gratify the curiosity and excite the ambition of a young enthusiast in
literature. Lady Diana soon appreciated the minstrel of the clan; and,
surviving to a remarkable age, she had the satisfaction of seeing him
at the height of his eminence--the solitary person who could give the
author of Marmion personal reminiscences of Pope.[128]

[Footnote 128: Mr. Scott of Harden's right to the peerage of
Polwarth, as representing, through his mother, the line of
Marchmont, was allowed by the House of Lords in 1835.]

On turning to James Ballantyne's Memorandum (already quoted), I find
an account of Scott's journey from Rosebank to Edinburgh, in the
November after the Ballads from Buerger were published, which gives an
interesting notion of his literary zeal and opening ambition at this
remarkable epoch of his life. Mr. Ballantyne had settled {p.231} in
Kelso as a solicitor in 1795; but, not immediately obtaining much
professional practice, time hung heavy on his hands, and he willingly
listened, in the summer of 1796, to a proposal of some of the
neighboring nobility and gentry respecting the establishment of a
weekly newspaper,[129] in opposition to one of a democratic tendency,
then widely circulated in Roxburghshire and the other Border counties.
He undertook the printing and editing of this new journal, and
proceeded to London, in order to engage correspondents and make other
necessary preparations. While thus for the first time in the
metropolis, he happened to meet with two authors, whose reputations
were then in full bloom,--namely, Thomas Holcroft and William
Godwin,--the former, a popular dramatist and novelist; the latter, a
novelist of far greater merit, but "still more importantly
distinguished," says the Memorandum before me, "by those moral, legal,
political, and religious heterodoxies, which his talents enabled him
to present to the world in a very captivating manner. His Caleb
Williams had then just come out, and occupied as much public attention
as any work has done before or since." "Both these eminent persons,"
Ballantyne continues, "I saw pretty frequently; and being anxious to
hear whatever I could tell about the literary men in Scotland, they
both treated me with remarkable freedom of communication. They were
both distinguished by the clearness of their elocution, and very full
of triumphant confidence in the truth of their systems. They were as
willing to speak, therefore, as