Chapter VII: {p.169} (1)

First Expedition into Liddesdale. -- Study of German. --
Political Trials, etc. -- Specimen of Law Papers. --
Bürger's Lenore Translated. -- Disappointment in Love.

1792-1796.

Scott was called to the Bar only the day before the closing of the session, and he appears to have almost immediately escaped to the country. On the 2d of August I find his father writing,--"I have sent the copies of your _thesis_ as desired;" and on the 15th he addressed to him at Rosebank a letter, in which there is this paragraph, an undoubted autograph of Mr. Saunders Fairford, _anno ætatis_ sixty-three:--

"DEAR WALTER,--... I am glad that your expedition to the west
proved agreeable. You do well to warn your mother against
Ashestiel. Although I said little, yet I never thought that road
could be agreeable; besides, it is taking too wide a circle. Lord
Justice-Clerk is in town attending the Bills.[94] He called here
yesterday, and inquired very particularly for you. I told him
where you was, and he expects to see you at Jedburgh upon the
21st. He is to be at Mellerstain[95] on the 20th, and will be
there all night. His Lordship said, in a very pleasant manner,
that something might cast up at Jedburgh to give you an
opportunity of appearing, and that he would insist upon it,
{p.170} and that in future he meant to give you a share of the
criminal business in this Court,--all which is very kind. I told
his Lordship that I had dissuaded you from appearing at Jedburgh,
but he said I was wrong in doing so, and I therefore leave the
matter to you and him. _I think it is probable he will breakfast
with Sir H. H. MacDougall on the 21st, on his way to
Jedburgh._"...

[Footnote 94: The Judges then attended in Edinburgh in
rotation during the intervals of term, to take care of
various sorts of business which could not brook delay, bills
of injunction, etc.]

[Footnote 95: The beautiful seat of the Baillies of
Jerviswood, in Berwickshire, a few miles below Dryburgh.]

This last quiet hint, that the young lawyer might as well be at Makerstoun (the seat of a relation) when _His Lordship_ breakfasted there, and of course swell the train of His Lordship's little procession into the county town, seems delightfully characteristic. I think I hear Sir Walter himself lecturing _me_, when in the same sort of situation, thirty years afterwards. He declined, as one of the following letters will show, the opportunity of making his first appearance on this occasion at Jedburgh. He was present, indeed, at the Court during the assizes, but "durst not venture." His accounts to William Clerk of his vacation amusements, and more particularly of his second excursion to Northumberland, will, I am sure, interest every reader:--

TO WILLIAM CLERK, ESQ., ADVOCATE, PRINCE'S STREET,
EDINBURGH.

ROSEBANK, 10th September, 1792.

DEAR WILLIAM,--Taking the advantage of a very indifferent day,
which is likely to float away a good deal of corn, and of my
father's leaving this place, who will take charge of this scroll,
I sit down to answer your favor. I find you have been, like
myself, taking advantage of the good weather to look around you a
little, and congratulate you upon the pleasure you must have
received from your jaunt with Mr. Russell[96] I apprehend, though
you are silent on the subject, that your conversation was
enlivened by many curious disquisitions of the nature {p.171}
of _undulating exhalations_. I should have bowed before the
venerable grove of oaks at Hamilton with as much respect as if I
had been a Druid about to gather the sacred mistletoe. I should
hardly have suspected your host Sir William[97] of having been
the occasion of the scandal brought upon the library and Mr.
Gibb[98] by the introduction of the Cabinet des Fées, of which I
have a volume or two here. I am happy to think there is an
admirer of _snug things_ in the administration of the library.
Poor Linton's[99] misfortune, though I cannot say it surprises,
yet heartily grieves me. I have no doubt he will have many
advisers and animadverters upon the naughtiness of his ways,
whose admonitions will be forgot upon the next opportunity.

I am lounging about the country here, to speak sincerely, as idle
as the day is long. Two old companions of mine, brothers of Mr.
Walker of Wooden, having come to this country, we have renewed a
great intimacy. As they live directly upon the opposite bank of
the river, we have signals agreed upon by which we concert a plan
of operations for the day. They are both officers, and very
intelligent young fellows, and what is of some consequence, have
a brace of fine greyhounds. Yesterday forenoon we killed seven
hares, so you may see how plenty the game is with us. I have
turned a keen duck-shooter, though my success is not very great;
and when wading through the mosses upon this errand, accoutred
with the long gun, a jacket, mosquito trousers, and a rough cap,
I might well pass for one of my redoubted moss-trooper {p.172}
progenitors, Walter Fire-the-Braes,[100] or rather Willie wi' the
Bolt-Foot.

For about-doors' amusement, I have constructed a seat in a large
tree which spreads its branches horizontally over the Tweed. This
is a favorite situation of mine for reading, especially in a day
like this, when the west wind rocks the branches on which I am
perched, and the river rolls its waves below me of a turbid blood
color. I have, moreover, cut an embrasure, through which I can
fire upon the gulls, herons, and cormorants, as they fly
screaming past my nest. To crown the whole, I have carved an
inscription upon it in the ancient Roman taste. I believe I shall
hardly return into town, barring accidents, sooner than the
middle of next month, perhaps not till November. Next week,
weather permitting, is destined for a Northumberland expedition,
in which I shall visit some parts of that country which I have
not yet seen, particularly about Hexham. Some days ago I had
nearly met with a worse accident than the tramp I took at
Moorfoot;[101] for having bewildered myself among the Cheviot
hills, it was nearly nightfall before I got to the village of
Hownam, and the passes with which I was acquainted. You do not
speak of being in Perthshire this season, though I suppose you
intend it. I suppose we, that is, _nous autres_,[102] are at
present completely dispersed.

