CHAPTER XVIIIThe Scottish Bar—Two Careers open—Walter's Choice—Studies with William Clerk—The Law Professors—Hume's Lectures—Hard Study—Beginnings of social Distinction—Influence of Clerk—Early Love-story—Description of Walter Scott at Twenty.Of the two branches of the legal profession, the bar offered the greatest attractions to young men ambitious of distinction. For mere financial success Walter Scott might have been tempted to take to the Writer's career. His father offered to take him at once into partnership, which would have meant 'an immediate prospect of a handsome independence.' But Walter was never very fond of money, and had then no expensive plans in view to make the acquisition of it a necessity. In all other respects he preferred the Advocate's life. It was the line of ambition and liberty. When he saw that his father also would prefer it, he hesitated no longer. Four arduous years of preparation (1789 to 1792) were devoted to the necessary legal studies. This period was utterly different from his Arts course. He studied with the greatest zeal and perseverance, giving his whole heart to the one aim. The companion of his studies was his cherished friend, William Clerk, whom he describes as 'a man of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, and who, should he ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by which he has been trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest degree.' At this time the Civil Law chair might be considered 'as inabeyance,' the Professor being almost in a state of dotage. It was different with the class of Scots Law. Under Professor David Hume, an enormous amount of legal learning had to be got up. Jeffrey, who attended the class in 1792, 'groaned over Hume's elaborate dulness,' but on Scott the subject seemed to exercise a charm. He considered Hume's prelections an honour to himself and an advantage to his country. He copied them over twice, which would mean the writing of four or five hundred closely packed pages. He speaks of Hume as having imported plan and order to the ancient and constantly altered structure of Scots Law by 'combining the past state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing clearly and judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes which led to them.'Upon these years of legal study Scott could always look back with satisfaction. 'A little parlour (he tells in his fragment of Autobiography, referring to the 'den' where Jeffrey found him) was assigned me in my father's house, which was spacious and convenient (for a modest student), and I took possession of my new realms with all the feelings of novelty and liberty. Let me do justice to the only years of my life in which I applied to learning with stern, steady, and undeviating industry. The rule of my friend Clerk and myself was, that we should mutually qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination upon certain points of law every morning in the week, Sundays excepted.... His house being at the extremity of Princes Street, New Town, was a walk of two miles. With great punctuality, however, I beat him up to his task every morning before seven o'clock, and in the course of two summers, we went, by way of question and answer, through the whole of Heineccius'sAnalysis of the Institutes and Pandects, as well as through the smaller copy of Erskine'sInstitutes of the Law of Scotland.'At this time, as a natural consequence of advancing years, his parents had given over entertaining company, unless in the case of near relations. Walter, however, though he was thus left in a great measure to form connections for himself, found no difficulty in making his way into good society. He scarcely ever refers to his social triumphs, but from other sources we can gather that he soon became a notable and a favourite figure. Before he had achieved any literary reputation, he had conquered local fame by the charm of his personality and the freshness of his conversation. Cockburn, speaking of the year 1811, has recorded that 'people used to be divided at this time as to the superiority of Scott's poetry or his talk. His novels had not yet begun to suggest another alternative. Scarcely, however, even in his novels was he more striking or delightful than in society, where the halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.'His early cultivation of society, which was of course a wholesome thing for a youth of twenty, was greatly favoured by his friendship with William Clerk. We have Lockhart's authority for the opinion that 'of all the connections he formed in life there was no one to whom he owed more.' Clerk's influence helped to decide him to take to the bar, the line of ambition and liberty. He then, as we have seen, by his very physical inertia, supplied Scott with a stimulating object during their legal studies. His influence on Scott's personal habits even was good and great. Walter's modesty and kind good-nature had perhaps made him a trifle more free and easy with his father's apprentices than was quite desirable for either him or them. They were, of course, his professional equals and the sharers in his daily pursuits, but their ideas and manners were not calculated to promote ambition so much as liberty. Walter, during his apprenticeship, was intentionally careless of appearances, and apt to be slovenly in his dress. He condescended to the clubs and festive resorts of the apprentices, a most dangerous thing for a genius, as Ferguson's blasted career had just proved. It was a fortunate enough and useful episode for the future author ofGuy Mannering, but it was not a good school of manners or academy of habits for Walter Scott. Fortunately William Clerk, with his West-end prejudices, came just at the right time, to chaff his friend out of his slovenliness and to show him the way to a more wholesome and not less interesting society. Finally, of course, it was his own sound sense that made this amiable change in his habits so easy. To this period, that is, about 1790, belongs the most romantic episode of Walter Scott's life, his unrequited love for Margaret Stuart.