says, "took lessons from Walker, whom we used to call _Blue Beard_. He
was one of the most conceited persons in the world, but a good
teacher; one of the ugliest countenances he had that need be
exhibited--enough, as we say, to _spean weans_. The man was always
extremely precise in the quality of everything about him; his dress,
accommodations, and everything else. He became insolvent, poor man,
and, for some reason or other, I attended the meeting of those
concerned in his affairs. Instead of ordinary accommodations for
writing, each of the persons present was equipped with a large sheet
of drawing-paper and a swan's quill. It was mournfully ridiculous
enough. Skirving made an admirable likeness of Walker; not a single
scar or mark of the small-pox, which seamed his countenance, but the
too accurate brother of the brush had faithfully laid it down in
longitude and latitude. Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons)
rather than let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the sale of
his effects. I did learn myself to take some vile views from nature.
When Will Clerk and I lived very much together, I used sometimes to
make them under his instruction. He to whom, as to all his family, art
is a familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland dog would at
a greyhound which showed fear of the water."[61]

[Footnote 61: [See _Journal_, vol. i. pp. 137-139.]]

Notwithstanding {p.111} all that Scott says about the total failure
of his attempts in the art of the pencil, I presume few will doubt
that they proved very useful to him afterwards; from them it is
natural to suppose he caught the habit of analyzing, with some
approach at least to accuracy, the scenes over which his eye might
have continued to wander with the vague sense of delight. I may add
that a longer and more successful practice of the crayon might, I
cannot but think, have proved the reverse of serviceable to him as a
future painter with the pen. He might have contracted the habit of
copying from pictures rather than from nature itself; and we should
thus have lost that which constitutes the very highest charm in his
delineations of scenery, namely, that the effect is produced by the
selection of a few striking features, arranged with a light,
unconscious grace, neither too much nor too little--equally remote
from the barren generalizations of a former age, and the dull, servile
fidelity with which so many inferior writers of our time fill in b