Compliments to all who are in town, and best respects to your own
family, both in Prince's Street and at Eldin.--Believe me ever
most sincerely yours,

WALTER SCOTT.

[Footnote 96: Mr. Russell, surgeon, afterwards Professor of
Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh.]

[Footnote 97: Sir William Miller (Lord Glenlee).]

[Footnote 98: Mr. Gibb was the Librarian of the Faculty of
Advocates.]

[Footnote 99: Clerk, Abercromby, Scott, Ferguson, and others,
had occasional boating excursions from Leith to Inchcolm,
Inchkeith, etc. On one of these their boat was neared by a
Newhaven one--Ferguson, at the moment, was standing up
talking; one of the Newhaven fishermen, taking him for a
brother of his own craft, bawled out, "Linton, you lang
bitch, is that you?" From that day Adam Ferguson's cognomen
among his friends of _The Club_ was Linton.]

[Footnote 100: Walter Scott of Synton (elder brother of
_Bolt-Foot_, the first Baron of Harden) was thus designated.
He greatly distinguished himself in the battle of Melrose, A.
D. 1526.]

[Footnote 101: This alludes to being lost in a fishing
excursion.]

[Footnote 102: The companions of _The Club_.]

TO {p.173} WILLIAM CLERK, ESQ.

ROSEBANK, 30th September, 1792.

DEAR WILLIAM,--I suppose this will find you flourishing like a
green bay-tree on the mountains of Perthshire, and in full
enjoyment of all the pleasures of the country. All that I envy
you is the _noctes cænæque deum_, which, I take it for granted,
you three merry men will be spending together, while I am poring
over Bartholine in the long evenings, solitary enough; for, as
for the lobsters, as you call them, I am separated from them by
the Tweed, which precludes evening meetings, unless in fine
weather and full moons. I have had an expedition through Hexham
and the higher parts of Northumberland, which would have
delighted the very cockles of your heart, not so much on account
of the beautiful romantic appearance of the country, though that
would have charmed you also, as because you would have seen more
Roman inscriptions built into gate-posts, barns, etc., than
perhaps are to be found in any other part of Britain. These have
been all dug up from the neighboring Roman wall, which is still
in many places very entire, and gives a stupendous idea of the
perseverance of its founders, who carried such an erection from
sea to sea, over rocks, mountains, rivers, and morasses. There
are several lakes among the mountains above Hexham, well worth
going many miles to see, though their fame is eclipsed by their
neighborhood to those of Cumberland. They are surrounded by old
towers and castles, in situations the most savagely romantic;
what would I have given to have been able to take effect-pieces
from some of them! Upon the Tyne, about Hexham, the country has a
different aspect, presenting much of the beautiful, though less
of the sublime. I was particularly charmed with the situation of
Beaufront, a house belonging to a mad sort of genius, whom, I am
sure, I have told you some stories about. He used to call himself
the Noble Errington, {p.174} but of late has assumed the title
of Duke of Hexham. Hard by the town is the field of battle where
the forces of Queen Margaret were defeated by those of the House
of York, a blow which the Red Rose never recovered during the
civil wars. The spot where the Duke of Somerset and the northern
nobility of the Lancastrian faction were executed after the
battle is still called Dukesfield. The inhabitants of this
country speak an odd dialect of the Saxon, approaching nearly
that of Chaucer, and have retained some customs peculiar to
themselves. They are the descendants of the ancient Danes, chased
into the fastnesses of Northumberland by the severity of William
the Conqueror. Their ignorance is surprising to a Scotchman. It
is common for the traders in cattle, which business is carried on
to a great extent, to carry all letters received in course of
trade to the parish church, where the clerk reads them aloud
after service, and answers them according to circumstances.

