levities the religious convictions of any portion 
 of his countrymen. But Dryden s prostitution of his 
 genius to the petty bitternesses of political warfare, and 
 the consequences both as to the party he served, and the 
 antagonists he provoked, might well supply matter for 
 serious consideration to the author of the Melville song 
 * Where," says Scott, " is the expert swordsman that does 
 not delight in the flourish of his weapon ? and a bravo 
 
300 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 man will least of all withdraw himself from his ancient 
 standard when the tide of battle beats against it." But 
 he says also, and I know enough of his own then re 
 cent experiences, in his intercourse with some who had 
 been among his earliest and dearest associates, not to 
 apply the language to the circumstances that suggested 
 it " He who keenly engages in political controversy 
 must not only encounter the vulgar abuse which he may 
 justly contemn, but the altered eye of friends whose re 
 gard is chilled." Nor, when he adds that " the protect 
 ing zeal of his party did not compensate Dryden for the 
 loss of those whom he alienated in their service," can I 
 help connecting this reflection too with his own subsequent 
 abstinence from party personalities, in which, had the 
 expert swordsman s delight in the flourish of his weapon 
 prevailed, he might have rivalled the success of either 
 Dryden or Swift, to be repaid like them by the settled 
 rancour of Whigs, and the jealous ingratitude of Tories. 
 It is curious enough to compare the hesitating style 
 of his apology for that tinge of evanescent superstition 
 which seems to have clouded occasionally Dryden s bright 
 and solid mind, with the open avowal that he has " pride 
 in recording his author s decided admiration of old ballads 
 and popular tales ; " and perhaps his personal feelings 
 were hardly less his prompter where he dismisses with 
 brief scorn the sins of negligence and haste, which had 
 been so often urged against Dryden. " Nothing," he 
 gays, "is so easily attained as the power of presenting 
 the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine 
 poetry ; the beauty of colour and outline, the combina 
 tion of notes, the melody of versification, may be imitated 
 by artists of mediocrity ; and many will view, hear, 01 
 peruse their performances, without being able positively 
 
EDITION OF DRYDEN. 301 
 
 to discover why they should not, since composed accord 
 ing to all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Ra 
 phael, Handel, or Dryden. The deficiency lies in the 
 vivifying spirit, which, like alcohol, may be reduced to 
 the same principle in all the fine arts. The French are 
 said to possess the best possible rules for building shipa 
 of war, although not equally remarkable for their power 
 of fighting them. When criticism becomes a pursuit 
 separate from poetry, those who follow it are apt to for 
 get that the legitimate ends of the art for which they lay 
 down rules, are instruction and delight, and that these 
 points being attained, by what road soever, entitles a poet 
 to claim the prize of successful merit. Neither did the 
 learned authors of these disquisitions sufficiently attend 
 to the general disposition of mankind, which cannot be 
 contented even with the happiest imitations of former 
 excellence, but demands novelty as a necessary ingredi 
 ent for amusement. To insist that every epic poem shall 
 have the plan of the Iliad, and every tragedy be mod 
 elled by the rules of Aristotle, resembles the principle 
 of the architect who should build all his houses with the 
 same number of windows and of stories. It happened, 
 too, inevitably, that the critics, in the plenipotential au 
 thority which they exercised, often assumed as indispen 
 sable requisites of the drama, or epopeia, circumstances 
 which, in the great authorities they quoted, were alto 
 gether accidental or indifferent. These they erected into 
 laws, and handed down as essential ; although the forms 
 prescribed have often as little to do with the merit and 
 success of the original from whi^h they are taken, as the 
 shape of the drinking glass with the flavour of the wine 
 which it contains." These sentences appear, from the 
 nates, to have been penned immediately after the biogra- 
 
302 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 pher of Dry den (who wrote no epic) had perused the 
 Edinburgh Review on Marmion. 
 
 I conclude with a passage, in writing which he seems 
 to have anticipated the only serious critical charge that 
 was ever brought against his edition of Dry den as a 
 whole namely, the loose and irregular way in which 
 his own a3sthetical notions are indicated, rather than ex 
 pounded. " While Dryden," says Scott, " examined, dis 
 cussed, admitted, or rejected the rules proposed by others, 
 he forbore, from prudence, indolence, or a regard for the 
 freedom of Parnassus, to erect himself into a legislator. 
 His doctrines are scattered without system or pretence to 
 it: it is impossible to read far without finding some 
 maxim for doing, or forbearing, which every student of 
 poetry will do well to engrave upon the tablets of his 
 memory ; but the author s mode of instruction is neither 
 harsh nor dictatorial." 
 
 On the whole, it is impossible to doubt that the success 
 of Dryden in rapidly reaching, and till the end of a long 
 life holding undisputed, the summit of public favour and 
 reputation, in spite of his " brave neglect " of minute fin 
 ishing, narrow laws, and prejudiced authorities, must have 
 had a powerful effect in nerving Scott s hope and resolu 
 tion for the wide ocean of literary enterprise into which 
 he had now fairly launched his bark. Like Dryden, he 
 felt himself to be " amply stored with acquired knowl 
 edge, much of it the fruits of early reading and applica 
 tion ; " anticipated that, though, " while engaged in the 
 hurry of composition, or overcome by the lassitude of 
 continued literary labour," he should sometimes " draw 
 with too much liberality on a tenacious memory," no 
 " occasional imperfections would deprive him of his 
 praise ; " in short, made up his mind that " pointed and 
 
ASHESTIEL 1808. 303 
 
 nicely-turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated 
 correction and revision," would all be dispensed with, 
 provided their place were supplied, as in Dryden, by 
 " rapidity of conception, a readiness of expressing every 
 idea, without losing anything by the way," " perpetual 
 animation and elasticity of thought ; " and language 
 "never laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden s 
 own phrase) cursedly confined. " 
 
 Scott s correspondence, about the time when his Dry- 
 den was published, is a good deal occupied with a wild 
 project of his friend Henry Weber that of an exten 
 sive edition of our Ancient Metrical Romances, for 
 which, in their own original dimensions, the enthusiastic 
 German supposed the public appetite to have been set 
 on edge by the " Specimens " of Ellis, and imperfectly 
 gratified by the text of Sir Tristrem. Scott assured him 
 that Ellis s work had been popular, rather in spite than 
 by reason of the antique verses introduced here and 
 there among his witty and sparkling prose ; while Ellis 
 told him, with equal truth, that the Tristrem had gone 
 through two editions, simply owing to the celebrity of its 
 editor s name ; and that, of a hundred that had purchased 
 the book, ninety-nine had read only the preface and 
 notes, but not one syllable of True Thomas s " quaint 
 Inglis." Weber, in reply to Ellis, alleged that Scott 
 had not had leisure to consider his plan so fully as it 
 deserved ; that nothing could prevent its success, pro 
 vided Scott would write a preliminary essay, and let his 
 name appear in the title-page, along with his own ; and 
 though Scott wholly declined this last proposal, he per 
 sisted for some months in a negotiation with the London 
 booksellers, which ended as both his patrons had fore 
 seen. 
 
304 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " But how is this ? " (Ellis writes) " Weber tells me he 
 is afraid Mr, Scott will not be able to do anything for the rec 
 ommendation of his Romances, because he is himself engaged 
 in no less than five different literary enterprises, some of them 
 of immense extent. Five ? Why, no combination of blood 
 and bone can possibly stand this ; and Sir John Sinclair, how 
 ever successful in pointing out the best modes of feeding com 
 mon gladiators, has not discovered the means of training minds 
 to such endless fatigue. I dare not ask you for an account of 
 these projects, nor even for a letter during the continuance 
 of this seven years apprenticeship, and only request that you 
 will, after the completion of your labours, take measures to lay 
 my ghost, which will infallibly be walking before that time, 
 and suffering all the pains of unsatisfied curiosity. Seriously, 
 I don t quite like your imposing on yourself such a series of 
 tasks. Some one is, I believe, always of service because, 
 whatever you write at the same time, con amore, conies in as 
 a relaxation, and is likely to receive more spirit and gaiety 
 from that circumstance ; besides which, every species of study 
 perhaps is capable of furnishing allusions, and adding vigour 
 and solidity to poetry. Too constant attention to what they 
 call their art, and too much solicitude about its minutiae, has 
 been, I think, the fault of every poet since Pope ; perhaps it 
 was his too perhaps the frequent and varied studies imposed 
 upon him by his necessities contributed, in some measure, to 
 Dryden s characteristic splendour of style. Yet, surely, the 
 best poet of the age ought not to be incessantly employed in 
 the drudgeries of literature. I shall lament if you are effect 
 ually distracted from the exercise of the talent in which you 
 are confessedly without a rival." 
 
 The poet answers as follows : 
 
 " My giving my name to Weber s Romances is out of the 
 question, as assuredly I have not time to do anything that can 
 entitle it to stand in his title-page ; but I will do all I can for 
 him in the business. By the by, I wish he would be eithe? 
 
ASHESTIEL 1808. 30 
 
 more chary in his communications on the subject of my em 
 ployments, or more accurate. I often employ his assistance in 
 making extracts, &c., and I may say to him as Lord Ogleby 
 does to Canton, that he never sees me badiner a little with a 
 subject, but he suspects mischief to wit, an edition. In the 
 mean time, suffice it to say, that I have done with poetry for 
 some time it is a scourging crop, and ought not to be hastily 
 repeated. Editing, therefore, may be considered as a green 
 crop of turnips or peas, extremely useful for those whose cir 
 cumstances do not admit of giving their farm a summer fallow. 
 Swift is my grande opus at present, though I am under engage 
 ments, of old standing, to write a Life of Thomson from some 
 original materials. I have completed an edition of some State 
 Papers of Sir Ralph Sadler, which I believe you will find curi 
 ous; I have, moreover, arranged for republication the more 
 early volumes of Somers s Tracts ; but these are neither toil 
 some nor exhausting labours. Swift, in fact, is my only task 
 of great importance. My present official employment leaves 
 my time very much my own, even while the courts are sitting 
 and entirely so in the vacation. My health is strong, and 
 my mind active ; I will therefore do as much as I can with 
 justice to the tasks I have undertaken, and rest when ad 
 vanced age and more independent circumstances entitle me to 
 repose." 
 
 This letter is dated Ashestiel, October 8, 1808 ; but it 
 carries us back to the month of April, when the Dryden 
 was completed. His engagements with London publish 
 ers respecting the Somers and the Sadler, were, I believe, 
 entered into before the end of 1807 ; but Constable ap 
 pears to have first ascertained them, when he accompa 
 nied the second cargo of Marmion to the great southern 
 market ; and, alarmed at the prospect of losing his hold 
 on Scott s industry, he at once invited him to follow up 
 his Dryden by an Edition of Swift on the same scale, 
 offering, moreover, to double the rate of payment whhh 
 
306 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 he had contracted for with the London publisher of the 
 Dry den ; that is to say, to give him 1500 for the new 
 undertaking. This munificent tender was accepted with 
 out hesitation ; and as early as May 1808, I find Scott 
 writing to his literary allies in all directions for books, 
 pamphlets, and MSS., materials likely to be serviceable 
 in completing and illustrating the Life and Works of the 
 Dean of St. Patrick s. While these were accumulating 
 about him, which they soon did in greater abundance 
 than he had anticipated, he concluded his labours on 
 Sadler s State Papers, characteristically undervalued in 
 his letter to Ellis, and kept pace, at the same time, with 
 Ballantyne, as the huge collection of the Somers Tracts 
 continued to move through the press. The Sadler was 
 published in the course of 1809, in three large volumes, 
 quarto ; but the last of the thirteen equally ponderous 
 tomes to which Somers extended, was not dismissed from 
 his desk until towards the conclusion of 1812. 
 
 But these were not his only tasks during the summer 
 and autumn of 1808 ; and if he had not "jive different 
 enterprises " on his hands when Weber said so to Ellis, 
 he had more than five very soon after. He edited this 
 year Strutt s unfinished romance of Queenhoo-Hall, and 
 equipped the fourth volume, with a conclusion in the fash 
 ion of the original ; * but how little he thought of this 
 matter may be guessed from one of tiis notes to Ballan 
 tyne, in which he says, " I wish you would see how far 
 the copy of Queenhoo-Hall, sent last night, extends, that 
 I may not write more nonsense than enough." The pub 
 lisher of this work was John Murray, of London. It was 
 immediately preceded by a reprint of Captain Carleton s 
 Memoirs of the War of the Spanish Succession, to which 
 * See General Preface to Waverley, and Appendix No. II 
 
EDITIONS OF SWIFT, CARLETON, ETC. 307 
 
 he gave a lively preface and various notes ; and fol 
 lowed by a similar edition of the Memoirs of Robert 
 Gary Earl of Monmouth, each of these being a sin 
 gle octavo, printed by Ballantyne and published by Con 
 stable. 
 
 The republication of Carleton,* Johnson s eulogy of 
 which fills a pleasant page in Boswell, had probably been 
 suggested by the lively interest which Scott took in the 
 first outburst of Spanish patriotism consequent on Napo 
 leon s transactions at Bayonne. There is one passage in 
 the preface which I must indulge myself by transcribing. 
 Speaking of the absurd recall of Peterborough, from the 
 command in which he had exhibited such a wonderful 
 combination of patience and prudence with military dar 
 ing, he says " One ostensible reason was, that Peter 
 borough s parts were of too lively and mercurial a qual 
 ity, and that his letters showed more wit than became a 
 General ; a commonplace objection, raised by the dull 
 malignity of commonplace minds, against those whom 
 they see discharging with ease and indifference the tasks 
 which they themselves execute (if at all) with the sweat 
 if their brow and in the heaviness of their hearts. There 
 is a certain hypocrisy in business, whether civil or mili 
 tary, as well as in religion, which they will do well to 
 observe who, not satisfied with discharging their duty, 
 desire also the good repute of men." It was not long 
 before some of the dull malignants of the Parliament 
 House began to insinuate what at length found a dull 
 and dignified mouthpiece in the House of Commons 
 
 * It seems to be now pretty generally believed that Carleton s Me 
 moirs were among the numberless fabrications of De Foe ; but in this 
 case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his Cavalier, he no doubt 
 had before him the rude journal of some officer who had fought and bled 
 n the campaigns described with such an inimitable air of truth. 
 
308 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that if a Clerk of Session had any real business to do, it 
 could not be done well by a man who found time for 
 more literary enterprises than any other author of the 
 age undertook "wrote more books," Lord Archibald 
 Hamilton serenely added, "than any body could find 
 leisure to read " and, moreover, mingled in general so 
 ciety as much as many that had no pursuit but pleasure. 
 
 The eager struggling of the different booksellers to 
 engage Scott at this time, is a very amusing feature in 
 the voluminous correspondence before me. Had he pos 
 sessed treble the energy for which it was possible to give 
 any man credit, he could never have encountered a tithe 
 of the projects that the post brought day after day to him, 
 announced with extravagant enthusiasm, and urged with 
 all the arts of conciliation. I shall mention only one out 
 of at least a dozen gigantic schemes which were thus pro 
 posed before he had well settled himself to his Swift ; and 
 I do so, because something of the kind was a few years 
 later carried into execution. This was a General Edition 
 of British Novelists, beginning with De Foe and reach 
 ing to the end of the last century ; to be set forth with 
 biographical prefaces and illustrative notes by Scott, and 
 printed of course by Ballantyne. The projector was 
 Murray, who was now eager to start on all points in the 
 race with Constable ; but this was not, as we shall see 
 presently, the only business that prompted my enterpris 
 ing friend s first visit to Ashestiel. 
 
 Conversing with* Scott, many years afterwards, about 
 the tumult of engagements in which he was thus involved, 
 he said, "Ay, it was enough to tear me to pieces, but 
 .here was a wonderful exhilaration about it all : my blood 
 was kept at fever-pitch I felt as if I could have grap 
 pled with anything and everything ; then, there waa 
 
EDITORIAL PROJECTS. 309 
 
 hardly one of all my schemes that did not afford me the 
 means of serving some poor devil of a brother author. 
 There were always huge piles of materials to be arranged, 
 sifted, and indexed volumes of extracts to be tran 
 scribed journeys to be made hither and thither, for 
 ascertaining little facts and dates, in short, I could 
 commonly keep half-a-dozen of the ragged regiment of 
 Parnassus in tolerable case." I said he must have felt 
 something like what a locomotive engine on a railway 
 might be supposed to do, when a score of coal waggons 
 are seen linking themselves to it the moment it gets the 
 steam up, and it rushes on its course regardless of the 
 burden. " Yes," said he, laughing, and making a crash 
 ing cut with his axe (for we were felling larches) ; "but 
 there was a cursed lot of dung carts too." He was 
 seldom, in fact, without some of these appendages ; and I 
 admired nothing more in him than the patient courtesy, 
 the unwearied gentle kindness with which he always 
 treated them, in spite of their delays and blunders, to say 
 nothing of the almost incredible vanity and presumption 
 which more than one of them often exhibited in the 
 midst of their fawning ; and I believe, with all their 
 faults, the worst and weakest of them repaid Mm by a 
 sariine fidelity of affection. This part of Scott s char 
 acter recalls by far the most pleasing trait in that of his 
 last predecessor in me plenitude of literary authority 
 Dr. Johnson. There was perhaps nothing (except the 
 one great blunder) that had a worse effect on the course 
 of his pecuniary fortunes, than the readiness with which 
 Jie exerted his interest with the booksellers on behalf of 
 inferior writers. Even from the commencement of his 
 connexion with Constable in particular, I can trace a 
 continual series of such applications. They stimulated 
 
310 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the already too sanguine publisher to numberless risks ; 
 and when these failed, the result was, in one shape or 
 another, some corresponding deduction from the fair 
 profits of his own literary labour. " I like well," Con 
 stable was often heard to say in the sequel, " I like well 
 Scott s ain bairns but heaven preserve me from those 
 of his fathering ! " 
 
 Every now and then, however, he had the rich com 
 pensation of finding that his interference had really pro 
 moted the worldly interests of some meritorious obscure. 
 Early in 1808 he tasted this pleasure, in the case of 
 a poetical shoemaker of Glasgow, Mr. John Struthers, a 
 man of rare worth and very considerable genius, whose 
 " Poor Man s Sabbath " was recommended to his notice 
 by Joanna Baillie, and shortly after published, at his de 
 sire, by Mr. Constable. He thus writes to Miss Baillie 
 from Ashestiel, on the 9th of May 1808 : 
 
 " Your letter found me in this quiet corner, and while it 
 always gives me pride and pleasure to hear from you, I am 
 truly concerned at Constable s unaccountable delays. I sup 
 pose that, in the hurry of his departure for London, his promise 
 to write Mr. Struthers had escaped ; as for any desire to quit 
 his bargain, it is out of the question. If Mr. Struthers will send 
 ;o my house in Castle Street, the manuscript designed for the 
 press, I will get him a short bill for the copy-money the mo 
 ment Constable returns, or perhaps before he comes down. 
 He may rely on the bargain being definitively settled, and the 
 printing will, I suppose, be begun immediately on the great 
 bibliopolist s return ; on which occasion I shall have, according 
 to good old phrase, * a crow to pluck with him, and a pock to 
 put the feathers in. I heartily wish we could have had the 
 honour to see Miss Agnes and you at our little farm, which is 
 now in its glory all the twigs bursting into leaf, and all the 
 lambs skipping on the hills. I have been fishing almost from 
 
JOHN 8TRUTHER8. 311 
 
 fiorning till night ; and Mrs. Scott, and two ladies our guests, 
 are wandering about on the banks in the most Arcadian fash 
 ion in the world. We are just on the point of setting out on a 
 pilgrimage to the bonny bush aboon Traquhair, which I be 
 lieve will occupy us all the morning. Adieu, my dear Miss 
 Baillie. Nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear that 
 you have found the northern breezes fraught with inspiration. 
 You are not entitled to spare yourself, and none is so deeply 
 interested in your labours as your truly respectful friend and 
 admirer, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " F. S. We quit our quiet pastures to return to Edinburgh 
 on the 10th. So Mr. Struthers parcel will find me there, if 
 he is pleased to intrust me with the care of it." 
 
 Mr. Struthers volume was unfortunate in bearing a 
 title so very like that of James Grahame s Sabbath, 
 which, though not written sooner, had been published a 
 year or two before. This much interfered with its suc 
 cess, yet it was not on the whole unsuccessful : it put 
 some 30 or 40 into the pocket of a good man, to whom 
 this was a considerable supply ; but it made his name and 
 character known, and thus served him far more essen 
 tially; for he wisely continued to cultivate his poetical 
 talents without neglecting the opportunity, thus afforded 
 him through them, of pursuing his original calling under 
 better advantages. It is said that the solitary and medi- 
 tauve generation of cobblers have produced a larger list 
 of murders and other domestic crimes than any other 
 mechanical trade except the butchers ; but the sons of 
 Crispin have, to balance their account, a not less dispro 
 portionate catalogue of poets ; and foremost among these 
 btands the pious author of the Poor Man s Sabbath ; one 
 f the very few thai have had sense and fortitude to resist 
 the innumerable temptations to which any measure of 
 
312 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 celebrity exposes persons of their class. I believe Mr 
 Struthers still survives to enjoy the retrospect of a long 
 and virtuous life. His letters to Scott are equally credit 
 able to his taste and his feelings, and some time after we 
 shall find him making a pilgrimage of gratitude to As- 
 hestiel.* 
 
 James Hogg was by this time beginning to be gener 
 ally known and appreciated in Scotland; and the popu 
 larity of his " Mountain Bard " encouraged Scott to more 
 strenuous intercession in his behalf. I have before me 
 a long array of letters on this subject, which passed be 
 tween Scott and the Earl of Dalkeith and his brother 
 Lord Montagu, in 1808. Hogg s prime ambition at this 
 period was to procure an ensigncy in a militia regiment, 
 and he seems to have set little by Scott s representations 
 that the pay of such a situation was very small, and that, 
 if he obtained it, he would probably find his relations 
 with his brother officers far from agreeable. There was, 
 however, another objection which Scott could not hint to 
 the aspirant himself, but which seems to have been duly 
 considered by those who were anxious to promote his 
 views. Militia officers of that day were by no means un 
 likely to see their nerves put to the test ; and the Shep 
 herd s though he wrote some capital war-songs, espe 
 cially Donald Macdonald were not heroically si rong. 
 This was in truth no secret among his early intimates, 
 though he had not measured himself at all exactly on 
 
 * I am happy to learn, as this page passes through the press, from 
 tL.y friend Mr. John Kerr of Glasgow, that about three years ago Mr. 
 Struthers was appointed keeper of Stirling s Library, a collection of 
 aome consequence in fiat city. The selection of him for this respect 
 We situation reflects honour on the directors of the institution. 
 t December, 1836.) 
 
JAMES HOGG 1808. 313 
 
 that score, and was even tempted, when he found there 
 was no chance of the militia epaulette, to threaten that he 
 would " list for a soldier " in a marching regiment. Not 
 withstanding at least one melancholy precedent, the Ex 
 cise, which would have suited him almost as badly as 
 " hugging Brown Bess," was next thought of; and the 
 Shepherd himself seems to have entered into that plan 
 with considerable alacrity : but I know not whether he 
 changed his mind, or what other cause prevented such an 
 appointment from taking place. After various shiftings 
 he at last obtained, as we shall see, from the late Duke 
 of Buccleuch s munificence, the gratuitous life-rent of a 
 small farm in the vale of Yarrow ; and had he contented 
 himself with the careful management of its fields, the rest 
 of his days might have been easy. But he could not 
 withstand the attractions of Edinburgh, which carried 
 him away from Altrive for months every year ; and when 
 at home, a warm and hospitable disposition, so often 
 stirred by vanity less pardonable than his, made him con 
 cert his cottage into an unpaid hostelrie for the reception 
 of endless troops of thoughtless admirers ; and thus, in 
 spite of much help and much forbearance, he was never 
 out of one set of pecuniary difficulties before he had 
 began to weave the meshes of some fresh entanglement. 
 In pace requiescat. There will never be such an Ettrick 
 Shepherd again. 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter of Scott s to 
 nis brother Thomas, dated 20th June 1808 : 
 
 "Excellent news to-day from Spain yet I wish the pa 
 triots had a leader of genius and influence. I fear the Castil- 
 r an nobility are more sunk than the common people, and that 
 t will be easier to find armies than generals. A Wallace 
 Oundee, or Montrose, would be the man tor Spain at this ino 
 
314 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ment. It is, however, a consolation, that though the grandees 
 of the earth, when the post of honour becomes the post of 
 danger, may be less ambitious of occupying it, there may be 
 some hidalgo among the mountains of Asturias with all the 
 spirit of the Cid Ruy Diaz, or Don Pelayo, or Don Quixote if 
 you will, whose gallantry was only impeachable from the ob 
 jects on which he exercised it. It strikes me as very singular 
 to have all the places mentioned in Don Quixote and Gil Bias 
 now the scenes of real and important events. Gazettes dated 
 from Oviedo, and gorges fortified in the Sierra Morena, Founds 
 like history in the land of romance. 
 
 " James Hogg has driven his pigs to a bad market. I am 
 endeavouring, as a pis aller, to have him made an Excise offi 
 cer, that station being, with respect to Scottish geniuses, the 
 grave of all the Capulets. Witness Adam Smith, Burns," 
 &c. 
 
 I mentioned the name of Joanna Baillie (for * who," 
 as Scott says in a letter of this time, " ever speaks of 
 Miss Sappho ? ") in connexion with the MS. of the Poor 
 Man s Sabbath. From Glasgow, where she had found 
 out Struthers in April, she proceeded to Edinburgh, and 
 took up her abode for a week or two under Scott s roof. 
 Their acquaintance was thus knit into a deep and re 
 spectful affection on both sides ; and henceforth they 
 maintained a close epistolary correspondence, which will, 
 I think, supply this compilation with some of the most 
 interesting of its materials. But within a few weeks 
 after Joanna s departure, he was to commence another 
 intimacy not less sincere and cordial ; and when I name 
 Mr, Morritt of Rokeby, I have done enough to prepare 
 many of my readers to expect not inferior gratification 
 from the still more abundant series of letters in which, 
 from this time to the end of his life, Scott communicated 
 his thoughts and feelings to one of the most accomplished 
 
LETTER TO LADY LOUISA STUART. 315 
 
 men that ever shared his confidence. He had now 
 reached a period of life after which real friendships are 
 but seldom formed ; and it is fortunate that another Eng 
 lish one had been thoroughly compacted before death cut 
 the ties between him and George Ellis because his 
 dearest intimates within Scotland had of course but a 
 slender part in his written correspondence. 
 
 Several friends had written to recommend Mr. Mor- 
 ritt to his acquaintance among others, Mr. W. S. Rose 
 and Lady Louisa Stuart. His answer to her ladyship I 
 must insert here, for the sake of the late inimitable Lydia 
 White, who so long ruled without a rival in the 3oft 
 realm of blue Mayfair : 
 
 " Edinburgh, 16th June 1808. 
 
 " My Dear Lady Louisa, Nothing will give us more pleas 
 ure than to have the honour of showing every attention in our 
 power to Mr. and Mrs. Morritt, and I am particularly happy 
 in a circumstance that at once promises me a great deal of 
 pleasure in the acquaintance of your Ladyship s friends, and 
 affords me the satisfaction of hearing from you again. Pray 
 don t triumph over me too much in the case of Lydia. I stood 
 a very respectable siege ; but she caressed my wife, coaxed my 
 children, and made, by dint of cake and pudding, some im 
 pression even upon the affections of my favourite dog : so, 
 when all the outworks were carried, the main fortress had n<? 
 choice but to surrender on honourable terms. To the best of 
 my thinking, notwithstanding the cerulean hue of her stock 
 ings, and a most plentiful stock of eccentric affectation, she is 
 really at bottom a good-natured woman, with much liveliness 
 and some talent. She is now set out to the Highlands, where 
 ghe is likely to encounter many adventures. Mrs. Scott and 
 J went as far as Loch Catrine with her, from which jaunt I 
 Vave just returned. We had most heavenly weather, which 
 was peculiarly favourable to my fair companions zeal for 
 ketching every object that fell in their way, from a castle t 
 
SI 6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 a pigeon-house. Did your Ladyship ever travel with a drau> 
 ing companion ? Mine drew like cart-horses, as well in labo 
 rious zeal as in effect ; for, after all, I could not help hinting 
 that the cataracts delineated bore a singular resemblance to 
 haycocks, and the rocks much correspondence to largo old- 
 fashioned cabinets with their folding-doors open. So much for 
 Lydia, whom I left on her journey through the Highlands, 
 but by what route she had not resolved. I gave her three 
 plans, and think it likely she will adopt none of them : more 
 over, when the executive government of postilions, landlords, 
 and Highland boatmen devolves upon her English servant 
 instead of me, I am afraid the distresses of the errant dam 
 sels will fall a little beneath the dignity of romances. All 
 this nonsense is entre nous, for Miss White has been actively 
 zealous in getting me some Irish correspondence about Swift, 
 and otherwise very obliging. 
 
 " It is not with my inclination that I fag for the booksellers ; 
 but what can I do ? My poverty and not my will consents. 
 The income of my office is only reversionary, and my private 
 fortune much limited. My poetical success fairly destroyed 
 my prospects of professional success, and obliged me to retire 
 from the Bar ; for though I had a competent share of informa 
 tion and industry, who would trust their cause to the author 
 of the Lay of the Last Minstrel ? Now, although I do allow 
 that an author should take care of his literary character, yet 
 I think the least thing that his literary character can do in 
 return is to take some care of the author, who is unfortunately, 
 like Jeremy in Love for Love, furnished with a set of tastes 
 and appetites which would do honour to the income of a Duke 
 if he had it. Besides, I go to work with Swift con amore ; 
 for, like Dryden, he is an early favourite of mine. The Mar- 
 mion is nearly out, and 1 have made one or two alterations on 
 the third edition, with which the press is now groaning. So 
 soon as it is, it will make the number of copies published within 
 the space of six months amount to eight thousand, an im 
 mense number surely, and enough to comfort the author s 
 wounded feelings, had the claws of the reviewers been able to 
 
M2. MORRIT 1808. 317 
 
 reach him through the steel jack of true Border indifference* 
 Your ladyship s much obliged and faithful servant, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Morritt reached Edinburgh soon after 
 this letter was written. Scott showed them the lions of 
 the town and its vicinity, exactly as if he had nothing 
 else to attend to but their gratification ; and Mr. Morritt 
 recollects with particular pleasure one long day spent in 
 rambling along the Esk by Roslin and Hawthornden, 
 
 " Where Jonson sat in Drummond s social shade," 
 down to the old haunts of Lasswade. 
 
 " When we approached that village," says the Memorandum 
 with which Mr. Morritt favours me, " Scott, who had laid hold 
 of my arm, turned along the road in a direction not leading 
 to the place where the carriage was to meet us. - After walk 
 ing some minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we 
 were losing the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith 
 Palace yet to see. Yes, said he, and I have been bringing 
 you where there is little enough to be seen only that Scotch 
 cottage one by the road side, with a small garth ; but, 
 though not worth looking at, I could not pass it. It was our 
 first country-house when newly married, and many a contriv 
 ance we had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table 
 for it with my own hands. Look at these two miserable wil 
 low-trees on either side the gate into the enclosure ; they are 
 tied together at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two 
 sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be sure, it is not 
 nrach of a lion to show a stranger ; but I wanted to see it again 
 myself, for I assure you that after I had constructed it, mamma 
 (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it so fine, we turned out 
 to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards from it to the 
 cottage door, in admiration of our own magnificence and ita 
 picturesque effect. I did want to see if it was still there 
 so now we will look after the barouche, and make the best of 
 
318 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 our way to Dalkeith. Such were the natural feelings that 
 endeared the Author of Marmlon and the Lay to those who 
 * saw him in his happier hours of social pleasure. His person 
 at that time may be exactly known from Raeburn s first pic 
 ture, which had just been executed for his bookseller, Con 
 stable, and which was a most faithful likeness of him and his 
 dog Camp. The literal fidelity of the portraiture, however, 
 is its principal merit. The expression is serious and contem 
 plative, very unlike the hilarity and vivacity then habitual to 
 his speaking face, but quite true to what it was in the absence 
 of such excitement. His features struck me at first as com 
 monplace and heavy, but they were almost always lighted 
 up by the flashes of the mind within. This required a hand 
 more masterly than Raeburn s ; and indeed, in my own opin 
 ion, Chantrey alone has in his bust attained that, in his case, 
 most difficult task of portraying the features faithfully, and yet 
 giving the real and transient expression of the countenance 
 when animated. 
 
 " We passed a week in Edinburgh, chiefly in his society and 
 that of his friends the Mackenzies. We were so far on our 
 way to Brahan Castle, in Ross-shire. Scott unlocked all his 
 antiquarian lore, and supplied us with numberless data, such 
 as no guide-book could have furnished, and such as his own 
 Monkbarns might have delighted to give. It would be idle to 
 tell how much pleasure and instruction his advice added to a 
 tour in itself so productive of both, as well as of private friend 
 ships and intimacies, now too generally terminated by death, 
 but never severed by caprice or disappointment. His was 
 added to the number by our reception now in Edinburgh, and, 
 on our return from the Highlands, at Ashestiel where he 
 tad made us promise to visit him, saying that the farm-house 
 had pigeon-holes enough for such of his friends as could live, 
 like him, on Tweed salmon and Forest mutton. There he was 
 the cherished friend and kind neighbour of every middling Sel 
 kirkshire yeoman, just as easily as in Edinburgh he was the 
 companion of clever youth and narrative old age in refined 
 society. He carried us one day to Melrose Abbey or Newark 
 
MR. MORR1TI 1808 319 
 
 another, to course with mountain greyhounds by Yarrow 
 braes or St. Mary s loch, repeating every ballad or legendary 
 tale connected with the scenery and on a third, we must all 
 go to a farmer s kirn, or harvest-home, to dance with Border 
 lasses on a barn floor, drink whiskey punch, and enter with him 
 into all the gossip and good fellowship of his neighbours, on a 
 complete footing of unrestrained conviviality, equality, and mu 
 tual respect. His wife and happy young family were clustered 
 round him, and the cordiality of his reception would have un 
 bent a misanthrope. 
 
 " At this period his conversation was more equal and ani 
 mated than any man s that I ever knew. It was most char 
 acterised by the extreme felicity and fun of his illustrations, 
 drawn from the whole encyclopsedia of life and nature, in a 
 style sometimes too exuberant for written narrative, but which 
 to him was natural and spontaneous. A hundred stories, al 
 ways apposite, and often interesting the mind by strong pathos, 
 or eminently ludicrous, were daily told, which, with many 
 more, have since been transplanted, almost in the same lan 
 guage, into the Waverley novels and his other writings. These 
 and his recitations of poetry, which can never be forgotten by 
 those who knew him, made up the charm that his boundless 
 memory enabled him to exert to the wonder of the gaping 
 lovers of wonders. But equally impressive and powerful was 
 the language of his warm heart, and equally wonderful were 
 the conclusions of his vigorous understanding, to those who 
 could return or appreciate either. Among a number of such 
 recollections, I have seen many of the thoughts which then 
 passed through his mind embodied in the delightful prefaces 
 annexed late in life to his poetry and novels. Those on liter 
 ary quarrels and literary irritability are exactly what he then 
 expressed. Keenly enjoying literature as he did, and indulg 
 ing his own love of it in perpetual composition, he always 
 maintained the same estimate of it as subordinate and auxili- 
 %ry to the purposes of life, and rather talked of men and 
 events than of books and criticism. Literary fame, he always 
 laid, was a bright feather in the cap, but not the substantia* 
 
320 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 cover of a well-protected head. This sound and manly feeling 
 was what I have seen described by some of his biographers as 
 pride ; and it will always be thought so by those whose own 
 vanity can only be gratified by the admiration of others, and 
 who mistake shows for realities. None valued the love and 
 applause of others more than Scott; but it was to the love 
 and applause of those he valued in return that he restricted 
 the feeling without restricting the kindness. Men who did 
 not, or would not, understand this, perpetually mistook him 
 and, after loading him with undesired eulogy, perhaps in hia 
 own house neglected common attention or civility to other 
 parts of his family. It was on such an occasion that I heard 
 him murmur in my ear, Author as I am, I wish these good 
 people would recollect that I began with being a gentleman, 
 and don t mean to give up the character. Such was all along 
 his feeling, and this, with a slight prejudice common to Scotch 
 men in favour of ancient and respectable family descent, con 
 stituted what in Grub Street is called his pride. It was, at 
 least, what Johnson would have justly called defensive pride. 
 From all other, and still more from mere vanity, I never knew 
 any man so remarkably free." 
 
 The farmer at whose annual kirn Scott and all his 
 household were, in those days, regular guests, was Mr. 
 Laidlaw, the Duke of Buccleuch s tenant on the lands of 
 Peel, which are only separated from the eastern terrace 
 of Ashestiel by the ravine and its brook. Mr. Laidlaw 
 was himself possessed of some landed property in the 
 same neighbourhood, and being considered as wealthy, 
 and fond of his wealth, he was usually called among the 
 country people Laird Nippy ; an expressive designation 
 which it would be difficult to translate. Though a very 
 dry, demure, and taciturn old presbyterian, he could not 
 resist the Sheriff s jokes ; nay, he even gradually sub- 
 dued his scruples so far as to become a pretty constant 
 attendant at his " English printed prayers " on the Sun* 
 
LAIRD NIPPY OF THE PEEL. 321 
 
 days ; which, indeed, were by this time rather more 
 popular than quite suited the capacity of the parlour- 
 chapel. Mr. Laidlaw s wife was a woman of superior 
 Toind and manners a great reader, and one of the few 
 S> whom Scott liked lending his books ; for most strict 
 *,nd delicate was he always in the care of them, and in 
 deed, hardly any trivial occurrence ever seemed to touch 
 his temper at all, except anything like irreverent treat 
 ment of a book. The intercourse between the family at 
 A.shestiel and this worthy woman and her children, was a 
 xmstant interchange of respect and kindness ; but I re- 
 aaember to have heard Scott say that the greatest compli 
 ment he had ever received in his life was from the rigid 
 old farmer himself; for, years after he had left Ashestiel, 
 he discovered casually that special care had been taken 
 to keep the turf seat on the Shirra s Jcnowe in good re 
 pair ; and this was much from Nippy. 
 
 And here I must set down a story which, most readers 
 will smile to be told, was often repeated by Scott ; and 
 always with an air that seemed to me, in spite of his 
 endeavours to the contrary, as grave as the usual aspect 
 of Laird Nippy of the Peel. This neighbour was a dis 
 tant kinsman of his dear friend William Laidlaw ; 
 BO distant, that elsewhere in that condition they would 
 scarcely have remembered any community of blood ; 
 but they both traced their descent, in the ninth degree, 
 to an ancestress who, in the days of John Knox, fell into 
 trouble from a suspicion of witchcraft. In her time the 
 Laidlaws were rich and prosperous, and held rank among 
 the best gentry of Tweeddale , but in some evil hour, her 
 husband, the head of his blood, reproached her with her 
 addiction to the black art, and she, in her anger, cursed 
 the name and lineage of Laidlaw. Her youngest son, 
 
 VOL. II. 21 
 
822 LIFE OF SIR WALTEK SCOTT. 
 
 who stood by, implored her to revoke the malediction 
 but in vain. Next day, however, on the renewal of his 
 entreaties, she carried him with her into the woods, made 
 him slay a heifer, sacrificed it to the power of evil in his 
 presence, and then, collecting the ashes in her apron, 
 invited the youth to see her commit them to the river. 
 u Follow them," said she, " from stream to pool, as long 
 as they float visible, and as many streams as you shall 
 then have passed, for so many generations shall your de 
 scendants prosper. After that, they shall like the rest of 
 the name, be poor, and take their part in my curse." The 
 streams he counted were nine ; " and now," Scott would 
 say, " look round you in this country, and sure enough 
 the Laidlaws are one and all landless men, with the 
 single exception of Auld Nippy ! " Many times had I 
 heard both him and William Laidlaw tell this story, be 
 fore any suspicion got abroad that Nippy s wealth rested 
 on insecure foundations. Year after year, we never e&* 
 corted a stranger by the Peel, but I heard the tale ; 
 and at last it came with a new conclusion ; " and now, 
 think whatever we choose of it, my good friend Nippy is 
 a bankrupt." * 
 
 Mr. Morritt s mention of the " happy young family 
 clustered round him " at Mr. Laidlaw s kirn, reminds me 
 that I ought to say a few words on Scott s method of 
 treating his children in their early days. He had now 
 two boys and two girls ; and he never had more.t He 
 
 * I understand the use of the word bankrupt here has given offence 
 and possibly it was not the exact word Scott employed. In com 
 mon parlance, however, a man is said to be bankrupt, when his worldly 
 affairs have undergone some disastrous change and such was cer 
 tainly the case with Mr. Laidlaw before he left his old possession o* 
 Vhe Peel. [1839.] 
 
 t 1 may as well transcribe here the rest of the record in Scott s family 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE 1808. 323 
 
 was not one of those who take much delight in a mere 
 infant ; but no father ever devoted more time and tender 
 care to his offspring than he did to each of his, as they 
 successively reached the age when they could listen to 
 him, and understand his talk. Like their mute play 
 mates, Camp and the greyhounds, they had at all times 
 free access to his study ; he never considered their tattle 
 as any disturbance ; they went and came as pleased their 
 fancy; he was always ready to answer their questions; 
 and when they, unconscious how he was engaged, en 
 treated him to lay down his pen and tell them a story, he 
 would take them on his knee, repeat a ballad or a legend, 
 kiss them, and set them down again to their marbles or 
 ninepins, and resume his labour as if refreshed by the 
 interruption. From a very early age he made them dine 
 at table, and " to sit up to supper " was the great reward 
 when they had been " very good bairns." In short, he 
 considered it as the highest duty as well as the sweetest 
 pleasure of a parent to be the companion of his children ; 
 
 Bible. After what was quoted in a former chapter, it thus pro 
 ceeds : 
 
 " 24 to die Octobris 1799. Margareta C. Scott, flium apud Edinbur- 
 gum edidit. 15 Novembris 1799, in Ecclesiam Christianam recepta fuit 
 per baptismum dicta filia, nomenque ei adjectum Charlotta Sophia, per 
 virum referendum Danielem Sandford; sponsoribus prcenobili Arthuro 
 Marchione de Downshire, Sophia Dumergue, et Anna Rutherford matre 
 mea. 
 
 " Margareta C, Scott puerum edidit. 28 Octobris A. D. 1801 apud 
 Edinburgum ; nomenque ei adjectum Gualterus, cum per v. rev. Doctor em 
 Danielem Sandford baptizatus erat. 
 
 " M. C. Scott filiam edidit apud Edinburgum 2*> die February 1803, 
 yuce in Ecclesiam recepta fuit per vir^m reverendum Doctorem Sand- 
 Cord, nomenque ei adjectum Anna Scott. 
 
 241 Decem: 1805. M. C. Scott apud Edinburgum puerum edidit, 
 sui baptizatus erat per virum reveren/lum Joannem Thomson, Ministrun 
 4e Duddingstone prope Edinburgum, nomenque Carolus illi datum " 
 
324 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 he partook all their little joys and sorrows, and made his 
 kind unformal instructions to blend so easily and play 
 fully with the current of their own sayings and doings, 
 that so far from regarding him with any distant awe, it 
 was never thought that any sport or diversion could go 
 on in the right way, unless papa were of the party, or 
 that the rainiest day could be dull so he were at home. 
 
 Of the irregularity of his own education he speaks 
 with considerable regret, in the autobiographical frag 
 ment written this year at Ashestiel ; yet his practice 
 does not look as if that feeling had been strongly rooted 
 in his mind; for he never did show much concern 
 about regulating systematically what is usually called 
 education in the case of his own children. It seemed, on 
 the contrary, as if he attached little importance to any 
 thing else, so he could perceive that the young curiosity 
 was excited the intellect, by whatever springs of inter 
 est, set in motion. He detested and despised the whole 
 generation of modern children s books, in which the at 
 tempt is made to convey accurate notions of scientific 
 minutiae : delighting cordially, on the other hand, in those 
 of the preceding age, which, addressing themselves chiefly 
 to the imagination, obtain through it, as he believed, the 
 best chance of stirring our graver faculties also. He ex 
 ercised the memory, by selecting for tasks of recitation 
 passages of popular verse the most likely to catch the 
 fancy of children ; and gradually familiarized them with 
 the ancient history of their own country, by arresting at 
 tention, in the course of his own oral narrations, on inci 
 dents and characters of a similar description. Nor did 
 he neglect to use the same means of quickening curiosity 
 as to the events of sacred history. On Sunday he never 
 rode at least not until his growing infirmity made hiy 
 
DOMESTIC EDUCATION. 325 
 
 pony almost necessary to him for it was his principle 
 that all domestic animals have a full right to their Sab 
 bath of rest ; but after he had read the church service, 
 he usually walked with his whole family, dogs included, 
 to some favourite spot at a considerable distance from the 
 house most frequently the ruined tower of Elibank 
 and there dined with them in the open air on a basket of 
 cold provisions, mixing his wine with the water of the 
 brook beside which they all were grouped around him on 
 the turf; and here, or at home, if the weather kept them 
 from their ramble, his Sunday talk was just such a series 
 of biblical lessons as that which we have preserved for 
 the permanent use of rising generations, in his Tales of a 
 Grandfather, on the early history of Scotland. I wish he 
 had committed that other series to writing too ; how 
 different that would have been from our thousand com 
 pilations of dead epitome and imbecile cant ! He had his 
 Bible, the Old Testament especially, by heart; and on 
 these days inwove the simple pathos or sublime enthu 
 siasm of Scripture, in whatever story he was telling, with 
 the same picturesque richness as he did, in his week-day 
 tales, the quaint Scotch of Pitscottie, or some rude ro 
 mantic old rhyme from Barbour s Bruce or Blind Harry s 
 Wallace. 
 
 By many external accomplishments, either in girl or 
 boy, he set little store. He delighted to hear his daugh 
 ters sing an old ditty, or one of his own framing ; but, so 
 the singer appeared to feel the spirit of her ballad, he 
 was not at all critical of the technical execution. There 
 was one thing, however, on which he fixed his heart 
 hardly less than the ancient Persians of the Cyropaedia : 
 like them, next to love of truth, he held love of horse 
 manship for the prime point of education. As soon as 
 
326 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 his eldest girl could sit a pony, she was made the regulaf 
 attendant of his mountain rides ; and they all, as they 
 attained sufficient strength, had the like advancement. 
 He taught them to think nothing of tumbles, and habitu 
 ated them to his own reckless delight in perilous fords 
 and flooded streams ; and they all imbibed in great per 
 fection his passion for horses as well, I may venture 
 to add, as his deep reverence for the more important 
 article of that Persian training. " Without courage," he 
 said, "there cannot be truth; and without truth there 
 can be no other virtue." 
 
 He had a horror of boarding-schools ; never allowed 
 his girls to learn any thing out of his own house ; and 
 chose their governess Miss Miller who about this 
 time was domesticated with them, and never left them 
 while they needed one, with far greater regard to her 
 kind good temper and excellent moral and religious prin 
 ciples, than to the measure of her attainments in what 
 are called fashionable accomplishments. The admirable 
 system of education for boys in Scotland combines all the 
 advantages of public and private instruction ; his carried 
 their satchels to the High-School, when the family was in 
 Edinburgh, just as he had done before them, and shared 
 of course the evening society of their happy home. But 
 he rarely, if ever, left them in town, when he could him 
 self be in the country ; and at Ashestiel he was, for 
 better or for worse, his eldest boy s daily tutor, after he 
 began Latin. 
 
 The following letter will serve, among other things, to 
 supply a few more details of the domestic life of Ashe 
 tiel : 
 
LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE SEPT. 1808. 327 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie , Hampstead. 
 
 " Sept. 20, 1808. 
 
 " My Dear Miss Baillie, The law, you know, makes the 
 husband answerable for the debts of his wife, and therefore 
 gives him a right to approach her creditors with an offer of 
 ayment ; so that, after witnessing many fruitless and broken 
 resolutions of my Charlotte, I am determined, rather than she 
 and I shall appear longer insensible of your goodness, to in 
 trude a few lines on you to answer the letter you honoured 
 her with some time ago. The secret reason of her procrasti 
 nation is, I believe, some terror of writing in English which 
 you know is not her native language to one who is as much 
 distinguished by her command of it as by the purposes she 
 adapts it to. I wish we had the command of what my old 
 friend Pitscottie calls 4 a blink of the sun or a whip of the 
 whirlwind, to transport you to this solitude before the frost 
 has stript it of its leaves. It is not, indeed (even I must con 
 fess), equal in picturesque beauty to the banks of Clyde and 
 Evan ; * but it is so sequestered, so simple, and so solitary, that 
 i* seems just to have beauty enough to delight its inhabitants, 
 without a single attraction for any visitor, except those who 
 come for its inhabitants sake. And in good sooth, whenever 
 I was tempted to envy the splendid scenery of the lakes of 
 Westmoreland, I always endeavoured to cure my fit of spleen 
 by recollecting that they attract as many idle, insipid, and in 
 dolent gazers, as any celebrated beauty in the land, and that 
 our scene of pastoral hills and pure streams is like Touch 
 stone s mistress, * a poor thing, but mine own. I regret, how 
 ever, that these celebrated beauties should have frowned, wept 
 or pouted upon you, when you honoured them by your visit 
 in summer. Did Miss Agnes Baillie and you meet with any 
 of the poetical inhabitants of that district Wordsworth, 
 
 * Miss Bailee was born at Long-Caiderwood, near Hamilton is 
 janarkshire. 
 
328 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Southey, or Coleridge ? The two former would, I am sure, 
 have been happy in paying their respects to you ; with the 
 habits and tastes of the latter I am less acquainted. 
 
 " Time has lingered with me from day to day in expectation 
 of being called southward ; I now begin to think my journey 
 will hardly take place till winter, or early in spring. One of 
 the most pleasant circumstances attending it will be the oppor 
 tunity to pay my homage to you, and to claim withal a certain 
 promise concerning a certain play, of which you were so kind 
 as to promise me a reading. I hope you do not permit indo 
 lence to lay the paring of her little finger upon you ; we can 
 not afford the interruption to your labours which even that 
 might occasion. And what are you doing ? your politeness 
 will lead you to say : in answer, Why, I am very like a cer 
 tain ancient king, distinguished in the Edda, who, when Lok 
 paid him a visit, 
 
 Was twisting of collars his dogs to hold, 
 And combing the mane of his courser bold. 
 
 If this idle man s employment required any apology, we must 
 seek it in the difficulty of seeking food to make savoury messes 
 for our English guests ; for we are eight miles from market, 
 and must call in all the country sports to aid the larder. We 
 had here, two days ago, a very pleasant English family, the 
 Morritts of Rokeby Park, in Yorkshire. The gentleman wan 
 dered over all Greece, and visited the Troad, to aid in confut 
 ing the hypothesis of old Bryant, who contended that Troy 
 town was not taken by the Greeks. His erudition is, how 
 ever, not of an overbearing kind, which was lucky for me, who 
 am but a slender classical scholar. Charlotte s kindest and 
 best wishes attend Miss Agnes Baillie, in which I heartily and 
 respectfully join ; to you she offers her best apology for not 
 writing, and hopes for your kind forgiveness. I ought perhaps 
 to make one for taking the task off her hands, but we are both 
 at your mercy ; and I am ever your most faithful, obedient, 
 and admiring servant, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
ASHESTIEL SEPT. 1808. 329 
 
 " P. S. I have had a visit from the author of the Poor 
 Man s Sabbath, whose affairs with Constable are, I hope, set 
 tled to his satisfaction. I got him a few books more than were 
 originally stipulated, and have endeavoured to interest Lord 
 Leven,* and through him Mr. Wilberforce, and through them 
 both, the saints in general, in the success of this modest and 
 apparently worthy man. Lord Leven has promised his exer 
 tions; and the interest of the party, if exerted, would save a 
 work tenfold inferior in real merit. What think you of Spain ? 
 The days of William Wallace and the Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar 
 seem to be reviving there." 
 
 * Alexander, tenth Earl of Leven, had married a lady of the Eng 
 lish family of Thornton, whose munificent charities are familiar to the 
 readers of Cowper s Life and Letters ; hence, probably, his Lordship s 
 influence with the party alluded to in the text. 
 
 END OF VOL* II. 
 
MEMOIES OF THE LIFE 
 
 OP 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, BAR!. 
 
MEMOIES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER XVHL 
 
 Muarrel with Messrs. Constable and Hunter John Ballantyne 
 established as a Bookseller in Edinburgh Scott s Literary 
 Projects The Edinburgh Annual Register, fyc. Meeting 
 of James Ballantyne and John Murray Murray s Visit 
 to Ashestiel Politics The Peninsular War Project of 
 the Quarterly Review Correspondence with Ellis, Gifford, 
 Morritt, Southey, Sharpe, fyc. 
 
 1808-1809. 
 
 THE reader does not need to be reminded that Scott 
 at this time had business enough on his hand, besides 
 combing the mane of Brown Adam, and twisting couples 
 for Douglas and Percy. He was deep in Swift ; and 
 the Ballantyne press was groaning under a multitude of 
 works, some of them already mentioned, with almost all 
 of which his hand as well as his head had something, 
 more or less, to do. But a serious change was about to 
 take place in his relations with the spirited publishing 
 house which had hitherto been the most efficient sup 
 porters of that press ; and his letters begin to be much 
 
8 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 occupied with differences and disputes which, uninterest 
 ing as the details would now be, must have cost him 
 many anxious hours in the apparently idle autumn of 
 1808. Mr. Constable had then for his partner Mr. Al 
 exander Gibson Hunter, afterwards Laird of Blackness, 
 to whose intemperate language, much more than to any 
 part of Constable s own conduct, Scott ascribed this un 
 fortunate alienation ; which, however, as well as most of 
 my friend s subsequent misadventures, I am inclined to 
 trace in no small degree, to the influence which a third 
 person, hitherto unnamed, was about this time beginning 
 to exercise over the concerns of James Ballantyne. 
 
 John Ballantyne, a younger brother of Scott s school 
 fellow, was originally destined for the paternal trade of a 
 merchant (that is to say, a dealer in everything from 
 fine broadcloth to children s tops) at Kelso. The 
 father seems to have sent him when very young to 
 London, where, whatever else he may have done in the 
 way of professional training, he spent some time in the 
 banking-house of Messrs. Currie. On returning to Kelso, 
 however, the " department " which more peculiarly de 
 volved upon him was the tailoring one.* His personal 
 Labits had not been improved by his brief sojourn in the 
 Great City, and his business, in consequence (by his own 
 statement) of the irregularity of his life, gradually melted 
 to nothing in his hands. Early in 1805, his goods were 
 sold off, and barely sufficed to pay his debts. The worthy 
 old couple found refuge with their ever affectionate el 
 dest son, who provided his father with some little occu 
 pation (real or nominal) about the printing-office ; and 
 
 * The first time that William Laidlaw saw John Ballantyne, he ha<j 
 come to Selkirk to measure the troopers of the Yeomanry Cavalry, o 
 whom Laidlaw was one, for new breeches. [1839.] 
 
THE BALLANTYNES. 9 
 
 thus John himself again quitted his native place, under 
 circumstances which, as I shall show in the sequel, had 
 left a deep and painful trace even upon that volatile 
 mind. 
 
 He had, however, some taste, and he at least fancied 
 himself to have some talent for literature ; * and the rise 
 of his elder brother, who also had met with no success in 
 his original profession, was before him. He had acquired 
 in London great apparent dexterity in book-keeping and 
 accounts. He was married by this time ; and it might 
 naturally be hoped, that with the severe lessons of the 
 past, he would now apply sedulously to any duty that 
 might be intrusted to him. The concern in the Canon- 
 gate was a growing one, and James Ballantyne s some 
 what indolent habits were already severely tried by its 
 multifarious management. The Company offered John 
 a salary of 200 a-year as clerk ; and the destitute ex- 
 merchant was too happy to accept the proposal.f 
 
 He was a quick, active, intrepid little fellow ; and in 
 society so very lively and amusing, so full of fun and 
 merriment, such a thoroughly light-hearted droll, all-over 
 quaintness and humorous mimicry ; and moreover, such 
 a keen and skilful devotee to all manner of field-sports, 
 
 * John Ballantyne, upon the marvellous success of Waverley, wrote 
 aid published a novel, called " The Widow s Lodgings." More 
 wretched trash never was. 
 
 t The reader, who compares this account of John Ballantyne s early 
 tife with that given in the former (English) edition of this work (Vol. 
 jff. p. 190), will observe some alterations that I have made but they 
 are none of them as to points of the very slightest importance. The 
 sketch of John s career, drawn up by himself, shortly before his death 
 confirms every word I had said as to anything of substantial conse 
 quence and indeed tells the story more unfavorably for him than I 
 did or do. It was printed in Vol. V. of the first edition, p. 77 ; and 
 will be reprinted in its proper place, sub anno 1821. [1839.] 
 
10 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 from fox-hunting to badger-baiting inclusive, that it was 
 no wonder he should have made a favourable impression 
 on Scott, when he appeared in Edinburgh in this destitute 
 plight, and offered to assist James in book-keeping, which 
 the latter never understood, or could bring himself to 
 attend to with regularity. The contrast between the 
 two brothers was not the least of the amusement ; indeed 
 that continued to amuse him to the last. The elder of 
 these is painted to the life in an early letter of Ley den s, 
 which, on the Doctor s death, he, though not (I fancy) 
 without wincing, permitted Scott to print : " Methinks 
 I see you with your confounded black beard, bull-neck, 
 and upper lip turned up to your nose, while one of your 
 eyebrows is cocked perpendicularly, and the other forms 
 pretty well the base of a right-angled triangle, open 
 ing your great gloating eyes, and crying Hut, Ley- 
 den ! ! ! " James was a short, stout, well-made man, and 
 would have been considered a handsome one, but for 
 these grotesque frowns, starts, and twistings of his feat 
 ures, set off by a certain mock majesty of walk and ges 
 ture, which he had perhaps contracted from his usual 
 companions, the emperors and tyrants of the stage. His 
 voice in talk was grave and sonorous, and he sung well 
 (theatrically well), in a fine rich bass. John s tone in sing 
 ing was a sharp treble in conversation something be 
 tween a croak and a squeak. Of his style of story-telling 
 it is sufficient to say that the late Charles Mathews s " old 
 Scotch lady " was but an imperfect copy of the original, 
 which the great comedian first heard in my presence from 
 his lips.* He was shorter than Jarnes, but lean as a 
 scarecrow, and he rather hopped than walked: his feat 
 
 * The reader will find an amusing anecdote of Johnny in the Me 
 noire of Mathews, by his widow, vol ii. p. 382. [1839.] 
 
THE BALLANTl.NKb. 11 
 
 ures, too, were naturally good, and he twisted them about 
 quite as much, but in a very different fashion. The elder 
 brother was a gourmand the younger liked his bottle 
 and his bowl, as well as, like Johnny Armstrong, "a 
 hawk, a hound, and a fair woman." Scott used to call 
 the one Aldiborontiphoscophornio the other Rigdum- 
 funnidos. They both entertained him ; they both loved 
 and revered him ; and I believe would have shed their 
 heart s blood in his service ; but they both, as men of 
 affairs, deeply injured him and above all, the day that 
 brought John into pecuniary connexion with him was the 
 blackest in his calendar. A more reckless, thoughtless, 
 improvident adventurer never rushed into the serious 
 responsibilities of business ; but his cleverness, his vivac 
 ity, his unaffected zeal, his gay fancy always seeing the 
 light side of everything, his imperturbable good-humour, 
 and buoyant elasticity of spirits, made and kept him such 
 a favourite, that I believe Scott would have as soon have 
 ordered his dog to be hanged, as harboured, in his dark 
 est hour of perplexity, the least thought of discarding 
 "jocund Johnny." 
 
 The great bookseller of Edinburgh was a man of cal 
 ibre infinitely beyond these Ballantynes. Though with 
 a strong dash of the sanguine, without which, indeed, 
 there can be no great projector in any walk of life, Archi 
 bald Constable was one of the most sagacious personi 
 that ever followed his profession. A brother poet of 
 Scott says to him, a year or two before this time, " Our 
 butteracious friend at the Cross turns out a deep draw- 
 well ; " and another eminent literatoV, still more closely 
 connected with Constable, had already, I believe, christ. 
 ened him " The Crafty." Indeed, his fair and very 
 aandsome physiognomy carried a bland astuteness of ex- 
 
12 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 pression, not to be mistaken by any who could read the 
 plainest of nature s handwriting. He made no preten 
 sions to literature though he was in fact a tolerable 
 judge of it generally, and particularly well skilled in the 
 department of Scotch antiquities. He distrusted himself, 
 however, in such matters, being conscious that his early 
 education had been very imperfect ; and moreover, he 
 wisely considered the business of a critic as quite as much 
 out of his " proper line " as authorship itself. But of that 
 " proper line," and his own qualifications for it, his esti 
 mation was ample ; and often as I may have smiled at 
 the lofty serenity of his self-complacence I confess 1 
 now doubt whether he rated himself too highly as a 
 master in the true science of the bookseller. He had, 
 indeed, in his mercantile character, one deep and fatal 
 flaw for he hated accounts, and systematically refused, 
 during the most vigorous years of his life, to examine or 
 sign a balance-sheet ; but for casting a keen eye over the 
 remotest indications of popular taste for anticipating 
 the chances of success and failure in any given variety 
 of adventure for the planning and invention of his 
 calling he was not, in his own day at least, surpassed ; 
 and among all his myriad of undertakings, I question if 
 any one that really originated with himself, and continued 
 to be superintended by his own care, ever did fail. He 
 was as bold as far-sighted and his disposition was as lil> 
 eral as his views were wide. Had he and Scott from the 
 beginning trusted as thoroughly as they understood each 
 other ; had there been no third parties to step in, flatter 
 ing an overweening vanity on the one hand into pre- 
 Bumption, and on the other side spurring the enterprise 
 that wanted nothing but a bridle, I have no doubt theii 
 joint career might have been one of unbroken prosperity 
 
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE. 13 
 
 But the Ballantynes were jealous of the superior mind, 
 bearing, and authority of Constable ; and though he too 
 had a liking for them both personally esteemed James s 
 literary tact, and was far too much of a humourist not to 
 be very fond of the younger brother s company he 
 could never away with the feeling that they intervened 
 unnecessarily, and left him but the shadow, where he 
 ought to have had the substantial lion s share, of confi 
 dence. On his part, again, he was too proud a man to 
 give entire confidence where that was withheld from him 
 self; and more especially, I can well believe that a frank 
 ness of communication as to the real amount of his capital 
 and general engagements of business, which would have 
 been the reverse of painful to him in habitually confiden 
 tial intercourse with Scott, was out of the question where 
 Scott s proposals and suggestions were to be met in con 
 ference, not with his own manly simplicity, but the buck 
 ram pomposity of the one, or the burlesque levity of the 
 other, of his plenipotentiaries. 
 
 The disputes in question seem to have begun very 
 shortly after the contract for the Life and Edition of 
 Swift had been completed; and we shall presently see 
 reason to infer that Scott to a certain degree was in 
 fluenced at the moment by a soreness originating in the 
 recent conduct of Mr. Jeffrey s Journal that great 
 primary source of the wealth and authority of the house 
 f Constable. The then comparatively little-known book 
 seller of London, who was destined to be ultimately Con 
 stable s most formidable rival in more than one depart 
 ment of publishing, has told me, that when he read the 
 article on Marmion, and another on general politics, in 
 the same number of the Edinburgh Review, he said to 
 Himself "Walter Scott has feelings both as a gentle- 
 
14 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 man and a Tory, which these people must now have 
 wounded ; the alliance between him and the whole 
 clique of the Edinburgh Review, its proprietor included, 
 is shaken ; " and, as far at least as the political part of 
 the affair was concerned, John Murray s sagacity was not 
 at fault. We have seen with what thankful alacrity he 
 accepted a small share in the adventure of Marmion 
 and with what brilliant success that was crowned ; nor ia 
 it wonderful that a young bookseller, conscious of ample 
 energies, should now have watched with eagerness the 
 circumstances which seemed not unlikely to place within 
 his own reach a more intimate connexion with the first 
 great living author in whose works he had ever had any 
 direct interest. He forthwith took measures for improv 
 ing and extending his relations with James Ballantyne, 
 through whom, as he guessed, Scott could best be ap 
 proached. His tenders of employment for the Canongate 
 press were such, that the apparent head of the firm pro 
 posed a conference at Ferrybridge, in Yorkshire ; and 
 there Murray, after detailing some of his own literary 
 plans particularly that already alluded to, of a Novel 
 ist s Library in his turn sounded Ballantyne so far, as 
 to resolve at once on pursuing his journey into Scotland. 
 Ballantyne had said enough to satisfy him that the pro 
 ject of setting up a new publishing house in Edinburgh, 
 in opposition to Constable, was already all but matured 
 and he, on the instant, proposed himself for its active co- 
 operator in the metropolis. The printer proceeded t<* 
 open his budget further, mentioning, among other things, 
 that the author of Marmion had " both another Scotch 
 poem and a Scotch novel on the stocks ; " and had, more 
 over, chalked out the design of an Edinburgh Annual 
 Register, to be conducted in opposition to the politics anc 
 
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, ETC. 1808. 15 
 
 sriticism of Constable s Review. These tidings might 
 have been enough to make Murray proceed farther 
 northwards ; but there was a scheme of his own which 
 had for some time deeply occupied his mind, and the last 
 article of this communication determined him to embrace 
 the opportunity of opening it in person at Ashestiel. 
 He arrived there about the middle of October. The 
 26th Number of the Edinburgh Review, containing Mr. 
 Brougham s celebrated article, entitled, " Don Cevallos, 
 wi the usurpation of Spain," had just been published; 
 and one of the first things Scott mentioned in conversa 
 tion was, that he had so highly resented the tone of that 
 essay, as to give orders that his name might be discon 
 tinued on tha list of subscribers.* Mr. Murray could 
 not have wished better auspices for the matter he had 
 come to open ; and, shortly after his departure, Scott 
 writes as follows, to his prime political confidant: 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq., Claremont. 
 
 "Ashestiel, Nov. 2d, 1808. 
 
 " Dear Ellis, We had, equally to our joy and surprise, a 
 flying visit from Heber, about three weeks ago. He staid but 
 three days but, between old stories and new, we made them 
 very merry in their passage. During his stay, John Murray, 
 the bookseller in Fleet Street, who has more real knowledge 
 of what concerns his business than any of his brethren at 
 least than any of them that I know came to canvass a most 
 important plan, of which I am now, in dern privacie/ to give 
 
 * " When the 26th Number appeared, Mr. Scott wrote to Constable 
 in these terms : The Edinburgh Review had become such as to ren 
 der it impossible for me to continue a contributor to it. Now, it ia 
 such as I can no longer continue to receive or read it. The list of the 
 then subscribers exhibits in an indignant dash of Constable s pen op- 
 posite Mr. Scott s name, the word STOPT ! ! ! " Letter from Mr 
 ff. Cadett. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
16 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 you the outline. I had most strongly recommended to our 
 Lord Advocate * to think of some counter-measures against 
 the Edinburgh Review, which, politically speaking, is doing 
 incalculable damage. I do not mean this in a mere party 
 view; the present Ministry are not all that I could wish 
 them for (Canning excepted) I doubt there is among them 
 too much self-seeking, as it was called in Cromwell s time ; and 
 what is their misfortune, if not their fault, there is not among 
 them one in the decided situation of paramount authority, both 
 with respect to the others and to the Crown, which is, I think, 
 necessary, at least in difficult times, to produce promptitude, 
 regularity, and efficiency in measures of importance. But 
 their political principles are sound English principles, and, 
 compared to the greedy and inefficient horde which preceded 
 them, they are angels of light and of purity. It is obvious, 
 however, that they want defenders both in and out of doors. 
 Pitt s 
 
 Love and fear glued many friends to him; 
 
 And now he s fallen, those tough commixtures melt ^L 
 
 Were this only to affect a change of hands, I should expect it 
 with more indifference ; but I fear a change of principles is 
 designed. The Edinburgh Review tells you coolly, We fore- 
 Bee a speedy revolution in this country as well as Mr. Cob- 
 bett ; and, to say the truth, by degrading the person of the 
 Sovereign exalting the power of the French armies, and the 
 wisdom of their counsels holding forth that peace (which 
 they allow can only be purchased by the humiliating prostra 
 tion of our honour) is indispensable to the very existence of 
 this country I think, that for these two years past, they have 
 done their utmost to hasten the accomplishment of their own 
 prophecy. Of this work 9000 copies are printed quarterly, 
 and no genteel family can pretend to be without it, because, 
 independent of its politics, it gives the only valuable literary 
 
 * The Right Hon. John Campbell Cclquhoun, husband of Scott t 
 tarly friend, Mary Anne Erskine. 
 t Slightly altered from 3d K. Henry VI. Act II. Scene 6. 
 
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW PROJECTED. 17 
 
 criticism which can be met with. Consider, of the numbers 
 who read this work, how many are there likely to separate the 
 literature from the politics how many youths are there, upon 
 whose minds the flashy and bold character of the work is likely 
 to make an indelible impression ; and think what the conse 
 quence is likely to be. 
 
 " Now, I think there is balm in Gilead for all this ; and that 
 the cure lies in instituting such a Review in London as should 
 be conducted totally independent of bookselling influence, on 
 a plan as liberal as that of the Edinburgh, its literature as well 
 supported, and its principles English and constitutional. Ac 
 cordingly, I have been given to understand that Mr. William 
 Gifford is willing to become the conductor of such a work, and 
 J have written to him, at the Lord Advocate s desire, a very 
 voluminous letter on the subject. Now, should this plan suc 
 ceed, you must hang your birding-piece on its hooks, take 
 down your old Anti-jacobin armour, and remember your 
 swashing blow. It is not that I think this projected Review 
 ought to be exclusively or principally political this would, in 
 my opinion, absolutely counteract its purpose, which I think 
 should be to offer to those who love their country, and to those 
 whom we would wish to love it, a periodical work of criticism 
 conducted with equal talent, but upon sounder principle than 
 that which has gained so high a station in the world of letters. 
 Is not this very possible ? In point of learning, you English 
 men have ten times our scholarship ; and as for talent and 
 genius, Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, 
 better than any of the rivers in Israel ? * Have we not your 
 self and your cousin, the Roses, Malthus, Matthias, Gifford, 
 Heber, and his brother ? Can I not procure you a score of 
 blue-caps who would rather write for us than for the Edin 
 burgh Review if they got as much pay by it ? A good plot, 
 ^ood friends, and full of expectation an excellent plot, very 
 good friends ! * 
 
 " Heber s fear, was, lest we should fail in procuring regulai 
 
 * Hotspur 1st K. Henry IV. Act II. Scene 3. 
 
18 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 steady contributors ; but I know so much of the interior di 
 cipline of reviewing, as to have no apprehension of that. Pro 
 vided we are once set a-going, by a few dashing numbers, there 
 would be no fear of enlisting regular contributors; but the 
 amateurs must bestir themselves in the first instance. From 
 Government we should be entitled to expect confidential com 
 munication as to points of fact (so far as fit to be made public), 
 in our political disquisitions. With this advantage, our good 
 cause and St. George to boot, we may at least divide the field 
 with our formidable competitors, who, after all, are much better 
 at cutting than parrying, and whom uninterrupted triumph has 
 as much unfitted for resisting a serious attack, as it has done 
 Buonaparte for the Spanish war. Jeffrey is, to be sure, a man 
 of the most uncommon versatility of talent, but what then ? 
 
 General Howe is a gallant commander, 
 There are others as gallant as he. 
 
 Think of all this, and let me hear from you very soon on the 
 subject. Canning is, I have good reason to know, very anx 
 ious about the plan. I mentioned it to Robert Dundas, who 
 was here with his lady for two days on a pilgrimage to Melrose, 
 and he approved highly of it. Though no literary man, he is 
 judicious, clair-voyant, and uncommonly sound-headed, like his 
 father, Lord Melville. With the exceptions I have mentioned, 
 the thing continues a secret. 
 
 " I am truly happy you think well of the Spanish business : 
 they have begun in a truly manly and rounded manner, and 
 barring internal dissension, are, I think, very likely to make 
 their part good. Buonaparte s army has come to assume 
 such a very motley description as gives good hope of its crum 
 bling down on the frost of adversity setting in. The Germans 
 and Italians have deserted him in troops, and I greatly doubt 
 his being able to assemble a very huge force at the foot of 
 the Pyrenees, unless he trusts that the terror of his name 
 will be sufficient to keep Germany in subjugation, and Austria 
 n awe. The finances of your old Russian friends are said tc 
 
LETTER TO GIFFORD OCT. 1808. 19 
 
 be ruined out and out; such is the account we have from 
 Leith. 
 " Enough of this talk. Ever yours, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The readiness with which Mr. Ellis entered into the 
 scheme thus introduced to his notice, encouraged Scott to 
 write still more fully ; indeed, I might fill half a volume 
 with the correspondence now before me concerning the 
 gradual organization, and ultimately successful establish 
 ment of the Quarterly Review. But my only object is 
 to illustrate the liberality and sagacity of Scott s views 
 on such a subject, and the characteristic mixture of strong 
 and playful language in which he developed them ; and 
 I conceive that this end will be sufficiently accomplished, 
 by extracting two more letters of this bulky series. Al 
 ready, as we have seen, before opening the matter e^n 
 to Ellis, he had been requested to communicate his senti 
 ments to the proposed editor of the work, and he had 
 done so in these terms : 
 
 " To William Giffbrd, Esq., London. 
 
