personalities which
traditionally haunt all courts of law, and particularly Scotch courts of
law: the first association kept him from the affectation and
sentimentality which is the bane of the youthful romanticist; and the
second enriched his memory with many an odd figure afterward to take its
place, clothed in the colors of a great dramatic imagination, upon the
stage of his stories.

[Footnote 2: Asked.]

Added to these experiences, there were others equally calculated to
enlarge his conception of human nature. Not the least among these he
found in the brilliant literary and artistic society of Edinburgh, to
which his mother's social position gave him entrance. Here, when only a
lad, he met Robert Burns, then the pet and idol of the fashionable
coteries of the capital. Here he heard Henry Mackenzie deliver a lecture
on German literature which turned his attention to the romantic poetry
of Germany and led directly to his first attempts at ballad-writing. But
much more vital than any or all of these influences, were those endless
walking-tours which alone or in company with a boon companion he took
over the neighboring country-side--care-free, roystering expeditions,
which he afterwards immortalized as Dandie Dinmont's "Liddesdale raids"
in _Guy Mannering_. Thirty miles across country as the crow flies, with
no objective point and no errand, a village inn or a shepherd's hut at
night, with a crone to sing them an old ballad over the fire, or a group
of hardy dalesmen to welcome them with stories and carousal--these were
blithe adventurous days such as could not fail to ripen Scott's already
ardent nature, and store his memory with genial knowledge. The account
of Dandie Dinmont given by Mr. Shortreed may be taken as a picture, only
too true in some of its touches, of Scott in these youthful escapades:
"Eh me, ... sic an endless fund of humor and drollery as he had then wi'
him. Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing.
Wherever we stopped how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye
did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs
in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and
gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk--(this, however, even in our
wildest rambles, was but rare)--but drunk or sober, he was aye the
gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was fou, but
he was never out o' gude humor." After this, we are not surprise