We intended to visit the lakes in Cumberland, but our jaunt was
cut short by the bad weather. I went to the circuit at Jedburgh,
to make my bow to Lord J. Clerk, and might have had employment,
but durst not venture. Nine of the Dunse rioters were condemned
to banishment, but the ferment continues violent in the Merse.
Kelso races afforded little sport--Wishaw[103] lost a horse which
cost him £500, and foundered irrecoverably on the course. At
another time I shall quote George Buchanan's adage of "a fool and
his money," but at present labor under a similar misfortune; my
Galloway having yesterday thought proper (N. B., without a rider)
to leap over a gate, and being lamed for the present. This is not
his first _faux-pas_, for he jumped into a water with me on his
back when in Northumberland, to the imminent danger of my life.
He is, therefore, to be sold (when recovered), and another
purchased. This accident has occasioned {p.175} you the trouble
of reading so long an epistle, the day being Sunday, and my
uncle, the captain, busily engaged with your father's naval
tactics, is too seriously employed to be an agreeable companion.
Apropos (des bottes)--I am sincerely sorry to hear that James is
still unemployed, but have no doubt a time will come round when
his talents will have an opportunity of being displayed to his
advantage. I have no prospect of seeing my _chère adorable_ till
winter, if then. As for you, I pity you not, seeing as how you
have so good a succedaneum in M. G.; and, on the contrary, hope,
not only that Edmonstone may _roast_ you, but that Cupid may
again (as erst) _fry_ you on the gridiron of jealousy for your
infidelity. Compliments to our right trusty and well-beloved
Linton and Jean Jacques.[104] If you write, which, by the way, I
hardly have the conscience to expect, direct to my father's care,
who will forward your letter. I have quite given up duck-shooting
for the season, the birds being too old, and the mosses too deep
and cold. I have no reason to boast of my experience or success
in the sport, and for my own part, should fire at any distance
under eighty or even ninety paces, though above forty-five I
would reckon it a _coup désespéré_, and as the bird is beyond
measure shy, you may be sure I was not very bloody. Believe me,
deferring, _as usual_, our dispute till another opportunity,
always sincerely yours,

WALTER SCOTT.

P. S.--I believe, if my pony does not soon recover, that
misfortune, with the bad weather, may send me soon to town.

[Footnote 103: William Hamilton of Wishaw,--who afterwards
established his claim to the peerage of Belhaven.]

[Footnote 104: John James Edmonstone.]

It was within a few days after Scott's return from his excursion to Hexham, that, while attending the Michaelmas head-court, as an annual county-meeting is called, at Jedburgh, he was introduced, by an old companion, Charles Kerr of Abbotrule, to Mr. Robert Shortreed, that {p.176} gentleman's near relation, who spent the greater part of his life in the enjoyment of much respect as Sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire. Scott had been expressing his wish to visit the then wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale, particularly with a view to examine the ruins of the famous castle of Hermitage, and to pick up some of the ancient _riding ballads_, said to be still preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers, who had followed the banner of the Douglases, when lords of that grim and remote fastness. Mr. Shortreed had many connections in Liddesdale, and knew its passes well, and he was pointed out as the very guide the young advocate wanted. They started, accordingly, in a day or two afterwards, from Abbotrule; and the laird meant to have been of the party; but "it was well for him," said Shortreed, "that he changed his mind--for he could never have done as we did."[105]

[Footnote 105: I am obliged to Mr. John Elliot Shortreed, a
son of Scott's early friend, for some _memoranda_ of his
father's conversations on this subject. These notes were
written in 1824; and I shall make several quotations from
them. I had, however, many opportunities of hearing Mr.
Shortreed's stories from his own lips, having often been
under his hospitable roof in company with Sir Walter, who to
the last always was his old friend's guest when business took
him to Jedburgh.]

During seven successive years Scott made a _raid_, as he called it, into Liddesdale, with Mr. Shortreed for his guide; exploring every rivulet to its source, and every ruined _peel_ from foundation to battlement. At this time no wheeled carriage had ever been seen in the district--the first, indeed, that ever appeared there was a gig, driven by Scott himself for a part of his way, when on the last of these seven excursions. There was no inn or public-house of any kind in the whole valley; the travellers passed from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead; gathering, wherever they went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible relics of antiquity--even such "a {p.177} rowth of auld nicknackets" as Burns ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much of the materials of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of these unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any definite object before him in his researches seems very doubtful. "He was _makin' himsel'_ a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed; "but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed: at first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun."

"In those days," says the Memorandum before me, "advocates were not so plenty--at least about Liddesdale;" and the worthy Sheriff-substitute goes on to describe the sort of bustle, not unmixed with alarm, produced at the first farmhouse they visited (Willie Elliot's at Millburnholm), when the honest man was informed of the quality of one of his guests. When they dismounted, accordingly, he received Mr. Scott with great ceremony, and insisted upon himself leading his horse to the stable. Shortreed accompanied Willie, however, and the latter, after taking a deliberate peep at Scott, "out-by the edge of the door-cheek," whispered, "Weel, Robin, I say, de'il hae me if I's be a bit feared for him now; he's just a chield like ourselves, I think." Half-a-dozen dogs of all degrees had already gathered round "the advocate," and his way of returning their compliments had set Willie Elliot at once at his ease.

According to Mr. Shortreed, this goodman of Millburnholm was the great original of Dandie Dinmont. As he seems to have been the first of these upland sheep-farmers that Scott ever visited, there can be little doubt that he sat for some parts of that inimitable portraiture; and it is certain that the James Davidson, who carried the name of Dandie to his grave with him, and whose thoroughbred deathbed scene is told in the Notes to Guy Mannering, {p.178} was first pointed out to Scott by Mr. Shortreed himself, several years after the novel had established the man's celebrity all over the Border; some accidental report about his terriers, and their odd names, having alone been turned to account in the original composition of the tale. But I have the best reason to believe that the kind and manly character of Dandie, the gentle and delicious one of his wife, and some at least of the most picturesque peculiarities of the _ménage_ at Charlieshope, were filled up from Scott's observation, years after this period, of a family, with one of whose members he had, through the best part of his life, a close and affectionate connection. To those who were familiar with him, I have perhaps already sufficiently indicated the early home of his dear friend, William Laidlaw, among "the braes of Yarrow."

