through manhood,--and the Earl of
Dalhousie,[57] whom, on meeting with him after a long separation in
the evening of life, he records as still being, and having always
been, "the same manly and generous character that all about him loved
as the _Lordie Ramsay_ of the Yards." The chosen companion, however,
continued to be for some time Mr. John Irving--his suburban walks with
whom have been recollected so tenderly, both in the Memoir of 1808,
and in the Preface to Waverley of 1829. It will interest the reader to
compare with those beautiful descriptions the following extract from a
letter with which Mr. Irving has favored me:--

"Every Saturday, and more frequently during the vacations, we
used to retire, with three or four books from the circulating
library, to Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat, or Blackford Hill,
and read them together. He read {p.105} faster than I, and had,
on this account, to wait a little at finishing every two pages,
before turning the leaf. The books we most delighted in were
romances of knight-errantry; the Castle of Otranto, Spenser,
Ariosto, and Boiardo were great favorites. We used to climb up
the rocks in search of places where we might sit sheltered from
the wind; and the more inaccessible they were, the better we
liked them. He was very expert at climbing. Sometimes we got into
places where we found it difficult to move either up or down, and
I recollect it being proposed, on several occasions, that I
should go for a ladder to see and extricate him; but I never had
any need really to do so, for he always managed somehow either to
get down or ascend to the top. The number of books we thus
devoured was very great. I forgot great part of what I read; but
my friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, remained,
to my surprise, master of it all, and could even weeks or months
afterwards repeat a whole page in which anything had particularly
struck him at the moment. After we had continued this practice of
reading for two years or more together, he proposed that we
should recite to each other alternately such adventures of
knight-errants as we could ourselves contrive; and we continued
to do so a long while. He found no difficulty in it, and used to
recite for half an hour or more at a time, while I seldom
continued half that space. The stories we told were