s in his
talk than _wit_--and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of
_vivid painting_--the true and primary sense of what is called
_Imagination_. He was like Jaques--though not a "Melancholy Jaques;"
and "moralized" a common topic "into a thousand similitudes."
Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of
matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared
_impromptus_ in London; and puzzled the promoters of such things
sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men
he seemed _commonplace_--not so to the most dexterous masters in what
was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore,
or Rogers,--to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.

Scott managed to give and receive such great dinners as I have been
alluding to, at least as often as any other private gentleman in
Edinburgh; but he very rarely accompanied his wife and daughters to
the evening assemblies, which commonly ensued under other roofs--for
{p.249} _early to rise_, unless in the case of spare-fed anchorites,
takes for granted _early to bed_. When he had no dinner engagement, he
frequently gave a few hours to the theatre; but still more frequently,
when the weather was fine, and still more, I believe, to his own
satisfaction, he drove out with some of his family, or a single
friend, in an open carriage; the favorite rides being either to the
Blackford Hills, or to Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine; or to
the beach of Portobello, where Peter was always instructed to keep his
horses as near as possible to the sea. More than once, even in the
first summer of my acquaintance with him, I had the pleasure of
accompanying him on these evening excursions; and never did he seem to
enjoy himself more fully than when placidly surveying, at such sunset
or moonlight hours, either the massive outlines of his "own romantic
town," or the tranquil expanse of its noble estuary. He delighted,
too, in passing, when he could, through some of the quaint windings of
the ancient city itself, now deserted, except at mid-day, by the upper
world. How often have I seen him go a long way round about, rather
than miss the opportunity of halting for a few minutes on the vacant
esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle
rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still
marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its
station. His coachman kne