They dined at Millburnholm, and after having lingered over Willie Elliot's punch-bowl, until, in Mr. Shortreed's phrase, they were "half-glowrin," mounted their steeds again, and proceeded to Dr. Elliot's at Cleughhead, where ("for," says my Memorandum, "folk were na very nice in those days") the two travellers slept in one and the same bed--as, indeed, seems to have been the case with them throughout most of their excursions in this primitive district. This Dr. Elliot had already a large MS. collection of the ballads Scott was in quest of; and finding how much his guest admired his acquisitions, thenceforth exerted himself, for several years, with redoubled diligence, in seeking out the living depositaries of such lore among the darker recesses of the mountains. "The Doctor," says Mr. Shortreed, "would have gane through fire and water for Sir Walter, when he ance kenned him."

Next morning they seem to have ridden a long way, for the express purpose of visiting one "auld Thomas o' Twizzlehope," another Elliot, I suppose, who was celebrated for his skill on the Border pipe, and in particular for {p.179} being in possession of the real _lilt_ of _Dick o' the Cow_. Before starting, that is, at six o'clock, the ballad-hunters had, "just to lay the stomach, a devilled duck or twae, and some _London_ porter." Auld Thomas found them, nevertheless, well disposed for "breakfast" on their arrival at Twizzlehope; and this being over, he delighted them with one of the most hideous and unearthly of all the specimens of "riding music," and, moreover, with considerable libations of whiskey-punch, manufactured in a certain wooden vessel, resembling a very small milk-pail, which he called "Wisdom," because it "made" only a few spoonfuls of spirits--though he had the art of replenishing it so adroitly, that it had been celebrated for fifty years as more fatal to sobriety than any bowl in the parish. Having done due honor to "Wisdom," they again mounted, and proceeded over moss and moor to some other equally hospitable master of the pipe. "Eh me," says Shortreed, "sic an endless fund o' humor and drollery as he then had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk--(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)--but, drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but he was never out o' gude-humor."

On reaching, one evening, some _Charlieshope_ or other (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual; but to their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had been produced, a young student of divinity, who happened to be in the house, was called upon to take the "big ha' Bible," {p.180} in the good old fashion of Burns's Saturday Night; and some progress had been already made in the service, when the goodman of the farm, whose "tendency," as Mr. Mitchell says, "was soporific," scandalized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of "By ----, here 's the keg at last!" and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing a day before of the advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler's haunt, at some considerable distance, in quest of a supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway Frith. The pious "exercise" of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot, or Armstrong, had the welcome _keg_ mounted on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic with infinite humor the sudden outburst of his old host, on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg--the consternation of the dame--and the rueful despair with which the young clergyman closed the book.

"It was in that same season, I think," says Mr. Shortreed, "that
Sir Walter got from Dr. Elliot the large old border war-horn,
which ye may still see hanging in the armory at Abbotsford. How
_great_ he was when he was made master o' _that_! I believe it
had been found in Hermitage Castle--and one of the Doctor's
servants had used it many a day as a grease-horn for his scythe,
before they discovered its history. When cleaned out, it was
never a hair the worse--the original chain, hoop, and mouth-piece
of steel, were all entire, just as you now see them. Sir Walter
carried it home all the way from Liddesdale to Jedburgh, slung
about his neck like Johnny Gilpin's bottle, while I was entrusted
with an ancient bridle-bit, which we had likewise picked up.

'The {p.181} feint o' pride--na pride had he...
A lang kail-gully hung down by his side,
And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had he,'

and meikle and sair we routed on 't and 'hotched and blew, wi'
micht and main.' O what pleasant days! And then a' the nonsense
we had cost us naething. We never put hand in pocket for a week
on end. Toll-bars there were none--and indeed I think our haill
charges were a feed o' corn to our horses in the gangin' and
comin' at Riccartoun mill."

It is a pity that we have no letters of Scott's describing this first _raid_ into Liddesdale; but as he must have left Kelso for Edinburgh very soon after its conclusion, he probably chose to be the bearer of his own tidings. At any rate, the wonder perhaps is, not that we should have so few letters of this period, as that any have been recovered. "I ascribe the preservation of my little handful," says Mr. Clerk, "to a sort of instinctive prophetic sense of his future greatness."

I have found, however, two note-books, inscribed "Walter Scott, 1792," containing a variety of scraps and hints which may help us to fill up our notion of his private studies during that year. He appears to have used them indiscriminately. We have now an extract from the author he happened to be reading; now a memorandum of something that had struck him in conversation; a fragment of an essay; transcripts of favorite poems; remarks on curious cases in the old records of the Justiciary Court; in short, a most miscellaneous collection, in which there is whatever might have been looked for, with perhaps the single exception of original verse. One of the books opens with: "_Vegtam's Kvitha_, or The Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical version of Mr. Gray; with some account of the death of Balder, both as narrated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern historians--_Auctore Gualtero Scott_." The Norse original and the two versions are then transcribed; and {p.182} the historical account appended, extending to seven closely written quarto pages, was, I doubt not, read before one or other of his debating societies. Next comes a page, headed "Pecuniary Distress of Charles the First," and containing a transcript of a receipt for some plate lent to the King in 1643. He then copies Langhorne's Owen of Carron; the verses of Canute, on passing Ely; the lines to a cuckoo, given by Warton as the oldest specimen of English verse; a translation "by a gentleman in Devonshire," of the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; and the beautiful quatrain omitted in Gray's Elegy,--

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year," etc.

