Front matter (continued 2)

CHAPTER X

Religious Observances—Sunday Attendance at Church—Sunday Books—Breakdown of the System—Alleged Infidelity among Professors—Low State of Morality—Increase of mixed Population—Provincialism.

The externals of religion in Edinburgh underwent a radical change during the boyhood of Walter Scott. The generation that was then retiring from the scene was a generation devoted, in all externals at least, to the cultivation of the religious duties. Rich and poor, old and young, they attended church with unfailing regularity. They held to the strict Puritanic idea of the Sabbath Day. That is, they thought devotion the only proper employment of that day, and considered even a casual appearance on the street during the hours of worship as a disgrace. With them family worship was a general and honoured practice. The reading of any but definitely religious books on Sunday was forbidden in every respectable family. In fact, the Sunday at home in such a family as Scott's was a day of discipline, of which even his good-nature was inclined to complain. What vexed his young soul was 'the gloom of one dull sermon succeeding to another.' The Sunday books were to him a relief and a delight. He retained all his life a favour for Bunyan's Pilgrim, Gesner's Death of Abel, Rowe's Letters, and a few others. Still, in his opinion, the tedium of the day did the young people no good. The scene soon changed. Even in the early eighties we find it noted as 'ungenteel' to go to church in a family capacity. Amusements and idle recreation began to be common. The streets were now crowded during the hours of service. On Sunday evenings they became scenes of noise and disorder. Family worship was abandoned, even, as was whispered, by the clergy themselves. And, as a striking evidence of this rapid declension, it is recorded that church collections had fallen from £1500 to £1000 a year. Critical seniors loudly wailed, but their outcry was as useless as it was earnest. Old times were changed, old manners gone, never to return. The decent, staid, and dignified generation was being hustled from the scene by a flippant, noisy crowd of loose and licentious innovators. Conduct which the elders would have regarded and punished as criminal was no longer atoned for even by the blush of shame.

Such a view of Edinburgh's religious state at the end of the eighteenth century was at all events maintained by certain praisers of the past. It has also been stoutly asserted that infidelity was rampant, under the ægis of the redoubtable David Hume. The University especially was accused of being tainted with infidelity, but the charge is denounced by Lord Cockburn as utterly false. 'I am not aware (he says) of a single professor to whom it was ever applied, or could be applied, justly. Freedom of discussion was not in the least combined with scepticism among the students, or in their societies. I never knew nor heard of a single student, tutor, or professor, by whom infidelity was disclosed, or in whose thoughts I believed it to be harboured, with perhaps only two obscure and doubtful exceptions. I consider the imputation as chiefly an invention to justify modern intolerance.'

As to the comparative religiousness of the present and the preceding generation, any such comparison is very difficult to be made. Religion is certainly more the fashion than it used to be. There is more said about it; there has been a great rise, and consequently a great competition, of sects; and the general mass of the religious public has been enlarged. On the other hand, if we are to believe one-half of what some religious persons themselves assure us, religion is now almost extinct. My opinion is that the balance is in favour of the present time. And I am certain that it would be much more so, if the modern dictators would only accept of that as religion, which was considered to be so by their devout fathers.'

On the whole, with due heed paid to possible qualifications, it is clear that the standard of life and conduct must have been low between, say, 1780 and 1820. We have Scott's express statement that domestic purity was in general maintained in Edinburgh society, but scandalous exceptions were by no means unknown. Among the lower classes the freedom from wholesome, if irksome, restraints was, of course, marked by greater lapses. Among them a generation grew up, practically ignorant of the elementary ideas of religion. As a contemporary quaintly puts it, they were as ignorant as Hottentots, and as little acquainted with the decalogue as with repealed Acts of Parliament. The streets, which formerly a lady might have traversed in perfect safety at any hour, now became notoriously unsafe. Doubtless all this was increased, and to some extent occasioned, by the constant influx of a new and shifting population, attracted by the rapid extension of the city. The vices and easy manners of a modern city soon concealed what remained of the old Scottish habits and character. In short, Edinburgh in those years passed from the state of a national capital to that of a big provincial centre, such as Colonel Mannering beheld it, 'with its noise and clamour, its sounds of trade, of revelry and licence, and the eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups.'

CHAPTER XI

Scott apprenticed to the Law—Copying Money and menus plaisirs—Novels—Romances—Early Attempts—John Irving—Sibbald's Library—Sees Robert Burns—The Parliament House—The 'Krames.'

About 1785-86, Walter Scott, acceding to his father's wish, was indentured in his father's office, and 'entered upon the dry and barren wilderness of forms and conveyances.' Boy as he was, he felt even then that he was not cut out for this career, but family circumstances and the necessary intimacy with so many representatives of the profession no doubt prevented him from making any very serious objection, though he felt in a general way that his 'parts ill-suited law's dry, musty arts.' His warm affection and respect for his father was also a determining motive. For this reason, and indeed with the honest desire to excel, he made up his mind to work hard. But he was never enthusiastic over deeds and quills. He mentions as no trifling incentive to labour, the copying money, an allowance which supplied him with funds for going to the theatre and subscribing to a library.[1] One of his feats was to copy one hundred and twenty folio pages with no interval either for food or rest. But when there was no call for toil, he would spend his time in reading. His desk was filled with books of every kind, except manuals of law. His supreme delight was in works of fiction, of which he must have read an enormous number. He was not, however, entirely uncritical in his choice. Only the 'art of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie,' could make him read a domestic tale. He therefore realised early enough that the field of novel-writing was unoccupied. His fondness for adventure led him to devour every romance he came across without much discrimination. 'I really believe (he says) I have read as much nonsense of this class as any man now living.' Of the exploits of knight-errantry he never tired, and he soon began to make attempts at imitating the stories he loved. These early efforts were not in verse.

[1] See General Preface to Waverley Novels.

A quaintly interesting glimpse into the life of this most notable of law apprentices is given in the General Preface of 1829, where he describes himself and a chosen friend as delighting, on a holiday, to escape from the town and in some solitary spot to recite alternately such adventures as each had been able to invent. 'These legends, in which the material 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.... Whole holidays were spent in this singular pastime, which continued for two or three years, and had, I believe, no small effect in directing the turn of my imagination to the chivalrous and romantic in poetry and prose.' This companion of Scott's was Mr. John Irving, W.S., whose mother seems also to have been very sympathetic with the boy. She would recite ballads to him, which he easily learned by heart, and which helped him in making the collection in six volumes which he had thus early begun.

Such being his tastes, he was naturally more interested in literary characters than in the notable men of the legal profession. In the course of frequenting Sibbald's circulating library in Parliament Square, where he must have spent a good deal of time in rummaging the dusty shelves for rare old songs and romances, he had occasionally 'a distant view' of some of the literary celebrities of the time. Among them was the unfortunate Andrew Macdonald, author of Vimonda, and also from this library vantage-ground he saw, at a distance, 'the boast of Scotland, Robert Burns.'[2] The Parliament House itself was less interesting to Scott than his beloved library, but he must by this time have been very familiar with it, and often have seen the 'Lords' of the old generation, whose pictures have been so quaintly sketched by Lord Cockburn. Edinburgh, like any other collection of three hundred thousand people, has amongst its numbers persons possessed of some æsthetic conscience, persons who lament the past orgies of Vandalism, and who do not admire the present triumphs of commercial architecture. But such men are naturally not as a rule to be found in Town or Parish Councils, and seldom indeed in public posts of any kind. Thus the population has always seemed wholly given over to the worship of the æsthetic Baal, and as a consequence the name of Lord Cockburn shines in almost solitary splendour as that of a dignitary who protested against the incredible doings of ignorance and avarice dressed in the authority of municipal rank. Cockburn bitterly regretted the destruction of the old Parliament House, which, he says, was, both outside and in, a curious and interesting place. 'The old building exhibited some respectable turrets, some ornamented windows and doors, and a handsome balustrade. But the charm that ought to have saved it was its colour and its age, which, however, were the very things that caused its destruction. About one hundred and seventy years had breathed over it a grave grey hue. The whole aspect was venerable and appropriate; becoming the air and character of a sanctuary of Justice. But a mason pronounced it to be all Dead Wall.[3] The officials to whom, at a period when there was no public taste in Edinburgh,[4] this was addressed, believed him; and the two fronts were removed in order to make way for the bright free-stone and contemptible decorations that now disgrace us.... I cannot doubt that King Charles tried to spur his horse against the Vandals when he saw the profanation begin. But there was such an utter absence of public spirit in Edinburgh then, that the building might have been painted scarlet without anybody objecting.'

[2] 'I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's 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 by 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 unpromising title of "The Justice of the Peace." I whispered 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.'—Letter to J. G. LOCKHART.

[3] This means, when translated, that it was plain wall, without any architectural or æsthetic value.

[4] Observe the delightful ambiguity.

