the partiality by continuing such exertions as I was capable of for their amusement."

James Ballantyne has preserved in his Memorandum an anecdote strikingly confirmative of the most remarkable statement in this page of Scott's confessions. "I remember," he says, "going into his library shortly after the publication of the Lady of the Lake, and finding Miss Scott (who was then a very young girl) there by herself. I asked her.

Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like the Lady of the Lake?' Her answer was given with perfect simplicity - Oh, I have not read it; papa says there's nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry.

In fact, his children in those days had no idea of the source of his distinction—or rather, indeed, that his position was in any respect different from that of other Advocates, Sheriffs, and Clerks of Session. The eldest boy came home one afternoon about this time from the High School, with tears and blood hardened together upon his cheeks. "Well, Wat," said his father, "what have you been fighting about to-day?" With that the boy blushed and hung his head, and at last stammered out- that he had been called a lassie." "Indeed!" said Mrs Scott, "this was a terrible mischief to be sure." "You may say what you please, mamma," Wat answered roughly, "but I dinna think there's a waufer (shab

bier) thing in the world than to be a lassie, to sit boring at a clout." Upon further enquiry it turned out that one or two of his companions had dubbed him The Lady of the Lake, and the phrase was to him incomprehensible, save as conveying some imputation on his prowess, which he accordingly vindicated in the usual style of the Yards. Of the poem he had never before heard. Shortly after, this story having got wind, one of Scott's colleagues of the Clerks' Table said to the boy-" Gilnockie, my man, you cannot surely help seeing that great people make more work about your papa than they do about me or any other of your uncles—what is it, do you suppose, that occasions this ?" The little fellow pondered for a minute or two, and then answered very gravely" It's commonly him that sees the hare sitting." And yet this was the man that had his children all along so very much with him. In truth, however, young Walter had guessed pretty shrewdly in the matter, for his father had all the tact of the Sutherland Highlander, whose detection of an Irish rebel up to the neck in a bog, he has commemorated in a note upon Rokeby. Like him, he was quick to catch the sparkle of the future victim's eye; and often said jestingly of himself, that whatever might be thought of him as a maker (poet), he was an excellent trouveur.

Ballantyne adds:

"One day, about this same

time, when his fame was supposed to have reached

6

whatever. —we ought not to be named in the same day.' · Indeed!' I answered, would you compare Campbell to Burns?' No, James, not at all—If you wish to speak of a real poet, Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our country.' But, in fact," (continues Ballantyne)" he had often said to me that neither his own nor any modern popular style of composition was that from which he derived most pleasure. I asked him what it was. swered -Johnson's; and that he had more pleasure in reading London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes, than any other poetical composition he could mention; and I think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions."

He an

In his Sketch of Johnson's Life, Scott says "The deep and pathetic morality of The Vanity of Human Wishes, has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental." And Lord Byron, in his Ravenna Diary,† has the following entry on the same subject:

* Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 264.

+ Life and Works, vol. v. p. 66.

"Read Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes,-all the examples and mode of giving them sublime, as well as the latter part, with the exception of an occasional couplet. 'Tis a grand poem-and so true!· true as the 10th of Juvenal himself. The lapse of ages changes all things-time-language the earth the bounds of the sea-the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself, who has always been, and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment."—

The last line of MS. that Scott sent to the press was a quotation from the " Vanity of Human Wishes." Yet it is the cant of our day-above all, of its poetasters, that Johnson was no poet. To be sure, they say the same of Pope—and hint it occasionally even of Dryden.

CHAPTER XXI.

First Visit to the Hebrides Staffa Skye Mull-Iona, &c.-The Lord of the Isles projected-Letters to Joanna Baillie-Southey

and Morritt.

1810.

WALTER SCOTT was at this epoch in the highest spirits, and having strong reasons of various kinds for his resolution to avail himself of the gale of favour, only hesitated in which quarter to explore the materials of some new romance. His first and most earnest desire was to spend a few months with the British army in the Peninsula, but this he soon resigned, from an amiable motive, which a letter presently to be quoted will explain. He then thought of revisiting Rokeby-for he had from the first day that he spent on that magnificent domain, contem