After this we have an Italian canzonet, on the praises of blue eyes (which were much in favor at this time); several pages of etymologies from Ducange; some more of notes on the Morte Arthur; extracts from the books of Adjournal, about Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of Branksome of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and her husband, "Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, called _Wicked Wat_;" other extracts about witches and fairies; various couplets from Hall's Satires; a passage from Albania; notes on the Second Sight, with extracts from Aubrey and Glanville; a "List of Ballads to be discovered or recovered;" extracts from Guerin de Montglave; and after many more similar entries, a table of the Mæso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Runic alphabets--with a fourth section, headed _German_, but left blank. But enough perhaps of this record.

In November, 1792, Scott and Clerk began their regular attendance at the Parliament House, and Scott, to use Mr. Clerk's words, "by and by crept into a tolerable share of such business as may be expected from a writer's connection." By this we are to understand that he was employed from time to time by his father, and probably a few other solicitors, in that dreary every-day taskwork, chiefly of long written _informations_, and other papers {p.183} for the Court, on which young counsellors of the Scotch Bar were then expected to bestow a great deal of trouble for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely a chance of finding reserved for their hands any matter that could elicit the display of superior knowledge of understanding. He had also his part in the cases of persons suing _in forma pauperis_; but how little important those that came to his share were, and how slender was the impression they had left on his mind, we may gather from a note on Redgauntlet, wherein he signifies his doubts whether he really had ever been engaged in what he has certainly made the _cause célèbre_ of _Poor Peter Peebles_.

But he soon became as famous for his powers of storytelling among the lawyers of the Outer-House, as he had been among the companions of his High School days. The place where these idlers mostly congregated was called, it seems, by a name which sufficiently marks the date--it was _the Mountain_. Here, as Roger North says of the Court of King's Bench in his early day, "there was more news than law;"--here hour after hour passed away, week after week, month after month, and year after year, in the interchange of light-hearted merriment among a circle of young men, more than one of whom, in after-times, attained the highest honors of the profession. Among the most intimate of Scott's daily associates from this time, and during all his subsequent attendance at the Bar, were, besides various since-eminent persons that have been already named, the first legal antiquary of our time in Scotland, Mr. Thomas Thomson, and William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder. Mr. Clerk remembers complaining one morning on finding the group convulsed with laughter, that _Duns Scotus_ had been forestalling him in a good story, which he had communicated privately the day before--adding, moreover, that his friend had not only stolen, but disguised it. "Why," answered he, skilfully waiving the main charge, "this {p.184} 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."

The German class, of which we have an account in one of the Prefaces of 1830, was formed before the Christmas of 1792, and it included almost all these loungers of _the Mountain_. In the essay now referred to Scott traces the interest excited in Scotland on the subject of German literature to a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the 21st of April, 1788, by the author of The Man of Feeling. "The literary persons of Edinburgh," he says, "were then first made aware of the existence of works of genius in a language cognate with the English, and possessed of the same manly force of expression; they learned at the same time that the taste which dictated the German compositions was of a kind as nearly allied to the English as their language: those who were from their youth accustomed to admire Shakespeare and Milton, became acquainted for the first time with a race of poets, who had the same lofty ambition to spurn the flaming boundaries of the universe, and investigate the realms of Chaos and Old Night; and of dramatists, who, disclaiming the pedantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of occasional improbabilities and extravagance, to present life on the stage in its scenes of wildest contrast, and in all its boundless variety of character.... Their fictitious narratives, their ballad poetry, and other branches of their literature, which are particularly apt to bear the stamp of the extravagant and the supernatural, began also to occupy the attention of the British literati. In Edinburgh, where the remarkable coincidence between the German language and the Lowland Scottish encouraged young men to approach this newly discovered spring of literature, a class was formed of six or seven intimate friends, who proposed to make themselves acquainted {p.185} with the German language. They were in the habit of being much together, and the time they spent in this new study was felt as a period of great amusement. One source of this diversion was the laziness of one of their number, the present author, who, averse to the necessary toil of grammar, and the rules, was in the practice of fighting his way to the knowledge of the German by his acquaintance with the Scottish and Anglo-Saxon dialects, and of course frequently committed blunders which were not lost on his more accurate and more studious companions." The teacher, Dr. Willich, a medical man, is then described as striving with little success to make his pupils sympathize in his own passion for the "sickly monotony" and "affected ecstasies" of Gessner's Death of Abel; and the young students, having at length acquired enough of the language for their respective purposes, as selecting for their private pursuits, some the philosophical treatises of Kant, others the dramas of Schiller and Goethe. The chief, if not the only _Kantist_ of the party, was, I believe, John Macfarlan of Kirkton; among those who turned zealously to the popular belles-lettres of Germany were, with Scott, his most intimate friends of the period, William Clerk, William Erskine, and Thomas Thomson.