 " Edinburgh, October 25, 1808. 
 
 " Sir, By a letter from the Lord Advocate of Scotland, in 
 consequence of a communication between his Lordship and Mr. 
 Canning on the subject of a new Review to be attempted in 
 London, I have the pleasure to understand that you have con 
 sented to become the editor, a point which, in my opinion, goea 
 no small way to ensure success to the undertaking. In offer 
 ing a few observations upon the details of such a plan, I only 
 obey the commands of our distinguished friends, without hav 
 ing the vanity to hope that I can point out any thing which 
 leas not likely to have at once occurred to a person of Mr, 
 liifford s literary experience and eminence. I shall, however, 
 
20 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 beg permission to offer you my sentiments, in the miscellaneous 
 way in which they occur to me. The extensive reputation 
 and circulation of the Edinburgh Review is chiefly owing to 
 two circumstances : First, that it is entirely uninfluenced by 
 the booksellers, who have contrived to make most of the other 
 Reviews merely advertising sheets to puff off their own publi 
 cations ; and, secondly, the very handsome recompense which 
 the editor not only holds forth to his regular assistants, but 
 actually forces upon those whose circumstances and rank make 
 it a matter of total indifference to them. The editor, to my 
 knowledge, makes a point of every contributor receiving this 
 bonus, saying that Czar Peter, when working in the trenches, 
 received pay as a common soldier. This general rule removes 
 all scruples of delicacy, and fixes in his service a number of 
 persons who might otherwise have felt shy in taking the price 
 of their labours, and even the more so because it was an object 
 of convenience to them. There are many young men of talent 
 and enterprise who are extremely glad of a handsome apology 
 to work for fifteen or twenty guineas, although they would not. 
 willingly be considered as hired reviewers. From this I deduce 
 two points of doctrine : first, that the work must be considered 
 as independent of all bookselling influence ; secondly, that the 
 labours of the contributors must be regularly and handsomely 
 recompensed, and that it must be a rule that each one shall 
 accept of the price of his labour. John Murray of Fleet 
 Street, a young bookseller of capital and enterprise, Jind with 
 more good sense and propriety of sentiment than fall to the 
 share of most of the trade, made me a visit at Ashestiel a few 
 weeks ago, and as I found he had had some communication 
 with you upon the subject, I did not hesitate to communicate 
 uiy sentiments to him on these and some other points of the 
 plan, and I thought his ideas were most liberal and satisfac 
 tory. 
 
 " The office of the editor is of such importance, that had you 
 not been pleased to undertake it, I fear the plan wr uld have 
 fallen wholly to the ground. The full power of control must, 
 of course, be vested in the editor for selecting, curtailing, an<? 
 
LETTER TO GIFFORD OCT. 1808. 21 
 
 correcting the contributions to the Review. But this is not- 
 all ; for, as he is the person immediately responsible to the 
 bookseller that the work (amounting to a certain number of 
 pages, more or less) shall be before the public at a certain 
 time, it will be the editor s duty to consider in due time the 
 articles of which each number ought to consist, and to take 
 measures for procuring them from the persons best qualified to 
 write upon such and such subjects. But this is sometimes so 
 troublesome, that I foresee with pleasure you will be soon 
 obliged to abandon your resolution of writing nothing yourself. 
 At the same time, if you will accept of my services as a sort of 
 jackal or lion s provider, I will do all in my power to assist in 
 this troublesome department of editorial duty. But there is 
 still something behind, and that of the last consequence. One 
 great resource to which the Edinburgh editor turns himself, 
 and by which he gives popularity even to the duller articles of 
 his Review, is accepting contributions from persons of inferior 
 powers of writing, provided they understand the books to 
 which the criticisms relate ; and as such are often of stupifying 
 mediocrity, he renders them palatable by throwing in a handful 
 of spice namely, any lively paragraph or entertaining illus 
 tration that occurs to him in reading them over. By this sort 
 of veneering, he converts, without loss of time, or hindrance of 
 business, articles which, in their original state, might hang in 
 the market, into such goods as are not likely to disgrace those 
 among which they are placed. This seems to be a point in 
 which an editor s assistance is of the last consequence ; for 
 those who possess the knowledge necessary to review books of 
 research or abstruse disquisition, are very often unable to put 
 the criticism into a readable, much more a pleasant and capti 
 vating form; and as their science cannot be attained for the 
 nonce, the only remedy is to supply their deficiencies, and 
 give their lucubrations a more popular turn. 
 
 " There is one opportunity possessed by you in a particular 
 degree that of access to the best sources of political informa 
 tion. It would not, certainly be advisable that the work 
 should assume, especially at the outset, a professed political 
 
22 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 character. On the contrary, the articles on science and mis 
 cellaneous literature ought to be of such a quality as might 
 fairly challenge competition with the best of our contempo 
 raries. But as the real reason of instituting the publication ia 
 the disgusting and deleterious doctrine with which the most 
 popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages, it is essential to 
 consider how this warfare should be managed. On this 
 ground, I hope it is not too much to expect from those who 
 have the power of assisting us, that they should on topics of 
 great national interest furnish the reviewers, through the 
 medium of their editor, with accurate views of points of fact, 
 so far as they are fit to be made public. This is the most deli 
 cate, and yet most essential part of our scheme. On the one 
 hand, it is certainly not to be understood that we are to be 
 held down to advocate upon all occasions the cause of adminis 
 tration. Such a dereliction of independence would render us 
 entirely useless for the purpose we mean to serve. On the 
 other hand, nothing will render the work more interesting 
 than the public learning, not from any vaunt of ours, but from 
 their own observation, that we have access to early and accu 
 rate information in point of fact. The Edinburgh Review has 
 profited much by the pains which the Opposition party have 
 taken to possess the writers of all the information they could 
 give them on public matters. Let me repeat that you, my 
 dear sir, from enjoying the confidence of Mr. Canning and 
 other persons in power, may easily obtain the confidential in 
 formation necessary to give credit to the work, and communi 
 cate it to such as you may think proper to employ in laying it 
 oefore the public. 
 
 " Concerning the mode and tune of publication, I think you 
 will be of opinion that monthly, in the present dearth of good 
 subjects of Review, would be too often, and that a quarterly 
 publication would both give you less trouble, and be amplv 
 sufficient for discussing all that is likely to be worth discussion, 
 The name to be assumed is of some consequence, though any 
 one of little pretension will do. We might, for example, re 
 vive the English Review, which was the name of Gilbert 
 
LETTER TO GIFFORD OCT. 1808. 23 
 
 Stuart s.* Regular correspondents ought to be sought after ; 
 but I should be little afraid of finding such, were the reputa 
 tion of the Review once decidedly established by three or four 
 numbers of the very first order. As it would be essential to 
 come on the public by surprise, that no unreasonable expecta 
 tion or artificial misrepresentation might prejudice its success, 
 the authors employed in the first number ought to be few and 
 of the first rate. The choosing of subjects would also be a 
 matter of anxious consideration : for example, a good and dis 
 tinct essay on Spanish affairs would be sufficient to give a 
 character to the work. The lucubrations of the Edinburgh 
 Review, on that subject, have done the work great injury with 
 the public ; and I am convinced, that of the many thousands 
 of copies now distributed of each Number, the quantity might 
 be reduced one-half at least, by any work appearing, which, 
 with the same literary talent and independent character, 
 should speak a political language more familiar to the British 
 ear than that of subjugation to France. At the same time, as 
 I before hinted, it will be necessary to maintain the respect of 
 the public by impartial disquisition ; and I would not have it 
 said, as may usually be predicated of other Reviews, that the 
 sentiments of the critic were less determined by the value of 
 the work than by the purpose it was written to serve. If a 
 weak brother will unadvisedly put forth his hand to support 
 even the ark of the constitution, I would expose his argu 
 ments, though I might approve of his intention and of his 
 conclusions. I should think an open and express declaration 
 of political tenets, or of opposition to works of a contrary 
 tendency, ought for the same reason to be avoided. I think, 
 from the little observation I have made, that the Whigs suffer 
 most deeply from cool sarcastic reasoning and occasional ridi 
 cule. Having long had a sort of command of the press, from 
 the neglect of all literary assistance on the part of those who 
 
 * " The English Review " was started in January 1783, under the 
 auspices of the elder Mr John Murray of Fleet Street. It had Dr. G. 
 Stuart for Editor, and ranked among its contributors WhHtaker th 
 Historian of Manchester, Dr. William Thomson, &c. &c. 
 
24 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 thought their good cause should fight its own battle, they are 
 apt to feel with great acuteness any assault in that quarter ; 
 and having been long accustomed to push, have in some degree 
 lost the power to parry. It will not, therefore, be long before 
 they make some violent retort, and 1 should not be surprised 
 if it were to come through the Edinburgh Review. We might 
 then come into close combat with a much better grace than if 
 we had thrown down a formal defiance. I am, therefore, for 
 going into a state of hostility without any formal declara 
 tion of war. Let our forces for a number or two consist of 
 volunteers and amateurs, and when we have acquired some 
 reputation, we shall soon levy and discipline forces of the 
 line. 
 
 " After all, the matter is become very serious, eight or 
 nine thousand copies of the Edinburgh Review are regularly 
 distributed, merely because there is no other respectable and 
 independent publication of the kind. In this city, where there 
 is not one Whig out of twenty men who read the work, many 
 hundreds are sold ; and how long the generality of readers 
 will continue to dislike politics, so artfully mingled with infor 
 mation and amusement, is worthy of deep consideration. But 
 it is not yet too late to stand in the breach ; the first number 
 ought, if possible, to be out in January, and if it can burst 
 among them like a bomb, without previous notice, the effect 
 will be more striking. Of those who might be intrusted in the 
 first instance, you are a much better judge than I am. I think 
 J can command the assistance of a friend or two here, partic 
 ularly William Erskine, the Lord Advocate s brother-in-law 
 and my most intimate friend. In London you have Malthus, 
 George Ellis, the Roses, cum pluribus aliis. Richard Heber 
 was with me when Murray came to my farm, and knowing his 
 zeal for the good cause, I let him into our counsels. In Mr. 
 Frere we have the hopes of a potent ally. The Rev. Reginald 
 Heber would be an excellent coadjutor, and when I come to 
 town I will sound Matthias. As strict secrecy would of course 
 be observed, the diffidence of many might be overcome; for 
 scholars you can be at no loss while Oxford stands where it 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS NOV. 1808. 25 
 
 did, and I think there will be no deficiency in the scientific 
 articles. 
 
 " Once more I have to apologize for intruding on you this 
 hasty, and therefore long, and probably confused letter; I 
 trust your goodness will excuse my expressing any apology for 
 submitting to your better judgment my sentiments on a plan 
 of such consequence. I expect to be called to London early 
 in the winter, perhaps next month. If you see Murray, as I 
 suppose you will, I presume you will communicate to him such 
 of my sentiments as have the good fortune to coincide with 
 yours. Among the works in the first Number, Fox s history, 
 Grattan s speeches, a notable subject for a quizzing article, 
 and any tract or pamphlet that will give an opportunity to 
 treat of the Spanish affairs, would be desirable subjects of crit 
 icism. I am, with great respect, Sir, your most obedient ser 
 vant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 On the 18th of November, Scott enclosed to Mr. Ellis 
 the rough scroll " (that now transcribed) of his letter 
 to Mr. Gifford ; " this being," he says, " one of the 
 very few epistles of which I thought it will be as well to 
 retain a copy." He then proceeds as follows : 
 
 " Supposing you to have read said scroll, you must know 
 further, that it has been received in a most favourable manner 
 by Mr. Gifford, who approves of its contents in all respects, 
 and that Mr. Canning has looked it over, and promised such 
 aid as is therein required. I therefore wish you to be apprised 
 fully of what could hardly be made the subject of writing, un 
 less in all the confidence of friendship. Let me touch a string 
 of much delicacy the political character of the Review. It 
 appears to me that this should be of a liberal and enlarged 
 nature, resting upon principles indulgent and conciliatory 
 as far as possible upon mere party questions but stern in 
 detecting and exposing all attempts to sap our constitutional 
 fabric. Religion is another slippery station ; here also I would 
 endeavour to be as impartial as the subject will admit of. This 
 
26 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 character of impartiality, as well as the maintenance of a high 
 reputation in literature, is of great consequence to such of our 
 friends as are in the Ministry, as our more direct efforts in 
 their favour ; for these will only be successful in proportion to 
 the influence we shall acquire by an extensive circulation ; to 
 procure which, the former qualities will be essentially neces 
 sary. Now, entre nous, will not our editor be occasionally a 
 little warm and pepperish ? essential qualities in themselves, 
 but which should not quite constitute the leading character of 
 such a publication. This is worthy of a memento. 
 
 " As our start is of such immense consequence, don t you 
 think Mr. Canning, though unquestionably our Atlas, might, 
 for a day find a Hercules on whom to devolve the burthen of 
 the globe, while he writes us a review ? I know what an au 
 dacious request this is ; but suppose he should, as great states 
 men sometimes do, take a political fit of the gout, and absent 
 himself from a large ministerial dinner, which might give it 
 him in good earnest, dine at three on a chicken and pint of 
 wine, and lay the foundation at least of one good article ? 
 Let us but once get afloat, and our labour is not worth talking 
 of; but, till then, all hands must work hard. 
 
 " Is it necessary to say that I agree entirely with you in the 
 mode of treating even delinquents ? The truth is, there is 
 policy, as well as morality, in keeping our swords clear as well 
 as sharp, and not forgetting the gentlemen in the critics. The 
 public appetite is soon gorged with any particular style. The 
 common Reviews, before the appearance of the Edinburgh, 
 had become extremely mawkish ; and, unless when prompted 
 by the malice of the bookseller or reviewer, gave a dawdling, 
 maudlin sort of applause to everything that reached even 
 mediocrity. The Edinburgh folks squeezed into their sauce 
 plenty of acid, and were popular from novelty as well as from 
 merit. The minor Reviews and other periodical publications, 
 have outred the matter still farther, and given us all abuse, and 
 no talent. But by the time the language of vituperative crit 
 icism becomes general (which is now pretty nearly the case) 
 -it affects the tympanum of the public ear no more that 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS NOV. 1808. 27 
 
 rogue or rascal from the cage of a parrot, or blood-and-wounds 
 from a horse-barrack. This, therefore, we have to trust to, 
 that decent, lively, and reflecting criticism, teaching men not 
 to abuse books only, but to read and to judge them, will have 
 the effect of novelty upon a public wearied with universal 
 efforts at blackguard and indiscriminating satire. I have a 
 long and very sensible letter from John Murray the bookseller, 
 in which he touches upon this point very neatly. By the by, 
 little Weber may be very useful upon antiquarian subjects, in 
 the way of collecting information and making remarks ; only, 
 you or I must re-write his lucubrations. I use him often as a 
 pair of eyes in consulting books and collating, and as a pair of 
 hands in making extracts. Constable, the great Edinburgh 
 editor, has offended me excessively by tyrannizing over this 
 poor Teutcher, and being rather rude when I interfered. It 
 is a chance but I may teach him that he should not kick down 
 the scaffolding before his house is quite built. Another bomb 
 is about to break on him besides the Review. This is an Ed 
 inburgh Annual Register, to be conducted under the auspices 
 of James Ballantyne, who is himself no despicable composer, 
 and has secured excellent assistance. I cannot help him, of 
 course, very far, but I will certainly lend him a lift as an ad 
 viser. I want all my friends to befriend this work, and will 
 send you a prospectus when it is published. It will be valde 
 anti-Foxite. This is a secret for the present. 
 
 " For heaven s sake do not fail to hold a meeting as soon as 
 you can. Gifford will be admirable at service, but will re 
 quire, or I mistake him much, both a spur and a bridle, a 
 spur on account of habits of literary indolence induced by 
 weak health, and a bridle, because, having renounced in 
 some degree general society, he cannot be supposed to have 
 the habitual and instinctive feeling enabling him to judge at 
 once and decidedly on the mode of letting his shafts fly down 
 the breeze of popular opinion. But he has worth, wit, learn 
 ing, and extensive information ; is tne friend of our friends in 
 power, and can easily correspond with them ; is in no danger 
 of having private quarrels fixed on him for public criticism ; 
 
28 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 nor very likely to be embarrassed by being thrown into action 
 in public life alongside of the very people he has reviewed, and 
 probably offended. All this is of the last importance to the 
 discharge of his arduous duty. It would be cruel to add a 
 word to this merciless epistle, excepting love to Mrs. Ellis and 
 all friends. Leyden, by the by, is triumphant at Calcutta 
 a Judge, of all things ! and making money ! He has flour 
 ished like a green bay tree under the auspices of Lord Minto, 
 his countryman. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Among others whom Scott endeavoured to enlist in 
 the service of the new Review was his brother Thomas, 
 who on the breaking up of his affairs in Edinburgh, had 
 retired to the Isle of Man, and who shortly afterwards 
 obtained the office in which he died, that of paymaster to 
 the 70th regiment. The poet had a high opinion of his 
 brother s literary talents, and thought that his knowledge 
 of our ancient dramatists, and his vein of comic narra 
 tion, might render him a very useful recruit. He thus 
 communicates his views to Thomas Scott, on the 19th 
 November, and, as might be expected, the communica 
 tion is fuller and franker than any other on the sub 
 ject : 
 
 " To Thomas Scott, Esq., Douglas, Isle of Man. 
 
 " Dear Tom, Owing to certain pressing business, I have 
 not yet had time to complete my collection of Shadwell * for 
 you, though it is now nearly ready. I wish you to have all 
 the originals to collate with the edition in 8vo. But I have a 
 more pressing employment for your pen, and to which I think 
 it particularly suited. You are to be informed, but under the 
 
 * Mr. T. Scott had meditated an edition of Shadwell s plays, 
 which, by the way, his brother considered as by no means meriting th 
 utter neglect into which they have fallen, chiefly in consequence of 
 Dryden s satire. 
 
LETTER TO THOMAS SCOTT NOV. 1808. 29 
 
 leal of the strictest secrecy, that a plot has been long hatching 
 by the gentlemen who were active in the Anti-jacobin paper, 
 to countermine the Edinburgh Review, by establishing one 
 which should display similar talent and independence, with 
 a better strain of politics. The management of this work was 
 much pressed upon me ; * but though great prospects of emol 
 ument were held out, I declined so arduous a task, and it haa 
 devolved upon Mr. Gifford, author of the Baviad, with whose 
 wit and learning you are weU acquainted. He made it a stip 
 ulation, however, that I should give all the assistance in my 
 power, especially at the commencement ; to which I am, for 
 many reasons, nothing loth. Now, as I know no one who pos 
 sesses more power of humour or perception of the ridiculous 
 than yourself, I think your leisure hours might be most pleas- 
 antly passed in this way. Novels, light poetry, and quizzical 
 books of all kinds, might be sent you by the packet ; you glide 
 back your reviews in the same way, and touch, upon the pub 
 lication of the number (quarterly), ten guineas per printed 
 sheet of sixteen pages. If you are shy of communicating di 
 rectly with Gifford, you may, for some time at least, send your 
 communications through me, and I will revise them. We want 
 the matter to be a profound secret till the first number is out. 
 If you agree to try your skill I will send you a novel or two. 
 You must understand, as Gadshill tells the Chamberlain, that 
 you are to be leagued with Trojans that thou dreamest not 
 of, the which for sport sake are content to do the profession 
 some grace ; f and thus far I assure you, that if by paying 
 attention to your style and subject you can distinguish your 
 self creditably, it may prove a means of finding you powerful 
 friends were anything opening in your island. Constable, or 
 rather that Bear his partner, has behaved to me of late not 
 very civilly, and I owe Jeffrey a flap with a fox-tail on account 
 of his review of Marmion, and thus doth the whirligig of time 
 
 * This circumstance was noL revealed to Mr. Murray. I presume, 
 therefore, the invitation to Scott must have proceeded from Mr. Can 
 ning. 
 
 f ll K. Henry IV. Act I. Scene 1. 
 
50 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 bring about my revenges. * The late articles on Spain have 
 given general disgust, and many have given up the Edinburgh 
 Review on account of them. 
 
 " My mother holds out very well, and talks of writing by 
 this packet. Her cask of herrings, as well as ours, red and 
 white, have arrived safe, and prove most excellent. We have 
 been both dining and supping upon them with great gusto, and 
 are much obliged by your kindness in remembering us. Yours 
 affectionately, W. S." 
 
 I suspect, notwithstanding the opinion to the contrary 
 expressed in the following extract, that the preparations 
 for the new journal did not long escape the notice of 
 either the editor or the publishers of the Edinburgh Re 
 view. On receiving the celebrated Declaration of West 
 minster on the subject of the Spanish war, which bears 
 date the 15th December 1808, Scott says to Ellis 
 
 " I cannot help writing a few lines to congratulate you on 
 the royal declaration. I suspect by this time the author is at 
 Claremont,t for, if I mistake not egregiously, this spirited 
 composition, as we say in Scotland, fathers itself in the man 
 liness of its style. It has appeared, too, at a most fortunate 
 time, when neither friend nor foe can impute it to temporary 
 motives. Tell Mr. Canning that the old women of Scotland 
 will defend the country with their distaffs, rather than that 
 troops enough be not sent to make good so noble a pledge. 
 Were the thousands that have mouldered away in petty con 
 quests or Liliputian expeditions united to those we now have 
 in that country, what a band would Moore have under him ! 
 
 Jeffrey has offered terms of pacification, engaging 
 
 * Twelfth Night, Act V. Scene 1. 
 
 f Scott s friend had mentioned that his cousin (now Lord Seaford) 
 expected a visit from Mr. Canning, at Claremont, in Surrey; which 
 beautiful seat continued in the possession of the Ellis family, until it 
 was purchased by the crown, on the marriage of the Princess Charlottt 
 tf Wales, in 1816. 
 
RUPTURE WITH CONSTABLE, ETC. 3 
 
 that no party politics should again appear in his Review. I 
 told him I thought it was now too late, and reminded him that 
 I had often pointed out to him the consequences of letting his 
 work become a party tool. He said he did not care for the 
 consequences there were but four men he feared as oppo 
 nents, Who were these? Yourself for one. Cer 
 tainly you pay me a great compliment ; depend upon it I wiL 
 endeavour to deserve it. Why, you would not join against 
 me ? Yes I would, if I saw a proper opportunity : not 
 against you personally, but against your politics. You are 
 privileged to be violent. I don t ask any privilege for undue 
 violence. But who are your other foemen ? George Ellis 
 and Southey. The fourth he did not name. All this was in 
 great good-humour ; and next day I had a very affecting note 
 from him, in answer to an invitation to dinner. He has no 
 suspicion of the Review whatever ; but I thought I could not 
 handsomely suffer him to infer that I would be influenced 
 by those private feelings respecting him, which, on more than 
 one occasion, he has laid aside when I was personally con 
 cerned." 
 
 As to Messrs. Constable and Co., it is not to be sup 
 posed that the rumours of the rival journal would tend 
 to soothe those disagreeable feelings between them and 
 Scott, of which I can trace the existence several months 
 beyond the date of Mr. Murray s arrival at Ashestiel. 
 Something seems to have occurred before the end of 
 1808 which induced Scott to suspect, that among other 
 sources of uneasiness had been a repentant grudge in the 
 minds of those booksellers as to their bargain about the 
 new edition of Swift ; and on the 2d of January 1809, I 
 find him requesting, that if, on reflection, they thought 
 they had hastily committed themselves, the deed might 
 be forthwith cancelled. On the llth of the same month, 
 Messrs. Constable reply as follows : 
 
 VOL. III. 3 
 
32 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. 
 
 " Sir, We are anxious to assure you that we feel no dis 
 satisfaction at any part of our bargain about Swift. Viewing 
 it as a safe and respectable speculation, we should be very 
 sorry to agree to your relinquishing the undertaking, and in 
 deed rely with confidence on its proceeding as originally ar 
 ranged. We regret that you have not been more willing to 
 overlook the unguarded expression of our Mr. Hunter about 
 which you complain. We are very much concerned that any 
 circumstance should have occurred that should thus interrupt 
 our friendly intercourse ; but as we are not willing to believe 
 that we have done anything which should prevent our being 
 again friends, we may at least be permitted to express a hope 
 that matters may hereafter be restored to their old footing 
 between us, when the misrepresentations of interested persons 
 may cease to be remembered. At any rate, you will always 
 find us, what we trust we have ever been, Sir, your faithful 
 servants, A. CONSTABLE & Co." 
 
 Scott answers : 
 
 " To Messrs. Constable Co. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 12th January 1809. 
 
 " Gentlemen, To resume, for the last time, the disagree 
 able subject of our difference, I must remind you of what I told 
 Mr. Constable personally, that no single unguarded expression, 
 much less the misrepresentation of any person whatever, would 
 have influenced me to quarrel with any of my friends. But if 
 Mr. Hunter will take the trouble to recollect the general opinion 
 he has expressed of my undertakings, and of my ability to exe- 
 cute them, upon many occasions during the last five months, 
 and his whole conduct in the bargain about Swift, I think he 
 ought to be the last to wish his interest compromised on my 
 account. I am only happy the breach has taken place before 
 there was any real loss to complain of, for although I have hac 
 ruy share of popularity, I cannot expect it to be more lasting 
 
RUPTURE WITH CONSTABLE. 33 
 
 than that of those who have lost it after deserving it much 
 better. 
 
 " In the present circumstances, I have only a parting favour 
 to request of your house, which is, that the portrait for which 
 I sat to Raeburn shall be considered as done at my debit, and 
 for myself. It shall be of course forthcoming for the fulfilment 
 of any engagement you may have made about engraving, if 
 guch exists. Sadler will now be soon out, when we will have 
 a settlement of our accounts. I am, Gentlemen, your obe 
 dient servant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. Constable declined, in very handsome terms, to 
 give up the picture. But for the present the breach was 
 complete. Among other negotiations which Scott had 
 patronised twelve months before, was one concerning the 
 publication of Miss Seward s Poems. On the 19th of 
 March 1809, he writes as follows to that lady : 
 
 " Constable, like many other folks who learn to undervalue 
 the means by which they have risen, has behaved, or rather 
 suffered his partner to behave, very uncivilly towards me. 
 But they may both live to know that they should not have 
 kicked down the ladder till they were sure of their footing. 
 The very last time I spoke to him on business was about your 
 poems, which he promised faithfully to write about. I under 
 stood him to decline your terms, in which he acted wrong ; 
 but I had neither influence to change his opinion, nor inclina 
 tion to interfere with his resolution. He is a very enterpris 
 ing, and, I believe, a thoroughly honest man, but his vanity in 
 Borne cases overpowers his discretion." 
 
 One word as to the harsh language in which Con 
 stable s then partner is mentioned in several of the pre 
 ceding letters. This Mr. Hunter was, I am told by 
 friends of mine who knew him well, a man of consider 
 able intelligence and accomplishments, to whose personal 
 
84 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 connexions and weight in society the house of Constable 
 and Co. owed a great accession of business and influence. 
 He was, however, a very keen politician ; regarded Scott a 
 Toryism with a fixed bitterness; and, moreover, could 
 never conceal his impression that Scott ought to have 
 embarked in no other literary undertakings whatever, 
 until he had completed his edition of Swift. It is not 
 wonderful that, not having been bred regularly to the 
 bookselh ng business, he should have somewhat misappre 
 hended the obligation which Scott had incurred when the 
 bargain for that work was made ; and his feeling of his 
 own station and consequence was no doubt such as to 
 give his style of conversation, on doubtful questions of 
 business, a tone for which Scott had not been prepared 
 by his previous intercourse with Mr. Constable. The de 
 fection of the poet was, however, at once regretted and 
 resented by both these partners ; and Constable, I am 
 told, often vented his wrath in figures as lofty as Scott s 
 own. u Ay," he would say, stamping on the ground with 
 a savage smile, " Ay, there is such a thing as rearing the 
 oak until it can support itself." 
 
 All this leads us to the second stage, one still more un 
 wise and unfortunate than the first, in the history of 
 Scott s commercial connexion with the Ballantynes. The 
 scheme of starting a new bookselling house in Edinburgh, 
 begun in the shortsighted heat of pique, had now been 
 matured ; I cannot add, either with composed observa 
 tion or rational forecast for it was ultimately settled 
 . that the ostensible and chief managing partner should be 
 
 person without capital, and neither by training nor by 
 temper in the smallest degree qualified for such a situa 
 tion ; more especially where the field was to be takeo 
 against long experience, consummate skill, and resources 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS. 35 
 
 Ivliich, if not so large as all the world supposed them, 
 were still in comparison vast, and admirably organized. 
 The rash resolution was, however, carried into effect, and 
 a deed, deposited, for secrecy s sake, in the hands of Scott, 
 laid the foundation of the firm of " John Ballantyne and 
 Co., booksellers, Edinburgh." Scott appears to have 
 supplied all the capital, at any rate his own one-half 
 share, and one-fourth, the portion of James, who, not hav 
 ing any funds to spare, must have become indebted to 
 some one for it. It does not appear from what source 
 John acquired his, the remaining fourth ; but Rigdum- 
 funnidos was thus installed in Hanover Street as the 
 avowed rival of " The Crafty." 
 
 The existing bond of copartnership is dated in July 
 1809 ; but I suspect this had been a revised edition. It 
 is certain that the new house were openly mustering their 
 forces some weeks before Scott desired to withdraw his 
 Swift from the hands of the old one in January. This 
 appears from several of the letters that passed between 
 him and Ellis while Gifford was arranging the materials 
 for the first number of the Quarterly Review, and also 
 between him and his friend Southey, to whom, perhaps, 
 more than any other single writer, that journal owed its 
 ultimate success. 
 
 To Ellis, for example, he says, on the 13th of Decem 
 ber 1808 : 
 
 " Now let me call your earnest attention to another literary 
 undertaking, which is, in fact, a subsidiary branch of the same 
 grand plan. I transmit the prospectus of an Edinburgh An 
 nual Register. I have many reasons for favouring this work 
 as much as I possibly can. In the first place, there is nothing 
 even barely tolerable of this nature, though so obviously neces- 
 tary to future history. Secondly, Constable was on the point 
 
86 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of arranging one on the footing of the Edinburgh Review, and 
 Bubsidiary thereunto, a plan which has been totally discon 
 certed by our occupying the vantage-ground. Thirdly, thia 
 work will be very well managed. The two Mackenzies,* 
 William Erskine cum plurimis aliis, are engaged in the literary 
 department, and that of science is conducted by Professor 
 Leslie, a great philosopher, and as abominable an animal as 1 
 ever saw. He writes, however, with great eloquence, and is 
 an enthusiast in mathematical, chemical, and mineralogical 
 pursuits. I hope to draw upon you in this matter, particularly 
 in the historical department, to which your critical labours will 
 naturally turn your attention. You will ask what I propose to 
 do myself. In fact, though something will be expected, I can 
 not propose to be very active unless the Swift is abandoned, of 
 which I think there is some prospect, as I have reason to com 
 plain of very indifferent usage, not indeed from Constable, 
 who is reduced to utter despair by the circumstance, but from 
 the stupid impertinence of his partner, a sort of Whig run mad. 
 I have some reason to believe that Ballantyne, whose stock is 
 now immensely increased, and who is likely to enlarge it by 
 marriage, will commence publisher. Constable threatened him 
 with withdrawing his business from him as a printer on account 
 of his being a Constitutionalist. He will probably by this false 
 step establish a formidable rival in his own line of publishing, 
 which will be most just retribution. I intend to fortify Ballan 
 tyne by promising him my continued friendship, which I hope 
 may be of material service to him. He is much liked by the 
 literary people here; has a liberal spirit, and understanding 
 business very completely, with a good general idea of litera 
 ture, I think he stands fair for success. 
 
 " But, Oh ! Ellis, these cursed, double cursed news, have 
 flunk my spirits so much, that I am almost at disbelieving a 
 Providence. God forgive me ! But I think some evil demon 
 has been permitted, in the shape of this tyrannical monster 
 yhoin God has sent on the nations visited in his anger. I am 
 
 * The Man of Feeling, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore. 
 
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN. 37 
 
 confident he is proof against lead and steel, and have only hopes 
 that he may be shot with a silver bullet,* or drowned in the 
 torrents of blood which he delights to shed. Oh for True 
 Thomas and Lord Soulis s cauldron ! f Adieu, my dear Ellis. 
 God bless you ! I have been these three days writing this by 
 snatches." 
 
 The "cursed news" here alluded to were those of 
 Napoleon s advance by Somosierra, after the dispersion 
 of the armies of Blake and Castanos. On the 23d of 
 the same month, when the Treason of Morla and the fall 
 of Madrid were known in Edinburgh, he thus resumes : - 
 (Probably while he wrote, some cause with which he was 
 not concerned was occupying the Court of Session) : 
 
 " Dear Ellis, I have nothing better to do but to vent my 
 groans. I cannot but feel exceedingly low. I distrust what 
 we call thoroughbred soldiers terribly, when anything like the 
 formation of extensive plans, of the daring and critical nature 
 which seems necessary for the emancipation of Spain, is re 
 quired from them. Our army is a poor school for genius 
 for the qualities which naturally and deservedly attract the 
 applause of our generals, are necessarily exercised upon a 
 small scale. I would to God Wellesley were now at the head 
 of the English in Spain. His late examination shows his acute 
 
 * See note, " Proof against shot given by Satan." Old Mor< 
 talitv, chap. xvi. 
 
 1 " On a circle of stones they placed the pot, 
 On a circle of stones but barely nine ; 
 They heated it red and fiery hot, 
 
 Till the burnish d brass did glimmer and shine. 
 They roll d him up in a sheet of lead, 
 
 A sheet of lead for a funeral pall : 
 They plunged him in the cauldron red, 
 
 And melted him, lead, and bones and all." 
 fee the Ballad of Lord SouKs, and notes, Border Minstrdty. 
 
38 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and decisive talents for command ; * and although I believe in 
 my conscience, that when he found himself superseded, he s^if- 
 fered the pigs to run through the business, when he might in 
 some measure have prevented them 
 
 Yet give the haughty devil his due, 
 Though bold his quarterings, they are true.* 
 
 Such a man, with an army of 40,000 or 50,000 British, with 
 the remains of the Gallician army, and the additional forces 
 which every village would furnish in case of success, might pos 
 sess himself of Burgos, open a communication with Arragon, 
 and even Navarre, and place Buonaparte in the precarious sit 
 uation of a general with 100,000 enemies between him and his 
 supplies; for I presume neither Castanos nor Palafox are so 
 broken as to be altogether disembodied. But a general who 
 is always looking over his shoulder, and more intent on saving 
 his own army than on doing the service on which he is sent, will 
 hardly, I fear, be found capable of forming or executing a 
 plan which its very daring character might render successful. 
 What would we think of an admiral who should bring back 
 his fleet and tell us old Keppel s story of a lee-shore, and the 
 risk of his Majesty s vessels ? Our sailors have learned that 
 his Majesty s ships were built to be stranded, or burnt, or sunk, 
 or at least to encounter the risk of these contingencies, when 
 his service requires it ; and I heartily wish our generals would 
 learn to play for the gammon, and not to sit down contented 
 with a mere saving game. What, however, can we say of 
 Moore, or how judge of his actions, since the Supreme Junta 
 have shown themselves so miserably incapable of the arduous 
 xertions expected from them ? Yet, like Pistol, they spoke 
 
 * This refers to Sir Arthur Wellesley s evidence before the Court of 
 Inquiry into the circumstances which led to the Convention (miscalled) 
 of Cintra. For the best answer to the then popular suspicion, which 
 Scott seems to have partaken, as to the conduct of Sir Arthur when 
 superseded in the moment of victory at Vimiero, I refer to the contem- 
 porary despatches lately published in Colonel Gurwood s invaluabl* 
 compilation. 
 
LETTER TO Mil. SHAKPE DEC. 1808. 39 
 
 bold words at the bridge too,* and I admired their firmness in 
 declaring O Farrel, and the rest of the Frenchified Spaniards, 
 traitors. But they may have Roman pride, and want Roman 
 talent to support it ; and in short, unless God Almighty should 
 raise among them one of those extraordinary geniuses who 
 seem to be created for the emergencies of an oppressed people, 
 I confess I still incline to despondence. If Canning could send 
 a portion of his own spirit with the generals he sends forth, 
 my hope would be high indeed. The proclamation was truly 
 gallant. 
 
 " As to the Annual Register, I do agree that the Prospectus 
 is in too stately a tone yet I question if a purer piece of 
 composition would have attracted the necessary attention. We 
 must sound a trumpet before we open a show. You will say 
 we have added a tambourin ; but the mob will the more read 
 ily stop and gaze ; nor would their ears be so much struck by 
 a sonata from Viotti. Do you know the Review begins to get 
 wind here ? An Edinburgh bookseller asked me to recommend 
 him for the sale here, and said he heard it confidentially from 
 London. Ever yours, W. S." 
 
 I may also introduce here a letter of about the same 
 date, and referring chiefly to the same subjects, addressed 
 by Scott to his friend, Mr. Charles Sharpe,f then at Ox 
 ford. The allusion at the beginning is to a drawing of 
 Queen Elizabeth, as seen " dancing high and disposedly, * 
 in her private chamber, by the Scotch ambassador, Sir 
 James Melville, whose description of the exhibition is 
 one of the most amusing things in his Memoirs. This 
 production of Mr. Sharpe s pencil, and the delight with 
 which Scott used to expatiate on its merits, must be well 
 remembered by every one that ever visited the poet at 
 
 * K. Henry V. Act IV. Scene 4. 
 
 t Scott s acquaintance with Mr. Sharpe began when the latter wat 
 very young. He supplied Scott, when compiling the Minstrelsy, -with 
 foe ballad of the " Tower of Repentance," &c. 
 
40 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Abbotsford. Some of the names mentioned in this let 
 ter as counted on by the projectors of the Quarterly Re 
 view will, no doubt, amuse the reader. 
 
 " To Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., Christ Church, Oxford. 
 " Edinburgh, 30th December 1808. 
 
 " My Dear Sharpe, The inimitable virago came safe, and 
 was welcomed by the inextinguishable laughter of all whc 
 looked upon her caprioles. I was unfortunately out of town 
 for a few days, which prevented me from acknowledging in 
 stantly what gave me so much pleasure, both on account of its 
 intrinsic value, and as a mark of your kind remembrance. 
 You have, I assure you, been upmost in my thoughts for some 
 time past, as I have a serious design on your literary talents, 
 which I am very anxious to engage in one or both of the two 
 following schemes. Imprimis, it has been long the decided 
 resolution of Mr. Canning and some of his literary friends, 
 particularly Geo. Ellis, Malthus, Frere, W. Rose, &c., that 
 something of an independent Review ought to be started in 
 London. This plan is now on the point of being executed, 
 after much consultation. I have strongly advised that politics 
 be avoided, unless in cases of great national import, and that 
 their tone be then moderate and manly ; but the general tone 
 of the publication is to be literary. William GifFord is editor, 
 and I have promised to endeavour to recruit for him a few 
 spirited young men able and willing to assist in such an under 
 taking. I confess you were chiefly in my thoughts when I 
 made this promise ; but it is a subject which for a thousand 
 reasons I would rather have talked over than written about 
 among others more prominent I may reckon my great abhor 
 rence of pen and ink, for writing has been so long a matter of 
 duty with me, that it is become as utterly abominable to me as 
 matters of duty usually are. Let me entreat you, therefore, 
 to lay hold of Macneill,* or any other new book you like, and 
 
 * " The Pastoral, or Lyric Muse of Scotland; in three Cantos," 4to 
 by Hector Macneill, appeared in Dec. 1808. 
 
LETTER TO MR. SHARPE DEC. 1808. 41 
 
 give us a good hacking review of it. I retain so much the old 
 habit of a barrister, that I cannot help adding, the fee is ten 
 guineas a-sheet, which may serve to buy an odd book now and 
 then as good play for nothing, you know, as work for noth 
 ing ; but besides this, your exertions in this cause, if you shall 
 choose to make any, will make you more intimately acquainted 
 with a very pleasant literary coterie than introductions of a 
 more formal kind ; and if you happen to know George Ellis 
 already, you must, I am sure, be pleased to take any trouble 
 likely to produce an intimacy between you. The Hebers are 
 also engaged, item Rogers, Southey, Moore (Anacreon), and 
 others whose reputations Jeffrey has murdered, and who are 
 rising to cry wo upon him, like the ghosts in King Richard ; 
 for your acute and perspicacious judgment must ere this have 
 led you to suspect that this same new Review, which by the 
 way is to be called the Quarterly, is intended as a rival to 
 the Edinburgh ; and if it contains criticism not very inferior 
 in point of talent, with the same independence on booksellers 
 influence (which has ruined all the English Reviews), I do not 
 see why it should not divide with it the public favour. Ob 
 serve carefully, this plan is altogether distinct from one which 
 has been proposed by the veteran Cumberland, to which is an 
 nexed the extraordinary proposal that each contributor shall 
 place his name before his article, a stipulation which must 
 prove fatal to the undertaking. If I did not think this likely 
 to be a very well managed business, I would not recommend it 
 to your consideration ; but you see I am engaged with no foot 
 land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, but with nobil 
 ity and tranquillity, burgomasters, and great oneyers, and so 
 forth.* 
 
 " The other plan refers to the enclosed prospectus, and has 
 long been a favourite scheme of mine, of William Erskine s, 
 and some of my other cronies here. Mr. Ballantyne, the 
 editor, only undertakes for the inferior departments of the 
 work, and for keeping the whole matter in train. We are 
 
 * Gadshill 1st K. Henry IV. Act II. Scene 1. 
 
42 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 most anxious to have respectable contributors, and the smallest 
 donation in any department, poetry, antiquities, &c. &c., will 
 be most thankfully accepted and registered. But the histori 
 cal department is that in which I would chiefly wish to see you 
 engaged. A lively luminous picture of the events of the last 
 momentous year, is a task for the pen of a man of genius ; as 
 for materials, I could procure you access to many of a valuable 
 kind. The appointments of our historian are 300 a-year 
 no deaf nuts. Another person * has been proposed, and writ 
 ten to, but I cannot any longer delay submitting the thing to 
 your consideration. Of course, you are to rely on every assist 
 ance that can be afforded by your humble comdumble, as Swift 
 says. I hope the great man will give us his answer shortly 
 and if his be negative, pray let yours be positive. Our politics 
 we would wish to be constitutional, but not party. You see, 
 my good friend, what it is to show your good parts before un 
 questionable judges. 
 
 " I am forced to conclude abruptly. Thine entirely, 
 
 "W. SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. Morritt was by this time beginning to correspond 
 with the poet pretty frequently. The first of their let 
 ters, however, that serves to throw light on Scott s per 
 sonal proceedings, is the following : 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 14th January 1809. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, For a long while I thought my summons 
 to London would have been immediate, and that I should have 
 had the pleasure to wait upon you at Rokeby Park in my way 
 to town. But, after due consideration, the commissioners OP 
 our Scottish reform of judicial proceedings resolved to begin 
 their sittings at Edinburgh, and have been in full activity ever 
 Bince last St. Andrew s day. You are not ignorant that in 
 business of this nature, very much of the detail, and of prepar 
 
 * Mr. Southey who finally undertook the task proposed to him. 
 
LETTER TO MR. MOBRITT JAN. 1809. 43 
 
 /fag the materials for the various meetings, necessarily devolves 
 upon the clerk, and I cannot say but that my time has been 
 fully occupied. 
 
 " Meanwhile, however, I have been concocting, at the in 
 stigation of various loyal and well-disposed persons, a grand 
 scheme of opposition to the proud critics of Edinburgh. It is 
 now matured in all its branches, and consists of the following 
 divisions. A new review in London, to be called the Quar 
 terly, William Gifford to be the editor ; George Ellis, Rose, 
 Mr. Canning if possible, Frere, and all the ancient Anti-Jaco 
 bins, to be concerned. The first number is now in hand, and 
 the allies, I hope and trust, securely united to each other. I 
 have promised to get them such assistance as I can, and most 
 happy should I be to prevail upon you to put your hand to the 
 ark. You can so easily run off an article either of learning or 
 of fun, that it would be inexcusable not to afford us your as 
 sistance. Then, sir, to turn the flank of Messrs. Constable and 
 Co., and to avenge myself of certain impertinences which, in 
 the vehemence of their Whiggery, they have dared to indulge 
 in towards me, I have prepared to start against them at Whit- 
 sunda^ first the celebrated printer, Ballantyne (who had the 
 honour of meeting you at Ashestiel), in the shape of an Edin 
 burgh publisher, with a long purse* and a sound political 
 creed, not to mention an alliance offensive and defensive with 
 young John Murray of Fleet Street, the most enlightened and 
 active of the London trade. By this means I hope to counter 
 balance the predominating influence of Constable and Co., 
 who at present have it in their power and inclination to for 
 ward or suppress any book as they approve or dislike its politi 
 cal tendency. Lastly, I have caused the said Ballantyne to 
 venture upon an Edinburgh Annual Register, of which I send 
 you a prospectus. I intend to help him myself as far as time 
 will admit, and hope to procure him many respectable coad 
 jutors. 
 
 * The purse was, alas ! Scott s own. Between May 1805 and the end 
 J 1810, he invested cash to the extent of ai least .9000 in the Ballau- 
 tyne companies ! 
 
44 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " My own motions southwards remain undetermined, but ] 
 conceive I may get to town about the beginning of March, 
 when I expect to find you en famille in Portland Place. Our 
 Heber will then most likely be in town, and altogether I am 
 much better pleased that the journey is put off till the lively 
 season of gaiety. 
 
 " I am busy with my edition of Swift, and treasure your kind 
 hints for my direction as I advance. In summer I think of 
 going to Ireland to pick up anything that may be yet re 
 coverable of the Dean of St. Patrick s. Mrs. Scott joins me 
 in kindest and best respects to Mrs. Morritt. I am, with great 
 regard, Dear Sir, your faithful humble servant, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT " 
 
 The two following letters seem to have been written at 
 the clerk s table, the first shortly before, and the second 
 very soon after, the news of the battle of Corunna 
 reached Scotland : 
 
 " To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 14th January 1809. 
 
 " Dear Southey, I have been some time from home in the 
 course of the holidays, but immediately on my return set about 
 procuring the books you wished to see. There are only three 
 of them in our library, namely 
 
 Dobrizzhoffer de Abiponibus, 3 vols. 
 
 A French translation of Gomella s History of Oronoquo. 
 
 Ramuzio Navigazioni, &c. &c. 
 
 Of these I can only lay my hands immediately on Dobrizzhof 
 fer, which I have sent off by the Carlisle coach, addressed to 
 the care of Jollie the bookseller for you. I do this at my own 
 risk, because we never grant license to send the books out of 
 Scotland, and should I be found to have done so I may be 
 censured, and perhaps my use of the library suspendei. At 
 Ihe same time, I think it hard you should take a journey ir 
 
LETTER TO MR. SOUTHEY JAN. 1809. 45 
 
 this deadly cold weather, and trust you will make early in 
 quiry after the book Keep it out of sight while you use it, 
 and return it as soon as you have finished. I suppose these 
 game Abipones were a nation to my own heart s content, being, 
 as the title-page informs me, bellicosi et equestres, like our old 
 Border lads. Should you think of coming hither, which per 
 haps might be the means of procuring you more information 
 than I can make you aware of, I bespeak you for my guest. 
 I can give you a little chamber in the wall, and you shall go 
 out and in as quietly and freely as your heart can desire, with 
 out a human creature saying why doest thou so ? Thalaba 
 is in parturition too, and you should in decent curiosity give an 
 eye after him. Yet I will endeavour to recover the other 
 books (now lent out), and send them to you in the same way 
 as Dob. travels, unless you recommend another conveyance. 
 But I expect this generosity on my part will rather stir your 
 gallantry to make us a visit when this abominable storm has 
 passed away. My present occupation is highly unpoetical 
 clouting, in short, and cobbling our old Scottish system of juris 
 prudence, with a view to reform. I am clerk tp a commission 
 under the authority of Parliament for this purpose, which 
 keeps me more than busy enough. 
 
 " I have had a high quarrel with Constable and Co. The 
 Edinburgh Review has driven them quite crazy, and its suc 
 cess led them to undervalue those who have been of most use 
 to them but they shall dearly abye it. The worst is, that 
 being out of a publishing house, I have not interest to be of 
 any service to Coleridge s intended paper.* Ballantyne, the 
 printer, intends to open shop here on the part of his brother, 
 and I am sure will do all he can to favour the work. Does it 
 positively go on ? 
 
 " I have read Wordsworth s lucubrations in the Courier f 
 and nrich agree with him. Alas ! we want everything but 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge s " Friend " was originally published in weekly 
 papers. 
 
 t Mr. Wordsworth s Remarks on the Convention of Cintra were 
 afterwards collected in a pamphlet. 
 
46 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 courage and virtue in this desperate contest. Skill, knowl 
 edge of mankind, ineffable unhesitating villany, combination 
 of movement and combination of means, are with our adver 
 sary. We can only fight like mastiffs, boldly, blindly, and 
 faithfully. I am almost driven to the pass of the Covenanters, 
 when they told the Almighty in their prayers, he should nc 
 longer be their God ; and I really believe, a few Gazettes more 
 will make me turn Turk or Infidel. Believe me, in great grief 
 of spirit, Dear Southey, ever yours, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " Mrs. Scott begs kind remembrance to Mrs. Southey. The 
 bed in the said chamber in the wall is a double one." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 31st January 1809. 
 
 " My Dear Southey, Yesterday I received your letter, 
 and to-day I despatched Gomella and the third volume of Ra- 
 muzio. The other two volumes can also be sent, if you should 
 find it necessary to consult them. The parcel is addressed to 
 the paternal charge of your Keswick carrier. There is no 
 hurry in returning these volumes, so don t derange your oper 
 ations by hurrying your extracts, only keep them from any 
 profane eye. I dipped into Gomella while I was waiting for 
 intelligence from you, and was much edified by the bonhommie 
 with which the miracles of the Jesuits are introduced. 
 
 " The news from Spain gave me such a mingled feeling, that 
 I never suffered so much in my whole life from the disorder 
 of spirits occasioned by affecting intelligence. My mind hao 
 naturally a strong military bent, though my path in life has 
 been so very different. I love a drum and a soldier as heartily 
 as ever Uncle Toby did, and between the pride arising from 
 our gallant bearing, and the deep regret that so much bravery 
 should run to waste, I spent a most disordered and agitated 
 aight, never closing my eyes but what I was harassed with 
 visions of broken ranks, bleeding soldiers, dying horses anci 
 
LETTER TO MR. SOUTHEY JAN. 1809. 47 
 
 all the currents of a heady fight. * I agree with you that we 
 want energy in our cabinet or rather their opinions are so 
 different, that they come to wretched compositions between 
 them, which are worse than the worst course decidedly fol 
 lowed out. Canning is most anxious to support the Spaniards, 
 and would have had a second army at Corunna, but for the 
 positive demand of poor General Moore that empty transport 
 should be sent thither. So the reinforcements were disem 
 barked. I fear it will be found that Moore was rather an 
 excellent officer, than a general of those comprehensive and 
 daring views necessary in his dangerous situation. Had Wel- 
 Icsley been there, the battle of Corunna would have been 
 fought and won at Somosierra, and the ranks of the victors 
 would have been reinforced by the population of Madrid. 
 Would to God we had yet 100,000 men in Spain. I fear not 
 Buonaparte s tactics. The art of fence may do a great deal, 
 but a la stoccata, as Mercutio says, cannot carry it away from 
 national valour and personal strength. The Opposition have 
 sold or bartered every feeling of patriotism for the most greedy 
 and selfish egoisme. 
 
 " Ballantyne s brother is setting up here as a bookseller, 
 chiefly for publishing. I will recommend Coleridge s paper to 
 him as strongly as I can. I hope by the time it is commenced 
 he will be enabled to send him a handsome order. From my 
 great regard for his brother, I shall give this young publisher 
 what assistance I can. He is understood to start against Con 
 stable and the Reviewers, and publishes the Quarterly. In 
 deed he is in strict alliance, offensive and defensive, with John 
 Murray of Fleet Street. I have also been labouring a little 
 for the said Quarterly, which I believe you will detect. I hear 
 very high things from GifFord of your article. About your 
 visit to Edinburgh, I hope it will be a month later than you 
 now propose, because my present prospects lead me to think I 
 qiust be in London the whole month of April. Early in May 
 f must return, and will willingly take the lakes in my way in 
 
 * 1st K. Henry IV. Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 VOL. III. 4 
 
48 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 hopes you will accompany me to Edinburgh, whir-h you posi 
 tively must not think of visiting in my absence. 
 
 " Lord Advocate, who is sitting behind me, says the Minis 
 ters have resolved not to abandon the Spaniards route qui 
 coute. It is a spirited determination but they must find a 
 general who has, as the Turks say, le Didble au corps, and who, 
 instead of standing staring to see what they mean to do, will 
 teach them to dread those surprises and desperate enterprises 
 by which they have been so often successful. Believe me> 
 Dear Southey, yours affectionately, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." . 
 
 " Mrs. Scott joins me in best compliments to Mrs. Southey. 
 I hope she will have a happy hour. Pray, write me word 
 when the books come safe. What is Wordsworth doing, and 
 where the devil is his Doe ? * I am not sure if he will thank 
 me for proving that all the Nortons escaped to Flanders, one 
 excepted. I never knew a popular tradition so totally ground 
 less as that respecting their execution at York." 
 
 * " The White Doe of Rylestone " was published by Longman and 
 Co. in 1319. 
 
ANDREW STEWART 1809. id 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Case of a Poetical Tailor condemned to Death at Edinburgh 
 His Letters to Scott Death of Camp Scott in London 
 Mr. Morritfs Description of him as " a Lion " in Town 
 Dinner at Mr. Sotheby s Coleridge s Fire, Famine, and 
 Slaughter The Quarterly Review started First Visit to 
 Rokeby The Lady of the Lake begun Excursion to the 
 Trossachs and Loch Lomond Letter on Byron s English 
 Bards and Scotch Reviewers Death of Daniel Scott 
 Correspondence about Mr. Canning s Duel with Lord Castle- 
 reagh Miss Baillie s Family Legend acted at Edinburgh 
 Theatrical Anecdotes Kemble Siddons Terry Let 
 ter on the Death of Miss Seward. 
 
 1809-1810. 
 
 IN the end of 1808, a young man, by name Andrew 
 Stewart, who had figured for some years before as a 
 poetical contributor to the Scots Magazine, and inserted 
 there, among other things, a set of stanzas in honour of 
 The Last Minstrel,* was tried, and capitally convicted, 
 on a charge of burglary. He addressed, some weeks 
 
 * One verse of this production will suffice : 
 
 " Sweetest Minstrel that e er sung 
 Of valorous deeds by Scotia done, 
 Whose wild notes warbled in the win , 
 
 Delightful strain ! 
 O er hills and dales, and vales amang, 
 
 T\ e ve heard again," &o. 
 
50 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 after his sentence had been pronounced, the following let 
 ters : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Castle Street. 
 
 " Edinburgh Tolbooth, 20th January 1809. 
 
 " Sir, Although I am a stranger to you, yet I am not to 
 your works, which I have read and admired, and which will 
 continue to be read and admired as long as there remains a 
 taste for true excellence. Previous to committing the crime 
 for which I am now convicted, I composed several poems in 
 the Scottish dialect, which I herewith send for your perusal, 
 and humbly hope you will listen to my tale of misery. I have 
 been a truly unfortunate follower of the Muses. I was born 
 in Edinburgh, of poor, but honest parents. My father is by 
 trade a bookbinder, and my mother dying in 1798, he was left 
 a widower, with five small children, who have all been brought 
 up by his own industry. As soon as I was fit for a trade, he 
 bound me apprentice to a tailor in Edinburgh, but owing to 
 his using me badly, I went to law. The consequence was, I 
 got up my indentures after being only two years in his service. 
 To my father s trade I have to ascribe my first attachment to 
 the Muses. I perused with delight the books that came in the 
 way ; and the effusions of the poets of my country I read with 
 rapture. I now formed the resolution of not binding myself 
 to a trade again, as by that means I might get my propensity 
 for reading followed. I acted as clerk to different people, and 
 my character was irreproachable. I determined to settle in 
 life, and for that purpose I married a young woman I formed 
 a strong attachment to. Being out of employment these last 
 nine months, I suffered all the hardships of want, and saw 
 
 Poverty, with empty hand 
 And eager look, half-naked stand. Ferguson. 
 
 Reduced to this miserable situation, with my wife almost starv 
 ing, and having no friends to render me the smallest assistance, 
 I resided in a furnished room till I was unable to pay the 
 rent, and then I was literally turned out of doors, like poor 
 
ANDREW STEWART 1809. 51 
 
 Dermody, in poverty and rags. Having no kind hand stretched 
 out to help me, I associated with company of very loose man 
 ners, till then strangers to me, and by them I was led to com 
 mit the crime I am condemned to suffer for. But my mind is 
 so agitated, I can scarce narrate my tale of misery. My age 
 is only twenty-three, and to all appearance will be cut off in 
 the prime. I was tried along with my brother, Robert Stew- 
 ail, and John M Intyre, for breaking into the workshop of 
 Peter More, calico-glazer, Edinburgh, and received the dread 
 ful sentence to be executed on the 22d of February next. We 
 have no friends to apply to for Royal Mercy. If I had any 
 kind friend to mention my case to my Lord Justice-Clerk, per 
 haps I might get my sentence mitigated. You will see my 
 poems are of the humorous cast. Alas ! it is now the con 
 trary. I remain your unfortunate humble servant, 
 
 " ANDREW STEWART." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " Tolbooth, Sunday. 
 
 " Sir, I received your kind letter lai/ night, enclosing one 
 pound sterling, for which I have only to request you will ac 
 cept the return of a grateful heart. My prayers, while on 
 earth, will be always for your welfare. Your letter came like 
 a ministering angel to me. The idea of my approaching end 
 darts across my brain ; and, as our immortal bard, Shakspeare, 
 says, harrows up my soul. Some time since, when chance 
 threw in my way Sir William Forbes s Life of Beattie, the ac 
 count of the closing scene of Principal Campbell, as thereir 
 mentioned, made a deep impression on my mind. * At a time, 
 eays he, when Campbell was just expiring, and had told hig 
 wife and niece so, a cordial happened unexpectedly to give 
 some relief. As soon as he was able to speak, he said he won 
 dered to see their faces so melancholy and covered with tears 
 at the apprehension of bis departure. * At that instant said 
 he, J felt my mind in such a state in the thoughts of my imme 
 diate dissolution, that I can express my feelings in no other way 
 
52 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 than by saying I was in a rapture* There is something aw 
 fully satisfactory in the above. 
 
 " I have to mention, as a dying man, that it was not the 
 greed of money that made me commit the crime, but the ex 
 treme pressure of poverty and want. 
 
 " How silent seems all not a whisper is heard, 
 
 Save the guardians of night when they bawl; 
 How dreary and wild appears all around; 
 No pitying voice near my call. 
 
 " life, what are all thy gay pleasures and cares, 
 
 When deprived of sweet liberty s smile ? 
 Not hope, in all thy gay charms arrayed, 
 Can one heavy hour now beguile. 
 
 " How sad is the poor convict s sorrowful lot, 
 
 Condemned in these walls to remain, 
 When torn from those that are nearest his heart, 
 Perhaps ne er to view them again. 
 
 " The beauties of morning now burst on my view, 
 
 Remembrance of scenes that are past, 
 When contentment sat smiling, and happy my lot 
 Scenes, alas ! formed not for to last. 
 
 " Now fled are the hours I delighted to roam 
 Scotia s hills, dales, and valleys among, 
 And with rapture would list to the songs of her bards, 
 And love s tale as it flowed from the tongue. 
 
 " Nought but death now awaits me; how dread, but how true! 
 
 How ghastly its form does appear ! 
 Soon silent the muse that delighted to view 
 And sing of the sweets of the year. 
 
 " You are the first gentleman I ever sent my poems to, and 
 I never corrected any of them, my mind has been in such a 
 state. I remain, Sir, your grateful unfortunate servant, 
 
 "ANDREW STEWART." 
 
 It appears that Scott, and his good-natured old friend, 
 
LONDON MARCH 1809. 53 
 
 Mr. Manners, the bookseller, who happened at this time 
 to be one of the bailies of Edinburgh, exerted their joint 
 influence in this tailor-poet s behalf, and with such suc 
 cess, that his sentence was commuted for one of trans 
 portation for life. A thin octavo pamphlet, entitled, 
 " POEMS, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, by Andrew 
 Stewart ; printed for the benefit of the Author s Father, 
 and sold by Manners and Miller, and A. Constable and 
 Co., 1809," appeared soon after the convict s departure for 
 Botany Bay. But as to his fortunes in that new world I 
 possess no information. There seemed to me something 
 so striking in the working of his feelings as expressed in 
 his letters to Scott, that I thought the reader would for 
 give this little episode. 
 
 In the course of February, Mr. John Ballantyne had 
 proceeded to London, for the purpose of introducing him 
 self to the chief publishers there in his new capacity, and 
 especially of taking Mr. Murray s instructions respecting 
 the Scotch management of the Quarterly Review. As 
 soon as the spring vacation began, Scott followed him by 
 sea. He might naturally have wished to be at hand 
 while his new partner was forming arrangements on 
 which so much must depend ; but some circumstances in 
 the procedure of the Scotch Law Commission had made 
 the Lord Advocate request his presence at this time in 
 town. There he and Mrs. Scott took up their quarters, 
 as usual, under the roof of their kind old friends the 
 Dumergues ; while their eldest girl enjoyed the advan 
 tage of being domesticated with the Miss Baillies at 
 Hampstead. They staid more than two months, and this 
 being his first visit to town since his fame had been 
 Browned by Marmion, he was of course more than ever 
 the object of general ririosity and attention. Mr. Mor- 
 
54 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ritt saw much of him, both at his own house in Portland 
 Place and elsewhere, and I transcribe a few sentences 
 from his memoranda of the period. 
 
 " Scott," his friend says, " more correctly than any 
 other man I ever knew, appreciated the value of that 
 apparently enthusiastic engouement which the world of 
 London shows to the fashionable wonder of the year. 
 During this sojourn of 1809, the homage paid him would 
 have turned the head of any less-gifted man of eminence. 
 It neither altered his opinions, nor produced the affecta r 
 tion of despising it ; on the contrary, he received it, culti 
 vated it, and repaid it in its own coin. All this is very 
 flattering, he would say, and very civil ; and if people 
 are amused with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, 
 or recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and gap 
 ing matrons, they are easily pleased, and a man would be 
 very ill-natured who would not give pleasure so cheaply 
 conferred. If he dined with us and found any new faces, 
 Well, do you want me to play lion to-day ? was his 
 usual question I will roar if you like it to your heart s 
 content. He would, indeed, in such cases put forth all 
 his inimitable powers of entertainment and day after 
 day surprised me by their unexpected extent and variety. 
 Then, as the party dwindled, and we were left alone, he 
 laughed at himself, quoted Yet know that I one Snug 
 the joiner am no lion fierce, &c. and was at once 
 himself again. 
 
 " He often lamented the injurious effects for literature 
 and genius resulting from the influence of London celeb 
 rity on weaker minds, especially in the excitement of 
 ambition for this subordinate and ephemeral reputatior 
 iu salon. i It may be a pleasant gale to sail with, he 
 said, l but it never yet led to a port that I should like t 
 
MR. MORRITT LONDON, MARCH 1809. 55 
 
 michor in ; nor did he willingly endure, either in London 
 or in Edinburgh, the little exclusive circles of literary so 
 ciety, much less their occasional fastidiousness and petty 
 partialities. 
 
 " One story which I heard of him from Dr. Howley, 
 now Archbishop of Canterbury (for I was not present), 
 was very characteristic. The Doctor was one of a grand 
 congregation of lions, where Scott and Coleridge, cum 
 multis aliis, attended at Sotheby s. Poets and poetry 
 were the topics of the table, and there was plentiful reci 
 tation of effusions as yet unpublished, which of course 
 obtained abundant applause. Coleridge repeated more 
 than one, which as Dr. H. thought, were eulogized by 
 some of the company with something like affectation, and 
 a desire to humble Scott by raising a poet of inferior rep 
 utation on his shoulders. Scott, however, joined in the 
 compliments as cordially as anybody, until, in his turn, he 
 was invited to display some of his occasional poetry, much 
 of which he must, no doubt, have written. Scott said he 
 had published so much, he had nothing of his own left 
 that he could think worth their hearing, but he would 
 repeat a little copy of verses which he had shortly before 
 seen in a provincial newspaper, and which seemed to him 
 almost as good as anything they had been listening to 
 with so much pleasure. He repeated the stanzas now so 
 well known of Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. The ap 
 plauses that ensued were faint then came slight criti 
 cisms, from which Scott defended the unknown author. 
 At last a more bitter antagonist opened, and fastening 
 Apon one line, cried, * This at least is absolute nonsense. 
 Scott denied the charge the Zoilus persisted until 
 Coleridge, out of all patience, exclaimed, i For God s 
 lake let Mr. Scott alone I wrote the poem. This ex- 
 
56 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 position of the real worth of dinner criticism can hardly 
 be excelled.* 
 
 " He often complained of the real dulness of parties 
 where each guest arrived under the implied and tacit 
 obligation of exhibiting some extraordinary powers of 
 talk or wit. If, he said, I encounter men of the world, 
 men of business, odd or striking characters of professional 
 excellence in any department, I am in my element, for 
 they cannot lionize me without my returning the compli 
 ment and learning something from them. He was much 
 with George Ellis, Canning, and Croker, and delighted 
 in them, as indeed who did not ? but he loved to 
 study eminence of every class and sort, and his rising 
 fame gave him easy access to gratify all his curiosity." 
 
 The meetings with Canning, Croker, and Ellis, to 
 which Mr. Morritt alludes, were, as may be supposed, 
 chiefly occupied with the affairs of the Quarterly Review. 
 The first number of that Journal appeared while Scott 
 was in London : it contained three articles from his pen 
 namely, one on the Reliques of Burns ; another on 
 the Chronicle of the Cid ; and a third on Sir John Carr s 
 
 * It may amuse the reader to turn to Mr. Coleridge s own stately 
 account of this lion-show in Grosvenor Street, in the Preface to his 
 celebrated Eclogue. There was one person present, it seems, who had 
 been in the secret of its authorship Sir Humphrey Davy; and no 
 one could have enjoyed the scene more than he must have done. " At 
 the house," Coleridge says, " of a gentleman who, by the principles and 
 corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian, consecrates a cultivated 
 genius and the favourable accidents of birth, opulence, and splendid 
 connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in a dinner party, with 
 more men of celebrity in science or polite literature than are commonh 
 found collected around the same table. In the course of conversation 
 one of the party reminded an illustrious poet," &c. &c. Coleridye 
 Poetical Works, Edition 1830, vol. i. p. 274. 
 
DEATH OF CAMP. 57 
 
 Tour through Scotland. His conferences with the editor 
 and publisher were frequent ; and the latter certainly 
 contemplated, at this time, a most close and intimate con 
 nexion with him, not only as a reviewer, but an author ; 
 and, consequently, with both the concerns of the Messrs. 
 Ballantyne. Scott continued for some time to be a very 
 active contributor to the Quarterly Review ; nor, indeed, 
 was his connexion with it ever entirely suspended. But 
 John Ballantyne transacted business in a fashion which 
 soon cooled, and in no very long time dissolved, the 
 general " alliance offensive and defensive " with Murray, 
 which Scott had announced before leaving Edinburgh to 
 both Southey and Ellis. 
 
 On his return northwards he spent a fortnight in York 
 shire with Mr. Morritt ; but his correspondence, from 
 which I resume my extracts, will show, among other 
 things, the lively impression made on him by his first 
 view of Rokeby. 
 
 The next of these letters reminds me, however, that I 
 should have mentioned sooner the death of Camp, he 
 first of not a few dogs whose names will be " freshly i*, 
 membered " as long as their master s works are popular. 
 This favourite began to droop early in 1808, and became 
 incapable of accompanying Scott in his rides ; but he 
 preserved his affection and sagacity to the last. At 
 Ashestiel, as the servant was laying the cloth for dinner, 
 he would address the dog lying on his mat by the fire, 
 and say, " Camp, my good fellow, the Sheriff s coming 
 home by the ford or by the hill ; " and the sick ani 
 mal would immediately bestir himself to welcome his 
 master, going out at the back door or the front door, ac 
 cording to the direction given, and advancing as far as he 
 was able, either towards the ford of the Tweed, or the 
 
58 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 bridge over the Glenkinnon burn beyond Laird Nippy s 
 gate. He died about January 1809, and was buried in a 
 fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the house 
 in Castle Street, immediately opposite to the window at 
 which Scott usually sat writing. My wife tells me she 
 remembers the whole family standing in tears about the 
 grave, as her father himself smoothed down the tarf 
 above Camp with the saddest expression of face she had 
 ever seen in him. He had been engaged to dine abroad 
 that day, but apologized on account of " the death of a. 
 dear old friend ; " and Mr. Macdonald Buchanan was not 
 at all surprised that he should have done so, when it 
 came out next morning that Camp was no more. 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 " Edinburgh, July 8, 1809. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, We reached home about a fortnight ago, 
 having lingered a little while at Kokeby Park, the seat of our 
 friend Morritt, and one of the most enviable places I have ever 
 seen, as it unites the richness and luxuriance of English vege 
 tation with the romantic variety of glen, torrent, and copse, 
 which dignifies our northern scenery. The Greta and Tees, 
 two most beautiful and rapid rivers, join their currents in the 
 demesne. The banks of the Tees resemble, from the height 
 of the rocks, the glen of Roslin, so much and justly admired. 
 The Greta is the scene of a comic romance,* of which I think 
 I remember giving you the outline. It concerns the history of 
 a 4 Felon Sowe, 
 
 * Which won d in Eokeby wood, 
 Ean endlong Greta side, 
 
 bestowed by Ralph of Kokeby on the freres of Richmond 
 and the misadventures of the holy fathers in their awkward 
 attempts to catch this intractable animal. We had the pleas. 
 
 * Scott printed this Ballad in the Notes to his poem of Rokeby. 
 
ROKEBY CANNING. 59 
 
 urc to find all our little folks well, and are now on the point 
 of shifting quarters to Ashestiel. I have supplied the vacancy 
 occasioned by the death of poor old Camp with a terrier puppy 
 of the old shaggy Celtic breed. He is of high pedigree, and 
 was procured with great difficulty by the kindness of Miss 
 Dunlop of Dunlop ; so I have christened him Wallace, as the 
 donor is a descendant of the Guardian of Scotland. Having 
 given you all this curious and valuable information about my 
 own affairs, let me call your attention to the enclosed, which 
 was in fact the principal cause of my immediately troubling 
 you." * * * 
 
 The enclosure, and the rest of the letter, refer to the 
 private affairs of Mr. Southey, in whose favour Scott had 
 for some time back been strenuously using his interest 
 with his friends in the Government. How well he had, 
 while in London, read the feelings of some of those min 
 isters towards each other, appears from various letters 
 written upon his return to Scotland. It may be sufficient 
 to quote part of one addressed to the distinguished author 
 whose fortunes he was exerting himself to promote. To 
 him Scott says (14th June), " Mr. Canning s opportu 
 nities to serve you will soon be numerous, or they will 
 .soon be gone altogether ; for he is of a different mould 
 from some of his colleagues, and a decided foe to those 
 half measures which I know you detest as much as I do. 
 It is not his fault that the cause of Spain is not at this 
 moment triumphant. This I know, and the time will 
 come when the world will know it too." 
 
 Before fixing himself at Ashestiel for the autumn, he 
 had undertaken to have a third poem ready for publica 
 tion by the end of the year, and probably made some 
 progress in the composition of the Lady of the Lake. 
 On the rising of the Court in Julj, he went, accompanied 
 
60 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 by Mrs. Scott and his eldest daughter, to revisit the local 
 ities, so dear to him in the days of his juvenile rambling / 
 which he had chosen for the scene of his fable. He gave 
 a week to his old friends at Cambusmore, and ascer 
 tained, in his own person, that a good horseman, well 
 mounted, might gallop from the shore of Loch Vennachar 
 to the rock of Stirling within the space allotted for that 
 purpose to FitzJames. From Cambusmore the party 
 proceeded to Ross Priory, and, under the guidance of 
 Mr. Macdonald Buchanan, explored the islands of Loch 
 Lomond, Arrochar, Loch Sloy, and all the scenery of a 
 hundred desperate conflicts between the Macfarlanes, the 
 Colquhouns, and the Clan Alpine. At Buchanan House, 
 which is very near Ross Priory, Scott s friends, Lady 
 Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart, were then visiting the 
 Duke of Montrose ; he joined them there, and read to 
 them the Stag Chase, which he had just completed under 
 the full influence of the genius loci. 
 
