of genius."]

When I visited Constable, as I often did at a period somewhat later
than that of which I now speak, and for the most part in company with
Scott, I found the bookseller established in a respectable country
gentleman's seat, some six or seven miles out of Edinburgh, and doing
the honors of it with all the ease that might have been looked for had
he been the long-descended owner of the place; there was no foppery,
no show, no idle luxury, but to all appearance the plain abundance and
simple enjoyment of hereditary wealth. His conversation was manly and
vigorous, abounding in Scotch anecdotes of the old time, which he told
with a degree of spirit and humor only second to his great author's.
No man could more effectually control, when he had a mind, either the
extravagant vanity which, on too many occasions, made him ridiculous,
or the despotic temper, which habitually held in fear and trembling
all such as were in any sort dependent on his Czarish Majesty's
pleasure. In him I never saw (at this period) anything but the
unobtrusive sense and the calm courtesy of a well-bred gentleman. His
very equipage kept up the series of contrasts between him and the two
Ballantynes. Constable went back and forward between the town and
Polton in a deep-hung and capacious green barouche, without any
pretence at heraldic blazonry, drawn by a pair of sleek, black,
long-tailed horses, and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain
blue livery. The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife
about the streets and suburbs in a snug machine, which did not
overburthen one powerful and steady cob; while the gay auctioneer,
whenever he left the saddle for the box, mounted a bright
blue dogcart, and rattled down the Newhaven road with two
high-mettled steeds, prancing _tandem_ before him, and {p.264} most
probably--especially if he was on his way to the races at
Musselburgh--with some "sweet singer of Israel" flaming, with all her
feathers, beside him. On such occasions, by the bye, Johnny sometimes
had a French horn with him, and he played on it with good skill, and
with an energy by no means prudent in the state of his lungs.

The Sheriff told with peculiar unction the following anecdote of this
spark. The first time he went over to pick up curiosities at Paris, it
happened that he met, in the course of his traffickings, a certain
brother bookseller of Edinburgh, as unlike him as one man could well
be to another