These studies were much encouraged by the example, and assisted by the advice, of an accomplished person, considerably Scott's superior in standing, Alexander Fraser Tytler, afterwards a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Woodhouselee. His version of Schiller's Robbers was one of the earliest from the German theatre, and no doubt stimulated his young friend to his first experiments in the same walk.

The contemporary familiars of those days almost all survive; but one, and afterwards the most intimate of them all, went before him; and I may therefore hazard in this place a few words on the influence which he exercised at this critical period on Scott's literary tastes and studies. {p.186} William Erskine was the son of an Episcopalian clergyman in Perthshire, of a good family, but far from wealthy. He had received his early education at Glasgow, where, while attending the college lectures, he was boarded under the roof of Andrew Macdonald, the author of Vimonda, who then officiated as minister to a small congregation of Episcopalian nonconformists. From this unfortunate but very ingenious man, Erskine had derived, in boyhood, a strong passion for old English literature, more especially the Elizabethan dramatists; which, however, he combined with a far livelier relish for the classics of antiquity than either Scott or his master ever possessed. From the beginning, accordingly, Scott had in Erskine a monitor who--entering most warmly into his taste for national lore--the life of the past--and the bold and picturesque style of the original English school--was constantly urging the advantages to be derived from combining with its varied and masculine breadth of delineation such attention to the minor graces of arrangement and diction as might conciliate the fastidiousness of modern taste. Deferring what I may have to say as to Erskine's general character and manners, until I shall have approached the period when I myself had the pleasure of sharing his acquaintance, I introduce the general bearing of his literary opinions thus early, because I conceive there is no doubt that his companionship was, even in those days, highly serviceable to Scott as a student of the German drama and romance. Directed, as he mainly was in the ultimate determination of his literary ambition, by the example of their great founders, he appears to have run at first no trivial hazard of adopting the extravagances, both of thought and language, which he found blended in their works with such a captivating display of genius, and genius employed on subjects so much in unison with the deepest of his own juvenile predilections. His friendly critic was just, as well as delicate; and unmerciful severity as to the mingled absurdities {p.187} and vulgarities of German detail commanded deliberate attention from one who admired not less enthusiastically than himself the genuine sublimity and pathos of his new favorites. I could, I believe, name one other at least among Scott's fellow-students of the same time, whose influence was combined in this matter with Erskine's; but his was that which continued to be exerted the longest, and always in the same direction. That it was not accompanied with entire success, the readers of The Doom of Devorgoil, to say nothing of minor blemishes in far better works, must acknowledge.

These German studies divided Scott's attention with the business of the courts of law, on which he was at least a regular attendant during the winter of 1792-93.

In March, when the Court rose, he proceeded into Galloway, where he had not before been, in order to make himself acquainted with the persons and localities mixed up with the case of a certain Rev. Mr. M'Naught, minister of Girthon, whose trial, on charges of habitual drunkenness, singing of lewd and profane songs, dancing and toying at a penny-wedding with a "sweetie wife" (that is, an itinerant vender of gingerbread, etc.), and moreover of promoting irregular marriages as a justice of the peace, was about to take place before the General Assembly of the Kirk.

As his "Case for M'Naught," dated May, 1793, is the first of his legal papers that I have discovered, and contains several characteristic enough turns, I make no apology for introducing a few extracts:--

At the head of the first class of offences stands the
extraordinary assertion, that, being a Minister of the Gospel,
the respondent had illegally undertaken the office of a justice
of peace. It is, the respondent believes, the first time that
ever the undertaking an office of such extensive utility was
stated as a crime; for he humbly apprehends, that by conferring
the office of a justice of the peace upon clergymen, their
influence may, in the general case, be rendered more extensive
among their parishioners, and {p.188} many trifling causes be
settled by them, which might lead the litigants to enormous
expenses, and become the subject of much contention before other
courts. The duty being only occasional, and not daily, cannot be
said to interfere with those of their function; and their
education, and presumed character, render them most proper for
the office. It is indeed alleged that the Act 1584, chap. 133,
excludes clergymen from acting under a commission of the peace.
This Act, however, was passed at a time when it was of the
highest importance to the Crown to wrench from the hands of the
clergy the power of administering justice in civil cases, which
had, from the ignorance of the laity, been enjoyed by them almost
exclusively. During the whole reign of James VI., as is well
known to the Reverend Court, such a jealousy subsisted betwixt
the Church and the State, that those who were at the head of the
latter endeavored, by every means in their power, to diminish the
influence of the former. At present, when these dissensions
happily no longer subsist, the law, as far as regards the office
of justice of the peace, appears to have fallen into disuse, and
the respondent conceives that any minister is capable of acting
in that, or any other judicial capacity, provided it is of such a
nature as not to withdraw much of his time from what the statute
calls the comfort and edification of the flock committed to him.
Further, the Act 1584 is virtually repealed by the statute 6th
Anne, _c._ 6, sect. 2, which makes the Scots Law on the subject
of justices of the peace the same with that of England, where the
office is publicly exercised by the clergy of all descriptions.