[1] He had made her acquaintance in the Greyfriars churchyard on a wet Sunday afternoon, when she accepted his offered umbrella and his escort home, for 'young Walter Scott,' a Duchess of Sutherland at this time said, 'was a comely creature.' And here we may give Lockhart's description of Scott as seen by Clerk and Margaret and the rest of his Edinburgh friends:—'His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging.... He had outgrown the sallowness of early ill-health, and had a fresh, brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, open, and well-set, with a changeful radiance, to which teeth of the most perfect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble expanse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His smile was always delightful; and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness and gravity with playful, innocent hilarity and humour in the expression, as being well calculated to fix a fair lady's eye. His figure, excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those days have been eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual standard, it was cast in the very mould of a young Hercules; the head set on with singular grace, the throat and chest after the truest model of the antique, the hands delicately finished; the whole outline that of extraordinary vigour, without as yet a touch of clumsiness.... I have heard him, in talking of this part of his life, say, with an arch simplicity of look and tone, which those who were familiar with him can fill in for themselves—"It was a proud night with me when I first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth her while to sit and talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of the ballroom, while all the world were capering in our view."'[1] Scott's youthful love-dream lasted through several years. The lady eventually married Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, who was a banker in Edinburgh. Sir William acted a very friendly part during Scott's financial disaster of 1826-27.CHAPTER XIXThe Advocate's 'Trials'—Scott and Clerk admitted to the Bar—Walter's first Fee—Connection of the Scotts with Lord Braxfield—Scottish Judges—Stories of Braxfield.The trials set to candidates for admission into the Faculty of Advocates were duly passed by Scott and his friend Clerk on the same days. They were formally admitted to the fraternity on the 11th of July, 1792.There is always some story of the young Advocate's first fee. When the ceremony of 'putting on the gown' was completed, Scott said to Clerk, putting on the air and tone of some Highland lassie waiting at the Cross to be 'fee'd' for the harvest, 'We've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, an' deil a ane has speir'd our price.' The friends were about to leave the Outer Court, when a friend, a solicitor, came up and gave Scott his first guinea fee. As he and Clerk went down the High Street, they passed a hosier's shop, and Scott remarked, 'This is a sort of wedding-day, Willie; I think I must go in and buy me a new nightcap.' Thus he 'wared' his guinea, but it is pleasing to know that his first big fee was spent on a silver taper-stand for his mother, which (Lockhart tells) the old lady used to point to with great satisfaction, as it stood on her chimney-piece five-and-twenty years afterwards.Scott's 'thesis'—no doubt, like Alan Fairford's, a very pretty piece of Latinity—was dedicated to the terrible Lord Braxfield, 'the giant of the bench,' as Cockburn calls him, 'whose very name makes people start yet.' Braxfield was a friend and near neighbour of the Scotts, his house being No. 28 George Square. It is said that he was rather kind to nervous young advocates at their first appearance in a case, so long as they were not 'Bar flunkies'—his term for brainless fops. Braxfield lives in popular tradition as a monster of rough and savage cruelty, and the sketch of the man by Cockburn bears out the character only too well. The sketch may be quoted in full, for its intrinsic interest, and for the vivid light it throws on the character and manners of Scottish judges in the century following the Union.'Strong-built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and his dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive.... Within the range of the Feudal and the Civil branches, and in every matter depending on natural ability and practical sense, he was very great; and his power arose more from the force of his reasoning and his vigorous application of principle, than from either the extent or the accuracy of his learning.... He had a colloquial way of arguing, in the form of question and answer, which, done in his clear, abrupt style, imparted a dramatic directness and vivacity to the scene.'With this intellectual force, as applied to law, his merits, I fear, cease. Illiterate, and without any taste for refined enjoyment, strength of understanding, which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. Despising the growing improvement of manners, he shocked the feelings even of an age which, with more of the formality, had far less of the substance of decorum than our own. Thousands of his sayings have been preserved, and the substance of them is indecency; which he succeeded in making many people enjoy, or at least endure, by hearty laughter, energy of manner, and rough humour. Almost the only story I ever heard of him that had some fun in it without immodesty, was when a butler gave up his place because his lordship's wife was always scolding him. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "ye 've little to complain o'; ye may be thankfu' ye 're no married to her."'It is impossible to blame his conduct as a criminal judge too gravely, or too severely. It was a disgrace to the age. A dexterous and practical trier of ordinary cases, he was harsh to prisoners even in his jocularity, and to every counsel whom he chose to dislike.... It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest; over which he would chuckle the more from observing that correct people were shocked.[1] Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness....[1] His remark to Margaret, one of the 'Friends of the People,' who made a speech in his own defence, was, 'Ye're a very clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the war o' a hanging.''In the political trials of 1793 and 1794 he was the Jeffreys of Scotland. He, as the head of the court, and the only very powerful man it contained, was the real director of its proceedings. The reports make his abuse of the judgment seat bad enough: but his misconduct was not so fully disclosed in formal decisions and charges, as it transpired in casual remarks and general manner. "Let them bring me prisoners and I'll find them law" used to be openly stated as his suggestion, when an intended political prosecution was marred by anticipated difficulties. Mr. Horner (father of Francis), who was one of the juniors in Muir's case, told me that when he was passing, as was often done then, behind the bench to get into the box, Braxfield, who knew him, whispered—"Come awa', Mr. Horner, come awa', and help to hang[2] ane o' thae damned scoondrels." The reporter of Gerald's case could not venture to make the prisoner say more than that "Christianity was an innovation." But the full truth is, that in stating this view he added that all great men had been reformers, "even our Saviour himself." "Muckle he made o' that," chuckled Braxfield in an under voice; "he was hanget." Before Hume'sCommentarieshad made our criminal record intelligible, the form and precedents were a mystery understood by the initiated alone, and by nobody so much as by Mr. Joseph Norris, the ancient clerk. Braxfield used to quash anticipated doubts by saying—"Hoot! just gie me Josie Norrie and a gude jury, an' I'll doo for the fallow." He died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year.'[2]Hangwas his phrase for all kinds of punishment.CHAPTER XXStories of the Judges—Lord Eskgrove—His Appearance—The Trials for Sedition—Anecdotes of Circuit Dinners—'Esky' andthe Harangue—The Soldier's Breeches—Esky and the Veiled Witness—Henderson and the Fine—The Luss Robbers—Death of Eskgrove.Stories about one or other of the judges were apparently the leading feature of conversation in Edinburgh society at the end of the eighteenth century. Lord Eskgrove, who, almost in his dotage at the age of seventy-six, was appointed to succeed Braxfield as head of the Criminal Court, was about the most ludicrous and childishly eccentric of the race. For a time it seemed the whole occupation of the wits to relate anecdotes about old Eskgrove. To give these anecdotes with a recognisable mimicry of his voice and manner was, in Cockburn's phrase, 'a sort of fortune in society.' And Scott, he adds, in those days was famous for this particularly. It was not the wit or the humour of Eskgrove which amused. He seems to have had neither. It was simply his personal oddity, and the utter incongruity of such an incredible creature elevated to a position such as his. His face is described as varying from a scurfy red to a scurfy blue. His nose was prodigious: the under lip enormous, and supported on a huge clumsy chin, which moved like the jaw of a Dutch toy. He walked with a slow, stealthy step—something between a walk and a hirple, and helped himself on by short movements of his elbows, backwards and forwards, like fins. His voice was low and mumbling. His pronunciation seems to have been fantastic in the extreme, especially in the way of cutting even short words into two. The following anecdotes from Cockburn, who knew him, 'when he was in the zenith of his absurdity,' bring 'Esky' very vividly before us.At the trial of Fysche Palmer for sedition, he made one of the very few remarks he ever made which had some little merit of their own. It was a retort to Mr. John Haggart, one of the prisoner's counsel, who, in defending his client against the charge of disrespect to the king, quoted Burke's statement that kings are naturally lovers of low company. "Then, sir, that says very little for you or your client! for if kinggs be lovers of low company, low company ought to be lovers of kinggs!"'Nothing disturbed him so much as the expense of the public dinner for which the judge on the circuit has a fixed allowance, and out of which the less he spends the more he gains. His devices for economy were often very diverting. His servant had strict orders to check the bottles of wine by laying aside the corks. Once at Stirling his lordship went behind a screen, while the company was still at table, and seeing an alarming row of corks, got into a warm altercation, which everybody heard, with John; maintaining it to be "impossibill" that they could have drunk so much. On being assured that they had, and were still going on—"Well, then, John, I must just protect myself!" On