life was more habitually averse to every sort of intemperance.
He could, when I first knew him, swallow a great quantity of wine
without being at all visibly disordered by it; but nothing short of
some very particular occasion could ever induce him to put this
strength of head to a trial; and {p.131} I have heard him many times
utter words which no one in the days of his youthful temptation can be
the worse for remembering:--"Depend upon it, of all vices, drinking is
the most incompatible with greatness."

The liveliness of his conversation--the strange variety of his
knowledge--and above all, perhaps, the portentous tenacity of his
memory--riveted more and more Clerk's attention, and commanded the
wonder of all his new allies; but of these extraordinary gifts Scott
himself appeared to be little conscious; or at least he impressed them
all as attaching infinitely greater consequence--(exactly as had been
the case with him in the days of the Cowgate Port and the kittle nine
steps)--to feats of personal agility and prowess. William Clerk's
brother, James, a midshipman in the navy, happened to come home from a
cruise in the Mediterranean shortly after this acquaintance began, and
Scott and the sailor became almost at sight "sworn brothers." In order
to complete his time under the late Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was
then on the Leith station, James Clerk obtained the command of a
lugger, and the young friends often made little excursions to sea with
him. "The first time Scott dined on board," says William Clerk, "we
met before embarking at a tavern in Leith--it was a large party,
mostly midshipmen, and strangers to him, and our host introducing his
landsmen guests said, 'My brother you know, gentlemen; as for Mr.
Scott, mayhap you may take him for a poor lamiter, but he is the first
to begin a row, and the last to end it;' which eulogium he confirmed
with some of the expletives of Tom Pipes."[67] When, many years
afterwards, Clerk read The Pirate, he was startled by the resurrection
of a hundred traits of the table-talk of this lugger; but the author
has since traced {p.132} some of the most striking passages in that
novel to his recollection of the almost childish period when he hung
on his own brother Robert's stories about Rodney's battles and the
haunted _keys_ of the West Indies.

[Footnote 67: "Dinna steer him," says Hobbie Elliot; "ye may
think Elshie's but a lamiter, but I warrant ye, grippie fo