Note 420 — 1782.

It was doubtless at this time that he had a youthful hearer, who afterwards became the renowned Sir Walter Scott. In a letter to Southey, dated Abbotsford, April 4, 1819, Scott writes: “When I was about twelve years old, I heard Wesley preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too colloquial for the taste of Saunders. He told many excellent stories. One I remember, which he said had happened to him at Edinburgh. ‘A drunken dragoon,’ said Wesley, ‘was commencing an assertion in military fashion, G——d eternally d——n me, just as I was passing. I touched the poor man on the shoulder, and when he turned round fiercely, said calmly, You mean, God bless you.’ In the mode of telling the story, he failed not to make us sensible how much this patriarchal appearance, and mild yet bold rebuke, overawed the soldier, who touched his hat, thanked him, and, I think, came to chapel that evening.”—(“Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott,” by J. G. Lockhart, Esq.)