Among the most vivid childish memories of Scott and his contemporaries was that of the Krames. It is described in the Heart of Midlothian as a narrow, crooked lane, winding between the Old Tolbooth and the Luckenbooths on the one side, and the buttresses and projections of St. Giles's Cathedral on the other. At one time, as Scott mentions, the narrow court, with its booths plastered against the sides of the Cathedral, was occupied by the hosiers, hatters, glovers, mercers, milliners, and drapers, who removed, however, to the South Bridge as soon as it was opened. The Krames then fell into the hands of the toy-merchants, and became the paradise of childhood. Its glories were maintained all the year round, but at New Year time especially it was the enchanted ground of the city youngsters. To the youthful Cockburn it was like one of the Arabian Nights' bazaars in Bagdad, and there is a touch of personal recollection, too, in Scott's picture (Heart of Midlothian, chap. vi.) of the little loiterers in the Krames, 'enchanted by the rich display of hobby-horses, babies, and Dutch toys, yet half-scared by the cross looks of the withered pantaloon, or spectacled old lady, by whom those tempting wares were watched and superintended.' The Krames disappeared, on the demolition of the adjacent Tolbooth, in 1817.

CHAPTER XII

Topics of Talk—Religion—Scott's Freedom from Fanaticism—Dilettantism of the 'liberal young Men'—Politics—Basis of Scott's Toryism—Cockburn's Anecdote of Table-talk—Men of the Old School—Robertson the Historian—His History of Charles V.—His noble Generosity—Closing Years—Anecdotes.

In all probability Walter Scott was not very greatly interested or influenced by the general conversation. Neither by nature nor by circumstances was he ever in danger of being seduced into fanaticism of any kind. As regards religion, his was the simple faith of one who reverenced God as the Omnipotent whose power meant justice, goodness, truth and love, and who loved his fellow-men, content to be happy himself and to try to pour out happiness on all around him. His mind did not hanker after theories on the mystery of existence. In fact, he was a 'moderate' of the best kind, whose only anxiety was that his life should be in the right. They seek in vain who search his volumes for philosophical wisdom or prophetic gleams. He never posed as preacher or as sage. He accepted the religion of his time, and felt himself at home in the Episcopal Church of Scotland rather than in the Calvinistic temples, whose services always repelled him by their gloom and dryness. Still less was he attracted by anything intellectually fanatical. His mind naturally rejected humbug. He was not one of the dilettante young gentlemen whose talk was of chemistry because Lavoisier had made it fashionable. Nor was he one of Cockburn's 'liberal young men of Edinburgh,' who lived upon Adam Smith, a sound enough, but for them apt to be windy, diet. I have no doubt he appreciated the greatness and good sense of the author of the Wealth of Nations, and the value of the brilliant work of Lavoisier, but the direction of his intellectual interests was determined by his heart. And his heart was in the story of the Past, glowing over the old ballads, songs, and romances of the age of chivalry and glory. He was not a party politician any more than he was a chemist or an economist. He was a Tory only because his sympathies were with the kind of people who composed that party. He identified the party with the gallantry and loyalty of the Cavalier, with the free, wholesome life of the country as opposed to the grasping selfishness and coarse materialism of the town, and with the generous sense of honour which made himself the truest and sweetest of gentlemen. His Toryism was a sentiment as far above the actual existing politics of his party as Milton's ideal republicanism was above the practice of his Puritan contemporaries, whom he styles 'owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.' Scott's saving gift of humour saved him from sharing the painful impression of which Lord Cockburn speaks. He was not so easily pained. When worthy people talk nonsense in the bosom of the family, they should not be taken too seriously even by boys. 'My father's house (Lord Cockburn says) was one of the places where the leaders and the ardent followers of the party in power were in the constant habit of assembling. I can sit yet, in imagination, at the small side-table, and overhear the conversation, a few feet off, at the established Wednesday dinner. How they raved! What sentiments! What principles! Not that I differed from them. I thought them quite right, and hated liberty and the people as much as they did. But this drove me into an opposite horror; for I was terrified out of such wits as they left me at the idea of bloodshed, and it never occurred to me that it could be avoided. My reason no sooner began to open, and to get some fair-play, than the distressing wisdom of my ancestors began to fade, and the more attractive sense that I met with among the young men into whose company our debating societies threw me, gradually hardened me into what I became—whatever this was.' Fortunately Cockburn, though he became a Whig and a political lawyer, did not let his mind become narrowed against the larger human interests. His sketches of some of the representative men of the older generation are as warm and appreciative as could be wished. He speaks of the pleasure he felt in having seen them, though it was at a time when he could only judge of their qualities from the respect which they commanded even among the young. One of these was Dr. William Robertson, described in Guy Mannering by Mr. Pleydell, with some pride, as 'our historian of Scotland, of the Continent, and of America.' Robertson's long and illustrious career was almost wholly connected with Edinburgh. He was educated at the University there, and about 1760 became minister of Old Greyfriars, which had been his father's charge before, and where Pleydell conducts Colonel Mannering to hear him preach. He was greater as a church leader and a man of letters than as a preacher. Lord Brougham, who was his grand-nephew, says that he preferred moral to gospel subjects, in order to discountenance the fanaticism of the evangelicals. As a church leader, he may be called the Lord North of the Church of Scotland. The 'moderatism' of Robertson led, after other secessions, eventually to the Disruption of 1843. But in spite of his professional activities, Robertson was essentially a literary artist. Conscientious and prolonged research gave a value to his historical works, which largely atoned for the monotony of his somewhat too ornate and dignified style. He has the glory—and that too, when Samuel Johnson was at his zenith—of having established a record in literary remuneration. For his history of Charles V. he received £4500, the largest sum which had till then been paid for a single work. No one will grudge the reward to the man who, at the age of twenty-two, with a country clergyman's income of less than £100 a year, took into his charge his orphaned brother and six sisters, and postponed his marriage for several years that he might give them education. In the last two years of his life, 1791-93, he was taken to reside at Grange House, a rare old mansion, the seat of the family of Dick Lauder, of Grange and Fountainhall. Here the enfeebled old man, quite broken down by disease of the liver, spent his time as much as possible in the garden. The Cockburn family, who lived close by at Hope Park, were intimate friends, and thus young Henry came to see a great deal of the Principal in the last summer of his life. He describes the historian as 'a pleasant-looking old man, with an eye of great vivacity and intelligence, a large projecting chin, small hearing-trumpet fastened by a black ribbon to a button-hole of his coat, and a rather large wig, powdered and curled.' For all his feebleness, with deafness superadded, he seems up to the last to have been able to take an animated part in conversation, whenever a favourite subject happened to be started at his table.

CHAPTER XIII

More Men of the Old School—Dr. Erskine—Scott on Church Disputes—His Admiration of Erskine's Character—Anecdote of Erskine's Walk to Fife—Professor Ferguson—His History of Rome—Abstainer and Vegetarian—Picture of Ferguson's Appearance—Odd Habits—Travels to Italy.

When Colonel Mannering and Mr. Pleydell went to Greyfriars Church to hear Dr. Robertson, they found, somewhat to their disappointment, that the great historian was not to be the preacher that morning. 'Never mind,'said the counsellor, 'have a moment's patience, and we shall do very well.' The preacher they actually did hear was that distinguished and excellent man, Dr. John Erskine, who was Robertson's colleague in the pastoral charge of Greyfriars. Scott describes his external appearance as not prepossessing: 'A remarkably fair complexion, strangely contrasted with a black wig without a grain of powder; a narrow chest and a stooping posture; hands which, placed like props on either side of the pulpit, seemed necessary rather to support the person than to assist the gesticulation of the preacher—no gown, not even that of Geneva, and a gesture which seemed scarce voluntary. "The preacher seems a very ungainly person," said Mannering. "Never fear, he's the son of an excellent Scottish lawyer—he'll show blood, I'll warrant him." The learned counsellor predicted truly.' They listen, in fact, to a typical specimen of Scottish pulpit eloquence, and Mannering is fain to admit that he had seldom heard so much learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument, brought into the service of Christianity. There is no doubt that in this most delightful chapter (xxxvii.) of Guy Mannering we have Scott himself in the person of Mr. Paulus Pleydell. And in the remarks of the witty counsellor we get some light here and there on how Scott regarded some of those questions which by our Whigs and philosophical Radicals and suchlike are regarded as so much more important and dignified than old ballads and mere human questions of noble courage, love, kindness, fun, and truth. Speaking of Robertson and Erskine's notorious difference in regard to church government, Mannering asks the advocate what he thinks of these points of difference: 'Why, I hope, Colonel, a plain man may go to heaven without thinking about them at all.' That was Walter Scott, God bless his memory! He was too much a living soul to waste his time or his brain power on the pitiful, dry, deadening rubbish of polemics in religion or in affairs of state. He had warm blood in his veins and a warm heart in his breast, and therefore could not waste his manhood on the marvellous speculations of the 'liberal young men of Edinburgh.' Therefore, to pervert a sentence of Carlyle, he became Walter Scott of the Universe, instead of drying up into a fossil Chancellor or Judge. What interested Scott in Erskine and Robertson, as it did in all such human beings whom he ever knew, was the beautiful, simple goodness of heart, which was so much finer a thing than the fleeting glory of eloquence or power. He tells with gusto how, in spite of differences of opinion the greatest possible in their sphere, the two good men never for a moment lost personal regard or esteem for each other, or suffered malignity to interfere with their opposition. Erskine was indeed very generally esteemed even by his opponents for his candour and kindliness, and his personal qualities went more to make his high reputation than the marked ability displayed in his works on Divinity. Cockburn, who, like Scott, used to attend his church, says he was all soul and no body; and compares the stooping figure of the old man, as he walked along, with his hands in his sides, and his elbows turned outwards, to a piece of old china with two handles. He also mentions the interesting fact that Erskine, as well as Robertson, habitually spoke 'good honest natural Scotch.' To illustrate his assertion that there was nothing this good man would not do for truth or a friend, Cockburn relates a characteristic anecdote: 'His friend Henry Erskine had once some interest in a Fife election, but whether as a candidate or not I can't say, in which the Doctor had a vote. Being too old and feeble to bear the motion of a carriage or of a boat, he was neither asked nor expected to attend; but loving Henry Erskine, and knowing that victories depended on single votes, he determined to walk the whole way round by Stirling Bridge, which would have taken him at least a fortnight; and he was only prevented from doing so, after having arranged all his stages, by the contest having been unexpectedly given up. Similar sacrifices were familiar to the heroic and affectionate old gentleman.' Dr. Erskine died at Edinburgh in 1803. His father was the famous lawyer, John Erskine, whose great work the Institutes of the Law of Scotland is understood to be still the leading authority on its subject.