 It was on this occasion, at Buchanan House, that he 
 first saw Lord Byron s " English Bards and Scotch Re 
 viewers." On this subject he says, in his Introduction to 
 Marmion of 1830 "When Byron wrote his famous 
 satire, I had my share of flagellation among my betters. 
 My crime was having written a poem for a thousand 
 pounds, which was no otherwise true than that I sold the 
 copyright for that sum. Now, not to mention that an 
 author can hardly be censured for accepting such a sum 
 as the booksellers are willing to give him, especially as 
 the gentlemen of the trade made no complaints of their 
 bargain ; I thought the interference with my private 
 ftffairs was rather beyond the limits of literary satire. I 
 was, moreover, so far from having had anything to do 
 mth the offensive criticism in the Edinburgh, that I had 
 
LORD BYRON S SATIRE. 61 
 
 remonstrated with the editor, because I thought the 
 Hours of Idleness treated with undue severity. They 
 were written, like all juvenile poetry, rather from the 
 recollection of what had pleased the author in others, 
 than what had been suggested by his own imagination ; 
 but nevertheless I thought they contained passages of 
 noble promise." 
 
 I need hardly transcribe the well-known lines 
 
 down to 
 
 Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan, 
 The golden-crested haughty Marmion, " 
 
 For this we spurn Apollo s venal son, 
 
 And bid a long good-night to Marmion, " 
 
 with his Lordship s note on the last line " Good-night to 
 Marmion, the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of 
 Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion." 
 But it may entertain my readers to compare the style in 
 which Scott alludes to Byron s assault in the preface of 
 1830, with that of one of his contemporary letters on the 
 subject. Addressing (August 7, 1809) the gentleman in 
 whose behalf he had been interceding with Mr. Canning, 
 he says " By the way, is the ancient * * * *, whose 
 decease is to open our quest, thinking of a better world ? 
 I only ask because about three years ago I accepted the 
 office I hold in the Court of Session, the revenue to ac 
 crue to me only on the death of the old incumbent. But 
 my friend has since taken out a new lease of life, and un 
 less I get some Border lad to cut his throat, may, for aught 
 I know, live as long as I shall; such odious deceivers 
 are these invalids. Mine reminds me of Sinbad s Old 
 Man of the Sea, and will certainly throttle me if I can t 
 somehow dismount him. If I were once in possession of 
 
02 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 my reversionary income, I would, like you, bid farewell 
 to the drudgery of literature, and do nothing but what I 
 pleased, which might be another phrase for doing very 
 little. I was always an admirer of the modest wish of a 
 retainer in one of Beaumont and Fletcher s plays 
 
 I would not be a serving man 
 
 To carry the cloak-bag still, 
 Nor would I be a falconer, 
 
 The greedy hawks to fill ; 
 But I would be in a good house, 
 
 And have a good master too, 
 But I would eat and drink of the best, 
 
 And no work would I do. * 
 
 In the mean time, it is funny enough to see a whelp of a 
 young Lord Byron abusing me, of whose circumstances 
 he knows nothing, for endeavouring to scratch out a liv 
 ing with my pen. God help the bear, if, having little else, 
 to eat, he must not even suck his own paws. I can as 
 sure the noble imp of fame it is not my fault that I was 
 not born to a pank and 5000 a-year, as it is not his lord 
 ship s merit, although it may be his great good fortune, 
 that he was not born to live by his literary talents or suc 
 cess. Adieu, my dear friend. I shall be impatient to 
 hear how your matters fadge." 
 
 This gentleman s affairs are again alluded to in a lettti 
 to Ellis, dated Ashestiel, September 14: 
 
 " I do not write to whet a purpose that is not blunted, but 
 to express my anxious wishes that your kind endeavours may 
 succeed while it is called to-day, for, by all tokens, it will sooc 
 be yesterday with this Ministry. And they weU deserve it, for 
 crossing, jostling, and hampering the measures of the only man 
 among them fit to be intrusted with the salvation of the coun 
 
 * Old Merrythought The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Act IV 
 Scene 5. 
 
ASHESTIEL SEPTEMBER 1809. 63 
 
 try. The spring-tide may, for aught I know, break in this 
 next session of Parliament. There is an evil fate upon us in 
 all we do at home and abroad, else why should the conqueror 
 of Talavera be retreating from the field of his glory at a mo 
 ment when, by all reasonable calculation, he should have been 
 the soul and mover of a combined army of 150,000 English^ 
 Spaniards, and Portuguese ? And why should Gilford employ 
 himself at home in the thriftless exercise of correction, as if 
 Mercury, instead of stretching to a race himself, were to amuse 
 himself with starting a bedrid cripple, and making a pair of 
 crutches for him with his own hand ? Much might have been 
 done, and may yet be done ; but we are not yet in the right 
 way. Is there no one among you who can throw a Congreve 
 rocket among the gerunds and supines of that model of ped 
 ants, Dr. Philopatris Parr ? I understand your foreign lingos 
 too little to attempt it, but pretty things might be said upon 
 the memorable tureen which he begged of Lord Somebody, 
 whom he afterwards wished to prove to be mad. For ex 
 ample, I would adopt some of the leading phrases of indepen 
 dent, Jiigh-souled, contentus parvo, and so forth, with which he is 
 bespattered in the Edinburgh,* and declare it our opinion, 
 that, if indulged with the three wishes of Prior s tale, he would 
 answer, like the heroine Corisca 
 
 * A ladle to iny silver dish 
 Is all I want, is all I wish. 
 
 I did not review Miss Edgeworth, nor do I think it all well 
 done ; at least, it falls below my opinion of that lady s merits. 
 Indeed I have contributed nothing to the last Review, and am, 
 therefore, according to all rules, the more entitled to criticise 
 it freely. The conclusion of the article on Sir John Moore is 
 transcendently written ; and I think I can venture to say, 4 aut 
 Erasmus, aut Diabolus. Your sugar-cake is very far from 
 being a heavy bon-bon ; but there I think we stop. The Mis- 
 
 * See Article on Dr. Parr s Spittai Sermon, in the Edinburgh Re 
 new, No. I. October 1802. 
 
 VOL. in. 5 
 
64 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Bionaries, though very good, is on a subject rather stale, and 
 much of the rest is absolute wading.* 
 
 " As an excuse for my own indolence, I have been in the 
 Highlands for some time past ; and who should I meet there, 
 of all fowls in the air, but your friend Mr. Blackburn, to whom 
 I was so much obliged for the care he took of my late unfor 
 tunate relative, at your friendly request. The recognition was 
 unfortunately made just when I was leaving the country, and 
 as he was in a gig, and I on the driving-seat of a carriage, the 
 place of meeting a narrow Highland road, which looked as if 
 forty patent ploughs had furrowed it, we had not time or space- 
 for so long a greeting as we could have wished. He has a 
 capital good house on the banks of the Leven, about three 
 miles below its discharge from the lake, and very near the 
 classical spot where Matthew Bramble and his whole family 
 were conducted by Smollett, and where Smollett himself was 
 born. There is a new inducement for you to come to Caledon. 
 Your health, thank God, is now no impediment ; and I am told 
 sugar and rum excel even whisky, so your purse must be pro 
 portionally distended." 
 
 The unfortunate brother, the blot of the family, to 
 whom Scott alludes in this letter, had disappointed all 
 the hopes under which his friends sent him to Jamaica. 
 It may be remarked, as characteristic of Scott at this 
 time, that in the various letters to Ellis concerning 
 Daniel, he speaks of him as his relation, never as his 
 brother ; and it must also be mentioned as a circumstance 
 suggesting that Daniel had retained, after all, some sense 
 of pride, that his West-Indian patron was allowed by 
 himself to remain, to the end of their connexion, in igno 
 rance of what his distinguished brother had thus thought 
 fit to suppress. Mr. Blackburn, in fact, never knew that 
 Daniel was Walter Scott s brother, until he was applied 
 
 Quarterly Review, No. III. August 1809. 
 
DEATH OF DANIEL SCCTT. 65 
 
 to for some information respecting him on my own behalf, 
 after this narrative was begun. The story is shortly, 
 that the adventurer s habits of dissipation proved incur 
 able ; but he finally left Jamaica under a stigma which 
 Walter Scott regarded with utter severity. Being em 
 ployed in s:>me service against a refractory or insurgent 
 body of negroes, he had exhibited a lamentable deficiency 
 of spirit and conduct. He returned to Scotland a dis 
 honoured man ; and though he found shelter and com 
 passion from his mother, his brother would never see him 
 again. Nay, when soon after, his health, shattered by 
 dissolute indulgence, and probably the intolerable load of 
 shame, gave way altogether, and he died as yet a young 
 man, the poet refused either to attend his funeral or to 
 wear mourning for him like the rest of the family. Thus 
 sternly, when in the height and pride of his blood, could 
 Scott, whose heart was never hardened against the dis 
 tress of an enemy, recoil from the disgrace of a brother. 
 It is a more pleasing part of my duty to add, that he 
 spoke to me, twenty years afterwards, in terms of great 
 and painful contrition for the austerity with which he had 
 conducted himself on this occasion. I must add, more 
 over, that he took a warm interest in a natural child 
 whom Daniel had bequeathed to his mother s care ; and 
 carter the old lady s death, religiously supplied her place 
 as the boy s protector. 
 
 About this time the edition of Sir Ralph Sadler s State 
 Papers, &c. (3 vols. royal 4to) was at length completed 
 by Scott, and published by Constable ; but the letters 
 which passed between the Editor and the bookseller show 
 that their personal estrangement had as yet undergone 
 slender alteration. The collection of the Sadler papers 
 was chiefly the work of Mr. Arthur Clifford but Scott 
 
66 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 drew up the Memoir and Notes, and superintended the 
 printing. His account of the Life of Sadler * extends to 
 thirty pages ; and both it and his notes are written with 
 all that lively solicitude about points of antiquarian detail, 
 which accompanied him through so many tasks less at 
 tractive than the personal career of a distinguished states 
 man intimately connected with the fortunes of Mary 
 Queen of Scots. Some volumes of the edition of Som- 
 ers s Tracts (which he had undertaken for Mr. Miller 
 and other booksellers of London two or three years be 
 fore) were also published about the same period ; but 
 that compilation was not finished (13 vols. royal 4to) 
 until 1812. His part in it (for which the booksellers 
 paid him 1300 guineas), was diligently performed, and 
 shows abundant traces of his sagacious understanding and 
 graceful expression. His editorial labours on Dryden, 
 Swift, and these other collections, were gradually storing 
 his mind with that minute and accurate knowledge of the 
 leading persons and events both of Scotch and English 
 history, which made his conversation on such subjects 
 that of one who had rather lived with than read about 
 the departed ; while, unlike other antiquaries, he always 
 preserved the keenest interest in the transactions of his 
 own time. 
 
 The reader has seen, that during his stay in London in 
 the spring of this year, Scott became strongly impressed 
 with a suspicion that the Duke of Portland s Cabinet 
 could not much longer hold together; and the letters 
 which have been quoted, when considered along with the 
 actual course of subsequent events, can leave little doubt 
 that he had gathered this impression from the tone of 
 Mr. Canning s private conversation as to the recent man- 
 * Republished in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. rv. 
 
CANNING AND CASTLEREAGH 1809. 6? 
 
 agement of the War Department. On the 20th of Sep 
 tember, Lord Castlereagh tendered his resignation, and 
 wrote the same day to Mr. Canning in these terms : 
 " Having," he said, " pronounced it unfit that I should 
 remain charged with the conduct of the war, and made 
 my situation as a Minister of the Crown dependent on your 
 will and pleasure, you continued to sit in the same Cabi 
 net with me, and leave me not only in the persuasion 
 that I possessed your confidence and support as a col 
 league, but allowed me, in breach of every principle of 
 good faith, both public and private, to originate and pro 
 ceed in the execution of a new enterprise of the most 
 arduous and important nature (the Walcheren expedi 
 tion) with your apparent concurrence and ostensible ap 
 probation. You were fully aware that, if my situation 
 in the Government had been disclosed to me, I could not 
 have submitted to remain one moment in office, without 
 the entire abandonment of my private honour and public 
 duty. You knew I was deceived, and you continued to 
 deceive me." * 
 
 The result was a duel on the morning of the 21st, in 
 which Mr. Canning was attended by Mr. Charles Ellis 
 (now Lord Seaford) as his second. Mr. Canning, at the 
 second fire, was wounded in the thigh. Both combatants 
 retired from office ; the Duke of Portland, whose health 
 was entirely broken, resigned the premiership ; and after 
 fruitless negotiations with Lords Grey and Greenville, 
 Mr. Percival became First Lord of the Treasury, as well 
 as Chancellor of the Exchequer ; while the Marquis Wei- 
 
 * In the Preface to Mr. Therry s Compilation of Mr. Canning s 
 Speeches, the reader will find the contemporary documents, on which 
 alone a fair judgment can be formed as to the origin and nature of 
 WT. Canning s differences with Lord Castlereagh. 
 
68 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 lesley took the Seals of the Foreign Department, and 
 Lord Liverpool removed from the Home Office to that 
 which Lord Castlereagh had occupied. There were 
 some other changes, but Scott s -friend, Mr. R. Dimdas 
 (now Lord Melville), remained in his place at the head 
 of the Board of Control. 
 
 While the public mind was occupied with the duel and 
 its yet uncertain results, Scott wrote as follows to the 
 nearest relation and most intimate friend of Mr. Can 
 ning s second : 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq. 
 
 "Ashestiel, Sept. 26, 1809. 
 
 "My Dear Ellis, Your letter gave me great pleasure, 
 especially the outside, for Canning s frank assured me that his 
 wound was at least not materially serious. So, for once, the 
 envelope of your letter was even more welcome than the con 
 tents. That hairbrained Irishman s letter carries absurdity 
 upon the face of it, for surely he would have had much more 
 reason for personal animosity had Canning made the matter 
 public, against the wishes of his uncle, and every other person 
 concerned, than for his consenting, at their request, that it 
 should remain a secret, and leaving it to them to make such 
 communication to Lord C. as they should think proper, and 
 when they should think proper. I am ill situated here for the 
 explanations I would wish to give, but I have forwarded copies 
 of the letters to Lord Dalkeith, a high-spirited and indepen 
 dent young nobleman, in whose opinion Mr. Canning would, I 
 think, wish to stand well. I have also taken some measures to 
 prevent the good folks of Edinburgh from running after any 
 straw that may be thrown into the wind. I wrote a very hur 
 tied note to Mr. C. Ellis the instant I saw the accident in the 
 papers, not knowing exactly where you might be, and trusting 
 no would excuse my extreme anxiety and solicitude upon the 
 occasion. 
 
POLITICS 1809. 69 
 
 " I see, among other reports, that my friend, Robert Dun- 
 das, is mentioned as Secretary at War. I confess I shall be 
 both vexed and disappointed if he, of whose talents and opin 
 ions I think very highly, should be prevailed on to embark in 
 so patched and crazy a vessel as can now be lashed together, 
 and that upon a sea which promises to be sufficiently boister 
 ous. My own hopes of every kind are as low as the heels of 
 my boots, and methinks I would say to any friend of mine as 
 Tybalt says to Benvolio What ! art thou drawn among 
 these heartless hinds ? I suppose the Doctor will be move the 
 first, and then the Whigs will come in like a land-flood, and 
 lay the country at the feet of Buonaparte for peace. This, if 
 his devil does not fail, he will readily patch up, and send a few 
 hundred thousands among our coach-driving Noblesse, and 
 perhaps among our Princes of the Blood. With the influence 
 acquired by such gages d amitie, and by ostentatious hospital 
 ity at his court to all those idiots who will forget the rat-trap 
 of the detenus, and crowd there for novelty, there wih 1 be, in 
 the course of five or six years, what we have never yet seen, a 
 real French party in this country. To this you are to add all 
 the Burdettites, men who, rather than want combustibles, will 
 fetch brimstone from hell. It is not these whom I fear, how 
 ever it is the vile and degrading spirit of egoisme so preva 
 lent among the higher ranks, especially among the highest. 
 God forgive me if I do them injustice, but I think champagne 
 duty free would go a great way to seduce some of them ; and 
 is it not a strong symptom when people, knowing and feeling 
 their own weakness, will, from mere selfishness and pride, suf 
 fer the vessel to drive on the shelves, rather than she should be 
 saved by the only pilot Capable of the task ? I will be much 
 obliged to you to let me know what is likely to be done 
 whether any fight can yet be made, or if all is over. Lord 
 Melville had been furious for some time against this Adminis 
 tration I think he will hardly lend a hand to clear the wreck. 
 I should think, if Marquis Wellesley returns, he might form a 
 steady Administration ; but God wot, he must condemn most of 
 the present rotten planks before he can lay down the new vessel 
 
70 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Above all, let me know how Canning s recovery goes on. We 
 must think what is to be done about the Review. Ever yours 
 truly, W. S." 
 
 Scott s views as to the transactions of this period, and 
 the principal parties concerned in them, were consider 
 ably altered by the observation of subsequent years ; but 
 I have been much interested with watching the course 
 of his sentiments and opinions on such subjects ; and, in 
 the belief that others may feel in the same way with my 
 self, I shall insert, without comment, some further ex 
 tracts from this correspondence : 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " Ashestiel, Nov. 3, 1809. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, I had your letter some time ago, which 
 gave me less comfort in the present public emergency than 
 your letters usually do. Frankly, I see great doubts, not to 
 say an impossibility, of Canning s attaining that rank among the 
 Opposition which will enable him to command the use of their 
 shoulders to place him where you cannot be more convinced 
 than I am he is entitled to stand. The condottieri of the 
 Grenvilles, for they have no political principles, and there 
 fore no political party, detached from their immense influence 
 over individuals will hardly be seduced from their standard 
 to that of Canning, by an eloquence which has been exerted 
 upon them in vain, even when they might have hoped to be 
 gainers by listening to it. The soi-disant Whigs stick together 
 like burs. The ragged regiment of Burdett and Folkstone is 
 ander yet stricter discipline, for you may have observed that nc 
 lover was ever so jealous of his mistress as Sir Francis is of 
 his mob popularity witness the fate of Paull, Tierney, even 
 Wardle ; in short, of whomsoever presumed to rival the brazen 
 mage whom the mob of Westminster has set up.* That 
 
 * Sir Francis Burdett has lived to show how unjustly the Tories o/ 
 1809 read his political character. 
 
POLITICS NOV. 1809. 71 
 
 either, or both of these parties, will be delighted with the ac 
 cession of our friend s wisdom and eloquence, cannot for a mo 
 ment be disputed. That the Grenvilles, in particular, did he 
 only propose to himself a slice of the great pudding, would 
 allow him to help himself where the plums lie thickest, cannot 
 be doubted. But I think it is very doubtful whether they, 
 closely banded and confident of triumph as they at present 
 are, will accept of a colleague upon terms which would make 
 him a master ; and unless Canning has these, it appears to me 
 that we (the Republic) should be no better than if he had re 
 tained his office in the present, or rather late, Administration. 
 But how far, in throwing himself altogether into the arms of 
 Opposition at this crisis, Canning will injure himself with the 
 large and sound party who profess Pittism, is, I really think, 
 worthy of consideration. The influence of his name is at 
 present as great as you or I could wish it ; but those who wish 
 to undermine it want but, according to our Scottish proverb, 
 a hair to make a tether of. I admit his hand is very difficult 
 to play, and much as I love and admire him, I am most inter 
 ested because it is the decided interest of his country, that he 
 should pique, repique, and capot his antagonists. But you 
 know much of the delicacy of the game lies in discarding 
 so I hope he will be in no hurry on throwing out his cards. 
 
 " I am the more anxious on this score, because I feel an in 
 ternal conviction that neither Marquis Wellesley nor Lord 
 Melville will lend their names to bolster out this rump of an 
 Administration. Symptoms of this are said to have transpired 
 in Scotland, but in this retirement I cannot learn upon what 
 authority. Should -this prove so, I confess my best wishes 
 would be realized, because I cannot see how Percival could 
 avoid surrendering at discretion, and taking, perhaps, a peer 
 age. We should then have an Administration a la Pitt, which 
 is a much better thing than an Opposition, howsoever con 
 ducted or headed, which, like a wave of the sea, forms indeed 
 but a single body when it is rolling towards the shore, bui 
 flashes into foam and dispersion the instant it reaches its ob 
 ject. Should Canning and the above-named noble peers come 
 
72 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to understand each other, joined to all among the present 
 Ministry whom their native good sense, and an attachment to 
 good warm places, will lead to hear reason, it does seem to me 
 that we might form a deeper front to the enemy than we have 
 presented since the death of Pitt, or rather since the dissolu 
 tion of his first Administration. But if this be a dream, as it 
 may very probably be, I still hope Canning will take his own 
 ground in Parliament, and hoist his own standard. Sooner 
 or later it must be successful. So much for politics about 
 which, after all, my neighbours the blackcocks know about aa 
 much as I do. 
 
 " I have a great deal to write you about a new poem which 
 I have on the anvil also, upon the melancholy death of a 
 favourite greyhound bitch rest her body, since I dare not 
 say soul ! She was of high blood and excellent promise. 
 Should any of your sporting friends have a whelp to spare, of 
 a good kind, and of the female sex, I would be grateful beyond 
 measure, especially if she has had the distemper. As I have 
 quite laid aside the gun, coursing is my only and constant 
 amusement, and my valued pair of four-legged champions, 
 Douglas and Percy, wax old and unfeary. Ever yours truly 
 
 "W. S." 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. 
 
 " Gloucester Lodge, .Nov. 13, 1809. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, I am very sensibly gratified by your kind 
 expressions, whether of condolence or congratulation, and I 
 acknowledge, if not (with your Highland -writer) the synony- 
 mousness of the two terms, at least the union of the two senti 
 ments, as applied to my present circumstances. I am not so 
 heroically fond of being out (qudtenus out), as not to consider 
 ttat a matter of condolence. But I am at the same time suf 
 ficiently convinced of the desirableness of not being in, whec 
 one should be in to no purpose, either of public advantage 01 
 personal credit, to be satisfied that on that ground I am en 
 titled to your congratulations. 
 
LETTER FROM CANNING 1809. 73 
 
 " I should be very happy indeed to look forward, with the 
 prospect of being able to realize it, to the trip to Scotland 
 which you suggest to me ; and still more to the visit included 
 therein, which, as you hold it out, would not be the least part 
 of my temptation. Of this, however, I hope we shall have op 
 portunities of talking before the season arrives ; for I reckon 
 upon your spring visit to London, and think of it, I assure you, 
 with great pleasure, as likely to happen at a period when I 
 shall have it more in my power than I have had on any former 
 occasion to enjoy the advantage of it. You will find me not in 
 quite so romantic a scene of seclusion and tranquillity here as 
 that which you describe but very tranquil and secluded 
 nevertheless, at a mile and a half s distance from Hyde Park 
 Corner a distance considerable enough, as I now am, to save 
 me from any very overwhelming unda salutantium. 
 
 " Here, or anywhere else, I beg you to believe in the very 
 sincere satisfaction which I shall derive from your society, and 
 which I do derive from the assurance of your regard and good 
 opinion. Ever, my Dear Sir, very truly and faithfully yours, 
 
 " GEO. CANNING. 
 
 " P. S. I expect, in the course of this week, to send you a 
 copy of a more ample statement of the circumstances of my 
 retirement, which the misrepresentations of some who, I think^ 
 must have known they were misrepresenting (though that I 
 must not say), have rendered necessary." 
 
 I could not quote more largely from these political 
 letters wUhout trespassing against the feelings of dis 
 tinguished individuals still alive. I believe the extracts 
 which I have given are sufficient to illustrate the sagacity 
 with which Scott had at that early period apprehended 
 the dangers to which the political career of Mr. Canning 
 was exposed, by the jealousy of the old Tory aristocracy 
 on the one hand, and the insidious flatteries of Whig in 
 triguers on the other. I willingly turn from his politics 
 
74 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 to some other matters, which about this time occupied a 
 large share of his thoughts. 
 
 He had from his boyish days a great love for theatrical 
 representation ; and so soon as circumstances enabled him 
 to practise extended hospitality, the chief actors of his 
 time, whenever they happened to be in Scotland, were 
 among the most acceptable of his guests. Mr. Charles 
 Young was, I believe, the first of them of whom he saw 
 much : As early as 1803 I find him writing of that gentle 
 man to the Marchioness of Abercorn as a valuable addi- . 
 tion to the society of Edinburgh ; and down to the end of 
 Scott s life, Mr. Young was never in the north without 
 visiting him. 
 
 Another graceful and intelligent performer in whom he 
 took a special interest, and of whom he saw a great deal 
 in his private circle, was Miss Smith, afterwards Mrs. 
 Bartley. But at the period of which I am now treating, 
 his principal theatrical intimacy was with John Philip 
 Kemble, and his sister Mrs. Siddons, both of whom he 
 appears to have often met at Lord Abercorn s villa near 
 Stanmore, during his spring visits to London after the 
 first establishment of his poetical celebrity. Of John 
 Kemble s personal character and manners, he has re 
 corded his impressions in a pleasing reviewal of Mr. 
 Boaden s Memoir.* The great tragedian s love of black- 
 letter learning, especially of dramatic antiquities, afforded 
 a strong bond of fellowship ; and I have heard Scott say 
 that the only man who ever seduced him into very deep 
 potations in his middle life was Kemble. He was fre 
 quently at Ashestiel, and the " fat Scotch butler," whonc 
 Mr, Skene has described to us, by name John Macbeth- 
 made sore complaints of the bad hours kept on such oc 
 
 * Miscellaneoui Prose Works, vol. xx. 1834; vol. i. part viii. 1841. 
 
THEATRICAL AFFAIRS. 75 
 
 casions in one of the most regular of households ; but the 
 watchings of the night were not more grievous to " Cousin 
 Macbeth," as Kemble called the honest beaujfetier, than 
 were the hazards and fatigues of the morning to the rep 
 resentative of " the Scotch usurper." Kemble s miseries 
 during a rough gallop were quite as grotesque as those of 
 his namesake, and it must be owned that species of dis 
 tress was one from the contemplation of which his host 
 could never derive anything but amusement. 
 
 I have heard Scott chuckle with particular glee over 
 the recollection of an excursion to the vale of the Ettrick, 
 near which river the party were pursued by a bull. 
 " Come, King John," said he, " we must even take the 
 water," and accordingly he and his daughter plunged into 
 the stream. But King John, halting on the bank and 
 surveying the river, which happened to be full and tur 
 bid, exclaimed, in his usual solemn manner, 
 
 " The flood is angry, Sheriff; 
 
 Methinks I ll get me up into a tree." * 
 
 It was well that the dogs had succeeded in diverting the 
 bull, because there was no tree at hand which could have 
 sustained King John, nor, had that been otherwise, could 
 so stately a personage have dismounted and ascended 
 with such alacrity as circumstances would have required. 
 He at length followed his friends through the river with 
 the rueful dignity of Don Quixote. 
 
 * John Kemble s most familiar table-talk often flowed into blank 
 verse; and so indeed did his sister s. Scott (who was a capital mimic) 
 cften repeated her tragic exclamation to a footboy during a dinner at 
 Ashestiel 
 
 "You ve brought me water, boy, I asked for beer." 
 
 Another time, dining with a Provost of Edinburgh, she ejaculated, 
 tti answer to her host s apology for his piece de resistance 
 " Beef cannot be too salt for me, my Lord ! " 
 
f6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 It was this intercourse which led Scott to exert him 
 self very strenuously, when some change in the adminis 
 tration of the Edinburgh theatre became necessary (I 
 believe in 1808), to prevail on Mr. Henry Siddons, 
 the nephew of Kernble, to undertake the lease and man 
 agement. Such an arrangement would, he expected, in 
 duce both Kemble and his sister to be more in Scotland 
 than hitherto ; and what he had seen of young Siddons 
 himself led him to prognosticate a great improvement in 
 the whole conduct of the northern stage. His wishes 
 were at length accomplished in the summer of 1809. 
 On this occasion he purchased a share, and became one 
 of the acting trustees for the general body of proprie 
 tors ; and thenceforth, during a long series of years, he 
 continued to take a very lively concern in the proceed 
 ings of the Edinburgh company. In this he was plenti 
 fully encouraged by his domestic camarilla ; for his wife 
 had all a Frenchwoman s passion for the spectacle ; and 
 the elder of the two Ballantynes (both equally devoted 
 to the company of players) was a regular newspaper 
 critic of theatrical affairs, and in that capacity had al 
 ready attained a measure of authority supremely gratify 
 ing to himself. 
 
 The first new play produced by Henry Siddons was 
 the Family Legend of Joanna BaiLie. This was, I be 
 lieve, the first of her dramas that ever underwent the 
 test of representation in her native kingdom ; and Scott 
 appears to have exerted himself most indefatigably in it 
 behalf. He was consulted about all the minutiae of cos 
 tume, attended every rehearsal, and supplied the prol- 
 cgue. The play was better received than any other 
 which the gifted authoress has since subjected to the 
 experiment ; and how ardently Scott enjoyed its 
 
JOANNA BAILLIE S FAMILY LEGEND. 77 
 
 success will appear from a few specimens of the many 
 letters which he addressed to his friend on the occasion. 
 
 The first of these letters is dated Edinburgh, October 
 27, 1809. He had gone into town for the purpose of 
 entering his eldest boy at the High School: 
 
 " On receiving your long kind letter yesterday, I sought out 
 Siddons, who was equally surprised and delighted at your lib 
 eral arrangement about the Lady of the Rock. I will put all 
 the names to rights, and retain enough of locality and person 
 ality to please the antiquary, without the least risk of bringing 
 the clan Gillian about our ears. I went through the theati3. 
 which is the most complete little thing of the kind I ever saw, 
 elegantly fitted up, and large enough for every purpose. I 
 trust, with you, that in this as in other cases, our Scotch pov 
 erty may be a counterbalance to our Scotch pride, and that 
 we shall not need in my time a larger or more expensive build- 
 inf. Siddons himself observes, that even for the purposes of 
 show (so paramount now-a-days) a moderate stage is better 
 fitted than a large one, because the machinery is pliable and 
 manageable in proportion to its size. With regard to the 
 equipment of the Family Legend, I have been much diverted 
 with a discovery which I have made. I had occasion to visit 
 our Lord Provost (by profession a stocking-weaver), and wag 
 surprised to find the worthy magistrate filled with a new-born 
 zeal for the drama. He spoke of Mr. Siddons merits with 
 enthusiasm, and of Miss Baillie s powers almost with tears of 
 rapture. Being a curious investigator of cause and effect, 1 
 never rested until I found out that this theatric rage which 
 had seized his lordship of a sudden, was owing to a large or 
 der for hose, pantaloons, and plaids for equipping the rival 
 clans of Campbell and Maclean, and which Siddons was sensible 
 enough to send to the warehouse of our excellent provost.* 
 
 * This magistrate was Mr William Coulter (the salt-beef Amphit- 
 yon), who died in office in April 1810, and is said to have been greatly 
 wmsoled on his deathbed by the prospect of so grand a funeral as must 
 
78 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ... The Laird * is just gone to the High School, and it is 
 with inexpressible feeling that I hear him trying to babble the 
 first words of Latin, the signal of commencing serious study 
 for his acquirements hitherto have been under the mild domin 
 ion of a governess. I felt very like Leontes 
 
 " Looking on the lines 
 Of my boy s face, raethought I did recoil 
 Thirty good years." f 
 
 And O ! my dear Miss Baillie, what a tale thirty years can 
 tell even in an uniform and unhazardous course of life ! How 
 much I have reaped that I have never sown, and sown that I 
 have never reaped ! Always, I shall think it one of the proud 
 est and happiest circumstances of my life that enables me to 
 subscribe myself your faithful and affectionate friend, 
 
 "W. S." 
 
 Three months later, he thus communicates the result 
 of the experiment : 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead. 
 
 " Jan. 30th, 1810. 
 
 "My Dear Miss Baillie, You have only to imagine all 
 that you could wish to give success to a play, and your con 
 ceptions will still fall short of the complete and decided tri 
 umph of the Family Legend. The house was crowded to a 
 most extraordinary degree ; many people had come from your 
 native capital of the west ; everything that pretended to dis 
 tinction, whether from rank or literature, was in the boxes, and 
 
 needs occur in the case of an actual Lord Provost of Auld Reekie. 
 Scott used to take him off as saying at some public meeting, " Gentle 
 men, though doomed to the trade of a stocking-weaver, I was born 
 with the soul of a Sheepio ! " (Scipio.) 
 
 * Young Walter Scott was called Gilnockie, the Laird of Gilnockie. 
 Ci simply the Laird, in consequence of his childish admiration fo? 
 Johnnie Armstrong, whose ruined tower is still extant at Gilnockie or 
 the Esk, nearly opposite Netherby. 
 
 4 Winter s Tale, Act I. Scene 2. 
 
THE FAMILY LEGEND 1810. 79 
 
 in the pit such an aggregate mass of humanity as I have sel 
 dom if ever witnessed in the same space. It was quite obvious 
 from the beginning, that the cause was to be very fairly tried 
 before the public, and that if anything went wrong, no effort, 
 even of your numerous and zealous friends, could have had 
 much influence in guiding or restraining the general feeling. 
 Some good-natured persons had been kind enough to propa 
 gate reports of a strong opposition, which, though I considered 
 them as totally groundless, did not by any means lessen the 
 extreme anxiety with which I waited the rise of the curtain. 
 But in a short time I saw there was no ground whatever for 
 apprehension, and yet I sat the whole time shaking for fear a 
 scene-shifter, or a carpenter, or some of the subaltern actors, 
 should make some blunder, and interrupt the feeling of deep 
 and general interest which soon seized on the whole pit, box, 
 and gallery, as Mr. Bayes has it.* The scene on the rock 
 struck the utmost possible effect into the audience, and you 
 beard nothing but sobs on all sides. The banquet-scene was 
 equally impressive, and so was the combat. Of the greater 
 scenes, that between Lorn and Helen in the castle of Maclean, 
 that between Helen and her lover, and the examination of 
 Maclean himself in Argyle s castle, were applauded to the very 
 echo. Siddons announced the play for the rest of the week, 
 which was received not only with a thunder of applause, but 
 with cheering and throwing up of hats and handkerchiefs. 
 Mrs. Siddons supported her part incomparably, although just 
 recovered from the indisposition mentioned in my last. Sid- 
 dons himself played Lorn very well indeed, and moved and 
 looked with great spirit. A Mr. Terry, who promises to be a 
 fine performer, went through the part of the Old Earl with 
 great taste and effect. For the rest I cannot say much, ex 
 cepting that from highest to lowest they were most accurately 
 perfect in their parts, and did their very best. Malcolm de 
 Gray was tolerable but stickish Maclean came off decently 
 - but the conspirators were sad hounds. You are, my dear 
 
 * See the Rehearsal. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
BO LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Miss Baillie, too much of a democrat in your writings ; you 
 allow life, soul, and spirit to these inferior creatures of the 
 drama, and expect they will be the better of it. Now it was 
 obvious to me, that the poor monsters, whose mouths are only 
 of use to spout the vapid blank verse which your modern play 
 wright puts into the part of the confidant and subaltern villain 
 of his piece, did not know what to make of the energetic and 
 poetical diction which even these subordinate department* 
 abound with in the Legend. As the play greatly exceeded 
 the usual length (lasting till half-past ten), we intend, when it 
 is repeated to-night, to omit some of the passages where the 
 weight necessarily fell on the weakest of our host, although we 
 may hereby injure the detail of the plot. The scenery was 
 very good, and the rock, without appearance of pantomime, 
 was so contrived as to place Mrs. Siddons in a very precarious 
 situation to all appearance. The dresses were more tawdry 
 than I should have judged proper, but expensive and showy. 
 I got my brother John s Highland recruiting party to reinforce 
 the garrison of Inverary, and as they mustered beneath the 
 porch of the castle, and seemed to fill the court-yard behind, 
 the combat scene had really the appearance of reality. Sid- 
 dons has been most attentive, anxious, assiduous, and docile, 
 and had drilled his troops so well that the prompter s aid was 
 unnecessary, and I do not believe he gave a single hint the 
 whole night ; nor were there any false or ridiculous accents or 
 gestures even among the underlings, though God knows they 
 fell often far short of the true spirit. Mrs. Siddons spoke the 
 epilogue * extremely well : the prologue, f which I will send 
 /ou in its revised state, was also very well received. Mrs. 
 Scott sends her kindest compliments of congratulation : she 
 had a party of thirty friends in one small box, which she was 
 obliged to watch like a clucking hen till she had gathered her 
 flock, for the crowd was insufferable. I am going to see 
 Legend to-night, when I shall enjoy it quietly, for las* 
 
 * Written by Henry Mackenzie. 
 
 t See Scott s Poetical Works, p. 635 (1841, English Ed.) 
 
MR. TERRY 1810. 81 
 
 night 1 was so much interested in its reception that I cannot 
 say I was at leisure to attend to the feelings arising from the 
 reuresentation itself. People are dying to read it. If you 
 think of suffering a single edition to be printed to gratify their 
 curiosity, I will take care of it. But I do not advise this, be 
 cause until printed no other theatres can have it before you 
 give leave. My kind respects attend Miss Agnes Baillie, and 
 believe me ever your obliged and faithful servant, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " P. S. A friend of mine writes dramatic criticism now 
 and then, I have begged him to send me a copy of the Edin 
 burgh paper in which he inserts his lucubrations, and I will 
 transmit it to you : he is a play-going man, and more in the 
 habit of expressing himself on such subjects than most people. 
 In case you have not got a playbill, I enclose one, because 
 I think in my own case I should like to see it." 
 
 The Family Legend had a continuous run of fourteen 
 nights, and was soon afterwards printed and published by 
 the Ballantynes. 
 
 The theatrical critic alluded to in the last of these 
 letters was the elder of those brothers ; the newspaper in 
 which his lucubrations then appeared was the Edinburgh 
 Evening Courant ; and so it continued until 1817, when 
 the Edinburgh Weekly Journal was purchased by the two 
 partners of the Canongate ; ever after which period it was 
 edited by the prominent member of that firm, and from 
 time to time was the vehicle of many fugitive pieces by 
 Scott. 
 
 In one of these letters there occurs, for the first time, 
 the name of a person who soon obtained a large share of 
 Scott s regard and confidence the late ingenious come 
 dian, Mr. Daniel Terry. He had received a good edu 
 cation, and been regularly trained as an architect; but 
 
82 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 abandoned that profession, at an early period of life, foi 
 the stage, and was now beginning to attract attention as a 
 valuable and efficient actor in Henry Siddons s new com 
 pany at Edinburgh. Already he and the Ballantynea 
 were constant companions, and through his familiarity 
 with them, Scott had abundant opportunities of appreciat 
 ing his many excellent and agreeable qualities. He had 
 the manners and feelings of a gentleman. Like John 
 Kemble, he was deeply skilled in the old literature of the 
 drama, and he rivalled Scott s own enthusiasm for the 
 antiquities of vertu. Their epistolary correspondence in 
 after days was frequent, and will supply me with many 
 illustrations of Scott s minor tastes and habits. As their 
 letters lie before me, they appear as if they had all been 
 penned by the same hand. Terry s idolatry of his new 
 friend induced him to imitate his writing so zealously, 
 that Scott used to say, if he were called on to swear 
 to any document, the utmost he could venture to attest 
 would be, that it was either in his own hand or in Terry s. 
 The actor, perhaps unconsciously, mimicked him in other 
 matters with hardly inferior pertinacity. His small lively 
 features had acquired, before I knew him, a truly ludi 
 crous cast of Scott s graver expression ; he had taught 
 bis tiny eyebrow the very trick of the poet s meditative 
 frown ; and to crown all, he so habitually affected hia 
 tone and accent, that, though a native of Bath, a stranger 
 eould hardly have doubted he must be a Scotchman. 
 These things afforded Scott and all their mutual ac 
 quaintances much diversion ; but perhaps no Stoic could 
 have helped being secretly gratified by seeing a clever 
 and sensible man convert himself into a living type and 
 symbol of admiration. 
 
 Charles Mathews and Terry were once thrown out of 
 
TERRY MATHEWS. 83 
 
 a gig together, and the former received an injury which 
 made him halt ever afterwards, while the latter escaped 
 unhurt. " Dooms, Dauniel" said Mathews when they 
 next met, " what a pity that it wasna your luck to get 
 the game leg, mon ! Your Shirra wad hae been the very 
 thing, ye ken, an ye wad hae been croose till ye war 
 coffined ! " Terry, though he did not always relish banter 
 ing on this subject, replied readily and good-humouredly 
 by a quotation from Peter Pindar s Bozzy and Piozzi : 
 
 " When Foote his leg by some misfortune broke, 
 Says I to Johnson, all by way of joke, 
 Sam, sir, in Paragraph will soon be clever, 
 He ll take off Peter better now than ever." 
 
 Mathews s mirthful caricature of Terry s sober mimicry 
 of Scott was one of the richest extravaganzas of his so 
 cial hours; but indeed I have often seen this Proteus 
 dramatize the whole Ballantyne group with equal suc 
 cess while Kigdumfunnidos screamed with delight, and 
 Aldiborontiphoscophornio faintly chuckled, and the Sher 
 iff, gently smiling, pushed round his decanters.* 
 
 Miss Seward died in March 1809. She bequeathed 
 her poetry to Scott, with an injunction to publish it 
 speedily, and prefix a sketch of her life ; while she made 
 aer letters (of which she had kept copies) the property of 
 Mr. Constable, in the assurance that due regard for his 
 own interests would forthwith place the whole collection 
 before the admiring world. Scott superintended accord- 
 
 * By the way, perhaps tha very richest article in Mathws s social 
 budget, was the scene alleged to have occurred when he himself com 
 municated to the two Ballantynes the new titles Avhich the Sheriff had 
 conferred on them. Rigdum s satisfaction with his own cap and bells, 
 and the other s indignant incredulity, passing by degrees into tragical 
 lorror, made a delicious contrast. [1839.] 
 
84 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ingly the edition of the lady s verses, which was pub 
 lished in three volumes, in August 1810, by John Ballan- 
 tyne and Co. ; and Constable lost no time in announcing 
 her correspondence, which appeared a year later, in six 
 volumes. The following letter alludes to these produc 
 tions, as well as a comedy by Mr. Henry Siddons, which 
 he had recently brought out on the Edinburgh stage ; 
 and lastly, to the Lady of the Lake, the printing of which 
 had by this time made great progress. 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie. 
 
 " Edinburgh, March 18, 1810. 
 
 "Nothing, my dear Miss Baillie, can loiter in my hands, 
 when you are commanding officer. I have put the play in 
 progress through the press, and find my publishers, the Ballan- 
 tynes, had previously determined to make Mr. Longman, the 
 proprietor of your other works, the offer of this. All that can 
 be made of it in such a cause certainly shall, and the book 
 sellers shall be content with as little profit as can in reason be 
 expected. I understand the trade well, and will take care of 
 this. Indeed, I believe the honour weighs more with the book 
 sellers here than the profit of a single play. So much for busi 
 ness. You are quite right in the risk I run of failure in a third 
 poem ; yet I think I understand the British public well enough 
 to set every sail towards the popular breeze. One set of folks 
 pique themselves upon sailing in the wind s eye another 
 class drive right before it; now I would neither do one or 
 t other, but endeavour to go, as the sailors express it, upon a 
 wind, and make use of it to carry me my own way, instead ol 
 going precisely in its direction ; or, to speak in a dialect witL 
 which I am more familiar, I would endeavour to make my 
 horse carry me, instead of attempting to carry my horse. I 
 have a vain-glorious presentiment of success upon this occa 
 sion, which may very well deceive me, but which I would 
 hardly confess to anybody but you, nor perhaps to you neither 
 
MISS SEWARD S LETTERS, ETC. 85 
 
 anless 1 knew you would find it out whether I told it you 
 or no, 
 
 4 You are a sharp observer, and you look 
 Quite through the eyes of men. 
 
 44 1 plead guilty to the charge of ill-breeding to Miss * * * *. 
 The despair which I used to feel on receiving poor Miss 
 Seward s letters, whom I really liked, gave me a most unsenti 
 mental horror for sentimental letters. The Grossest thing I 
 ever did in my life was to poor dear Miss Seward ; she wrote 
 me in an evil hour (I had never seen her, mark that !) a long 
 and most passionate epistle upon the death of a dear friend, 
 whom I had never seen neither, concluding with a charge not 
 to attempt answering the said letter, for she was dead to the 
 world, &c. &c. &c. Never were commands more literally 
 obeyed. I remained as silent as the grave, till the lady made 
 so many inquiries after me, that I was afraid of my death 
 being prematurely announced by a sonnet or an elegy. When 
 I did see her, however, she interested me very much, and I am 
 now doing penance for my ill-breeding, by submitting to edit 
 her posthumous poetry, most of which is absolutely execrable. 
 This, however, is the least of my evils, for when she proposed 
 this bequest to me, which I could not in decency refuse, she 
 combined it with a request that I would publish her whole 
 literary correspondence. This I declined on principle, having 
 a particular aversion at perpetuating that sort of gossip ; but 
 what availed it ? Lo ! to ensure the publication, she left it to 
 an Edinburgh bookseller ; and I anticipate the horror of see 
 ing myself advertised for a live poet like a wild beast on a 
 painted streamer, for I understand all her friends are depicted 
 therein in body, mind, and manners. So much for the risks 
 pf sentimental correspondence. 
 
 44 Siddons play was truly flat, but not unprofitable ; he con 
 trived to get it well propped in the acting, and though it was 
 such a thing as if you or I had written it (supposing, that is, 
 tfhat in your case, and I think even in my own, is impossible) 
 "rould have been damned seventy-fold, yet it went through 
 
^6 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 with applause. Such is the humour of the multitude ; and 
 they will quarrel with venison for being dressed a day sooner 
 than fashion requires, and batten on a neck of mutton, because, 
 on the whole, it is rather better than they expected ; however, 
 Siddons is a good lad, and deserves success, through whatever 
 channel it comes. His mother is here just now. I was quite 
 shocked to see her, for the two last years have made a dreadful 
 inroad both on voice and person ; she has, however, a very bad 
 cold. I hope she will be able to act Jane de Montfort, which 
 we have long planned. Very truly yours, W. S.** 
 
THOMA8 SCOTT S EXTBACTORSHIP. 87 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Affair of Thomas Scoffs Extractorship discussed in the Howe 
 of Lords Speeches of Lord Lauderdale, Lord Melville, frc. 
 Lord Holland at the Friday Club Publication of The 
 Lady of the Lake Correspondence concerning Versification 
 with Ellis and Canning The Poem criticised by Jeffrey and 
 Mackintosh Letters to Southey and Morritt Anecdotes 
 from James Ballantyne s Memoranda. 
 
 1810. 
 
 THERE occurred, while the latter cantos of the Lady 
 of the Lake were advancing through the press, an affair 
 which gave Scott so much uneasiness, that I must not 
 pass it in silence. Each Clerk of Session had in those 
 days the charge of a particular office or department in 
 the Great Register House of Scotland, and the appoint 
 ment of the subalterns, who therein recorded and ex 
 tracted the decrees of the Supreme Court, was in his 
 hands. Some of these situations, remunerated, according 
 to a fixed rate of fees, by the parties concerned in the 
 suits before the Court, were valuable, and considered 
 not at all below the pretensions of gentlemen who had 
 been regularly trained for the higher branches of the law. 
 About the time when Thomas Scott s affairs as a Writer 
 to the Signet fell into derangement, but before they were 
 yet hopeless, a post became vacant in his brother s office, 
 
88 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 which yielded an average income of 400, and which he 
 would very willingly have accepted. The poet, however, 
 considered a respectable man, who had grown grey at an 
 inferior desk in the same department, as entitled to pro 
 motion, and exerted the right of patronage in his favour 
 accordingly, bestowing on his brother the place which 
 this person left. It was worth about 250 a-year, and 
 its duties being entirely mechanical, might be in great 
 part, and often had been in former times entirely, dis 
 charged by deputy. Mr. Thomas Scott s appointment to 
 this Extractor ship took place at an early stage of the pro 
 ceedings of that Commission for inquiring into the Scotch 
 System of Judicature, which had the poet for its secre 
 tary. Thomas, very soon afterwards, was compelled to 
 withdraw from Edinburgh, and retired, as has been men 
 tioned, to the Isle of Man, leaving his official duties to 
 the care of a substitute, who was to allow him a certain 
 share of the fees, until circumstances should permit his 
 return. It was not, however, found so easy, as he and 
 his friends had anticipated, to wind up his accounts, and 
 settle with his creditors. Time passed on, and being an 
 active man, in the prime vigour of life, he accepted a 
 commission in the Manx Fencibles, a new corps raised 
 by the Lord of that island, the Duke of Athol, who will 
 ingly availed himself of the military experience which 
 Mr. Scott had acquired in the course of his long con 
 nexion with the Edinburgh Volunteers. These Manx 
 Fencibles, however, were soon dissolved, and Thomas 
 Scott, now engaged in the peaceful occupation of collect 
 ing materials for a History of the Isle of Man, to which 
 his brother had strongly directed his views, was anxiously 
 expecting a final arrangement, which might allow him to 
 re-establish himself in Edinburgh, and resume his seat in 
 
THOMAS SCOTT S EXTRACTORSHIP. 89 
 
 the Register House, when he received the intelligence 
 that the Commission of Judicature had resolved to abolish 
 that, among many other similar posts. This was a severe 
 blow ; but it was announced, at the same time, that the 
 Commission meant to recommend to Parliament a scheme 
 of compensation for the functionaries who were to be dis 
 charged at their suggestion, -and that his retired allow 
 ance would probably amount to 130 per annum. 
 
 In the spring of 1810, the Commission gave in its re 
 port, and was dissolved ; and a bill, embodying the details 
 of an extensive reform, founded on its suggestions, was 
 laid before the House of Commons, who adopted most of 
 its provisions, and among others passed, without hesita 
 tion, the clauses respecting compensation for the holders 
 of abolished offices. But when the bill reached the 
 House of Lords, several of these clauses were severely 
 reprobated by some Peers of the Whig party, and the 
 case of Thomas Scott, in particular, was represented as a 
 gross and flagrant job. The following extract from Han 
 sard s Debates will save me the trouble of further de 
 tails : 
 
 "THOMAS SCOTT. 
 
 " THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE moved an amendment, 
 * That those only be remunerated who were mentioned in the 
 schedule. The application of this amendment was towards the 
 compensation intended for Mr. Thomas Scott, the brother of 
 Walter Scott. It appeared the former was appointed to the 
 office of an Extractor at a time when it must have been fore 
 seen that those offices would be abolished. Mr. Thomas Scott 
 had not been connected previously with that sort of situation, 
 but was recruiting for the Manx Fencibles in the Isle of Man 
 %t the time, and had not served the office, but performed its 
 duties through the means of a deputy. He considered this 
 transaction a perfect job. By the present bill Mr. T. Scott 
 
90 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 would have, 130 for life as an indemnity for an office, the 
 duties of which he never had performed, while those clerks 
 who had laboured for twenty years had no adequate remunera 
 tion. 
 
 " VISCOUNT MELVILLE supported the general provisions of 
 the bill. With respect to Mr. T. Scott, he certainly had been 
 in business, had met with misfortunes, and on account of his 
 circumstances went to the Isle of Man ; but with respect to his 
 appointment, this was the fact : a situation in the same office 
 [of the Register House] with that of his brother, of 400, be 
 came vacant, and he [Walter Scott] thought it his duty to pro 
 mote a person who had meritoriously filled the situation which 
 was afterwards granted to Mr. T. Scott. His brother was 
 therefore so disinterested as to have appointed him to the in 
 ferior instead of the superior situation. The noble viscount 
 saw no injustice in the case, and there was no partiality but 
 what was excusable. 
 
 " LORD HOLLAND thought no man who knew him would 
 suspect that he was unfavourable to men of literature ; on the 
 contrary, he felt a great esteem for the literary character of 
 Walter Scott. He and his colleagues ever thought it their 
 duty to reward literary merit without regard to political opin 
 ions ; and he wished he could pay the same compliment to the 
 noble and learned viscount, for he must ever recollect that the 
 poet Burns, of immortal memory, had been shamefully neg 
 lected. But with respect to Mr. Thomas Scott, the question 
 was quite different, for he was placed in a situation which he 
 and his brother knew at the time would be abolished ; and 
 from Parliament he claimed an indemnity for what could not 
 be pronounced any loss. It was unjust as regarded others, 
 and improper as it respected Parliament. 
 
 " The amendment was then proposed and negatived. The 
 bill was accordingly read the third time and passed." HAN- 
 BARD, June 1810. 
 
 I shall now extract various passages from Scott s let- 
 ners to his brother and other friends, which will show 
 
THOMAS SCOTT 1810. 91 
 
 what his feelings were while this affair continued under 
 agitation. 
 
 " To Thomas Scott, Esq., Douglas, Isle of Man. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 25th May 1810. 
 
 "My Dear Tom, I write under some anxiety for your 
 interest, though I sincerely hope it is groundless. The devil 
 or James Gibson * has put it into Lord Lauderdale s head t;j 
 challenge your annuity in the House of Lords on account of 
 your non-residence, and your holding a commission in the 
 militia. His lordship kept his intention as secret as possible, 
 but fortunately it reached the kind and friendly ear of Colin 
 Mackenzie. Lord Melville takes the matter up stoutly, and I 
 have little doubt will carry his point, unless the whole bill is 
 given up for the season, which some concurring opposition from 
 different quarters renders not impossible. In that case, you 
 must, at the expense of a little cash and time, show face in 
 Edinburgh for a week or two, and attend your office. But I 
 devoutly hope all will be settled by the bill being passed as it 
 now stands. This is truly a most unworthy exertion of pri 
 vate spite and malice, but I trust it will be in vain." 
 
 " Edinburgh, June 12th. 
 
 " Dear Tom, I have the pleasure to acquaint you that I 
 have every reason to believe that the bill will pass this week. 
 It has been committed; upon which occasion Lord Lauder- 
 dale stated various objections, all of which were repelled. He 
 then adverted to your case with some sufficiently bitter obser 
 vations. Lord Melville advised him to reserve his epithets till 
 he was pleased to state his cause, as he would pledge himself 
 to show that they were totally inapplicable to the transaction. 
 
 * James Gibson, Esq. W. S. (now Sir James Gibson-Craig of Ric- 
 tarton, Bart.) had always been regarded as one of the most able and 
 tctive of the Scotch "Whigs whose acknowledged chief in those lays 
 IF as the Earl of Lauderdale. 
 
92 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The Duke of Montrose also intimated his intention to defend 
 it, which I take very kind of his Grace, as he went down on 
 purpose, and declared his resolution to attend whenever the 
 business should be stirred. So much for 
 
 The Lord of Graham, by every chief adored, 
 Who boarts his native philabeg restored. " * 
 
 " Edinburgh, 21st Juno 1810. 
 
 " My Dear Tom, The bill was read a third time in the 
 House of Lords, on which occasion Lord Lauderdale made his 
 attack, which Lord Melville answered. There was not much 
 said on either side : Lord Holland supported Lord Lauder 
 dale, and the bill passed without a division. So you have 
 fairly doubled Cape Lauderdale. I believe his principal view 
 was to insult my feelings, in which he has been very unsuc 
 cessful, for I thank God I feel nothing but the most hearty 
 contempt both for the attack and the sort of paltry malice by 
 which alone it could be dictated." 
 
 The next letter is addressed to an old friend of Scott s, 
 who, though a stout Whig, had taken a lively interest in 
 the success of his brother s parliamentary business : 
 
 " To John Richardson, Esq., Fludyer Street, Westminster. 
 
 "Edinburgh, 3d July 1810. 
 
 " My Dear Richardson, I ought before now to have writ 
 ten you my particular thanks for your kind attention to the 
 interest which I came so strangely and unexpectedly to have 
 in the passing of the Judicature Bill. The only purpose which 
 I suppose Lord Lauderdale had in view was to state chargea 
 which could neither be understood nor refuted, and to give me 
 a little pain by dragging my brother s misfortunes into public 
 
 * These lines are slightly altered from the Rolliad, p. 308. Th 
 Duke had obtained the repeal of an act of Parliament forbidding the 
 *se of tbe Highland garb. 
 
THOMAS SCOTT LORD HOLLAND. 93 
 
 notice. If the last was his aim, I am happy to say it has most 
 absolutely miscarried, for I have too much contempt for the 
 motive which dictated his Lordship s eloquence, to feel much for 
 its thunders. My brother loses by the bill from 150 to 200, 
 which no power short of an act of Parliament could have 
 taken from him; and far from having a view to the compensa 
 tion, he is a considerable loser by its being substituted for the 
 actual receipts of his office. I assure you I am very sensible 
 of your kind and friendly activity and zeal in my brother s 
 behalf. 
 
 "I received the Guerras* safe; it is a fine copy, and I 
 think very cheap, considering how difficult it is now to procure 
 foreign books. I shall be delighted to have the Tiaite des 
 Tournois. I propose, on the 12th, setting forth for the West 
 Highlands, with the desperate purpose of investigating the 
 caves of Staffa, Egg, and Skye. There was a time when this 
 was a heroic undertaking, and when the return of Samuel 
 Johnson from achieving it was hailed by the Edinburgh literati 
 with per varies casus, and other scraps of classical gratula- 
 tion equally new and elegant. But the harvest of glory has 
 been entirely reaped by the early discoverers ; and in an age 
 when every London citizen makes Lochlomond his washpot, 
 and throws his shoe over Ben-Nevis, a man may endure every 
 hardship, and expose himself to every danger of the Highland 
 Beas, from sea-sickness to the jaws of the great sea-snake, 
 without gaining a single leaf of laurel for his pains. 
 
 " The best apology for bestowing all this tediousness upon 
 you is, that John Burnet is dinning into the ears of the Court 
 a botheration about the politics of the magnificent city of 
 Culross. But I will release you sooner than I fear I shall 
 escape myself, with the assurance that I am ever yours most 
 truly, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 I conclude the affair of Thomas Scott with a brief ex- 
 Jrac: from a letter which his brother addressed to him a 
 
 * A copy of the Guerras Civiles de Granada. 
 
94 LIFE OP SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 few weeks later : " Lord Holland has been in Edin 
 burgh, and we met accidentally at a public party. He 
 made up to me, but I remembered his part in your affair, 
 and cut him Avith as little remorse as an old pen." The 
 meeting here alluded to occurred at a dinner of the Fri 
 day Club, at Fortune s Tavern, to which Lord Holland 
 was introduced by Mr. Thomas Thomson. Two gentle 
 men who were present, inform me that they distinctly 
 remember a very painful scene, for which, knowing Scott s 
 habitual good-nature and urbanity, they had been wholly 
 unprepared. One of them (Lord Jeffrey) adds, that this 
 was the only example of rudeness he ever witnessed in him 
 in the course of a lifelong familiarity. I have thought it 
 due to truth and justice not to omit this disagreeable pas 
 sage in Scott s life, which shows how even his mind could 
 at times be unhinged and perverted by the malign influ 
 ence of political spleen. It is consolatory to add, that he 
 enjoyed much agreeable intercourse in after days with 
 Lord Holland, and retained no feelings of resentment 
 towards any other of the Whig gentlemen named in the 
 preceding correspondence.* 
 
 * I subjoin a list of the Members of The Friday Club, which was in 
 stituted in June 1803 (on the model, I believe, of Johnson s at the 
 Turk s Head), down to the period of Scott s death. The others 
 marked, like his name, by an asterisk, are also dead. 
 
 1803. * Sir James Hall, 1803. George Cranstoun (Lord 
 
 * Professor Dugald Stewart, Corehouse) 
 
 * Professor John Playfair, * Walter Scott, 
 
 * Rev. Arch. Alison, Thomas Thomson, 
 Rev. Sydney Smith, Dr. John Thomson, 
 
 * Rev. Peter Elmslie, John A. Murray (Lord Mut 
 *Alex. Irving (Lord New- ray) 
 
 ton) Henry Brougham (Loro 
 
 Wm. Erskine (Lord Kin- Brougham) 
 
 nedder) * Henry Mackenzie, 
 
LETTER TO MR. MORRTTT. 95 
 
 While these affairs were still in progress, the poem of 
 the Lady of the Lake was completed. Scott was at the 
 same time arranging the materials, and superintending 
 the printing, of the collection entitled " English Min 
 strelsy," in which several of his own minor poems first 
 appeared, and which John Ballantyne and Co. also pub 
 lished in the summer of 1810. The Swift, too (to say 
 nothing of reviews and the like), was going on ; and so 
 was the Somers. A new edition of the Minstrelsy of the 
 Scottish Border was moreover at press, and in it the 
 editor included a few features of novelty, particularly Mr. 
 Morritt s spirited ballad of the Curse of Moy. He gives 
 a lively description of his occupations, in the following 
 letter addressed to that gentleman : 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., 24 Portland Place, London. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 2d March 1810. 
 
 " My Dear Morritt, You are very good to remember such 
 a false knave as I am, who have omitted so long to thank you 
 
 1803. H. Mackenzie (Lord Mac- 1811. T. F. Kennedy, 
 
 kenzie), J. Fullerton (Lord Fuller- 
 
 * Malcolm Laing, ton), 
 Henry Cockburn (Lord John Allen, 
 
 Cockburn), * Francis Homer. 
 
 John Richardson, Thomas Campbell, 
 
 Francis Jeffrey (Lord Jef- 1812. * George Wilson, 
 
 frey). 1814. * Dr. John Gordon, 
 
 William Clerk, 1816. Andrew Rutherford, 
 
 1804, * Alex. Hamilton, 1817. * James Keay, 
 
 * Dr. Coventry, 1825. Leonard Horner, 
 
 * Professor John Robison Professor Pillans, 
 George Strickland. 1826. Count M. de Flahault, 
 
 * Professor Dalzell, *D. Cathcart (Lord Allo- 
 
 * Lord Webb Seymour, way), 
 
 * Earl of Selkirk, 1827. Earl of Minto, 
 
 * Lord Glenbervie, William Murray, 
 
 1807. * Rev. John Thomson 1830. Hon. Mountstuart Elpbin- 
 
 1810. John Jeffrey, stone. 
 
 VOL. nr. 7 
 
96 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 for a letter, bringing me the assurances of your health and re 
 membrance, which I do not value the less deeply and sincerely 
 for my seeming neglect. Truth is, I do not eat the bread of 
 idleness. But I was born a Scotchman, and a bare one, and 
 was therefore born to fight my way with my left hand where 
 my right failed me, and with my teeth, if they were both cut 
 off. This is but a bad apology for not answering your kind 
 ness, yet not so bad when you consider that it was only ad 
 mitted as a cause of procrastination, and that I have been let 
 me see I have been Secretary to the Judicature Commis 
 sion, which sat daily during all the Christmas vacation. I have 
 been editing Swift, and correcting the press, at the rate of six 
 sheets a- week. I have been editing Somers at the rate of four 
 ditto ditto. I have written reviews I have written songs = 
 I have made selections I have superintended rehearsals 
 and all this independent of visiting, and of my official duty 
 which occupies me four hours every working day except Mon 
 days and independent of a new poem with which I am 
 threatening the world. This last employment is not the most 
 prudent, but I really cannot well help myself. My office, 
 though a very good one for Scotland, is only held in reversion ; 
 nor do I at present derive a shilling from it. I must expect 
 that a fresh favourite of the public will supersede me, and my 
 philosophy being very great on the point of poetical fame, I 
 would fain, at the risk of hastening my own downfall, avail 
 myself of the favourable moment to make some further provi 
 sion for my little people. Moreover, I cannot otherwise hon 
 estly indulge myself in some of the luxuries which, when long 
 gratified, become a sort of pseudo necessaries. As for the 
 terrible parodies * which have come forth, I can only say with 
 Benedict, A college of such witmongers cannot flout me out 
 of my humour. Had I been conscious of one place about my 
 temper, were it even, metaphorically speaking, the tip of my 
 heel, vulnerable to this sort of aggression, I have that respect 
 for mine own ease, that I would have shunned being a candi 
 
 * I suppose this is an allusion to " The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle," 
 *The Goblin Gnom," and some other productions, like them, long 
 since forgotten. 
 
LETTER TO MR. MORRITT. 97 
 
 date for public applause, as I would avoid snatching a honey 
 comb from among a hive of live bees. My present attempt is 
 a poem, partly Highland the scene Loch Katrine, tempore 
 Jacobi quinti. If I fail, as Lady Macbeth gallantly says, T fail, 
 and there is only a story murdered to no purpose ; and if 1 
 succeed, why then, as the song says 
 
 Up with the bonnie blue bonnet, 
 The dirk and the feather and a . 
 
 " I hope to show this ditty to you soon in Portland Place, for 
 It seems determined I must go to London, though the time is 
 not fixed. The pleasure of meeting you and half a dozen 
 other friends, reconciles me to this change of plan, for had I 
 answered your letter the day I received it, I would have said 
 nothing was less likely than my going to town in spring. I 
 hope it will be so late as to afford me an opportunity of visit 
 ing Rokeby and Greta Side on my return. The felon sow her 
 self could not think of them with more affection than I do ; 
 and though I love Portland Place dearly, yet I would fain 
 enjoy both. But this must be as the Fates and Destinies and 
 Sisters three determine. Charlotte hopes to accompany me, 
 and is particularly gratified by the expectation of meeting Mrs. 
 Morritt. We think of our sunny days at Kokeby with equal 
 delight. 
 
 " Miss Baillie s play went off capitally here, notwithstanding 
 her fond and over-credulous belief in a Creator of the world. 
 The fact is so generally believed that it is man who makes the 
 deity, that I am surprised it has never been maintained as a 
 corollary, that the knife and fork make the fingers. We wept 
 till our hearts were sore, and applauded till our hands were 
 blistered what could we more and this in crowded theatres. 
 
 " I send a copy of the poetical collection, not for you, my 
 good friend, because you would not pay your literary subscrip 
 tion,* but for Mrs. Morritt. I thought of leaving it as I came 
 
 * Scott alludes to some translations of Italian poetry which he had 
 wished for Mr. Morritt s permission to publish in the " English Min 
 strelsy." 
 
98 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 through Yorkshire, but as I can get as yet an office frank, it 
 will be safer in your charge. By a parity of reasoning, you 
 will receive a copy of the new edition of the Minstrelsy just 
 finished, and about to be shipped, enriched with your Curse of 
 Moy, which is very much admired by all to whom I have shown 
 
 it. I am sorry that dear is so far from you. There is 
 
 something about her that makes me think of her with a mix 
 ture of affection and anxiety such a pure and excellen 
 heart, joined to such native and fascinating manners, cannot 
 pass unprotected through your fashionable scenes without 
 much hazard of a twinge at least, if not a stab. I remember 
 we talked over this subject once while riding on the banks of 
 Tees, and somehow (I cannot tell why) it falls like a death-bell 
 on my ear. She is too artless for the people that she has to 
 live amongst. This is all vile croaking, so I will end it by 
 begging ten times love and compliments to Mrs. Morritt, in 
 which Charlotte heartily joins. Believe me ever, Dear Mor 
 ritt, yours most faithfully, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Early in May the Lady of the Lake came out as 
 her two elder sisters had done in all the majesty of 
 quarto, with every accompanying grace of typography, 
 and with, moreover, an engraved frontispiece of Saxon s 
 portrait of Scott ; the price of the book, two guineas. 
 For the copyright the poet had nominally received 2000 
 guineas, but as John Ballantyne and Co. retained three- 
 fourths of the property to themselves (Miller of London 
 purchasing the other fourth), the author s profits were, or 
 should have been, more than this. 
 
 It ought to be mentioned, that during the progress of 
 the poem his feelings towards Constable were so much 
 softened, that he authorized John Ballantyne to ask, in 
 his name, that experienced bookseller s advice respecting 
 the amount of the first impression, the method of adver 
 tising, and other professional details. Mr. Constable 
 
THE LADY OF THE LAKE. 99 
 
 readily gave the assistance thus requested, and would 
 willingly have taken any share they pleased in the ad 
 venture. The property had been disposed of before these 
 communications occurred, and the triumphant success of 
 the coup d essai of the new firm was sufficient to close 
 Scott s ears for a season against any propositions of the 
 like kind from the house at the Cross ; but from this time 
 there was no return of anything like personal ill-will be 
 tween the parties. One article of this correspondence 
 will be sufficient. 
 
 " To Mr. Constable. 
 
 " Castle Street, 13th March 1810. 
 
 " Dear Sir, I am sure if Mr. Hunter is really sorry for the 
 occasion of my long absence from your shop, I shall be happy 
 to forget all disagreeable circumstances, and visit it often as a 
 customer and amateur. I think it necessary to add (before 
 departing from this subject, and I hope for ever), that it is not 
 in my power to restore our relative situation as author and 
 publishers, because, upon the breach between us, a large cap 
 ital was diverted by the Ballantynes from another object, and 
 invested in their present bookselling concern, under an ex 
 press assurance from me of such support as my future publica 
 tions could give them ; which is a pledge not to be withdrawn 
 without grounds which I cannot anticipate. But this is not a 
 consideration which need prevent our being friends and well- 
 wishers. Yours truly, W. SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. Robert Cadell, the publisher of this Memoir, who 
 was then a young man in training for his profession in 
 Edinburgh, retains a strong impression of the interest 
 which the Lady of the Lake excited there for two or 
 three months before it was on the counter. " James Bal- 
 lantyne," he says, "read the cantos from time to time 
 to select coteries, as they advanced at press. Common 
 
100 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 fame was loud in their favour ; a great poem was on all 
 hands anticipated. I do not recollect that any of all the 
 author s works was ever looked for with more intense 
 anxiety, or that any one of them excited a more extraor 
 dinary sensation when it did appear. The whole country 
 rang with the praises of the poet crowds set off to view 
 the scenery of Loch Katrine, till then comparatively un 
 known ; and as the book came out just before the season 
 for excursions, every house and inn in that neighbour 
 hood was crammed with a constant succession of visitors 
 It is a well-ascertained fact, that from the date of the 
 publication of the Lady of the Lake, the post-horse duty 
 in Scotland rose in an extraordinary degree, and indeed 
 it continued to do so regularly for a number of years, the 
 author s succeeding works keeping up the enthusiasm for 
 our scenery which he had thus originally created." 
 
 I owe to the same correspondent the following de 
 tails : " The quarto edition of 2050 copies disappeared 
 instantly, and was followed in the course of the same 
 year by four editions in octavo, viz. one of 3000, a sec 
 ond of 3250, and a third and a fourth each of 6000 
 copies ; thus, in the space of a few months, the extraor 
 dinary number of 20,000 copies were disposed of. In 
 the next year (1811) there was another edition of 3000 ; 
 there was one of 2000 in 1814; another of 2000 in 
 1815 ; one of 2000 again in 1819 ; and two, making be 
 tween them 2500, appeared in 1825 : Since which time 
 the Lady of the Lake, in collective editions of his poetry, 
 an 1 in separate issues, must have circulated to the extent 
 of at least 20,000 copies more." So that, down to the 
 month of July 1836, the legitimate sale in Great Britaiu 
 has been not less than 50,000 copies. 
 
 I have little to add to what the Introduction of 1830 
 
THE LADY OV THE LAKE, 
 
 101 
 
 and seme letters already extracted, have told us concern 
 ing the history of the composition of this poem. Indeed 
 the coincidences of expression and illustration in the In 
 troduction, and those private letters written twenty years 
 before, are remarkable. In both we find him quoting 
 Montrose s lines, and in both he quotes also " Up wi the 
 bonnie blue bonnet," &c. In truth, both letters and In 
 troduction were literal transcripts of his usual conversa 
 tion on the subject. " A lady," he says, " to whom I was 
 nearly related, and with whom I lived during her whole 
 life on the most brotherly terms of affection, was residing 
 with me (at Ashestiel) when the work was in progress, 
 and used to ask me what I could possibly do to rise so 
 early in the morning. At last I told her the subject of 
 my meditations ; and I can never forget the anxiety and 
 affection expressed in her reply. Do not be so rash, 
 she said, my dearest cousin. You are already popular 
 more so perhaps than you yourself will believe, 01 
 than even I or other partial friends can fairly allow to 
 your merit. You stand high ; do not rashly attempt to 
 climb higher and incur the risk of a fall; for, depend 
 upon it, a favourite will not be permitted even to stumble 
 with impunity. I replied to this affectionate expostula 
 tion in the words of Montrose : 
 
 He either fears his fate too much, 
 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 Who dares not put it to the touch, 
 To win or lose it all. 
 
 If I fail, I said for the dialogue is strong in my rec- 
 tllection, ( it is a sign that I ought never to have suc 
 ceeded, and I will write prose for life : you shall see no 
 change in my temper, DOF will I eat a single meal the 
 worse. But if I succeed 
 
103 ,LXFi OF &IR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Up wi the bonnie blue bonnet, 
 The dirk and the feather an a ! 
 
