out looks,
brought forth milk in place of water--so with that, and hips and haws,
we came in little the worse." His father met him with some impatient
questions as to what he had been living on so long, for the old man
well knew how scantily his pocket was supplied. "Pretty much like the
young ravens," answered he; "I only wished I had been as good a player
on the flute as poor George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. If I
had his art I should like nothing better than to tramp like him from
cottage to cottage over the world."--"I doubt," said the grave Clerk
to the Signet, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better
than a _gangrel scrape gut_." Some allusions to reproaches of this
kind occur in the Memoir; and we shall find others in letters
subsequent to his admission at the Bar.[72]

[Footnote 72: After the cautious father had had further
opportunity of observing his son's proceedings, his wife
happened one night to express some anxiety on the protracted
absence of Walter and his brother Thomas. "My dear Annie,"
said the old man, "Tom is with Walter this time; and have you
not yet perceived that wherever Walter goes, he is pretty
sure to find his bread buttered on both sides?"--_From Mrs.
Thomas Scott._--(1839.)]

The debating club formed among these young friends at {p.135} this
era of their studies was called _The Literary Society_; and is not to
be confounded with the more celebrated Speculative Society, which
Scott did not join for two years later. At _The Literary_ he spoke
frequently, and very amusingly and sensibly, but was not at all
numbered among the most brilliant members. He had a world of knowledge
to produce; but he had not acquired the art of arranging it to the
best advantage in a continued address; nor, indeed, did he ever, I
think, except under the influence of strong personal feeling, even
when years and fame had given him full confidence in himself, exhibit
upon any occasion the powers of oral eloquence. His antiquarian
information, however, supplied many an interesting feature in these
evenings of discussion. He had already dabbled in Anglo-Saxon and the
Norse Sagas: in his Essay on Imitations of Popular Poetry, he alludes
to these studies as having facilitated his acquisition of German:--But
he was deep especially in Fordun and Wyntoun, and all the Scotch
chronicles; and his friends rewarded him by the honorable