on hearing, a day before, of the
advocate's approaching visit, he had despatched to a certain
smuggler's haunt at some considerable distance in quest of a
supply of _run_ brandy from the Solway frith. The pious
'exercise' of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With
a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment,
this jolly Elliot or Armstrong had the welcome _keg_ mounted
on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and
simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing
about it until daylight streamed in upon the party. Sir
Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with
his Liddesdale companions, to mimic with infinite humour the
sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of
horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the
keg, the consternation of the dame, and the rueful despair
with which the young clergyman closed the book."[5]

No wonder old Mr. Scott felt some doubt of his son's success at the
bar, and thought him more fitted in many respects for a "gangrel
scrape-gut."[6]

In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott became a sound lawyer,
and might have been a great lawyer, had not his pride of character,
the impatience of his genius, and the stir of his imagination rendered
him indisposed to wait and slave in the precise manner which the
prepossessions of solicitors appoint.

For Scott's passion for romantic literature was not at all the sort of
thing which we ordinarily mean by boys' or girls' love of romance. No
amount of drudgery or labour deterred Scott from any undertaking on
the prosecution of which he was bent. He was quite the reverse,
indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in his manners
or his literary interests. As regards the history of his own country
he was no mean antiquarian. Indeed he cared for the mustiest
antiquarian researches--of the mediaeval kind--so much, that in the
depth of his troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and
herald as one of the things which soothed him most. "I do not know
anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling
discussions about antiquarian _old womanries_. It is like knitting a
stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it."[7] Thus his love
of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind
which only feeds on romantic excitements; rather was it that