may therefore hazard in this place a few words on the influence which
he exercised at this critical period on Scott's literary tastes and
studies. {p.186} William Erskine was the son of an Episcopalian
clergyman in Perthshire, of a good family, but far from wealthy. He
had received his early education at Glasgow, where, while attending
the college lectures, he was boarded under the roof of Andrew
Macdonald, the author of Vimonda, who then officiated as minister to a
small congregation of Episcopalian nonconformists. From this
unfortunate but very ingenious man, Erskine had derived, in boyhood, a
strong passion for old English literature, more especially the
Elizabethan dramatists; which, however, he combined with a far
livelier relish for the classics of antiquity than either Scott or his
master ever possessed. From the beginning, accordingly, Scott had in
Erskine a monitor who--entering most warmly into his taste for
national lore--the life of the past--and the bold and picturesque
style of the original English school--was constantly urging the
advantages to be derived from combining with its varied and masculine
breadth of delineation such attention to the minor graces of
arrangement and diction as might conciliate the fastidiousness of
modern taste. Deferring what I may have to say as to Erskine's general
character and manners, until I shall have approached the period when I
myself had the pleasure of sharing his acquaintance, I introduce the
general bearing of his literary opinions thus early, because I
conceive there is no doubt that his companionship was, even in those
days, highly serviceable to Scott as a student of the German drama and
romance. Directed, as he mainly was in the ultimate determination of
his literary ambition, by the example of their great founders, he
appears to have run at first no trivial hazard of adopting the
extravagances, both of thought and language, which he found blended in
their works with such a captivating display of genius, and genius
employed on subjects so much in unison with the deepest of his own
juvenile predilections. His friendly critic was just, as well as
delicate; and unmerciful severity as to the mingled absurdities
{p.187} and vulgarities of German detail commanded deliberate
attention from one who admired not less enthusiastically than himself
the genuine sublimity and pathos of his new favorites. I could, I
believe, name one other at least among Scott's fellow-students