pet pieces were, I think, the
Song for Brougham Castle, the Laodamia, and some of the early sonnets;
in Southey, Queen Orraca, Fernando Ramirez, the Lines on the Holly
Tree--and, of his larger poems, the Thalaba. Crabbe was perhaps, next
to Shakespeare, the standing resource; but in those days Byron was
pouring out his spirit fresh and full: and, if a new piece from his
hand had appeared, it was sure to be read by Scott the Sunday evening
afterwards, and that with such delighted emphasis as showed how
completely the elder bard had kept all his enthusiasm for poetry at
the pitch of youth, all his admiration of genius, free, pure, and
unstained by the least drop of literary {p.255} jealousy. Rare and
beautiful example of a happily constituted and virtuously disciplined
mind and character!

Very often something read aloud by himself or his friends suggested
an old story of greater compass than would have suited a
dinner-table--and he told it, whether serious or comical, or, as more
frequently happened, part of both, exactly in every respect in the
tone and style of the notes and illustrations to his novels. A great
number of his best oral narratives have, indeed, been preserved in
those parting lucubrations; and not a few in his letters. Yet very
many there were of which his pen has left no record--so many, that,
were I to task my memory, I could, I believe, recall the outlines at
least of more than would be sufficient to occupy a couple of these
volumes. Possibly, though well aware how little justice I could do to
such things, rather than think of their perishing forever, and leaving
not even a shadow behind, I may at some future day hazard the attempt.

Let me turn, meanwhile, to some dinner-tables very different from his
own, at which, from this time forward, I often met Scott. It is very
true of the societies I am about to describe, that he was "among them,
not of them;" and it is also most true that this fact was apparent in
all the demeanor of his bibliopolical and typographical allies towards
him whenever he visited them under their roofs--not a bit less so than
when they were received at his own board; but still, considering how
closely his most important worldly affairs were connected with the
personal character of the Ballantynes, I think it a part, though
neither a proud nor a very pleasing part, of my duty as his
biographer, to record my reminiscences of them and their doings in
some detail.

James Ballanty