which he put a handful of the corks into his pocket, and resumed his seat.'Like the poor man in the story, Lord Eskgrove was "sair hauden doon by yon turkey cock." The plague of his life for more than a year was Henry Brougham. In revenge the judge used to sneer at Brougham's eloquence by styling it or himthe Harangue. "Well, gentle-men, what did the Harangue say next? Why, it said this" (mis-stating it); "but here, gentle-men, the Harangue was most plainly wrong, and not intelligibill."'Everything was connected by his terror with republican horrors. I heard him, in condemning a tailor to death for murdering a soldier by stabbing him, aggravate the offence thus: "And not only did you murder him, whereby he was bereaved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell, the le-thall weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which were his Majes-ty's!"'In the trial of Glengarry for murder in a duel, a lady of great beauty was called as a witness. She came into court veiled. But before administering the oath Eskgrove gave her this exposition of her duty—"Young woman! you will now consider yourself as in the presence of Almighty God and of this High Court. Lift up your veil; throw off all modesty, and look me in the face."'Sir John Henderson of Fordell, a zealous Whig, once came before the court, their lordships having to fix the amount of some discretionary penalty which he had incurred. Eskgrove began to give his opinion in a very low voice, but loud enough to be heard by those next him, to the effect that the fine ought to be £50; when Sir John, with his usual imprudence, interrupted him and begged him to raise his voice, adding that if judges did not speak so as to be heard, they might as well not speak at all. Eskgrove, who never could endure any imputation of bodily infirmity, asked his neighbour, "What does the fellow say?" "He says that, if you don't speak out, you may as well hold your tongue." "Oh, is that what he says? My lords, what I was sayingg was very simpell. I was only sayingg that in my humbell opinyon, this fine could not be less than two hundred and fifty pounds sterlingg"—this sum being roared out as loudly as his old angry voice could launch it.'His tediousness in charging juries was most dreadful, and he was the only judge who insisted on the old custom of making juries stand during the judge's address. Often have I gone back to the court at midnight, and found him, whom I had left mumbling hours before, still going on, with the smoky unsnuffed tallow candles in greasy tin candlesticks, and the poor despairing jurymen, most of the audience having retired or being asleep; the wagging of his lordship's nose and chin being the chief signs that he was stillchar-ging.'A very common arrangement of his logic to juries was this:—"And so, gentle-men, having shown you that the pannell's argument is utterly impossibill, I shall now proceed for to show you that it is extremely improbabill."'He rarely failed to signalise himself in pronouncing sentences of death. It was almost a matter of style with him to console the prisoner by assuring him that, "whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be, or even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, there are plenty of rever-end gentle-men who will be most happy for to show you the way to yeternal life."'He had to condemn two or three persons to die who had broken into a house at Luss, and assaulted Sir James Colquhoun and others, and robbed them of a large sum of money. He first, as was his almost constant practice, explained the nature of the various crimes, assault, robbery, and hamesucken—of which last he gave them the etymology; and he then reminded them that they attacked the house and the persons within it, and robbed them, and then came to this climax—"All this you did; and God preserve us! joost when they were sitten doon to their denner!'"In concluding his reminiscences of Eskgrove Lord Cockburn says: 'He was the staple of the public conversation; and so long as his old age lasted, he nearly drove Napoleon out of the Edinburgh world.... A story of Eskgrove is still preferred to all other stories. Only, the things that he did and said every day are beginning to be incredible to this correct and fiat age.' Lord Eskgrove died in 1804, at the age of eighty.CHAPTER XXIScott's Anecdote of Lord Kames—Judicial Cruelty—Lord Meadowbank's Marriage—'Declaim, Sir'—Judges and Drinking—Hermand and the Pope—Bacchus on the Bench—Hermand and the Middy.When Scott dined at Carlton House in 1815, the Prince Regent is said to have been particularly delighted with his guest's anecdotes of the old Scottish judges and lawyers. The following story was considered among the best, and it is one which Scott was fond of telling: 'Lord Kames' (described by Cockburn as 'an indefatigable and speculative but coarse man'), 'whenever he went on the Ayr circuit, was in the habit of visiting Matthew Hay, a gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood, and staying at least one night, which, being both of them ardent chess players, they usually concluded with their favourite game. One spring circuit the battle was not concluded at daybreak, so the judge said—"Well, Matthew, I must e'en come back this gate in the harvest, and let the game lie ower for the present"; and back he came in September, but not to his old friend's hospitable house; for that gentleman had in the meantime been apprehended on a capital charge, and his name stood on thePorteous Roll, or list of those who were about to be tried under his former guest's auspices. The laird was indicted and tried accordingly, and the jury returned a verdict ofGuilty. The judge forthwith put on his cocked hat (which answers to the black cap in England), and pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual terms—"To be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon your unhappy soul!" Having concluded this awful formula in his most sonorous cadence, Kames, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod to his unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him in a sort of chuckling whisper—"And now, Matthew, my man, that's checkmate to you." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of judicial humour; and, "I'faith, Walter," said he, "this old big-wig seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me at breakfast—"The table spread with tea and toast,Death warrants and theMorning Post"?'This gruesome story, incredible as it appears and repulsive in its bare and uncalled-for cruelty, is an attested fact. Lord Cockburn, in referring to the above incident, says: 'Besides general and uncontradicted notoriety, I had the fact from Lord Hermand, who was one of the counsel at the trial, and never forgot a piece of judicial cruelty which excited his horror and anger.'To pass to a more agreeable subject, there was Lord Meadowbank, who disappeared from the festive party an hour or two after his marriage. Search was made, and the oblivious Benedick was found busily engaged in writing a profound thesis on the subject of 'Pains and Penalties.'He was a most versatile man, and his fondness for discussion made him often highly diverting. Referring to his power of discovering principles and tracking out their consequences, Jeffrey said that while the other judges gave the tree a tug, Meadowbank not only tore it up by the roots, but gave it a shake which dispersed the earth and exposed all the fibres.One day Mr. Thomas Walker Baird was, in a dull technical way, stating a dry case to Lord Meadowbank, who was sitting single. This did not please the judge, who thought that his dignity required a grander tone. So he dismayed poor Baird, than whom no man could have less turn for burning in the Forum, by throwing himself back in his chair and saying, 'Declaim, sir, why don't you declaim? Speak to me as if I were a popular assembly.'In the lively story of Mr. Pleydell and his clerk Driver, Scott has immortalised the convivial habits of the Scottish Bar. The actual incident, as stated in the note, occurred to Dundas of Arniston at the time he was Lord Advocate. How ably the judges comported themselves at the table is well proved in Cockburn's description of Lord Hermand, who, he says, 'had acted in more of the severest scenes of old Scotch drinking than any man at least living. Commonplace topers think drinking a pleasure; with Hermand it was a virtue. It inspired the excitement by which he was elevated, and the discursive jollity which he loved to promote. But beyond these ordinary attractions, he had a sincere respect for drinking, indeed a high moral approbation, and a serious compassion for the poor wretches who could not indulge in it; with due contempt for those who could, but did not. He groaned over the gradual disappearance of theFeriatdays of periodical festivity, and prolonged the observance, like a hero fighting amidst his fallen friends, as long as he could. The worship of Bacchus, which softened his own heart, and seemed to him to soften the hearts of his companions, was a secondary duty. But in its performance there was no violence, no coarseness, no impropriety, and no more noise than what belongs to well-bred jollity unrestrained. It was merely a sublimation of his peculiarities and excellences; the realisation of what poetry ascribes to the grape. No carouse ever injured his health, for he was never ill, or impaired his taste for home and quiet, or muddled his head: he slept the sounder for it, and rose the earlier and the cooler. The cordiality inspired by claret and punch was felt by him as so congenial to all right thinking, that he was confident that he could convert the Pope if he could only get him to sup with him. And certainly his Holiness would have been hard to persuade if he could have withstood Hermand about the middle of his second tumbler.'The Bacchic religion of Lord Hermand sometimes found expression even on the Bench. On one occasion a young man was convicted of culpable homicide. In a wrangle with a friend, with whom he had been drinking all night, he had stabbed him and caused his death. The case being little more than a sad accident, the youth was sentenced to only a short imprisonment. At this Lord Hermand, who regarded the case as a discredit to the cause of drinking, was highly indignant at his colleagues' softness. He would have transported the homicide: 'We are told that there was no malice, and that the prisoner must have been in liquor. In liquor! Why, he was drunk! And yet he murdered the very man who had been drinking with him! They had been carousing the whole night; and yet he stabbed him! after drinking a whole bottle of rum with him! Good God, my Laards, if he will do this when he's drunk, what will he not do when he's sober?'A somewhat similar case shows Lord Hermand in a different light. His love for children was a great feature in his character. A little English midshipman, being attacked by a much bigger lad in Greenock, defended himself with his dirk, and somehow killed his assailant. 