In the list of the young friends with whom Walter Scott chiefly associated about 1788-89 occurs the name of Adam Ferguson, who continued to be a cherished intimate, and became, in 1818, Scott's tenant and neighbour at Huntley Burn on the lands of Abbotsford. His father was the venerable and famous Professor Adam Ferguson, who, taken all round, was probably the ablest of the many remarkable men who signalised Edinburgh in this period. From about 1745 to 1757 he had been chaplain to the 42nd Highlanders, or Black Watch, and it is mentioned that no orders could keep him in the rear during an action. He was next appointed Keeper of the Advocates' Library in succession to David Hume. He remained in this post for less than a year, and soon after began his connection with Edinburgh University, first as Professor of Natural Philosophy, and then, in 1764, as Professor of Moral Philosophy. The latter subject was his favourite study, and he filled the chair for twenty years. During this time he wrote his great work, the History of the Roman Republic. He was a man of original mind, and had a rare faculty of extempore lecturing, for which his practical experience in the world and his extensive travels in Europe and America must have supplied him with a rich and varied fund of striking illustrations. In his personal habits he was an exception to his generation, being a strict abstainer from both wine and animal food. In consequence of this peculiarity he seems to have refrained from dining out, except with his relative Dr. Joseph Black, a kindred spirit; and his son used to say it was delightful to see the two philosophers rioting over a boiled turnip! 'When I first knew him (says Lord Cockburn), he was a spectacle well worth beholding. His hair was silky and white; his eyes animated and light blue; his cheeks sprinkled with broken red, like autumnal apples, but fresh and healthy; his lips thin, and the under one curled. A severe paralytic attack had reduced his animal vitality, though it left no external appearance, and he required considerable artificial heat. His raiment, therefore, consisted of half-boots lined with fur, cloth breeches, a long cloth waistcoat with capacious pockets, a single-breasted coat, a cloth greatcoat also lined with fur, and a felt hat commonly tied by a ribbon below the chin. His boots were black; but with this exception the whole coverings, including the hat, were of a Quaker grey colour, or of a whitish brown; and he generally wore the fur greatcoat within doors. When he walked forth, he used a tall staff, which he commonly held at arm's-length out towards the right side; and his two coats, each buttoned by only the upper button, flowed open below, and exposed the whole of his curious and venerable figure. His gait and air were noble; his gesture slow; his look full of dignity and composed fire. He looked like a philosopher from Lapland. Domestically he was kind, but anxious and peppery. His temperature was regulated by Fahrenheit; and often, when sitting quite comfortably, he would start up and put his wife and daughters into commotion, because his eye had fallen on the instrument, and discovered that he was a degree too hot or too cold. He always locked the door of his study when he left it, and took the key in his pocket; and no housemaid got in till the accumulation of dust and rubbish made it impossible to put the evil day off any longer; and then woe on the family. He shook hands with us boys one day in summer 1793, on setting off, in a strange sort of carriage, and with no companion except his servant, James, to visit Italy for a new edition of his history. He was then about seventy-two, and had to pass through a good deal of war; but returned in about a year, younger than ever.'

From this time, however, his remarkable figure ceased to be seen in Edinburgh. His last years were spent mostly in rural retirement, and he died at St. Andrews in 1816.

CHAPTER XIV

'Jupiter' Carlyle—Noble Looks—Friend of Robertson and John Home—The Play of Douglas—Anecdote of Dr. Carlyle—Dr. Joseph Black—Latent Heat—His personal Appearance—Anecdote of last Illness—His History of Great Britain—Forerunner of the Modern School.

Of the other eighteenth-century Edinburgh worthies in Cockburn's little gallery, the best-known name is that of 'Jupiter' Carlyle, the minister of Inveresk. Carlyle's fame, or notoriety, what you will, came from his intimate relations with the eminent characters of his time, such as Hume, Blair, Home, and Adam Smith. If he was not great himself, his wise counsels aided his friends to achieve greatness. The charm of his manners was extraordinary, and his countenance and bearing so nobly imposing as to suggest the classical eke-name of Jupiter. While he lived, Carlyle and culture were synonymous. Cockburn, who scarcely appreciated his value, admits the grace and kindness of his manner, and says that he was one of the noblest-looking old gentlemen he almost ever beheld. Carlyle was a conspicuous figure in the General Assembly. He was a firm ally of Principal Robertson, whose moderate policy was exactly to the mind of the extremely 'Broad' minister of Inveresk. Great excitement was aroused by his open support of his friend Home in producing the play of Douglas. It is said that he took part in the private rehearsal of the play, and made a distinct hit as Old Norval. At the third public representation he was present in the theatre, and witnessed the extraordinary success of Home's piece. The play was received by crowded audiences for many successive nights with universal and vociferous applause. 'Where's your Shakespeare noo?' was the triumphant shout of a patriotic but uncritical admirer. The play of Douglas, though rejected by the keen judgment of Garrick as 'totally unfit for the stage,' has passages of fine rhetoric, and shows at least an easy mastery of elegant language. The author Home was suspended by the General Assembly for his audacity in writing a play while he was a minister of the Church of Scotland. A few years after, he received a pension of £300 a year, which enabled him to spend the remainder of his life in happiness and peace. Carlyle, his neighbour and constant friend, has done full justice to the amiable qualities of Home, who was the liberal friend of struggling merit in the hour of need. Carlyle died in 1805 at the age of eighty-four, and Home in 1808, aged eighty-six.

Dr. Carlyle was a famous bon vivant. His physical powers were fortunately adequate to carry him through in any company. It is strange and amusing in these days to think of a man like him sitting through the prolonged convivialities of his clubs and parties. For Carlyle, both as a divine and an aristocrat, was the very pink of propriety. He would have deplored excess in himself as he did in others. He was, in fact, a very temperate gentleman, and his conduct was admirable and exemplary. The respect that was paid to his merits was only increased by the fact that he could drink his four or five bottles of wine with impunity—nay, with advantage. He was often the better, never the worse, of his wine. One evening he was leaving Pinkieburn House, where he had dined, and wending his way home with all his usual Olympian dignity. An old woman-servant stood at the side-door, beholding the minister with reverent admiration. 'Ay,' she was heard to say, 'there goes Dr. Carlyle, the good man—as steady as a wall, and he's had his ain share o' four bottles o' port.'

Dr. Joseph Black, the eminent chemist, lived in Edinburgh from 1766 to his death in 1799. He was Professor of Chemistry in the University, but his delicate health seems to have disabled him from continuing the researches so fruitfully pursued in Glasgow (1756-66). His fame rests on the discovery of Latent Heat, and he seems to have been the first to apply hydrogen gas in raising balloons. Looking at his portrait, one realises the remarkable truth and felicity of Cockburn's word-picture: 'A striking and beautiful person; tall, very thin, and cadaverously pale; his hair carefully powdered, though there was little of it except what was collected into a long thin queue; his eyes dark, clear, and large, like deep pools of pure water. He wore black speckless clothes, silk stockings, silver buckles, and either a slim green silk umbrella, or a genteel brown cane. The general frame and air were feeble and slender. The wildest boy respected Black. No lad could be irreverent towards a man so pale, so gentle, so elegant, and so illustrious. So he glided like a spirit through our rather mischievous sportiveness unharmed. He died seated with a bowl of milk on his knee, of which his ceasing to live did not spill a drop; a departure which it seemed, after the event happened, might have been foretold of this attenuated philosophical gentleman.' We shall not omit the companion picture to this touching scene, the even more tranquil death of Dr. Robert Henry, the historian. Four days before his death, he wrote to Sir Harry Moncrieff the strange message: 'Come out here directly. I have got something to do this week, I have got to die.' Moncrieff obeyed the summons, and sat with him alone for what turned out to be the last three days of his life. During this time, as he sat in his easy-chair, now dozing, now conversing, a neighbouring minister, who was a notorious and much-dreaded bore, came to call. 'Keep him out,' cried the doctor, 'don't let the cratur in here.' It was too late, the cratur entered, but when he came in, behold the doctor to all appearance fast asleep. Moncrieff at once taking in the situation, signed to the intruder to be silent. The visitor sat down, apparently to wait till Dr. Henry might awake. Every time he offered to speak, he was checked by solemn gestures from Moncrieff or Mrs. Henry. 'So he sat on, all in perfect silence, for above a quarter of an hour; during which Sir Harry occasionally detected the dying man peeping cautiously through the fringes of his eyelids to see how his visitor was coming on. At last Sir Harry tired, and he and Mrs. Henry pointing to the poor doctor, fairly waved the visitor out of the room; on which the doctor opened his eyes wide, and had a tolerably hearty laugh; which was renewed when the sound of the horse's feet made them certain that their friend was actually off the premises. Dr. Henry died that night.' His one work, a remarkable pioneer production, was the History of Great Britain. Though severely criticised at the time of its publication, the work certainly deserves Cockburn's praise of 'considerable merit in the execution.' Its author, however, has the credit, apart from the intrinsic value of his own attempt, of having discovered the new and fruitful idea of making history display the internal growth of the nation as well as its political development. In short, Henry was the forerunner of Macaulay and Green.