 Afterwards I showed my critic the first canto, which 
 reconciled her to my imprudence." The lady here al 
 luded to was no doubt Miss Christian Rutherford, his 
 mother s sister, who, as I have already mentioned, was so 
 little above his age, that they seem always to have liver 
 together on the terms of equality indicated in her use of 
 the word " cousin " in the dialogue before us. She was, 
 however, about as devout a Shakspearian as her nephew, 
 and the use of cousin, for kinsman in general, is common 
 to all our elder dramatists.* 
 
 He says, in the same essay, " I remember that about 
 the same time a friend started in to heeze up my hope, 
 like the minstrel in the old song. He was bred a farmer, 
 but a man of powerful understanding, natural good taste, 
 and warm poetical feeling, perfectly competent to supply 
 the wants of an imperfect or irregular education. He 
 was a passionate admirer of field sports, which we often 
 pursued together. As this friend happened to dine with 
 me at Ashestiel one day, I took the opportunity of read 
 ing to him the first canto of the Lady of the Lake, in 
 order to ascertain the effect the poem was likely to pro 
 duce upon a person who was but too favourable a rep- 
 lesentative of readers at large. His reception of my 
 recitation, or prelection, was rather singular. He placed 
 4is hand across his brow, and listened with great atten 
 tion through the whole account of the stag-hunt, till the 
 dogs throw themselves into the lake to follow their mas 
 ter, who embarks with Ellen Douglas. He then started 
 up with a sudden exclamation, struck his hand on thfe 
 
 * Thus Lady Capulet exclaims, on seeing the corpse of Tybalt, 
 " Tybalt, my cousin ! my brother s child ! " 
 
THE LADY OF THE LAKE. 103 
 
 table, and declared, in a voice of censure calculated for 
 the occasion, that the dogs must have been totally ruined 
 by being permitted to take the water after such a severe 
 chase. I own I was much encouraged by the species of 
 reverie which had possessed so zealous a follower of the 
 sports of the ancient Nimrod, who had been completely 
 surprised out of all doubts of the reality of the tale." 
 Scott adds " Another of his remarks gave me less 
 pleasure. He detected the identity of the king with the 
 wandering knight, Fitz-James, when he winds his bugle 
 to summon his attendants. He was probably thinking 
 of the lively but somewhat licentious old ballad in which 
 the denouement of a royal intrigue " [one of James V. 
 himself by the way] " takes place as follows : 
 
 He took a bugle from his side, 
 
 He blew both loud and shrill, 
 And four-and-twenty belted knights 
 Came skipping owre the hill. 
 
 * Then he took out a little knife, 
 
 Let a his duddies fa , 
 And he was the bravest gentleman 
 That was amang them a . 
 And we ll go no more a roving, &c. 
 
 This discovery, as Mr. Pepys says of the rent in his 
 camlet cloak, was but a trifle, yet it troubled me ; and 
 T was at a good deal of pains to efface any marks by 
 which I thought my secret could be traced before the 
 conclusion, when I relied on it with the same hope of 
 producing effect with which the Irish postboy is said to 
 reserve a trot for the avenue. " * 
 
 I believe the shrewd critic here introduced was the 
 poet s excellent cousin, Charles Scott, now laird of 
 
 * Introduction to the Lady f the Lake 1830. 
 
l04 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Knowe-south. The storj of the Irish postilion s trot 
 he owed to Mr. Moore. 
 
 In their reception of this poem, the critics were for 
 once in full harmony with each other, and with the popu 
 lar voice. The article in the Quarterly was written by 
 George Ellis ; but its eulogies, though less discriminative, 
 are not a whit more emphatic than those of Mr. Jeffrey 
 In the rival Review. Indeed, I have always considered 
 this last paper as the best specimen of contemporary 
 criticism on Scott s poetry ; and I shall therefore indulge 
 myself with quoting here two of its paragraphs : 
 
 " There is nothing in Mr. Scott of the severe and majestic 
 style of Milton or of the terse and fine composition of Pope 
 or of the elaborate elegance and melody of Campbell or 
 even of the flowing and redundant diction of Southey ; but 
 there is a medley of bright and glowing images, set carelessly 
 and loosely together a diction tinged successively with the 
 careless richness of Shakspeare, the harshness and antique 
 simplicity of the old romances, the homeliness of vulgar bal 
 lads and anecdotes, and the sentimental glitter of the most 
 modern poetry passing from the borders of the ludicrous to 
 those of the sublime alternately minute and energetic 
 sometimes artificial, and frequently negligent, but always full 
 of spirit and vivacity abounding in images that are striking 
 ftt first sight to minds of every contexture and never ex 
 pressing a sentiment which it can cost the most ordinary reader 
 any exertion to comprehend. Upon the whole, we are inclined 
 to think more highly of the Lady of the Lake than of either of 
 its author s former publications. We are more sure, howevei, 
 that it has fewer faults than that it has greater beauties ; and 
 as its beauties bear a strong resemblance to those with which 
 the public has been already made familiar in these celebrated 
 works, we should not be surprised if its popularity were les? 
 splendid and remarkable. For our own parts, however, we 
 are of opinion, that it will be oftener read hereafter than eithei 
 
THE LADY OF THE LAKE. 105 
 
 f them ; and that if it had appeared first in the series, their 
 reception would have been less favourable than that which it 
 has experienced. It is more polished in its diction, and more 
 regular in its versification ; the story is constructed with infi 
 nitely more skill and address ; there is a greater proportion of 
 pleasing and tender passages, with much less antiquarian de 
 tail ; and, upon the whole, a larger variety of characters, more 
 artfully and judiciously contrasted. There is nothing so fine, 
 perhaps, as the battle in Marmion or so picturesque as some 
 of the scattered sketches in the Lay ; but there is a rich 
 ness and a spirit in the whole piece, which does not pervade 
 either of those poems a profusion of incident, and a shift 
 ing brilliancy of colouring, that reminds us of the witchery 
 of Ariosto and a constant elasticity, and occasional energy, 
 which seem to belong more peculiarly to the author now be 
 fore us. 
 
 " It is honourable to Mr. Scott s genius that he has been able 
 to interest the public so deeply with this third presentment of 
 the same chivalrous scenes ; but we cannot help thinking, that 
 both his glory and our gratification would have been greater, 
 if he had changed his hand more completely, and actually 
 given us a true Celtic story, with all its drapery and accom 
 paniments, in a corresponding style of decoration. Such a 
 subject, we are persuaded, has very great capabilities, and only 
 wants to be introduced to public notice by such a hand as Mr. 
 Scott s, to make a still more powerful impression than he has 
 already effected by the resurrection of the tales of romance. 
 There are few persons, we believe, of any degree of poetical 
 susceptibility, who have wandered among the secluded valleys 
 of the Highlands, and contemplated the singular people by 
 whom they are still tenanted with their love of music and of 
 song their hardy and irregular life, so unlike the unvarying 
 toils of the Saxon mechanic their devotion to their chiefs 
 their wild and lofty traditions their national enthusiasm 
 the melancholy grandeur of the scenes they inhabit and the 
 multiplied superstitions which still linger among them with 
 out feeling that there is no existing people so well adapted fat 
 
106 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the purposes of poetry, or so capable of furnishing the occa 
 rions of new and striking inventions. 
 
 " We are persuaded, that if Mr. Scott s powerful and crea 
 tive genius were to be turned in good earnest to such a sub 
 ject, something might be produced still more impressive and 
 original than even this age has yet witnessed."* 
 
 The second of these paragraphs is a strikingly pro 
 phetic one ; and if the details already given negative the 
 prediction of the first, namely, that the immediate 
 popularity of the Lady of the Lake would be less re 
 markable than that of the Lay or Marmion had been 
 its other prediction, that the new poem would be " oftener 
 read hereafter than either of the former," has, I believe, 
 proved just. The Lay, if I may venture to state the 
 creed now established, is, I should say, generally con 
 sidered as the most natural and original, Marmion as the 
 most powerful and splendid, the Lady of the Lake as the 
 most interesting, romantic, picturesque, and graceful of 
 his great poems. 
 
 Of the private opinions expressed at the time of its 
 first publication by his distinguished literary friends, and 
 expressed with an ease and candour equally honourable 
 
 * It may interest the reader to compare with this passage a brief 
 extract from Sir James Mackintosh s Indian Diary of 1811: 
 
 "The subject of the Lady," says he, "is a common Highland 
 irruption, but at a point where the neighbourhood of the Lowlands 
 affords the best contrast of manners Avhere the scenery affords the 
 noblest subject of description and where the wild clan is so near to 
 the Court, that their robberies can be connected with the romantic 
 adventures of a disguised king, an exiled lord, and a high-born beauty. 
 The whole narrative is very fine. There are not so ninny splendid 
 passages for quotation as in the two former poems. This may indeed 
 silence the objections of the critics, but I doubt whether it will pn> 
 mote the popularity of the poem. It has nothing so good as the A<? 
 iress to Scotland, or the Death of Marmion." Life of Mackintosh 
 vol. ii. p. 82. 
 
LETTER TO MR. SOUTHEY. 107 
 
 to them and to him, that of Mr. Sou they was, as far as I 
 know, the only one which called forth anything like a 
 critical reply ; and even here, more suo, he seems glad to 
 turn from his own productions to those of his correspond 
 ent. It will be seen that Mr. Southey had recently put 
 forth the first volume of his History of Brazil ; that his 
 Kehama was then in the Ballantyne press ; and that he. 
 had mentioned to Scott his purpose of writing another 
 poem under the title of " Don Pelayo " which in the 
 issue was exchanged for that of " Roderick the Last of 
 the Goths." 
 
 " To Robert Southey, Esq., Durham. 
 
 " Edinburgh, May 20, 1810. 
 
 " My Dear Southey, I am very sensible of the value of 
 your kind approbation of my efforts, and trust I shall, under 
 such good auspices, keep my ground with the public. I have 
 studied their taste as much as a thing so variable can be cal 
 culated upon, and I hope I have again given them an accep 
 table subject of entertainment. What you say of the songs is 
 very just, and also of the measure. But, on the one hand, I 
 wish to make a difference between my former poems and this 
 new attempt, in the general tenor of versification, and on the 
 other, having an eye to the benefits derivable from the change 
 of stanza, I omitted no opportunity which could be given or 
 taken, of converting my dog-trot into a hop-step-and-jump. I 
 am impatient to see Kehama ; James Ballantyne, who has a 
 good deal of tact, speaks very highly of the poetical fire and 
 beauty which pervades it ; and, considering the success of Sir 
 William Jones, I should think the Hindhu mythology would 
 not revolt the common readers, for in that lies your only 
 ganger. As for Don Pelayo, it should be exquisite under your 
 management: the subject is noble, the parties finely con 
 trasted in manners, dress, religion, and all that the poet desires 
 to bring into action ; and your complete knowledge of everj 
 
108 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 historian who has touched upon the peiiod, promises the reader 
 at once delight and instruction. 
 
 "Twenty times twenty thanks for the History of Brazil, 
 which has been my amusement, and solace, and spring of in 
 struction for this month past. I have always made it my read 
 ing-book after dinner, between the removal of the cloth and 
 our early tea-time. There is only one defect I can point out, 
 and that applies to the publishers I mean the want of a good 
 map. For, to tell you the truth, with my imperfect atlas of 
 South America, I can hardly trace these same Tups of yours 
 (which in our Border dialect signifies rams), with all their 
 divisions and subdivisions, through so many ramifications, with 
 out a carte de pays. The history itself is most singularly enter 
 taining, and throws new light upon a subject which we have 
 hitherto understood very imperfectly. Your labour must have 
 been immense, to judge from the number of curious facts 
 quoted, and unheard-of authorities which you have collected. 
 I have traced the achievements of the Portuguese adventurers 
 with greater interest than I remember to have felt since, when 
 a schoolboy, I first perused the duodecimo collection of Voy 
 ages and Discoveries called the World Displayed a sensation 
 which I thought had been long dead within me ; for, to say the 
 truth, the philanthropic and cautious conduct of modern dis 
 coverers, though far more amiable, is less entertaining than 
 that of the old Buccaneers, and Spaniards, and Portuguese, 
 who went to conquer and achieve adventures, and met with 
 Btrange chances of fate in consequence, which could never 
 have befallen a well-armed boat s crew, not trusting themselves 
 beyond their watering-place, or trading with the natives on the 
 principles of mercantile good faith. 
 
 " I have some thoughts of a journey and voyage to the Heb 
 rides this year, but if I don t make that out, I think I shall 
 make a foray into your northern counties, go to see my friend 
 Morritt at Greta Bridge, and certainly cast myself Keswick- 
 ways either going or coming. I have some literary projects 
 to talk over with you, for the re-editing some of our ancient 
 elassical romances and poetry, and ^o forth. I have great com- 
 
LETTER TO MR. SOUTHEY. 109 
 
 mand of our friends the Ballantynes, and I think, so far as the 
 filthy lucre of gain is concerned, I could make a very advan 
 tageous bargain for the time which must necessarily be be 
 stowed in such a labour, besides doing an agreeable thing for 
 ourselves, and a useful service to literature. What is be 
 come of Coleridge s Friend? I hope he had a letter from 
 me, enclosing my trifling subscription. How does our friend, 
 Wordsworth ? I won t write to him, because he hates letter- 
 writing as much as I do ; but I often think on him, and al 
 ways with affection. If you make any stay at Durham let 
 me know, as I wish you to know my friend Surtees of Mains- 
 forth.* He is an excellent antiquary, some of the rust of 
 which study has clung to his manners ; but he is good-hearted, 
 and you would make the summer eve (for so by the courtesy of 
 the kalendar we must call these abominable easterly blighting 
 afternoons) short between you. I presume you are with my 
 friend Dr. Southey, who, I hope, has not quite forgotten me, 
 in which faith I beg kind compliments to him, and am ever 
 yours most truly, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 George Ellis having undertaken, at Gifford s request, 
 to review the Lady of the Lake, does not appear to have 
 addressed any letter to the poet upon the subject, until 
 after his article had appeared. He then says simply, 
 that he had therein expressed his candid sentiments, and 
 hoped his friend, as great a worshipper as himself of Dry- 
 den s tales, would take in good part his remarks on the 
 octosyllabic metre as applied to serious continued narra 
 tive. The following was Scott s reply : 
 
 * This amiable gentleman, author of the History of Durham, in 
 three volumes folio, one of the most learned as well as interesting 
 works of its class, was an early and dear friend of Scott s. He died 
 at the family seat of Mainsforth, near Durham, llth February 1834, in 
 his 55th year. A club has since been instituted for the publication of 
 .indent documents, &c., connected with the history of the English 
 Border and called in honour of his memory, The Surtees Club. * 
 
110 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " To G. Ellis, Esq. 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, I have been scandalously lazy in answer 
 ing your kind epistle, received I don t know how long since , 
 but then I had been long your creditor, and I fancy corre 
 spondents, like merchants, are often glad to plead their friends 
 neglect of their accompt-current as an apology for their own, 
 espacially when they know that the value of the payments 
 being adjusted, must leave a sad balance against them. I 
 have run up an attempt on the Curse of Kehama for the Quar 
 terly; a strange thing it is the Curse, I mean and the 
 critique is not, as the blackguards say, worth a damn; but 
 what I could I did, which was to throw as much weight as pos 
 sible upon the beautiful passages, of which there are many, 
 and to slur over the absurdities, of which there are not a few. 
 Jt is infinite pity of Southey, with genius almost to exuber 
 ance, so much learning and real good feeling of poetry, that, 
 with the true obstinacy of a foolish papa, he will be most at 
 tached to the defects of his poetical offspring. This said Ke 
 hama affords cruel openings for the quizzers, and I suppose will 
 get it roundly in the Edinburgh Review. I could have made 
 a very different hand of it indeed, had the order of the day 
 been pour dechirer.* 
 
 " I told you how much I was delighted with your critique on 
 the Lady ; but, very likely moved by the same feeling for 
 which I have just censured Southey, I am still inclined to de 
 fend the eight-syllable stanza, which I have somehow persuaded 
 myself is more congenial to the English language more fa 
 vourable to narrative poetry at least than that which has 
 oeen commonly termed heroic verse. If you will take the 
 trouble to read a page of Pope s Iliad, you will probably find a 
 good many lines out of which two syllables may be struck with 
 out injury to the sense. The first lines of this translation have 
 been repeatedly noticed as capable of being cut down from 
 
 * See this article in his Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xvii. pp. 301- 
 337, (Edin. Ed.) 
 
LETTER TO ELLIS. Ill 
 
 ships of the line into frigates, by striking out the said two-syl 
 labled words, as 
 
 Achilles wrath to Greece, the direful spring 
 Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing, 
 That wrath which sent to Pluto s gloomy reign 
 The souls of mighty chiefs in battle slain, 
 Whose bones unburied on the desert shore, 
 Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore. 
 
 " Now, since it is true that by throwing out the epithets un 
 derscored, we preserve the sense without diminishing the force 
 of the verses and since it is also true that scarcely one of 
 the epithets are more than merely expletive I do really 
 think that the structure of verse which requires least of this 
 sort of bolstering, is most likely to be forcible and animated. 
 The case is different in descriptive poetry, because there epi 
 thets, if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after 
 than avoided, and admit of being varied ad infinltum. But if 
 in narrative you are frequently compelled to tag your substan 
 tives with adjectives, it must frequently happen that you are 
 forced upon those that are merely commonplaces, such as 
 heavenly goddess, desert shore, and so forth ; and I need not 
 tell you, that whenever any syllable is obviously inserted for 
 the completion of a couplet, the reader is disposed to quarrel 
 with it. Besides, the eight-syllable stanza is capable of cer 
 tain varieties denied to the heroic. Double rhymes, for in 
 stance, are congenial to it, which often give a sort of Gothic 
 richness to its cadences ; you may also render it more or less 
 rapid by retaining or dropping an occasional syllable. Lastly, 
 and which I think its principal merit, it runs better into sen 
 tences than any length of line I know, as it corresponds, upon 
 an average view of our punctuation, very commonly with the 
 proper and usual space between comma and comma. Lastly 
 the Second, and which o jght perhaps to have been said first, 
 I think I have somehow a better knack at this false gallop 
 of verse, as Touchstone calls it, than at your more legitimate 
 hexameters ; and so there is the short and long of my longa 
 and shorts Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 VOL. III. 8 
 
112 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Mr. Ellis recurs to the octosyllabic measure of the 
 Lady of the Lake in his next letter. " I don t think," 
 says he, " after all the eloquence with which you plead 
 for your favourite metre, that you really like it from any 
 other motive than that sainte paresse that delightful 
 indolence which induces one to delight in doing those 
 things which we can do with the least fatigue. If you 
 will take the trouble of converting Dryden s Theodore 
 and Honoria (a narrative, is it not?) into Hudibrastic 
 measure, and after trying this on the first twenty lines 
 you feel pleased with the transformation, I will give up 
 the argument ; although, in point of fact, I believe that 
 I regret the variety of your own old stanza, much more 
 than the absence of that heroic measure, which you justly 
 remark is not, without great difficulty, capable of being 
 moulded into sentences of various lengths. "When, there 
 fore, you give us another poem, pray indulge me with 
 rather a larger share of your ancient dithyrambics." 
 
 Canning, too, came to the side of Ellis in this debate. 
 After telling Scott, that " on a repeated perusal " he had 
 been " more and more delighted " with the Lady of the 
 Lake, he says " But I should like to see something a 
 little different when you write next. In short, I have 
 sometimes thought (very presumptuously) that partly by 
 persuasion, and partly by showing the effect of a change 
 of dress of a fuller and more sweeping style upon 
 some of your favourite passages, I could induce you to 
 present yourself next time in a Drydenic habit. Has 
 this ever occurred to you, and have you tried it, and not 
 liked yourself so well ? " We shall see by and by what 
 Attention Scott gave to these friendly suggestions. 
 
 Of the success of the new poem he speaks as follows 
 in his Introduction of 1830: "It was certainly s# 
 
THE LADY OF THE LAKE. 113 
 
 extraordinary as to induce me for the moment to con 
 clude that I had at last fixed a nail in the proverbially 
 inconstant wheel of Fortune. I had attained, perhaps, 
 that degree of public reputation at which prudence, or 
 certainly timidity, would have made a halt, and discon 
 tinued efforts by which I was far more likely to diminish 
 my fame than to increase it. But as the celebrated 
 John Wilkes is said to have explained to King George 
 the Third that he himself, amid his full tide of popu 
 larity, was never a Wilkite so I can with honest truth 
 exculpate myself from having been at any time a partisan 
 of my own poetry, even when it was in the highest fash 
 ion with the million. It must not be supposed that I was 
 either so ungrateful, or so superabundantly candid, as to 
 despise or scorn the value of those whose voice had ele 
 vated me so much higher than my own opinion told me I 
 deserved. I felt, on the contrary, the more grateful to the 
 public, as receiving that from partiality which I could 
 not have claimed from merit : and I endeavoured to de 
 serve the partiality by continuing such exertions as I was 
 capable of for their amusement." 
 
 James Ballantyne has preserved in his Memorandum 
 an anecdote strikingly confirmative of the most remark 
 able statement in this page of Scott s confessions. "I 
 remember," he says, " going into his library shortly after 
 the publication of the Lady of the Lake, and finding Miss 
 Scott (who was then a very young girl) there by herself. 
 I asked her l Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like the 
 Lady of the Lake ? Her answer was given with perfect 
 simplicity Oh, I have not read it ; papa says there s 
 nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry. * * 
 
 In fact, his children in those days had no idea of the 
 source of his distinction or rather, indeed, that hia 
 
114 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 position was in any respect different from that of other 
 Advocates, Sheriffs, and Clerks of Session. The eldest 
 boy came home one afternoon about this time from the 
 High School, with tears and blood hardened together 
 upon his cheeks. " Well, Wat," said his father, " what 
 have you been fighting about to-day ? " With that the 
 boy blushed and hung his head, and at last stammered 
 out that " he had been called a lassie! " Indeed ! " 
 said Mrs. Scott, " this was a terrible mischief to be sure." 
 " You may say what you please, mamma," Wat answered 
 roughly, " but I dinna think there s a waufer (shabbier) 
 thing in the world than to be a lassie, to sit boring at a 
 clout." Upon further inquiry it turned out that one or 
 two of his companions had dubbed him The Lady of the 
 Lake, and the phrase was to him incomprehensible, save 
 as conveying some imputation on his prowess, which he 
 accordingly vindicated in the usual style of the Yards. 
 Of the poem he had never before heard. Shortly after, 
 this story having got wind, one of Scott s colleagues of 
 the Clerks Table said to the boy " Gilnockie, my man, 
 you cannot surely help seeing that great people make 
 more work about your papa than they do about me or 
 any other of your uncles what is it, do you suppose, 
 that occasions this ? " The little fellow pondered for a 
 minute or two, and then answered very gravely " It s 
 commonly him that sees the hare sitting." And yet this 
 was the man that had his children all along so very mush 
 with him. In truth, however, young Walter had guessed 
 pretty shrewdly in the matter, for his father had all the 
 tact of the Sutherland Highlander, whose detection of an 
 Irish rebel up to the neck in a bog, he has commemorated 
 in a note upon Rokeby. Like him, he was quick to catch 
 the sparkle of the future victim s eye ; and often said jest- 
 
JAMES BALLANTYNE S MEMORANDA. 115 
 
 mgly of himself, that whatever might be thought of him 
 as a maker (poet), he was an excellent trouveur. 
 
 Ballantyne adds : " One day about this same time, 
 when his fame was supposed to have reached its acme, I 
 said to him Will you excuse me, Mr. Scott, but I 
 should like to ask you what you think of your own genius 
 as a poet, in comparison with that of Burns ? He re 
 plied There is no comparison whatever we ought 
 not to be named in the same day/ < Indeed ! I an 
 swered, would you compare Campbell to Burns ? No, 
 James, not at all If you wish to speak of a real poet, 
 Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our country/ 
 But, in fact," (continues Ballantyne) " he had often 
 said to me that neither his own nor any modern popular 
 style of composition was that from which he derived most 
 pleasure. I asked him what it was. He answered 
 Johnson s ; and that he had more pleasure in reading 
 London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes, than any 
 other poetical composition he could mention ; and I think 
 I never saw his countenance more indicative of high ad 
 miration than while reciting aloud from those produc 
 tions." 
 
 In his sketch of Johnson s Life, Scott says " The 
 deep and pathetic morality of The Vanity of Human 
 Wishes, has often extracted tears from those whose eyes 
 wander dry over pages professedly sentimental." * And 
 Lord Byron, in his Ravenna Diary, f has the following 
 entry on the same subject : " Read Johnson s Vanity 
 of Human Wishes, all the examples and mode of giv 
 ing them sublime, as well as the latter part, with the ex- 
 
 * Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 264, 1834; vol. i. part 3d 
 841, (Edin. Ed.) 
 t Life and Works, vol. v. p. 66, (Edin. Ed.) 
 
116 JLIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ception of an occasional couplet. Tis a grand poem 
 and so true ! true as the 10th of Juvenal himself. The 
 lapse of ages changes all things time language 
 the earth the bounds of the sea the stars of the sky, 
 and everything about, around, and underneath man, 
 except man himself, who has always been, and always 
 will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives 
 conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but 
 to disappointment." 
 
 The last line of MS. that Scott sent to the press was a 
 quotation from the " Vanity of Human Wishes." Yet it 
 is the cant of our day above all, of its poetasters, that 
 Johnson was no poet To be sure, they say the same of 
 Pope and hint it occasionally even of Dryden. 
 
THE HEBRIDES 
 
 1810. Il7 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 First Visit to the Hebrides Staffa Skye Mull lona, 
 fyc. The Lord of the Isles projected Letters to Joanna 
 Baillie, Southey, and Morritt. 
 
 1810. 
 
 WALTER SCOTT was at this epoch in the highest spir 
 its, and having strong reasons of various kinds for his 
 resolution to avail himself of the gale of favour, only 
 hesitated in which quarter to explore the materials of 
 some new romance. His first and most earnest desire 
 was to spend a few months with the British army in the 
 Peninsula, but this he soon resigned, from an amiable 
 motive, which a letter presently to be quoted will ex 
 plain. He then thought of revisiting Rokeby for he 
 had from the first day that he spent on that magnificent 
 domain, contemplated it as the scenery of a future poem. 
 But the burst of enthusiasm which followed the appear 
 ance of the Lady of the Lake finally swayed him to un 
 dertake a journey, deeper than he had as yet gone, into 
 the Highlands, and a warm invitation from the Laird of 
 Staffa,* a brother of his friend and colleague Mr. Mac- 
 donald Buchanan, easily induced him to add a voyage to 
 
 * The reader will find a warm tribute to Staffa s character as a 
 Highland landlord, in Scott s article on Sir John Carr s Caledonian 
 Sketches, (Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xix.); and some spirited 
 verses, written at his mansion of Ulva, in Scott s Poetical Works^ edi< 
 tion 1834, vol. x. p. 356; 1841, p. 641. 
 
118 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the Hebrides. He was accompanied by part of his family 
 (not forgetting his dog Wallace), and by several friends 
 besides ; among others his relation Mrs. Apreece (now 
 Lady Davy), who had been, as he says in one of his let 
 ters, " a lioness of the first magnitude in Edinburgh," 
 during the preceding winter. He travelled slowly with 
 his own horses, through Argyleshire, as far as Oban ; but 
 indeed, even where post-horses might have been had, this 
 was the mode he always preferred in these family excur 
 sions, for he delighted in the liberty it afforded him of 
 alighting and lingering as often and as long as he chose : 
 and, in truth, he often performed the far greater part of 
 the day s journey on foot examining the map in the 
 morning so as to make himself master of the bearings 
 and following his own fancy over some old disused riding 
 track, or along the margin of a stream, while the carriage, 
 with its female occupants, adhered to the proper road. 
 At Oban, where they took to the sea, Mrs. Apreece met 
 him by appointment. 
 
 He seems to have kept no journal during this expedi 
 tion ; but I shall string together some letters which, with 
 the notes that he contributed many years afterwards to 
 Mr. Croker s Edition of Boswell, may furnish a tolerable 
 sketch of the insular part of his progress, and of the feel 
 ings with which he first inspected the localities of his last 
 great poem The Lord of the Isles. The first of these 
 letters is dated from the Hebridean residence of the 
 young Laird of Staffa.* 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie. 
 
 " Ulva House, July 1&, 1810. 
 "I cannot, my dear Miss Baillie, resist the temptation of 
 
 * Sir Reginald Macdonald Steuart Seton, of Staffa, Allantou, ano 
 Touch, Baronet, died on the 15th of April 1838, in his 61st year. 
 
THE HEBRIDES 1810. 119 
 
 writing to you from scenes which you have rendered classical 
 ;\s well as immortal. We which in the present case means 
 my wife, my eldest girl, and myself are thus far in fortunate 
 accomplishment of a pilgrimage to the Hebrides. The day 
 before yesterday we passed the Lady s Rock, in the Sound of 
 Mull, so near that I could almost have touched it. This is, 
 you know, the Rock of your Family Legend. The boat, by 
 my desire, went as near as prudence permitted ; and I wished 
 to have picked a relic from it, were it but a cockle-shell or a 
 mussel, to have sent to you; but a spring-tide was running 
 with such force and velocity as to make the thing impossible. 
 About two miles farther, we passed under the Castle of Duart, 
 the seat of Maclean, consisting of one huge (indeed immense) 
 square tower, in ruins, and additional turrets and castellated 
 buildings (the work, doubtless, of Benlora s guardianship), on 
 which the roof still moulders. It overhangs the strait channel 
 from a lofty rock, without a single tree in the vicinity, and is 
 surrounded by high and barren mountains, forming altogether 
 as wild and dreary a scene as I ever beheld. Duart is con 
 fronted by the opposite castles of Dunstaffnage, Dunolly, Ard- 
 tornish, and others, all once the abodes of grim feudal chiefs, 
 who warred incessantly with each other. I think I counted 
 seven of these fortresses in sight at once, and heard seven 
 times seven legends of war and wonder connected with them. 
 We landed late, wet and cold, on the Island of Mull, near an 
 other old castle called Aros, separated, too, from our clothes, 
 which were in a large wherry, which could not keep pace with 
 our row-boat. Mr. Macdonald of Staffa, my kind friend and 
 guide, had sent his piper (a constant attendant, mark that !) 
 to rouse a Highland gentleman s family in the neighbourhood, 
 where we were received with a profusion of kindness and hos 
 pitality. Why should I appal you with a description of our 
 difficulties and distresses how Charlotte lost her shoes, and 
 little Sophia her whole collection of pebbles how I was di 
 vorced from my razors, and the whole party looked like a 
 Jewish sanhedrim ! By this time we were accumulated as 
 follows: Sir George Paul, the great philanthropist, Mrs. 
 
120 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Apreece, a distant relation of mine, Hannah Mackenzie, a 
 daughter of our friend Henry, and Mackinnon of Mackinnon, 
 a young gentleman born and bred in England, but neverthe 
 less a Highland chief.* It seems his father had acquired wealth, 
 and this young man, who now visits the Highlands for the first 
 time, is anxious to buy back some of the family property, which 
 was sold long since. Some twenty Mackinnons, who happened 
 to live within hearing of our arrival (that is, I suppose, within 
 ten miles of Aros), came posting to see their young chief, who 
 behaved with great kindness, and propriety, and liberality. 
 Next day we rode across the isle on Highland ponies, attended 
 by a numerous retinue of gillies, and arrived at the head of 
 the salt-water loch called Loch-an-Gaoil, where Staffa s boats 
 awaited us with colours flying and pipes playing. We pro 
 ceeded in state to this lonely isle, where our honoured lord has 
 a very comfortable residence, and were received by a discharge 
 of swivels and musketry from his people. 
 
 " Yesterday we visited Staffa and lona : The former is one 
 of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, 
 in my mind, every description I had heard of it ; or rather, 
 the appearance of the cavern, composed entirely of basaltic 
 pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral,f and running deep 
 
 * William Alexander Mackinnon, Esq., now member of Parliameq 4 
 for Lymington, Hants. 
 
 f " that wondrous dome, 
 
 Where, as to shame the temples deck d 
 By skill of earthly architect, 
 Nature herself, it seem d, would raise 
 A minster to her Maker s praise ! 
 Not for a meaner use ascend 
 Her columns, or her arches bend ; 
 Nor of a theme less solemn tells 
 That mighty surge that ebbs and swells, 
 And still, between each awful pause 
 From the high vault an answer draws, 
 In varied tone prolonged and high, 
 That mocks the organ s melody. 
 Nor doth its entrance front in vain 
 
STAFFA 1810. 121 
 
 into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and 
 paved as it were with ruddy marble, baffles all description. 
 You can walk along the broken pillars, with some difficulty, 
 and in some places with a little danger, as far as the farthest 
 extremity. Boats also can come in below when the sea is 
 placid, which is seldom the case. I had become a sort of 
 favourite with the Hebridean boatmen, I suppose from my 
 anxiety about their old customs, and they were much pleased 
 to see me get over the obstacles which stopped some of the 
 party. So they took the whim of solemnly christening a great 
 stone seat at the mouth of the cavern, Clachan-an-Bairdh, or 
 the Poet s Stone. It was consecrated with a pibroch, which 
 the echoes rendered tremendous, and a glass of whiskey, not 
 poured forth in the ancient mode of libation, but turned over 
 the throats of the assistants. The head boatman, whose father 
 had been himself a bard, made me a speech on the occasion ; 
 but as it was in Gaelic, I could only receive it as a silly beauty 
 does a fine-spun compliment bow, and say nothing. 
 
 " When this fun was over (in which, strange as it may seem, 
 the men were quite serious), we went to lona, where there 
 are some ancient and curious monuments. From this remote 
 island the light of Christianity shone forth on Scotland and 
 Ireland. The ruins are of a rude architecture, but curious to 
 the antiquary. Our return was less comfortable ; we had to 
 row twenty miles against an Atlantic tide and some wind, 
 besides the pleasure of seeing occasional squalls gathering to 
 windward. The ladies were sick, especially poor Hannah 
 Mackenzie, and none of the gentlemen escaped except Staffa 
 and myself. The men, however, cheered by the pipes, and by 
 their own interesting boat-songs, which were uncommonly wild 
 and beautiful, one man leading and the others answering in 
 
 To old lona s holy fane, 
 That Nature s voice might seem to say, 
 1 Well hast thou lone, frail Child of clay! 
 Thy humble powers that stately shrine 
 Task d high and hard but witness mine 1 " 
 
 Lord of the Isles, Canto iv. St. 10, 
 
122 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 chorus, kept pulling away without apparently the least sense 
 of fatigue, and we reached Ulva at ten at night, tolerably wet, 
 and well disposed for bed. 
 
 " Our friend Staffa is himself an excellent specimen of High- 
 land chieftainship ; he is a cadet of Clanronald, and lord of a 
 cluster of isles on the western side of Mull, and a large estate 
 (in extent at least) on that island. By dint of minute atten 
 tion to this property, and particularly to the management of 
 his kelp, he has at once trebled his income and doubled his 
 population, while emigration is going on all around him. But 
 he is very attentive to his people, who are distractedly fond of 
 him, and he has them under such regulations as conduce both to 
 his own benefit and their profit ; and keeps a certain sort of 
 rude state and hospitality, in which they can take much pride. 
 [ am quite satisfied that nothing under the personal attention 
 of the landlord himself will satisfy a Highland tenantry, and 
 that the substitution of factors, which is now becoming general, 
 is one great cause of emigration. This mode of life has, how 
 ever, its evils ; and I can see them in this excellent man. The 
 habit of solitary power is dangerous even to the best regulated 
 minds, and this ardent and enthusiastic young man has not 
 escaped the prejudices incident to his situation. But I think I 
 have bestowed enough of my tediousness upon you. To bal 
 last my letter, I put in one of the hallowed green pebbles from 
 the shore of St. Columba put it into your work-basket until 
 we meet, when you will give me some account of its virtues. 
 Don t suppose the lapidaries can give you any information 
 about, it, for in their profane eyes it is good for nothing. But 
 the piper is sounding to breakfast, so no more (excepting love 
 to Miss Agnes, Dr. and Mrs. Baillie), from your truly affec 
 tionate WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " P. S. I am told by the learned, the pebble will wear its 
 way out of the letter, so I will keep it till I get to Edinburgh. 
 I must not omit to mention, that all through these islands I 
 have found every person familiarly acquainted with the Family 
 Legend, and great admirers." 
 
INCHKENNETH. 123 
 
 It would be idle to extract many of Scott s notes on 
 Boswell s Hebridean Journal; but the following speci 
 mens appear too characteristic to be omitted. Of the 
 island Inchkenneth, where Johnson was received by the 
 head of the clan Maclean, he says 
 
 " Inchkenneth is a most beautiful little islet of the most ver 
 dant green, while all the neighbouring shore of Greban, as well 
 as the large islands of Colonsay and Ulva, are as black as 
 heath and moss can make them. But Ulva has a good anchor 
 age, and Inchkenneth is surrounded by shoals. It is now un 
 inhabited. The ruins of the huts, in which Dr. Johnson was 
 received by Sir Allan M Lean, were still to be seen, and some 
 tatters of the paper hangings were to be seen on the walls. 
 Sir George Onesiphorus Paul was at Inchkenneth with the 
 same party of which I was a member. He seemed to me to 
 suspect many of the Highland tales which he heard, but he 
 showed most incredulity on the subject of Johnson s having 
 been entertained in the wretched huts of which we saw the 
 ruins. He took me aside, and conjured me to tell him the 
 truth of the matter. This Sir Allan/ said he, was he a 
 regular baronet, or was his title such a traditional one as you 
 find in Ireland ? I assured my excellent acquaintance, that, 
 for my own part, I would have paid more respect to a Knight 
 of Kerry, or Knight of Glynn yet Sir Allan M Lean was a 
 regular baronet by patent ; and, having given him this infor 
 mation, I took the liberty of asking him, in return, whether he 
 would not in conscience prefer the worst cell in the jail at 
 Gloucester (which he had been very active in overlooking 
 while the building was going on) to those exposed hovels where 
 Johnson had been entertained by rank and beauty. He looked 
 round the little islet, and allowed Sir Allan had some advan 
 tage in exercising ground ; but in other respects he thought 
 the compulsory tenants of Gloucester had greatly the advan 
 tage. Such was his opinion of a place, concerning which 
 Johnson has recorded that it wanted little which palaces 
 could afford. 
 
124 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Sir Allan M Lean, like many Highland chiefs, was embar 
 rassed in his private affairs, and exposed to unpleasant solici 
 tations from attorneys, called, in Scotland, Writers (which, 
 indeed, was the chief motive of his retiring to Inchkenneth)- 
 Upon one occasion he made a visit to a friend, then residing at 
 Carron Lodge, on the banks of the Carron, where the banks 
 of that river are studded with pretty villas. Sir Allan, admir 
 ing the landscape, asked his friend whom that handsome seat 
 
 belonged to. M , the Writer to the Signet, was the reply. 
 
 Umph ! said Sir Allan, but not with an accent of assent, I 
 mean that other house. Oh ! that belongs to a very honest 
 
 fellow, Jamie , also a Writer to the Signet. Umph ! 
 
 said the Highland chief of M Lean, with more emphasis than 
 before. And yon smaller house? That belongs to a 
 Stirling man ; I forget his name, but I am sure he is a writer 
 
 too ; for Sir Allan, who had recoiled a quarter of a circle 
 
 backward at every response, now wheeled the circle entire, 
 and turned his back on the landscape, saying, My good friend, 
 I must own you have a pretty situation here, but d n your 
 neighbourhood. " 
 
 The following notices of Boswell himself, and his 
 father, Lord Auchinleck, may be taken as literal tran 
 scripts from Scott s Table-Talk: 
 
 " Boswell himself was callous to the contacts of Dr. John- 
 eon, and when telling them, always reminds one of a jockey 
 receiving a kick from the horse which he is showing off to a 
 customer, and is grinning with pain while he is trying to cry 
 out, * Pretty rogue no vice all fun. To him Johnson s 
 rudeness was only pretty Fanny s way. Dr. Robertson had a 
 sense of good breeding, which inclined him rather to forego 
 the benefit of Johnson s conversation than awaken his rude 
 ness 
 
 ; Old Lord Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, 
 after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own ad 
 vantages as a man of good estate and ancient family ; and. 
 
BOSWELL AUCHINLECK. 1 25 
 
 Moreover, he was a strict Presbyterian and Whig of the old 
 Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud 
 aristocrat ; and great was the contempt he entertained and 
 expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendship, 
 and the character of the personages of whom he was engoue 
 one after another. There s nae hope for Jamie, mon, he said 
 to a friend. Jamie is gane clean gyte. What do you think, 
 mon ? He s done wi Paoli he s off wi the land-louping 
 scoundrel of a Corsican ; and whose tail do you think he has 
 pinned himself to now, mon ? Here the old Judge summoned 
 up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. A dominie, mon an 
 auld dominie ! he keeped a schule, and caud it an acaadamy? 
 Probably if this had been reported to Johnson, he would have 
 felt it most galling, for he never much liked to think of that 
 period of his life ; it would have aggravated his dislike of Lord 
 Auchinleck s Whiggery and Presbyterianism. These the old 
 Lord carried to such an unusual height, that once, when a 
 country man came in to state some justice business, and being 
 required to make his oath, declined to do so before his Lord- 
 ihip, because he was not a covenanted magistrate Is that 
 a your objection, mon ? said the Judge ; come your ways in 
 here, and we ll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant 
 together. The oath was accordingly agreed and sworn to by 
 Doth, and I dare say it was the last time it ever received such 
 homage. It may be surmised how far Lord Auchinleck, such 
 as he is here described, was likely to suit a high Tory and 
 Episcopalian like Johnson. As they approached Auchinleck, 
 Boswell conjured Johnson by all the ties of regard, and in 
 requital of the services he had rendered him upon his tour, 
 that he would spare two subjects in tenderness to his father s 
 prejudices $ the first related to Sir John Pringle, President of 
 the Royal Society, about whom there was then some dispute 
 surrent ; the second concerned the general question of Whig 
 uid Tory. Sir John Pringle, as Boswell says, escaped, but 
 the controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with 
 great fury, and ended in Johnson s pressing upon the old 
 Judge the question, what good Cromwell, of whom he had said 
 
126 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Bomething derogatory, had ever done to his country ? when, 
 after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out, 
 God ! doctor, he gart kings ken that they had a liih in their 
 neck he taught kings they had a joint in their necks. Jamie 
 then set to mediating between his father and the philosopher, 
 and availing himself of the Judge s sense of hospitality, which 
 was punctilious, reduced the debate to more order." 
 
 The following letter, dated Ashestiel, August 9, ap 
 pears to have been written immediately on Scott s return, 
 from this expedition : 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., RoTceby Park. 
 
 " My Dear Morritt, Your letter reached me in the very 
 centre of the Isle of Mull, from which circumstance you will 
 perceive how vain it was for me even to attempt availing my< 
 self of your kind invitation to Rokeby, which would otherwise 
 have given us so much pleasure. We deeply regretted the 
 absence of our kind and accomplished friends, the Clephanes, 
 yet, entre nous, as we were upon a visit to a family of the Cap- 
 ulets, I do not know but we may pay our respects to them 
 more pleasantly at another time. There subsist some aching 
 scars of the old wounds which were in former times inflicted 
 upon each other by the rival tribes of M Lean and Macdonald, 
 c.nd my very good friends the Laird of Staffa and Mrs. M Lean 
 Clephane are both too true Highlanders to be without the 
 characteristic prejudices of their clans, which, in their case, 
 divide two highly-accomplished and most estimable families, 
 living almost within sight of each other, and on an island 
 where polished conversation cannot be supposed to abound. 
 
 " I was delighted, on the whole, with my excursion. The 
 weather was most excellent during the whole time of our wan 
 derings ; and I need not tell you of Highland hospitality. 
 Fhe cavern at Staffa, and indeed the island itself, dont ov 
 parle en histoire, is one of the few lions which completely 
 maintain an extended reputation. I do not know whether its 
 extreme resemblance to a work of art, from the perfect regu- 
 
THE HEBRIDES 1810. 127 
 
 larity of the columns, or the grandeur of its dimensions, far 
 exceeding the works of human industry, joined to a certain 
 ruggedness and magnificent irregularity, by which nature vin 
 dicates her handiwork, are most forcibly impressed upon my 
 memory. We also saw the far-famed Island of Columba, 
 where there are many monuments of singular curiosity, forming 
 a strange contrast to the squalid and dejected poverty of the 
 present inhabitants of the isle. We accomplished both these 
 objects in one day, but our return, though we had no alarms 
 to boast of, was fatiguing to the ladies, and the sea not afford 
 ing us quite such a smooth passage as we had upon the Thames 
 (that morning we heard the voice of Lysons setting forth the 
 contents of the records in the White Tower), did, as one may 
 say, excite a combustion in the stomachs of some of our party. 
 Mine being a staunch anti-revolutionist, was no otherwise 
 troublesome than by demanding frequent supplies of cold beef 
 and biscuit. Mrs. Apreece was of our party. Also 
 
 4 Sir George Paul, for prison-house renowned, 
 A wandering knight, on high adventures bound. 
 
 We left this celebrated philanthropist in a plight not unlike 
 some of the misadventures of Him of the sorrowful figure. 
 The worthy baronet was mounted on a quadruped, which the 
 owners called a pony, with his woful valet on another, and 
 travelling slowly along the coast of Mull, in order to detect 
 the point which approached nearest to the continent, protest 
 ing he would not again put foot in a boat till he had discovered 
 the shortest possible traject. Our separation reminded me of 
 the disastrous incident in Byron s Shipwreck, when they were 
 forced to abandon two of their crew on an unknown coast, and 
 beheld them at a distance commencing their solitary peregri 
 nation along the cliffs. WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The lona pebble, mentioned in Scott s letter from 
 Ulva, being set in a brooch of the form of a harp, was 
 sent to Joanna Baillie some months later ; but it may be 
 as well to insert here the letter whic ii accompanied it. 
 
128 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The young friend, to whose return from a trip to the seat 
 of war in the Peninsula it alludes, was John Miller, Esq., 
 then practising at the Scotch Bar, but now an eminent 
 King s counsel of Lincoln s Inn. 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead. 
 
 "Edinburgh, No,r. 23, ]SiO. 
 
 " I should not have been so long your debtor, my dear IVLss 
 Baillie, for your kind and valued letter, had not the false 
 knave, at whose magic touch the lona pebbles were to assume 
 a shape in some degree appropriate to the person to whom 
 they are destined, delayed finishing his task. I hope you will 
 Bet some value upon this little trumpery brooch, because it is 
 a harp, and a Scotch harp, and set with lona stones. This 
 last circumstance is more valuable, if ancient tales be true, 
 than can be ascertained from the reports of dull modern lapi 
 daries. These green stones, blessed of St. Columba, have a 
 virtue, saith old Martin, to gratify each of them a single wish 
 of the wearer. I believe, that which is most frequently formed 
 by those who gather them upon the shores of the Saint, is for 
 a fair wind to transport them from his domains. Now, after 
 this, you must suppose everything respecting this said harp 
 sacred and hallowed. The very inscription is, you will please 
 to observe, in the ancient Celtic language and character, and 
 has a very talismanic look. I hope that upon you it will have 
 the effect of a conjuration, for the words Buail a n Tend sig 
 nify Strike the String ; and thus having, like the pedlars who 
 deal in like matters of value, exhausted all my eloquence in 
 setting forth the excellent outward qualities and mysterious 
 virtues of my little keepsake, I have only to add, in homely 
 phrase, God give you joy to wear it. I am delighted with the 
 account of your brother s silvan empire in Glo stershire. The 
 planting and cultivation of trees always seemed to me the most 
 interesting occupation of the country. I cannot enter into the 
 spirit of common vulgar farming, though I am doomed to carry 
 on, in a small extent, that losing trade. It never occurred tf 
 
LETTER TO MISS BAILL1E. 129 
 
 me to be a bit more happy because my turnips were better 
 than my neighbours ; and as for grieving my shearers, as we 
 very emphatically term it in Scotland, I am always too happy 
 to get out of the way, that I may hear them laughing at a dis 
 tance when on the harvest rigor. 
 
 00 
 
 So every servant takes his course, 
 And bad at first, they all grow worse 
 
 I mean for the purposes of agriculture, for my hind shall kill 
 a salmon, and my plough-boy find a hare sitting, with any man 
 in the Forest. But planting and pruning trees I could work at 
 from morning till night ; and if ever my poetical revenues en 
 able me to have a few acres of my own, that is one of the 
 principal pleasures I look forward to. There is, too, a sort of 
 eelf-congratulation, a little tickling self-flattery in the idea that, 
 while you are pleasing and amusing yourself, you are seriously 
 contributing to the future welfare of the country, and that 
 your very acorn may send its future ribs of oak to future vic 
 tories like Trafalgar. 
 
 " You have now by my calculation abandoned your exten 
 sive domains and returned to your Hampstead villa, which, at 
 this season of the year, though the lesser, will prove, from your 
 neighbourhood to good society, the more comfortable habita 
 tion of the two. Dr. Baillie s cares are transferred (I fear for 
 some time) to a charge still more important than the poor 
 Princess.* I trust in God that his skill and that of his breth 
 ren may be of advantage to the poor King ; for a Regency, 
 from its unsettled and uncertain tenure, must in every country, 
 but especially where parties run so high, be a lamentable busi 
 ness. I wonder that the consequences which have taken place 
 had not occurred sooner, during the long and trying suspense 
 in which his mind must have been held by the protracted lin 
 gering state of a beloved child. 
 
 " Your country neighbours interest me excessively. I was 
 delighted with the man, who remembered me, though he had 
 
 * The Princess Amelia whose death was mmediately followed bj 
 the hopeless malady of King George III. 
 
130 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 forgotten Sancho Panza ; but I am afraid my pre-eminence in 
 his memory will not remain much longer than the worthy 
 Bquire s government at Barataria. Meanwhile, the Lady of 
 the Lake is likely to come to preferment in an unexpected 
 manner, for two persons of no less eminence than Messrs. 
 Martin and Reynolds, play carpenters in ordinary to Covent 
 Garden, are employed in scrubbing, careening, and cutting her 
 down into one of those new-fashioned sloops called a melo 
 drama, to be launched at the theatre ; and my friend Mr. H. 
 Siddons, emulous of such a noble design, is at work on the 
 same job here. It puts me in mind of the observation with 
 which our parish smith accompanied his answer to an inquiry 
 whom he had heard preach on Sunday Mr. such-a-one 
 O ! sir, he made neat work thinking, doubtless, of turning off 
 a horse-shoe handsomely. I think my worthy artizans will 
 make neat work too before they have done with my unlucky 
 materials but, as Durandarte says in the cavern of Monte- 
 einos * Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards. Jeffrey was 
 the author of the critique in the Edinburgh ; he sent it to me 
 in the sheet, with an apology for some things in that of Mar- 
 mion which he said contained needless asperities ; and, indeed, 
 whatever I may think of the justice of some part of his criti 
 cism, I think his general tone is much softened in my behalf. 
 
 " You say nothing about the drama on Fear, for which you 
 have chosen so admirable a subject, and which, I think, will be 
 in your own most powerful manner. I hope you will have an 
 eye to its being actually represented. Perhaps of all passions 
 it is the most universally interesting ; for although most part 
 of an audience may have been in love once in their lives, and 
 many engaged in the pursuits of ambition, and some perhaps 
 have fostered deadly hate ; yet there will always be many in 
 each case who cannot judge of the operations of these motives 
 from personal experience : Whereas, I will bet my life there is 
 not a soul of them but has felt the impulse of fear, were it but 
 as the old tale goes, at snuffing a candle with his fingers. I 
 believe I should have been able to communicate some persona* 
 anecdotes on the subject, had I been enabled to accomplish a 
 
LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE. 131 
 
 plar I have had much at heart this summer, namely, to take a 
 peep at Lord Wellington and his merry men in Portugal ; but 
 I found the idea gave Mrs. Scott more distress than I am enti 
 tled to do for the mere gratification of my own curiosity. Not 
 that there would have been any great danger, for I could 
 easily, as a non-combatant, have kept out of the way of the 
 4 grinning honour of my namesake, Sir Walter Blount,* and 
 I think I should have been overpaid for a little hardship and 
 risk by the novelty of the scene. I could have got very good 
 recommendations to Lord Wellington ; and, I dare say, I 
 should have picked up some curious materials for battle 
 scenery. A friend of mine made the very expedition, and 
 arriving at Oporto when our army was in retreat from the 
 frontier, he was told of the difficulty and danger he might en 
 counter in crossing the country to the southward, so as to join 
 them on the march ; nevertheless, he travelled on through a 
 country totally deserted, unless when he met bands of fugitive 
 peasantry flying they scarce knew whither, or the yet wilder 
 groups of the Ordinanza, or levy en masse, who, fired with re 
 venge or desire of plunder, had armed themselves to harass 
 the French detached parties. At length in a low glen he 
 heard, with feelings that may be easily conceived, the distant 
 sound of a Highland bagpipe playing The Garb of Old Gaul, 
 and fell into the quarters of a Scotch regiment, where he was 
 most courteously received by his countrymen, who assured 
 his honour he was just come in time to see the pattle. Ac 
 cordingly, being a young man of spirit, and a volunteer sharp 
 shooter, he got a rifle, joined the light corps, and next day 
 witnessed the Battle of Busaco, of which he describes the car- 
 Dage as being terrible. The narrative was very simply told, 
 and conveyed, better than any I have seen, the impressions 
 which such scenes are likely to make when they have the 
 effect (I had almost said the charm) of novelty. I don t know 
 why it is I never found a soldier could give me an idea of a 
 battle. I believe their mind is too much upon the tactique. to 
 
 * See l8t K. K*nry IV. Act V. Scene 3. 
 
132 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 regard the picturesque, just as the lawyers care very little for 
 an eloquent speech at the Bar, if it does not show good doc 
 trine. The technical phrases of the military art, too, are un 
 favourable to convey a description of the concomitant terror 
 and desolation that attends an engagement; but enough of 
 this bald disjointed chat, * from ever yours, W. S." 
 
 There appeared in the London Courier of September 
 15, 1810, an article signed S. T. C., charging Scott with 
 being a plagiarist, more especially from the works of the 
 poet for whose initials this signature had no doubt been 
 meant to pass. On reading this silly libel, Mr. Southey 
 felt satisfied that Samuel Taylor Coleridge could have 
 no concern in its manufacture ; but as Scott was not so 
 well acquainted with Coleridge as himself, he lost no 
 time in procuring his friend s indignant disavowal, and 
 forwarding it to Ashestiel. Scott acknowledges this deli 
 cate attention as follows : 
 
 " To Robert Southey, Esq. 
 
 "Ashestiel, Thursday. 
 
 " My Dear Southey, Your letter, this morning received, 
 released me from the very painful feeling, that a man of Mr. 
 Coleridge s high talents, which I had always been among the 
 first to appreciate as they deserve, had thought me worthy of 
 the sort of public attack which appeared in the Courier of the 
 15th. The initials are so remarkable, and the trick so very im 
 pudent, that I was likely to be fairly duped by it, for which I 
 have to request Mr. Coleridge s forgiveness. I believe attacks of 
 any sort sit as light upon me as they can on any one. If I have 
 had my share of them, it is one point, at least, in which I resem 
 ble greater poets but I should not like to have them conn 
 from the hand of contemporary genius. A man, though he doe* 
 
 * Hot! pur 1st K. Henry IV. Act I. Scene 3. 
 
LETTER TO MR. SOUTHEY. 133 
 
 not * wear his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, * 
 would not willingly be stooped upon by a falcon. I am truly 
 obliged to your friendship for so speedily relieving me from so 
 painful a feeling. The hoax was probably designed to set two 
 followers of literature by the ears, and I dare say will be fol 
 lowed up by something equally impudent. As for the imita 
 tions, I have not the least hesitation in saying to you, that I 
 was unconscious at the time of appropriating the goods of 
 others, although I have not the least doubt that several of the 
 passages must have been running in my head. Had I meant 
 to steal, I would have been more cautious to disfigure the stolen 
 goods. In one or two instances the resemblance seems general 
 and casual, and in one, I think, it was impossible I could prac 
 tise plagiarism, as Ethwald, one of the poems quoted, was pub 
 lished after the Lay of the Last Minstrel. A witty rogue, the 
 other day, who sent me a letter subscribed Detector, proved 
 me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida s Latin 
 poems, which I had never seen or heard of; yet there was so 
 strong a general resemblance, as fairly to authorize Detector s 
 suspicion. 
 
 " I renounced my Greta excursion in consequence of having 
 made instead a tour to the Highlands, particularly to the Isles. 
 I wished for Wordsworth and you a hundred times. The 
 scenery is quite different from that on the mainland dark, 
 eavage, and horrid, but occasionally magnificent in the highest 
 degree. Stafia, in particular, merits well its far-famed reputa 
 tion : it is a cathedral arch, scooped by the hand of nature, 
 equal in dimensions and in regularity to the most magnificent 
 aisle of a gothic cathedral. The sea rolls up to the extrem 
 ity in most tremendous majesty, and with a voice like ten 
 thousand giants shouting at once. I visited Icolmkill also, 
 where there are some curious monuments, mouldering among 
 the poorest and most naked wretches that I ever beheld. Af- 
 p ectionately yours, W. SCOTT." 
 
 The lines of VIDA," which " Detector " had enclosed 
 * Othelk, Act I. Scene 1. 
 
*34 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to Scott as the obvious original of the address to " Wom 
 an " in Marmion, closing with 
 
 * When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
 A ministering angel thou! " 
 
 end as follows ; and it must be owned that, if Vida had 
 really written them, a more extraordinary example of 
 casual coincidence could never have been pointed out 
 
 " Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, 
 Fungeris angelico sola ministerio ! " 
 
 Detector s reference is " VIDA ad Eranen, El. II. v. 21 ; " 
 
 but it is almost needless to add there are no such lines 
 
 and no piece bearing such a title in Vida s works. 
 Detector was no doubt some young college wag, for hia 
 letter has a Cambridge postmark. 
 
LIFE OF MISS SEWABD. 135 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 tt/e of Miss Seward Waverley resumed Ballantyne s Cri 
 tique on the First Chapters of the Novel Waverley again 
 laid aside Unfortunate Speculations of John Ballantyne 
 and Co. ; History of the Culdees ; Tixall Poetry ; Beau 
 mont and Fletcher ; Edinburgh Annual Register, fyc. 
 Scott s Essay on Judicial Reform His Scheme of going to 
 India Letters on the War in the Peninsula Death of 
 Lord President Blair and of Lord Melville Publication 
 of the Vision of Don Roderick The Inferno of Altesir 
 dora, *c. 
 
 1810-1811. 
 
 IN the course of this autumn appeared the Poetical 
 Works of Miss Seward, in three volumes, with a Prefa 
 tory Memoir of her Life by Scott. This edition had, as 
 we have seen, been enjoined by her last will but his 
 part in it was an ungrateful one, and the book was among 
 the most unfortunate that James Ballantyne printed, and 
 his brother published, in deference to the personal feel 
 ings of their partner. He had been, as was natural, 
 pleased and flattered by the attentions of the Lichfield 
 poetess in the days of his early aspirations after literary 
 distinction ; but her verses, which he had with his usual 
 readiness praised to herself beyond their worth, appeared 
 when collected a formidable monument of mediocrity. 
 Her Correspondence, published at the same time by Con- 
 
136 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 stable, was considered by him with still greater aversion. 
 He requested the bookseller to allow him to look over 
 the MS., and draw his pen through passages in which 
 her allusions to letters of his own might compromise him 
 as a critic on his poetical contemporaries. To this re 
 quest Constable handsomely acceded, although it was 
 evident that he thus deprived the collection of its best 
 chance of popularity. I see, on comparing her letters as 
 they originally reached Scott, with the printed copies, 
 that he had also struck out many of her most extravagant 
 rhapsodies about himself and his works. No collection 
 of this kind, after all, can be wholly without value ; I 
 have already drawn from it some sufficiently interesting 
 fragments, as the biographers of other eminent authors 
 of this time will probably do hereafter under the like 
 circumstances : and, however affected and absurd, Miss 
 Seward s prose is certainly far better than her verse. 
 
 And now I come to a very curious letter of James 
 Ballantyne s, the date of which seems to fix pretty accu 
 rately the time when Scott first resumed the long-forgot 
 ten MS. of his Waverley. As in the Introduction of 
 1829 he mentions having received discouragement as to 
 the opening part of the novel from two friends, and as 
 Ballantyne on this occasion writes as if he had never be 
 fore seen any portion of it, I conclude that the fragment 
 of 1805 had in that year been submitted to Erskine 
 alone. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., AshestieL 
 
 " Edinburgh, Sept. 15, 1810. 
 
 " Dear Sir, What you have sent of Waverley has amused 
 me much ; and certainly if I had read it as part of a new 
 novel, the remainder of which was open to my perusal, I 
 should have proceeded with avidity. So much for its genera) 
 
WA VERLEY 1810. 137 
 
 tffect ; but you have sent me too little to enable me to form a 
 decided opinion. Were I to say that I was equally struck with 
 Waverley as I was with the much smaller portion of the Lady, 
 which you first presented to us as a specimen, the truth would 
 not be in me ; but the cases are different. It is impossible 
 that a small part of a fine novel can equally impress one with 
 the decided conviction of splendour and success as a small part 
 of a fine poem. I will state one or two things that strike me. 
 Considering that sixty years since only leads us back to the 
 year 1 750, a period when our fathers were alive and merry, it 
 seems to me that the air of antiquity diffused over the charac 
 ter is rather too great to harmonize with the time. The pe 
 riod is modern ; Johnson was writing and Garrick was act 
 ing and in fact scarcely anything appears to have altered, 
 more important than the cut of a coat. 
 
 " The account of the studies of Waverley seems unnecessa- 
 ;*ily minute. There are few novel readers to whom it would 
 be interesting. I can see at once the connexion between the 
 studies of Don Quixote, or of the Female Quixote, and the 
 wents of their lives ; but I have not yet been able to trace 
 betwixt Waverley s character and his studies such clear and 
 decided connexion. The account, in short, seemed to me too 
 particular ; quite unlike your usual mode in your poetry, and 
 less happy. It may be, however, that the further progress of 
 the character will defeat this criticism. The character itself 1 
 :hink excellent and interesting, and I was equally astonished 
 and delighted to find in the last-written chapter, that you can 
 paint to the eye in prose as well as in verse. 
 
 " Perhaps your own reflections are rather too often mixed 
 with the narrative but I state this with much diffidence. I 
 do not mean to object to a train of reflections arising from 
 pome striking event, but I don t like their so frequent recur 
 rence. The language is spirited, but perhaps rather careless. 
 The humour is admirable. Should you go on ? My opinion 
 is, clearly certainly. I have no doubt of success, though it 
 is impossible to guess how much Ever respect 
 fully, J. B," 
 
J38 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The part of the letter which I have omitted, refers to 
 tlie state of Ballantyne s business at the time when it was 
 written. He Lad, that same week, completed the eleventh 
 edition of the Lay ; and the fifth of the Lady of the Lake 
 had not passed through his press, before new orders from 
 London called for the beginning of a sixth. I presume 
 the printer s exultation on this triumphant success had a 
 great share in leading him to consider with doubt and 
 suspicion the propriety of his friend s interrupting just 
 then his career as the great caterer for readers of poetry. 
 However this and other matters may have stood, the 
 novel appears to have been forthwith laid aside again. 
 
 Some sentences refer to less fortunate circumstances in 
 their joint affairs. The publishing firm was not as yet a 
 twelvemonth old, and already James began to apprehend 
 that some of their mightiest undertakings would wholly 
 disappoint Scott s prognostications. He speaks with par 
 ticular alarm of the edition of Beaumont and Fletcher s 
 plays, of which Weber had now dismissed several vol 
 umes from his incompetent and presumptuous hand. How 
 Scott should ever have countenanced the project of an 
 edition of an English book of this class, by a mere drudg 
 ing German, appears to me quite inexplicable. He placed 
 at Weber s disposal his own annotated copy, which had 
 been offered some years before for the use of Gifford ; 
 but Weber s text is thoroughly disgraceful, and so are all 
 the notes, except those which he owed to his patron s own 
 pen. James Ballantyne augurs, and well might he do so, 
 not less darkly, as to " the Aston speculation " that is, 
 the bulky collection entitled "Tixall poetry." "Over 
 this," he says, "the (Edinburgh) Review of the Sadler 
 has thrown a heavy cloud the fact is, it seems to me to 
 have ruined it. Here is the same editor and the same 
 
EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER, ETC. 139 
 
 printer, and your name withdrawn. I hope you agree 
 with John and me, that this Aston business ought to be 
 got rid of at almost any sacrifice. We could not now 
 even ask a London bookseller to take a share, and a net 
 outlay of near 2500, upon a worse than doubtful specu 
 lation, is surely most tolerable and not to be endured. " 
 Another unpromising adventure of this season, was the 
 publication of the History of the Culdees (that is, of the 
 clergy of the primitive Scoto-Celtic Church), by Scott s 
 worthy old friend, Dr. John Jamieson, the author of the 
 celebrated Dictionary. This work, treating of an obscure 
 subject, on which very different opinions were and are 
 entertained by Episcopalians on the one hand, and the 
 adherents of Presbyterianism on the other, was also 
 printed and published by the Ballantynes, in consequence 
 of the interest which Scott felt, not for the writer s hy 
 pothesis, but for the writer personally : and the result was 
 another heavy loss to himself and his partners. But a 
 far more serious business was the establishment of the 
 Edinburgh Annual Register, which, as we have seen, was 
 suggested by Scott in the very dawn of his bookselling 
 projects. The two first volumes were issued about this 
 time, and expectation had been highly excited by the 
 announcement that the historical department was in the 
 hands of Southey, while Scott and many other eminent 
 persons were to contribute regularly to its miscellaneous 
 literature and science. Mr. Southey was fortunate in 
 beginning his narrative with the great era of the Spanish 
 Revolt against Napoleon, and it exhibited his usual re 
 search, reflection, elegance, and spirit. Several of the 
 miscellanies, also, were admirable : Mr. Southey inserted 
 in the second volume for 1808, published in 1810, some 
 tf the most admired of his minor poems ; and Scott did 
 
140 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the like. He moreover drew up for that volume an 
 Essay of considerable extent on those changes in the 
 Scottish System of Judicature, which had occupied the 
 attention of the Commission under which he served as 
 secretary ; and the sagacity of this piece appears, on the 
 whole, as honourable to him, as the clear felicity of its 
 language. Nevertheless, the public were alarmed by the 
 prospect of two volumes annually : it was, in short, a new 
 periodical publication on a large scale; all such adven 
 tures are hazardous in the extreme ; and none of them 
 ever can succeed, unless there be a skilful bookseller, and 
 a zealous editor, who give a very large share of their 
 industry and intelligence, day after day, to the conduct of 
 all its arrangements. Such a bookseller John Ballan- 
 tyne was not ; such an editor, with Scott s multifarious 
 engagements, he could not be for an Annual Register ; 
 and who, indeed, could wish that this had been other 
 wise ? The volumes succeeded each other at irregular 
 intervals ; there was soon felt the want of one ever active 
 presiding spirit ; and though the work was continued 
 during a long series of years, it never was the source of 
 anything but anxiety and disappointment to its original 
 projectors. 
 
 I am tempted, as Scott s Essay on Judicial Reform has 
 never been included in any collection of his writings, to 
 extract here a few specimens of a composition which 
 appears to be as characteristic of the man as any that 
 ever proceeded from his pen. His deep jealousy of the 
 national honour of Scotland, his fear lest the course of 
 innovation at this time threatened should end in a tota 
 assimilation of her Jurisprudence to the system of the 
 more powerful sister country, and his habitual and deep- 
 rooted dread of change in matters affecting the whole 
 
ESSAY ON JUDICIAL REFORM 1810. 141 
 
 machinery of social existence, are expressed in, among 
 ethers, the following passages : 
 
 "An established system is not to be tried by those tests 
 which may with perfect correctness be applied to a new theory. 
 A civilized nation, long in possession of a code of law, under 
 which, with all its inconveniences, they have found means to 
 flourish, is not to be regarded as an infant colony, on which 
 experiments in legislation may, without much charge of pre 
 sumption, be hazarded. A philosopher is not entitled to in 
 vestigate such a system by those ideas which he has fixed in 
 his own mind as the standard of possible excellence. The 
 only unerring test of every old establishment is the effect 
 it has actually produced ; for that must be held to be good, 
 from whence good is derived. The people have, by degrees, 
 moulded their habits to the law they are compelled to obey ; 
 for some of its imperfections, remedies have been found; to 
 others they have reconciled themselves ; till, at last, they have, 
 from various causes, attained the object which the most san 
 guine visionary could promise to himself from his own perfect 
 unembodied system. Let us not be understood to mean, that a 
 superstitious regard for antiquity ought to stay the hand of a 
 temperate reform. But the task is delicate, and full of dan 
 ger ; perilous in its execution, and extremely doubtful in its 
 issue. Is there not rational ground to apprehend, that, in at 
 tempting to eradicate the disease, the sound part of the consti 
 tution may be essentially injured ? Can we be quite certain 
 that less inconvenience will result from that newly discovered 
 and unknown remedy, than from the evil, which the juices and 
 humours with which it has long been incorporated may have 
 neutralized ? that, after a thorough reformation has been 
 achieved, it may not be found necessary to counterwork the 
 antidote itself, by having recourse to the very error we have 
 incautiously abjured ? We are taught, by great authority, that 
 possibly they may espy something that may, in truth, be mis 
 chievous in some particular case, but weigh not how many in 
 conveniences are, on the other side, prevented or remedied bj 
 
142 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that which is the supposed vicious strictness of the law ; and 
 he that purchases a reformation of a law with the introduction 
 of greater inconveniences, by the amotion of a mischief, makes 
 an ill bargain. No human law can be absolutely perfect. It 
 is sufficient that it be best ut plurimum; and as to the mis 
 chiefs that it occasions, as they are accidental and casual, so 
 they may be oftentimes, by due care, prevented, without an 
 alteration of the main. * 
 
 " Every great reform, we farther conceive, ought to be taken 
 at a point somewhat lower than the necessity seems to require. 
 Montesquieu has a chapter, of which the title is, Qu il ne faut 
 pas tout corriger. Our improvement ought to contain within 
 itself a principle of progressive improvement. We are thug 
 enabled to see our way distinctly before us ; we have, at the 
 same time, under our eyes, the ancient malady, with the pal 
 liatives by which the hand of time has controlled its natural 
 symptoms, and the effects arising from the process intended to 
 remove it ; and our course, whether we advance or recede, will 
 be safe, and confident, and honourable ; whereas, by taking 
 our reform at the utmost possible stretch of the wrong com 
 plained of, we cannot fail to bring into disrepute the order 
 of things, as established, without any corresponding certainty 
 that our innovations will produce the result which our san 
 guine hopes have anticipated ; and we thus deprive ourselves 
 of the chance of a secure retreat, in the event of our failure." 
 
 Nor does the following paragraph on the proposal for 
 extending to Scotland the system of Jury Trial in civil 
 actions of all classes, appear to me less characteristic of 
 Scott : 
 
 " We feel it very difficult to associate with this subject any 
 idea of political or personal liberty; both of which have been 
 lupposed to be secured, and even to be rendered more valua 
 ble, by means of the trial by jury in questions of private right. 
 ft is perhaps owing to our want of information, or to the 
 
 * Lord Hale on the Amendment of the Laws. 
 
ESSAY ON JUDICIAL REFORM ^10. 143 
 
 phlegm and frigidity of our national character, that we can 
 not participate in that enthusiasm which the very name of this 
 institution is said to excite in many a patriotic bosom. We 
 can listen to the cabalistic sound of Trial by Jury, which has 
 produced effects only to be paralleled by those of the mysteri 
 ous words uttered by the Queen of the City of Enchantments, 
 in the Arabian Tale, and retain the entire possession of our 
 form and senses. We understand that sentiment of a celebrat 
 ed author, that this barrier against the usurpation of power, 
 in matters where power has any concern, may probably avert 
 from our island the fate of many states that now exist but in 
 history ; and we think this great possession is peculiarly valu 
 able in Scotland, where the privileges of the public prosecutor 
 are not controlled by those of a grand jury. The merits of 
 the establishment we are now examining are to be ascertained 
 by a different test. It is merely a contrivance for attaining 
 the ends of private justice, for developing the merits of a civil 
 question in which individuals are interested ; and that contriv 
 ance is the best, which most speedily and effectually serves 
 the purpose for which it was framed. In causes of that de 
 scription, no shield is necessary against the invasion of power ; 
 the issue is to be investigated without leaning or partiality, 
 for whatever is unduly given to one party is unduly wrested 
 from the other ; and unless we take under our consideration 
 those advantages which time or accident may have introduced, 
 we see not what superiority can in the abstract be supposed to 
 belong to this as a judicature for the determination of all or 
 the greater number of civil actions. We discover no grounu 
 for suspecting that the judgments of a few well-educated and 
 upright men may be influenced by any undue bias ; that an 
 interest, merely patrimonial, is more safely lodged in an ob 
 scure and evanescent body than in a dignified, independent, 
 and permanent tribunal, versed in the science to be adminis 
 tered, and responsible for the decisions they pronounce ; and 
 we suspect that a philosopher, contemplating both in his closet, 
 will augur more danger from a system which devolves on one 
 jet of men the responsibility of doctrines taught them by an* 
 
 VOL. III. 10 
 
144 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 other, than from that system which attaches to the judges all 
 the consequences of the law they deliver." 
 