'He was tried for this in Glasgow, and had the good luck to have Hermand for his judge; for no judge ever fought a more gallant battle for a prisoner. The boy appeared at the bar in his uniform. Hermand first refused "to try a child." After this was driven out of him, the indictment, which described the occurrence, and said that the prisoner had slain the deceased "wickedly and feloniously," was read; and Hermand then said, "Well, my young friend, this is not true, is it? Are you guilty or not guilty?" "Not guilty, my Lord." "I'll be sworn you're not!" In spite of all his exertions, his young friend was convicted of culpable homicide; for which he was sentenced to a few days' imprisonment.'With his mind filled with the sayings and doings of the Braxfields and the Eskgroves, Walter Scott could scarcely nourish many illusions regarding his chosen profession. Fortunately he went 'where his own nature would be leading.'CHAPTER XXIIPolitical Lawyers—Politics an 'accident' in Scott's History—Early Days at the Bar—Peter Peebles—The Mountain—Anecdote of Scott and Clerk—The German Class—Friendship with William Erskine—German Romance—Seniors of the Bar—Robert Blair—Greatest of Scottish Judges—Anecdote of Hermand and Henry Erskine.In speaking of Scottish politics in 1792—it was in 1792, November, that Scott and Clerk began their regular attendance at the Parliament House—it is desirable to repeat that Scott is not to be regarded as ever having been in any circumstances a politician. It is absurd even to mention his name among the crowd of Tory juniors seeking to push their way to preferment by party services and loud-mouthed partisan zeal. This crowd, of which Lord Cockburn speaks, 'produced several most excellent men and very respectable lawyers, but not one person, except Walter Scott, who rose to distinction in literature.' Scott was in no sense a 'product' of so ignoble a school. There is perhaps nothing in creation so utterly mean and odious as the person who deliberately engineers his course to legal office by excessive partisanship. Meanness and narrowness of mind must be born in the creature who does it. Who would expect literary distinction from such? If there be any instances on record—and there is most unfortunately that of Francis Bacon—of genius united with such a career, they are distinguished by their singularity, and operate as exceptions. Walter Scott was one of the junior bar, but he was never one of these political aspirants. His conscience, not the main chance, was the ruling principle with him. Party was a small thing to Scott: not the be-all and the end-all of existence as it was to many others of his contemporaries. It was natural for Cockburn and the Whigs, who were struggling for existence against very real oppression and injustice, to exaggerate to themselves the importance of the whole wretched business.'They took the rustic murmur of their bourgFor the great wave that circles round the world.'Scott's good sense and utter lack of conceit preserved him from falling into their mistake. Like most other men of culture and honour, both then and now, he frankly took a side in politics rather than be always posing as an independent and as if he were the only conscientious man in a neighbourhood. Historical sentiment, the glamour of romance and the tradition of great names, made him prefer the Tory side. That was all. But he retained his independence complete and unsullied. Whenever at any time he took an active part in militant politics, it was not to curry favour and gain the spoils, but because his whole heart and soul were with the cause.Scott certainly started life with the idea of making his career in the law. Work gradually came to him. Friendly solicitors were pleased to put certain kinds of business in the young man's hands, chiefly at first, as was natural, for his father's sake. 'By and by,' says Clerk, 'he crept into a tolerable share of such business as may be expected from a Writer's connexion.' That is, of course, from his father's connection, and the business would consist of long writteninformationsand other papers for the Court, on which young counsellors of the Scottish Bar were expected to bestow a great deal of trouble for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely any chance of displaying their ability or making a name. Another part of every young advocate's work, even less important in fees or in fame, was that of acting for pauper litigants, as Alan Fairford did in the famous case of Poor Peter Peebles. In the note Scott says that he himself had at one time the honour to be counsel for the actual Peter.On the whole, Scott in these early days had probably plenty of leisure time on his hands. He spent some of it at all events among the 'unemployed' of the Bar. They were in the habit of congregating at a particular spot at the north end of the Outer House, which, according to Lockhart, was called by a name which easily recalls the date—the Mountain. From Cockburn's account it would appear that the loungers of the Mountain were all Whigs, separated into a sect of their own and all branded with the same mark. As he mentions among them Thomas Thomson, who we know was at this time one of Scott's most intimate daily associates, we must infer that the separation was not quite absolute. The following story of Clerk's shows that he also was one of the group. One morning finding them all convulsed with laughter, he complained thatDuns Scotushad been forestalling him in a good story which he had told him privately the day before—adding, moreover, that his friend had not only stolen it, but disguised it. 