CHAPTER XV

The 'Meadows' one Hundred Years ago—A Resort of great Men—Vixerunt fortes—Their Intimacy and Quarrels—Hume and Ferguson—Home, the happy—His boundless Generosity—Sympathy with Misfortune—Home and Edinburgh Society—Sketch by Scott—'The Close of an Era.'

Time's changes have altered the state of the 'Meadows.' This park is now surrounded by houses, a tramway line passes half-way down its south side, and a constant stream of passengers between north and south makes its Middle Walk a busy thoroughfare. The privacy is gone for ever that made it in the eighteenth century 'so distinctly the resort of our philosophy and our fashion.' It is now a noisy playground for the flannelled fools at the wicket and the muddied oafs at the goal. In the corners are swings, parallel bars, etc., for the use of little children. But in the days of Scott's boyhood, it was possible to enjoy a quiet, meditative stroll in these still suburban fields. And the great learned and legal luminaries made the Meadows their resort for talk or for quiet meditation. The lofty yet simple character of the men of this great generation, but still more their strong nationality, combined with their graceful manners and extraordinary benevolence, made a strong impression on the imagination of Scott. The brilliance of the succeeding era, which he himself created, never quite made up to his mind for what was lost. The change was inevitable, but to him the men whom as a boy he had seen in the Meadows or on the streets of Edinburgh, the geniuses whose works and reputation had then only been known to him by name, remained always the ideal figures of Scotland's literary and scientific greatness. He was struck also by the breadth of mind which they had, almost without exception, and which he, almost alone, carried over into the next century: for those great men were like a family of amiable brothers, free from jealousy and eagerly ready to make common cause of each individual's fame. In reviewing Mackenzie's Life of Home for the Quarterly in 1827, he speaks of them in this touching strain: 'There were men of literature in Edinburgh before she was renowned for romances, reviews, and magazines:

"Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona";

and a single glance at the authors and men of science who dignified the last generation will serve to show that, in those days, there were giants in the North. The names of Hume, Robertson, and Ferguson stand high in the list of British historians. Adam Smith was the father of the economical system in Britain, and his standard work will long continue the text-book of that science. Dr. Black as a chemist opened the path of discovery which has since been prosecuted with such splendid success. Of metaphysicians Scotland boasted perhaps but too many; to Hume and Ferguson we must add Reid, and, though younger, still of the same school, Dugald Stewart. In natural philosophy Scotland could present Professor Robison, James Watt, and Clerk of Eldin, who taught the British seamen the road to assured conquest. Others we could mention, but these form a phalanx whose reputation was neither confined to their narrow, poor, and rugged native country, nor to England and the British dominions, but known and respected wherever learning, philosophy, and science were honoured.' In regard to the personal friendship of these great men, be it remembered, to the honour of the excellent 'Jupiter' Carlyle, that he was a great peacemaker among them. So was John Home, the happy. Ferguson, it would seem, had the defects of his virtues. Sir Walter, indeed, who never minimised the merits of any man except himself, says he kept his passions and feelings in strong subjection to his reason, but there were occasions when the 'passions and feelings' refused to be controlled. In fact, he was a constant thorn in the patient side of Carlyle; being jealous of his rivals and indignant against any assumption of superiority. However, Home and Carlyle kept Adam Smith, Ferguson, and Hume on very good terms; while Robertson's good-nature was so great, that it disarmed Ferguson's weakness without the aid of the peacemakers. Thus they all dwelt in unity, and 'held their being on the terms—each aid the ithers.' And so Carlyle remarks, as if the assumption were the only possible one, 'David Hume did not live to see Ferguson's History, otherwise his candid praise would have prevented all the subtle remarks of the jealous or resentful.' Very probably, after all, for Hume always regarded Ferguson as the master spirit of the group. He was certainly the most masterful, for, as Cockburn records, though a most kind and excellent man, he was as fiery as gunpowder. The darling of the fraternity was of course John Home. Famed in his youth for sprightliness and wit, he simply charmed every company in which he mingled. He was joyous himself, and the cause of joy in others. 'Such was the charm of his fine spirits in those days (says Carlyle, who knew and loved him like a very brother), that when he left the room prematurely, which was but seldom the case, the company grew dull, and soon dissolved.' To praise his works was a sure passport to his favour, and after once conferring his esteem there was nothing he would not do or say to attest it. For the sake of the poor he made himself a beggar, and was thus able to dispense constantly, not in charity but in friendly kindness to the struggling and unfortunate, many times the amount of his modest pension. For this his name should stand above all Greek, above all Roman fame, save that of Cimon or of Donatello. After all, the cultured and refined poor are the greatest sufferers in our modern civilisation. They suffer, without betraying it, the same privations of want and cold as the more favoured inhabitants of the slums, and they suffer in addition unspeakable agonies of mind, beholding themselves daily sinking in the struggle to climb up the slippery side of the pit of poverty. Their very work is spoiled and depreciated by the ceaseless haunting of the spectre of ruin, and the absolute certainty that the struggle is hopeless. Such persons were happy to be near John Home. He was their Providence. He sought them out, made their acquaintance, gained their confidence, guessed the needs they would not tell, and never failed to put the poor wretches in the way of hope. When shall we see his like again? Probably when another Donatello ruins himself for his friends, and when another youthful de Medici bestows a second fortune on the ruined old artist, to maintain the credit of his father's name. No wonder that Scott saw Home as the object of general respect and veneration. The kindly old man mingled in society to the very last. He died in 1808. 'There was a general feeling (Scott adds) that his death closed an era in the literary history of Scotland, and dissolved a link, which, though worn and frail, seemed to connect the present generation with that of their fathers.'

CHAPTER XVI

Ladies of the Old School—Anecdotes told by Scott, Dr. Carlyle, and Lord Cockburn—Their Speech—'Suphy' Johnston—Anecdote of Suphy and Dr. Gregory—Miss Menie Trotter—Her Dream—Views of Religion.

Speaking of the society manners of the old generation, Scott more than hints that the upper classes in Scotland had only just emerged from a very rough and socially ignorant condition. He tells an anecdote of 'a dame of no small quality, the worshipful Lady Pumphraston, who buttered a pound of green tea, sent her as an exquisite delicacy, dressed it as a condiment to a rump of salt beef, and complained that no degree of boiling would render those foreign greens tender.' One of the most extraordinary passages in Carlyle's book is a description of a tour he made in his boyhood—it was in the summer of 1733—with his father and another clergyman, Jardine, minister of Lochmaben. They visited Bridekirk, the family seat of the Carlyles. The laird was from home, but the lady came to the door, and with boisterous hospitality ordered the party to alight and come in. She is described as a very large and powerful virago, about forty years of age. Her appearance naturally startled the boy. A gentlewoman like this he had never seen, and the picture fixed itself in his memory for life. 'Lady Bridekirk (he says) was like a sergeant of foot in women's clothes; or rather like an over-grown coachman of a Quaker persuasion. On our peremptory refusal to alight, she darted into the house, like a hogshead down a slope, and returned instantly with a pint bottle of brandy—a Scots pint, I mean—and a stray beer-glass, into which she filled almost a bumper. After a long grace said by Mr. Jardine—for it was his turn now, being the third brandy-bottle we had seen since we left Lochmaben—she emptied it to our healths, and made the gentlemen follow her example: she said she would spare me as I was so young, but ordered a maid to bring a ginger-bread cake from the cupboard, a luncheon of which she put in my pocket. This lady was famous, even in the Annandale border, both at the bowl and in battle: she could drink a Scots pint of brandy with ease; and when the men grew obstreperous in their cups, she could either put them out of doors, or to bed, as she found most convenient.' In the latter half of the century, however, the typical lady of rank was a very great improvement on Lady Bridekirk. Like that hospitable virago, she was distinctly Scottish in speech and in dress. 'They all dressed (says Cockburn), and spoke, and did, exactly as they chose; but without any other vulgarity than what perfect naturalness is sometimes mistaken for. They were a delightful set; strong-headed, warm-hearted, and high-spirited; the fire of their tempers not always latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the modes and habits of the modern world; and adhering to their own ways, so as to stand out, like primitive rocks, above ordinary society.'

