in the room where
the precious relic hangs, before I requested him to set it down in
writing--how little anticipating the use to which I should ultimately
apply it![64]

[Footnote 64: ["Long life to thy fame and peace to thy soul,
Rob Burns! When I want to express a sentiment which I feel
strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare--or
thee."--_Journal_, December 11, 1826.]]

His intimacy with Adam (now Sir Adam) Ferguson was thus his first
means of introduction to the higher literary society of Edinburgh; and
it was very probably to that connection that he owed, among the rest,
his acquaintance with the blind poet Blacklock, whom Johnson, twelve
years earlier, "beheld with reverence." We have seen, however, that
the venerable author of Douglas was a friend of his own parents, and
had noticed him even in his infancy at Bath. John Home now inhabited a
villa at no great distance from Edinburgh, and there, all through his
young days, Scott was a frequent guest. Nor must it be forgotten that
his uncle, Dr. Rutherford, inherited much of the general
accomplishments, as well as the professional reputation of his
father--and that it was beneath that roof he saw, several years before
this, Dr. Cartwright, then in the enjoyment of some fame as a poet. In
this family, indeed, he had more than one kind {p.123} and strenuous
encourager of his early literary tastes, as will be shown abundantly
when we reach certain relics of his correspondence with his mother's
sister. Dr. Rutherford's good-natured remonstrances with him, as a
boy, for reading at breakfast, are well remembered, and will remind my
reader of a similar trait in the juvenile manners both of Burns and
Byron; nor was this habit entirely laid aside even in Scott's advanced
age.

If he is quite accurate in referring his first acquaintance with the
Highlands to his fifteenth year, this incident also belongs to the
first season of his apprenticeship. His father had, among a rather
numerous list of Highland clients, Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle,
an enthusiastic Jacobite, who had survived to recount, in secure and
vigorous old age, his active experiences in the insurrections both of
1715 and 1745. He had, it appears, attracted Walter's attention and
admiration at a very early date; for he speaks of having "seen him in
arms" and heard him "exult in the prospect of drawing his claymore
once more before he died," when Paul Jones threatened