'Why,' answered Scott, skilfully waiving the main charge, 'this is always the way with theBaronet. He is continually saying that I change his stories, whereas in fact I only put a cocked hat on their heads, and stick a cane into their hands—to make them fit for going into company.' About Christmas of this eventful year, Scott, Clerk, Thomson, and William Erskine (afterwards Lord Kinedder) joined a German class; and all the four soon qualified themselves to read Schiller and Goethe. Erskine was a Tory: Scott's other young advocate friends were by descent and connection Whigs. From the time of the German class Erskine and Scott drew closer together, and Erskine became by and by, as we learn from Lockhart, 'the nearest and most confidential' of all Scott's Edinburgh associates. We also know that, though politics never shook the mutual regard of the others, 'the events and controversies of the immediately ensuing years could not but disturb, more or less, the social habits of young barristers who adopted opposite views on the French Revolution and the policy of Pitt. His friendship exercised an influence which Lockhart rates very high, on Scott's literary tastes. Along with a sincere love of the classics, Erskine had cherished from boyhood a strong passion for Old English literature, especially the Elizabethan dramatists. He sympathised with, and understood the real value of, Scott's taste for antiquity and national lore. He delighted in the bold and picturesque style, the strength and originality, of the native English school, but he warned Scott of the necessity of paying some deference to modern taste. In short, he knew how to "sift and sunder," and understood that the absurdities and extravagances of great works form no part of their greatness, though they are exactly the parts most likely to be selected for imitation.' Lockhart, in pointing out that Scott was mainly influenced in his first literary attempts by the founders of German drama and romance, states the opinion that he ran at first no trivial risk of adopting some of their extravagances both of idea and expression. Erskine's vigorous condemnation of the mingled absurdities and vulgarities of German detail, coming from one who so enthusiastically admired their great qualities, and who approved of their new departure in choosing romantic subjects, had no doubt full weight in guiding the judgment of so sane and sound a genius as Scott.The seniors of the Bar about this time were, on the Government or Tory side, Robert Blair, Charles Hope, and Robert Dundas. Of Blair it has been said by Cockburn that he was a species of man not very common in Scotland: he might have said in any country, if his own description is correct. 'He had a fine manly countenance, a gentleman-like, portly figure, a slow dignified gait, and a general air of thought and power. Too solid for ingenuity, and too plain for fancy, soundness of understanding was his peculiar intellectual quality. Within his range nobody doubted, or could doubt, Blair's wisdom. Nor did it ever occur to any one to doubt his probity. He was all honesty. The sudden opening of the whole secrets of his heart would not have disclosed a single speck of dishonour. And all his affections, personal and domestic, were excellent and steady.'If not indolent, Blair seems to have been strongly averse to letting himself be bothered with mean details or drudgery. He maintained, as few can do, a noble independence of small and mean interests. But with his great love of rest, repose, and ease he combined a fiery and excitable disposition. The combination is said to be rare. It is always noble.Blair is a splendid example of this truth. He was absolutely indifferent to preferment. Lord Melville says that George III. used to speak of him as 'the man who would not go up.' Literally as well as morally he kept his own way. There was a line, it is said, in the Outer House, which was kept clear for him whenever he was present. Even his official superiors, and the judges themselves, stood in awe of him. He was, by preference and practice, a silent man. He was one who could play a long game with a dozen people, and yet not speak. In politics he was a loyal party man, but as void of malignity as he was free from self-seeking. He was one of the few who 'have greatness thrust upon them,' having been made Lord President of the Court of Session a few years before his death. His memory is still revered as that of the greatest of Scottish judges. His character and the marvellous clearness of his judicial 'opinions' made him the pride of Edinburgh during his all too short reign, which closed in 1811. His death was very sudden, and affected the whole population like the unexpected loss of a dear personal friend. Lord Cockburn has described the scene: 'It overwhelmed us all. Party made no division about Blair. All pleasure and all business were suspended. I saw Hermand that night. He despised Blair's abstinence from the pollution of small politics. He did not know that he could love a man who neither cared for claret nor for whist; but, at near seventy years of age, he was crying like a child. Next day the Court was silent, and adjourned. The Faculty of Advocates, hastily called together, resolved to attend him to his grave. Henry Erskine tried to say something, and because he could only try it, it was as good a speech as he ever made.' From his grave in Greyfriars Churchyard to the edge of the Castlehill, the vast concourse of spectators stood silent and uncovered when the sod was laid.CHAPTER XXIIISeniors (continued)—Charles Hope—His Voice—Tribute by Cockburn—Robert Dundas, Nephew of Henry, Lord Melville—His Manner and Moderation—Anecdote of Lords Blair and Melville—Lord Melville's Son—Scott's Project of Emigration.Charles Hope may be considered one of the very best representatives of his profession. He had an extensive practice as an advocate, and afterwards filled successively, with great distinction, the offices of Lord Advocate, Lord Justice-Clerk, and Lord President. But his great