 Some, though not all, of the changes deprecated in thia 
 Essay, had been adopted by the Legislature before it was 
 published ; others of them have since been submitted to 
 experiment ; and I believe that, on the whole, his views 
 may safely bear the test to which time has exposed them 
 though as to the particular point of triil by jury in civil 
 causes, the dreaded innovation, being conducted by wise 
 and temperate hands, has in its results proved satisfactory 
 to the people at large, as well as to the Bench and the 
 Bar of Scotland. I have, however, chiefly introduced 
 the above extracts as illustrative of the dissatisfaction 
 with which Scott considered the commencement of a 
 system of jurisprudential innovation ; and though it must 
 not be forgotten that his own office as a Clerk of Session 
 had never yet brought him anything but labour, and that 
 he consequently complained from time to time of the 
 inroads this labour made on hours which might other 
 wise have been more profitably bestowed, I suspect his 
 antipathy to this new system, as a system, had no small 
 share in producing the state of mind indicated in a re 
 markable letter addressed, in the later part of this year, 
 to his brother Thomas. The other source of uneasiness 
 to which it alludes has been already touched upon and 
 we shall have but too much of it hereafter. He says to 
 his brother (Ashestiel, 1st November 1810), "I have no 
 objection to tell you in confidence, that, were Dundas to 
 go out Governor- General to India, and were he willing 
 to take me with him in a good situation, I would not hes 
 itate to pitch the Court of Session and the booksellers to 
 the Devil, and try my fortune in another climate." He 
 adds, "but this is strictly entre nous" nor indeed was 
 
INDIAN PROJECT 1810. 145 
 
 I aware, until I found tliis letter, that he had ever enter 
 tained such a design as that which it communicates. Mr. 
 Dundas (now Lord Melville), being deeply conversant ID 
 our Eastern affairs, and highly acceptable to the Court 
 of Directors in the office of President of the Board of 
 Control, which he had long filled, was spoken of, at vari 
 ous times in the course of his public life, as likely to be 
 appointed Governor-General of India. He had, no doubt, 
 hinted to Scott, that in case he should ever assume that 
 high station it would be very agreeable for him to be ac 
 companied by his early friend : and there could be little 
 question of his capacity to have filled with distinction tho 
 part either of an Indian secretary or of an Indian judge. 
 
 But, though it is easy to account for his expressing in 
 so marked a manner at this particular period his willing 
 ness to relinquish literature as the main occupation of 
 his time ; it is impossible to consider the whole course of 
 his correspondence and conversation, without agreeing 
 in the conclusion of Mr. Morritt, that he was all along 
 sincere in the opinion that literature ought never to be 
 ranked on the same scale of importance with the con 
 duct of business in any of the great departments of pub 
 lic life. This opinion he always expressed ; and I have 
 no doubt that, at any period preceding his acquisition of 
 a landed property, he would have acted on it, even to 
 the extent of leaving Scotland, had a suitable opportunity 
 been afforded him to give that evidence of his sincerity. 
 This is so remarkable a feature in his character, that the 
 reader will forgive me should I recur to it in the sequel. 
 
 At the same time I have no notion that at this or 
 any other period he contemplated abandoning literature 
 Such a thought would hardly enter the head of the man 
 uot yet forty years of age, whose career had been one of 
 
146 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 unbroken success, and whose third great work had just 
 been received with a degree of favour, both critical and 
 popular, altogether unprecedented in the annals of hia 
 country. His hope, no doubt, was that an honourable 
 official station in the East might afford him both a world 
 of new materials for poetry, and what would in hia case 
 be abundance of leisure for turning them to account, ac 
 cording to the deliberate dictates of his own judgment. 
 What he desired to escape from was not the exertion of 
 his genius, which must ever have been to him the source 
 of his most exquisite enjoyment, but the daily round of 
 prosaic and perplexing toils in which his connexion with 
 the Ballantynes had involved him. He was able to com 
 bine the regular discharge of such functions with the ex 
 ercise of the high powers of imagination, in a manner of 
 which history affords no other example ; yet many, no 
 doubt, were the weary hours, when he repented him of 
 the rash engagements which had imposed such a burden 
 of mere task work on his energies. But his external 
 position, before the lapse of another year, underwent a 
 change which for ever fixed his destiny to the soil of his 
 best affections and happiest inspirations. 
 
 The letters of Scott to all his friends have sufficiently 
 shown the unflagging interest with which, among all 
 his personal labours and anxieties, he watched the prog 
 ress of the great contest in the Peninsula. It was so 
 earnest, that he never on any journey, not even in his 
 very frequent passages between Edinburgh and Ashes- 
 tiel, omitted to take with him the largest and best map 
 he had been able to procure of the seat of war ; upon 
 this he was perpetually poring, tracing the marches and 
 counter-marches of the French and English by means 
 cf black and white pins ; and not seldom did Mrs. Scott 
 
LETTER TO MR. MORRITT APRIL, 1811. 14 / 
 
 complain of this constant occupation of his attention and 
 her carriage. In the beginning of 1811, a committee 
 was formed in London to collect subscriptions for the re 
 lief of the Portuguese, who had seen their lands wasted, 
 their vines torn up, and their houses burnt in the course 
 of Massena s last unfortunate campaign ; and Scott, on 
 reading the advertisement, immediately addressed Mr. 
 Whitmore, the chairman, begging that the committee 
 would allow him to contribute to their fund the profits, 
 to whatever they might amount, of a poem which he pro 
 posed to write upon a subject connected with the localities 
 of the patriotic struggle. His offer was of course ac 
 cepted ; and " THE VISION OF DON RODERICK " was 
 begun as soon as the Spring vacation enabled him to 
 retire to Ashestiel. 
 
 On the 26th of April he writes thus to Mr. Mor- 
 ritt, who had lost a dear young friend in the battle of 
 Barossa : 
 
 " I rejoice with the heart of a Scotsman in the success of 
 Lord Wellington, and with all the pride of a seer to boot. I 
 have been for three years proclaiming him as the only man we 
 had to trust to a man of talent and genius not deterred 
 by obstacles, not fettered by prejudices, not immured within 
 the pedantries of his profession but playing the general and 
 the hero, when most of our military commanders would have 
 exhibited the drill-sergeant, or at best the adjutant. These 
 campaigns will teach us what we have long needed to know, 
 that success depends not on the nice drilling of regiments, but 
 upon the grand movements and combinations of an army. 
 We have been hitherto polishing hinges, when we should have 
 studied the mechanical union of a huge machine. Now 
 our army begin to see that the grand secret, as the French call 
 it, consists only in union, joint exertion, and concerted move 
 ment. This will enable us to meet the dogs on fair terms a* 
 
148 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to numbers, and for the rest, * My soul and body on the action 
 both. 
 
 " The downfall of Buonaparte s military fame will be the 
 signal of his ruin, and, if we may trust the reports this day 
 brings us from Holland, there is glorious mischief on foot al 
 ready. I hope we shall be able to fling fuel into the flame im 
 mediately. A country with so many dykes and ditches must 
 be fearfully tenable when the peasants are willing to fight. 
 How I should enjoy the disconsolate visages of those Whig 
 dogs, those dwellers upon the Isthmus, who have been foretel 
 ling the rout and ruin which it only required their being in 
 power to have achieved ! It is quite plain, from Sir Robert 
 Wilson s account, that they neglected to feed the lamp of Rus 
 sia, and it only resulted from their want of opportunity that 
 they did not quench the smoking flax in the Peninsula a 
 thought so profligate, that those who, from party or personal 
 interest, indulged it ought to pray for mercy, and return thanks 
 for the providential interruption which obstructed their pur 
 pose, as they would for a meditated but prevented parricide. 
 But enough of the thorny subject of politics. 
 
 " I grieve for your loss at Barossa, but what more glorious 
 fall could a man select for himself or friend, than dying with 
 his sword in hand and the cry of victory in his ears ? 
 
 " As for my own operations they are very trifling, though 
 sufficiently miscellaneous. I have been writing a sketch of 
 Buonaparte s tactics for the Edinburgh Register, and some 
 other trumpery of the same kind. Particularly I meditate 
 some wild stanzas referring to the Peninsula: if I can lick 
 them into any shape, I hope to get something handsome from 
 the booksellers for the Portuguese sufferers : Silver and gold 
 have I none, but that which I have I will give unto them. 
 My lyrics are called the Vision of Don Roderick : you remem 
 ber the story of the last Gothic King of Spain descending into 
 an enchanted cavern to know the fate of the Moorish invasion 
 that is my machinery. Pray don t mention this, for some 
 one will snatch up the subject, as I have been served before ; 
 and I have not written a line yet. I am going to Ashestiel for 
 ight days, to fish and rhyme." 
 
LETTER TO MRS. SCOTT OF HARDEN. 149 
 
 The poem was published, in 4to, in July ; and the im 
 mediate proceeds were forwarded to the board in London. 
 His friend the Earl of Dalkeith seems to have been a 
 member of the committee, and he writes thus to Scott on 
 the occasion : " Those with ample fortunes and thicker 
 heads may easily give 100 guineas to a subscription, but 
 the man is really to be envied who can draw that sum 
 from his own brains, and apply the produce so benefi 
 cially and to so exalted a purpose." 
 
 In the original preface to this poem, Scott alludes to 
 two events which had " cruelly interrupted his task " 
 the successive deaths of his kind friend the Lord Presi 
 dent of the Court of Session (Blair),* and his early pa 
 tron, Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville : and his letters 
 at the time afford additional evidence of the shock his 
 feelings had thus sustained. 
 
 The following, to Mrs. Scott of Harden, is dated May 
 20th, 1811:- 
 
 " My Dear Madam, We are deprived of the prospect of 
 waiting upon you on the birth-day, by the confusion into which 
 the business of this court is thrown by the most unexpected 
 and irreparable loss which it has sustained in the death of the 
 President. It is scarcely possible to conceive a calamity which 
 is more universally or will be so long felt by the country. His 
 integrity and legal knowledge, joined to a peculiar dignity of 
 thought, action, and expression, had begun to establish in the 
 minds of the public at large that confidence in the regular and 
 solemn administration of justice, which is so necessary to its 
 usefulness and respectability. My official situation, as weU 
 as the private intimacy of our families, makes me a sincere 
 mourner on this melancholy occasion, for I feel a severe per 
 sonal deprivation, besides the general share of sorrow common 
 
 * The Right Hon. Robert Blair of Avontoun, son of the Author of 
 4 The Grave." 
 
150 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 lo all of every party or description who were in the way of 
 witnessing his conduct. 
 
 " He was a rare instance of a man whose habits were every 
 way averse to the cultivation of popularity, rising, neverthe 
 less, to the highest point in the public opinion, by the manly 
 and dignified discharge of his duty. I have been really so 
 much shocked and out of spirits, yesterday and the day pre 
 ceding, that I can write and think of nothing else. 
 
 " I have to send you the Vision of Don Roderick, as soon as 
 we can get it out it is a trifle I have written to eke out the 
 subscription for the suffering Portuguese. Believe me, my 
 dear Mrs. Scott, ever yours most truly and respectfully, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The next letter is to Mr. Morritt, who, like himself, 
 had enjoyed a large share of Lord Melville s friendly 
 regard ; and had more than once met his Lordship, after 
 his fall, at the Poet s house, in Castle Street ; where, by 
 the way, the old Statesman entered with such simple- 
 heartedness into all the ways of the happy circle, that it 
 had come to be an established rule for the children to sit 
 up to supper whenever Lord Melville dined there. 
 
 " Edinburgh, July 1, 1811. 
 
 " My Dear M. I have this moment got your kind letter, 
 just as I was packing up Don Roderick for you. This patri 
 otic puppet-show has been finished under wretched auspices ; 
 poor Lord Melville s death so quickly succeeding that of Pres 
 ident Blair, one of the best and wisest judges that ever dis 
 tributed justice, broke my spirit sadly. My official situation 
 placed me in daily contact with the President, and his ability 
 and candour were the source of my daily admiration. As for 
 poor dear Lord Melville, Tis vain to name him whom we 
 mourn in vain. Almost the last time I saw him, he was talk 
 ing of you in the highest terms of regard, and expressing great 
 hopes of again seeing you at Dunira this summer, where 
 
VISION OF DON RODERICK 1811 151 
 
 proposed to attend you. Hex mihi! quid hei miJdf humana 
 perpessi sumus. His loss will be long and severely felt here, 
 and Envy is already paying her cold tribute of applause to 
 the worth which she maligned while it walked upon earth. 
 
 " There is a very odd coincidence between the deaths of 
 these eminent characters, and that of a very inferior person, a 
 dentist of this city, named Dubisson. He met the President 
 before his death, who used a particular expression in speaking 
 to him ; the day before Lord Melville died, he also met Dubis 
 son nearly on the same spot, and to the man s surprise used the 
 President s very words in saluting him. On this second death, 
 he expressed (jocularly, however) an apprehension that he 
 himself would be the third was taken ill and died in an 
 hour s space. Was not this remarkable ? Yours ever, 
 
 "W. S." 
 
 The Vision of Don Roderick had features of novelty, 
 both as to the subject and the manner of the composition, 
 which excited much attention, and gave rise to some 
 sharp controversy. The main fable was indeed from the 
 most picturesque region of old romance ; but it was made 
 throughout the vehicle of feelings directly adverse to 
 those with which the Whig critics had all along regarded 
 the interference of Britain in behalf of the nations of the 
 Peninsula ; and the silence which, while celebrating our 
 other generals on that scene of action, had been pre 
 served with respect to Scott s own gallant countryman, 
 Sir John Moore, was considered or represented by them 
 ta an odious example of genius hoodwinked by the in 
 fluence of party. Nor were there wanting persons who 
 affected to discover that the charm of Scott s poetry had 
 to a great extent evaporated under the severe test to 
 which he had exposed it, by adopting, in place of those 
 comparatively light and easy measures in which he had 
 hitherto dealt, the most elaborate one that our literature 
 
152 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 exhibits. The production, notwithstanding the complex 
 ity of the Spenserian stanza, had been very rapidly exe 
 cuted; and it shows, accordingly, many traces of negli 
 gence. But the patriotic inspiration of it found an echo 
 in the vast majority of British hearts ; many of the Whig 
 oracles themselves acknowledged that the difficulties of 
 the metre had been on the whole successfully overcome ; 
 and even the hardest critics were compelled to express 
 unqualified admiration of various detached pictures and 
 passages, which, in truth, as no one now disputes, neither 
 he nor any other poet ever excelled. The whole setting or 
 framework whatever relates in short to the last of the 
 Goths himself was, I think, even then unanimously 
 pronounced admirable ; and no party feeling could blind 
 any man to the heroic splendour of such stanzas as those 
 in which the three equally gallant elements of a British 
 army are contrasted. I incline to believe that the choice 
 of the measure had been in no small degree the result of 
 those hints which Scott received on the subject of his 
 favourite octosyllabics, more especially from Ellis and 
 Canning ; and, as we shall see presently, he about this 
 time made more than one similar experiment, in all like 
 lihood from the same motive. 
 
 Of the letters which reached him in consequence of the 
 appearance of The Vision, he has preserved several, 
 which had no doubt interested and gratified him at the 
 time. One of these was from Lady Wellington, to whom 
 he had never had the honour of being presented, but who 
 could not, as she said, remain silent on the receipt of such 
 a tribute to the fame of "the first and best of men." 
 Ever afterwards she continued to correspond with him, 
 and indeed, among the very last letters which the Duchesa 
 of Wellington appears to have written, was a most affect- 
 
LETTER FROM MR. CANNING. 153 
 
 ing one, bidding him farewell, and thanking him for the 
 solace his works had afforded her during her fatal illness. 
 Another was in these terms : 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. 
 
 " Hinckley, July 26, 1811. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, I am very glad that you have essayed a 
 new metre new I mean for you to use. That which you 
 have chosen is perhaps at once the most artificial and the most 
 magnificent that our language affords ; and your success in it 
 ought to encourage you to believe, that for you, at least, the 
 majestic march of Dryden (to my ear the perfection of har 
 mony) is not, as you seem to pronounce it, irrecoverable. Am 
 I wrong in imagining that Spenser does not use the plusquam- 
 Alexandrine the verse which is as much longer than an 
 Alexandrine, as an Alexandrine is longer than an ordinary 
 heroic measure ? I have no books where I am, to which to 
 refer. You use this and in the first stanza. 
 
 " Your poem has been met on my part by an exchange 
 bomewhat like that of Diomed s armour against Glaucus s 
 brass for gold a heavy speech upon bullion. If you have 
 never thought upon the subject as to my great contentment 
 I never had a twelvemonth ago let me counsel you to keep 
 clear of it, and forthwith put my speech into the fire, unread. 
 It has no one merit but that of sincerity. I formed my opin 
 ion most reluctantly ; having formed it, I could not but main 
 tain it ; having maintained it in Parliament, I wished to record 
 it intelligibly. But it is one which, so far from cherishing and 
 wishing to make proselytes to, I would much rather renounce, 
 if I could find a person to convince me that it is erroneous. 
 .This is at least an unusual state of mind in controversy. It is 
 such as I do not generally profess on all subjects such as you 
 will give me. credit for not being able to maintain, for instance, 
 when either the exploits which you celebrate in your last 
 poem, or your manner of celebrating them, are disputed or 
 disparaged. Believfe me, with great regard and esteem, very 
 lincerely yours, GEORGE CANNING." 
 
154 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 But, of all the letters addressed to the author of the 
 Vision of Don Roderick, I am very sure no one was so 
 welcome as that which reached him, some months after 
 his poem had ceased to be new in England, from a dear 
 friend of his earliest days, who, after various chances and 
 changes of life, was then serving in Lord Wellington s 
 army, as a captain in the 58th regiment. I am sure that 
 Sir Adam Fergusson s good-nature will pardon my in 
 serting here some extracts from a communication which 
 his affectionate schoolfellow very often referred to in 
 after years with the highest appearance of interest and 
 pleasure. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq. 
 
 " Lisbon, 31st August 1811. 
 
 "My Dear Walter, After such a length of silence be 
 tween us, and, I grant on my part, so unwarrantable, I think 
 I see your face of surprise on recognising this MS., and hear 
 you exclaim What strange wind has blown a letter from 
 Lintonf I must say, that although both you and my good 
 friend Mrs. S. must long ago have set me down as a most in 
 different, not to say ungrateful sort of gentleman, far other 
 wise has been the case, as in the course of my wanderings 
 through this country, I have often beguiled a long march, or 
 watchful night s duty, by thinking on the merry fireside in 
 North Castle Street. However, the irregular roving life we 
 lead, always interfered with my resolves of correspondence. 
 
 " But now, quitting self, I need not tell you how greatly I 
 was delighted at the success of the Lady of the Lake. I dare 
 gay you are by this time well tired of such greetings so I 
 shall only say, that last spring I was so fortunate as to get a 
 reading of it, when in the lines of Torres Vedras, and thought 
 I had no inconsiderable right to enter into and judge of ita 
 beauties, having made one of the party on your first visit to 
 the Trossachs ; and -you will allow, that a little vanity on mj 
 
LETTER FROM CAPT. ADAM FERGUSSON. 155 
 
 part on this account (everything considered) was natural 
 enough. While the book was in my possession, I had nightly 
 invitations to evening parties ! to read and illustrate passages 
 of it ; and I must say that (though not conscious of much merit 
 in the way of recitation) my attempts to do justice to the grand 
 opening of the stag-hunt, were always followed with bursts of 
 applause for this Canto was the favourite among the rough 
 sons of the fighting Third Division. At that time supplies of 
 various kinds, especially anything in the way of delicacies, 
 were very scanty ; and, in gratitude, I am bound to declare, 
 that to the good offices of the Lady I owed many a nice slice 
 of ham, and rummer of Lot punch, which, I assure you, were 
 amongst the most welcome favours that one officer could be 
 stow on another, during the long rainy nights of last January 
 and February. By desire of my messmates of the Black-cuffs, 
 I some time ago sent a commission to London for a copy of the 
 music of the Boat-Song, Hail to the Chief, as performed at 
 Covent Garden, but have not yet got it. If you can assist in 
 this, I need not say that on every performance a flowing bump 
 er will go round to the Bard. We have lately been fortunate 
 in getting a good master to our band, who is curious in old 
 Scotch and Irish airs, and has harmonized Johnny Cope, &c. 
 &c 
 
 " Lisbon, 6th October. 
 
 " I had written all the foregoing botheration, intending to 
 send it by a wounded friend going home to Scotland, when, to 
 my no small joy, your parcel, enclosing Den Roderick, reached 
 me. How kind I take it your remembering old Linton in 
 this way. A day or two after I received yours, I was sent into 
 the Alentejo, where I remained a month, and only returned a 
 few days ago, much delighted with the trip. You wish to 
 know how I like the Vision; but as you can t look for any 
 * earned critique from me, I shall only say that I fully entered 
 <nto the spirit and beauty of it, and that I relished much thfl 
 wild and fanciful opening of the introductory part ; yet what 
 particularly delighted me were the stanzas announcing the 
 
156 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 approach of the British fleets and armies to this country, and 
 the three delightful ones descriptive of the different troops, 
 English, Scotch, and Irish ; and I can assure you the Pats are, 
 to a man, enchanted with the picture drawn of their country 
 men, and the mention of the great man himself. Your swear 
 ing, in the true character of a minstrel, * shiver my harp, and 
 burn its every chord, amused me not a little. From being 
 well acquainted with a great many of the situations described, 
 they had of course the more interest, and Grim Busaco s iron 
 ridge most happily paints the appearance of that memorable 
 field. You must know that we have got with us some bright 
 geniuses, natives of the dear country, and who go by the name 
 of the poets. Of course, a present of this kind is not thrown 
 away upon indifferent subjects, but it is read and repeated 
 with all the enthusiasm your warmest. wish could desire. 
 Should it be my fate to survive, I am resolved to try my 
 hand on a snug little farm either up or down the Tweed, 
 somewhere in your neighbourhood ; and on this dream many 
 a delightful castle do I build. 
 
 " I am most happy to hear that the Club * goes on in the 
 old smooth style. I am afraid, however, that now ***** 
 has become a judge, the delights of Scrogum and The Tailor 
 will be lost, till revived perhaps by the old croupier in the 
 shape of a battered half-pay officer. Yours affectionately, 
 
 " ADAM FERGUSSON." 
 
 More than one of the gallant captain s chateaux en 
 Espagne were, as we shall see, realized in the sequel. 
 I must not omit a circumstance which had reached Scott 
 from another source, and which he always took special 
 pride in relating, namely, that in the course of the day 
 when the Lady of the Lake first reached Sir Adam Fer- 
 gusson, he was posted with his company on a point of 
 ground exposed to the enemy s artillery ; somewhere n 
 doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were 
 * See ante, vol. i. p. 183. 
 
THE VISION OF DON RODERICK. 157 
 
 ordered to lie prostrate on the ground ; while they kept 
 that attitude, the Captain, kneeling at their head, read 
 aloud the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the 
 listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza, 
 whenever the French shot struck the bank close above 
 them. 
 
 The only allusion which I have found, in Scott s letters, 
 to the Edinburgh Review on his Vision, occurs in a letter 
 to Mr. Morritt (26th September 1811), which also con 
 tains the only hint of his having been about this time re 
 quested to undertake the task of rendering into English 
 the Charlemagne of Lucien Buonaparte. He says 
 " The Edinburgh Reviewers have been down on my 
 poor Don hand to fist; but, truly, as they are too fas 
 tidious to approve of the campaign, I should be very un 
 reasonable if I expected them to like the celebration of 
 it. I agree with them, however, as to the lumbering 
 weight of the stanza, and I shrewdly suspect it would 
 require a very great poet indeed to prevent the tedium 
 arising from the recurrence of rhymes. Our language 
 is unable to support the expenditure of so many for 
 each stanza : even Spenser himself, with all the license 
 of using obsolete words and uncommon spellings, some 
 times fatigues the ear. They are also very wroth with 
 me for omitting the merits of Sir John Moore ; but as 
 I never exactly discovered in what these lay, unless in 
 conducting his advance and retreat upon a plan the most 
 likely to verify the desponding speculations of the fore- 
 said reviewers, I must hold myself excused for not 
 giving praise where I was unable to see that much 
 was due. The only literary news I have to send you 
 . s, that Lucien Buonaparte s epic, in twenty-four chants, 
 is about to appear. An application was made to me 
 
Jd5 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to translate it, which I negatived of course, and that 
 roundly." * 
 
 I have alluded to some other new experiments in ver 
 sification about this time as probably originating in the 
 many hints of Ellis, Canning, and probably of Erskine, 
 that, if he wished to do himself full justice in poetical 
 narration, he ought to attempt at least the rhyme of 
 Dryden s Fables. Having essayed the most difficult of 
 all English measures in Don Roderick, he this year tried 
 also the heroic couplet, and produced that imitation of 
 Crabbe, The Poacher on seeing which, Crabbe, as his 
 eon s biography tells us, exclaimed, " This man, whoever 
 he is, can do all that I can, and something more" This 
 piece, together with some verses, afterwards worked up 
 into the Bridal of Triermain, and another fragment in 
 imitation of Moore s Lyrics, when first forwarded to Bal- 
 lantyne, were accompanied with a little note, in which he 
 says " Understand I have no idea of parody, but serious 
 imitation, if I can accomplish it. The subject for my 
 Crabbe is a character in his line which he has never 
 touched. I think of Wordsworth, too, and perhaps a 
 ghost story after Lewis. I should be ambitious of try 
 ing Campbell ; but his peculiarity consists so much in 
 the matter, and so little in the manner, that (to his praise 
 be it spoken), I rather think I cannot touch him. * The 
 three imitations which he did execute appeared in the 
 Edinburgh Register for 1809, published in the autumn 
 of 1811. They were there introduced by a letter en 
 titled The Inferno of Altesidora, in which he shadows 
 out the chief reviewers of the day, especially his friends 
 
 * The ponderous epic entitled, Charlemagne ou VEglise Delivree 
 vras published in 1814; and an English version, by the Rev. S. ButJet 
 and the Rev. F. Hodgson, appeared in 1815. 2 vols. 4to. 
 
POETICAL IMITATIONS, ETC. 1811. 159 
 
 Jeffrey and Gifford, with admirable breadth and yet 
 lightness of pleasantry. He kept his secret as to this 
 Inferno, and all its appendages, even from Miss Baillie 
 to whom he says, on their appearance, that " the 
 imitation of Crabbe had struck him as good; that of 
 Moore as bad ; and that of himself as beginning well, 
 but falling off grievously to the close." He seems to 
 have been equally mysterious as to an imitation of the 
 quaint love verses of the beginning of the 17th century, 
 which had found its way shortly before into the news 
 papers, under the name of The Resolve ; * but I find 
 him acknowledging its parentage to his brother Thomas, 
 whose sagacity had at once guessed at the truth. " As 
 to the Resolve," he says, " it is mine ; and it is not or, 
 to be less enigmatical, it is an old fragment, which I 
 coopered up into its present state with the purpose of 
 quizzing certain judges of poetry, who have been ex 
 tremely delighted, and declare that no living poet could 
 write in the same exquisite taste." These critics were 
 his Friends of the Friday Club. When included in the 
 Register, however, the Resolve had his name affixed to 
 it. In that case his concealment had already answered 
 its purpose. It is curious to trace the beginnings of the 
 systematic mystification which he afterwards put in prac 
 tice with regard to the most important series of his 
 works. 
 
 The quarto edition of Don Roderick having rapidly 
 gone off, instead of reprinting the poem as usual in a 
 separate octavo, he inserted it entire in the current vol 
 ume of the Register ; a sufficient proof how much that 
 undertaking was already felt to require extraordinary 
 exertion on the part of its proprietors. Among other 
 * See Poetical Works, Edition 1834, vol. viii. p. 374. 
 
 TOL. III. 11 
 
160 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 minor tasks of the same year, he produced an edition of 
 Wilson s Secret History of the Court of King James I., 
 in two vols. 8vo, to which he supplied a copious preface, 
 and a rich body of notes. He also contributed two or 
 three articles to the Quarterly Review. 
 
THE CLEEKS OF SESSION. 161 
 
 CHAPTER XXHL 
 
 tfeto Arrangement concerning the Clerks of Session Scott* 
 first Purchase of Land Abbotsford ; Turn-again, &fc. 
 Joanna Baillie s Orra, Sfc. Death of James Grahame 
 and of John Leyden. 
 
 1811. 
 
 THROUGHOUT 1811, Scott s serious labour continued 
 to be bestowed on the advancing edition of Swift ; but 
 this and all other literary tasks were frequently inter 
 rupted in consequence of an important step which he 
 took early in the year ; namely, the purchase of the first 
 portion of what became in the sequel an extensive landed 
 property in Roxburghshire. He had now the near pros 
 pect of coming into the beneficial use of the office he had 
 so long filled without emolument in the Court of Session. 
 For, connected with the other reforms in the Scotch judi 
 cature, was a plan for allowing the retirement of function 
 aries, who had served to an advanced period of life, upon 
 pensions ; should this meet the approbation of Parliament, 
 there was little doubt that Mr. George Home would avail 
 himself of the opportunity to resign the place of which 
 he had for five years executed none of the duties ; and 
 the second Lord Melville, who had now succeeded his 
 father as the virtual Minister for Scotland, had so much 
 at heart a measure in itself obviously just and prudent, 
 
162 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 that little doubt could be entertained of the result of his 
 efforts in its behalf. The Clerks of Session, it had been 
 already settled, were henceforth to be paid not by fees, 
 but by fixed salaries ; the amount of each salary, it was 
 soon after arranged, should be 1300 per annum ; and 
 contemplating a speedy accession of professional income 
 so considerable as this, and at the same time a vigorous 
 prosecution of his literary career, Scott fixed his eyes on . 
 a small farm within a few miles of Ashestiel, which it 
 was understood would presently be in the market, and 
 resolved to place himself by its acquisition in the situa 
 tion to which he had probably from his earliest days 
 looked forward as the highest object of ambition, that of 
 a Tweedside Laird. Sit mihi sedes utinam senectce ! 
 
 And the place itself, though not to the general observer 
 a very attractive one, had long been one of peculiar in 
 terest for him. I have often heard him tell, that when 
 travelling in his boyhood with his father, from Selkirk to 
 Melrose, the old man suddenly desired the carriage to 
 halt at the foot of an eminence, and said, " We must get 
 out here, Walter, and see a thing quite in your line." 
 His father then conducted him to a rude stone on the 
 edge of an acclivity about half a mile above the Tweed 
 at Abbotsford, which marks the spot 
 
 " Where gallant Cessford s life-blood deer 
 Reeked on dark Elliot s bo/der spear." 
 
 This was the conclusion of the battle of Melrose, fought 
 in 1526, between the Earls of Angus and Home, and the 
 two chiefs of the race of Kerr on the one side, and Buc- 
 aleuch on the other, in sight of the young King James V 
 the possession of whose person was the object of the con 
 test. This battle is often mentioned in the Border Min* 
 
ABBOTSFORD 1811. 163 
 
 Btrelsy, and the reader will find a long note on it, under 
 the lines which I have just quoted from the Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel. In the names of various localities be 
 tween Melrose and Abbotsford, such as Skirmish-field, 
 Charge-Law, and so forth, the incidents of the fight have 
 found a lasting record ; and the spot where the retainer 
 of Buccleuch terminated the pursuit of the victors by the 
 mortal wound of Kerr of Cessford (ancestor of the Dukes 
 of Roxburghe), has always been called Turn-again. In 
 his own future domain the young minstrel had before 
 him the scene of the last great Clan-battle of the Bor 
 ders. 
 
 On the 12th of May 1811, he writes to James Bal- 
 lantyne, apologizing for some delay about proof-sheets. 
 " My attention," he adds, " has been a little dissipated by 
 considering a plan for my own future comfort, which I 
 hasten to mention to you. My lease of Ashestiel is out 
 I now sit a tenant at will under a heavy rent, and at 
 all the inconvenience of one when in the house of another. 
 I have, therefore, resolved to purchase a piece of ground 
 sufficient for a cottage and a few fields. There are two 
 pieces, either of which would suit me, but both would 
 make a very desirable property indeed. They stretch 
 along the Tweed, near half-way between Melrose and 
 Selkirk, on the opposite side from Lord Somerville, and 
 could be had for between 7000 and 8000 or either 
 separate for about half the sum. I have serious thoughts 
 of one or both, and must have recourse to my pen to 
 make the matter easy. The worst is the difficulty which 
 John might find in advancing so large a sum as the copy 
 right of a new poem ; supposing it to be made payable 
 within a year at farthest from the work going to press, 
 which would be essential to my purpose. Yet the Lady 
 
164 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of the Lake came soon home. I have a letter this morn 
 ing giving me good hope of my Treasury business being 
 carried through : if this takes place, I will buy both the 
 little farms, which will give me a mile of the beautiful 
 turn of Tweed, above Gala-foot if not, I will confine 
 myself to one. As my income, in the event supposed, 
 will be very considerable, it will afford a sinking fund to 
 clear off what debt I may incur in making this purchase. 
 It is proper John and you should be as soon as possible 
 apprized of these my intentions, which I believe you will 
 think reasonable in my situation, and at my age, while I 
 may yet hope to sit under the shade of a tree of my own 
 planting. I shall not, I think, want any pecuniary as 
 sistance beyond what I have noticed, but of course my 
 powers of rendering it will be considerably limited for a 
 time. I hope this Register will give a start to its prede 
 cessors ; I assure you I shall spare no pains. John must 
 lend his earnest attention to clear his hands of the quire 
 stock, and to taking in as little as he can unless in the 
 way of exchange ; in short, reefing our sails, which are 
 at present too much spread for our ballast." 
 
 He alludes in the same letter to a change in the firm 
 of Messrs. Constable, which John Ballantyne had just 
 announced to him ; and, although some of his prognosti 
 cations on this business were not exactly fulfilled, I must 
 quote his expressions for the light they throw on his opin 
 ion of Constable s temper and character. " No associ 
 ation," he says, " of the kind Mr. C. proposes, will stand 
 two years with him for its head. His temper is too 
 haughty to bear with the complaints, and to answer all 
 the minute inquiries, which partners of that sort will 
 think themselves entitled to make, and expect to have 
 answered. Their first onset, however, will be terrible^ 
 
ABBOTSFORD 1811. 1 65 
 
 and John must be prepared to lie by The new 
 
 poem would help the presses." The new partners to 
 which he refers were Mr. Robert Cathcart of Drum, 
 Writer to the Signet, a gentleman of high worth and in 
 tegrity, who continued to be connected with Constable s 
 business until his death in November 1812 ; and Mr. 
 Robert Cadell, who afterwards married Mr. Constable s 
 eldest daughter.* 
 
 Of the two adjoining farms, both of which he had at 
 this time thought of purchasing, he shortly afterwards 
 made up his mind that one would be sufficient to begin 
 with ; and he selected that nearest to Ashestiel, and com 
 prising the scene of Cessford s slaughter. The person 
 from whom he bought it was an old friend of his own, 
 whose sterling worth he venerated, and whose humorous 
 conversation rendered him an universal favourite among 
 the gentry of the Forest the late Rev. Dr. Robert 
 Douglas, minister of Galashiels the same man to whom 
 Mrs. Cockburn described the juvenile prodigy of George s 
 Square, in November 1777. Dr. Douglas had never re 
 sided on the property, and his efforts to embellish it had 
 been limited to one stripe of firs, so long and so narrow 
 that Scott likened it to a black hair-comb. It ran from 
 the precincts of the homestead towards Turn-again, and 
 has bequeathed the name of the Doctor s redding-kame to 
 the mass of nobler trees amidst which its dark straight 
 line can now hardly be traced. The farm consisted of a 
 rich meadow or haugh along the banks of the river, and 
 about a hundred acres of undulated ground behind, all in 
 a, neglected state, undrained, wretchedly enclosed, much 
 
 * This union was dissolved by the death of the lady within a year 
 of the marriage. Mr. Cadell, not long after the catastrophe of 1826 
 became sole publisher of Scott s later works. 
 
166 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of it covered with nothing better than the native heath. 
 The farm-house itself was small and poor, with a common 
 kail-yard on one flank, and a staring barn of the Doctor s 
 erection on the other ; while in front appeared a filthy 
 pond covered with ducks and duckweed, from which the 
 whole tenement had derived the unharmonious designa 
 tion of Clarty Hole. But the Tweed was everything to 
 him a beautiful river, flowing broad and bright over a 
 bed of milkwhite pebbles, unless here and there where it 
 darkened into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by 
 the birches and alders which had survived the statelier 
 growth of the primitive Forest ; and the first hour that 
 he took possession he claimed for his farm the name of 
 the adjoining ford, situated just above the influx of the 
 classical tributary Gala. As might be guessed from the 
 name of A bbotsford, these lands had all belonged of old 
 to the great Abbey of Melrose ; and indeed the Duke of 
 Buccleuch, as the territorial representative of that relig 
 ious brotherhood, still retains some seignorial rights over 
 them, and almost all the surrounding district. Another 
 feature of no small interest in Scott s eyes was an ancient 
 Roman road leading from the Eildon hills to this ford, 
 the remains of which, however, are now mostly sheltered 
 from view amidst his numerous plantations. The most 
 graceful and picturesque of all the monastic ruins in Scot 
 land, the Abbey of Melrose itself, is visible from many 
 points in the immediate neighbourhood of the house ; and 
 last, not least, on the rising ground full in view across 
 the river, the traveller may still observe the chief traces 
 of that ancient British barrier, the Catrail, of which the 
 reader has seen frequent mention in Scott s early letter? 
 to Ellis, when investigating the antiquities of Beged and 
 Strathclyde. 
 
ABBOTSFORD 1811. 167 
 
 Such was the territory on which Scott s prophetic eye 
 already beheld rich pastures, embosomed among flourish 
 ing groves, where his children s children should thank 
 the founder. But the state of his feelings when he first 
 called these fields his own, will be best illustrated by * 
 few extracts from his letters. To his brother-in-law, Mr 
 Carpenter, he thus writes, from Ashestiel, on the 5th of 
 August 
 
 " As my lease of this place is out, I have bought, for about 
 4000, a property in the neighbourhood, extending along the 
 banks of the river Tweed for about half-a-mile. It is very 
 bleak at present, having little to recommend it but the vicinity 
 of the river ; but as the ground is well adapted by nature to 
 grow wood, and is considerably various in form and appear 
 ance, I have no doubt that by judicious plantations it may be 
 rendered a very pleasant spot ; and it is at present my great 
 amusement to plan the various lines which may be necessary 
 for that purpose. The farm comprehends about a hundred 
 acres, of which I shall keep fifty in pasture and tillage, and 
 plant all the rest, which will be a very valuable little posses 
 sion in a few years, as wood bears a high price among us. I 
 intend building a small cottage here for my summer abode, 
 being obliged by law, as well as induced by inclination, to 
 make this county my residence for some months every year. 
 This is the greatest incident which has lately taken place in 
 our domestic concerns, and I assure you we are not a little 
 proud of being greeted as laird and lady of Abbotsford. We 
 will give a grand gala when we take possession of it, and as 
 we are very clannish in this corner, all the Scotts in the coun 
 try, from the Duke to the peasant, shall dance on the green to 
 the bagpipes, and drink whisky punch. Now as this happy 
 festival is to be deferred for more than a twelvemonth, during 
 which our cottage is to be built, &c. &c., what is there to 
 tender brother and sister Carpenter from giving us their com 
 pany upon so gratifying an occasion ? Pray, do not stay broil- 
 
168 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ing yourself in India for a moment longer than you have se 
 cured comfort and competence. Don t look forward to peace t 
 it will never come either in your day or mine." 
 
 The same week he says to Joanna Baillie 
 
 " My dreams about my cottage go on ; of about a hundred 
 acres I have manfully resolved to plant from sixty to seventy ; 
 as to my scale of dwelling why, you shall see my plan when 
 I have adjusted it. My present intention is to have only two 
 spare bed-rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which will on a 
 pinch have a couch bed ; but I cannot relinquish my Border 
 principle of accommodating all the cousins and duniwastles, 
 who will rather sleep on chairs, and on the floor, and in the 
 hay-loft, than be absent when folks are gathered together ; and 
 truly I used to think Ashestiel was very much like the tent of 
 Periebanou, in the Arabian Nights, that suited alike all num 
 bers of company equally ; ten people fill it at any time, and I 
 remember its lodging thirty-two without any complaint. As 
 for the go-about folks, they generally pay their score one way 
 or other ; for you who are always in the way of seeing, and 
 commanding, and selecting your society, are too fastidious to 
 understand how a dearth of news may make anybody welcome 
 that can tell one the current report of the day. If it is any 
 pleasure to these stragglers to say I made them welcome as 
 strangers, I am sure that costs me nothing only I deprecate 
 publication, and am now the less afraid of it that I think scarce 
 any bookseller will be desperate enough to print a new Scot 
 tish tour. Besides, one has the pleasure to tell over all the 
 stories that have bored your friends a dozen of times, with 
 some degree of propriety. In short, I think, like a true Scotch 
 man, that a stranger, unless he is very unpleasant indeed, 
 usually brings a title to a welcome along with him ; and to 
 confess the truth, I do a little envy my old friend Abonhassan 
 his walks on the bridge of Bagdad, and evening conversations, 
 and suppers with the guests whom he was never to see again 
 in his life: he never fell into a scrape till he met with the 
 
LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE AUG. 1811. 169 
 
 Caliph and, thank God, no Caliphs frequent the brigg of 
 Melrose, which will be my nearest Rialto at Abbotsford. 
 
 " I never heard of a stranger that utterly baffled all efforts 
 to engage him in conversation, excepting one whom an ac 
 quaintance of mine met in a stage-coach. My friend,* who 
 piqued himself on his talents for conversation, assailed this tor 
 toise on all hands, but in vain, and at length descended to 
 expostulation. I have talked to you, my friend, on all the 
 ordinary subjects literature, farming, merchandise gam 
 ing, game-laws, horse-races suits at law politics, and swin 
 dling, and blasphemy, and philosophy is there any one 
 subject that you will favour me by opening upon ? The 
 wight writhed his countenance into a grin Sir, said he, 
 can you say anything clever about bend leather f There, I 
 own, I should have been as much non-plussed as my acquaint 
 ance ; but upon any less abstruse subject, I think, in general, 
 something may be made of a stranger, worthy of his clean 
 sheets, and beef-steak, and glass of port. You, indeed, my 
 dear friend, may suffer a little for me, as I should for you, 
 when such a fortuitous acquaintance talks of the intercourse 
 arising from our meeting as anything beyond the effect of 
 chance and civility : but these braggings break no bones, and 
 are always a compliment to the person of whom the discourse 
 is held, though the narrator means it to himself; for no one 
 can suppose the affectation of intimacy can be assumed unless 
 from an idea that it exalts the person who brags of it. My 
 little folks are well, and I am performing the painful duty of 
 hearing my little boy his Latin lesson every morning ; painful, 
 because my knowledge of the language is more familiar than 
 grammatical, and because little Walter has a disconsolate 
 yawn at intervals, which is quite irresistible, and has nearly 
 cost me a dislocation of my jaws." 
 
 In answering the letter which announced the acquisi 
 tion of Abbotsford, Joanna Baillie says, very prettily : 
 
 * This friend was Mr. William Clerk. 
 
170 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 "Yourself and Mrs. Scott, and the children, will fee. 
 sorry at leaving Ashestiel, which will long have a conse 
 quence, and be the object of kind feelings with many 
 from having once been the place of your residence. If 
 I should ever be happy enough to be at Abbotsford, you 
 must take me to see Ashestiel too. I have a kind of 
 tenderness for it, as one has for a man s first wife, when 
 you hear he has married a second." The same natural 
 sentiment is expressed in a manner characteristically dif 
 ferent, in a letter from the Ettrick Shepherd, of about 
 the same date : " Are you not sorry at leaving auld 
 Ashestiel for gude an a\ after having been at so much 
 trouble and expense in making it a complete thing? 
 Upon my word I was, on seeing it in the papers." 
 
 That Scott had many a pang in quitting a spot which 
 had been the scene of so many innocent and noble pleas 
 ures, no one can doubt ; but the desire of having a 
 permanent abiding-place of his own, in his ancestorial 
 district, had long been growing upon his mind ; and, 
 moreover, he had laboured in adorning Ashestiel, not 
 only to gratify his own taste as a landscape gardener, but 
 because he had for years been looking forward to the day 
 when Colonel Russell * would return from India to claim 
 possession of his romantic inheritance. And he was over 
 paid for all his exertions, when the gallant soldier sat 
 down at length among the trees which an affectionate 
 kinsman had pruned and planted in his absence. Pie 
 retained, however, to the end of his life, a certain " ten 
 derness of feeling " towards Ashestiel, which could not 
 perhaps be better shadowed than in Joanna Baillie s simil 
 itude. It was not his first country residence nor could 
 its immediate landscape be said to equal the Vale of th 
 * Now Major-General Sir James Russell, K. C. B. 
 
AUGUST 1811. 171 
 
 Esk, either in actual picturesqueness, or (before Mar- 
 mion) in dignity of association. But it was while occupy 
 ing Ashestiel that he first enjoyed habitually the free 
 presence of wild and solitary nature ; and I shall here 
 quote part of a letter, in which he alludes to his favourite 
 wildernesses between Tweed and Yarrow, in language, 
 to my mind, strongly indicative of the regrets and mis 
 givings with which he must have taken his farewell 
 wanderings over them in the summer and autumn of 
 1811. 
 
 Miss Baillie had then in the press a new volume of 
 Tragedies, but had told her friend that the publication, 
 for booksellers reasons, would not take place until win 
 ter. He answers (August 24th) " Were it possible 
 for me to hasten the treat I expect by such a composition 
 with you, I would promise to read the volume at the 
 silence of noonday, upon the top of Minchmuir, or Win- 
 dlestrawlaw. The hour is allowed, by those skilful in de- 
 monology, to be as full of witching as midnight itself ; and 
 I assure you, I have felt really oppressed with a sort of 
 fearful loneliness, when looking around the naked and tow 
 ering ridges of desolate barrenness, which is all the eye 
 takes in from the top of such a mountain the patches 
 of cultivation being all hidden in the little glens and val 
 leys or only appearing to make one sensible how feeble 
 and inefficient the efforts of art have been to contend witl 
 the genius of the soil. It is in such a scene that the un 
 known author of a fine, but unequal poem, called Alba 
 nia, places the remarkable superstition which consists in 
 hearing the noise of a chase, with the baying of the 
 hounds, the throttling sobs of the deer, the halloos of 
 a numerous band of huntsmen, and the * hoofs thick 
 beating on the hollow hill. I have often repeated his 
 
172 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 verses with some sensations of awe in such a place, 
 and I am sure yours would effect their purpose as com 
 pletely." * 
 
 Miss Baillie sent him, as soon as it was printed, the 
 book to which this communication refers ; she told him it 
 was to be her last publication, and that she was getting 
 her knitting-needles in order meaning to begin her 
 new course of industry with a purse, by way of return 
 for his lona brooch. The poetess mentioned, at the same 
 time, that she had met the evening before with a Scotch 
 lady who boasted that " she had once been Walter Scott s 
 bedfellow." " Don t start," adds Joanna ; " it is thirty 
 years since the irregularity took place, and she describes 
 her old bedfellow as the drollest looking, entertaining 
 
 * The lines here alluded to and which Scott delighted to repeat 
 - are as follows : 
 
 " Ere since, of old, the haughty thanes of Ross, 
 So to the simple swain tradition tells, 
 Were wont with clans, and ready vassals throng d, 
 To wake the hounding stag, or guilty wolf, 
 There oft is heard, at midnight or at noon, 
 Beginning faint, but rising still more loud, 
 And nearer, voice of hunters, and of hounds, 
 And horns, hoarse winded, blowing far and keen: 
 Forthwith the hubbub multiplies ; the gale 
 Labours with wilder shrieks, and rifer din 
 Of hot pursuit ; the broken cry f deer 
 Mangled by throttling dogs ; the shouts of men. 
 And hoofs, thick beating on the hollow hill 
 Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale 
 Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman s ears 
 Tingle with inward dread. Aghast, he eyes 
 The mountain s height, and all the ridges round, 
 Yet not one trace of living wight discerns, 
 Nor knows, o erawed, and trembling as he stands, 
 To what, or whom, he owes his idle fear, 
 To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend ; 
 But wonders, and no end of wondering finds." 
 
 Albania reprinted in Scottish Descriptive Potmt. 
 pp. 167, 168 
 
JOANNA BAILLIE ? S ORRA. 173 
 
 little urchin that ever was seen. I told her that you are 
 a great strong man, six feet high, but she does not b*- 
 Heve me." In point of fact, the assigned date was a 
 lady s one ; for the irregularity in question occurred on 
 board the Leith smack which conveyed Walter Scott to 
 London on his way to Bath, when he was only four years 
 of age, A. D. 1775. 
 
 Miss Baillie s welcome volume contained, among 
 others, her tragedy on the Passion of Fear ; and Scott 
 gives so much of himself in the letter acknowledging 
 this present, that I must insert it at length. 
 
 "To Miss Joanna Baillie. 
 
 " My Dear Friend, .... It is too little to say I am en 
 chanted with the said third volume, especially with the two 
 first plays, which in every point not only sustain, but even 
 exalt your reputation as a dramatist. The whole character of 
 Orra is exquisitely supported as well as imagined, and the lan 
 guage distinguished by a rich variety of fancy, which I know 
 no instance of excepting in Shakspeare. After I had read 
 Orra twice to myself, Terry read it over to us a third time, 
 aloud, and I have seldom seen a little circle so much affected 
 as during the whole fifth act. I think it would act charmingly, 
 omitting, perhaps, the baying of the hounds, which could not 
 be happily imitated, and retaining only the blast of the horn 
 and the halloo of the huntsmen at a distance. Only I doubt 
 if we have now an actress that could carry through the mad 
 scene in the fifth act, which is certainly one of the most sub 
 lime that ever were written. Yet I have a great quarrel with 
 this beautiful drama, for you must know you have utterly de 
 stroyed a song of mine, precisely in the turn of your outlaw s 
 ditty, and sung by persons in somewhat the same situation. I 
 took out my unfortunate manuscript to look at it, but alas ! it 
 was the encounter of the iron and the earthen pitchers in the 
 fable. I was clearly sunk, and the potsherds not worth gath- 
 
174 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ering up. But only conceive that the chorus should have rui? 
 thus verbatim 
 
 Tis mirk midnight with peaceful men, 
 "With us tis dawn of day 
 
 And again 
 
 * Then boot and saddle, comrades boon, 
 Nor wait the dawn of day. * 
 
 " I think the Dream extremely powerful indeed, but I am 
 rather glad we did not hazard the representation. It rests so 
 entirely on Osterloo, that I am almost sure we must have 
 made a bad piece of work of it. By-the-by, a story is told of 
 an Italian buffoon, who had contrived to give his master, a 
 petty prince of Italy, a good hearty ducking, and a fright to 
 boot, to cure him of an ague ; the treatment succeeded, but 
 the potentate, by way of retaliation, had his audacious physi 
 cian tried for treason, and condemned to lose his head; th 
 criminal was brought forth, the priest heard his confession, and 
 the poor jester knelt down to the block. Instead of wielding 
 his axe, the executioner, as he had been instructed, threw a 
 pitcher of water on the bare neck of the criminal ; here the 
 jest was to have terminated, but poor Gonella was found dead 
 on the spot. I believe the catastrophe is very possible.f The 
 latter half of the volume I have not perused with the same 
 attention, though I have devoured both the Comedy and the 
 Beacon in a hasty manner. I think the approbation of the 
 public will make you alter your intention of taking up the 
 knitting-needle and that I shall be as much to seek for my 
 purse as for the bank-notes which you say are to stuff it 
 
 * These lines were accordingly struck out of the outlaw s song in 
 Bokeby. The verses of Orra, to which Scott alludes, are no doubt th 
 following: 
 
 " The wild fire dances on the fen, 
 
 The red star sheds its ray, 
 Up rouse ye, then, my merry men, 
 It is our opening day," &c 
 
 Plays on the Passions, vol. iii. p. 44 
 
 t Thi* story is told, among others, by Montaigne. 
 
OBRA FEAR. IV d 
 
 khougli I have no idea where they are to come from. Bufc 1 
 shall think more of the purse than the notes, come when 01 
 how they may. 
 
 " To return, I really think Fear the most dramatic passion 
 you have hitherto touched, because capable of being drawn to 
 the most extreme paroxysm on the stage. In Orra you have 
 all gradations, from a timidity excited by a strong and irrita 
 ble imagination, to the extremity which altogether unhinges 
 the understanding. The most dreadful fright I ever had in 
 my life (being neither constitutionally timid, nor in the way 
 of being exposed to real danger) was in returning from Hamp- 
 stead the day which I spent so pleasantly with you. Although 
 the evening was nearly closed, I foolishly chose to take the 
 short cut through the fields, and in that enclosure, where the 
 path leads close by a thick and high hedge with several gaps 
 in it, however did I meet one of your very thorough-paced 
 London ruffians, at least judging from the squalid and jail-bird 
 appearance and blackguard expression of countenance. Like 
 the man that met the devil, I had nothing to say to him, if he 
 had nothing to say to me, but I could not help looking back to 
 watch the movements of sach a suspicious figure, and to my 
 great uneasiness saw him creep through the hedge on my left 
 hand. I instantly went to the first gap to watch his motions, 
 and saw him stooping, as I thought, either to lift a bundle or 
 to speak to some person who seemed lying in the ditch. Im 
 mediately after, he came cowering back up the opposite side 
 of the hedge, as returning towards me under cover of it. I 
 saw no weapons he had, except a stick, but as I moved on to 
 gain the stile which was to let me into the free field with 
 the idea of a wretch springing upon me from the cover at 
 eveiy step I took I assure you I would not wish the worst 
 enemy I ever had to undergo such a feeling as I had for about 
 five minutes ; my fancy made him of that description which 
 usually combines murder with plunder, and though I was well 
 armed with a stout stick and a very formidable knife, which 
 when opened becomes a sort of skene-dhu, or dagger, I confess 
 
 VOL. III. 12 
 
176 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 my sensations, though those of a man much resolved not to 
 die like a sheep, were vilely short of heroism; so much so, 
 that when I jumped over the stile, a sliver of the wood run 
 a third of an inch between my nail and flesh, without my feel 
 ing the pain, or being sensible such a thing had happened. 
 However, I saw my man no more, and it is astonishing how 
 my spirits rose when I got into the open field ; and <vhen I 
 reached the top of the little mount, and all the bells in Lon 
 don (for aught I know) began to jingle at once, I thought I 
 had never heard anything so delightful in my life so rapid 
 are the alternations of our feelings. This foolish story, for 
 perhaps I had no rational ground for the horrible feeling which 
 possessed my mind for a little while, came irresistibly to my 
 pen when writing to you on the subject of terror. 
 
 " Poor Grahanae, gentle, and amiable, and enthusiastic, de 
 serves all you can say of him ; his was really a hallowed harp, 
 as he was himself an Israelite without guile. How often have 
 I teazed him, but never out of his good-humour, by praising 
 Dundee and laughing at the Covenanters ! but I beg your 
 pardon ; you are a Westland Whig too, and will perhaps make 
 less allowance for a descendant of the persecutors. I think 
 his works should be collected and published for the benefit of 
 his family. Surely the wife and orphans of such a man have 
 a claim on the generosity of the public.* 
 
 " Pray make my remembrance to the lady who so kindly 
 remembers our early intimacy. I do perfectly remember being 
 an exceedingly spoiled, chattering monkey, whom indifferent 
 health and the cares of a kind Grandmamma and Aunt, had 
 \nade, I suspect, extremely abominable to everybody who had 
 
 * James Grahame, author of The Sabbath, had been originally a 
 member of the Scotch Bar, and was an early friend of Scott s. Not 
 succeeding in the law, he (with all his love for the Covenanters) 
 took orders in the Church of England, obtained a curacy in the county 
 of Durham, and died there, on the 14th of September 1811, in the 47tfc 
 year of his age. See a Memoir of his Life and Writings in the Edin 
 Vurgh Annual Register for 1812, part ii. pp. 384-415. 
 
DANIEL TERRY. 177 
 
 uot a great deal of sympathy and good-nature, which I dare 
 tay was the case of my quondam bedfellow, since she recollects 
 me so favourably. Farewell, and believe me faithfully and 
 respectfully, your sincere friend, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Miss Baillie, in her next letter, mentioned the name 
 of the " old bedfellow," and that immediately refreshed 
 Scott s recollection. " I do," he replies, " remember Miss 
 Wright perfectly well. Oh, how I should like to talk 
 over with her our voyage in the good ship the Duchess 
 of Buccleuch, Captain Beatson, master ; much of which, 
 from the novelty doubtless of the scene, is strongly im 
 pressed on my memory. A long voyage it was of 
 twelve days, if I mistake not, with the variety of a day or 
 two in Yarmouth Roads. I believe the passengers had a 
 good deal of fun with me ; for I remember being per 
 suaded to shoot one of them with an air-gun, who, to my 
 great terror, lay obstinately dead on the deck, and would 
 not revive till I fell a-crying, which proved the remedy 
 specific upon the occasion." 
 
 The mention of Mr. Terry, in the letter about Orra, 
 reminds me to observe that Scott s intimacy with that 
 gentleman began to make very rapid progress from the 
 date of the first purchase of Abbotsford. He spent 
 several weeks of that autumn at Ashestiel, riding over 
 daily to the new farm, and assisting his friend with ad 
 vice, which his acquirements as an architect and draughts 
 man rendered exceedingly valuable, as to the future ar 
 rangements about both house and grounds. Early in 
 1812 Terry proceeded to London, and made, on the 20th 
 May, a very successful debut on the boards of the Hay- 
 aaarket as Lord Ogleby. He continued, however, to visit 
 
178 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Scotland almost every season, and no ally had more to do 
 either with the plans ultimately adopted as to Scott s new 
 structure, or with the collection of literary and antiqua 
 rian curiosities which now constitute its . museum. From 
 this time the series of letters between them is an ample 
 one. The intelligent zeal with which the actor laboured 
 to promote the gratification of the poet s tastes and fancies 
 on the one side : on the other, Scott s warm anxiety for 
 Terry s professional success, the sagacity and hopefulness 
 with which he counsels and cheers him throughout, and 
 the good-natured confidence with which he details his 
 own projects, both the greatest and the smallest, all 
 this seems to me to make up a very interesting picture. 
 To none of his later correspondents, with the one excep 
 tion of Mr. Morritt, does Scott write with a more perfect 
 easy-heartedness than to Terry ; and the quaint dramatic 
 turns and allusions with which these letters abound, will 
 remind all who knew him of the instinctive courtesy with 
 which he uniformly adopted, in conversation, a strain the 
 most likely to fall in with the habits of any companion. 
 It has been mentioned that his acquaintance with Terry 
 sprung from Terry s familiarity with the Ballantynes ; as 
 it ripened, he had, in fact, learned to consider the in 
 genious comedian as another brother of that race ; and 
 Terry, transplanted to the south, was used and trusted 
 by him, and continued to serve and communicate with 
 him, very much as if one of themselves had found it con 
 venient to establish his headquarters in London. 
 
 Among the letters written immediately after Scott had 
 completed his bargain with Dr. Douglas, is one which 
 (unlike the rest) I found in his own repositories : 
 
LAST LETTER TO LEYDEN. 179 
 
 * For Doctor Leyden, Calcutta. 
 M Favoured by the Hon. Lady Hood. 
 
 41 Ashestiel, 25th August 1811, 
 
 My Dear Leyden, You hardly deserve I should write to 
 you, for I have written you two long letters since I saw Mr. 
 Purves, and received from him your valued dagger,* which I 
 preserve carefully till Buonaparte shall come or send for it. 
 I might take a cruel revenge on you for your silence, by de 
 clining Lady Hood s request to make you acquainted with her ; 
 in which case, I assure you, great would be your loss. She is 
 quite a congenial spirit ; an ardent Scotswoman, and devotedly 
 attached to those sketches of traditionary history which all the 
 waters of the Burrampooter cannot, I suspect, altogether wash 
 out of your honour s memory. This, however, is the least of 
 her praises. She is generous, and feeling, and intelligent, and 
 has contrived to keep her heart and social affections broad 
 awake amidst the chilling and benumbing atmosphere of Lon 
 don fashion. I ought perhaps first to have told you, that Lady 
 H. was the honourable Mary Mackenzie, daughter of Lord 
 Seaforth, and is the wife of Sir Samuel Hood, one of our most 
 distinguished naval heroes, who goes out to take the command 
 in your seas. Lastly, she is a very intimate friend of Mrs. 
 Scott s and myself, and first gained my heart by her admira 
 tion of the Scenes of Infancy. So you see, my good friend, 
 what your laziness would have cost you, if, listening rather to 
 the dictates of revenge than generosity, I had withheld my pen 
 from the inkhorn. But, to confess the truth, I fear two such 
 minds would soon have found each other out, like good dancers 
 in a ball-room, without the assistance of a master of ceremonies. 
 So I may even play Sir Clement Cotterel with a good grace, 
 since I cannot further my vengeance by withholding my good 
 offices. My last went by favour of John Pringle,f who carried 
 you a copy of the Lady of the Lake, a poem which I realty 
 
 * A Malay crease, now at Abbotsford. 
 f A son of Mr. Pringle of Why tbank. 
 
180 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 think you will like better than Marmion on the whole, though 
 not perhaps in particular passages. Pray let me know if it 
 tarried you back to the land of mist and mountain ? 
 
 " Lady Hood s departure being sudden, and your deserti 
 not extraordinary (speaking as a correspondent), I have not 
 time to write you much news. The best domestic intelligence 
 is, that the Sheriff of Selkirkshire, his lease of Ashestiel being 
 out, has purchased about 100 acres, extending along the banks 
 of the Tweed just above the confluence of the Gala, and about 
 three miles from Melrose. There, saith fame, he designs to 
 bigg himself a bower sibi et amicis and happy will he be 
 when India shall return you to a social meal at his cottage. 
 The place looks at present very like poor Scotland s gear. 
 It consists of a bank and haugh as poor and bare as Sir John 
 Falstaff s regiment; though I fear, ere you come to see, the 
 verdant screen I am about to spread over its nakedness will 
 have in some degree removed this reproach. But it has a wild 
 solitary air, and commands a splendid reach of the Tweed ; 
 and, to sum all in the words of Touchstone, it is a poor thing, 
 but mine own. * 
 
 " Our little folks, whom you left infante, are now shooting 
 fast forward to youth, and show some blood, as far as aptitude 
 to learning is concerned. Charlotte and I are wearing on as 
 easily as this fashions world will permit. The outside of my 
 head is waxing grizzled, but I cannot find that this snow has 
 cooled either my brain or my heart. Adieu, dear Leyden ! 
 Pray, brighten the chain of friendship by a letter when occa 
 sion serves ; and believe me ever yours, most affectionately, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 On the 28th of August 1811, just three days after this 
 letter was penned, John Leyden died. On the very day 
 when Scott was writing it, he, having accompanied the 
 Governor- General, Lord Minto, on the expedition againsf 
 
 * "An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own," &c. 
 
 As You Like It, Act V. Scene 4. 
 
DEATH OF LEYDEN. 181 
 
 Java, dashed into the surf, that he might be the first 
 Briton in the armament who should set foot on the 
 island. " When," says Scott, in his Sketch of Leyden s 
 Life, " the well-concerted movements of the invaders had 
 given them possession of the town of Batavia, he dis 
 played the same ill-omened precipitation in his haste to 
 examine a library, or rather warehouse of books, in which 
 many Indian MSS. of value were said to be deposited. 
 The apartment had not been regularly ventilated, and, 
 either from this circumstance, or already affected by the 
 fatal sickness peculiar to Batavia, Leyden, when he left 
 the place, had a fit of shivering, and declared the atmos 
 phere was enough to give any mortal a fever. The pres 
 age was too just. He took to his bed and died in three 
 days, on the eve of the battle which gave Java to the 
 British empire 
 
 * Grata quies patriae, sed et omnis terra sepulchrum. " * 
 
 The packet in which Lady Hood, on her arrival in 
 India, announced this event, and returned Scott s un 
 opened letter, contained also a very touching one from 
 the late Sir John Malcolm, who, although he had never 
 at that time seen the poet, assumed, as a brother borderer 
 lamenting a common friend, the language of old acquaint 
 anceship; and to this Scott replied in the same style 
 which, from their first meeting in the autumn of the next 
 year, became that, on both sides, of warm and respectful 
 attachment. I might almost speak in the like tenor of a 
 third letter in the same melancholy packet, from another 
 enthusiastic admirer of Leyden, Mr. Henry Ellis,f who 
 
 * This little biography of Leyden is included in Scott s Miscellane 
 ous Prose Works, vol. iv. p. 137 (Edin. Ed.) 
 
 t Now the Right Honourable Henry Ellis, appointed, in 1836, am- 
 assador from the Court of St. James s to the Shah of Persia. 
 
162 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 also communicated to Scott his spirited stanzas on that 
 untimely fate ; but his personal intercourse with this dis 
 tinguished diplomatist took place at a later period. 
 
 Before passing from the autumn of 1811, I may men 
 tion, that the letter of James Hogg, from which I have 
 quoted an expression of regret as to Ashestiel, was one 
 of many from the Shepherd, bearing about this date, 
 which Scott esteemed worthy of preservation. Strange 
 as the fact may appear, Hogg, on the other hand, seems 
 to have preserved none of the answers ; but the half of 
 the correspondence is quite sufficient to show how con 
 stantly and earnestly, in the midst of his own expanding 
 toils and interests, Scott had continued to watch over the 
 struggling fortunes of the wayward and imprudent Shep 
 herd. His letters to the different members of the Buc- 
 cleuch family at this time are full of the same subject. 
 I shall insert one, addressed, on the 24th of August, to 
 the Countess of Dalkeith, along with a presentation copy 
 of Hogg s u Forest Minstrel." It appears to me a re 
 markable specimen of the simplest natural feelings on 
 more subjects than one, couched in a dialect which, in 
 any hands but the highest, is apt to become a cold 
 one: 
 
 . " Ashestiel, Aug. 24, 1811. 
 "Dear Lady Dalkeith, The Ettrick Bard, who compiled 
 
 he enclosed collection, which I observe is inscribed to your 
 ladyship, has made it his request that I would transmit a copy 
 for your acceptance. I fear your Ladyship will find but little 
 amusement in it ; for the poor fellow has just talent sufficient 
 
 o spoil him for his own trade, without having enough to sup 
 port him by literature. But I embrace the more readily an 
 opportunity of intruding upon your Ladyship s leisure, that I 
 might thank you for the very kind and affecting letter with 
 
JAMES HOGG LADY DALKEITH, ETC. 183 
 
 which you honoured me some time ago. You do me justice in 
 believing that I was deeply concerned at the irreparable loss 
 you sustained in the dear and hopeful boy * to whom all the 
 friends of the Buccleuch family looked forward with so much 
 confidence. I can safely say, that since that inexpressible 
 misfortune, I almost felt as if the presence of one, with whom 
 the recollection of past happiness might in some degree be 
 associated, must have awakened and added to your Lady 
 ship s distress, from a feeling that scenes of which we were not 
 to speak, were necessarily uppermost in the recollection of both. 
 But your Ladyship knows better than I can teach, that, where 
 all common topics of consolation would be inapplicable, Heaven 
 provides for us the best and most effectual lenitive in the prog 
 ress of time, and in the constant and unremitting discharge 
 of the duties incumbent on the station in which we are placed. 
 Those of your Ladyship are important, in proportion to the 
 elevation of your rank, and the promising qualities of the 
 young minds which I have with so much pleasure seen you 
 forming and instructing to be comforts, I trust, to yourself, 
 and an honour to society. Poor Lady Kosslyn f is gone, with 
 all the various talent and vivacity that rendered her society so 
 delightful. I regret her loss the more, as she died without, 
 ever making up some unkindness she had towards me for these 
 foolish politics. It is another example of the great truth, that 
 life is too short for the indulgence of animosity. I have the 
 honour to be, with the greatest respect, your Ladyship s obliged 
 and very humble servant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 The Countess, in acknowledgment of the dedication of 
 the Forest Minstrel, sent Hogg, through Scott s hands, 
 
 * Lord Scott. See ante, vol. ii. p. 288. 
 
 t The Countess of Rosslyn, born Lady Harriet Bouverie, a very in 
 timate friend of Lady Dalkeith, died 8th August 1810. She had, as 
 fcas been mentioned before, written to Scott, resenting somewhat 
 warmly his eong at the Melville dinner. See ante, vol. ii. p. 244. 
 
184 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the donation of a hundred guineas a sum which, to 
 him, in those days, must have seemed a fortune ; but 
 which was only the pledge and harbinger of still more 
 important benefits conferred soon after her Ladyship s 
 husband became the head of his house. 
 
EOKEBY BEGUN. 185 
 
 CHAPTER XXTV. 
 
 The Poem of Rokeby begun Correspondence with Mr. Mar- 
 ritt Death of Henry Duke of Buccleuch George Ellis 
 John Wilson Apprentices of Edinburgh Scott s " Nick- 
 Nackatories " Letter to Miss Baillie on the Publication of 
 Childe Harold Correspondence with Lord Byron. 
 
 1811-1812. 
 
 OP the 4000 which Scott paid for the original farm 
 of Abbotsford, he borrowed one half from his eldest 
 brother, Major John Scott ; the other moiety was raised 
 by the Ballantynes, and advanced on the security of the 
 as yet unwritten, though long meditated, poem of Rokeby. 
 He immediately, I believe by Terry s counsel, requested 
 Mr. Stark of Edinburgh, an architect of whose talents he 
 always spoke warmly, to give him a design for an orna 
 mental cottage in the style of the old English vicarage- 
 house. But before this could be done, Mr. Stark died ; 
 and Scott s letters will show how, in the sequel, his build 
 ing plans, checked for a season by this occurrence, grad 
 ually expanded, until twelve years afterwards the site 
 was occupied not by a cottage but a castle. 
 
 His first notions are sketched as follows, in a letter ad 
 dressed to Mr. Morritt very shortly after the purchase : 
 " We stay at Ashestiel this season, but migrate the next 
 
186 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 to our new settlements. I have fixed only two points 
 respecting my intended cottage one is, that it shall be 
 in my garden, or rather kailyard the other, that the 
 little drawing-room shall open into a little conservatory, 
 in which conservatory there shall be a fountain. These 
 are articles of taste which I have long since determined 
 upon ; but I hope, before a stone of my paradise is begun, 
 we shall meet and collogue upon it." 
 
 Three months later (December 20th, 1811), he opens 
 the design of his new poem in another letter to the lord 
 of Rokeby, whose household, it appears, had just been 
 disturbed by the unexpected accouchement of a fair vis 
 itant. The allusion to the Quarterly Review, towards 
 the close, refers to an humorous article on Sir John Sin 
 clair s pamphlets about the Bullion Question a joint 
 production of Mr. Ellis and Mr. Canning. 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. 
 
 " My Dear Morritt, I received your kind letter a week or 
 two ago. The little interlude of the bantling at Rokeby re 
 minds me of a lady whose mother happened to produce her 
 upon very short notice, between the hands of a game at whist, 
 and who, from a joke of the celebrated David Hume, who was 
 one of the players, lived long distinguished by the name of 
 The Parenthesis. My wife had once nearly made a similar 
 blunder in very awkward circumstances. We were invited to 
 dine at Melville Castle (to which we were then near neigh 
 bours), with the Chief Baron * and his lady, its temporary in 
 habitants, when behold, the Obadiah whom I despatched 
 two hours before dinner from our cottage to summon the Dr. 
 Slop of Edinburgh, halting at Melville Lodge to rest his wea 
 ried horse, make apologies, and so forth, encountered the Mel- 
 
 * The late Right Honourable Robert Dundas, Chief Baron of th 
 Scotch Court of Exchequer. 
 
ROKEBY 1811. 187 
 
 *ie Casuc C^diah sallying on the identical errand, for the 
 identical man of skill, who, like an active knight-errant, relieved 
 the two distressed dames within three hours of each other. A 
 blessed duet they would have made if they had put off their 
 crying bout, as it is called, till they could do it in concert. 
 
 " And now, I have a grand project to tell you of. Nothing 
 less than a fourth romance, in verse ; the theme, during the 
 English civil wars of Charles I., and the scene, your own do 
 main of Rokeby. I want to build my cottage a little better 
 than my limited finances will permit out of my ordinary in 
 come ; and although it is very true that an author should not 
 hazard his reputation, yet, as Bob Acres says, I really think 
 Reputation should take some care of the gentleman in return. 
 Now, I have all your scenery deeply imprinted in my memory, 
 and moreover, be it known to you, I intend to refresh its traces 
 this ensuing summer, and to go as far as the borders of Lan 
 cashire, and the caves of Yorkshire, and so perhaps on to Der 
 byshire. I have sketched a story which pleases me, and I am 
 only anxious to keep my theme quiet, for its being piddled 
 upon by some of your Ready-to-catch literati, as John Bunyan 
 calls them, would be a serious misfortune to me. I am not 
 without hope of seducing you to be my guide a little way on 
 my tour. Is there not some book (sense or nonsense, I care 
 not) on the beauties of Teesdale I mean a descriptive 
 work ? If you can point it out or lend it me, you will do me 
 a great favour, and no less if you can tell me any traditions 
 of the period. By which party was Barnard Castle occupied ? 
 It strikes me that it should be held for the Parliament. Pray, 
 help me in this, by truth, or fiction, or tradition, I care not 
 which, if it be picturesque. What the deuce is the name of 
 that wild glen, where we had such a clamber on horseback up 
 a stone staircase ? Cat s Cradle, or Cat s Castle, I think it 
 was. I wish also to have the true edition of the traditionary 
 tragedy of your old house at Mortham, and the ghost there 
 unto appertaining, and you will do me yeoman s service in 
 Compiling the relics of so valuable a legend. Item Do you 
 Snow anything of a striking ancient castle belonging, I think, 
 
188 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 fco the Duke of Leeds, called Coningsburgh ? * Grose notices 
 it, but in a very flimsy manner. I once flew past it on the 
 mail-coach, when its round tower and flying buttresses had a 
 most romantic effect in the morning dawn. 
 