There is no doubt they had an individuality and distinction, which the universal adoption of Southern customs and speech has since made impossible. They were, like Scott's Mrs. Bethune Baliol, of 'real old-fashioned Scottish growth,' and their dialect was the same. 'It was Scottish, decidedly Scottish, often containing phrases and words little used in the present day. But the tone and mode of pronunciation were as different from the usual accent of the ordinary Scotch patois, as the accent of St. James's is from that of Billingsgate. The vowels were not pronounced much broader than in the Italian language, and there was none of the disagreeable drawl which is so offensive to modern ears. In short, it seemed to be the Scottish as spoken by the ancient court of Scotland, to which no idea of vulgarity could be attached.' The Countess of Eglinton, to whom Allan Ramsay dedicated his Gentle Shepherd, was the ideal type of this generation in Scott's estimation (see Note G to Highland Widow).

Miss Sophia, or 'Suphy,' Johnston, of the family of Hilton, was perhaps even more deserving of the choice. Her picture has been drawn by Lady Anne Barnard and by Lord Cockburn, who as a boy knew 'Suphy' in her old age. Her character was just as independent as is possible. She had 'her own proper den' in Windmill Street. One female servant was all the attendance she required. This privileged person generally left her alone all the Sunday, when by Miss Suphy's orders she locked the door upon her mistress and carried away the key. Thus the old lady was saved the trouble of rising to admit visitors, but she had a hole through which she could easily see who was at the door and even have a little talk when she felt inclined; with this very considerable advantage that, whenever she had had enough, she could tell the caller to go away. This remarkable woman, owing to her father's eccentricity, had been brought up without education and passed her youth 'in utter rusticity.' She made herself a good carpenter and smith, and even when past middle age she would still occasionally shoe a horse. Lady Anne calls her a droll, ingenious fellow, and says she was by many people suspected of being a man. She was a great reader, having taught herself to read and write after she came to woman's age. Cockburn, who saw her first at Niddrie, the house of the Wauchopes, near Edinburgh, when she was about sixty, did not think her 'Amazonian,' but his description of her appearance seems to suit the epithet. 'Her dress was always the same—a man's hat when out of doors and generally when within them, a cloth covering exactly like a man's greatcoat, buttoned closely from the chin to the ground, worsted stockings, strong shoes with large brass clasps.' Such peculiarities, in those simpler and more natural times, did not affect her welcome in society. She was prized by the most fashionable and aristocratic persons for her excellent disposition and her rare intellectual powers, for her racy talk, spiced with anecdote and shrewd, often sarcastic observation; and for the originality of her views, which she never hesitated to express with refreshing pith and freedom of speech. Her natural cheerfulness was never impaired either by the loneliness of her life or by the narrowness of her fortune. When shall we find again in a noble lady's drawing-room so picturesque a figure 'sitting, with her back to the light, in the usual arm-chair by the side of the fire, in the Niddrie drawing-room, with her greatcoat and her hat, her dark wrinkled face, and firmly pursed mouth, the two feet set flat on the floor and close together, so that the public had a full view of the substantial shoes, the book held by the two hands very near the eyes?'

Suphy and her contemporaries were all as stout of heart as some of them were strong of arm. They had no fear of death, and, though they enjoyed life and took a deep interest in affairs around them, they had no hankering concern to ward off the inevitable. When Suphy's strength was giving way, the famous Dr. Gregory cautioned her to leave off animal food, saying she must be content with 'spoon meat' unless she wished to die. 'Dee, Doctor; odd! I'm thinking they've forgotten an auld wife like me up yonder.' Next day the doctor called, and found her at the spoon meat—supping a haggis!

Of a little later date was Miss Menie Trotter, of the Mortonhall family, with whom Lord Cockburn's sketches end:—

'She was of the agrestic order. Her pleasures lay in the fields and long country walks. Ten miles at a stretch, within a few years of her death, was nothing to her.... One of her friends asking her, not long before her death, how she was, she said, "Very weel—quite weel. But, eh, I had a dismal dream last nicht; a fearful dream!" "Ay, I'm sorry for that; what was it?" "Ou, what d'ye think? Of a' places i' the world, I dreamed I was in heaven! And what d'ye think I saw there? Deil hae 't but thoosands upon thoosands, and ten thoosands upon ten thoosands, o' stark naked weans! That wad be a dreadfu' thing, for ye ken I ne'er could bide bairns a' my days."'

The great memoirist concludes his sketches of the old Scottish ladies with a criticism on their religion which has an interest now as revealing the religiosity that characterised his own time. He declares that from the freedom of their remarks and their free use of religious terms, they would all have been deemed irreligious in his day. We are happily far removed now from the time when cheerfulness and freedom of expression on sacred subjects would excite the horror of the pious.

CHAPTER XVII

Scott's Contemporaries in Edinburgh—Local 'Societies'—The Speculative—Scott's Explosion—Visit of Francis Jeffrey to the 'Den'—Anecdote of Murray of Broughton—General View of the youthful Societies.

How deeply Scott's imagination was affected, how richly his memory filled, how strongly his inestimable natural qualities confirmed and developed by his long and intimate association with such pricelessly rare and noble specimens of the old Scottish national character as have flitted through the last few chapters, it requires no help of ours to convince any reader of the Scotch Novels. There is more danger perhaps of exaggerating any influence that may have been exercised upon him by his equals in age and juniors with whom he came in contact in general society, and particularly in the 'literary societies' of the city. There have been at all periods, we believe, many societies of this kind for the young aspirants at Edinburgh University. Naturally the young bloods of the law are the most anxious to shine in such arenas. Naturally also the prize of reputation usually falls to the glib and fluent speaker, especially if he has some real ability and learning to second his tongue. The better the society is attended, the more genuine is the mettle required in its leaders. It is, however, perhaps safe to assert the general principle that success in these meetings implies talent rather than genius, forensic skill rather than learning or intellect. Thus we can quite believe, as stated in his Life, that for Francis Jeffrey his entrance into the Speculative Society did more than any other event in the whole course of his education, though such a statement about Scott would be ludicrous. We can quite agree with Cockburn that the same society has trained more young men to public speaking, talent, and liberal thought than all the other private institutions in Scotland. At the same time we do not in the least regret that it did not effect all this for Walter Scott. He says with his usual unconscious self-depreciation that he never made any great figure in these societies. He was a member, however, of several in succession, and took some part in their proceedings. He would have preferred to be silent, but the rules of the societies compelled him at times to contribute an essay. In his own opinion his essays were but very poor work. This they may have been from a critic's point of view. But they had the quality of genius. They were at least utterly different and distinct from all others. They astonished and delighted the fortunate hearers. We can gather some idea of this even from his own statement: 'I was like the Lord of Castle Rack-rent, who was obliged to cut down a tree to get a few faggots to boil the kettle; for the quantity of ponderous and miscellaneous knowledge 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 service." 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.' It was in January, 1791, that Scott became a member of the Speculative, the most ambitious of the literary societies. On the 11th of December, 1792, Francis Jeffrey was admitted. On that evening one of Scott's happy explosions occurred. He delivered an essay on Ballads, which so interested the future critic that he sought and obtained Scott's acquaintance, a circumstance which pleasantly revives the memory of Jeffrey now that his works, once so formidable, have fallen into the wallet where Time stores alms for Oblivion. Jeffrey called on Scott the very 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, Lockhart records, they went to a tavern and supped together. In this snug den of Walter's his character and interests were visibly and quaintly to be traced. It was full to overflowing of books, and a small painted cabinet contained old Scottish and Roman coins. A little print of Bonnie Prince Charlie was guarded by a claymore and a Lochaber axe, which had been given him by old Stewart of Invernahyle, a Jacobite client of his father's, who had been 'out' in both the 'Fifteen' and the 'Forty-five.' Below the picture a china saucer was hooked up against the wall. This was 'Broughton's saucer,' the memorial of a very striking incident in the domestic life of the Scotts. One autumn Mr. Scott senior had a client who came regularly every evening at a certain hour to the house, and remained in the Writer's private room usually till long after the family had gone to bed. The little mystery of the unknown visitor excited Mrs. Scott's curiosity, and her husband's vague statements increased it. One night, therefore, though she knew it was against her husband's desire, she entered the room with a salver in her hand, and offered the gentlemen a dish of tea. Mr. Scott very coldly refused it, but the stranger bowed and accepted a cup. Presently he took his leave, and Mr. Scott, lifting the empty cup he had used, threw it out on the pavement. His wife was astonished at first, but not when she heard the explanation: 'I may admit into my house, on business, persons wholly unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's.' It was actually the traitor Secretary Murray, who bought off his life and fortune by giving evidence against his gallant associates. The saucer belonging to the traitor's cup was appropriated by Walter for his collection. Lockhart gives an additional anecdote which equally brings out the disgust felt by the loyal-hearted Scots towards the traitor. 'When Murray was confronted with Sir John Douglas of Kelhead (ancestor of the Marquis 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 designation of Murray of Broughton—but that was a gentleman and a man of honour, and one that could hold up his head!"' A great deal of pardonable nonsense has been spoken and written by distinguished persons regarding the literary societies of their youth. We shall conclude with Scott's own general remarks, which are much more sensible and only exaggerated in depreciating himself. 'Looking back on those times, I cannot applaud in all respects the way in which our days were spent. There was too much idleness, and sometimes too much conviviality; but our hearts were warm, our minds honourably bent on knowledge and literary distinction; and if I, certainly the least informed of the party, may be permitted to bear witness, we were not without the fair and creditable means of obtaining the distinction to which we aspired.'