... Another branch of the accusation against the defender as a
justice of peace, is the ratification of irregular marriages. The
defender must here also call the attention of his reverend
brethren and judges to the expediency of his conduct. The girls
were usually with child at the time the application was made to
the defender. In this situation, the children born out of
matrimony, though begot under promise of marriage, must have been
thrown upon the parish, or perhaps murdered in infancy, had not
the men been persuaded to consent to a solemn declaration of
betrothment, or private marriage, emitted before the defender as
a justice of peace. The defender himself, commiserating the
situation of such women, often endeavored to persuade their
seducers to do them justice; and men frequently acquiesced
{p.189} in this sort of marriage, when they could by no means
have been prevailed upon to go through the ceremonies of
proclamation of banns, or the expense and trouble of a public
wedding. The declaration of a previous marriage was sometimes
literally true; sometimes a fiction voluntarily emitted by the
parties themselves, under the belief that it was the most safe
way of constituting a private marriage _de presenti_. The
defender had been induced, from the practice of other justices,
to consider the receiving these declarations, whether true or
false, as a part of his duty, which he could not decline, even
had he been willing to do so. Finally, the defender must remind
the Venerable Assembly that he acted upon these occasions as a
justice of peace, which brings him back to the point from which
he set out, namely, that the Reverend Court are utterly
incompetent to take cognizance of his conduct in that character,
which no sentence that they can pronounce could give or take
away.

The second grand division of the libel against the defender
refers to his conduct as a clergyman and a Christian. He was
charged in the libel with the most gross and vulgar behavior,
with drunkenness, blasphemy, and impiety; yet all the evidence
which the appellants have been able to bring forward tends only
to convict him of three acts of drunkenness during the course of
fourteen years: for even the Presbytery, severe as they have
been, acquit him _quoad ultra_. But the attention of the Reverend
Court is earnestly entreated to the situation of the defender at
the time, the circumstances which conduced to his imprudence, and
the share which some of those had in occasioning his guilt, who
have since been most active in persecuting and distressing him on
account of it.

The defender must premise, by observing, that the crime of
drunkenness consists not in a man's having been in that situation
twice or thrice in his life, but in the constant and habitual
practice of the vice; the distinction between _ebrius_ and
_ebriosus_ being founded in common sense, and recognized by law.
A thousand cases may be supposed, in which a man, without being
aware of what he is about, may be insensibly led on to
intoxication, especially in a country where the vice is
unfortunately so common, that upon some occasions a man may go to
excess from a false sense of modesty, or a fear of disobliging
his entertainer. {p.190} The defender will not deny, that after
losing his senses upon the occasions, and in the manner to be
afterwards stated, he may have committed improprieties which fill
him with sorrow and regret: but he hopes, that in case he shall
be able to show circumstances which abridge and palliate the
guilt of his imprudent excess, the Venerable Court will consider
these improprieties as the effects of that excess only, and not
as arising from any radical vice in his temper or disposition.
When a man is bereft of his judgment by the influence of wine,
and commits any crime, he can only be said to be morally
culpable, in proportion to the impropriety of the excess he has
committed, and not in proportion to the magnitude of its evil
consequences. In a legal view, indeed, a man must be held as
answerable and punishable for such a crime, precisely as if he
had been in a state of sobriety; but his crime is, in a moral
light, comprised in the _origo mali_, the drunkenness only. His
senses being once gone, he is no more than a human machine, as
insensible of misconduct, in speech and action, as a parrot or an
automaton. This is more particularly the case with respect to
indecorums, such as the defender is accused of; for a man can no
more be held a common swearer, or a habitual talker of obscenity,
because he has been guilty of using such expressions when
intoxicated, than he can be termed an idiot, because, when
intoxicated, he has spoken nonsense. If, therefore, the defender
can extenuate the guilt of his intoxication, he hopes that its
consequences will be numbered rather among his misfortunes than
faults; and that his Reverend Brethren will consider him, while
in that state, as acting from a mechanical impulse, and as
incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong. For the
scandal which his behavior may have occasioned, he feels the most
heartfelt sorrow, and will submit with penitence and contrition
to the severe rebuke which the Presbytery have decreed against
him. But he cannot think that his unfortunate misdemeanor,
circumstanced as he was, merits a severer punishment. He can show
that pains were at these times taken to lead him on, when bereft
of his senses, to subjects which were likely to call forth
improper or indecent expressions. The defender must further urge,
that not being originally educated for the church, he may, before
he assumed the sacred character, have occasionally permitted
himself freedoms of expression which are reckoned less culpable
{p.191} among the laity. Thus he may, during that time, have
learned the songs which he is accused of singing, though rather
inconsistent with his clerical character. What, then, was more
natural, than that, when thrown off his guard by the assumed
conviviality and artful solicitations of those about him, former
improper habits, though renounced during his thinking moments,
might assume the reins of his imagination, when his situation
rendered him utterly insensible of their impropriety?

... The Venerable Court will now consider how far three instances
of ebriety, and their consequences, should ruin at once the
character and the peace of mind of the unfortunate defender, and
reduce him, at his advanced time of life, about sixty years,
together with his aged parent, to a state of beggary. He hopes
his severe sufferings may be considered as some atonement for the
improprieties of which he may have been guilty; and that the
Venerable Court will, in their judgment, remember mercy.