 " The Quarterly is beyond my praise, and as much beyond 
 me as I was beyond that of my poor old nurse who died the 
 other day. Sir John Sinclair has gotten the golden fleece at 
 last. Dogberry would not desire a richer reward for having 
 been written down an ass. 6000 a-year!f Good faith, the 
 whole reviews in Britain should rail at me, with my free con- 
 Bent, better cheap by at least a cypher. There is no chance, 
 with all my engagements, to be at London this spring. My 
 little boy Walter is ill with the measles, and I expect the rest 
 to catch the disorder, which appears, thank God, very mild. 
 Mrs. Scott joins in kindest compliments to Mrs. Morritt, 
 many merry Christmases to you and believe me, truly, 
 yours WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 I insert Mr. Morritt s answer, both for the light which 
 it throws on various particular passages in the poem as 
 we have it, and because it shows that some of those feat 
 ures in the general plan, which were censured by the pro 
 fessional critics, had been early and strongly recommended 
 to the poet s consideration by the person whom, on this 
 eceasion, he was most anxious to please. 
 
 To Walter Scott, Esq. 
 
 " Rokeby, 28th December 1811. 
 
 " My Dear Scott, I begin at the top of my paper, because 
 four request must be complied with, and I foresee that a letter 
 
 * See note, Ivanhoe, ch. 42. 
 
 t Shortly after the appearance of the article alluded to, Sir John 
 Sinclair was appointed cashier of Excise for Scotland. " It should be 
 added," says his biographer, " that the emoluments of the situation 
 were greatly reduced at the death of Sir James Grant, his predeces 
 
LETTER FROM MR. MORRITT 1811. 189 
 
 on the antiquities of Teesdale will not be a short one. Your 
 project delights me much, and I willingly contribute my mite 
 to its completion. Yet, highly as I approve of the scene where 
 you lay the events of your romance, I have, I think, some ob 
 servations to make as to the period you have chosen for it. Of 
 this, however, you will be a better judge after I have detailed 
 my antiquarian researches. Now, as to Barnard Castle, it 
 was built in Henry I. s tune, by Barnard, son of Guy Baliol, 
 who landed with the Conqueror. It remained with the Baliola 
 till their attainder by Edward I. The tomb of Alan of Gallo 
 way was here in Leland s time; and he gives the inscription. 
 Alan, if you remember, married Margaret of Huntingdon, 
 David s daughter, and was father, by her, of Devorgild, who 
 married John Baliol, and from whom her son, John Baliol, 
 claimed the crown of Scotland. Edward I. granted the castle 
 and liberties to Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick ; it descended 
 (with that title) to the Nevills, and by Ann Nevill to Richard 
 Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard HI. It does not 
 appear to whom Henry VII. or his son re-granted it, but it fell 
 soon into the hands of the Nevills, Earls of Westmoreland, by 
 whom it was forfeited in the Rising of the North. It was 
 granted by James I. to the citizens of London, from whom Sir 
 Henry Vane received it by purchase. It does not seem ever 
 to have been used as a place of strength after the Rising of the 
 North ; and when the Vanes bought it of the citizens, it was 
 probably in a dismantled state. It was, however, a possession 
 of the Vanes before the Civil Wars, and, therefore, with a safe 
 conscience you may swear it stood for the Parliament. The 
 lady for whose ghost you inquire at Rokeby, has been so 
 buried in uncertainty, you may make what you like of her. 
 The most interesting fiction makes her the heiress of the Roke- 
 bys, murdered in the woods of the Greta by a greedy collateral 
 who inherited the estate. She reached the house before she 
 expired, and her blood was extant in my younger days at 
 Mortham tower. Others say it was a Lady Rokeby, the wife 
 pf the owner, who was shot in the walks by robbers ; but she 
 certainly became a ghost, and, under the very poetic nom fa 
 
190 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 guerre 01 Mortham Dobby, she appeared dressed as a fine lady, 
 with a piece of white silk trailing behind her without a head, 
 indeed (though no tradition states how she lost so material a 
 member), but with many of its advantages, for she had long 
 hair 011 her shoulders and eyes, nose, and mouth, in her 
 breast. The parson once, by talking Latin to her, confined 
 her under the bridge that crosses the Greta at my dairy, but 
 the arch being destroyed by floods in 1771, became incapable 
 of containing a ghost any longer, and she was seen after tha 
 time by some of the older parishioners. I often heard of her 
 in my early youth, from a sibyl who lived in the park to the 
 age of 105, but since her death I believe the history has be 
 come obsolete. 
 
 " The Rokebys were at all times loyal, at least from Henry 
 IV. downward. They lived early at Mortham tower, which 
 was, I believe, a better building than the tower of Rokeby, for 
 here also was one where my house now stands. I fancy they 
 got Mortham by marriage.* Colonel Rokeby, the last posses 
 sor of the old blood, was ruined in the Civil Wars by his loyalty 
 and unthriftiness, and the estates were bought by the Robin 
 sons, one of whom, the long Sir Thomas Robinson, so well- 
 known and well-quizzed in the time of our grandfathers, after 
 laying out most of the estate on this place, sold the place and 
 the estate together to my father in 1769. Oliver Cromwell 
 paid a visit to Barnard Castle in his way from Scotland, Octo 
 ber 1648. He does not seem to have been in the castle, but 
 lodged in the town, whence I conclude the castle was then un 
 inhabitable. Now I would submit to you, whether, considering 
 the course of events, it would not be expedient to lay the time 
 of your romance as early as the war of the Roses. For, 1-st, 
 As you seem to hint that there will be a ghost or two in it, like 
 the King of Bohemia s giants, they will be more out of the 
 
 * The heiress of Mortham married Rokeby in the reign of Edward 
 II. ; and his own castle at Rokeby having been destroyed by the Scoter 
 after the battle of Bannockburn, he built one on his wife s estate the 
 game of which considerable remains still exist on the northern bank 
 of the Greta. 
 
LETTER FROM MR. MORRITT 1811. 191 
 
 way. 2d, Barnard Castle, at the time I propose, belonged to 
 Nevills and Plantagenets, of whom something advantageous 
 (according to your cavalier views) may be brought forward ; 
 whereas, a short time before the Civil Wars of the Parliament, 
 the Vanes became possessors, and still remain so ; of whom, if 
 any Tory bard should be able to say anything obliging, it will 
 certainly be * insigne, recens, adhuc indicium ore alio, and d 
 honour to his powers of imagination. 3d, The knights of 
 Rokeby itself were of high rank and fair domain at the earlier 
 period, and were ruining themselves ignobly at the other. 4th t 
 Civil war for civil war : the first had two poetical sides, and 
 the last only one ; for the roundheads, though I always thought 
 them politically right, were sad materials for poetry; even 
 Milton cannot make much of them. I think no time suits so 
 well with a romance, of which the scene lies in this country, 
 as the Wars of the two Roses unless you sing the Rising of 
 the North ; and then you will abuse Queen Elizabeth, and be 
 censured as an abettor of Popery. How you would be in 
 volved in political controversy with all our Whigs, who are 
 anti- Stuarts ; and all our Tories, who are anti-Papistical ! I 
 therefore see no alternative but boldly to venture back to the 
 days of the holy King Harry ; for, God knows, it is difficult to 
 say anything civil of us since that period. Consider only, did 
 not Cromwell himself pray that the Lord would deliver him 
 from Sir Harry Vane ? and what will you do with him ? 
 still more, if you take into the account the improvements in 
 and about the castle to which yourself was witness when we 
 visited it together ? * 
 
 " There is a book of a few pages, describing the rides 
 through and about Teesdale ; I have it not, but if I can get it 
 I will send it. It is very bare of information, but gives names. 
 If you can get the third volume of Hutchinson s History of 
 Durham, it would give you some useful bits of information, 
 
 * Mr. Morritt alludes to the mutilation of a curious vaulted roof of 
 Extreme antiquity, in the great tower of Barnard Castle, occasioned by 
 its conversion into a manufactory of patent shot; an improvement at 
 the Poet had expressed some indignation. 
 
192 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 though very ill written. The glen where we clambered up to 
 Cat-castle is itself called Deepdale. I fear we have few tra 
 ditions that have survived the change of farms, arid property 
 of all sorts, which has long taken place in this neighbourhood. 
 But we have some poetical names remaining, of which we none 
 of us know the antiquity, or at least the origin. Thus, in the 
 scamper we took from Deepdale and Cat-castle, we rode next, 
 if you remember, to Cotherstone, an ancient village of the Fitz- 
 hughs on the Tees, whence I showed you a rock rising over 
 the crown of the wood, still called Pendragon Castle. The 
 river that joins the Tees at Cotherstone is yclept the Balder, I 
 fancy in honour of the son of Odin ; for the farm contiguous 
 to it retains the name of Woden s Croft. The parish in which 
 it stands is Romaldkirk, the church of St. Romald the hermit, 
 and was once a hermitage itself in Teesdale forest. The parish 
 next to Rokeby, on the Tees below my house, is Wycliff, where 
 the old reformer was born, and the day-star of the Reformation 
 first rose on England. 
 
 " The family of Rokeby, who were the proprietors of this 
 place, were valiant and knightly. They seem to have had 
 good possessions at the Conquest (see Doomsday Book) ; in 
 Henry IH. s reign they were Sheriffs of Yorkshire. In Ed 
 ward II. s reign, Froissart informs us, that when the Scotch 
 army decamped in the night so ingeniously from Weardale 
 that nobody knew the direction of their march, a hue and cry 
 was raised after them, and a reward of a hundred merka 
 annual value in land was offered by the Crown for whoever 
 could discover them, and that de Rokeby I think Sir Ralph 
 was the fortunate knight who ascertained their quarters 
 on the moors near Hexham. In the time of Henry IV., the 
 High- Sheriff of Yorkshire, who overthrew Northumberland and 
 drove him to Scotland after the battle of Shrewsbury, was aisw 
 a Rokeby. Tradition says that this sheriff was before this an 
 adherent of the Percys, and was the identical knight who dis- 
 Buaded Hotspur from the enterprise, on whose letter the angry 
 warrior comments so freely in Shakspeare. They are indeed, 
 \ think, mentioned as adherents of the Percys in Chevy Chase. 
 
LETTER FROM MR. MORRITT 1811. 193 
 
 and fought under their banner ; I hope, therefore, that they 
 broke that connexion from pure patriotism, and not for filthy 
 lucre. 
 
 " Such are all the annals that occur to me at present. If 
 you will come here, we can summon a synod of the oldest 
 women in the country, and you shall cross-examine them aa 
 much as you please. There are many romantic spots, and old 
 names rather than remains of peels, and towers, once called 
 castles, which belonged to Scroops, Fitzhughs, and Nevills, 
 with which you should be intimate before you finish your poem, 
 and also the abbots and monks of Egglestone, who were old 
 and venerable people, if you carry your story back into Romish 
 times ; and you will allow that the beauty of the situation de 
 serves it, if you recollect the view from and near the bridge 
 between me and Barnard Castle. Coningsburgh Castle, a 
 noble building as you say, stands between Doncaster and 
 Rotherham. I think it belongs to Lord Fitzwilliam, but am 
 not sure. You may easily find the account of it in Grose, or 
 any of the other antiquarians. The building is a noble cir 
 cular tower, buttressed all round, and with walls of immoder 
 ate thickness. It is of a very early era, but I do not know its 
 date. 
 
 " I have almost filled my letter with antiquarianism ; but 
 will not conclude without repeating how much your intention 
 has charmed us. The scenery of our rivers deserves to become 
 classic ground, and I hope the scheme will induce you to visit 
 and revisit it often. I will contrive to ride with you to Wens- 
 lydale and the Caves at least, and the border of Lancashire, 
 &c. if I can ; and to facilitate that trip, I hope you will bring 
 Mrs. Scott here, that our dames may not be impatient of our 
 absence. I know each dale, and every alley green/ between 
 Rokeby and the Lakes and Caves, and have no scruple in 
 recommending my own guidance, under which you will be 
 far more likely to make discoveries than by yourself; for the 
 people have many of them no knowledge of their own country. 
 Should I, in consequence of your celebrity, be obliged to leave 
 Rokeby from the influx of coc&ney romancers, artists, illustra- 
 
194 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 tors, and sentimental tourists, I shall retreat to Ashestiel, or to 
 your new cottage, and thus visit on you the sins of your writ 
 ings. At all events, however, I shall raise the rent of my inn 
 at Greta-Bridge on the first notice of your book, as I hear the 
 people at Callander have made a fortune by you. Pray give 
 our kindest and best regards to Mrs. Scott, and believe me 
 ever, Dear Scott, yours very truly, J. B. S. MORRITT." 
 
 In January 1812, Scott entered upon the enjoyment 
 of his proper salary as a Clerk of Session, which, with 
 his sheriffdom, gave him from this time till very near the 
 close of his life, a professional income of 1600 a-year. 
 On the llth of the same month he lost his kind friend 
 and first patron, Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch, and 
 fifth of Queensberry. Both these events are mentioned 
 in the following letter to Joanna Baillie, who, among 
 other things, had told Scott that the materials for his 
 purse were now on her table, and expressed her anxiety 
 to know who was the author of some beautiful lines on 
 the recent death of their friend, James Grahame, the 
 poet of the Sabbath. These verses had, it appears, 
 found their way anonymously into the newspapers. 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead. 
 
 " January 17th, 1812. 
 
 ** My Dear Friend, The promise of the purse has flattered 
 my imagination so very agreeably, that I cannot help sending 
 you an ancient silver mouth-piece, to which, if it pleases your 
 taste, you may adapt your intended labours : this, besides, is a 
 genteel way of tying you down to your promise ; and to bribe 
 you still farther, I assure you it shall not be put to the pur 
 pose of holding bank-notes or vulgar bullion, but reserved as 9 
 place of deposit for some of my pretty little medals and nick- 
 uackatories. When I do make another poetical effort, I shall 
 eertainly expect the sum you mention from the booksellera 
 
LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE JAN. 1812. 195 
 
 for they have had too good bargains of me hitherto, and I fear 
 I shall want a great deal of money to make my cottage exactly 
 what I should like it. Meanwhile, between ourselves, my income 
 has been very much increased since I wrote to you, in a dif 
 ferent way. My predecessor in the office of Clerk of Session 
 retired to make room for me, on the amiable condition of re 
 taining all the emoluments during his life, which, from my 
 wish to retire from the Bar and secure a certain though dis 
 tant income, I was induced to consent to ; and considering his 
 advanced age and uncertain health, the bargain was really 
 not a bad one. But alas ! like Sinbad s old man of the sea, 
 my coadjutor s strength increased prodigiously after he had 
 fairly settled himself on my shoulders, so that after five years 
 gratuitous labour I began to tire of my burden. Fortunately, 
 Mr. Bankes late superannuation act provides a rateable pen 
 sion for office-holders obliged to retire after long and faithful 
 services ; and my old friend very handsomely consented to be 
 transferred from my galled shoulders to the broad back of the 
 public, although he is likely to sustain a considerable diminu 
 tion of income by the exchange, to which he has declared him 
 self willing to submit as a penalty for having lived longer than 
 he or I expected. To me it will make a difference of 1300 
 a-year, no trifle to us who have no wish to increase our expense 
 in a single particular, and who could support it on our former 
 income without inconvenience. This I tell you in confidence, 
 because I know you will be very well pleased with any good 
 fortune which comes in my way. Everybody who cares a far 
 thing for poetry is delighted with your volume, and well they 
 may. You will neither be shocked nor surprised at hearing 
 that Mr. Jeffrey has announced himself of a contrary opinion. 
 So, at least, I understand, for our very ideas of what is poetry 
 diffsr so widely, that we rarely talk upon these subjects. 
 There is something in his mode of reasoning that leads me 
 greatly to doubt whether, notwithstanding the vivacity of his 
 imagination, he really has any feeling of poetical genius, or 
 whether he has worn it all off by perpetually sharpening his 
 wit on the grindstone of criticism. 
 
196 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " I am very glad that you met my dear friend, George 
 Ellis, a wonderful man, who, through the life of a statesman 
 and politician, conversing with princes, wits, fine ladies, and 
 fine gentlemen, and acquainted with all the intrigues and tra- 
 casseries of the cabinets and ruelles of foreign courts, has yet 
 retained all warm and kindly feelings which render a man 
 amiable in society, and the darling of his friends. 
 
 " The author of the elegy upon poor Grahame, is John Wil- 
 gon, a young man of very considerable poetical powers. He 
 is now engaged in a poem called the Isle of Palms, something 
 in the style of Southey. He is an eccentric genius, and has 
 fixed himself upon the banks of Windermere, but occasion 
 ally resides in Edinburgh, where he now is. Perhaps you 
 have seen him ; his father was a wealthy Paisley manufac 
 turer his mother a sister of Robert Sym. He seems an 
 excellent, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic young man ; some 
 thing too much, perhaps, of the latter quality, places him 
 among the list of originals. 
 
 " Our streets in Edinburgh are become as insecure as 
 your houses in Wapping. Only think of a formal association 
 among nearly fifty apprentices, aged from twelve to twenty, to 
 scour the streets and knock down and rob all whom they found 
 in their way. This they executed on the last night of the 
 year with such spirit, that two men have died, and several 
 others are dangerously ill, from the wanton treatment they 
 received. The watchword of these young heroes when they 
 met with resistance was Mar him, a word of dire import ; 
 and which, as they were all armed with bludgeons loaded with 
 lead, and were very savage, they certainly used in the sense of 
 RatclifFe Highway. The worst of all this is not so much the 
 immediate evil, which a severe example will probably check 
 for the present, as that the formation and existence of such au 
 association, holding regular meetings and keeping regular min 
 utes, argues a woful negligence in the masters of these boys, 
 the tradesmen and citizens of Edinburgh, of that wholesome 
 domeBtic discipline which they ought, in justice to God and to 
 man, to exercise over the youth intrusted to their charge ; a 
 
LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE 1812. 197 
 
 negligence which cannot fail to be productive of every sort of 
 vice, crime, and folly, among boys of that age.* 
 
 " Yesterday I had the melancholy task of attending the fu 
 neral of the good old Duke of Buccleuch. It was, by his own 
 direction, very private ; but scarce a dry eye among the assist 
 ants a rare tribute to a person whose high rank and large 
 possessions removed him so far out of the social sphere of pri 
 vate friendship. But the Duke s mind was moulded upon the 
 kindliest and most single-hearted model, and arrested the 
 affections of all who had any connexion with him. He is truly 
 a great loss to Scotland, and will be long missed and lamented, 
 though the successor to his rank is heir also to his generous 
 spirit and affections. He was my kind friend. Ever yours, 
 
 "W. SCOTT." 
 
 The next of his letters to Joanna Baillie is curious, as 
 giving his first impressions on reading Childe Harold. 
 It contains also a striking sketch of the feelings he 
 throughout life expressed, as to what he had observed 
 of society in London with a not less characteristic 
 display of some of his own minor amusements. 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie. 
 
 " Ashestiel, April 4th, 1812. 
 
 "I ought not, even in modern gratitude, which may be 
 moved by the gift of a purse, much less in minstrel sympathy, 
 which values it more as your work than if it were stuffed with 
 guineas, to have delayed thanking you, my kind friend, for 
 such an elegant and acceptable token of your regard. My 
 kindest and best thanks also attend the young lady who would 
 not permit the purse to travel untenanted.f I shall be truly 
 
 * Three of these lads, all urder eighteen years of age, were execut 
 ed on the scene of one of the murders here alluded to, April the 22d, 
 1812. Their youth and penitence excited the deepest compassion; but 
 never certainly was a severe example oaore necessary. 
 
 t The purse contained an old coin ^rom Joanna Baillie s niece, th 
 laughter of the Doctor. 
 
193 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 glad when I can offer them in person, but of that there is no 
 speedy prospect. I don t believe I shall see London this great 
 while again, which I do not very much regret, were it not that 
 it postpones the pleasure of seeing you and about half-a-dozen 
 other friends. Without having any of the cant of loving re 
 tirement, and solitude, and rural pleasures, and so forth, 1 
 really have no great pleasure in the general society of London ; 
 I have never been there long enough to attempt anything like 
 living in my own way, and the immense length of the streets 
 separates the objects you are interested in so widely from each 
 other, that three parts of your time are past in endeavouring 
 to dispose of the fourth to some advantage. At Edinburgh, 
 although in general society we are absolute mimics of London, 
 and imitate them equally in late hours, and in the strange pre 
 cipitation with which we hurry from one place to another, in 
 search of the society which we never sit still to enjoy, yet still 
 people may manage their own parties and motions their own 
 way. But all this is limited to my own particular circum 
 stances, for in a city like London, the constant resident has 
 beyond all other places the power of conducting himself ex 
 actly as he likes. Whether this is entirely to be wished or 
 not, may indeed be doubted. I have seldom felt myself so 
 fastidious about books as in the midst of a large library, where 
 one is naturally tempted to imitate the egregious epicure who 
 condescended to take only one bite out of the sunny side of 
 a peach. I suspect something of scarcity is necessary to make 
 you devour the intellectual banquet with a good relish and di 
 gestion, as we know to be the case with respect to corporeal 
 sustenance. But to quit all this egotism, which is as little as 
 possible to the purpose, you must be informed that Erskine 
 has enshrined your letter among his household papers of the 
 snost precious kind. Among your thousand admirers you 
 have not a warmer or more kindly heart; he tells me Jeffrey 
 ta ks very favourably of this volume. I should be glad, for his 
 own sake, that he took some opportunity to retrace the paths 
 of his criticism ; but after pledging himself so deeply as he has 
 tone, I doubt much his giving way even unto conviction As 
 
CHILDE HAROLD. 199 
 
 to my own share, I am labouring sure enough, but I have not 
 yet got on the right path where I can satisfy myself I shall go 
 on with courage, for diffidence does not easily beset me and 
 the public, still more than the ladies, * stoop to the forward 
 and the bold ; but then in either case, I fancy, the suitor for 
 favour must be buoyed up by some sense of deserving it, 
 whether real or supposed. The celebrated apology of Dryden 
 for a passage which he could not defend, that he knew when 
 he wrote it, it was bad enough to succeed, was, with all defer 
 ence to his memory, certainly invented to justify the fact after 
 it was committed. 
 
 " Have you seen the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, by Lord 
 Byron ? It is, I think, a very clever poem, but gives no good 
 symptom of the writer s heart or morals. His hero, notwith 
 standing the affected antiquity of the style in some parts, is a 
 modern man of fashion and fortune, worn out and satiated 
 with the pursuits of dissipation, and although there is a cau 
 tion against it in the preface, you cannot for your soul avoid 
 concluding that the author, as he gives an account of his own 
 travels, is also doing so in his own character. Now really this 
 is too bad ; vice ought to be a little more modest, and it must 
 require impudence at least equal to the noble Lord s other 
 powers, to claim sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from 
 his being tired of his wassailers and his paramours. There is 
 a monstrous deal of conceit in it too, for it is informing the 
 inferior part of the world that their little old-fashioned scruples 
 of limitation are not worthy of his regard, while his fortune 
 nd possessions are such as have put all sorts of gratifications 
 too much in his power to afford him any pleasure. Yet with 
 all this conceit and assurance, there is much poetical merit in 
 the book, and I wish you would read it. 
 
 " I have got Rob Roy s gun, a long Spanish-barrelled piece, 
 with his initials, R. M. C., for Robert Macgregor Campbell, 
 which latter name he assumed in compliment to the Argyle 
 tamily who afforded him a good deal of private support, be 
 cause he was a thorn in the side of their old rival house of 
 Montrose. I have, moreover, a relic of a more heroic charac- 
 
200 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ter ; it is a sword which was given to the great Marquis of 
 Montrose by Charles I., and appears to have belonged to hia 
 father, our gentle King Jamie. It had been preserved for a 
 long time at Gartmore, but the present proprietor was selling 
 his library, or great part of it, and John Baliantyne, the pur 
 chaser, wishing to oblige me, would not conclude a bargain, 
 which the gentleman s necessity made him anxious about, till 
 he flung the sword into the scale ; it is, independent of its 
 other merits, a most beautiful blade. I think a dialogue be 
 tween this same sword and Rob Roy s gun might be composed 
 with good effect. 
 
 " We are here in a most extraordinary pickle considering 
 that we have just entered upon April, when, according to the 
 poet, primroses paint the sweet plain, * instead of which, 
 both hill and valley are doing penance in a sheet of snow of 
 very respectable depth. Mail-coaches have been stopt shep 
 herds, I grieve to say, lost in the snow ; in short, we experi 
 ence all the hardships of a January storm at this late period 
 of the spring ; the snow has been near a fortnight, and if it 
 departs with dry weather, we may do well enough, but if wet 
 weather should ensue, the wheat crop through Scotland will 
 be totally lost. My thoughts are anxiously turned to the 
 Peninsula, though I think the Spaniards have but one choice, 
 and that is to choose Lord Wellington dictator ; I have no 
 doubt he could put things right yet. As for domestic politics, 
 I really give them very little consideration. Your friends, the 
 Whigs, are angry enough, I suppose, with the Prince Regent, 
 but those who were most apt to flatter his follies, have little 
 reason to complain of the usage they have met with and he 
 may probaWy think that those who were true to the father in 
 his hour of calamity, may have the best title to the confidence 
 of the son. The excellent private character of the old King 
 gave him great advantages as the head of a free government. 
 I fear the Prince will long experience the inconveniences of not 
 having attended to his own. Mrs. Siddons, as fame reports 
 has taken another engagement at Covent Garden : surely she 
 
 * Allan Ramsay s song of "The Yellow-hair d Laddie." 
 
EDINBURGH REVIEW CHILDE HAROLD. 201 
 
 b wrong ; she should have no twilight, but set in the full pos 
 session of her powers.* 
 
 " I hope Campbell s plan of lectures will answer.f I think 
 the brogue may be got over, if he will not trouble himself by 
 attempting to correct it, but read with fire and feeling ; he ia 
 an animated reciter, but I never heard him read. 
 
 " I have a great mind, before sealing this long scrawl, to 
 send you a list of the contents of the purse as they at present 
 stand : 
 
 " 1st, Miss Elizabeth Baillie s purse-penny, called by the 
 learned a denarius of the Empress Faustina. 
 
 "2d, A gold brooch, found in a bog in Ireland, which, for 
 aught I know, fastened the mantle of an Irish Princess in the 
 days of Cuthullin, or Neal of the Nine Hostages. 
 
 " 3d, A toadstone a celebrated amulet, which was never 
 lent to any one unless upon a bond for a thousand merks for 
 its being safely restored. It was sovereign for protecting new 
 born children and their mothers from the power of the fairies, 
 and has been repeatedly borrowed from my mother, on account 
 of this virtue. 
 
 "4th, A coin of Edward I, found in Dryburgh Abbey. 
 
 " 5th, A funeral ring, with Dean Swift s hair. 
 
 " So you see my nicknackatory is well supplied, though the 
 purse is more valuable than all its contents. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear friend. Mrs. Scott joins in kind respects 
 to your sister, the Doctor, and Mrs. Baillie. 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT.** 
 
 A month later, the Edinburgh Review on Lord By 
 ron s Romaunt having just appeared, Scott says to Mr. 
 Morritt (May 12) "I agree very much in what you 
 
 * Mrs. Siddons made her farewell appearance at Covent Garden, aa 
 Lady Macbeth, on the 29th of June 1812 ; but she afterwards resumed 
 her profession for short intervals more than once, and did not finally 
 bid adieu to the stage until the 9th of June 1819. 
 
 t Mr. Thomas Campbell had announced his first course of Lectures 
 Vi English Poetry about this time. 
 
202 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 say of Childe Harold. Though there is something pro 
 voking and insulting to morality and to feeling in hia 
 misanthropical ennui, it gives, nevertheless, an odd piq 
 uancy to his descriptions and reflections. This is upon 
 the whole a piece of most extraordinary power, and may 
 rank its author with our first poets. I see the Edinburgh 
 Review has hauled its wind." 
 
 Lord Byron was, I need not say, the prime object of 
 interest this season in the fashionable world of London ; 
 nor did the Prince Regent owe the subsequent hostilities 
 of the uoble Poet to any neglect on his part of the brill 
 iant genius which had just been fully revealed in the 
 Childe Harold. Mr. Murray, the publisher of the Ro- 
 maunt, on hearing, on the 29th of June, Lord Byron s 
 account of his introduction to his Royal Highness, con 
 ceived that, by communicating it to Scott, he might afford 
 the opportunity of such a personal explanation between 
 his two poetical friends, as should obliterate on both sides 
 whatever painful feelings had survived the offensive allu 
 sions to Marmion in the English Bards and Scotch Re 
 viewers ; and this good-natured step had the desired 
 consequences. Mr. Moore says that the correspondence 
 " begun in some inquiries which Mr. Scott addressed to 
 Lord Byron on the subject of his interview with Roy 
 alty;"* but he would not have used that expression, 
 had he seen the following letter: 
 
 " To the Right Honourable Lord Byron, frc. fyc. 
 
 Care of John Murray, Esq., Fleet Street, London. 
 
 " Edinburgh, July 3d, 1812. 
 
 "My Lord, I am uncertain if I ought to profit by the 
 tpology which is afforded me, by a very obliging communic* 
 
 * Life and Works of Lord Byron, vol. ii. p. 155. 
 
LETTER TO LORD BYRON JULY 1812. 203 
 
 tion from our acquaintance, John Murray of Fleet Street, to 
 give your Lordship the present trouble. But my intrusion 
 concerns a large debt of gratitude due to your Lordship, and 
 a much less important one of explanation, which I think I owe 
 to myself, as I dislike standing low in the opinion of any per 
 son whose talents rank so highly in my own, as your Lordship s 
 most deservedly do. 
 
 " The first count, as our technical language expresses it, 
 relates to the high pleasure I have received from the Pilgrim 
 age of Childe Harold, and from its precursors ; the former, 
 with all its classical associations, some of which are lost oil so 
 poor a scholar as I am, possesses the additional charm of vivid 
 and animated description, mingled with original sentiment ; 
 but besides this debt, which I owe your Lordship in common 
 with the rest of the reading public, I have to acknowledge my 
 particular thanks for your having distinguished by praise, in 
 the work which your Lordship rather dedicated in general to 
 satire, some of my own literary attempts. And this leads me 
 to put your Lordship right in the circumstances respecting the 
 sale of Marmion, which had reached you in a distorted and 
 misrepresented form, and which, perhaps, I have some reason 
 to complain, were given to the public without more particular 
 inquiry. The poem, my Lord, was not written upon contract 
 for a sum of money though it is too true that it was sold and 
 published in a very unfinished state (which I have since re 
 gretted), to enable me to extricate myself from some engage 
 ments which fell suddenly upon me, by the unexpected mis 
 fortunes of a very near relation. So that, to quote statute and 
 precedent, I really come under the case cited by Juvenal, 
 though not quite in the extremity of the classic author 
 
 Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven. 
 
 And so much for a mistake, into which your Lordship might 
 Easily fall, especially as I generally find it the easiest way of 
 stopping sentimental compliments on the beauty, &c. of certain 
 poetry, and the delights which the author must have taken in 
 l ke composition, by assigning the readiest reason that will cut 
 
204 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the discourse short, upon a subject where one must appear 
 either conceited, or aflectedly rude and cynical. 
 
 "As for my attachment to literature, I sacrificed for the 
 pleasure of pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and pro 
 fessional honours, at a time of life when I fully knew their 
 value ; and I am not ashamed to say, that in deriving advan 
 tages in compensation from the partial favour of the public, 1 
 have added some comforts and elegancies to a bare indepen 
 dence. I am sure your Lordship s good sense will easily put 
 this unimportant egotism to the right account, for though I 
 do not know the motive would make me enter into controversy 
 with a fair or an unfair literary critic I may be well ex 
 cused for a wish to clear my personal character from any tinge 
 of mercenary or sordid feeling in the eyes of a contemporary 
 of genius. Your Lordship will likewise permit me to add, that 
 you would have escaped the trouble of this explanation, had I 
 not understood that the satire alluded to had been suppressed, 
 not to be reprinted. For in removing a prejudice on your 
 Lordship s own mind, I had no intention of making any appeal 
 by or through you to the public, since my own habits of life 
 have rendered my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather too 
 easy. 
 
 " Leaving this foolish matter where it lies, I have to request 
 your Lordship s acceptance of my best thanks for the flatter 
 ing communication which you took the trouble to make Mr. 
 Murray on my behalf, and which could not fail to give me the 
 gratification which I am sure you intended. I dare say our 
 worthy bibliopolist overcoloured his report of your Lordship s 
 conversation with the Prince Regent, but I owe my thanks to 
 him nevertheless, for the excuse he has given me for intruding 
 these pages on your Lordship. Wishing you health, spirit, 
 and perseverance, to continue your pilgrimage through the 
 interesting countries which you have still to pass with Childe 
 Harold, I have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship s 
 obedient servant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " P. S. Will your Lordship permit me a verbal criticisn: 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD BYRON. 205 
 
 on Childe Harold, were it only to show I have read his Pil 
 grimage with attention ? * Nuestra Dama de la Pena means, 
 I suspect, not our Lady of Crime or Punishment, but our Lady 
 of the Cliff; the difference is, I believe, merely in the accentuar 
 tion of pena. " 
 
 Lord Byron s answer was in these terms : 
 
 To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 " St. James s Street, July 6, 1813. 
 
 ** Sir, I have just been honoured with your letter. I feel 
 sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the 
 evil works of my nonage, as the thing is suppressed voluntanly, 
 and your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The 
 Satire was written when I was very young and very angry, 
 and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I 
 am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions. I can 
 not sufficiently thank you for your praise ; and now, waiving 
 myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered 
 me to be presented to him at a ball : and after some sayings, 
 peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he 
 talked to me of you and your immortalities ; he preferred you 
 to every bard past and present, and asked which of your works 
 pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I answered, I 
 thought the Lay. He said his own opinion was nearly similar. 
 In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought you more 
 particularly the poet of Princes, as they never appeared more 
 fascinating than in Marmion and the Lady of the Lake. He 
 was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of your 
 Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately 
 of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both ; 
 so that (with the exception of the Turks * and your humble 
 servant) you were in very good company I defy Murray to 
 have exaggerated his Royal Highness s opinion of your powers, 
 aor can I pretend to enumerate all ne said on the subject ; but 
 
 * A Turkish ambassador and his suite figured at the ball. 
 
206 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 it may give you pleasure to hear that it was conveyed in l*v 
 guage which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe 
 it ; and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea 
 of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto con 
 sidered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of 
 any living gentleman. 
 
 " This interview was accidental. I never went to the levee j 
 for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sov 
 ereigns, my curiosity was sufficiently allayed : and my politics 
 being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, no business 
 there. To be thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratify 
 ing to you ; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the com 
 munication being made through me, the bearer of it will con 
 sider himself very fortunately, and sincerely, your obliged and 
 obedient servant, BYRON." 
 
 " P. S. Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry, 
 and just after a journey." 
 
 Scott immediately replied as follows : 
 
 " To the Right Hon. Lord Byron, &c. &c. frc. 
 
 " Abbotsford near Melrose, 16th July 1812. 
 
 "My Lord, I am much indebted to your Lordship for 
 your kind and friendly letter : and much gratified by the 
 Prince Regent s good opinion of my literary attempts. I know 
 so little of courts or princes, that any success I may have had 
 in hitting off the Stuarts is, I am afraid, owing to a little old 
 Jacobite leaven which I sucked in with the numerous tradition 
 ary tales that amused my infancy. It is a fortunate thing for 
 the Prince himself that he has a literary turn, since nothing 
 can so effectually relieve the ennui of state, and the anxieties 
 of power. 
 
 " I hope your Lordship intends to give us more of Childe 
 Harold. I was delighted that my friend Jeffrey for such, in 
 despite of many a feud, literary and political, I always esteem 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD BYRON. 207 
 
 him has made so handsomely the amende honorable for not 
 having discovered in the bud the merits of the flower ; and I 
 am happy to understand that the retractation so handsomely 
 made was received with equal liberality. These circumstances 
 may perhaps some day lead you to revisit Scotland, which haa 
 a maternal claim upon you, and I need not say what pleasure 
 I should have in returning my personal thanks for the honour 
 you have done me. I am labouring here to contradict an old 
 proverb, and make a silk purse out of a sow s ear, namely, to 
 convert a bare haugh and brae, of about 100 acres, into a com 
 fortable farm. Now, although I am living in a gardener s hut, 
 and although the adjacent ruins of Melrose have little to tempt 
 one who has seen those of Athens, yet, should you take a tour 
 which is so fashionable at this season, I should be very happy 
 to have an opportunity of introducing you to anything remark 
 able in my fatherland. My neighbour, Lord Somerville, would, 
 I am sure, readily supply the accommodations which I want, 
 unless you prefer a couch in a closet, which is the utmost hos 
 pitality I have at present to oifer. The fair, or shall I say the 
 sage, Apreece that was, Lady Davy that is, is soon to show us 
 how much science she leads captive in Sir Humphrey ; so your 
 Lordship sees, as the citizen s wife says in the farce Thread- 
 needle Street has some charms, since they procure us such cel 
 ebrated visitants. As for me, I would rather cross-question 
 your Lordship about the outside of Parnassus, than learn the 
 nature of the contents of all the other mountains in the world, 
 ^ray, when under its cloudy canopy did you hear anything 
 ^f the celebrated Pegasus ? Some say he has been brought 
 off with other curiosities to Britain, and now covers at Tatter- 
 gal s. I would fain have a cross from him out of my little moss 
 trooper s Galloway, and I think your Lordship can tell me how 
 to set about it, as I recognise his true paces in the high-mettled 
 description of Ali Pacha s military court. 
 
 " A wise man said or, if not, I, who am no wise man, now 
 pay that there ii no surer mark of regard than when your 
 correspondent ventures to write nonsense to you. Having, 
 therefore, like Dogberry, bestowed all my tediousness upon 
 
 VOL. m. 14 
 
/0& LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 your Lordship, you are to conclude that I have given you a 
 convincing proof that I am very much your Lordship s obliged 
 and very faithful servant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 From this time the epistolary intercourse between 
 Scott and Byron continued to be kept up ; and it erelong 
 assumed a tone of friendly confidence equally honourable 
 to both these great competitors, without rivalry, for the 
 favour of the literary world. 
 
 The date of the letter last quoted immediately pre 
 ceded that of Scott s second meeting with another of the 
 most illustrious of his contemporaries. He had met 
 Davy at Mr. Wordsworth s when in the first flush of 
 his celebrity in 1804, and been, as one of his letters 
 states, much delighted with " the simple and unaffected 
 style of his bearing the most agreeable characteristic 
 of high genius." Sir Humphrey, now at the summit of 
 his fame, had come, by his marriage with Scott s accom 
 plished relation, into possession of an ample fortune ; and 
 he and his bride were among the first of the poet s vis 
 itants in the original cabin at Abbotsford. 
 
 The following letter is an answer to one in which Mr. 
 Southey had besought Scott s good offices in behalf of an 
 application which he thought of making to be appointed 
 Historiographer- Royal, in the room of Mr. Dutens, just 
 dead. It will be seen that both poets regarded with 
 much alarm the symptoms of popular discontent which 
 appeared in various districts, particularly among the 
 Luddites, as they were called, of Yorkshire, during the 
 uncertain condition of public affairs consequent on the 
 assassination of the Prime Minister, Mr. Percival, by 
 Bellinghain, in the lobby of the House of Commons, on 
 me llth of May 1812 ; and that Scott had, in his capac 
 ity of Sheriff, had his own share in suppressing the tu 
 
LETTER TO MR. SOUTHEY JUNE 1812. 209 
 
 mults of the only manufacturing town of Selkirkshire. 
 The last sentence of the letter alludes to a hint dropped 
 in the Edinburgh Review, that the author of the histori 
 cal department of the Edinburgh Annual Register ought 
 to be called to the bar of the House of Commons, in con 
 sequence of the bold language in which he had criticized 
 the parliamentary hostility of the Whigs to the cause of 
 Spain. 
 
 " To Robert Souihey, Esq., Keswick. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 4th June 1812. 
 
 " My Dear Southey, It is scarcely necessary to say that 
 the instant I had your letter I wrote to the only friend I have 
 in power, Lord Melville (if indeed he be now in power), beg 
 ging him for the sake of his own character, for the remem 
 brance of his father who wished you sincerely well, and by 
 every other objuration I could think of, to back your applica 
 tion. All I fear, if Administration remain, is the influence of 
 the clergy, who have a strange disposition to job away among 
 themselves the rewards of literature. But I fear they are all 
 to pieces above stairs, and much owing to rashness and mis 
 management ; for if they could not go on without Canning and 
 Wellesley, they certainly should from the beginning have in 
 vited them in as companions, and not mere retainers. On the 
 whole> that cursed compound of madness and villany has con 
 trived to do his country more mischief at one blow than all her 
 sages and statesmen will be able to repair perhaps in our day 
 You are quite right in apprehending a Jacquerie ; the country 
 is mined below our feet. Last week, learning that a meeting 
 was to be held among the weavers of the large manufacturing 
 village of Galashiels, for the purpose of cutting a man s web 
 from his loom, I apprehended the ringleaders and disconcerted 
 the whole project ; but in the course of my inquiries, imagine 
 my surprise at discovering a bundle of letters and printed man 
 ifestoes, from which it appeared that the Manchester Weavers 
 Committee corresponds with every manufacturing town in the 
 
210 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 South and West of Scotland, and levies a subsidy of 2s. 6d. 
 per man (an immense sum) for the ostensible purpose of 
 petitioning Parliament for redress of grievances, but doubtless 
 to sustain them in their revolutionary movements. An ener 
 getic administration, which had the confidence of the country, 
 would soon check all this ; but it is our misfortune to lose the 
 pilot when the ship is on the breakers. But it is sickening to 
 think of our situation. 
 
 " I can hardly think there could have been any serious 
 intention of taking the hint of the Review, and yet liberty 
 has so often been made the pretext of crushing its own best 
 supporters, that I am always prepared to expect the most ty 
 rannical proceedings from professed demagogues. 
 
 " I am uncertain whether the Chamberlain will be liable to 
 removal if not, I should hope you may be pretty sure of 
 your object. Believe me ever yours faithfully, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " 4:th June. What a different birthday from those I have 
 Been ! It is likely I shall go to Rokeby for a few days this 
 summer ; and if so, I will certainly diverge to spend a day at 
 Keswick." 
 
 Mr. Southey s application was unsuccessful the office 
 he wished for having been bestowed, as soon as it fell 
 vacant, on a person certainly of vastly inferior literary 
 pretensions the late Rev. J. S. Clarke, D. D., private 
 ibrarian to the Regent. 
 
"FLITTING" TO ABBOTSFORD. 211 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 The "Flitting" to Abbotsford Plantations George Thom 
 son Rokeby and Triermain in progress Excursion to 
 Flodden Bishop Auckland, and Rokeby Park Corre 
 spondence with Crabbe Life of Patrick Carey, fyc. Pub 
 lication of Rokeby and of the Bridal of Triermain. 
 
 1812-1813. 
 
 TOWARDS the end of May 1812, the Sheriff finally 
 removed from Ashestiel to Abbotsford. The day when 
 this occurred was a sad one for many a poor neighbour 
 for they lost, both in him and his wife, very gen 
 erous protectors. In such a place, among the few evils 
 which counterbalance so many good things in the condi 
 tion of the peasantry, the most afflicting is the want of 
 access to medical advice. As far as their means and 
 skill would go, they had both done their utmost to supply 
 this want ; and Mrs. Scott, in particular, had made it so 
 much her business to visit the sick in their scattered cot 
 tages, and bestowed on them the contents of her medi 
 cine-chest as well as of the larder and cellar, with such 
 unwearied kindness, that her name is never mentioned 
 there to this day without some expression of tenderness. 
 Scott s children remember the parting scene as one of 
 unmixed affliction but it had had, as we shall see, its 
 nghter features. 
 
212 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Among the many amiable English friends whom he 
 owed to his frequent visits at Rokeby Park, there was, I 
 believe, none that had a higher place in his regard than 
 the late Anne Lady Alvanley, the widow of the cele 
 brated Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He 
 was fond of female society in general ; but her ladyship 
 was a woman after his heart ; well born, and highly bred, 
 ^ui without the sligh]e~st tinge of the frivolities of modern 
 fashion ; soundly informed, and a warm lover of litera 
 ture and the arts, but holding in as great horror as him 
 self the imbecile chatter and affected ecstasies of the 
 bluestocking generation. Her ladyship had written to 
 him early in May, by Miss Sarah Smith (now Mrs, 
 Bartley), whom I have already mentioned as one of his 
 theatrical favourites ; and his answer contains, among 
 other matters, a sketch of the " Forest Flitting." 
 
 " To the Right Honourable Lady Alvanley. 
 
 " Ashestiel, 25th May 1812. 
 
 "I was honoured, my dear Lady Alvanley, by the kind 
 letter which you sent me with our friend Miss Smith, whose 
 talents are, I hope, receiving at Edinburgh the full meed of 
 honourable applause which they so highly merit. It is very 
 much against my will that I am forced to speak of them by 
 report alone, for this being the term of removing, I am under 
 the necessity of being at this farm to superintend the transfer 
 ence of my goods and chattels, a most miscellaneous collection, 
 to a small property, about five miles down the Tweed, which I 
 purchased last year. The neighbours have been much de 
 lighted with the procession of my furniture, in which old 
 swords, bows, targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. 
 A family of turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of 
 gome preux chevalier of ancient Border fame ; and the very 
 sows, for aught I know, were bearing banners and muskets. 1 
 
"FLITTING" TO ABBOTSFORD. 213 
 
 assure your ladyship that this caravan, attended by a dozen of 
 ragged rosy peasant children, carrying fishing-rods and spears, 
 and leading poneys, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it 
 crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pen 
 cil, and really reminded me of one of the gypsey groupes of 
 Callot upon their march. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 28th May. 
 
 " I have got here at length, and had the pleasure to hear 
 Miss Smith speak the Ode on the Passions charmingly last 
 night. It was her benefit, and the house was tolerable, though 
 not so good as she deserves, being a very good girl, as well as 
 an excellent performer. 
 
 " I have read Lord Byron with great pleasure, though pleas 
 ure is not quite the appropriate word. I should say admira 
 tion mixed with regret, that the author should have adopted 
 such an unamiable misanthropical tone. The reconciliation 
 with Holland-House is extremely edifying, and may teach 
 young authors to be in no hurry to exercise their satirical vein. 
 I remember an honest old Presbyterian, who thought it right 
 to speak with respect even of the devil himself, since no one 
 knew in what corner he might one day want a friend. But 
 Lord Byron is young, and certainly has great genius, and has 
 both time and capacity to make amends for his errors. I won 
 der if he will pardon the Edinburgh reviewers, who have read 
 their recantation of their former strictures. 
 
 " Mrs. Scott begs to offer her kindest and most respectful 
 compliments to your ladyship and the young ladies. I hope 
 we shall get into Yorkshire this season to see Morritt : he and 
 his lady are really delightful persons. Believe me, with great 
 respect, dear Lady Alvanley, your much honoured and obliged 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 A week later, in answer to a letter, mentioning the 
 approach of the celebrated sale of books in which the 
 Roxburghe Club originated, Scott says to his trusty ally 
 Daniel Terry : 
 
14 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 9th June 1812. 
 
 " My Dear Terry, I wish you joy of your success, which 
 although all reports state it as most highly flattering, does not 
 exceed what I had hoped for you. I think I shall do you a 
 sensible pleasure in requesting that you will take a walk over 
 the fields to Hampstead one of these fine days, and deliver the 
 enclosed to my friend Miss Baillie, with whom, I flatter myself, 
 you will be much pleased, as she has all the simplicity of real 
 genius. I mentioned to her some time ago, that I wished to 
 make you acquainted, so that the sooner you can call upon 
 her, the compliment will be the more gracious. As I suppose 
 you will sometimes look in at the Roxburghe sale, a nemoran- 
 dum respecting any remarkable articles will be a great favour. 
 
 " Abbotsford was looking charming, when I was obliged to 
 mount my wheel in this court, too fortunate that I have at 
 length some share in the roast meat I am daily engaged in 
 turning. Our flitting and removal from Ashestiel baffled all 
 description ; we had twenty-four cart-loads of the veriest trash 
 ^n nature, besides dogs, pigs, poneys, poultry, cows, calves, 
 bare-headed wenches, and bare-breeched boys. In other re- 
 epects we are going on in the old way, only poor Percy is dead. 
 I intend to have an old stone set up by his grave, with Cy 
 gist li preux Percie, and I hope future antiquaries will debate 
 which hero of the house of Northumberland has left his bones 
 m Teviotdale.* Believe me yours very truly, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 This was one of the busiest summers of Scott s busy 
 life. Till the 12th of July he was at his post in the 
 Court of Session five days every week ; but every Sat 
 urday evening found him at Abbotsford, to observe the 
 progress his labourers had made within doors and with 
 out in his absence; and on Monday night he returned 
 to Edinburgh. Even before the Summer Session com 
 
 * The epitaph of this favourite greyhound may be seen on the edg 
 if the bank, a little way below the house of Abbotsford. 
 
ROKEBY BEGUN MAY 1812. 215 
 
 menced, he appears to have made some advance in his 
 Rokeby, for he writes to Mr. Morritt, from Abbotsford, 
 on the 4th of May " As for the house and the poem, 
 there are twelve masons hammering at the one, and one 
 poor noddle at the other so they are both in progress " ; 
 and his literary labours throughout the long vacatior 
 were continued under the same sort of disadvantage, 
 That autumn he had, in fact, no room at all for himself. 
 The only parlour which had been hammered into any 
 thing like habitable condition, served at once for dining- 
 room, drawing-room, school-room, and study. A window 
 looking to the river was kept sacred to his desk ; an old 
 bed-curtain was nailed up across the room close behind 
 his chair, and there, whenever the spade, the dibble, or 
 the chisel (for he took his full share in all the work on 
 hand) was laid aside, he pursued his poetical tasks, ap 
 parently undisturbed and unannoyed by the surrounding 
 confusion of masons and carpenters, to say nothing of the 
 lady s small talk, the children s babble among themselves, 
 or their repetition of their lessons. The truth no doubt 
 was, that when at his desk he did little more, as far as 
 regarded poetry, than write down the lines which he had 
 fashioned in his mind while pursuing his vocation i*s a 
 planter, upon that bank which received originally, by 
 way of joke, the title of the thicket. " I am now," he 
 says to Ellis (Oct. 17), " adorning a patch of naked land 
 with trees facturis nepotibus umbram, for I shall never 
 live to enjoy their shade myself otherwise than in the re 
 cumbent posture of Tityrus and Menalcas." But he did 
 live to see the thicket deserve not only that name, but a 
 nobler one ; and to fell wUh his own hand many a well- 
 grown tree that he had planted there. 
 
 Another plantation of the same date, by his eastern 
 
216 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 boundary, was less successful. For this he had asked 
 and received from his early friend, the Marchioness of 
 Stafford, a supply of acorns from Trentham, and it was 
 named in consequence Sutherland bower; but the field- 
 mice, in the course of the ensuing winter, contrived to 
 root up and devour the whole of her ladyship s goodly 
 benefaction. A third space had been set apart, and duly 
 enclosed, for the reception of some Spanish chestnuts- 
 offered to him by an admirer established in merchandise 
 at Seville ; but that gentleman had not been a very know 
 ing ally as to such matters, for when the chestnuts ar 
 rived, it turned out that they had been boiled. 
 
 Scott writes thus to Terry, in September, while the 
 Roxburghe sale was still going on : 
 
 " I have lacked your assistance, my dear sir, for twenty 
 whimsicalities this autumn. Abbotsford, as you will readily 
 conceive, has considerably changed its face since the auspicea 
 of Mother Retford were exchanged for ours. We have got up 
 a good garden wall, complete stables in the haugh^ according 
 to Stark s plan, and the old farm-yard being enclosed with a 
 wall, with some little picturesque additions in front, has much 
 relieved the stupendous height of the Doctor s barn. The new 
 plantations have thriven amazingly well, the acorns are coming 
 up fast, and Tom Purdie is the happiest and most consequen 
 tial person in the world. My present work is building up the 
 well with some debris from the Abbey. O for your assistance, 
 for I am afraid we shall make but a botched job of it, espe 
 cially as our materials are of a very miscellaneous complexion. 
 The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my fountain 
 fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last cir 
 cumstance will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the liter 
 ary entertainment your researches hold out for me. I should, 
 however, like much to have the Treatise on Dreams, by the 
 author of the New Jerusalem, which, as John CuthbertsoD tht 
 
GEORGE THOMSON. 217 
 
 Hnith said of the minister s sermon, must be neat work. The 
 Loyal Poems, by N. T.,* are probably by poor Nahum Tate, 
 who associated with Brady in versifying the Psalms, and more 
 honourably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom and 
 Achitophel. I never saw them, however, but would give a 
 guinea or thirty shillings for the collection. Our friend John 
 Ballantyne has, I learn, made a sudden sally to London, and 
 doubtless you will crush a quart with him or a pottle pot ; he 
 will satisfy your bookseller for The Dreamer, or any other 
 little purchase you may recommend for me. You have pleased 
 Miss Baillie very much both in public and in society, and 
 though not fastidious, she is not, I think, particularly lavish of 
 applause either way. A most valuable person is she, and as 
 warm-hearted as she is brilliant. Mrs. Scott and all our little 
 folks are well. I am relieved of the labour of hearing Walter s 
 lesson by a gallant son of the church, who with one leg of 1 
 wood, and another of oak, walks to and fro from Melrose every 
 day for that purpose. Pray stick to the dramatic work,f and 
 never suppose either that you can be intrusive, or that I can 
 be uninterested in whatever concerns you. Yours, 
 
 " W. S." 
 
 The tutor alluded to at the close of this letter was Mr. 
 George Thomson, son of the minister of Melrose, who, 
 when the house afforded better accommodation, was and 
 continued for many years to be domesticated at Abbots- 
 ford. Scott had always a particular tenderness towards 
 persons afflicted with any bodily misfortune ; and Thom 
 son, whose leg had been amputated in consequence of a 
 rough casualty of his boyhood, had a special share in his 
 favour from the high spirit with which he refused at the 
 
 * The Reverend Alexander Dyce says, " N". T. stands for Naihanie 
 Thomson, the Tory bookseller, who published these Loyal Poems." 
 [1839.] 
 
 t An edition of the British Dramatists had, I believe, been projected 
 by Mr. Terry. 
 
218 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SGOTT. 
 
 time to betray the name of the companion that had 
 occasioned his mishap, and continued ever afterwards to 
 struggle against its disadvantages. Tall, vigorous, ath 
 letic, a dauntless horseman, and expert at the singlestick 
 George formed a valuable as well as picturesque addition 
 to the tail of the new laird, who often said, "In the 
 Dominie, like myself, accident has spoiled a capital life- 
 guardsman." His many oddities and eccentricities in no 
 degree interfered with the respect due to his amiable 
 feelings, upright principles, and sound learning ; nor did 
 Dominie Thamson at all quarrel in after times with the 
 universal credence of the neighbourhood that he had 
 furnished many features for the inimitable personage 
 whose designation so nearly resembled his own ; and if 
 he has not yet " wagged his head " in a " pulpit o his 
 ain," he well knows it has not been so for want of earnest 
 and long-continued intercession on the part of the author 
 of Guy Mannering.* 
 
 For many years Scott had accustomed himself to pro 
 ceed in the composition of poetry along with that of prose 
 essays of various descriptions ; but it is a remarkable fact 
 that he chose this period of perpetual noise and bustle, 
 when he had not even a summer-house to himself, for the 
 new experiment of carrying on two poems at the same 
 time and this too without suspending the heavy labour 
 of his edition of Swift, to say nothing of the various lesser 
 matters in which the Ballantynes were, from day to day, 
 calling for the assistance of his judgment and his pen. 
 In the same letter in which William Erskine acknowl 
 edges the receipt of the first four pages of Rokeby, he 
 adverts also to the Bridal of Triermain as being already 
 
 * Mr.- Thomson died 8th January 1838, before the publication of the 
 Srst edition of these Memoirs had been completed. [1839.] 
 
ROKEBY AND TRIERMAIN. 219 
 
 in ra^id progress. The fragments of this second poem, 
 inserted in the Register gf the preceding year, had at 
 tracted considerable notice ; the secret of their authorship 
 had been well kept; and by some means, even in the 
 dhrewdest circles of Edinburgh, the belief had become 
 prevalent that they proceeded not from Scott but from 
 Erskine. Scott had no sooner completed his bargain as 
 to the copyright of the unwritten Rokeby, than he re 
 solved to pause from time to time in its composition, and 
 weave those fragments into a shorter and lighter romance, 
 executed in a different metre, and to be published anony 
 mously, in a small pocket volume, as nearly as possible 
 on the same day with the avowed quarto. He expected 
 great amusement from the comparisons which the critics 
 would no doubt indulge themselves in drawing between 
 himself and this humble candidate ; and Erskine good- 
 humouredly entered into the scheme, undertaking to do 
 nothing which should effectually suppress the notion of 
 his having set himself up as a modest rival to his friend. 
 Nay, he suggested a further refinement, which in the 
 sequel had no small share in the success of this little plot 
 upon the sagacity of the reviewers. Having said that he 
 much admired the opening of the first canto of Rokeby, 
 Erskine adds, " I shall request your accoucheur to send 
 me your little Dugald too as he gradually makes his prog 
 ress. What I have seen is delightful. You are aware 
 how difficult it is to form any opinion of a work, the 
 general plan of which is unknown, transmitted merely in 
 legs and wings as they are formed and feathered. Any 
 remarks must be of the most minute and superficial kind, 
 confined chiefly to the language, and other such subordi 
 nate matters. I shall be very much amused if the secret 
 is kept and the knowing ones taken in. To prevent any 
 
220 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 discovery from your prose, what think you of putting 
 down your ideas of what the preface ought to contain, 
 and allowing me to write it over ? And perhaps a quiz 
 zing review might be concocted." 
 
 This last hint was welcome ; and among other parts 
 of the preface to Triermain which threw out " the know 
 ing ones," certain Greek quotations interspersed in it are 
 now accounted for. Scott, on his part, appears to have 
 studiously interwoven into the piece allusions to personal 
 feelings and experiences more akin to his friend s history 
 and character than to his own ; and he did so still more 
 largely, when repeating this experiment, in the introduc 
 tory parts of Harold the Dauntless. 
 
 The same post which conveyed William Erskine s let 
 ter above quoted, brought him an equally wise and kind 
 one from Mr. Morritt, in answer to a fresh application for 
 some minute details about the scenery and local traditions 
 of the Valley of the Tees. Scott had promised to spend 
 part of this autumn at Rokeby Park himself; but now, 
 busied as he was with his planting operations at home, 
 and continually urged by Ballantyne to have the poem 
 ready for publication by Christmas, he would willingly 
 have trusted his friend s knowledge in place of his own 
 observation and research. Mr. Morritt gave him in reply 
 various particulars, which I need not here repeat, but 
 added "I am really sorry, my dear Scott, at your 
 abandonment of your kind intention of visiting Rokeby 
 and my sorrow is not quite selfish for seriously, I 
 wish you could have come, if but for a few days, in order, 
 on the spot, to settle accurately in your mind the locali 
 ties of the new poem, and all their petty circumstances, 
 of which there are many that would give interest and 
 ornament to your descriptions. I am too m ach nattered 
 
LETTER PROM MR. MORRITT. 221 
 
 by your proposal of inscribing the poem to me, not to ac 
 cept it with gratitude and pleasure. I shall always feel 
 your friendship as an honour we all wish our honours 
 to be permanent and yours promises mine at least a 
 fair chance of immortality. I hope, however, you will 
 not be obliged to write in a hurry on account of the im 
 patience of your booksellers. They are, I think, ill ad 
 vised in their proceeding, for surely the book will be the 
 more likely to succeed from not being forced prematurely 
 into this critical world. Do not be persuaded to risk 
 your established fame on this hazardous experiment. If 
 you want a few hundreds independent of these booksell 
 ers, your credit is so very good, now that you have got 
 rid of your Old Man of the Sea, that it is no great merit 
 to trust you, and I happen at this moment to have five or 
 six for which I have no sort of demand so rather than 
 be obliged to spur Pegasus beyond the power of pulling 
 him up when he is going too fast, do consult your own 
 judgment and set the midwives of the trade at defiance. 
 Don t be scrupulous to the disadvantage of your muse, 
 and above all be not offended at me for a proposition 
 which is meant in the true spirit of friendship. I am 
 more than ever anxious for your success the Lady of 
 the Lake more than succeeded I think Don Roderick 
 is less popular I want this work to be another Lady at 
 the least. Surely it would be worth your while for such 
 an object to spend a week of your time, and a portion of 
 your Old Man s salary, in a mail-coach flight hither, were 
 it merely to renew your acquaintance with the country, 
 and to rectify the little misconceptions of a cursory view. 
 Ever affectionately yours, J. B. S. M. ? 
 
 This appeal was not to be resisted. Scott, I believe, 
 Accepted Mr. Morritt s friendly offer so far as to ask his 
 
222 LIFE OP S1A WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 assistance in having some of Ballantyne s bills discounted 
 and he proceeded the week after to Rokeby, by the way 
 of Flodden and Hexham, travelling on horseback, his 
 eldest boy and girl on their poneys, while Mrs. Scott fol 
 lowed them in the carriage. Two little incidents that 
 diversified this ride through Northumberland have found 
 their way into print already ; but, as he was fond of tell 
 ing them both down to the end of his days, I must give 
 them a place here also. Halting at Flodden to expound 
 the field of battle to his young folks, he found that Mar- 
 mion had, as might have been expected, benefited the 
 keeper of the public house there very largely ; and the 
 village Boniface, overflowing with gratitude, expressed 
 his anxiety to have a Scott s Head for his sign-post. The 
 poet demurred to this proposal, and assured mine host 
 that nothing could be more appropriate than the portrai 
 ture of a foaming tankard, which already surmounted his 
 door-way. " Why, the painter-man has not made an ill 
 job," said the landlord, " but I would fain have something 
 more connected with the book that has brought me so 
 much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, 
 and handing it to the author, begged he would at least 
 suggest a motto from the tale of Flodden Field. Scott 
 opened the book at the death scene of the hero, and his 
 eye was immediately caught by the " inscription " in 
 black letter 
 
 " Drink, weary pilgrim, drink, and pray 
 For the kind soul of Sibyl Grey," &c. 
 
 u Well, my friend," said he, " what more would you have ? 
 You need but strike out one letter in the first of these 
 lines, and make your painter-man, the next time he cornea 
 this way, print between the jolly tankard and your OWE 
 name 
 
 "Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and PAY." 
 
FLODDEN 1812. 223 
 
 Scott was delighted to find, on his return, that this 
 suggestion had been adopted, and for aught I know, the 
 romantic legend may still be visible. 
 
 The other story I shall give in the words of Mr. Gil 
 lies. " It happened at a small country town that Scott 
 suddenly required medical advice for one of his servants, 
 and, on inquiring if there was any doctor at the place, 
 was told that there was two one long established, and 
 the other a new comer. The latter gentleman, being 
 luckily found at home, soon made his appearance; a 
 grave, sagacious-looking personage, attired in black, with 
 a shovel hat, in whom, to his utter astonishment, Sir Wal 
 ter recognised a Scotch blacksmith, who had formerly 
 practised, with tolerable success, as a veterinary operator 
 in the neighbourhood of Ashestiel. How, in all the 
 world ! exclaimed he, can it be possible that this is 
 John Lundie ? In troth is it, your honour just a 
 that s for him. * Well, but let us hear ; you were a 
 horse-doctor before ; now, it seems, you are a mem-doc 
 tor ; how do you get on ? Ou, just extraordinar weel ; 
 for your honour maun ken my practice is vera sure and 
 orthodox. I depend entirely upon twa simples. * And 
 what may their names be ? Perhaps it is a secret ? 
 * 111 tell your honoui*, in a low tone ; my twa simple? 
 are just laudamy and calamy ! Simples with a ven 
 geance ! replied Scott. But John, do you never hap 
 pen to kill any of your patients ? Kill ? Ou ay, 
 may be sae ! Whiles they die, and whiles no ; but it s 
 the will o Providence. Ony how, your honour, it wad be 
 \ang before it makes up for Flvdden ! " * 
 
 It was also in the course of this expedition that Scotl 
 first made acquaintance with the late excellent and ven 
 
 * Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott p. 56. 
 TOL. in. 15 
 
224 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 erable Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham. The trav 
 ellers having reached Auckland over night, were seeing 
 the public rooms of the Castle at an early hour next 
 morning, when the Bishop happened, in passing through 
 one of them, to catch a glimpse of Scott s person, and 
 immediately recognising him, from the likeness of the 
 engravings by this time multiplied, introduced himself to 
 the party, and insisted upon acting as cicerone. After 
 showing them the picture-gallery and so forth, his Lord 
 ship invited them to join the morning service of the 
 chapel, and when that was over, insisted on their remain 
 ing to breakfast. But Scott and his Lordship were by 
 this time so much pleased with each other that they could 
 not part so easily. The good Bishop ordered his horse, 
 nor did Scott observe without admiration the proud cur 
 vetting of the animal on which his Lordship proposed to 
 accompany him during the next stage of his progress. 
 " Why, yes, Mr. Scott," said the gentle but high-spirited 
 old man, " I still like to feel my horse under me." He 
 was then in his 79th year, and survived to the age of 
 ninety-two, the model in all things of a real prince of the 
 Church. They parted after a ride of ten miles, with mu 
 tual regret ; and on all subsequent rides in that direction, 
 Bishop-Auckland was one of the poet s regular halting 
 places. 
 
 At Rokeby, on this occasion, Scott remained about a 
 week ; and I transcribe the following brief account of his 
 proceedings while there from Mr. Morritt s Memoran 
 dum: "I had, of course," he says, "had many previous 
 opportunities of testing the almost conscientious fidelity 
 tf his local descriptions ; but I could not help being 
 singularly struck with the lights which this visit threw 
 on that characteristic of his compositions. The morning 
 
ROKEBT. 225 
 
 nfter he arrived he said, You have often given me ma 
 terials for romance now I want a good robber s cave, 
 and an old church of the right sort. We rode out, and 
 he found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of 
 Brignal and the ruined Abbey of Eggleston. I observed 
 him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and 
 herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a 
 bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil ; and 
 could not help saying, that as he was not to be upon oath 
 in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as 
 poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. 
 I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness ; but I under 
 stood him when he replied, * that in nature herself no 
 two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied 
 truly what was before his eyes, would possess the same 
 variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an 
 imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the 
 scenes he recorded ; whereas whoever trusted to imagi 
 nation, would soon find his own mind circumscribed, and 
 contracted to a few favourite images, and the repeti 
 tion of these would sooner or later produce that very 
 monotony and barrenness which had always haunted 
 descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient 
 worshippers of truth. Besides which, he said, local 
 names and peculiarities make a fictitious story look so 
 much better in the face. In fact, from his boyish habits, 
 he was but half satisfied with the most beautiful scenery 
 ivhen he could not connect with it some local legend, and 
 when I was forced sometimes to confess with the Knife- 
 grinder, Story ! God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir 
 he would laugh and say, then let us make one 
 nothing so easy as to make a tradition. " Mr. Morritt 
 udds, that he had brought with him about half the bridal 
 
226 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of Triermain told him that he meant to bring it out 
 the same week with Rokeby and promised himself 
 particular satisfaction in laying a trap for Jeffrey ; who, 
 however, as we shall see, escaped the snare. 
 
 Some of the following letters will show with what 
 rapidity, after having refreshed and stored his memory 
 with the localities of Rokeby, he proceeded in the com 
 position of the romance : 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 12th October 1812. 
 
 " My Dear Morritt, I have this morning returned from 
 Dalkeith House, to which I was whisked amid the fury of an 
 election tempest, and I found your letter on my table. More 
 on such a subject cannot be said among friends who give each 
 other credit for feeling as they ought. 
 
 " We peregrinated over Stanmore, and visited the Castles 
 of Bowes, Brough, Appleby, and Brougham with great interest. 
 Le?t our spirit of chivalry thus excited should lack employment, 
 we found ourselves, that is, / did, at Carlisle, engaged in the 
 service of two distressed ladies, being no other than our friends 
 Lady Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart, who overtook us there, 
 and who would have had great trouble in finding quarters, the 
 election being in full vigour, if we had not anticipated their 
 puzzle, and secured a private house capable of holding us all. 
 Some distress occurred, I believe, among the waiting damsels, 
 whose case I had not so carefully considered, for I heard a 
 sentimental exclamation * Am I to sleep with the grey 
 hounds ? which I conceived to proceed from Lady Douglas s 
 vuivante, from the exquisite sensibility of tone with which it 
 was uttered, especially as I beheld the fair one descend from 
 the carriage with three half-bound volumes of a novel in her 
 hand. Not having it in my power to alleviate her woes, bj 
 Hfering her either a part or the whole of my own couch 
 Vranseat, quoth I, cum cceteris erroribus. 
 
LETTER TO MR. MORRITT. 227 
 
 " I am delighted with your Cumberland admirer,* and give 
 him credit for his visit to the vindicator of Homer; but you 
 missed one of another description, who passed Rokeby with 
 great regret, I mean General John Malcolm, the Persian 
 envoy, the Delhi resident, the poet, the warrior, the polite 
 man, and the Borderer. He is really a fine fellow. I met him 
 at Dalkeith, and we returned together ; he has just left me, 
 after drinking his coffee. A fine time we had of it, talking 
 of Troy town, and Babel, and Persepolis, and Delhi, and 
 Langholm, and Burnfoot ; f with all manner of episodes about 
 Iskendiar, Rustan, and Johnnie Armstrong. Do you know, 
 that poem of Ferdusi s must be beautiful. He read me some 
 very splendid extracts which he had himself translated. Should 
 you meet him in London, I have given him charge to be ac 
 quainted with you, for I am sure you will like each other. To 
 be sure, I know him little, but I like his frankness and his 
 sound ideas of morality and policy ; and I have observed, that 
 when I have had no great liking to persons at the beginning, 
 it has usually pleased Heaven, as Slender says, to decrease it 
 on further Acquaintance. Adieu, I must mount my horse. 
 Our last journey was so delightful that we have every tempta 
 tion to repeat it. Pray give our kind love to the lady, and 
 believe me ever yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 29th November 1812. 
 
 " My Dear Morritt, I have been, and still am, working 
 very hard, in hopes to face the public by Christmas, and I 
 
 * This alluded to a ridiculous hunter of lions, who being met by Mr. 
 Rlorritt in the grounds at Rokeby, disclaimed all taste for picturesque 
 beauties, but overwhelmed their owner with Homeric Greek ; of which 
 he had told Scott. 
 
 f Burnfoot is the name of a farm-house on the Buccleuch estate, not 
 far from Langholm, where the late Sir John Malcolm and his distin 
 guished brothers were born. Their grandfather had, I believe, found 
 refuge there after forfeiting a good estate and an ancient baronetcy in 
 the affair of 1715. A monument to the. gallant General s memory ha 
 ecently been erected near the spot of his birth. 
 
228 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 think I have hitherto succeeded in throwing some interest into 
 the piece. It is, however, a darker and more gloomy interest 
 than I intended ; but involving one s self with bad company, 
 whether in fiction or in reality, is the way not to get out of 
 it easily ; so I have been obliged to bestow more pains and 
 trouble upon Bertram, and one or two blackguards whom he 
 picks up in the slate quarries, than what I originally designed 
 I am very desirous to have your opinion of the three first 
 Cantos, for which purpose, so soon as I can get them collected, 
 I will send the sheets under cover to Mr. Freeling, whose 
 omnipotent frank will transmit them to Rokeby, where, I pre 
 sume, you have been long since comfortably settled 
 
 So York may overlook the town of York. 
 
 3d King Henry VI. Act I. Scene 4. 
 
