e he
is not thoroughly at home; and I think there are still higher and
better reasons why he should not do so where he is.

Before I ever met Scott in private, I had, of course, heard many
people describe and discuss his style of conversation. Everybody
seemed to agree that it overflowed with hearty good-humor, as well as
plain unaffected good sense and sagacity; but I had heard not a few
persons of undoubted ability and accomplishment maintain that the
genius of the great poet and novelist rarely, if ever, revealed itself
in his talk. It is needless to say, that the persons I allude to were
all his own countrymen, and themselves imbued, more or less, with the
conversational habits derived from a system of education in which the
{p.244} study of metaphysics occupies a very large share of
attention. The best table-talk of Edinburgh was, and probably still
is, in a very great measure made up of brilliant disquisition--such as
might be transferred without alteration to a professor's note-book, or
the pages of a critical Review--and of sharp word-catchings, ingenious
thrusting and parrying of dialectics, and all the quips and quibblets
of bar pleading. It was the talk of a society to which lawyers and
lecturers had, for at least a hundred years, given the tone. From the
date of the Union, Edinburgh ceased to be the headquarters of the
Scotch nobility--and long before the time of which I speak, they had
all but entirely abandoned it as a place of residence. I think I never
knew above two or three of the Peerage to have houses there at the
same time--and these were usually among the poorest and most
insignificant of their order. The wealthier gentry had followed their
example. Very few of that class ever spent any considerable part of
the year in Edinburgh, except for the purposes of educating their
children, or superintending the progress of a lawsuit; and these were
not more likely than a score or two of comatose and lethargic old
Indians, to make head against the established influences of academical
and forensic celebrity. Now Scott's tastes and resources had not much
in common with those who had inherited and preserved the chief
authority in this provincial hierarchy of rhetoric. He was highly
amused with watching their dexterous logomachies--but his delight in
such displays arose mainly, I cannot doubt, from the fact of their
being, both as to subject-matter and style and method, remote _a
Scaevolae studiis_. He sat by,