In respect whereof, etc.
WALTER SCOTT.

This argument (for which he received five guineas) was sustained by Scott in a speech of considerable length at the Bar of the Assembly. It was far the most important business in which any solicitor had as yet employed him, and _The Club_ mustered strong in the gallery. He began in a low voice, but by degrees gathered more confidence; and when it became necessary for him to analyze the evidence touching a certain penny-wedding, repeated some very coarse specimens of his client's alleged conversation, in a tone so bold and free, that he was called to order with great austerity by one of the leading members of the Venerable Court. This seemed to confuse him not a little; so when, by and by, he had to recite a stanza of one of M'Naught's convivial ditties, he breathed it out in a faint and hesitating style; whereupon, thinking he needed encouragement, the allies in the gallery astounded the Assembly by cordial shouts of _hear! hear!--encore! encore!_ They were immediately turned out, and Scott got through the rest of his harangue very little to his own satisfaction.

He {p.192} believed, in a word, that he had made a complete failure, and issued from the Court in a melancholy mood. At the door he found Adam Ferguson waiting to inform him that the brethren so unceremoniously extruded from the gallery had sought shelter in a neighboring tavern, where they hoped he would join them. He complied with the invitation, but seemed for a long while incapable of enjoying the merriment of his friends. "Come, _Duns_," cried _the Baronet_,--"cheer up, man, and fill another tumbler; here's ****** going to give us _The Tailor_."--"Ah!" he answered, with a groan, "the tailor was a better man than me, sirs; for he didna venture _ben_ until he _kenned the way_." A certain comical old song, which had, perhaps, been a favorite with the minister of Girthon--

"The tailor he came here to sew,
And weel he kenn'd the way o't," etc.

was, however, sung and chorused; and the evening ended in the full jollity of _High Jinks_.

Mr. M'Naught was deposed from the ministry, and his young advocate has written out at the end of the printed papers on the case two of the _songs_ which had been alleged in the evidence. They are both grossly indecent. It is to be observed, that the research he had made with a view to pleading this man's cause carried him, for the first, and I believe for the last time, into the scenery of his Guy Mannering; and I may add that several of the names of the minor characters of the novel (that of _M'Guffog_, for example) appear in the list of witnesses for and against his client.

If the preceding autumn forms a remarkable point in Scott's history, as first introducing him to the manners of the wilder Border country, the summer which followed left traces of equal importance. He gave the greater part of it to an excursion which much extended his knowledge of Highland scenery and character; and in particular furnished him with the richest stores, which he afterwards turned {p.193} to account in one of the most beautiful of his great poems, and in several, including the first, of his prose romances.

Accompanied by Adam Ferguson, he visited on this occasion some of the finest districts of Stirlingshire and Perthshire; and not in the percursory manner of his more boyish expeditions, but taking up his residence for a week or ten days in succession at the family residences of several of his young allies of _the Mountain_, and from thence familiarizing himself at leisure with the country and the people round about. In this way he lingered some time at Tullibody, the seat of the father of Sir Ralph Abercromby, and grandfather of his friend Mr. George Abercromby (now Lord Abercromby); and heard from the old gentleman's own lips his narrative of a journey which he had been obliged to make, shortly after he first settled in Stirlingshire, to the wild retreat of Rob Roy. The venerable laird told how he was received by the cateran "with much courtesy," in a cavern exactly such as that of _Bean Lean_; dined on collops cut from some of his own cattle, which he recognized hanging by their heels from the rocky roof beyond; and returned in all safety, after concluding a bargain of _blackmail_--in virtue of which annual payment Rob Roy guaranteed the future security of his herds against, not his own followers merely, but all freebooters whatever. Scott next visited his friend Edmonstone, at Newton, a beautiful seat close to the ruins of the once magnificent Castle of Doune, and heard another aged gentleman's vivid recollections of all that happened there when John Home, the author of Douglas, and other Hanoverian prisoners, escaped from the Highland garrison in 1745.[106] Proceeding towards the sources of the Teith, he was received for the first time under a roof which, in subsequent years, he regularly revisited, that of another of his associates, Buchanan, the young Laird of Cambusmore. It was thus that {p.194} the scenery of Loch Katrine came to be so associated with "the recollection of many a dear friend and merry expedition of former days," that to compose The Lady of the Lake was "a labor of love, and no less so to recall the manners and incidents introduced."[107] It was starting from the same house, when the poem itself had made some progress, that he put to the test the practicability of riding from the banks of Loch Vennachar to the Castle of Stirling within the brief space which he had assigned to Fitz-James's Grey Bayard, after the duel with Roderick Dim; and the principal landmarks in the description of that fiery progress are so many hospitable mansions, all familiar to him at the same period--Blairdrummond, the residence of Lord Kaimes; Ochtertyre, that of John Ramsay, the scholar and antiquary (now best remembered for his kind and sagacious advice to Burns); and "the lofty brow of ancient Kier," the splendid seat of the chief family of the name of Stirling; from which, to say nothing of remoter objects, the prospect has, on one hand, the rock of "Snowdon," and in front the field of Bannockburn.

[Footnote 106: _Waverley_, chap, xxxviii. note.]

[Footnote 107: Introduction to _The Lady of the Lake_, 1830.]