CHAPTER XVIII

The Scottish Bar—Two Careers open—Walter's Choice—Studies with William Clerk—The Law Professors—Hume's Lectures—Hard Study—Beginnings of social Distinction—Influence of Clerk—Early Love-story—Description of Walter Scott at Twenty.

Of the two branches of the legal profession, the bar offered the greatest attractions to young men ambitious of distinction. For mere financial success Walter Scott might have been tempted to take to the Writer's career. His father offered to take him at once into partnership, which would have meant 'an immediate prospect of a handsome independence.' But Walter was never very fond of money, and had then no expensive plans in view to make the acquisition of it a necessity. In all other respects he preferred the Advocate's life. It was the line of ambition and liberty. When he saw that his father also would prefer it, he hesitated no longer. Four arduous years of preparation (1789 to 1792) were devoted to the necessary legal studies. This period was utterly different from his Arts course. He studied with the greatest zeal and perseverance, giving his whole heart to the one aim. The companion of his studies was his cherished friend, William Clerk, whom he describes as '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 trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest degree.' At this time the Civil Law chair might be considered 'as in abeyance,' the Professor being almost in a state of dotage. It was different with the class of Scots Law. Under Professor David Hume, an enormous amount of legal learning had to be got up. Jeffrey, who attended the class in 1792, 'groaned over Hume's elaborate dulness,' but on Scott the subject seemed to exercise a charm. He considered Hume's prelections an honour to himself and an advantage to his country. He copied them over twice, which would mean the writing of four or five hundred closely packed pages. He speaks of Hume as having imported plan and order to the ancient and constantly altered structure of Scots Law by '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.'

Upon these years of legal study Scott could always look back with satisfaction. 'A little parlour (he tells in his fragment of Autobiography, referring to the 'den' where Jeffrey found him) was assigned me in my father's house, which was spacious and convenient (for a modest student), and I took possession of my new realms with all the feelings of novelty and liberty. Let me do justice to the only years of my life in which I applied to learning with stern, steady, and undeviating industry. The rule of my 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, Sundays excepted.... His house being at the extremity of Princes 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 Institutes and Pandects, as well as through the smaller copy of Erskine's Institutes of the Law of Scotland.'

At this time, as a natural consequence of advancing years, his parents had given over entertaining company, unless in the case of near relations. Walter, however, though he was thus left in a great measure to form connections for himself, found no difficulty in making his way into good society. He scarcely ever refers to his social triumphs, but from other sources we can gather that he soon became a notable and a favourite figure. Before he had achieved any literary reputation, he had conquered local fame by the charm of his personality and the freshness of his conversation. Cockburn, speaking of the year 1811, has recorded that 'people used to be divided at this time as to the superiority of Scott's poetry or his talk. His novels had not yet begun to suggest another alternative. Scarcely, however, even in his novels was he more striking or delightful than in society, where the halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.'

His early cultivation of society, which was of course a wholesome thing for a youth of twenty, was greatly favoured by his friendship with William Clerk. We have Lockhart's authority for the opinion that 'of all the connections he formed in life there was no one to whom he owed more.' Clerk's influence helped to decide him to take to the bar, the line of ambition and liberty. He then, as we have seen, by his very physical inertia, supplied Scott with a stimulating object during their legal studies. His influence on Scott's personal habits even was good and great. Walter's modesty and kind good-nature had perhaps made him a trifle more free and easy with his father's apprentices than was quite desirable for either him or them. They were, of course, his professional equals and the sharers in his daily pursuits, but their ideas and manners were not calculated to promote ambition so much as liberty. Walter, during his apprenticeship, was intentionally careless of appearances, and apt to be slovenly in his dress. He condescended to the clubs and festive resorts of the apprentices, a most dangerous thing for a genius, as Ferguson's blasted career had just proved. It was a fortunate enough and useful episode for the future author of Guy Mannering, but it was not a good school of manners or academy of habits for Walter Scott. Fortunately William Clerk, with his West-end prejudices, came just at the right time, to chaff his friend out of his slovenliness and to show him the way to a more wholesome and not less interesting society. Finally, of course, it was his own sound sense that made this amiable change in his habits so easy. To this period, that is, about 1790, belongs the most romantic episode of Walter Scott's life, his unrequited love for Margaret Stuart.[1] He had made her acquaintance in the Greyfriars churchyard on a wet Sunday afternoon, when she accepted his offered umbrella and his escort home, for 'young Walter Scott,' a Duchess of Sutherland at this time said, 'was a comely creature.' And here we may give Lockhart's description of Scott as seen by Clerk and Margaret and the rest of his Edinburgh friends:—

'His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging.... 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 changeful radiance, to which teeth of the most perfect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble expanse 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.... 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 ballroom, while all the world were capering in our view."'

[1] Scott's youthful love-dream lasted through several years. The lady eventually married Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, who was a banker in Edinburgh. Sir William acted a very friendly part during Scott's financial disaster of 1826-27.

CHAPTER XIX

The Advocate's 'Trials'—Scott and Clerk admitted to the Bar—Walter's first Fee—Connection of the Scotts with Lord Braxfield—Scottish Judges—Stories of Braxfield.

The trials set to candidates for admission into the Faculty of Advocates were duly passed by Scott and his friend Clerk on the same days. They were formally admitted to the fraternity on the 11th of July, 1792.

There is always some story of the young Advocate's first fee. When the ceremony of 'putting on the gown' was completed, Scott said to Clerk, putting on the air and tone of some Highland lassie waiting at the Cross to be 'fee'd' for the harvest, 'We've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, an' deil a ane has speir'd our price.' The friends were about to leave the Outer Court, when a friend, a solicitor, came up and gave Scott his first guinea fee. As he and Clerk went down the High Street, they passed a hosier's shop, and Scott remarked, 'This is a sort of wedding-day, Willie; I think I must go in and buy me a new nightcap.' Thus he 'wared' his guinea, but it is pleasing to know that his first big fee was spent on a silver taper-stand for his mother, which (Lockhart tells) the old lady used to point to with great satisfaction, as it stood on her chimney-piece five-and-twenty years afterwards.

Scott's 'thesis'—no doubt, like Alan Fairford's, a very pretty piece of Latinity—was dedicated to the terrible Lord Braxfield, 'the giant of the bench,' as Cockburn calls him, 'whose very name makes people start yet.' Braxfield was a friend and near neighbour of the Scotts, his house being No. 28 George Square. It is said that he was rather kind to nervous young advocates at their first appearance in a case, so long as they were not 'Bar flunkies'—his term for brainless fops. Braxfield lives in popular tradition as a monster of rough and savage cruelty, and the sketch of the man by Cockburn bears out the character only too well. The sketch may be quoted in full, for its intrinsic interest, and for the vivid light it throws on the character and manners of Scottish judges in the century following the Union.

'Strong-built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and his dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive.... Within the range of the Feudal and the Civil branches, and in every matter depending on natural ability and practical sense, he was very great; and his power arose more from the force of his reasoning and his vigorous application of principle, than from either the extent or the accuracy of his learning.... He had a colloquial way of arguing, in the form of question and answer, which, done in his clear, abrupt style, imparted a dramatic directness and vivacity to the scene.

'With this intellectual force, as applied to law, his merits, I fear, cease. Illiterate, and without any taste for refined enjoyment, strength of understanding, which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. Despising the growing improvement of manners, he shocked the feelings even of an age which, with more of the formality, had far less of the substance of decorum than our own. Thousands of his sayings have been preserved, and the substance of them is indecency; which he succeeded in making many people enjoy, or at least endure, by hearty laughter, energy of manner, and rough humour. Almost the only story I ever heard of him that had some fun in it without immodesty, was when a butler gave up his place because his lordship's wife was always scolding him. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "ye 've little to complain o'; ye may be thankfu' ye 're no married to her."

'It is impossible to blame his conduct as a criminal judge too gravely, or too severely. It was a disgrace to the age. A dexterous and practical trier of ordinary cases, he was harsh to prisoners even in his jocularity, and to every counsel whom he chose to dislike.... It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest; over which he would chuckle the more from observing that correct people were shocked.[1] Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness....

[1] His remark to Margaret, one of the 'Friends of the People,' who made a speech in his own defence, was, 'Ye're a very clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the war o' a hanging.'

