ugh
perhaps deep enough to drown it three times over, must needs be
shallow. But it will be easily believed that the best and highest of
their own idols had better means and skill of measurement: I can never
forget the pregnant expression of one of the ablest of that school and
party--Lord Cockburn--who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his
hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly:
"I have the misfortune to think differently from you--in my humble
opinion, Walter Scott's _sense_ is a still more wonderful thing than
his _genius_."

Indeed I have no sort of doubt that, long before 1818, full justice
was done to Scott, even in these minor things, by all those of his
Edinburgh acquaintance, whether Whig or Tory, on whose personal
opinion he could have been supposed to set much value. With few
exceptions, the really able lawyers of his own or nearly similar
standing had ere that time attained stations of judicial dignity, or
were in the springtide of practice; and in either case they were
likely to consider general society much in his own fashion, as the
joyous relaxation of life, rather than the theatre of exertion and
display. Their tables were elegantly, some of them sumptuously spread;
and they lived in a pretty constant interchange of entertainments upon
a large scale, in every circumstance of which, conversation included,
it was their ambition to imitate those voluptuous metropolitan
circles, wherein most of them had from time to time mingled, and
several of them {p.248} with distinguished success. Among such
prosperous gentlemen, like himself past the _mezzo cammin_, Scott's
picturesque anecdotes, rich easy humor, and gay involuntary glances of
mother-wit, were, it is not difficult to suppose, appreciated above
contributions of a more ambitious stamp; and no doubt his London
_reputation de salon_ (which had by degrees risen to a high pitch,
although he cared nothing for it) was not without its effect in
Edinburgh. But still the old prejudice lingered on in the general
opinion of the place, especially among the smart praters of _the
Outer-House_, whose glimpses of the social habits of their superiors
were likely to be rare, and their gall-bladders to be more distended
than their purses.

In truth, it was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations,
whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried
absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualitie