e
antique busts of Homer. "No, truly," he answered, smiling, "for if
there had been either limners or stuccoyers worth their salt in those
days, the owner of such a headpiece would never have had to trail the
poke. They would have alimented the honest man decently among them for
a lay-figure."

[Footnote 106:
"What beauties does Flora disclose,
How sweet are her smiles upon Tweed," etc.--_Crawford._]

[Footnote 107: The late Sir Patrick Murray of
Ochtertyre, Bart.--one of the Scotch Barons of
Exchequer.]

A few days after this, I received a communication from the Messrs.
Ballantyne, to the effect that Mr. Scott's various avocations had
prevented him from fulfilling his agreement with them as to the
historical department of the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816, and
that it would be acceptable to him as well as them, if I could
undertake to supply it in the course of the autumn. This proposal was
agreed to on my part, and I had consequently occasion to meet him
pretty often during that summer session. He told me, that if the war
had gone on, he should have liked to do the historical summary as
before; but that the prospect of having no events to record but
radical riots, and the passing or rejecting of corn bills and poor
bills, sickened him; that his health was no longer what it had been;
and that though he did not mean to give over writing altogether--(here
he smiled significantly, and glanced his eye towards a pile of MS. on
the desk by him)--he thought himself now entitled to write nothing but
what would rather be an amusement than a fatigue to him--"_Juniores ad
labores_."

{p.240} He at this time occupied as his _den_ a square small room,
behind the dining parlor in Castle Street. It had but a single
Venetian window, opening on a patch of turf not much larger than
itself, and the aspect of the place was on the whole sombrous. The
walls were entirely clothed with books; most of them folios and
quartos, and all in that complete state of repair which at a glance
reveals a tinge of bibliomania. A dozen volumes or so, needful for
immediate purposes of reference, were placed close by him on a small
movable frame--something like a dumb-waiter. All the rest were in
their proper niches, and wherever a volume had been lent, its room was
occupied by a wooden block of the same size, having a card with the
name of the borrower and d