'In the political trials of 1793 and 1794 he was the Jeffreys of Scotland. He, as the head of the court, and the only very powerful man it contained, was the real director of its proceedings. The reports make his abuse of the judgment seat bad enough: but his misconduct was not so fully disclosed in formal decisions and charges, as it transpired in casual remarks and general manner. "Let them bring me prisoners and I'll find them law" used to be openly stated as his suggestion, when an intended political prosecution was marred by anticipated difficulties. Mr. Horner (father of Francis), who was one of the juniors in Muir's case, told me that when he was passing, as was often done then, behind the bench to get into the box, Braxfield, who knew him, whispered—"Come awa', Mr. Horner, come awa', and help to hang[2] ane o' thae damned scoondrels." The reporter of Gerald's case could not venture to make the prisoner say more than that "Christianity was an innovation." But the full truth is, that in stating this view he added that all great men had been reformers, "even our Saviour himself." "Muckle he made o' that," chuckled Braxfield in an under voice; "he was hanget." Before Hume's Commentaries had made our criminal record intelligible, the form and precedents were a mystery understood by the initiated alone, and by nobody so much as by Mr. Joseph Norris, the ancient clerk. Braxfield used to quash anticipated doubts by saying—"Hoot! just gie me Josie Norrie and a gude jury, an' I'll doo for the fallow." He died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year.'

[2] Hang was his phrase for all kinds of punishment.

CHAPTER XX

Stories of the Judges—Lord Eskgrove—His Appearance—The Trials for Sedition—Anecdotes of Circuit Dinners—'Esky' and the Harangue—The Soldier's Breeches—Esky and the Veiled Witness—Henderson and the Fine—The Luss Robbers—Death of Eskgrove.

Stories about one or other of the judges were apparently the leading feature of conversation in Edinburgh society at the end of the eighteenth century. Lord Eskgrove, who, almost in his dotage at the age of seventy-six, was appointed to succeed Braxfield as head of the Criminal Court, was about the most ludicrous and childishly eccentric of the race. For a time it seemed the whole occupation of the wits to relate anecdotes about old Eskgrove. To give these anecdotes with a recognisable mimicry of his voice and manner was, in Cockburn's phrase, 'a sort of fortune in society.' And Scott, he adds, in those days was famous for this particularly. It was not the wit or the humour of Eskgrove which amused. He seems to have had neither. It was simply his personal oddity, and the utter incongruity of such an incredible creature elevated to a position such as his. His face is described as varying from a scurfy red to a scurfy blue. His nose was prodigious: the under lip enormous, and supported on a huge clumsy chin, which moved like the jaw of a Dutch toy. He walked with a slow, stealthy step—something between a walk and a hirple, and helped himself on by short movements of his elbows, backwards and forwards, like fins. His voice was low and mumbling. His pronunciation seems to have been fantastic in the extreme, especially in the way of cutting even short words into two. The following anecdotes from Cockburn, who knew him, 'when he was in the zenith of his absurdity,' bring 'Esky' very vividly before us.

At the trial of Fysche Palmer for sedition, he made one of the very few remarks he ever made which had some little merit of their own. It was a retort to Mr. John Haggart, one of the prisoner's counsel, who, in defending his client against the charge of disrespect to the king, quoted Burke's statement that kings are naturally lovers of low company. "Then, sir, that says very little for you or your client! for if kinggs be lovers of low company, low company ought to be lovers of kinggs!"

'Nothing disturbed him so much as the expense of the public dinner for which the judge on the circuit has a fixed allowance, and out of which the less he spends the more he gains. His devices for economy were often very diverting. His servant had strict orders to check the bottles of wine by laying aside the corks. Once at Stirling his lordship went behind a screen, while the company was still at table, and seeing an alarming row of corks, got into a warm altercation, which everybody heard, with John; maintaining it to be "impossibill" that they could have drunk so much. On being assured that they had, and were still going on—"Well, then, John, I must just protect myself!" On which he put a handful of the corks into his pocket, and resumed his seat.

'Like the poor man in the story, Lord Eskgrove was "sair hauden doon by yon turkey cock." The plague of his life for more than a year was Henry Brougham. In revenge the judge used to sneer at Brougham's eloquence by styling it or him the Harangue. "Well, gentle-men, what did the Harangue say next? Why, it said this" (mis-stating it); "but here, gentle-men, the Harangue was most plainly wrong, and not intelligibill."

'Everything was connected by his terror with republican horrors. I heard him, in condemning a tailor to death for murdering a soldier by stabbing him, aggravate the offence thus: "And not only did you murder him, whereby he was bereaved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell, the le-thall weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which were his Majes-ty's!"

'In the trial of Glengarry for murder in a duel, a lady of great beauty was called as a witness. She came into court veiled. But before administering the oath Eskgrove gave her this exposition of her duty—"Young woman! you will now consider yourself as in the presence of Almighty God and of this High Court. Lift up your veil; throw off all modesty, and look me in the face."

'Sir John Henderson of Fordell, a zealous Whig, once came before the court, their lordships having to fix the amount of some discretionary penalty which he had incurred. Eskgrove began to give his opinion in a very low voice, but loud enough to be heard by those next him, to the effect that the fine ought to be £50; when Sir John, with his usual imprudence, interrupted him and begged him to raise his voice, adding that if judges did not speak so as to be heard, they might as well not speak at all. Eskgrove, who never could endure any imputation of bodily infirmity, asked his neighbour, "What does the fellow say?" "He says that, if you don't speak out, you may as well hold your tongue." "Oh, is that what he says? My lords, what I was sayingg was very simpell. I was only sayingg that in my humbell opinyon, this fine could not be less than two hundred and fifty pounds sterlingg"—this sum being roared out as loudly as his old angry voice could launch it.

'His tediousness in charging juries was most dreadful, and he was the only judge who insisted on the old custom of making juries stand during the judge's address. Often have I gone back to the court at midnight, and found him, whom I had left mumbling hours before, still going on, with the smoky unsnuffed tallow candles in greasy tin candlesticks, and the poor despairing jurymen, most of the audience having retired or being asleep; the wagging of his lordship's nose and chin being the chief signs that he was still char-ging.

'A very common arrangement of his logic to juries was this:—"And so, gentle-men, having shown you that the pannell's argument is utterly impossibill, I shall now proceed for to show you that it is extremely improbabill."

'He rarely failed to signalise himself in pronouncing sentences of death. It was almost a matter of style with him to console the prisoner by assuring him that, "whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be, or even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, there are plenty of rever-end gentle-men who will be most happy for to show you the way to yeternal life."

'He had to condemn two or three persons to die who had broken into a house at Luss, and assaulted Sir James Colquhoun and others, and robbed them of a large sum of money. He first, as was his almost constant practice, explained the nature of the various crimes, assault, robbery, and hamesucken—of which last he gave them the etymology; and he then reminded them that they attacked the house and the persons within it, and robbed them, and then came to this climax—"All this you did; and God preserve us! joost when they were sitten doon to their denner!'"

In concluding his reminiscences of Eskgrove Lord Cockburn says: 'He was the staple of the public conversation; and so long as his old age lasted, he nearly drove Napoleon out of the Edinburgh world.... A story of Eskgrove is still preferred to all other stories. Only, the things that he did and said every day are beginning to be incredible to this correct and fiat age.' Lord Eskgrove died in 1804, at the age of eighty.

CHAPTER XXI

Scott's Anecdote of Lord Kames—Judicial Cruelty—Lord Meadowbank's Marriage—'Declaim, Sir'—Judges and Drinking—Hermand and the Pope—Bacchus on the Bench—Hermand and the Middy.

When Scott dined at Carlton House in 1815, the Prince Regent is said to have been particularly delighted with his guest's anecdotes of the old Scottish judges and lawyers. The following story was considered among the best, and it is one which Scott was fond of telling: 'Lord Kames' (described by Cockburn as 'an indefatigable and speculative but coarse man'), 'whenever he went on the Ayr circuit, was in the habit of visiting Matthew Hay, a gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood, and staying at least one night, which, being both of them ardent chess players, they usually concluded with their favourite game. One spring circuit the battle was not concluded at daybreak, so the judge said—"Well, Matthew, I must e'en come back this gate in the harvest, and let the game lie ower for the present"; and back he came in September, but not to his old friend's hospitable house; for that gentleman had in the meantime been apprehended on a capital charge, and his name stood on the Porteous Roll, or list of those who were about to be tried under his former guest's auspices. The laird was indicted and tried accordingly, and the jury returned a verdict of Guilty. The judge forthwith put on his cocked hat (which answers to the black cap in England), and pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual terms—"To be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon your unhappy soul!" Having concluded this awful formula in his most sonorous cadence, Kames, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod to his unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him in a sort of chuckling whisper—"And now, Matthew, my man, that's checkmate to you." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of judicial humour; and, "I'faith, Walter," said he, "this old big-wig seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me at breakfast—

"The table spread with tea and toast,

Death warrants and the Morning Post"?'

This gruesome story, incredible as it appears and repulsive in its bare and uncalled-for cruelty, is an attested fact. Lord Cockburn, in referring to the above incident, says: 'Besides general and uncontradicted notoriety, I had the fact from Lord Hermand, who was one of the counsel at the trial, and never forgot a piece of judicial cruelty which excited his horror and anger.'

To pass to a more agreeable subject, there was Lord Meadowbank, who disappeared from the festive party an hour or two after his marriage. Search was made, and the oblivious Benedick was found busily engaged in writing a profound thesis on the subject of 'Pains and Penalties.'

He was a most versatile man, and his fondness for discussion made him often highly diverting. Referring to his power of discovering principles and tracking out their consequences, Jeffrey said that while the other judges gave the tree a tug, Meadowbank not only tore it up by the roots, but gave it a shake which dispersed the earth and exposed all the fibres.

