er life, he had always that slight
contentiousness of bias which enthusiastic men do not often heartily like,
and which may have prevented Scott from continuing to the full the close
intimacy of those earlier years. Yet almost his last record of a really
delightful evening, refers to a bachelor's dinner given by Mr. Clerk, who
remained unmarried, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter's worst troubles
had come upon him. "In short," says the diary, "we really laughed, and
real laughter is as rare as real tears. I must say, too, there was a
_heart_, a kindly feeling prevailed over the party. Can London give such a
dinner?"[21] It is clear, then, that Clerk's charm for his friend survived
to the last, and that it was not the mere inexperience of boyhood, which
made Scott esteem him so highly in his early days.

If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes badgered Scott, another of
his friends who became more and more intimate with him, as life went
on, and who died before him, always soothed him, partly by his
gentleness, partly by his almost feminine dependence. This was William
Erskine, also a barrister, and son of an Episcopalian clergyman in
Perthshire,--to whose influence it is probably due that Scott himself
always read the English Church service in his own country house, and
does not appear to have retained the Presbyterianism into which he was
born. Erskine, who was afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord
Kinnedder--a distinction which he did not survive for many months--was
a good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his companions thought,
of almost superfine taste. The style apparently for which he had
credit must have been a somewhat mimini-pimini style, if we may judge
by Scott's attempt in _The Bridal of Triermain_, to write in a manner
which he intended to be attributed to his friend. Erskine was left a
widower in middle life, and Scott used to accuse him of philandering
with pretty women,--- a mode of love-making which Scott certainly
contrived to render into verse, in painting Arthur's love-making to
Lucy in that poem. It seems that some absolutely false accusation
brought against Lord Kinnedder, of an intrigue with a lady with whom
he had been thus philandering, broke poor Erskine's heart, during his
first year as a Judge. "The Counsellor (as Scott always called him)
was," says Mr. Lockhart, "a little man of feeble make, who seemed
unhappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, and had never, I should
suppo