oldest specimen of English verse; a translation "by a
gentleman in Devonshire," of the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; and the
beautiful quatrain omitted in Gray's Elegy,--

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year," etc.

After this we have an Italian canzonet, on the praises of blue eyes
(which were much in favor at this time); several pages of etymologies
from Ducange; some more of notes on the Morte Arthur; extracts from
the books of Adjournal, about Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of Branksome
of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and her husband, "Sir Walter Scott of
Buccleuch, called _Wicked Wat_;" other extracts about witches and
fairies; various couplets from Hall's Satires; a passage from Albania;
notes on the Second Sight, with extracts from Aubrey and Glanville; a
"List of Ballads to be discovered or recovered;" extracts from Guerin
de Montglave; and after many more similar entries, a table of the
Maeso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Runic alphabets--with a fourth section,
headed _German_, but left blank. But enough perhaps of this record.

In November, 1792, Scott and Clerk began their regular attendance at
the Parliament House, and Scott, to use Mr. Clerk's words, "by and by
crept into a tolerable share of such business as may be expected from
a writer's connection." By this we are to understand that he was
employed from time to time by his father, and probably a few other
solicitors, in that dreary every-day taskwork, chiefly of long written
_informations_, and other papers {p.183} for the Court, on which
young counsellors of the Scotch Bar were then expected to bestow a
great deal of trouble for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with
scarcely a chance of finding reserved for their hands any matter that
could elicit the display of superior knowledge of understanding. He
had also his part in the cases of persons suing _in forma pauperis_;
but how little important those that came to his share were, and how
slender was the impression they had left on his mind, we may gather
from a note on Redgauntlet, wherein he signifies his doubts whether he
really had ever been engaged in what he has certainly made the _cause
celebre_ of _Poor Peter Peebles_.

But he soon became as famous for his powers of storytelling among the
lawyers of the Outer-House, as he had been among the companions of his
High School days. The place where these idlers mostly congregated was
called, it seems, by a name which sufficiently m