One day Mr. Thomas Walker Baird was, in a dull technical way, stating a dry case to Lord Meadowbank, who was sitting single. This did not please the judge, who thought that his dignity required a grander tone. So he dismayed poor Baird, than whom no man could have less turn for burning in the Forum, by throwing himself back in his chair and saying, 'Declaim, sir, why don't you declaim? Speak to me as if I were a popular assembly.'

In the lively story of Mr. Pleydell and his clerk Driver, Scott has immortalised the convivial habits of the Scottish Bar. The actual incident, as stated in the note, occurred to Dundas of Arniston at the time he was Lord Advocate. How ably the judges comported themselves at the table is well proved in Cockburn's description of Lord Hermand, who, he says, 'had acted in more of the severest scenes of old Scotch drinking than any man at least living. Commonplace topers think drinking a pleasure; with Hermand it was a virtue. It inspired the excitement by which he was elevated, and the discursive jollity which he loved to promote. But beyond these ordinary attractions, he had a sincere respect for drinking, indeed a high moral approbation, and a serious compassion for the poor wretches who could not indulge in it; with due contempt for those who could, but did not. He groaned over the gradual disappearance of the Feriat days of periodical festivity, and prolonged the observance, like a hero fighting amidst his fallen friends, as long as he could. The worship of Bacchus, which softened his own heart, and seemed to him to soften the hearts of his companions, was a secondary duty. But in its performance there was no violence, no coarseness, no impropriety, and no more noise than what belongs to well-bred jollity unrestrained. It was merely a sublimation of his peculiarities and excellences; the realisation of what poetry ascribes to the grape. No carouse ever injured his health, for he was never ill, or impaired his taste for home and quiet, or muddled his head: he slept the sounder for it, and rose the earlier and the cooler. The cordiality inspired by claret and punch was felt by him as so congenial to all right thinking, that he was confident that he could convert the Pope if he could only get him to sup with him. And certainly his Holiness would have been hard to persuade if he could have withstood Hermand about the middle of his second tumbler.'

The Bacchic religion of Lord Hermand sometimes found expression even on the Bench. On one occasion a young man was convicted of culpable homicide. In a wrangle with a friend, with whom he had been drinking all night, he had stabbed him and caused his death. The case being little more than a sad accident, the youth was sentenced to only a short imprisonment. At this Lord Hermand, who regarded the case as a discredit to the cause of drinking, was highly indignant at his colleagues' softness. He would have transported the homicide: 'We are told that there was no malice, and that the prisoner must have been in liquor. In liquor! Why, he was drunk! And yet he murdered the very man who had been drinking with him! They had been carousing the whole night; and yet he stabbed him! after drinking a whole bottle of rum with him! Good God, my Laards, if he will do this when he's drunk, what will he not do when he's sober?'

A somewhat similar case shows Lord Hermand in a different light. His love for children was a great feature in his character. A little English midshipman, being attacked by a much bigger lad in Greenock, defended himself with his dirk, and somehow killed his assailant. 'He was tried for this in Glasgow, and had the good luck to have Hermand for his judge; for no judge ever fought a more gallant battle for a prisoner. The boy appeared at the bar in his uniform. Hermand first refused "to try a child." After this was driven out of him, the indictment, which described the occurrence, and said that the prisoner had slain the deceased "wickedly and feloniously," was read; and Hermand then said, "Well, my young friend, this is not true, is it? Are you guilty or not guilty?" "Not guilty, my Lord." "I'll be sworn you're not!" In spite of all his exertions, his young friend was convicted of culpable homicide; for which he was sentenced to a few days' imprisonment.'

With his mind filled with the sayings and doings of the Braxfields and the Eskgroves, Walter Scott could scarcely nourish many illusions regarding his chosen profession. Fortunately he went 'where his own nature would be leading.'

CHAPTER XXII

Political Lawyers—Politics an 'accident' in Scott's History—Early Days at the Bar—Peter Peebles—The Mountain—Anecdote of Scott and Clerk—The German Class—Friendship with William Erskine—German Romance—Seniors of the Bar—Robert Blair—Greatest of Scottish Judges—Anecdote of Hermand and Henry Erskine.

In speaking of Scottish politics in 1792—it was in 1792, November, that Scott and Clerk began their regular attendance at the Parliament House—it is desirable to repeat that Scott is not to be regarded as ever having been in any circumstances a politician. It is absurd even to mention his name among the crowd of Tory juniors seeking to push their way to preferment by party services and loud-mouthed partisan zeal. This crowd, of which Lord Cockburn speaks, 'produced several most excellent men and very respectable lawyers, but not one person, except Walter Scott, who rose to distinction in literature.' Scott was in no sense a 'product' of so ignoble a school. There is perhaps nothing in creation so utterly mean and odious as the person who deliberately engineers his course to legal office by excessive partisanship. Meanness and narrowness of mind must be born in the creature who does it. Who would expect literary distinction from such? If there be any instances on record—and there is most unfortunately that of Francis Bacon—of genius united with such a career, they are distinguished by their singularity, and operate as exceptions. Walter Scott was one of the junior bar, but he was never one of these political aspirants. His conscience, not the main chance, was the ruling principle with him. Party was a small thing to Scott: not the be-all and the end-all of existence as it was to many others of his contemporaries. It was natural for Cockburn and the Whigs, who were struggling for existence against very real oppression and injustice, to exaggerate to themselves the importance of the whole wretched business.

'They took the rustic murmur of their bourg

For the great wave that circles round the world.'

Scott's good sense and utter lack of conceit preserved him from falling into their mistake. Like most other men of culture and honour, both then and now, he frankly took a side in politics rather than be always posing as an independent and as if he were the only conscientious man in a neighbourhood. Historical sentiment, the glamour of romance and the tradition of great names, made him prefer the Tory side. That was all. But he retained his independence complete and unsullied. Whenever at any time he took an active part in militant politics, it was not to curry favour and gain the spoils, but because his whole heart and soul were with the cause.

Scott certainly started life with the idea of making his career in the law. Work gradually came to him. Friendly solicitors were pleased to put certain kinds of business in the young man's hands, chiefly at first, as was natural, for his father's sake. 'By and by,' says Clerk, 'he crept into a tolerable share of such business as may be expected from a Writer's connexion.' That is, of course, from his father's connection, and the business would consist of long written informations and other papers for the Court, on which young counsellors of the Scottish Bar were expected to bestow a great deal of trouble for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely any chance of displaying their ability or making a name. Another part of every young advocate's work, even less important in fees or in fame, was that of acting for pauper litigants, as Alan Fairford did in the famous case of Poor Peter Peebles. In the note Scott says that he himself had at one time the honour to be counsel for the actual Peter.

On the whole, Scott in these early days had probably plenty of leisure time on his hands. He spent some of it at all events among the 'unemployed' of the Bar. They were in the habit of congregating at a particular spot at the north end of the Outer House, which, according to Lockhart, was called by a name which easily recalls the date—the Mountain. From Cockburn's account it would appear that the loungers of the Mountain were all Whigs, separated into a sect of their own and all branded with the same mark. As he mentions among them Thomas Thomson, who we know was at this time one of Scott's most intimate daily associates, we must infer that the separation was not quite absolute. The following story of Clerk's shows that he also was one of the group. One morning finding them all convulsed with laughter, he complained that Duns Scotus had been forestalling him in a good story which he had told him privately the day before—adding, moreover, that his friend had not only stolen it, but disguised it. 'Why,' answered Scott, skilfully waiving the main charge, 'this is always the way with the Baronet. 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.' About Christmas of this eventful year, Scott, Clerk, Thomson, and William Erskine (afterwards Lord Kinedder) joined a German class; and all the four soon qualified themselves to read Schiller and Goethe. Erskine was a Tory: Scott's other young advocate friends were by descent and connection Whigs. From the time of the German class Erskine and Scott drew closer together, and Erskine became by and by, as we learn from Lockhart, 'the nearest and most confidential' of all Scott's Edinburgh associates. We also know that, though politics never shook the mutual regard of the others, 'the events and controversies of the immediately ensuing years could not but disturb, more or less, the social habits of young barristers who adopted opposite views on the French Revolution and the policy of Pitt. His friendship exercised an influence which Lockhart rates very high, on Scott's literary tastes. Along with a sincere love of the classics, Erskine had cherished from boyhood a strong passion for Old English literature, especially the Elizabethan dramatists. He sympathised with, and understood the real value of, Scott's taste for antiquity and national lore. He delighted in the bold and picturesque style, the strength and originality, of the native English school, but he warned Scott of the necessity of paying some deference to modern taste. In short, he knew how to "sift and sunder," and understood that the absurdities and extravagances of great works form no part of their greatness, though they are exactly the parts most likely to be selected for imitation.' Lockhart, in pointing out that Scott was mainly influenced in his first literary attempts by the founders of German drama and romance, states the opinion that he ran at first no trivial risk of adopting some of their extravagances both of idea and expression. Erskine's vigorous condemnation of the mingled absurdities and vulgarities of German detail, coming from one who so enthusiastically admired their great qualities, and who approved of their new departure in choosing romantic subjects, had no doubt full weight in guiding the judgment of so sane and sound a genius as Scott.