 " I trust you will read it with some partiality, because, if 1 
 have not been so successful as I could wish in describing your 
 lovely and romantic glens, it has partly arisen from my great 
 anxiety to do it well, which is often attended with the very 
 contrary effect. There are two or three songs, and particu 
 larly one in praise of Brignal Banks, which I trust you will 
 like because, entre nous, I like them myself. One of them 
 is a little dashing banditti song, called and entitled Allen-a- 
 Dale. I think you will be able to judge for yourself in about 
 a week. Pray, how shall I send you the entire goose, which 
 will be too heavy to travel the same way with its giblets for 
 the Carlisle coach is terribly inaccurate about parcels ? I fear 
 I have made one blunder in mentioning the brooks which flow 
 into the Tees. I have made the Balder distinct from that 
 which comes down Thorsgill I hope I am not- mistake a. 
 You will see the passage ; and if they are the same rivulet, 
 the leaf must be cancelled. 
 
 " I trust this will find Mrs. Morritt pretty well ; and I am 
 glad to find she has been better for her little tour. We werfe 
 delighted with ours, except in respect of its short duration 
 and Sophia and Walter hold their heads very high among 
 their untravelled companions, from the predominance acquired 
 
ROKEBT DECEMBER 1812. 22ii 
 
 by their visit to England. You are not perhaps aware of the 
 polish wliich is supposed to be acquired by the most transitory 
 intercourse with your more refined side of the Tweed. There 
 was an honest carter who once applied to me respecting a 
 plan which he had formed of breeding his son, a great booby 
 of twenty, to the Church. As the best way of evading the 
 scrape, I asked him whether he thought his son s language was 
 quite adapted for the use of a public speaker ? to which he 
 answered, with great readiness, that he could knap English 
 with any one, having twice driven his father s cart to Etal 
 coal-hill. 
 
 " I have called my heroine Matilda. 1 don t much like 
 Agnes, though I can t tell why, unless it is because it begins 
 like Agag. Matilda is a name of unmanageable length ; but, 
 after all, is better than none, and my poor damsel was likely 
 to go without one in my indecision. 
 
 " We are all hungering and thirsting for news from Russia. 
 If Boney s devil does not help him, he is in a poor way. The 
 Leith letters talk of the unanimity of the Russians as being 
 most exemplary ; and troops pour in from all quarters of their 
 immense empire. Their commissariat is well managed under 
 the Prince Duke of Oldenburgh. This was their weak point 
 in former wars. 
 
 " Adieu ! Mrs. Scott and the little people send love to Mrs. 
 Morritt and you. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To the Same. 
 " Edinburgh, Thursday, 10th December 1812. 
 
 "My Dear Morritt, I have just time to say that I have 
 received your letters, and am delighted that Rokeby pleases 
 the owner. As I hope the whole will be printed off before 
 Christmas, it will scarce be worth while to send you the other 
 jheets till it reaches you altogether. Your criticisms are the 
 best proof of your kind attention to the poem. I need not say 
 \ will pay them every attention in the next edition. But some 
 
230 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 of the faults are so interwoven with the story, that they must 
 itand. Denzil, for instance, is essential to me, though, as you 
 say, not very interesting; and I assure you that, generally 
 speaking, the poeta loquitur has a bad effect in narrative ; and 
 when you have twenty things to tell, it is better to be slatternly 
 than tedious. The fact is, that the tediousuess of many really 
 good poems arises from an attempt to support the same tone 
 throughout, which often occasions periphrasis, and always stiff 
 ness. I am quite sensible that I have often carried the oppo 
 site custom too far ; but I am apt to impute it partly to not 
 being able to bring out my own ideas well, and partly to haste 
 not to error in the system. This would, however, lead to a 
 long discussion, more fit for the fireside than for a letter. I 
 need not say that, the poem being in fact your own, you are at 
 perfect liberty to dispose of the sheets as you please. I am 
 glad my geography is pretty correct. It is too late to inquire 
 if Rokeby is insured, for I have burned it down in Canto V. ; 
 but I suspect you will bear me no greater grudge than at the 
 noble Russian who burned Moscow. Glorious news to-day 
 from the north pereat iste I Mrs. Scott, Sophia, and Walter, 
 join in best compliments to Mrs. Morritt ; and I am, in great 
 haste, ever faithfully yours, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 "P. S. I have heard of Lady Hood by a letter from her 
 self. She is well, and in high spirits, and sends me a pretty 
 topaz seal, with a talisman which secures this letter, and signi* 
 fies (it seems), which one would scarce have expected from its 
 appearance, my name." 
 
 We are now close upon the end of this busy twelve 
 month; but I must not turn the leaf to 1813, without 
 noticing one of its miscellaneous incidents his first in 
 tercourse by letter with the poet Crabbe. Mr. Hatchard, 
 the publisher of his "Tales," forwarded a copy of the 
 book to Scott as soon as it was ready ; and, the bookseller 
 Having communicated to his author some flattering ex 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH CRABBE. 23J 
 
 prestions in Scott s letter of acknowledgment, Mr. Crabbe 
 addressed him as follows : 
 
 To Waiter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 " Merston, Grantham, 13th October 1812. 
 
 " Sir, Mr. Hatchard, judging rightly of the satisfaction it 
 would afford me, has been so obliging as to communicate your 
 two letters, in one of which you desire my Tales to be sent ; 
 in the other, you acknowledge the receipt of them ; and in 
 both you mention my verses in such terms, that it would be 
 affected in me were I to deny, and I think unjust if I were to 
 conceal, the pleasure you give me. I am indeed highly grat 
 ified. 
 
 " I have long entertained a hearty wish to be made known 
 to a poet whose works are so greatly and so universally ad 
 mired ; and I continued to hope that I might at some time find 
 a common friend, by whose intervention I might obtain that 
 honour ; but I am confined by duties near my home, and by 
 sickness in it. It may be long before I be in town, and then 
 no such opportunity might offer. Excuse me, then, sir, if I 
 gladly seize this which now occurs to express my thanks for 
 the politeness of your expressions, as well as my desire of being 
 known to a gentleman who has delighted and affected me, and 
 moved all the passions and feelings in turn, I believe Envy 
 surely excepted certainly, if I know myself, but in a moder 
 ate degree. I truly rejoice in your success ; and while I am 
 entertaining, in my way, a certain set of readers, for the most 
 part, probably, of peculiar turn and habit, I can with pleasure 
 see the effect you produce on all. Mr. Hatchard tells me that 
 he hopes or expects that thousands will read my Tales, and 
 I am convinced that your publisher might, in like manner, so 
 speak of your ten thousands ; but this, though it calls to mind 
 the passage, is no true comparison with the related prowess of 
 David and Saul, because I have no evil spirit to arise and 
 trouble me on the occasion ; though, if I had, I know no David 
 whose skill is so likely to allay it. Once more, sir, accept my 
 
232 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 best thanks, with my hearty wishes for your health and happi 
 ness, who am, with great esteem, and true respect, 
 
 " Dear Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 " GEORGE CRABBE." 
 
 I cannot produce Scott s reply to this communication, 
 Mr. Crabbe appears to have, in the course of the year 
 sent him a copy of all his works, " ex dono auctoris," and 
 there passed between them several letters, one or two of 
 which I must quote. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 "Know you, sir, a gentleman in Edinburgh, A. Brunton 
 (the Rev.) who dates St. John Street, and who asks my assist 
 ance in furnishing hymns which have relation to the Old or 
 New Testament anything which might suit the purpose of 
 those who are cooking up a book of Scotch Psalmody ? Who 
 is Mr. Brunton ? What is his situation ? If I could help one 
 who needed help, I would do it cheerfully but have no great 
 opinion of this undertaking 
 
 " With every good wish, yours sincerely, 
 
 " GEO. CRABBE " 
 
 Scott s answer to this letter expresses the opinions he 
 always held in conversation on the important subject to 
 which it refers ; and acting upon which, he himself at 
 various times declined taking any part in the business 
 advocated by Dr. Brunton : 
 
 " To the Rev. George Crabbe, Merston, Grantham. 
 
 "My Dear Sir, I was favoured with your kind letter 
 ome time ago. Of all people in the world, I am least entitled 
 to demand regularity of correspondence ; for being, one way 
 and another, doomed to a great deal more writing than suits 
 my indolence, I am sometimes tempted to envy the reverend 
 hermit of Prague, confessor to the niece of Queen Gorboduc, 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH CRABBE. 233 
 
 who never saw either pen or ink. Mr. Brunton is a very re 
 spectable clergyman of Edinburgh, and I believe the work in 
 which he has solicited your assistance is one adopted by the 
 General Assembly, or Convocation of the Kirk. I have no 
 notion that he has any individual interest in it ; he is a well- 
 educated and liberal-minded man, and generally esteemed. I 
 have no particular acquaintance with him myself, though we 
 speak together. He is at this very moment sitting on the out 
 side of the bar of our Supreme Court, within which I am fag 
 ging as a Clerk ; but as he is hearing the opinion of the Judges 
 upon an action for augmentation of stipend to him and to his 
 brethren, it would not, I conceive, be a very favourable time 
 to canvass a literary topic. But you are quite safe with him ; 
 and having so much command of scriptural language, which 
 appears to me essential to the devotional poetry of Christians, I 
 am sure you can assist his purpose much more than any man 
 alive. 
 
 " I think those hymns which do not immediately recall the 
 warm and exalted language of the Bible are apt to be, how 
 ever elegant, rather cold and flat for the purposes of devotion. 
 You will readily believe that I do not approve of the vague 
 and indiscriminate Scripture language which the fanatics of 
 old, and the modern Methodists, have adopted, but merely that 
 solemnity and peculiarity of diction, which at once puts the 
 reader and hearer upon his guard as to the purpose of the 
 poetry. To my Gothic ear, indeed, the Stabat Mater, the Dies 
 Irce, and some of the other hymns of the Catholic Church, are 
 more solemn and affecting than the fine classical poetry of 
 Buchanan ; the one has the gloomy dignity of a Gothic church, 
 and reminds us instantly of the worship to which it is dedi 
 cated ; the other is more like a Pagan temple, recalling to our 
 memory the classical and fabulous deities.* This is, probably, 
 all referable to the association of ideas that is, if the asso 
 ciation of ideas continues to be the universal pick-lock of all 
 metaphysical difficulties, as it was when I studied moral phi- 
 
 * See Life of Dryden, Scott s Miscellaneous Prose Works, (edit 
 1841) p. 61. 
 
234: LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 losophy or to any other more fashionable universal solvent 
 which may have succeeded to it in reputation. Adieu, my 
 dear sir, I hope you and your family will long enjoy all 
 happiness and prosperity. Never be discouraged from the 
 constant use of your charming talent. The opinions of re 
 viewers are really too contradictory to found anything upon 
 them, whether they are favourable or otherwise; for it is 
 usually their principal object to display the abilities of the 
 writers of the critical lucubrations themselves. Your Tales 
 are universally admired here. I go but little out, but the few 
 judges whose opinions I have been accustomed to look up to, 
 are unanimous. Ever yours, most truly, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, Law. then, is your profession I mean a 
 profession you give your mind and time to but how fag as 
 a clerk ? Clerk is a name for a learned person, I know, in our 
 Church ; but how the same hand which held the pen of Mar- 
 mion, holds that with which a clerk fags, unless a clerk means 
 something vastly more than I understand is not to be com 
 prehended. I wait for elucidation. Know you, dear sir, I 
 have often thought I should love to read reports that is, 
 brief histories of extraordinary cases, with the judgments. If 
 that is what is meant by reports, such reading must be pleas 
 ant ; but, probably, I entertain wrong ideas, and could not 
 understand the books I think so engaging. Yet I conclude 
 there are histories of cases, and have often thought of consult 
 ing Hatchard whether he knew of such kind of reading, but 
 
 hitherto I have rested in ignorance Yours 
 
 truly, GEORGE CRABBE." 
 
 " To the Rev. George Crdbbe. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, I have too long delayed to thank you for 
 the most kind and acceptable present of your three volumea 
 Now am I doubly armed, since I have a set for my cabin aJ 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH CRABBE. 233 
 
 AJobotsford as well as in town ; and, to say truth, the auxiliary 
 copy arrived in good time, for my original one suffers as much 
 by its general popularity among my young people, as a popular 
 candidate from the hugs and embraces of his democratical ad 
 mirers. The clearness and accuracy of your painting, whether 
 natural or moral, renders, I have often remarked, your works 
 generally delightful to those whose youth might render them 
 insensible to the other beauties with which they abound- 
 There are a sort of pictures surely the most valuable, were 
 it but for that reason which strike the uninitiated as much 
 as they do the connoisseur, though the last alone can render 
 reason for his admiration. Indeed our old friend Horace knew 
 what he was saying when he chose to address his ode, Fir- 
 ginibus puerisque and so did Pope when he told somebody he 
 had the mob on the side of his version of Homer, and did not 
 mind the high-flying critics at Button s. After all, if a fault 
 less poem could be produced, I am satisfied it would tire the 
 critics themselves, and annoy the whole reading world with the 
 spleen. 
 
 " You must be delightfully situated in the Vale of Belvoir 
 a part of England for which I entertain a special kindness, for 
 the sake of the gallant hero, Robin Hood, who, as probably 
 you will readily guess, is no small favourite of mine ; his indis 
 tinct ideas concerning the doctrine of mewn and tuum being 
 no great objection to an outriding Borderer. I am happy to 
 think that your station is under the protection of the Rutland 
 family, of whom fame speaks highly. Our lord of the cairn 
 and the scaur, waste wilderness and hungry hills, for many a 
 league around, is the Duke of Buccleuch, the head of my clan ; 
 a kind and benevolent landlord, a warm and zealous friend, 
 and the husband of a lady comme il y en a pen. They are 
 both great admirers of Mr. Crabbe s poetry, and would be 
 happy to know him, should he ever come to Scotland, and 
 venture into the Gothic halls of a Border chief. The early 
 jind uniform kindness of this family, with the friendship of the 
 Sate and present Lord Melville, enabled me, some years ago, to 
 exchange my toils as a barrister, for the lucrative and respect- 
 
JJ36 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 able situation of one of the Clerks of our Supreme Court 
 which only requires a certain routine of official duty, neithei 
 laborious nor calling for any exertion of the mind ; so that my 
 time is entirely at my own command, except when I am at 
 tending the Court, which seldom occupies more than two hours 
 of the morning during sitting. I besides hold in commendam 
 the Sheriffdom of Ettrick Forest, which is now no forest ; so 
 that J am a pluralist as to law appointments, and have, as Dog- . 
 berry says, two gowns and every thing handsome alwut me. * 
 " I have often thought it is the most fortunate thing for 
 bards like you and me to have an established profession, and 
 professional character, to render us independent of those wor 
 thy gentlemen, the retailers, or, as some have called them, the 
 midw ; ves of literature, who are so much taken up with the 
 abortions they bring into the world, that they are scarcely able 
 l > bestow the proper care upon young and nourishing babes 
 like ours. That, however, is only a mercantile way of looking 
 ctt the matter ; but did any of my sons show poetical talent, of 
 which, to my great satisfaction, there are no appearances, the 
 first thing I should do would be to inculcate upon him the duty 
 of cultivating some honourable profession, and qualifying him 
 self to play a more respectable part in society than the mere 
 poet. And as the best corollary of my doctrine, I would make 
 him get your tale of The Patron by heart from beginning 
 to end. It is curious enough that you should have republished 
 the Village for the purpose of sending your young men to 
 college, and I should have written the Lay of the Last Min 
 strel for the purpose of buying a new horse for the Volunteer 
 Cavalry. I must now send this scrawl into town to get a 
 frank, for, God knows, it is not worthy of postage. With the 
 warmest wishes for your health, prosperity, and increase of 
 frame though it needs not I remain most sincerely and 
 affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT." f 
 
 * Much ado about Nothing, Act IV. Sc^ne 2. 
 
 t Several of these letters having been enclosed in franked covers 
 Which have perished, I am unable to affix the exact dates to them 
 
EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER 1812. 237 
 
 The contrast of the two poets epistolary styles is 
 nighly amusing ; but I have introduced these specimens 
 less on that account, than as marking the cordial confi 
 dence which a very little intercourse was sufficient to es 
 tablish between men so different from each other in most 
 of the habits of life. It will always be considered as 
 one of the most pleasing peculiarities in Scott s history, 
 that he was the friend of every great contemporary poet : 
 Crabbe, as we shall see more largely in the sequel, was 
 no exception to the rule : yet I could hardly name one 
 of them who, manly principles and the cultivation of 
 literature apart, had many points of resemblance to him ; 
 and surely not one who had fewer than Crabbe. 
 
 Scott continued, this year, his care for the Edinburgh 
 Annual Register the historical department of which 
 was again supplied by Mr. Southey. The poetical mis 
 cellany owed its opening piece, the Ballad of Polydore, 
 to the readiness with which Scott entered into correspond 
 ence with its author, who sent it to him anonymously, 
 with a letter which, like the verses, might well have ex 
 cited much interest in his mind, even had it not concluded 
 with stating the writer s age to be fifteen. Scott invited 
 the youth to visit him in the country, was greatly pleased 
 with the modesty of his manners and the originality of 
 his conversation, and wrote to Joanna Baillie, that, 
 " though not one of the crimps for the muses," he thought 
 he could hardly be mistaken in believing that in the boy 
 ish author of Polydore he had discovered a true genius. 
 When I mention the name of my friend William Howison 
 of Clydegrove, it will be allowed that he prognosticated 
 wisely. He continued to correspond with this young gen 
 tleman and his father, and gave both much advice, for 
 which both were most grateful. There was inserted in 
 
238 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the same volume a set of beautiful stanzas, inscribed 
 to Scott by Mr. Wilson, under the title of the " Magic 
 Mirror," in which that enthusiastic young poet also bears 
 a lofty and lasting testimony to the gentle kindness with 
 which his earlier efforts had been encouraged by him 
 whom he designates, for the first time, by what afterwards 
 became one of his standing titles, that of " The Great 
 Magician." 
 
 " Onwards a figure came, with stately brow, 
 
 Aoid, as he glanced upon the ruiri d pile 
 A look of regal pride, Say, who art thou 
 
 (His countenance bright ning with a scornful smile, 
 He sternly cried), whose footsteps rash profane 
 The wild romantic realm where I have willed to reign ? 
 
 ** But ere to these proud words I could reply, 
 
 How changed that scornful face to soft and mild ! 
 A. witching frenzy glitter d in his eye, 
 
 Harmless, withal, as that of playful child. 
 And when once more the gracious vision spoke, 
 
 I felt the voice familiar to mine ear; 
 While many a faded dream of earth awoke, 
 
 Connected strangely with that unknown seer, 
 Who now stretch d forth his arm, and on the sand 
 A circle round me traced, as with magician s wand." &c. 
 
 Scott s own chief contribution to this volume was a 
 brief account of the Life and Poems (hitherto unpub 
 lished) * of Patrick Carey, whom he pronounces to nave 
 been not only as stout a cavalier, but almost as good a 
 poet as his contemporary Lovelace. That Essay waa 
 expanded, and prefixed to an edition of Carey s " Trivial 
 
 * The Rev. Alexander Dyce informs me, that nine of Carey s piecea 
 ivere printed in 1771, for J. Murray of Fleet Street, in a quarto of 
 thirty-five pages, entitled Poems from a MS. written in the time 
 f Oliver Cromwell." This rare tract had never fallen into Scott i 
 iands. [1839.] 
 
CAREY S POEMS 1812. 239 
 
 Poems and Triolets," which Scott published in 1820; 
 but its circulation in either shape has been limited : and 
 I believe I shall be gratifying the majority of my readers 
 by here transcribing some paragraphs of his beautiful 
 and highly characteristic introduction of this forgotten 
 poet of the 17th century. 
 
 " The present ag3 has been so distinguished for research into 
 p-^etical antiquities, that the discovery of an unknown bard is, 
 in certain chosen literary circles, held as curious as an aug 
 mentation of the number of fixed stars would be esteemed by 
 astronomers. It is true, these blessed twinklers of the night 
 are so far removed from us, that they afford no more light than 
 serves barely to evince their existence to the curious investi 
 gator ; and in like manner the pleasure derived from the revi 
 val of an obscure poet is rather in proportion to the rarity of 
 his volume than to its merit ; yet this pleasure is not inconsis 
 tent with reason and principle. We know by every day s ex 
 perience the peculiar interest which the lapse of ages confers 
 upon works of human art. The clumsy strength of the ancient 
 castles, which, when raw from the hand of the builder, inferred 
 only the oppressive power of the barons who reared them, is 
 now broken by partial ruin into proper subjects for the poet 
 or the painter; and as Mason has beautifully described &he 
 change, 
 
 Time 
 
 Has mouldered into beauty many a tower, 
 Which, when it frowned with all its battlements, 
 Was only terrible. 
 
 " The monastery, too, which was at first but a fantastic mon 
 ument of the superstitious devotion of monarchs, or of the pur 
 ple pride of fattened abbots, has gained by the silent influence 
 of antiquity, the power of impressing awe and devotion. Even 
 the stains and weather-taints upon the battlements of such 
 buildings add, like the scars of a veteran, to the affecting im- 
 Vression : 
 
 VOL. in. 16 
 
24:0 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 * For time has softened what was harsh when new, 
 And now the stains are all of sober hue; 
 The living stains which nature s hand alone, 
 Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone. Crabbe. 
 
 " If such is the effect of Time in adding interest to the la 
 bours of the architect, if partial destruction is compensated 
 by the additional interest of that which remains, can we denj 
 his exerting a similar influence upon those subjects which ara 
 Bought after by the bibliographer and poetical antiquary ? 
 The obscure poet, who is detected by their keen research, may 
 indeed have possessed but a slender portion of that spirit which 
 has buoyed up the works of distinguished contemporaries dur 
 ing the course of centuries, yet still his verses shall, in the lapse 
 of time, acquire an interest, which they did not possess in the 
 eyes of his own generation. The wrath of the critic, like that 
 of the son of Ossian, flies from the foe that is low. Envy, base 
 as she is, has one property of the lion, and cannot prey on car 
 casses ; she must drink the blood of a sentient victim, and tear 
 the limbs that are yet warm with vital life. Faction, if the 
 ancient has suffered her persecution, serves only to endear hin? 
 to the recollection of posterity, whose generous compassion 
 overpays him for the injuries he sustained while in life. Ana 
 thus freed from the operation of all unfavourable prepossessions, 
 his merit, if he can boast any, has more than fair credit with 
 his readers. This, however, is but part of his advantages. 
 The mere attribute of antiquity is of itself sufficient to inter 
 est the fancy, by the lively and powerful train of associations 
 which it awakens. Had the pyramids of Egypt, equally disa 
 greeable in form and senseless as to utility, been the work of 
 any living tyrant, with what feelings, save those of scorn and 
 derision, could we have regarded such a waste of labour ? But 
 the sight, nay the very mention of these wonderful monuments, 
 is associated with the dark and sublime ideas which vary their 
 tinge according to the favourite hue of our studies. The 
 Christian divine recollects the land of banishment and of ref 
 uge ; to the eyes of the historian s fancy, they excite the shades 
 of Pharaohs and of Ptolemies, of Cheops and Merops, and Se- 
 
CAREY S POEMS 1812. 241 
 
 sostris drawn in triumph by his sceptred slaves ; the philoso 
 pher beholds the first rays of moral truth as they dawned 
 on the hieroglyphic sculptures of Thebes and Memphis ; and 
 the poet sees the fires of magic blazing upon the mystic al 
 tars of a land of incantation. Nor is the grandeur of size 
 essential to such feelings, any more than the properties of 
 grace and utility. Even the rudest remnant of a feudal 
 towar, even the obscure and almost indistinguishable vestige 
 of an altogether unknown edifice, has power to awaken such 
 trains of fancy. We have a fellow interest with the son of 
 the winged days, over whose fallen habitation we tread. 
 
 The massy stones, though hewn most roughly, show 
 The hand of man had once at least been there. Wordsworth. 
 
 " Similar combinations give a great part of the delight wo 
 receive from ancient poetry. In the rude song of the Scald, 
 we regard less the strained imagery and extravagance of epi 
 thet, than the wild impressions which it conveys of the daunt 
 less resolution, savage superstition, rude festivity, and ceaseless 
 depredation of the ancient Scandinavians. In the metrical 
 romance, we pardon the long, tedious, and bald enumeration 
 of trifling particulars ; the reiterated sameness of the eternal 
 combats between knights and giants; the overpowering lan 
 guor of the love speeches, and the merciless length and simi 
 larity of description when Fancy whispers to us, that such 
 strains may have cheered the sleepless pillow of the Black 
 Prince on the memorable eves of Cressy or Poictiers. There 
 is a certain romance of Ferumbras, which Robert the Bruce 
 read to his few followers, to divert their thoughts from the des 
 perate circumstances in which they were placed, after an un 
 successful attempt to rise against the English. Is there a true 
 Scotsman who, being aware of this anecdote, would fee dis 
 posed to yawn over the romance of Ferumbras ? Or, on the 
 contrary, would not the image of the dauntless hero, inflexible 
 in defeat, beguiling the anxiety of his war-worn attendants by 
 the lays of the minstrel, give to these rude lays themselves an 
 interest beyond Greek and Roman fame ? " 
 
242 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The year 1812 had the usual share of minor literary 
 labours such as contributions to the journals ; and 
 before it closed, the Romance of Rokeby was finished. 
 Though it had been long in hand, the MS. sent to the 
 printer bears abundant evidence of its being the prima 
 cura : three cantos at least reached Ballantyne through 
 the Melrose post written on paper of various sorts and 
 sizes full of blots and interlineations the closing 
 couplets of a despatch now and then encircling the page, 
 and mutilated by the breaking of the seal. 
 
 According to the recollection of Mr. Cadell, though 
 James Ballantyne read the poem, as the sheets were ad 
 vancing through the press, to his usual circle of literary 
 dilettanti, their whispers were far from exciting in Edin 
 burgh such an intensity of expectation as had been wit 
 nessed in the case of The Lady of the Lake. He adds, 
 however, that it was looked for with undiminished anx 
 iety in the south. " Send me Rokeby" Byron writes to 
 Murray on seeing it advertised, " Who the devil is he ? 
 No matter he has good connexions, and will be well 
 introduced." * Such, I suppose, was the general feeling 
 in London. I well remember, being in those days a 
 young student at Oxford, how the booksellers shops 
 there were beleaguered for the earliest copies, and how 
 he that had been so fortunate as to secure one, was fol 
 lowed to his chambers by a tribe of friends, all as eager 
 to hear it read as ever horse-jockeys were to see the con 
 clusion of a match at Newmarket ; and indeed not a few 
 of those enthusiastic academics had bets depending on 
 the issue of the struggle, which they considered the elder 
 favourite as making, to keep his own ground against th 
 fiery rivalry of Childe Harold. 
 
 * Byron s Life and Works, vol. ii. p. 169. 
 
PUBLICATION OP ROKEBY JAN. 1813. 243 
 
 The poem was published a day or two before Scott 
 returned to Edinburgh from Abbotsford, between which 
 place and Mertoun he had divided his Christmas vaca 
 tion. On the 9th and 10th of January 1813, he thus 
 addresses his friends at Sunninghill and Hampstead : 
 
 " To George Ellis, Esq., 
 
 ^""^ REE 1 
 
 " My Dear Ellis, I am sure you will place it to anything 
 rather than want of kindness that I have been so long silent 
 so very long, indeed, that I am not quite sure whether the 
 fault is on my side or yours but, be it what it may, it can 
 never, I am sure, be laid to forgetfulness in either. This 
 comes to train you on to the merciful reception of a Tale of 
 the Civil Wars ; not political, however, but merely a pseudo- 
 romance of pseudo-chivalry. I have converted a lusty bucca- 
 nier into a hero with some effect ; but the worst of all my 
 undertakings is, that my rogue always, in despite of me, turns 
 out my hero. I know not how this should be. I am myself, 
 as Hamlet says, 4 indifferent honest ; and my father, though 
 an attorney (as you will call him), was one of the most honest 
 men, as well as gentlemanlike, that ever breathed. I am sure 
 I can bear witness to that for if he had at all smacked, or 
 grown to, like the son of Lancelot Gobbo, he might have left us 
 all as rich as Croesus, besides having the pleasure of taking a 
 fine primrose path himself, instead of squeezing himself through 
 a tight gate and up a steep ascent, and leaving us the decent 
 competence of an honest man s children. As to our more 
 ancient pedigree, I should be loath to vouch for them. My 
 grandfather was a horse-jockey and cattle-dealer, and made a 
 fortune ; my great-grandfather a Jacobite and traitor (as the 
 times called him), and lost one ; and after him intervened one 
 or two half-starved lairds, who rode a lean horse, and were 
 followed by leaner greyhounds; gathered with difficulty a 
 hundred pounds from a hundred tenants; fought duels; 
 cocked their hats, and called themselves gentlemen. Then 
 
244 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 we come to the old Border times, cattle-driving, halters, and 
 BO forth, for which, in the matter of honesty, very little I sup 
 pose can be said at least in modern acceptation of the word. 
 Upon the whole, I am inclined to think it is owing to the ear 
 lier part of this inauspicious generation that I uniformly find 
 myself in the same scrape in my fables, and that, in spite of 
 the most obstinate determination to the contrary, the greatest 
 rogue in my canvass always stands out as the most conspicuous 
 and prominent figure. All this will be a riddle to you, unless 
 you have received a certain packet, which the Ballantynes 
 were to have sent under Freeling s or Croker s cover, so soon 
 as they could get a copy done up. 
 
 " And now let me gratulate you upon the renovated vigour 
 of your fine old friends the Russians. By the Lord, sir ! it is 
 most famous this campaign of theirs. I was not one of the 
 very sanguine persons who anticipated the actual capture of 
 Buonaparte a hope which rather proceeded from the ignor 
 ance of those who cannot conceive that military movements, 
 upon a large scale, admit of such a force being accumulated 
 upon any particular point as may, by abandonment of other 
 considerations, always ensure the escape of an individual. 
 But I had no hope, in my time, of seeing the dry bones of the 
 Continent so warm with life again, as this revivification of the 
 Russians proves them to be. I look anxiously for the effect 
 of these great events on Prussia, and even upon Saxony ; for 
 1 think Boney will hardly trust himself again in Germany, 
 now that he has been plainly shown, both in Spain and Rus 
 sia, that protracted stubborn unaccommodating resistance will 
 foil those grand exertions in the long-run. All laud be to 
 Lord Wellington, who first taught that great lesson. 
 
 " Charlotte is with me just now at this little scrub habita 
 tion, where we weary ourselves all day in looking at our pro 
 jected improvements, and then slumber over the fire, I pre 
 tending to read, and she to work trout-nets, or cabbage-nets ; 
 or some such article. What is Canning about ? Is there any 
 chance of our getting him in ? Surely Ministers cannot hope 
 
PUBLICATION OF ROKEBT. 245 
 
 lo do without him. Believe me, Dear Ellis, ever truly 
 yours, W. SCOTT." 
 
 " Abbotsford. 9th January 1813." 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie. 
 
 " Abbotsford, January 10, 1813. 
 
 " Your kind encouragement, my dear friend, has given me 
 spirits to complete the lumbering quarto, which I hope has 
 reached you by this time. I have gone on with my story 
 forth right, without troubling myself excessively about the 
 development of the plot and other critical matters 
 
 But shall we go mourn for that, my dear? 
 
 The pale moon shines by night; 
 And when we wander here and there, 
 We then do go most right. 
 
 I hope you will like Bertram to the end ; he is a Caravaggio 
 sketch, which, I may acknowledge to you but tell it not in 
 Gath I rather pique myself upon ; and he is within the 
 keeping of Nature, though critics will say to the contrary. It 
 may be difficult to fancy that any one should take a sort of 
 pleasure in bringing out such a character, but I suppose it is 
 partly owing to bad reading, and ill-directed reading, when I 
 was young. No sooner had I corrected the last sheet of Roke- 
 by, than I escaped to this Patmos as blythe as bird on tree, 
 and have been ever since most decidedly idle that is to say, 
 with busy idleness. I have been banking, and securing, and 
 dyking against the river, and planting willows, and aspens, 
 and weeping-birches, around my new old well, which I think I 
 void you I had constructed last summer. I have now laid the 
 foundations of a famous background of copse, with pendant 
 trees in front ; and I have only to beg a few years to see how 
 my colours will come Dut of the canvass. Alas! who can 
 promise that ? But somebody will take my place and enjoy 
 them, whether I do or no. My old friend, and pastor, Princi 
 pal Robertson (the historian), when he was not expected to 
 survive many weeks, still watched the setting of the blossoni 
 
246 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 upon some fruit-trees in the garden with as much interest as 
 if it was possible he could have seen the fruit come to maturity, 
 and moralized on his own conduct, by observing that we act 
 upon the same inconsistent motive throughout life. It is well 
 we do so for those that are to come after us. I could almost 
 dislike the man who refuses to plant walnut-trees, because they 
 do not bear fruit till the second generation ; and so many 
 thanks to our ancestors, and much joy to our successors, and 
 truce to my fine and very new strain of morality. Yours ever, 
 
 " W. S." 
 
 The following letter lets us completely behind the 
 scenes at the publication of Rokeby. The " horrid 
 story " it alludes to was that of a young woman found 
 murdered on New Year s Day in the highway between 
 Greta Bridge and Barnard Castle a crime, the perpe 
 trator of which was never discovered. The account of a 
 parallel atrocity in Galloway, and the mode of its detec 
 tion, will show the reader from what source Scott drew 
 one of the most striking incidents in his Guy Manner- 
 ing : 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., RoTceby Park. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 12th January 1813. 
 
 " Dear Morritt, Yours I have just received in mine office 
 at the Register-House, which will excuse this queer sheet of 
 paper. The publication of Rokeby was delayed till Monday, 
 to give tb3 London publishers a fair start. My copies, that is, 
 my friends , were all to be got off about Friday or Saturday ; 
 but yours may have been a little later, as it was to be what 
 they cal 1 a picked one. I will call at Ballantyne s as I return 
 from this place, and close the letter with such news as I can 
 get about it there. The book has gone off here very bobbishly, 
 for the impression of 3000 and upwards is within two or three 
 score of being exhausted, and the demand for these continuing 
 faster than they can be boarded. I am heartily glad of this, for 
 
PUBLICATION OF ROKEBY. 247 
 
 now I have nothing to fear but a bankruptcy in the Gazette 
 of Parnassus ; but the loss of five or six thousand pounds to 
 my good friends and school-companions would have afflicted 
 me very much. I wish we could whistle you here to-day. 
 Ballantyne always gives a christening dinner, at which the 
 Duke of Buccleuch, and a great many of my friends, are for 
 mally feasted. He has always the best singing that can be 
 heard in Edinburgh, and we have usually a very pleasant 
 party, at which your health as patron and proprietor of Koke- 
 by will be faithfully and honourably remembered. 
 
 " Your horrid story reminds me of one in Galloway, where 
 the perpetrator of a similar enormity on a poor idiot girl, was 
 discovered by means of the print of his foot which he left upon 
 the clay floor of the cottage in the death-struggle. It pleased 
 Heaven (for nothing short of a miracle could have done it) to 
 enlighten the understanding of an old ram-headed sheriff, who 
 was usually nick-named Leather-head. The steps which he 
 took to discover the murderer were most sagacious. As the 
 poor girl was pregnant (for it was not a case of violation), it 
 was pretty clear that her paramour had done the deed, and 
 equally so that he must be a native of the district. The sheriff 
 caused the minister to advertise from the pulpit that the girl 
 would be buried on a particular day, and that all persons in 
 the neighbourhood were invited to attend the funeral, to show 
 their detestation of such an enormous crime, as well as to 
 ivince their own innocence. This was sure to bring the mur 
 derer to the funeral. When the people were assembled in the 
 kirk, the doors were locked by the sheriff s order, and the 
 shoes of all the men were examined ; that cf the murderer 
 was detected by the measure of the foot, tread, &c., and a 
 peculiarity in the mode in which the sole of one of them had 
 been patched. The remainder of the curious chain of evidence 
 upon which he was convicted will suit best with twilight, or a 
 blinking candle, being too long for a letter. The fellow bore a 
 most excellent character, and had committed this crime for no 
 other reason that could be alleged, than that, having been led 
 accidentally into an intrigue with this poor wretch ? his pride 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 i-evolted at the ridicule which was likely to attend the dis 
 covery. 
 
 " On calling at Ballantyne s, I find, as I had anticipated, 
 that your copy, being of royal size, requires some particular 
 nicety in hot-pressing. It will be sent by the Carlisle mail 
 quam primum. Ever yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " P. S. Love to Mrs. Morritt. John Ballantyne says hi 
 has just about eighty copies left, out of 3250, this being the 
 second day of publication, and the book a two-guinea one." 
 
 It will surprise no one to hear that Mr. Morritt as 
 sured his friend he considered Rokeby as the best of all 
 his poems. The admirable, perhaps the unique fidelity 
 of the local descriptions, might alone have swayed, for I 
 will not say it perverted, the judgment of the lord of that 
 beautiful and thenceforth classical domain ; and, indeed, 
 I must admit that I never understood or appreciated half 
 the charm of this poem until I had become familiar with 
 its scenery. But Scott himself had not designed to rest 
 his strength on these descriptions. He said to James 
 Ballantyne while the work was in progress (September 
 2), "I hope the thing will do, chiefly because the world 
 will not expect from me a poem of which the interest 
 turns upon character ;" and in another letter (October 
 28, 1812), " I think you will see the same sort of differ- 
 $nce taken in all my former poems, of which I would 
 nay, if it is fair for me to say anything, that the force in 
 the Lay is thrown on style in Marmion, on description 
 and in the Lady of the Lake, on incident." * I sus- 
 
 * Several letters to Ballantyne on the same subject are quoted in the 
 notes to the last edition of Rokeby. See Scott s Poetical Works, 1841, 
 p. 285 ; and especially the note on p. 346, from which it appears tba* 
 the closing stanza was added, in deference to Ballantyne and Ers 
 kine, though the author retained his own opinion that " it spoilec 
 ne effect without producing another." 
 
ROKEBY. 249 
 
 pect some of these distinctions may have been matters of 
 after-thought ; but as to Rokeby there can be no mistake. 
 His own original conceptions of some of its principal char 
 acters have been explained in letters already cited ; and 
 I believe no one who compares the poem with his novels 
 will doubt that, had he undertaken their portraiture in 
 prose, they would have come forth with effect hardly 
 inferior to any of all the groups he ever created. As it 
 is, I question whether even in his prose there is anything 
 more exquisitely wrought out, as well as fancied, than 
 the whole contrast of the two rivals for the love of the 
 heroine in Rokeby ; and that heroine herself, too, has a 
 very particular interest attached to her. Writing to Miss 
 Edgeworth five years after this time (10th March 1818), 
 he says, " I have not read one of my poems since they 
 were printed, excepting last year the Lady of the Lake, 
 which I liked better than I expected, but not well enough 
 to induce me to go through the rest so I may truly say 
 with Macbeth 
 
 I am afraid to think of what I ve done 
 Look on t again I dare not. 
 
 " This much of Matilda I recollect (for that is not so 
 easily forgotten) that she was attempted for the exist 
 ing person of a lady who is now no more, so that I am 
 particularly flattered with your distinguishing it from the 
 others, which are in general mere shadows." I can have 
 no doubt that the lady he here alludes to, was the object 
 of his own unfortunate first love ; and as little, that in 
 the romantic generosity, both of the youthful poet who 
 fails to win her higher favour, and of his chivalrous com 
 petitor, we have before us something more than " a mere 
 shadow." 
 
250 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 In spite of these graceful characters, the inimitable 
 scenery on which they are presented, and the splendid 
 vivacity and thrilling interest of several chapters in the 
 story such as the opening interview of Bertram and 
 Wy cliff the flight up the cliff on the Greta the first 
 entrance of the cave at Brignall the firing of Rokeby 
 Castle and the catastrophe in Eglistone Abbey ; in 
 spite certainly of exquisitely happy lines profusely scat 
 tered throughout the whole composition, and of some de 
 tached images that of the setting of lie_lropical__sun^* 
 for example which were never surpassed by any poet ; 
 in spite of all these merits, the immediate success of 
 Rokeby was greatly inferior to that of the Lady of the 
 Lake ; nor has it ever since been so much a favourite 
 with the public at large as any other of his poetical ro 
 mances. He ascribes this failure, in his Introduction of 
 1830, partly to the radically unpoetical character of the 
 Round-heads ; but surely their character has its poetical 
 side also, had his prejudices allowed him to enter upon its 
 study with impartial sympathy ; and I doubt not, Mr. 
 Morritt suggested the difficulty on this score, when the 
 outline of the story was as yet undetermined, from con 
 sideration rather of the poet s peculiar feelings, and pow- 
 
 * "My noontide, India may declare; 
 Like her fierce sun, I fired the air ! 
 Like him, to wood and cave bid fly 
 Her natives, from mine angry eye ; 
 And now, my race of terror run, 
 Mine be the eve of tropic sun ! 
 No pale gradations quench his ray, 
 No twilight dews his wrath allay ; 
 With disk like battle -target red, 
 He rushes to his burning bed. 
 Dyes the wide wave with bloody light, 
 Then sinks at once and all is night." Canto vi. 21. 
 
ROKEBY 1813. 251 
 
 ers as hitherto exhibited, than of the subject absolutely, 
 Partly he blames the satiety of the public ear, which had 
 had so much of his rhythm, not only from himself, but 
 from dozens of mocking-birds, male and female, all more 
 or less applauded in their day, and now all equally for 
 gotten.* This circumstance, too, had probably no slen 
 der effect ; the more that, in defiance of all the hints of 
 his friends, he now, in his narrative, repeated (with more 
 negligence) the uniform octosyllabic couplets of the Lady 
 of the Lake, instead of recurring to the more varied ca 
 dence of the Lay or Marmion. It is fair to add that, 
 among the London circles at least, some sarcastic flings 
 in Mr. Moore s " Twopenny Post Bag " must have had 
 an unfavourable influence on this occasion.! But the 
 cause of failure which the poet himself places last, was 
 
 * " Scott found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex. 
 There was Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but, with 
 the greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much hon 
 our to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, until the ap 
 pearance of The Bridal of Triermain and Harold the Dauntless, 
 which, in the opinion of some, equalled if not surpassed him; and, lo! 
 after three or four years they turned out to be the master s own com 
 position." BYRON, vol. xv. p. 96. 
 
 f See, for instance, the Epistle of Lady Corke or that of Messrs, 
 w.ackington, booksellers, to one of their dandy authors 
 
 " Should you feel any touch of poetical glow, 
 We ve a scheme to suggest Mr. Scott, you must know 
 (Who, we re sorry to say it, now works for the Row), 
 Having quitted the Borders to seek new renown, 
 Is coming by long Quarto stages to town, 
 And beginning with Rokeby (the job s sure to pay) ; 
 Means to do all the gentlemen s seats ou the way. 
 Now the scheme is, though none of our hackneys can beat him, 
 To start a new Poet through Highgate to meet him ; 
 Who by means of quick proofs no revises long coaches 
 May do a few Villas before Scott approaches ; 
 . Indeed if our Pegasus be not curst shabby, 
 He ll reach without foundering, at least Woburn- Abbey," &e. 
 
252 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 unquestionably the main one. The deeper and darke* 
 passion of Childe Harold, the audacity of its morbid vo 
 luptuousness, and the melancholy majesty of the numbers 
 in which it defied the world, had taken the general imag 
 ination by storm ; and Rokeby, with many beauties and 
 some sublimities, was pitched, as a whole, on a key which 
 seemed tame in the comparison. 
 
 I have already adverted to the fact that Scott felt it a 
 relief, not a fatigue, to compose the Bridal of Triermain 
 pari passu with Rokeby. In answer, for example, to 
 one of James Ballantyne s letters, urging accelerated 
 speed with the weightier romance, he says, " I fully share 
 in your anxiety to get forward the grand work ; but, I 
 assure you, I feel the more confidence from coquetting 
 with the guerilla." 
 
 The quarto of Rokeby was followed, within two 
 months, by the small volume which had been designed 
 for a twin-birth ; the MS. had been transcribed by one 
 of the Ballantynes themselves, in order to guard against 
 any indiscretion of the press-people ; and the mystifica 
 tion, aided and abetted by Erskine, in no small degree 
 heightened the interest of its reception. Except Mr. 
 Morritt, Scott had, so far as I am aware, no English con 
 fidant upon this occasion. Whether any of his daily 
 companions in the Parliament House were in the secret, 
 I have never heard; but I can scarcely believe that 
 any of those intimate friends, who had known him and 
 Erskine from their youth upwards, could have for a 
 moment believed the latter capable either of the inven 
 tion or the execution of this airy and fascinating romance 
 in little. Mr. Jeffrey, for whom chiefly " the trap had 
 been set," was fax too sagacious to be caught in it ; but, 
 as it happened, he made a voyage that year to America, 
 
BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN MARCH 1813. 253 
 
 and thus lost the opportunity of immediately expressing 
 his opinion either of Rokeby or of the Bridal of Trier- 
 main. The writer in the Quarterly Review (July 1813) 
 seems to have been completely deceived. " We have 
 already spoken of it," says the critic, " as an imitation of 
 Mr. Scott s style of composition ; and if we are compelled 
 to make the general approbation more precise and spe 
 cific, we would say, that if it be inferior in vigour to 
 some of his productions, it equals or surpasses them in 
 elegance and beauty ; that it is more uniformly tender, 
 and far less infected with the unnatural prodigies and 
 coarseness of the earlier romances. In estimating its 
 merits, however, we should forget that it is offered as an 
 imitation. The diction undoubtedly reminds us of a 
 rhythm and cadence we have heard before ; but the sen 
 timents, descriptions, and characters, have qualities that 
 are native and unborrowed." 
 
 If this writer was, as I suppose, Ellis, he probably con 
 sidered it as a thing impossible that Scott should have 
 engaged in such a scheme without giving him a hint of 
 it ; but to have admitted into the secret any one who was 
 likely to criticise the piece, would have been to sacrifice 
 the very object of the device. Erskine s own suggestion, 
 that " perhaps a quizzical review might be got up," led, 
 I believe, to nothing more important than a paragraph 
 in one of the Edinburgh newspapers. He may be par 
 doned for having been not a little flattered to find it gen 
 erally considered as not impossible that he should have 
 written such a poem ; and I have heard James Ballan- 
 tyne say, that nothing could be more amusing than the 
 Btyle of his coquetting on the subject while it was yet 
 fresh ; but when this first excitement was over, his nat- 
 aral feeling of what was due to himself, as well as to his 
 
LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 friend, dictated many a remonstrance ; and, though he 
 ultimately acquiesced in permitting another minor ro 
 mance to be put forth in the same manner, he did so 
 reluctantly, and was far from acting his part so well. 
 
 Scott says, in the Introduction to the Lord of the Isles, 
 ** As Mr. Erskine was more than suspected of a taste for 
 poetry, and as I took care, in several places, to mix some 
 thing that might resemble (as far as was in my power) 
 my friend s feeling and manner, the train easily caught, 
 and two large editions were sold." Among the passages 
 to which he here alludes, are no doubt those in which 
 the character of the minstrel Arthur is shaded with the 
 colourings of an almost effeminate gentleness. Yet, in 
 the midst of them, the " mighty minstrel " himself, from 
 time to time, escapes ; as, for instance, where the lover 
 bids Lucy, in that exquisite picture of crossing a moun 
 tain stream, trust to his "stalwart arm" 
 
 " Which could yon oak s prone trunk uprear." 
 
 Nor can I pass the compliment to Scott s own fair patron 
 ess, where Lucy s admirer is made to confess, with some 
 momentary lapse of gallantry, that he 
 
 " Ne er won best meed to minstrel true 
 One favouring smile from fair Buccleuch, 
 
 jor the burst of genuine Borderism, 
 
 "Bewcastle now must keep the hold, 
 
 Spier- Adam s steeds must bide in stall; 
 Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold 
 
 Must only shoot from battled wall; 
 And Liddesdale may buckle spur, 
 
 And Tevio^now may belt the brand, 
 Tarras and Ewes keep nightly stir, 
 
 And Eskdale foray Cumberland." 
 
BRIDAL OF TRIEBMAIN 1813. 255 
 
 But, above all, the choice of the scenery, both of the In 
 troductions and of the story itself, reveals the early and 
 treasured predilections of the poet. For who that re 
 members the circumstances of his first visit to the vale of 
 St. John, but must see throughout the impress of his own 
 real romance ? I own I am not without a suspicion that, 
 in one passage, which always seemed to me a blot upon 
 the composition that in which Arthur derides the mili 
 tary coxcombries of his rival 
 
 " Who comes in foreign trashery 
 
 Of tinkling chain and spur, 
 A walking haberdashery 
 
 Of feathers, lace, and fur; 
 In Rowley s antiquated phrase, 
 Horse-milliner of modern days " 
 
 there is a sly reference to the incidents of a certain ball, 
 of August 1797, at the Gilsland Spa.* 
 
 Among the more prominent Erskinisms, are the eulo 
 gistic mention of Glasgow, the scene of Erskine s educa 
 tion ; and the lines on Collins a supplement to whose 
 Ode on the Highland Superstitions is, as far as I know, 
 the only specimen that ever was published of Erskine s 
 verse, f 
 
 As a whole, the Bridal of Triermain appears to me as 
 characteristic of Scott as any of his larger poems. His 
 genius pervades and animates it beneath a thin and play 
 ful veil, which perhaps adds as much of grace as it takes 
 away of splendour. As Wordsworth says of the eclipse 
 on the lake of Lugano 
 
 " Tis sunlight sheathed and gently charmed; " 
 
 * See ante, vol. i. p. 301. 
 
 t It is included in the Border Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 270. 
 17 
 
256 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 and I think there is at once a lightness and a polish of 
 versification beyond what he has elsewhere attained. If 
 it be a miniature, it is such a one as a Cooper might 
 have hung fearlessly beside the masterpieces of Van 
 dyke. 
 
 The Introductions contain some of the most exquisite 
 passages he ever produced ; but their general effect haa 
 always struck me as unfortunate. No art can reconcile 
 us to contemptuous satire of the merest frivolities of 
 modern life some of them already, in twenty years, 
 grown obsolete interlaid between such bright visions 
 of the old world of romance, when 
 
 " Strength was gigantic, valour high, 
 And wisdom soared beyond the sky, 
 And beauty had such matchless beam 
 As lights not now a lover s dream." 
 
 The fall is grievous, from the hoary minstrel of Newark, 
 and his feverish tears on Killiecrankie, to a pathetic 
 swain, who can stoop to denounce as objects of his jeal 
 ousy 
 
 " The landaulet and four blood bays 
 The Hessian boot and pantaloon." 
 
 Before Triermain came out, Scott had taken wing for 
 Abbotsford ; and indeed he seems to have so contrived it 
 in his earlier period, that he should not be in Edinburgh 
 when any unavowed work of his was published ; whereas, 
 from the first, in the case of books that bore his name on 
 the title-page, he walked as usual to the Parliament 
 House, and bore all the buzz and tattle of friends and 
 acquaintance with an air of good-humoured equanimity, 
 or rather total apparent indifference. The following let- 
 ter, which contains some curious matter of more kinds 
 
LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE 1813. 257 
 
 than one, was written partly in town and partly in the 
 country : 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead. 
 
 " Edinburgh, March 13, 1813. 
 
 "My Dearest Friend, The pinasters have arrived safe, 
 and I can hardly regret, while 1 am so much flattered by, the 
 trouble you have had in collecting them. I have got some 
 wild larch trees from Loch Katrine, and both are to be planted 
 next week, when, God willing, I shall be at Abbotsford to 
 superintend the operation. I have got a little corner of ground 
 laid out for a nursery, where I shall rear them carefully till 
 they are old enough to be set forth to push their fortune on the 
 banks of Tweed. What I shall finally make of this villa-work 
 I don t know, but in the meantime it is very entertaining. I 
 shall have to resist very flattering invitations this season ; for 1 
 have received hints, from more quarters than one, that my bow 
 would be acceptable at Carlton House in case I should be in 
 London, which is very flattering, especially as there were some 
 prejudices to be got over in that quarter. I should be in some 
 danger of giving new offence, too ; for, although I utterly 
 disapprove of the present rash and ill-advised course of the 
 princess, yet, as she always was most kind and civil to me, I 
 certainly could not, as a gentleman, decline obeying any com 
 mands she might give me to wait upon her, especially in her 
 present adversity. So, though I do not affect to say I should 
 be sorry to take an opportunity of peeping at the splendours 
 of royalty, prudence and economy will keep me quietly at 
 home till another day. My great amusement here this some 
 time past has been going almost nightly to see John Kemble, 
 vho certainly is a great artist. It is a pity he shows too much 
 of his machinery. I wish he could be double-capped, as they 
 say of watches ; but the fault of too much study certainly 
 does not belong to many of his tribe. He is, I think, very 
 great in those parts especially where character is tinged by 
 *ome acquired and systematic habits, like those of the Stoic 
 
258 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 philosophy in Cato and Brut us, or of misanthropy in Penrud- 
 dock ; but sudden turns and natural bursts of passion arc not 
 his forte. I saw him play Sir Giles Overreach (the Richard 
 III. of middling life) last night; but he came not within a 
 hundred miles of Cooke, whose terrible visage, and short, 
 abrupt, and savage utterance, gave a reality almost to that ex 
 traordinary scene in which he boasts of his own successful vil- 
 lany to a nobleman of worth and honour, of whose alliance he 
 is ambitious. Cooke contrived somehow to impress upon the 
 audience the idea of such a monster of enormity as had learned 
 to pique himself even upon his own atrocious character. But 
 Kemble was too handsome, too plausible, and too smooth, to 
 admit its being probable that he should be blind to the un 
 favourable impression which these extraordinary vaunts are 
 likely to make on the person whom he is so anxious to con 
 ciliate. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 21st March. 
 
 " This letter, begun in Edinburgh, is to take wing from Ab 
 botsford. John Winnos (now John Winnos is the sub-oracle 
 of Abbotsford, the principal being Tom Purdie) John Win 
 nos pronounces that the pinaster seed ought to be raised at 
 first on a hot-bed, and thence transplanted to a nursery ; so to 
 a hot-bed they have been carefully consigned, the upper oracle 
 not objecting, in respect his talent lies in catching a salmon, or 
 finding a hare sitting on which occasions (being a very com 
 plete Scrub) he solemnly exchanges his working jacket for an 
 old green one of mine, and takes the air of one of Robin 
 Hood s followers. His more serious employments are plough 
 ing, harrowing, and overseeing all my premises ; being a com 
 plete jack-of-all-trades, from the carpenter to the shepherd, 
 nothing comes strange to him ; and being extremely honest, 
 and somewhat of a humourist, he is quite my right hand. I 
 cannot help singing his praises at this moment, because I have 
 BO many odd and out-of-the-way things to do, that I believe the 
 conscience of many of our jog-trot countrymen would revolt 
 It being made my instrument in sacrificing good corn-laud to 
 
LETTER TO LADY LOUISA STUART. 259 
 
 the visions of Mr. Price s theory. Mr. Pinkerton, the histo 
 rian, has a play coming out at Edinburgh ; it is by no means 
 bad poetry, yet I think it will not be popular ; the people come 
 and go, and speak very notable things in good blank verse, but 
 there is no very strong interest excited ; the plot also is disa 
 greeable, and liable to the objections (though in a less degree) 
 which have been urged against the Mysterious Mother ; it is 
 to be acted on Wednesday ; I will let you know its fate. P., 
 with whom I am in good habits, showed the MS., but I re 
 ferred him, with such praise as I could conscientiously bestow, 
 to the players and the public. I don t know why one should 
 take the task of damning a man s play out of the hands of 
 the proper tribunal. Adieu, my dear friend. I have scarce 
 room for love to Miss, Mrs., and Dr. B. W. SCOTT." 
 
 To this I add a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart, who had 
 sent him a copy of these lines, found by Lady Douglas 
 on the back of a tattered bank-note 
 
 " Farewell, my note, and wheresoe er ye wend, 
 Shun gaudy scenes, and be the poor man s friend. 
 You ve left a poor one ; go to one as poor, 
 And drive despair and hunger from his door." 
 
 It appears that these noble friends had adopted, or 
 feigned to adopt, the belief that the Bridal of Triermain 
 was a production of Mr. R. P. Gillies who had about 
 this time published an imitation of Lord Byron s JKo- 
 maunt, under the title of "Childe Alarique." 
 
 " To the Lady Louisa Stuart, Bothwett Castle. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 28th April 1813. 
 
 " Dear Lady Louisa, Nothing can give me more pleasure 
 than to hear from you, because it is both a most acceptable 
 favour to me, and also a sign that your own spirits are recov 
 ering their tone. Ladies are, I think, very fortunate in having 
 % resource in work at a time when the mind rejects intellectual 
 
260 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 amusement. Men have no resource but striding up 
 the room, like a bird that beats itself to pieces against the bars 
 of its cage ; whereas needle-work is a sort of sedative, too me 
 chanical to worry the mind by distracting it from the points on 
 which its musings turn, yet gradually assisting it in regaining 
 steadiness and composure ; for so curiously are our bodies and 
 minds linked together, that the regular and cctistant employ 
 ment of the former on any process, however dull and uniform, 
 has the effect of tranquillizing, where it cannot disarm, the feel 
 ings of the other. I am very much pleased with the lines on the 
 guinea note, and if Lady Douglas does not object, I would wil 
 lingly mention the circumstance in the Edinburgh Annual Reg 
 ister. I think it will give the author great delight to know that 
 his lines had attracted attention, and had sent the paper on 
 which they were recorded, heaven-directed, to the poor. Of 
 course I would mention no names. There was, as your Lady 
 ship may remember, some years since, a most audacious and 
 determined murder committed on a porter belonging to the 
 British Linen Company s Bank at Leith, who was stabbed to 
 the heart in broad daylight, and robbed of a large sum in 
 notes.* If ever this crime comes to light, it will be through 
 the circumstance of an idle young fellow having written part 
 of a playhouse song on one of the notes, which, however, has 
 as yet never appeared in circulation. 
 
 " I am very glad you like Rokeby, which is nearly out of 
 fashion and memory with me. It has been wonderfully pop 
 ular, about ten thousand copies having walked off already, in 
 about three months, and the demand continuing faster than it 
 can be supplied. As to my imitator, the Knight of Triermain, 
 I will endeavour to convey to Mr. Gillies (puisque Gillies il 
 esf) your Ladyship s very just strictures on the Introduction to 
 the second Canto. But if he takes the opinion of a hacked 
 old author like myself, he will content himself with avoiding 
 such bevues in future, without attempting to mend those which 
 
 * This murder, perpetrated in November 1806, remains a mystery 
 in 1841. The porter s name was Begbie. 
 
LETTER TO LADT LOUISA STUART. 261 
 
 are already made. There is an ominous old proverb which 
 Bays, confess and be hanged ; and truly if an author acknowl 
 edges his own blunders, I do not know who he can expect to 
 stand by him ; whereas, let him confess nothing, and he will 
 always find some injudicious admirers to vindicate even his 
 faults. So that I think after publication the effect of criticism 
 should be prospective, in which point of view I dare say Mr. 
 G. will take your friendly hint, especially as it is confirmed by 
 that of the best judges who have read the poem. Here is 
 beautiful weather for April ! an absolute snow-storm mortify 
 ing me to the core by retarding the growth of all my young 
 trees and shrubs. Charlotte begs to be most respectfully re 
 membered to your Ladyship and Lady D. We are realizing 
 the nursery tale of the man and his wife who lived in a vine 
 gar bottle, for our only sitting-room is just twelve feet square, 
 and my Eve alleges that I am too big for our paradise. To 
 make amends, I have created a tolerable garden, occupying 
 about an English acre, which I begin to be very fond of. 
 When one passes forty, an addition to the quiet occupations of 
 life becomes of real value, for I do not hunt and fish with quite 
 the relish I did ten years ago. Adieu, my dear Lady Louisa, 
 and all good attend you. WALTER SOOTT." 
 
262 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Affairs of John Ballantyne and Co. Causes of their Derange* 
 ment -Letters of Scott to his Partners Negotiation for 
 Relief with Messrs. Constable New Purchase of Land at 
 Abbotsford Embarrassments continued John Ballan- 
 tyne s Expresses Drumlanrig, Penrith, fyc. Scott s 
 Meeting with the Marquis of Abercorn at Longtown His 
 Application to the Duke of Buccleuch Offer of the Poet- 
 Laureateship considered and declined Address of the 
 City of Edinburgh to the Prince-Regent its Reception 
 Civic Honours conferred on Scott Question of Taxation on 
 Literary Income Letters to Mr. Morritt, Mr. Southey^ 
 Mr. Richardson, Mr. Crabbe, Miss Baillie, and Lord 
 Byrun. 
 
 1813. 
 
 ABOUT a month after the publication of the Bridal of 
 Triermain, the affairs of Messrs. Ballantyne, which had 
 never apparently been in good order since the establish 
 ment of the bookselling firm, became so embarrassed as 
 to call for Scott s most anxious efforts to disentangle 
 them. Indeed, it is clear that there had existed some 
 very serious perplexity in the course of the preceding 
 autumn ; for Scott writes to John Ballantyne, while 
 Rokeby was in progress (August 11, 1812) "I have 
 & letter from James, very anxious about your health and 
 state of spirits. If you suffer the present inconveniences 
 
JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO. 263 
 
 to depress you too much, you are wrong ; and if you con 
 ceal any part of them, are very unjust to us all. I am 
 always ready to make any sacrifices to do justice to 
 engagements, and would rather sell anything, or every 
 thing, than be less than true men to the world." 
 
 I have already, perhaps, said enough to account for 
 the general want of success in this publishing adventure ; 
 but Mr. James Ballantyne sums up the case so briefly in 
 his death-bed paper, that I may here quote his words. 
 " My brother," he says, " though an active and pushing, 
 was not a cautious bookseller, and the large sums re 
 ceived never formed an addition to stock. In fact, they 
 were all expended by the partners, who, being then 
 young and sanguine men, not unwillingly adopted my 
 brother s hasty results. By May 1813, in a word, the 
 absolute throwing away of our own most valuable publi 
 cations, and the rash adoption of some injudicious specu 
 lations of Mr. Scott, had introduced such losses and 
 embarrassments, that after a very careful consideration, 
 Mr. Scott determined to dissolve the concern." He adds, 
 " This became a matter of less difficulty, because time 
 had in a great measure worn away the differences be 
 tween Mr. Scott and Mr. Constable, and Mr. Hunter was 
 now out of Constable s concern.* A peace, therefore, 
 was speedily made up, and the old habits of intercourse 
 were restored." 
 
 How reluctantly Scott had made up his mind to open 
 such a negotiation with Constable, as involved a complete 
 exposure of the mismanagement of John Ballantyne s bus 
 iness as a publisher, will appear from a letter dated about 
 the Christmas of 1812, in which he says to James, who 
 had proposed asking Constable to take a share both in 
 * Mr. Hunter died in March 1812. 
 
264 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Rokeby and in the Annual Register, "You must bo 
 aware, that in stating the objections which occur to me 
 to taking in Constable, I think they ought to give way 
 either to absolute necessity or to very strong grounds of 
 advantage. But I am persuaded nothing ultimately 
 good can be expected from any connexion with that 
 house, unless for those who have a mind to be hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water. We will talk the matter 
 coolly over, and in the meanwhile, perhaps you could 
 see W. Erskine, and learn what impression this odd 
 union is like to make among your friends. Erskine is 
 sound-headed, and quite to be trusted with your whole 
 story. I must own I can hardly think the purchase of 
 the Register is equal to the loss of credit and character 
 which your surrender will be conceived to infer." At 
 the time when he wrote this, Scott no doubt anticipated 
 that Rokeby would have success not less decisive than 
 the Lady of the Lake ; but in this expectation though 
 10,000 copies in three months would have seemed to 
 any other author a triumphant sale he had been dis 
 appointed. And meanwhile the difficulties of the firm 
 accumulating from week to week, had reached, by the 
 middle of May, a point which rendered it absolutely 
 necessary for him to conquer all his scruples. 
 
 Mr. Cadell, then Constable s partner, says in his Mem 
 oranda, " Prior to this time the reputation of John 
 Ballantyne and Co. had been decidedly on the decline. 
 It was 2 notorious in the trade that their general specu 
 lations had been unsuccessful ; they were known to be 
 grievously in want of money. These rumours were 
 realized to the full by an application which Messrs. B. 
 made to Mr. Constable in May 1813, for pecuniary aid, 
 accompanied by an offer of some of the books they had 
 
JOHN BALLANTTNE A.ND CO. 265 
 
 published since 1809, as a purchase, along with various 
 shares in Mr. Scott s own poems. Their difficulties 
 were admitted, and the negotiation was pressed urgent 
 ly; so much so, that a pledge was given, that if the 
 terms asked were acceded to, John Ballantyne and Co. 
 would endeavour to wind up their concerns, and cease as 
 soon as possible to be publishers." Mr. Cadell adds 
 "I need hardly remind you that this was a period of 
 very great general difficulty in the money market. It 
 was the crisis of the war. The public expenditure had 
 reached an enormous height ; and even the most pros 
 perous mercantile houses were often pinched to sustain 
 their credit. It may easily, therefore, be supposed that 
 the Messrs. Ballantyne had during many months besieged 
 every banker s door in Edinburgh, and that their agents 
 had done the like in London." 
 
 The most important of the requests which the labour 
 ing house made to Constable was, that he should forth 
 with take ^entirely to himself the stock, copyright, and 
 future management of the Edinburgh Annual Register. 
 Upon examining the state of this book, however, Consta 
 ble found that the loss on it had never been less than 
 1000 per annum, and he therefore declined that matter 
 for the present. He promised, however, to consider seri 
 ously the means he might have of ultimately relieving 
 them from the pressure of the Register, and, in the mean 
 time, offered to take 300 sets of the stock on hand. The 
 other purchases he finally made on the 18th of May, 
 were considerable portions of Weber s unhappy Beau 
 mont and Fletcher of an edition of De Foe s novels 
 in twelve volumes of a collection entitled Tales of the 
 East in three large volumes, 8vo, double-columned 
 and of another in on^ volume, called Popular Tales 
 
266 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 about 800 copies of the Vision of Don Roderick and 
 a fourth of the remaining copyright of Rokeby, price 
 700. The immediate accommodation thus received 
 amounted to 2000 ; and Scott, who had personally con 
 ducted the latter part of the negotiation, writes thus to 
 his junior partner, who had gone a week or two earlier 
 to London in quest of some similar assistance there : 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne, care of Messrs. Longman if Co., 
 London. 
 
 " Printing-Office, May 18th, 1813. 
 
 " Dear John, After many offis and ons, and as many pro- 
 jets and contre-projets as the treaty of Amiens, I have at 
 length concluded a treaty with Constable, in which I am sensi 
 ble he has gained a great advantage ; * but what could I do 
 amidst the disorder and pressure of so many demands ? The 
 arrival of your long-dated bills decided my giving in, for what 
 could James or I do with them? I trust this sacrifice has 
 cleared our way, but many rubs remain ; nor am I, after these 
 hard skirmishes, so able .. to meet them by my proper credit. 
 Constable, however, will be a zealous ally ; and for the first 
 time these many weeks I shall lay my head on a quiet pillow, 
 for now I do think that, by our joint exertions, we shall get 
 well through the storm, save Beaumont from depreciation, get 
 a partner in our heavy concerns, reef our topsails, and move 
 on securely under an easy sail. And if, on the one hand, I 
 have sold my gold too cheap, I have, on the other, turned my 
 lead to gold. Brewster f and Singers J are the only heavy 
 
 * " These and after purchases of books from the stock of J. Ballan 
 tyne and Co. were resold to the trade by Constable s firm, at less than 
 <ne half and one third of the prices at which they were thus obtained." 
 Note, from Mr. R. Cadell 
 
 t Dr. Brewster s edition of Ferguson s Astronomy, 2 vols. 8vo, witk 
 plates, 4to, Edin. 1811. 36s. 
 
 J Dr. Singers General View of the County of Dumfries, 8vo, Edia 
 1812. 18s. 
 
JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO. 267 
 
 things to which I have not given a blue eye. Had your news 
 of CadelFs sale * reached us here, I could not have harpooned 
 my grampus so deeply as I have done, as nothing but Rokeby 
 would have barbed the hook. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear John. I have the most sincere regard for 
 you, and you may depend on my considering your interest 
 with quite as much attention as my own. If I have ever ex 
 pressed myself with irritation in speaking of this business, you 
 must impute it to the sudden, extensive, and unexpected em 
 barrassments in which I found myself involved all at once. If 
 to your real goodness of heart and integrity, and to the quick 
 ness and acuteness of your talents, you added habits of more 
 universal circumspection, and, above all, the courage to tell 
 disagreeable truths to those whom you hold in regard, I pro 
 nounce that the world never held such a man of business. 
 These it must be your study to add to your other good quali 
 ties. Meantime, as some one says to Swift, I love you with 
 all your failings. Pray make an effort and love me with all 
 mine. Yours truly, W. S." 
 
 Three days afterwards, Scott resumes the subject as 
 follows : 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne, London. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 21st May 1813. 
 
 " Dear John, Let it never escape your recollection, that 
 shutting your own eyes, or blinding those of your friends, upon 
 the actual state of business, is the high road to ruin. Mean 
 while, we have recovered our legs for a week or two. Con 
 stable will, I think, come in to the Register. He is most anx 
 ious to maintain the printing-office ; he sees most truly that the 
 more we print the less we publish ; and for the same reason he 
 will, I think, help us off with our heavy quire-stock. 
 
 u I was aware of the distinction between the state and the 
 calendar as to the latter including the printing-office bills, and 
 
 * A trade sale of Messrs. Cadell and Davies in the Strand. 
 
208 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCO1T. 
 
 I summed and docked them (they are marked with red ink), 
 but there is still a difference of 2000 and upwards on the 
 calendar against the business. I sometimes fear that, between 
 the long dates of your bills, and the tardy settlements of the 
 Edinburgh trade, some difficulties will occur even in June; 
 and July I always regard with deep anxiety. As for loss, if I 
 get out without public exposure, I shall not greatly regard tLe 
 rest. Radcliffe the physician said, when he lost 2000 on the. 
 South-Sea scheme, it was only going up 2000 pair of stairs ; I 
 say, it is only writing 2000 couplets, and the account is bal 
 anced. More of this hereafter. Yours truly, W. SCOTT. 
 
 " P. S. James has behaved very well during this whole 
 transaction, and has been most steadily attentive to business. 
 I am convinced that the more he works the better his health 
 will be. One or other of you will need to be constantly in the 
 printing-office henceforward it is the sheet-anchor." 
 
 The allusion in this postscript to James Ballantyne j 
 health reminds me that Scott s letters to himself are full 
 of hints on that subject, even from a very early period of 
 their connexion ; and these hints are all to the same 
 effect. James was a man of lazy habits, and not a little 
 addicted to the more solid, and perhaps more dangerous, 
 part of the indulgencies of the table. One letter (dated 
 Ashestiel, 1810) will be a sufficient specimen : 
 
 " To Mr. James Ballantyne. 
 
 " My Dear James, I am very sorry for the state of your 
 health, and should be still more so, were I not certain that I 
 can prescribe for you as well as any physician in Edinburgh. 
 You have naturally an athletic constitution and a hearty 
 stomach, and these agree very ill with a sedentary life and the 
 habits of indolence which it brings on. Your stomach thus 
 gets weak ; and from those complaints of all others arise most 
 certainly flatulence, hypochondria, and all the train of un 
 
JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO. 269 
 
 pleasant feelings connected with indigestion. We all know 
 the horrible sensation of the nightmare arises from the same 
 cause which gives those waking nightmares commonly called 
 the blue devils. You must positively put yourself on a regi 
 men as to eating, not for a month or two, but for a year at 
 least, and take regular exercise and my life for yours. I 
 know this by myself, for if I were to eat and drink in town as 
 I do here, it would soon finish me, and yet I am sensible I live 
 too genially in Edinburgh as it is. Yours very truly, 
 
 " W. SCOTT." 
 
 Among Scott s early pets at Abbotsford there was a 
 huge raven, whose powers of speech were remarkable, 
 far beyond any parrot s that he had ever met with ; and 
 who died in consequence of an excess of the kind to 
 which James Ballantyne was addicted. Thenceforth 
 Scott often repeated to his old friend, and occasionally 
 scribbled by way of postscript to his notes on business 
 
 " When you are craving, 
 Remember the Raven." 
 
 Sometimes the formula is varied to 
 
 " When you ve dined half, 
 Think on poor Ralph! " 
 
 His preachments of regularity in book-keeping to John, 
 and of abstinence from good cheer to James Ballantyne, 
 were equally vain ; but on the other hand it must be 
 allowed that they had some reason for displeasure (the 
 more felt, because they durst not, like him, express their 
 feelings)* when they found that scarcely had these 
 
 * Since this work was first published, I have been compelled to ex- 
 tmine very minutely the details of Scott s connexion with the Ballan- 
 tynes, and one result is, that both James and John had trespassed so 
 largely, for their private purposes, on the funds of the Companies, that, 
 
270 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 "hard skirmishes" terminated in the bargain of May 
 18th, before Scott was preparing fresh embarrassments 
 for himself, by commencing a negotiation for a consider 
 able addition to his property at Abbotsford. As early as 
 the 20th of June he writes to Constable as being already 
 aware of this matter, and alleges his anxiety " to close at 
 once with a very capricious person," as the only reason 
 that could have induced him to make up his mind to sell 
 the whole copyright of an as yet unwritten poem, to be 
 entitled " The Nameless Glen." This copyright he then 
 offered to dispose of to Constable for 5000 ; adding, 
 "this is considerably less in proportion than I have 
 already made on the share of Rokeby sold to yourself, 
 and surely that is no unfair admeasurement." A long 
 correspondence ensued, in the course of which Scott 
 mentions " the Lord of the Isles," as a title which had 
 suggested itself to him in place of "the Nameless Glen; 
 but as the negotiation did not succeed, I may pass its de 
 tails. The new property which Scott was so eager to 
 acquire, was that hilly tract stretching from the old 
 .Roman road near Turn-again towards the Cauidshiels 
 Loch : a then desolate and naked mountain-mere, which 
 he likens, in a letter of this summer (to Lady Louisa 
 Stuart), to the Lake of the Genie and the Fisherman in 
 the Arabian Tale. To obtain this lake at one extremity 
 of his estate, as a contrast to the Tweed at the other, was 
 a prospect for which hardly any sacrifice would have ap- 
 [.eared too much ; and he contrived to gratify his wishes 
 in the course of that July, to which he had spoken of 
 
 Scott being, as their letters distinctly state, the only " monied part* 
 ner," and his over-advances of capital having been very extensive, 
 any inquiry on their part as to his uncommercial expenditure musl 
 have been entirely out of the question. To avoid misrepresentatioa 
 however, I leave my text as it was. [1839.] 
 
" THE NAMELESS GLEN." 271 
 
 himself in May as looking forward "with the deepest 
 anxiety." 
 
 Nor was he, I must add, more able to control some of 
 his minor tastes. I find him writing to Mr. Terry, on 
 the 20th of June, about "that splendid lot of ancient 
 armour, advertised by Winstanley," a celebrated auction 
 eer in London, of which he had the strongest fancy to 
 make his spoil, though he was at a loss to know where it 
 should be placed when it reached Abbotsford ; and on the 
 2d of July, this acquisition also having been settled, he 
 says to the same correspondent "I have written to 
 Mr. Winstanley. My bargain with Constable was other 
 wise arranged, but Little John is to find the needful arti 
 cle, and I shall take care of Mr. Winstanley s interest, 
 who has behaved too handsomely in this matter to be 
 trusted to the mercy of our little friend the Picaroon, 
 who is, notwithstanding his many excellent qualities, a 
 little on the score of old Gobbo doth somewhat smack 
 somewhat grow to.* We shall be at Abbotsford on 
 the 12th, and hope soon to see you there. I am fitting 
 up a small room above Peter-house, where an unceremo 
 nious bachelor may consent to do penance, though the 
 place is a cock-loft, and the access that which leads many 
 a bold fellow to his last nap a ladder." f And a few 
 weeks later, he says, in the same sort, to his sister-in-law, 
 Mrs. Thomas Scott " In despite of these hard times, 
 affect my patrons the booksellers very much, I am 
 
 * Merchant of Vemce, Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 + The court of offices, built on the haugh at Abbotsford in 1812, in 
 cluded a house for the faithful coachman, Peter Mathieson. One of 
 Scott s Cantabrigian friends, Mr. W. S. Rose, gave the whole pile soon 
 afterwards the name, which it retained to the end, of Peter-House. 
 The loft at Peter-House continued to be occupied by occasional bach* 
 lor guests until the existing mansion was completed. 
 
 VOL. m. 18 
 
272 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 buying old books and old armour as usual, and adding to 
 what your old friend Burns * calls 
 
 4 A fouth of auld nick-nackets, 
 Rusty aim caps and jingling jackets, 
 Wad baud the Lothians three in tackete 
 
 A towmont gude, 
 And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets, 
 
 Before the nude. " 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, it must have been with a 
 most uneasy mind that he left Edinburgh to establish 
 himself at Abbotsford that July. The assistance of Con 
 stable had not been granted, indeed it had not been asked, 
 to an extent at all adequate for the difficulties of the case ; 
 and I have now to transcribe, with pain and reluctance, 
 some extracts from Scott s letters, during the ensuing au 
 tumn, which speak the language of anxious, and indeed 
 humiliating distress ; and give a most lively notion of the 
 incurable recklessness of his younger partner. 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne. 
 
 u Abbotsford, Saturday, 24th July. 
 
 " Dear John, I sent you the order, and have only to hope 
 it arrived safe and in good time. I waked the boy at three 
 o clock myself, having slept little, less on account of the money 
 than of the time. Surely you should have written, three or 
 four days before, the probable amount of the deficit, and, as on 
 former occasions, I would have furnished you with means of 
 meeting it. These expresses, besides every other inconven 
 ience, excite surprise in my family and in the neighbourhood. 
 I know no justifiable occasion for them but the unexpected 
 return of a bill. I do not consider you as answerable for the 
 
 * Mrs. Thomas Scott had met Burns frequenth - in early life at Dum 
 fries. Her brother, the late Mr. David MacCulloch, was a great favour 
 ite with the poet, and the best singer of his songs that I ever heard. 
 
LETTER TO JOHN BALLANTYNE. 272 
 
 success of plans, but I do and must hold you responsible for 
 giving me, in distinct and plain terms, your opinion as to any 
 difficulties which may occur, and that in such time that I may 
 make arrangements to obviate them if possible. 
 
 " Of course if anything has gone wrong you will come out 
 here to-morrow. But if, as I hope and trust, the cash arrived 
 safe, you will write to me, under cover to the Duke of Buc- 
 cleuch, Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries-shire. I shall set out for 
 that place on Monday morning early. W. S. * 
 
 " To Mr, James Ballantyne. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 25th July 1813. 
 
 " Dear James, I address the following jobation for John 
 to you, that you may see whether I do not well to be an- 
 ~gry, and enforce upon him the necessity of constantly writing 
 his fears as well as his hopes. You should rub him often on 
 this point, for his recollection becomes rusty the instant I leave 
 town and am not in the way to rack him with constant ques 
 tions. I hope the presses are doing well, and that you are 
 quite stout again. Yours truly, W. S." 
 
 (ENCLOSURE.) 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne. 
 
 "My Good Friend John, The post brings me no letter 
 vrom you, which I am much surprised at, as you must suppose 
 me anxious to learn that your express arrived. I think he 
 must have reached you before post-hours, and James or you 
 might have found a minute to say so in a single line. I once 
 more request that you will be a business-like correspondent, 
 and state your provisions for every week prospectively. I do 
 not expect you to warrant them, which you rather perversely 
 teem to insist is my wish, but I do want to be aware of their 
 vature and extent, that I may provide against the possibility 
 of miscarriage. The calendar, to which you refer me, tells me 
 what sums are due, but cannot tell your shifts to pay them, 
 
274 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 which aie naturally altering with circumstances, and of which 
 alterations I request to have due notice. You say you could 
 not suppose Sir W. Forbes would have refused the long dated 
 bills ; but that you had such an apprehension is clear, both be 
 cause in the calendar these bills were rated two months lower, 
 and because, three days before, you wrote me an enigmatical 
 expression of your apprehensions, instead of saying plainly 
 there was a chance of your wanting 350, when I would have . 
 sent you an order to be used conditionally. 
 
 " All I desire is unlimited confidence and frequent corre 
 spondence, and that you will give me weekly at least the full 
 est anticipation of your resources, and the probability of their 
 being effectual. I may be disappointed in my own, of which 
 you shall have equally timeous notice. Omit no exertions to 
 procure the use of money, even for a month or six weeks, for 
 time is most precious. The large balance due in January from 
 the trade, and individuals, which I cannot reckon at less than 
 4000, will put us finally to rights ; and it will be a shame to 
 founder within sight of harbour. The greatest risk we run is 
 from such ill-considered despatches as those of Friday. Sup 
 pose that I had gone to Drumlanrig suppose the poney had 
 set up suppose a thousand things and we were ruined for 
 want of your telling your apprehensions in due time. Do not 
 plague yourself to vindicate this sort of management ; but if 
 you have escaped the consequences (as to which you have left 
 me uncertain), thank God, and act more cautiously another 
 time. It was quite the same to me on what day I sent that 
 draft ; indeed it must have been so if I had the money in my 
 cash account, and if I had not, the more time given me to 
 provide it the better. . 
 
 " Now, do not affect to suppose that my displeasure arises 
 \!rom your not having done your utmost to realize funds, and 
 that utmost having failed. It is one mode, to be sure, of ex 
 culpation, to suppose one s self accused of something they are 
 not charged with, and then to make a querulous or indignant 
 defence, and complain of the injustice of the accuser. The 
 head and front of your offending is precisely your not writing 
 
LETTER TO JOHN BALLANTYNE. 275 
 
 explicitly, and I request this may not happen again. It ia 
 your fault, and I believe arises either from an ill-judged idea 
 of smoothing matters to me as if I were not behind the cur 
 tain or a general reluctance to allow that any danger is 
 near, until it is almost unparriable. I shall be very sorry if 
 anything I have said gives you pain ; but the matter is too 
 serious for all of us, to be passed over without giving you my 
 explicit sentiments. To-morrow I set out for Drumlanrig, and 
 shall not hear from you till Tuesday or Wednesday. Make 
 yourself master of the post-town Thornhill, probably, or 
 Sanquhar. As Sir W. F. & Co. have cash to meet my order, 
 nothing, I think, can have gone wrong, unless the boy per 
 ished by the way. Therefore, in faith and hope, and that 
 I may lack none of the Christian virtues in charity with 
 your dilatory worship, I remain very truly yours, W. S." 
 
 Scott proceeded, accordingly, to join a gay and festive 
 circle, whom the Duke of Buccleuch had assembled about 
 him on first taking possession of the magnificent Castle 
 of Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale, the principal messuage of 
 the dukedom of Queensberry, which had recently lapsed 
 into his family. But, post equitem sedet atra cura 
 another of John Ballantyne s unwelcome missives, ren 
 dered necessary by a neglect of precisely the same kind 
 as before, reached him in the midst of this scene of re 
 joicing. On the 31st, he again writes : 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne, Bookseller, Edinburgh. 
 
 " Drumlanrig, Friday. 
 
 "Dear John, 1 enclose the order. Unfortunately, the 
 Drumlanrig post only goes thrice a-week ; but the Marquis 
 of Queensberry, who carries this to Dumfries, has promised 
 that the guard of the mail-coach shall deliver it by five to-mor 
 row. I was less anxious, as your note said you could clear this 
 month. It is a cruel thing, that no State you furnish exc hides 
 
276 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 the arising of such unexpected claims as this for the taxes on 
 the printing-office. What unhappy management, to suffer them 
 to run ahead in such a manner ! but it is in vain to complain. 
 Were it not for your strange concealments, I should anticipate 
 no difficulty in winding up these matters. But who can reckon 
 upon a State where claims are kept out of view until they are 
 in the hands of a loriter ? If you have no time to say that this 
 comes safe to hand, I suppose James may favour me so far. 
 Yours truly, W. S. 
 
 " Let the guard be rewarded. 
 
 " Let me know exactly what you can do and hope to do for 
 next month ; for it signifies nothing raising money for you, 
 unless I see it is to be of real service. Observe, I make you 
 responsible for nothing but a fair statement.* The guard is 
 known to the Marquis, who has good-naturedly promised to 
 give him this letter with his own hand ; so it must reach you 
 in time, though probably pact five on Saturday." 
 
 Another similar application reached Scott the day 
 after the guard delivered his packet. lie writes thus, 
 in reply : 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne. 
 
 " Drumlanrig, Sunday. 
 
 " Dear John, I trust you got my letter yesterday by five, 
 with the draft enclosed. I return your draft accepted. On 
 Wednesday I think of leaving this place, where, but for these 
 damned affairs, I should have been very happy. W. S." 
 
 Scott had been for some time under an engagement to 
 meet the Marquis of Abercorn at Carlisle, in the first 
 week of August, for the transaction of some business con- 
 
 * John Ballantyne had embarked no capital not a shilling in 
 the business ; and was bound by the contract to limit himself to an 
 allowance of .300 a-year, in consideration of his management, until 
 there should be an overplus of profits ! [1839.] 
 
LONGTOWN, AUGUST 1813. 277 
 
 nected with his brother Thomas s late administration of 
 that nobleman s Scottish affairs ; and he had designed to 
 pass from Drumlanrig to Carlisle for this purpose, with 
 out going back to Abbotsford. In consequence of these 
 repeated harassments, however, he so far altered his 
 plans as to cut short his stay at Drumlanrig, and turn 
 homewards for two or three days, where James Ballan- 
 tyne met him with such a statement as in some measure 
 relieved his mind. 
 
 He then proceeded to fulfil his engagement with Lord 
 Abercorn, whom he encountered travelling in a rather 
 peculiar style between Carlisle and Longtown. The 
 ladies of the family and the household occupied four or 
 five carriages, all drawn by the Marquis s own horses, 
 while the noble Lord himself brought up the rear, 
 mounted on horseback, and decorated with the ribbon 
 of the order of the Garter. On meeting the cavalcade, 
 Scott turned with them, and he was not a little amused 
 when they reached the village of Longtown, which he 
 had ridden through an hour or two before, with the prep- 
 ations which he found there made for the dinner of 
 the party. The Marquis s major-domo and cook had ar 
 rived there at an early hour in the morning, and every 
 thing was now arranged for his reception in the paltry 
 little public-house, as nearly as possible in the style usuai 
 in his own lordly mansions. The ducks and geese that 
 had been dabbling three or four hours ago in the village 
 pond were now ready to make their appearance undei 
 numberless disguises as entrees; a regular bill-of-fare 
 flanked the noble Marquis s allotted cover ; every hucka 
 back towel in the place had been pressed to do service as 
 a napkin ; and, that nothing migr t be wanting to the 
 mimicry of splendour, the landlady s poor remnants of 
 
278 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 crockery and pewter had been furbished up, and mus 
 tered in solemn order on a crazy old beauffet, which was 
 to represent a sideboard worthy of Lucullus, I think it 
 worth while to preserve this anecdote, which Scott de 
 lighted in telling, as perhaps the last relic of a style of 
 manners now passed away, and never likely to be revived 
 among us. 
 
 Having despatched this dinner and his business, Scott 
 again turned southwards, intending to spend a few daya 
 with Mr. Morritt at Rokeby ; but on reaching Penrith, 
 the landlord there, who was his old acquaintance (Mr. 
 Buchanan), placed a letter in his hands : ecce iterum - 
 it was once more a cry of distress from John Ballantyne. 
 He thus answered it : 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne. 
 
 " Penrith, Aug. 10, 1813. 
 
 "Dear John, I enclose you an order for 350. I shah 1 
 remain at Rokeby until Saturday or Sunday, and be at Ab 
 botsford on Wednesday at latest. 
 
 " I hope the printing-office is going on well. I fear, fron* 
 the state of accompts between the companies, restrictions OB 
 the management and expense will be unavoidable, which maj 
 trench upon James s comforts. I cannot observe hitherto thai 
 the printing-office is paying off, but rather adding to its em 
 barrassments ; and it cannot be thought that I have eithei 
 means or inclination to support a losing concern at the rate of 
 200 a-month. If James could find a monied partner, an activu 
 man who understood the commercial part of the business, and 
 would superintend the conduct of the cash, it might be the 
 best for all parties ; for I really am not adequate to the fatigue 
 of mind which these affairs occasion me, though I must do thf 
 best to struggle through them. Believe me yours, &c. 
 
 W. S." 
 
LETTERS TO JOHN BALLANTYNE. 279 
 
 At Brough he encountered a messenger who brought 
 him such a painful account of Mrs. Morritt s health, that 
 he abandoned his intention of proceeding to Rokeby; 
 and, indeed, it was much better that he should be at Ab- 
 botsford again as soon as possible, for his correspondence 
 shows a continued succession, during the three or four 
 ensuing weeks, of the same annoyances that had pursued 
 him to Drumlanrig and to Penrith. By his desire, the 
 Ballantynes had, it would seem, before the middle of Au 
 gust, laid a statement of their affairs before Constable. 
 Though the statement was not so clear and full as Scott 
 had wished it to be, Constable, on considering it, at once 
 assured them, that to go on raising money in driblets 
 would never effectually relieve them ; that, in short, one 
 or both of the companies must stop, unless Mr. Scott 
 could find means to lay his hand, without farther delay, 
 on at least 4000 ; and I gather that, by way of inducing 
 Constable himself to come forward with part at least of 
 this supply, John Ballantyne again announced his inten 
 tion of forthwith abandoning the bookselling business 
 altogether, and making an effort to establish himself on 
 a plan which Constable had shortly before suggested 
 as an auctioneer in Edinburgh. The following letters 
 need no comment : 
 
 " To Mr. John Ballantyne. 
 
 "Abbotsford, Aug. 16, 1813. 
 
 " Dear John. I am quite satisfied it is impossible for J. B. 
 ind Co. to continue business longer than is absolutely neces- 
 pary for the sale of stock and extrication of their affairs. The 
 fatal injury which their credit has sustained, as well as your 
 Adopting a profession in which I sincerely hope you will be 
 more fortunate, renders the closing of the bookselling business 
 inevitable. With regard to the printing, it is my intention to 
 
280 LIFE OF SIK WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 retire from that also, so soon as I can possibly do so with safety 
 to myself, and with the regard I shall always entertain for 
 James s interest. Whatever loss I may sustain will be prefer 
 able to the life I have lately led, when I seem surrounded by a 
 eort of magic circle, which neither permits me to remain at 
 home in peace, nor to stir abroad with pleasure. Your first 
 exertion as an auctioneer may probably be on that distin 
 guished, select, and inimitable collection of books, made by an 
 amateur of this city retiring from business. I do not feel 
 either health or confidence in my own powers sufficient to au 
 thorize me to take a long price for a new poem, until these 
 affairs shall have been in some measure digested. This idea 
 has been long running in my head, but the late fatalities which 
 have attended this business have quite decided my resolution. 
 I will write to James to-morrow, being at present annoyed 
 with a severe headache. Yours truly, W. SCOTT." 
 
 Were I to transcribe all the letters to which these 
 troubles gave rise, I should fill a volume before I had 
 reached the end of another twelvemonth. The two next 
 I shall quote are dated on the same day (the 24th Au 
 gust), which may, in consequence of the answer the sec 
 ond of them received, be set down as determining thn 
 crisis of 1813. 
 
 " To Mr. James Ballantyne. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 24th August 1813. 
 
 " Dear James, Mr. Constable s advice is, as I have always 
 found it, sound, sensible, and friendly and I shall be guided 
 by it. But I have no wealthy friend who would join in secu 
 rity with me to such an extent ; and to apply in quarters where 
 I might be refused, would ensure disclosure. I conclude John 
 has shown Mr. C. the state of the affairs ; if not, I would wish 
 him to do so directly. If the proposed accommodation could 
 be granted to the firm on my personally joining in the security 
 the whole matter would be quite safe, for I have to receive in 
 
LETTER TO JAMES BALLANTYNE. 281 
 
 the course of the winter some large sums from my father s es 
 tate.* Besides which, I shall certainly be able to go to press 
 in November with a new poem ; or, if Mr. Constable s addi 
 tional security would please the bankers better, I could ensure 
 Mr. C. against the possibility of loss, by assigning the copyrights, 
 together with that of the new poem, or even my library, in his 
 relief. In fact, if he looks into the affairs, he will I think see 
 that there is no prospect of any eventual loss to the creditors, 
 though I may be a loser myself. My property here is unincum- 
 bered ; so is my house in Castle Street ; and I have no debts out 
 of my own family, excepting a part of the price of Abbotsford, 
 which I am to retain for four years. So that, literally, I have 
 no claims upon me unless those arising out of this business^; 
 Clerkship, 1300 "] and when it is considered that my in- 
 
 M^SCO loo come is above 200 a ~y ear even tf 
 
 Interest, 100 f the printing-office pays nothing, I should 
 
 Somers, (say) 200 ho p e no one can possibly be a loser by 
 
 2100 J me. I am sure I would strip myself to 
 my shirt rather than it should be the case; and my only 
 reason for wishing to stop the concern was to do open justice 
 to all persons. It must have been a bitter pill to me. I can 
 more confidently expect some aid from Mr. Constable, or 
 from Longman s house, because they can look into the con 
 cern and satisfy themselves how little chance there is of 
 their being losers, which others cannot do. Perhaps be 
 tween them they might manage to assist us with the credit 
 necessary, and go on in winding up the concern by occasional 
 acceptances. 
 
 " An odd thing has happened. I have a letter, by order of 
 the Prince Regent, offering me the laureateship in the most 
 flattering terms. Were I my own man, as you call it, I would 
 refuse this offer (with all gratitude) ; but, as I am situated, 
 300 or 400 a-year is not to be sneezed at upon a point of 
 poetical honour and it makes me a better man to that ex 
 tent. I have not yet written, however. I will say little about 
 
 * He probably alludes to the final settlement of accounts with th* 
 Marquis of Abercorn. 
 
282 LIFE DP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Constable s handsome behaviour, but shall not forget it. It is 
 needless to say I shall wish him to be consulted in every step 
 that is taken. If I should lose all I advanced to this business, 
 I should be less vexed than I am at this moment. I am very 
 busy with Swift at present, but shall certainly come to town if 
 it is thought necessary ; but I should first wish Mr. Constable 
 to look into the affairs to the bottom. Since I have personally 
 superintended them, they have been winding up very fast, and 
 we are now almost within sight of harbour. I will also own 
 it was partly ill-humour at John s blunder last week that made 
 me think of throwing things up. Yours truly, W. S." 
 
 After writing and despatching this letter, an idea oc 
 curred to Scott that there was a quarter, not hitherto 
 alluded to in any of these anxious epistles, from which 
 he might consider himself as entitled to ask assistance, 
 not only with little, if any, chance of a refusal, but (ow 
 ing to particular circumstances) without incurring any 
 very painful sense of obligation. On the 25th he says to 
 John Ballantyne 
 
 " After some meditation, last night, it occurred to me I had 
 some title to ask the Duke of Buccleuch s guarantee to a cash- 
 account for 4000, as Constable proposes. I have written to 
 him accordingly, and have very little doubt that he will be my 
 surety. If this cash-account be in view, Mr. Constable will 
 certainly assist us until the necessary writings are made out 
 I beg your pardon I dare say I am very stupid ; but very 
 often you don t consider that I can t follow details which would 
 be quite obvious to a man of business ; for instance, you tell 
 me daily, that if the sums I count upon are forthcoming, the 
 results must be as I suppose. But in a week the scene 
 is changed, and all I can do, and more, is inadequate to bring 
 about these results. I protest I don t know if at this moment 
 4000 will clear us out. After all, you are vexed, and so aiu 
 I ; and it is needless to wrangle who has a right to be angry 
 Commend me to James. Yours truly, W. S." 
 
LETTER TO THE DUKE OF BUOCLEUCH. 283 
 
 Having explained to the Duke of Buccleuch the posi 
 tion in which he stood obliged either to procure some 
 guarantee which would enable him to raise 4000, or to 
 sell abruptly all his remaining interest in the copyright 
 of his works ; and repeated the statement of his personal 
 property and income, as given in the preceding letter to 
 James Ballantyne Scott says to his noble friend : 
 
 " I am not asking nor desiring any loan from your Grace, 
 but merely the honour of your sanction to my credit as a good 
 man for 4000 ; and the motive of your Grace s interference 
 would be sufficiently obvious to the London Shy locks, as your 
 constant kindness and protection is no secret to the world. 
 Will your Grace consider whether you can do what I propose, 
 in conscience and safety, and favour me with your answer ? 
 I have a very flattering offer from the Prince Regent, of his 
 own free motion, to make me poet-laureate ; I am very much 
 embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, afraid of giving 
 offence where no one would willingly offend, and perhaps 
 losing an opportunity of smoothing the way to my youngsters 
 through life ; on the other hand, the office is a ridiculous one, 
 somehow or other they and I should be well quizzed, yet 
 that I should not mind. My real feeling of reluctance lies 
 deeper it is, that favoured as I have been by the public, I 
 should be considered, with some justice, I fear, as engrossing 
 a petty emolument which might do real service to some poorer 
 brother of the Muses. I shall be most anxious to have your 
 Grace s advice on this subject. There seems something churl 
 ish, and perhaps conceited, in repelling a favour so hand 
 somely offered on the part of the Sovereign s representative ; 
 and on the other hand, I feel much disposed to shake myself 
 Iree from it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode- 
 maker is described by Pope as a poet out of his way or out of 
 his senses. I will find some excuse for protracting my reply 
 till I can have the advantage of your Grace s opinion ; and 
 remain, in the mean time, very truly, your obliged and 
 grateful WALTER SCOTT. 
 
284 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " P. S. I trust your Grace will not suppose me capable of 
 making such a request as the enclosed, upon any idle or un 
 necessary speculation ; but, as I stand situated, it is a matter 
 of deep interest to me to prevent these copyrights from being 
 disposed of either hastily or at under prices. I could have 
 half the booksellers in London for my sureties, on a hint of a 
 new poem ; but bankers do not like people in trade, and my 
 brains are not ready to spin another web. So your Grace 
 must take me under your princely care, as in the days of lang 
 syne ; and I think I can say, upon the sincerity of an honest 
 man, there is not the most distant chance of your having any 
 trouble or expense through my means." 
 
 The Duke s answer was in all respects such as might 
 have been looked for from the generous kindness and 
 manly sense of his character. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Abbotsford. 
 
 " Drumlanrig Castle, August 28th, 1813. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, I received yesterday your letter of the 
 24th. I shall with pleasure comply with your request of 
 guaranteeing the 4000. You must, however, furnish me 
 with the form of a letter to this effect, as I am completely 
 ignorant of transactions of this nature. 
 
 " I am never willing to offer advice, but when my opinion is 
 asked by a friend I am ready to give it. As to the offer of his 
 Royal Highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say 
 that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which, by 
 the general concurrence of the world, is stamped ridiculous. 
 There is no good reason why this should be so ; but so it is., 
 Walter Scott, Poet Laureate, ceases to be the Walter Scott of 
 the Lay, Marmion, &c. Any future poem of yours would not 
 come forward with the same probability of a successful recep 
 tion. The poet laureate would stick to you and your pro. 
 Auctions like a piece of court plaster. Your muse has hitherto 
 been independent don t put her into harness. We know 
 
POET LAUKEATESHIF. 285 
 
 * 
 
 how lightly she trots along when left to her natural paces, but 
 do not try driving. I would write frankly and openly to his 
 Royal Highness, but with respectful gratitude, for he has paid 
 you a compliment. I would not fear to state that you had 
 hitherto written when in poetic mood, but feared to trammel 
 yourself with a fixed periodical exertion ; and I cannot but 
 conceive that His Royal Highness, who has much taste, will at 
 once see the many objections which you must have to his 
 proposal, but which you cannot write. Only think of being 
 chaunted and recitatived by a parcel of hoarse and squeaking 
 choristers on a birthday, for the edification of the bishops, 
 pages, maids of honour, and gentlemen-pensioners ! Oh horri 
 ble ! thrice horrible ! Yours sincerely, BUCCLEUCH, &c." 
 
 The letter which first announced the Prince Regent s 
 proposal, was from his Royal Highness s librarian, Dr. 
 James Stanier Clarke ; but before Scott answered it he 
 had received a more formal notification from the late 
 Marquis of Hertford, then Lord Chamberlain. I shall 
 transcribe both these documents. 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 " Pavilion, Brighton, August 18, 1813. 
 
 " My Dear Sir, Though I have never had the honour of 
 being introduced to you, you have frequently been pleased to 
 convey to me very kind and flattering messages, * and I trust, 
 therefore, you will allow me, without any further ceremony, to 
 say That I took an early opportunity this morning of seeing 
 the Prince Regent, who arrived here late yesterday ; and I 
 then delivered to his Royal Highness my earnest wish and 
 anxious desire that the vacant situation of poet laureate might 
 be conferred on you. The Prince replied, that you had 
 
 * The Royal Librarian had forwarded to Scott presentation copies of 
 his successive publications The Progress of Maritime Discovery 
 Falconer s Shipwreck, with a Life of the Author Naufragia A Lift 
 af Nelson, in two quarto volumes, &c. c. &c. 
 
286 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 already been written to, and that if you wished it, every* 
 thing would be settled as I could desire. 
 
 " I hope, therefore, I may be allowed to congratulate you on 
 this event. You are the man to whom it ought first to have 
 been offered, and it gave me sincere pleasure to find that those 
 sentiments of high approbation which my Royal Master had 
 BO often expressed towards you in private, were now so openly 
 and honourably displayed in public. Have the goodness, dear, 
 sir, to receive this intrusive letter with your accustomed cour 
 tesy, and believe me, yours very sincerely, J. S. CLARKE, 
 Librarian to H. R. H. the Prince Regent." 
 
 " To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh. 
 
 " Ragley, 31st August 1813. 
 
 " Sir, I thought it my duty to his Royal Highness the 
 Prince Regent, to express to him my humble opinion that I 
 could not make so creditable a choice as in your person for the 
 office, now vacant, of poet laureate. I am now authorized to 
 offer it to you, which I would have taken an earlier oppor 
 tunity of doing, but that, till this morning, I have had no 
 occasion of seeing his Royal Highness since Mr. Pye s death. 
 1 have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient, humble ser 
 vant, INGRAM HERTFORD." 
 
 The following letters conclude this matter : 
 
 To the Most Noble the Marquis of Hertford, fyc. frc. Ragley % 
 Warwickshire. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 4th Sept. 
 
 " My Lord, I am this day honoured with your Lordship s 
 letter of the 31st August, tendering for my acceptance the 
 situation of poet laureate in the Royal Household. I shall 
 always think it the highest honour of my life to have been the 
 object of the good opinion implied in your Lordship s recom 
 mendation, and in the gracious acquiescence of his Royal High- 
 ness the Prince Regent. I humbly trust I shall not forfeit 
 
POET LAUREATESHIP. 287 
 
 sentiments so highly valued, although I find myself under the 
 necessity of declining, with every acknowledgment of respect 
 and gratitude, a situation above my deserts, and offered to me 
 in a manner so very flattering. The duties attached to the 
 office of poet laureate are not indeed very formidable, if 
 judged of by the manner in which they have sometimes been 
 discharged. But an individual selected from the literary- 
 characters of Britain, upon the honourable principle expressed 
 in your Lordship s letter, ought not, in justice to your Lord 
 ship, to his own reputation, but above all to his Royal High 
 ness, to accept of the office, unless he were conscious of the 
 power of filling it respectably, and attaining to excellence in 
 the execution of the tasks which it imposes. This confidence 
 I am so far from possessing, that, on the contrary, with all the 
 advantages which do now, and I trust ever will, present them 
 selves to the poet whose task it may be to commemorate the 
 events of his Royal Highness s administration, I am certain I 
 should feel myse, 1> Inadequate to the fitting discharge of the 
 regularly recurring duty of periodical composition, and should 
 thus at once disappoint the expectation of the public, and, 
 what would give me still more pain, discredit the nomination 
 of his Royal Highness. 
 
 " Will your Lordship permit me to add, that though far 
 from being wealthy, I already hold two official situations in 
 the line of my profession, which afford a respectable income. 
 It becomes me, therefore, to avoid the appearance of engross 
 ing one of the few appointments which seem specially adapted 
 for the provision of those whose lives have been dedicated ex 
 clusively to literature, and who too often derive from their 
 labours more credit than emolument. 
 
 " Nothing could give me greater pain than being thought 
 ungrateful to his Royal Highness s goodness, or insensible to 
 the honourable distinction his undeserved condescension has 
 been pleased to bestow upon me. I have to trust to your 
 Lordship s kindness for laying at the feet of his Royal High 
 ness, in the way most proper and respectful, my humble, grate 
 ful, and dutiful thanks, with these reasons for declining a situ 
 
 VOL. III. 19 
 
288 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ation which, though every way superior to my deserts, I should 
 chiefly have valued as a mark of his Royal Highness s approba 
 tion. 
 
 " For your Lordship s unmerited goodness, as well as fo? 
 the trouble you have had upon this occasion, I can only offer 
 you my respectful thanks, and entreat that you will be pleased 
 to believe me, my Lord Marquis, your Lordship s much obliged 
 and much honoured humble servant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, fyc. Drumlanrig Castle. 
 
 "Abbotsford, Sept. 5, 1813. 
 
 " My Dear Lord Duke, Good advice is easily followed 
 when it jumps with our own sentiments and inclinations. I 
 uo sooner found mine fortified by your Grace s opinion than I 
 wrote to Lord Hertford, declining the laurel in the most civil 
 way I could imagine. I also wrote to the Prince s librarian, 
 who had made himself active on the occasion, dilating, at some 
 what more length than I thought respectful to the Lord Cham 
 berlain, my reasons for declining the intended honour. My 
 wife has made a copy of the last letter, which I enclose for 
 your Grace s perusal: there is no occasion either to preserve 
 or return it but I am desirous you should know what I have 
 put my apology upon, for I may reckon on its being misrepre 
 sented. I certainly should never have survived the recitative 
 described by your Grace : it is a part of the etiquette I was 
 quite unprepared for, and should have sunk under it. It is 
 curious enough that Drumlanrig should always have been the 
 refuge of bards who decline court promotion. Gay, I think, 
 refused to be a gentleman-usher, or some such post ; * and I am 
 
 * Poor Gay " In wit a man, simplicity a child," was insulted, 
 on the accession of George II., by the offer of a gentleman-ushership 
 to one of the royal infants. His prose and verse largely celebrate his 
 obligations to Charles third Duke of Queensberry, and the charming 
 Lady Catharine Hyde, his Duchess under whose roof the poet spen 
 the latter years of his life. 
 
POET LAURBATESHIP. 289 
 
 determined to abide by my post of Grand Ecuyer Trenchant 
 of the Chateau, varied for that of tale-teller of an evening. 
 
 " I will send your Grace a copy of the letter of guarantee 
 when I receive it from London. By an arrangement with 
 Longman and Co., the great booksellers in Paternoster-row, I 
 am about to be enabled to place their security, as well as my 
 wn, between your Grace and the possibility of hazard. But 
 your kind readiness to forward a transaction which is of such 
 great importance both to my fortune and comfort, can never 
 be forgotten although it can scarce make me more than 1 
 have always been, my dear Lord, your Grace s much obliged 
 and truly faithful WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 (COPY ENCLOSURE.) 
 
 "To the Rev. J. S. Clarke, See. frc. frc. Pavilion, Brighton. 
 " Abbotsford, 4th September 1813. 
 
 " Sir, On my return to this cottage, after a short excur- 
 on, I was at once surprised and deeply interested by the re- 
 ^ipt of your letter. I shall always consider it as the proudest 
 incident of my life that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, 
 wnose taste in literature is so highly distinguished, should have 
 thought of naming me to the situation of poet-laureate. I 
 feel, therefore, no small embarrassment lest I should incur the 
 suspicion of churlish ingratitude in declining an appointment 
 m every point of view so far above my deserts, but which I 
 should chiefly have valued as conferred by the unsolicited 
 generosity of his Royal Highness, and as entitling me to the 
 distinction of terming myself an immediate servant of hia 
 Majesty. But I have to trust to your goodness in represent 
 ing to his Royal Highness, with my most grateful, humble, and 
 dutiful acknowledgments, the circumstances which compel me 
 to decline the honour which his undeserved favour has pro 
 posed for me. The poetical pieces I have hitherto composed 
 uave uniformly been the hasty production of impulses, which 
 i. must term fortunate, since they have attracted his Royal 
 Highness s notice and approbation. But I strongly fear, 01 
 
290 LIFE OF SI* WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 rather ain absolutely certain, that I should feel myself unable 
 to justify, in the eye of the public, the choice of his Royal 
 Highness, by a fitting discharge of the duties of an office which 
 requires stated and periodical exertion. And although I am 
 conscious how much this difficulty is lessened under the gov 
 ernment of his Royal Highness, marked by paternal wisdom 
 at home and successes abroad which seem to promise the lib 
 eration of Europe, I still feel that the necessity of a regular 
 commemoration would trammel my powers of composition at 
 the very time when it would be equally my pride and duty to 
 tax them to the uttermost. There is another circumstance 
 which weighs deeply in my mind while forming my present 
 resolution. I have already the honour to hold two appoint 
 ments under Government, not usually conjoined, and which 
 afford an income, far indeed from wealth, but amounting to 
 decent independence. I fear, therefore, that in accepting one 
 of the few situations which our establishment holds forth as 
 the peculiar provision of literary men, I might be justly cen 
 sured as availing myself of his Royal Highness s partiality to 
 engross more than my share of the public revenue, to the prej 
 udice of competitors equally meritorious at least, and other 
 wise unprovided for ; and as this calculation will be made by 
 thousands who know that I have reaped great advantages by 
 the favour of the public, without being aware of the losses 
 which it has been my misfortune to sustain, I may fairly 
 reckon that it will terminate even more to my prejudice than 
 if they had the means of judging accurately of my real cir 
 cumstances. I have thus far, sir, frankly exposed to you, for 
 his Royal Highness s favourable consideration, the feelings 
 which induce me to decline an appointment offered in a man 
 ner so highly calculated to gratify, I will not say my vanity 
 only, but my sincere feelings of devoted attachment to the 
 crown and constitution of my country, and to the person of 
 his Royal Highness, by whom its government has been so 
 worthily administered. No consideration on earth would give 
 me so much pain as the idea of my real feelings being miscon- 
 itrued on this occasion, or that I should be supposed stupici 
 
POET LAUREATESHIP. 291 
 
 enough not to estimate the value of his Royal Highness s 
 avour, or so ungrateful as not to feel it as I ought. And you 
 will relieve me from great anxiety if you will have the good 
 ness to let me know if his Royal Highness is pleased to receive 
 favourably my humble and grateful apology. 
 
 " I cannot conclude without expressing my sense of your 
 kindness and of the trouble you have had upon this account, 
 and I request you will believe me, sir, your obliged humble 
 servant, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 4th September 1813. 
 
 " My Dear Southey, On my return here I found, to my 
 no small surprise, a letter tendering me the laurel vacant by 
 the death of the poetical Pye. I have declined the appoint 
 ment, as being incompetent to the task of annual commemo 
 ration; but chiefly as being provided for in my professional 
 department, and unwilling to incur the censure of engrossing 
 the emolument attached to one of the few appointments which 
 seems proper to be filled by a man of literature who has no 
 other views in life. Will you forgive me, my dear friend, if I 
 own I had you in my recollection. I have given Croker the 
 hint, and otherwise endeavoured to throw the office into your 
 option. I am uncertain if you will like it, for the laurel has 
 certainly been tarnished by some of its wearers, and, as at 
 present managed, its duties are inconvenient and somewhat 
 liable to" ridicule. But the latter matter might be amended, 
 as I think the Regent s good sense would lead him to lay aside 
 these regular commemorations ; and as to the former point, it 
 has been worn by Dryden of old, and by Warton in modern 
 days. If you quote my own refusal against me, I reply first, 
 I have been luckier than you in holding two offices not usually 
 conjoined ; secondly, I did not refuse it from any foolish preju 
 dice against the situation, otherwise how durst I mention it to 
 you, my elder brother ir. the muse ? but from a sort of in 
 ternal hope that they would give it to you, upon whom it would 
 
292 LIFE OF SIR* WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 be so much more worthily conferred. For I am not such a a 
 ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though 1 
 have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in 
 my favour. I have not time to add ten thousand other rea 
 sons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to 
 beg you to think before you reject the offer which I flatter my 
 self will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a 
 fellow with two gowns already, I should have jumped at :t like 
 a cock at a gooseberry. Ever yours most truly, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT.** 
 
 Immediately after Mr. Croker received Scott s letter 
 here alluded to, Mr. Southey was invited to accept the 
 vacant laurel. But, as the birthday ode had been omit 
 ted since the illness of King George III., and the Regent 
 had good sense and good taste enough to hold that ancient 
 custom as " more honoured in the breach than the obser 
 vance," the whole fell completely into disuse.* The office 
 was thus relieved from the burden of ridicule which had, in 
 spite of many illustrious names, adhered to it ; and though 
 its emoluments did not in fact amount to more than a 
 quarter of the sum at which Scott rated them when he 
 declined it, they formed no unacceptable addition to Mr. 
 Southey s income. Scott s answer to his brother poet s 
 affectionate and grateful letter on the conclusion of thia 
 affair, is as follows : 
 
 " To R. Southey, Esq., Keswick. 
 
 "Edinburgh, November 13, 1813. 
 
 " I do not delay, my Dear Southey, to say my gratulor. 
 Long may you live, as Paddy says, to rule over us, and to re- 
 
 * See the Preface to the third volume of the late Collective Edition 
 of Mr. Southey s Poems, p. xii., where he corrects a trivial error I had 
 fallen into in the first edition of these Memoirs, and adds, " Sir Wai- 
 ter s conduct was, as it always was, characteristically generous, and in 
 the highest degree friendly." [1839.] 
 
LETTER TO SOUTHED. 293 
 
 deem the crown of Spenser and of Dryden to its pristine dig 
 nity. I am only discontented with the extent of your royal 
 revenue, which I thought had been 400, or 300 at the very 
 least. Is there no getting rid of that iniquitous modus, and 
 requiring the butt in kind ? I would have you think of it ; 1 
 know no man so well entitled to Xeres sack as yourself, though 
 many bards would make a better figure at drinking it. I 
 should think that in due time a memorial might get some re 
 lief in this part of the appointment it should be at least 
 100 wet and 100 dry. When you have carried your point 
 of discarding the ode, and my point of getting the sack, you 
 will be exactly in the situation of Davy in the farce, who stip 
 ulates for more wages, less work, and the key of the ale-cellar.* 
 I was greatly delighted with the circumstances of your investi 
 ture. It reminded me of the porters at Calais with Dr. Smol 
 lett s baggage, six of them seizing upon one small portman 
 teau, and bearing it in triumph to his lodgings. You see what 
 it is to laugh at the superstitions of a gentleman-usher, as I 
 think you do somewhere. * The whirligig of time brings in 
 his revenges. f 
 
 " Adieu, my dear Southey ; my best wishes attend all that 
 you do, and my best congratulations every good that attends 
 y OU yea even this, the very least of Providence s mercies, as 
 a poor clergyman said when pronouncing grace over a herring. 
 I should like to know how the Prince received you ; his ad 
 dress is said to be excellent, and his knowledge of literature 
 far from despicable. What a change of fortune even since the 
 short time when we met ! The great work of retribution is 
 now rolling onward to consummation, yet am I not fully satis- 
 e d per eat iste! there will be no permanent peace in Eu 
 rope till Buonaparte sleeps with the tyrants of old. My best 
 compliments attend Mrs. Southey and your family. Ever 
 yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 To avoid returning to the affair of the laureatesfcip, 1 
 
 * Garrick s Bon Ton, or HigK Life Abovt, Stairg, 
 t Twelfth Night, Act V. Scene 1. 
 
294 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 have placed together such letters concerning it as ap 
 peared important. I regret to say that, had I adhered to 
 the chronological order of Scott s correspondence, ten out 
 of every twelve letters between the date of his applica 
 tion to the Duke of Buccleuch, and his removal to Edin 
 burgh on the 12th of November, would have continued 
 to tell the same story of pecuniary difficulty, urgent and 
 almost daily applications for new advances to the Ballan- 
 tynes, and endeavours, more or less successful, but in no 
 case effectually so, to relieve the pressure on the book 
 selling firm by sales of its heavy stock to the great pub 
 lishing houses of Edinburgh and London. Whatever 
 success these endeavours met with, appears to have been 
 due either directly or indirectly to Mr. Constable ; who 
 did a great deal more than prudence would have war 
 ranted, in taking on himself the results of its unhappy 
 adventures, and, by his sagacious advice, enabled the 
 distressed partners to procure similar assistance at the 
 hands of others, who did not partake his own feelings of 
 personal kindness and sympathy. " I regret to learn," 
 Scott writes to him on the 1 6th October, " that there is 
 great danger of your exertions in our favour, which once 
 promised so fairly, proving finally abortive, or at least 
 being too tardy in their operation to work out our relief. 
 If anything more can be honourably and properly done 
 to avoid a most unpleasant shock, I shall be most willing 
 to do it ; if not God s will be done ! There will be 
 enough of property, including my private fortune, to pay 
 every claim; and I have not used prosperity so ill, as 
 greatly to fear adversity. But these things we will talk 
 over at meeting ; meanwhile believe me, with a sincere 
 Bense of your kindness and friendly views, very truly 
 yours, W. S." I have no wish to quote more largely 
 
JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO. 295 
 
 from the letters which passed during this crisis between 
 Scott and his partners. The pith and substance of his, 
 to John Ballantyne at least, seems to be summed up in 
 one brief postscript : " For God s sake treat me as a 
 man, and not as a milch-cow!" 
 
 The difficulties of the Ballantynes were by this time 
 well known throughout the commercial circles not only 
 of Edinburgh, but of London ; and a report of their 
 actual bankruptcy, with the addition that Scott was en 
 gaged as their surety to the extent of 20,000, found its 
 way to Mr. Morritt about the beginning of November. 
 This dear friend wrote to him, in the utmost anxiety, and 
 made liberal offers of assistance in case the catastrophe 
 might still be averted; but the term of Martinmas, 
 always a critical one in Scotland, had passed before this 
 letter reached Edinburgh, and Scott s answer will show 
 symptoms of a clearing horizon. I think also there is 
 one expression in it which could hardly have failed to 
 convey to Mr. Morritt that his friend was involved, more 
 deeply than he had ever acknowledged, in the concerns 
 of the Messrs. Ballantyne. 
 
 " To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby Park. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 20th November 1813. 
 
 * I did not answer your very kind letter, my dear Morritt, 
 *ntil I could put your friendly heart to rest upon the report 
 you have heard, which I could not do entirely until this term 
 of Martinmas was passed. I have the pleasure to say that 
 vhere is no truth whatever in the Ballantynes reported bank 
 ruptcy. They have had severe difficulties for the last four 
 months to make their resources balance the demands upon 
 them, and I, having the price of Rokeby, and other monies in 
 their hands, have had considerable reason for apprehension* 
 and no slight degree of plague and trouble. They have, how 
 
296 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 ever, been so well supported, that I have got out of hot watei 
 Upon their account. They are winding up their bookselling 
 concern with great regularity, and are to abide hereafter by 
 the printing-office, which, with its stock, &c., will revert to 
 them fairly. 
 
 " I have been able to redeem the offspring of my brain, and 
 they are like to pay me like grateful children. This matter 
 has set me a thinking about money more seriously than ever I 
 did in my life, and I have begun by insuring my life for 4000, 
 to secure some ready cash to my family should I slip girths 
 suddenly. I think my other property, library, &c., may be 
 worth about 12,000, and I have not much debt. 
 
 " Upon the whole, I see no prospect of any loss whatever. 
 Although in the course of human events I may be disap 
 pointed, there certainly can be none to vex your kind and 
 affectionate heart on my account. I am young, with a large 
 official income, and if I lose anything now, I have gained a 
 great deal in my day. I cannot tell you, and will not attempt 
 to tell you, how much I was affected by your letter so much, 
 indeed, that for several days I could not make my mind up to 
 express myself on the subject. Thank God ! all real danger 
 was yesterday put over and I will write, in two or three 
 days, a funny letter, without any of these vile cash matters, of 
 which it may be said there is no living with them nor without 
 Ever yours, most truly, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 All these annoyances produced no change whatever in 
 Scott s habits of literary industry. During these anxious 
 months of September, October, and November, he kept 
 feeding James Ballantyne s press, from day to day, both 
 with the annotated text of the closing volumes of Swift s 
 works, and with the MS. of his Life of the Dean. He 
 had also proceeded to mature in his own mind the plan 
 of the Lord of the Isles, and executed such a portion of 
 the First Canto as gave him confidence to renew hia 
 negotiation with Constable for the sale of the whole, or 
 
AUTUMN, 1813. 297 
 
 part of its copyright. It was, moreover, at this period, 
 that, looking into an old cabinet in search of some fishing- 
 tackle, his eye chanced to light once more on the Ashes- 
 tiel fragment of Waverley. He read over those intro 
 ductory chapters thought they had been undervalued 
 and determined to finish the story. 
 
 All this while, too, he had been subjected to those in 
 terruptions from idle strangers, which from the first to 
 the last imposed so heavy a tax on his celebrity ; and he 
 no doubt received such guests with all his usual urbanity 
 of attention. Yet I was not surprised to discover, among 
 his hasty notes to the Ballantynes, several of tenour akin 
 to the following specimens : 
 
 " Sept. 2d, 1813. 
 
 "My temper is really worn to a hair s breadth. The in 
 truder of yesterday hung on me till twelve to-day. When I 
 had just taken my pen, he was relieved, like a sentry leaving 
 guard, by two other lounging visitors ; and their post has now 
 been supplied by some people on real business." 
 
 Again 
 
 " Monday Evening. 
 
 " Oh James ! oh James ! Two Irish dames 
 
 Oppress me very sore ; 
 I groaning send one sheet I ve penned 
 For, hang them ! there s no more." 
 
 A scrap of nearly the same date to his brother Thomas 
 may be introduced, as oelonging to the same state of 
 feeling 
 
 " Dear Tom, I observe what you say as to Mr. * * * * ; 
 and as you may often be exposed to similar requests, which it 
 would be difficult to parry, you can sign such letters of intro 
 duction as relate to persons whom you do not delight to honour 
 
298 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 short, T. Scott ; by which abridgement of your name I shall un< 
 ilerstand to limit my civilities. * 
 
 It is proper to mention, that, in the very agony of these 
 perplexities, the unfortunate Maturin received from him 
 a timely succour of 50, rendered doubly acceptable by 
 the kind and judicious letter of advice in which it was 
 enclosed ; and I have before me ample evidence that his. 
 benevolence had been extended to other struggling broth 
 ers of the trade, even when he must often have had 
 actual difficulty to meet the immediate expenditure of his 
 own family. All this, however, will not surprise the 
 reader. 
 
 Nor did his general correspondence suffer much inter 
 ruption ; and, as some relief after so many painful details, 
 I shall close the narrative of this anxious year by a few 
 specimens of his miscellaneous communications : 
 
 " To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead. 
 
 Abbotsford, Sept. 12, 1813. 
 
 "My Dear Miss Baillie, I have been a vile lazy corre 
 spondent, having been strolling about the country, and indeed 
 a little way into England, for the greater part of July and 
 August ; in short, aye skipping here and there, like the 
 Tanner of Tamworth s horse. Since I returned, I have had a 
 gracious offer of the laurel on the part of the Prince Regent. 
 You will not wonder that I have declined it, though with every 
 expression of gratitude which such an unexpected compliment 
 demanded. Indeed, it would be high imprudence in one hav 
 ing literary reputation to maintain, to accept of an offer which 
 obliged him to produce a poetical exercise on a given theme 
 twice a-year ; and besides, as my loyalty to the royal family ig 
 very sincere, I would not wish to have it thought mercenary. 
 The public has done its part by me very well, and so hai 
 Government : and I thought this little literary provision ought 
 
LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE. 299 
 
 to be bestowed on one who has made literature his sole pro 
 fession. If the Regent means to make it respectable, he 
 will abolish the foolish custom of the annual odes, which is a 
 drudgery no person of talent could ever willingly encounter 
 or come clear off from, if he was so rash. And so, peace be 
 with the laurel, 
 
 Profaned by Gibber and contemned by Gray. 
 
 " I was for a fortnight at Drumlanrig, a grand old chateau, 
 which has descended, by the death of the late Duke of 
 Queensberry to the Duke of Buccleuch. It is really a most 
 magnificent pile, and when embosomed amid the wide forest 
 scenery, of which I have an infantine recollection, must have 
 been very romantic. But old Q. made wild devastation 
 among the noble trees, although some fine ones are still left, 
 and a quantity of young shoots are, in despite of the want of 
 every kind of attention, rushing up to supply the places of the 
 fathers of the forest from whose stems they are springing. It 
 will now I trust be in better hands, for the reparation of the 
 castle goes hand in hand with the rebuilding of all the cottages, 
 in which an aged race of pensioners of Duke Charles, and hia 
 pious wife, Kitty, blooming, young and gay, have, dur 
 ing the last reign, been pining into rheumatisms and agues, in 
 neglected poverty. 
 
 " All this is beautiful to witness : the indoor work does not 
 please me so well, though I am aware that, to those who are 
 to inhabit an old castle, it becomes often a matter of necessity 
 to make alterations by which its tone and character are 
 changed for the worse. Thus a noble gallery, which ran the 
 whole length of the front, is converted into bedrooms very 
 comfortable, indeed, but not quite so magnificent ; and as grim 
 a dungeon as ever knave or honest man was confined in, is in 
 some danger of being humbled into a wine-cellar. It is almost 
 impossible to draw your breath, when you recollect that this, 
 so many feet under ground, and totally bereft of air and light, 
 Kras built for the imprisonment of human beings, whether 
 guilty, suspected, or merely unfortunate. Certainly, if oiu 
 
BOO LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 frames are not so hardy, our hearts are softer than those of 
 our forefathers, although probably a few years of domestic 
 war, or feudal oppression, would bring us back to the same 
 case-hardening both in body and sentiment. 
 
 " I meant to have gone to Rokeby, but was prevented by 
 Mrs. Morritt being unwell, which I very much regret, as I 
 know few people that deserve better health. I am very glad 
 you have known them, and I pray you to keep up the ac 
 quaintance in winter. I am glad to see by this day s paper 
 that our friend Terry has made a favourable impression on his 
 first appearance at Covent- Garden he has got a very good 
 engagement there for three years, at twelve guineas a-week, 
 which is a handsome income. This little place comes on as 
 fast as can be reasonably hoped ; and the pinasters are all 
 above the ground, but cannot be planted out for twelve 
 months. My kindest compliments in which Mrs. Scott 
 always joins attend Miss Agnes, the Doctor, and his fam 
 ily. Ever, my dear friend, yours most faithfully, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 " To Daniel Terry, Esq., London. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 20th October 1813. 
 
 " Dear Terry, You will easily believe that I was greatly 
 pleased to hear from you. I had already learned from The 
 Courier (what I had anticipated too strongly to doubt for one 
 instant) your favourable impression on the London public. I 
 think nothing can be more judicious in the managers than to 
 exercise the various powers you possess, in their various ex 
 tents. A man of genius is apt to be limited to one single 
 style, and to become per force a mannerist, merely because 
 the public is not so just to its own amusement as to give him 
 an opportunity of throwing himself into different lines ; and 
 doubtless the exercise of our talents in one unvaried course, 
 by degree^ renders them incapable of any other, as the over 
 use of any one limb of our body gradually impoverishes the rest 
 I shall be anxious to hear that you have played Malvolio, which 
 is, J think, one of your coups-de-maitre, and in which envy 
 
LETTER TO TERRY. 301 
 
 Itself cannot affect to trace an imitation. That same charge of 
 imitation, by the way, is one of the surest scents upon which 
 dunces are certain to open. Undoubtedly, if the same char 
 acter is well performed by two individuals, their acting must 
 bear a general resemblance it could not be well performed 
 by both were it otherwise. But this general resemblance, 
 which arises from both following nature and their author, can 
 as little be termed imitation as the river in Wales can be 
 identified with that of Macedon. Never mind these dunder 
 heads, but go on your own way, and scorn to laugh on the 
 right side of your mouth, to make a difference from some 
 ancient comedian who, in the same part, always laughed on 
 the left. Stick to the public be uniform in your exertions 
 to study even those characters which have little in them, and to 
 give a grace which you cannot find in the author. Audiences 
 are always grateful for this or rather for gratitude is as 
 much out of the question in the Theatre, as Bernadotte says 
 to Boney it is amongst sovereigns or rather, the audience is 
 gratified by receiving pleasure from a part which they had no 
 expectation would afford them any. It is in this view that, 
 had I been of your profession, and possessed talents, I think 
 I should have liked often those parts with which my breth 
 ren quarrelled, and studied to give them an effect which 
 their intrinsic merit did not entitle them to. I have some 
 thoughts of being in town in spring (not resolutions by any 
 means) ; and it will be an additional motive to witness your 
 success, and to find you as comfortably established as your 
 friends in Castle Street earnestly hope and trust you will be. 
 
 " The summer an uncommon summer in beauty and se 
 renity has glided away from us at Abbotsford, amidst our 
 usual petty cares and petty pleasures. The children s garden 
 is in apple-pie order, our own completely cropped and stocked, 
 %nd all the trees flourishing like the green bay of the Psalmist. 
 
 have been so busy about our domestic arrangements, that I 
 have not killed six hares this season. Besides, I have got a 
 cargo of old armour, sufficient to excite a suspicion that I in 
 tend to mount a squadron of cuirassiers. I only want a place 
 
302 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 for my armoury ; and, thank God, I can wait for that, these 
 being no times for building. And this brings me to the loss of 
 poor Stark, with whom more genius has died than is left behind 
 among the collected universality of Scottish architects. O Lord ! 
 but what does it signify ? Earth was born to bear, and 
 man to pay (that is, lords, nabobs, Glasgow traders, and those 
 who have wherewithal) so wherefore grumble at great cas 
 tles and cottages, with which the taste of the latter contrives 
 to load the back of Mother .Terra ? I have no hobby-horsi- 
 cal commissions at present, unless if you meet the Voyages of 
 Captain Richard, or Robert Falconer, in one volume cow- 
 heel, quoth Sancho I mark them for my own. Mrs. Scott, 
 Sophia, Anne, and the boys, unite in kind remembrances. 
 Ever yours truly, W. SCOTT." 
 
 M To the Right Hon. Lord Byron, 4 Bennet Street, St. James s, 
 London. 
 
 " Abbotsford, 6th Nov. 1813. 
 
 "My Dear Lord, I was honoured with your Lordship s 
 letter of the 27th September,* and have sincerely to regret 
 that there is such a prospect of your leaving Britain, without 
 my achieving your personal acquaintance. I heartily wish 
 your Lordship had come down to Scotland this season, for I 
 have never seen a finer, and you might have renewed all your 
 old associations with Caledonia, and made such new ones as 
 were likely to suit you. I dare promise you would have liked 
 me well enough for I have many properties of a Turk 
 never trouble myself about futurity am as lazy as the day 
 is long delight in collecting silver-mounted pistols and ata- 
 ghans, and go out of my own road for no one all which I 
 take to be attributes of your good Moslem. Moreover, I am 
 Bomewhat an admirer of royalty, and in order to maintain this 
 part of my creed, I shall take care never to be connected with 
 > court, but stick to the ignotum pro mirabili. 
 
 * The letter in question has not been preserved in Scott s collection 
 of correspondence. This leaves some allusions in the answei obscure 
 
LETTER TO LORD B1RON. 303 
 
 " The author of the Queen s Wake will be delighted with 
 your approbation. He is a wonderful creature for his oppor 
 tunities, which were far inferior to those of the generality of 
 Scottish peasants. Burns, for instance (not that their ex 
 tent of talents is to be compared for an instant) had an 
 education not much worse than the sons of many gentlemen 
 in Scotland. But poor Hogg literally could neither read nor 
 write till a very late period of his life ; and when he first dis 
 tinguished himself by his poetical talent, could neither spell 
 nor write grammar. When I first knew him,, he used to send 
 me his poetry, and was both indignant and horrified when 1 
 pointed out to him parallel passages in authors whom he had 
 never read, but whom all the world would have sworn he had 
 copied. An evil fate has hitherto attended him, and baffled 
 every attempt that has been made to place him in a road to in 
 dependence. But I trust he may be more fortunate in future. 
 
 "I have not yet seen Southey in the Gazette as Laureate. 
 He is a real poet, such as we read of in former times, with 
 every atom of his soul and every moment of his time dedicated 
 to literary pursuits, in which he differs from almost all those 
 who have divided public attention with him. Your Lordship s 
 habits of society, for example, and my own professional and 
 official avocations, must necessarily connect us much more with 
 our respective classes in the usual routine of pleasure or busi 
 ness, than if we had not any other employment than vacare 
 musis. But Southey s ideas are all poetical, and his whole soul 
 dedicated to the pursuit of literature. In this respect, as well 
 as in many others, he is a most striking and interesting char 
 acter. 
 
 " I am very much interested in all that concerns your Gia< 
 our, which is universally approved of among our mountains. 
 I have heard no objection except by one or two geniuses, who 
 run over poetry as a cat does over a harpsichord, and they 
 effect to complain of obscurity. On the contrary, I hold every 
 real lover of the art is obliged to you for condensing the nar 
 rative, by giving us only those striking scenes which you have 
 shown to be so susceptible of poetic ornament, and leaving to 
 
804 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 imagination the says I s and says he s, and all the minutiae of 
 detail which might be proper in giving evidence before a court 
 of justice. The truth is, I think poetry is most striking when 
 the mirror can be held up to the reader, and the same kept 
 constantly before his eyes ; it requires most uncommon powers 
 to support a direct and downright narration ; nor can I remem 
 ber many instances of its being successfully maintained even 
 by our greatest bards. 
 
 "As to those who have done me^the honour to take my 
 rhapsodies for their model, I can only say they have exempli 
 fied the ancient adage, one fool makes many ; nor do I think 
 I have yet had much reason to suppose I have given rise to 
 anything of distinguished merit. The worst is, it draws on 
 me letters and commendatory verses, to which my sad and 
 sober thanks in humble prose are deemed a most unmeet and 
 ungracious reply. Of this sort of plague your Lordship must 
 ere now have had more than your share, but I think you can 
 hardly have met with so original a request as concluded the 
 letter of a bard I this morning received, who limited his de 
 mands to being placed in his due station on Parnassus and 
 invested with a post in the Edinburgh Custom House. 
 
 " What an awakening of dry bones seems to be taking place 
 on the Continent ! I could as soon have believed in the resur 
 rection of the Romans as in that of the Prussians yet it 
 seems a real and active renovation of national spirit. It will 
 certainly be strange enough if that tremendous pitcher, which 
 has travelled to so many fountains, should be at length broken 
 on the banks of the Saale ; but from the highest to the lowest 
 we are the fools of fortune. Your Lordship will probably rec 
 ollect where the Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who con 
 sulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring, 
 requiring that the maxim which it conveyed should be at once 
 proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity and tem 
 pering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied 
 by the Jewish sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both 
 purposes, being comprehended in the words And this alsa 
 shall pass away. 
 
LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE. 305 
 
 " When your Lordship sees Rogers, will you remember me 
 kindly to Mm ? I hope to be in London next spring, and re 
 new my acquaintance with my friends there. It will be an 
 additional motive if I could flatter myself that your Lordship s 
 Btay in the country will permit me the pleasure of waiting 
 upon you. I am, with much respect and regard, your Lord 
 ship s truly honoured and obliged humble servant, 
 
 " WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " I go to Edinburgh next week, multum gemens" 
 
 "To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 10th Dec. 1813. 
 
 " Many thanks, my dear friend, for your kind token of re 
 membrance, which I yesterday received. I ought to blush, if 
 I had grace enough left, at my long and ungenerous silence : 
 but what shall I say ? The habit of procrastination, which 
 had always more or less a dominion over me, does not relax its 
 sway as I grow older and less willing to take up the pen. I 
 have not written to dear Ellis this age, yet there is not a 
 day that I do not think of you and him, and one or two other 
 friends in your southern land. I am very glad the whisky 
 came safe : do not stint so laudable an admiration for the 
 liquor of Caledonia, for I have plenty of right good and sound 
 Highland Ferintosh, and I can always find an opportunity of 
 sending you up a bottle. 
 
 " We are here almost mad with the redemption of Holland, 
 which has an instant and gratifying effect on the trade ot 
 Leith, and indeed all along the east coast of Scotland. About 
 100,000 worth of various commodities, which had been dor 
 mant in cellars and warehouses, was sold the first day the news 
 arrived, and Orange ribbons and Orange Boven was the order 
 of the day among all ranks. It is a most miraculous revivifi 
 cation which it has been our fate to witness. Though of a tol 
 erably sanguine temper, I had fairly adjourned all hopes and 
 expectations of the kind till another generation : the sam 
 
306 LIFE OP SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 power, however, that opened the windows of heaven and the 
 fountains of the great deep, has been pleased to close them, and 
 to cause his wind to blow upon the face of the waters, so that we 
 may look out from the ark of our preservation, and behold the 
 reappearance of the mountain crests, and old, beloved, and well- 
 known landmarks, which we had deemed swallowed up for ever 
 in the abyss : the dove with the olive branch would complete 
 the simile, but of that I see little hope. Buonaparte is that 
 desperate gambler, who will not rise while he has a stake left ; 
 and indeed, to be King of France would be a poor petti 
 fogging enterprise, after having been almost Emperor of the 
 World. I think he will drive things on, till the fickle and im 
 patient people over whom he rules get tired of him and shake 
 him out of the saddle. Some circumstances seem to intimate 
 his having become jealous of the Senate; and indeed any 
 thing like a representative body, however imperfectly con 
 structed, becomes dangerous to a tottering tyranny. The 
 sword displayed on both frontiers may, like that brandished 
 across the road of Balaam, terrify even dumb and irrational 
 subjection into utterance but enough of politics, though now 
 a more cheerful subject than they have been for many years 
 past. 
 
 " I have had a strong temptation to go to the Continent this 
 Christmas ; and should certainly have done so, had I been sure 
 of getting from Amsterdam to Frankfort, where, as I know 
 Lord Aberdeen and Lord Cathcart, I might expect a welcome. 
 But notwithstanding my earnest desire to see the allied armiea 
 cross the Rhine, which I suppose must be one of the grandest 
 military spectacles in the world, I should like to know that the 
 roads were tolerably secure, and the means of getting forward 
 attainable. In spring, however, if no unfortunate change takes 
 place, I trust to visit the camp of the allies, and see all the 
 pomp and powe 1 * and circumstance of war, which I have so 
 often imagined, ana sometimes attempted to embody in verse* 
 Johnnie Richardson is a good, honourable, kind-hearted 
 little fellow as lives in the world, with a pretty taste for poetry 
 ifhich he has wisely kept under subjection to the occupation 
 
LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIB. 307 
 
 of drawing briefs and revising conveyances. It is a great good 
 fortune to him to be in your neighbourhood, as he is an idolater 
 of genius, and where could he offer up his worship so justly ? 
 And I am sure you will like him, for he is really officious, in 
 nocent, sincere. * Terry, I hope, will get on well; he is 
 industrious, and zealous for the honour of his art. Ventidius 
 must have been an excellent part for him, hovering between 
 tragedy and comedy, which is precisely what will suit him. 
 We have a woful want of him here, both in public and private, 
 for he was one of the most easy and quiet chimney-corner com 
 panions that I have had for these two or three years past. 
 
 " I am very glad if anything I have written to you could 
 give pleasure to Miss Edgeworth, though I am sure it will fall 
 very short of the respect which I have for her brilliant talents, 
 I always write to you a la vole e, and trust implicitly to your 
 kindness and judgment upon all occasions where you may 
 choose to communicate any part of my letters.f As to the 
 taxing men, I must battle them as I can : they are worse than 
 the great Emathian conqueror, who 
 
 * bade spare 
 
 The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower 
 Went to the ground. 
 
 Your pinasters are coming up gallantly in the nursery-bed at 
 Abbotsford. I trust to pay the whole establishment a Christ 
 mas visit, which will be, as Robinson Crusoe says of his glass 
 of rum, to mine exceeding refreshment. All Edinburgh have 
 been on tiptoe to see Madame de Stael, but she is now not 
 likely to honour us with a visit, at which I cannot prevail on 
 myself to be very sorry ; for as I tired of some of her works, 1 
 am afraid I should disgrace my taste by tiring of the authoress 
 too, All my little people are very well, learning, with great 
 
 * Scott s old friend, Mr. John Richardson, had shortly before this 
 time taken a house in Mis& Baillie s neighbourhood, on Hampstead 
 Heath. 
 
 f Miss Baillie had apologized to him for having sent an extract of 
 pne of his letters to her friend at Edgeworth?town 
 
 J Milton Sonnet No. VIII 
 
308 LIFE OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 pain and diligence, much which they will have forgotten alto 
 gether, or nearly so, in the course of twelve years hence :- but 
 the habit of learning is something in itself, even when the 
 lessons are forgotten. 
 
 " I must not omit to tell you that a friend of mine, with 
 whom that metal is more plenty than with me, has given me 
 some gold mohurs to be converted into a ring for enchasing 
 King Charles hair ; but this is not to be done until I get to 
 London, and get a very handsome pattern. Ever, most truly 
 snd sincerely, yours, W. SCOTT." 
 
 The last sentence of this letter refers to a lock of the 
 hair of Charles L, which, at Dr. Baillie s request, Sir 
 Henry Halford had transmitted to Scott when the royal 
 martyr s remains were discovered at Windsor, in April 
 1813. Sir John Malcolm had given him some Indian 
 coins to supply virgin gold for the setting of this relic ; 
 and for some years he constantly wore the ring, which is 
 a massive and beautiful one, with the word REMEMBER 
 surrounding it in highly relieved black-letter. 
 
 The poet s allusion to " taxing men " may require 
 another word of explanation. To add to his troubles 
 during this autumn of 1813, a demand was made on him 
 by the commissioners of the income-tax, to return in one 
 of their schedules an account of the profits of bis literary 
 exertions during the three last years. He demurred to 
 this, and took the opinion of high authorities in Scotland, 
 who confirmed him in his impression that the claim was 
 beyond tbe statute. The grounds of his resistance are 
 thus briefly stated in one of his letters to his legal friend 
 in London: 
 
 " To John Richardson, Esq., Fludyer Street, Westminster. 
 
 " My Dear Richardson, I have owed you a letter this long 
 time, but perhaps my debt might not yet be discharged, had I 
 
TAXATION OF LITERARY INCOME. 309 
 
 not a little matter of business to trouble you with. I wish you 
 to lay before either the King s counsel, or Sir Samuel Romilly 
 and any other you may approve, the point whether a copy 
 right, being sold for the term during which Queen Anne s act 
 warranted the property to the author, the price is liable in 
 payment of the property-tax. I contend it is not so liable, for 
 the following reasons : 1st, It is a patent right, expected to 
 produce an annual, or at least an incidental profit, during the 
 currency of many years ; and surely it was never contended 
 that if a man sold a theatrical patent, or a patent for machin 
 ery, property-tax should be levied in the first place on the 
 full price as paid to the seller, and then on the profits as pur 
 chased by the buyer. I am not very expert at figures, but I 
 think it clear that a double taxation takes place. 2d, It should 
 be considered that a book may be the work not of one year, 
 but of a man s whole h fe ; and as it has been found, in a late 
 case of the Duke of Gordon, that a fall of timber was not sub 
 ject to property-tax because it comprehended the produce of 
 thirty years, it seems at least equally fair that mental exertions 
 should not be subjected to a harder principle of measurement. 
 3J, The demand is, so far as I can learn, totally new and un 
 heard of. 4ZA, Supposing that I died and left my manuscripts 
 to be sold publicly along with the rest of my library, is there 
 any ground for taxing what might be received for the written 
 book, any more than any rare printed book, which a speculative 
 bookseller might purchase with a view to republication ? You 
 will know whether any of these things ought to be suggested 
 in the brief. David Hume, and every lawyer here whom I 
 have spoken to, consider the demand as illegal. Believe ma 
 truly yours, WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Mr. Richardson having prepared a case, obtained upon 
 it the opinions of Mr. Alexander (afterwards Sir William 
 Alexander and Chief Baron of the Exchequer) and of the 
 late Sir Samuel Romilly. These eminent lawyers agreed 
 in the view of their Scotch brethren ; and after tedious 
 
810 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 correspondence, the Lords of the Treasury at last decided 
 that the Income-Tax Commissioners should abandon their 
 claim upon the produce of literary labour. I have thought 
 it worth while to preserve some record of this decision, 
 and of the authorities on which it rested, in case such a 
 demand should ever be renewed hereafter. 
 
 In the beginning of December, the Town-Council of 
 Edinburgh resolved to send a deputation to congratulate 
 the Prince Regent on the prosperous course of public 
 events, and they invited Scott to draw up their address, 
 which, on its being transmitted for previous inspection to 
 Mr. William Dundas, then Member for the City, and 
 through him shown privately to the Regent, was ac 
 knowledged to the penman, by his Royal Highness s 
 command, as "the most elegant congratulation a sov 
 ereign ever received, or a subject offered." * The Lord 
 Provost of Edinburgh presented it accordingly at the 
 levee of the 10th, and it was received most graciously. 
 On returning to the north, the Magistrates expressed 
 their sense of Scott s services on this occasion by pre 
 senting him with the freedom of his native city, and also 
 with a piece of plate, which the reader will find alluded 
 to, among other matters of more consequence, in a letter 
 to be quoted presently. 
 
 At this time Scott further expressed his patriotic exul 
 tation in the rescue of Europe, by two songs for the an 
 niversary of the death of Pitt ; one of which has ever 
 Bince, I believe, been chaunted at that celebration : 
 
 " O dread was the time and more dreadful the omen, 
 When the brave on Marengo lay slaughter d in vain," &c. f 
 
 * Letter from the Right Hon. W. Dundas, dated 6th December 181& 
 f See Scott s Poetical Works, vol xi. p. 309. Edition 1834. 
 
 END OF VOL. UI. 
 
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