forte was public speaking. For this his qualifications were great: a tall figure, commanding presence, natural manner, great command of language, and a magnificent voice, which Cockburn describes as 'surpassed by that of the great Mrs. Siddons alone, which, drawn direct from heaven and worthy to be heard there, was the noblest that ever struck the human ear.'Few men, surely, have ever received or deserved such an encomium from a political opponent as Cockburn has left us of Lord President Hope:—'It is a pleasure to me to think of him. He was my first—I might almost say my only, professional patron, and used to take me with him on his circuits; and in spite of my obstinate and active Whiggery has been kind to me through life. When his son, who was Solicitor-General in 1830, lost that office by the elevation of the Reform Ministry, and I succeeded him, his father shook me warmly by the hand, and said, "Well, Harry, I wish you joy. Since my son was to lose it, I am glad that your father's son has got it." It was always so with him. Less enlightened than confident in his public opinions, his feelings towards his adversaries, even when ardently denouncing their principles, were liberalised by the native humanity and fairness of his dispositions.'Perhaps the most interesting public character in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth century was Robert Dundas of Arniston. He was the son of a Lord President Dundas, whose father had also occupied that high position. His uncle was Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, the famous friend of Pitt. The uncle, it is supposed, greatly influenced the policy of the nephew, whose power in Scotland was for a time almost unlimited. At all events, in a position almost certain to provoke jealousy and enmity on all hands, he was able to maintain a character for moderation and fairness even in the cases of political prosecution which his office of Lord Advocate required him to conduct. In those troublous times the powers given to the Lord Advocate were extravagant and arbitrary. Dundas seems to have been a man of moderate abilities and ordinary acquirements, but Cockburn's lively picture sufficiently explains his remarkable success in his trying and difficult duties. 'He had two qualifications which suited his position, and made him not only the best Lord Advocate that his party could have supplied, but really a most excellent one. These consisted in his manner, and in his moderation. He was a little, alert, handsome, gentleman-like man, with a countenance and air beaming with sprightliness and gaiety, and dignified by considerable fire; altogether inexpressibly pleasing. It was impossible not to like the owner of that look. No one could contemplate his animated and elegant briskness, or his lively benignity, without feeling that these were the reflections of an ardent and amiable heart. His want of intellectual depth and force seemed to make people like him the better. And his manner was worthy of his appearance. It was kind, polite, and gay; and if the fire did happen to break out, it was but a passing flash, and left nothing painful after it was gone.'Dundas had his town residence at No. 57 George Square. His uncle, Lord Melville, had come here on the 26th of May 1811, with the intention of attending the funeral of Lord Blair next day. He retired to rest apparently in his usual health, but was found next morning dead in bed. Thus, strange to say, the two friends, who had both been alive and active a week before, were lying dead with but a wall between them, for Blair's house was No. 56, next door to that of Dundas. A strange incident is related by Lord Cockburn, which he says he was inclined to regard as true: viz., that a letter written by Lord Melville was found on his table, or in a writing-case after his death, in which he drew a moving picture of his feelings at the funeral of Lord Blair. Little had he imagined that he himself would be dead before that funeral took place. The letter was addressed to a member of the government, with a view to obtain some public provision for Blair's family. 'Such things,' adds Lord Cockburn, 'are always awkward when detected; especially when done by a skilful politician. Nevertheless an honest and a true man might do this. It is easy to anticipate one's feelings at a friend's burial; and putting the description into the form of having returned from it is mere rhetoric.'Scott enjoyed the personal friendship of Viscount Melville, and still more of the younger members of the Dundas family. Robert Dundas was Lord Advocate at the time of Scott's appointment to the sheriffship of Selkirk. Another Robert Dundas, Lord Melville's son, had been one of Scott's admirers in the story-telling days of the High School, and their intimacy continued later on. In fact Arniston and Melville supplied Walter Scott with quite a troop of warm friends. An anecdote which connects Lord Melville and Scott may be given here, though it belongs to the end of the next decade (1810). Great changes had at that time been proposed in the Scottish law and judicature. They did not commend themselves to Scott's judgment. In fact, he wrote a remarkable essay in theEdinburgh Annual Registeragainst the rash attempt at a general innovation. He was at the same time uneasy in regard to the affairs of his Ballantyne publishing business, and fretting a little at the drudgery of his clerkship, which as yet yielded him no income. It was a crisis very like that in the life of Burns when he proposed to emigrate to Jamaica. Scott indeed seriously entertained the idea of going to India, as is clear from his letter to his brother Thomas in November 1810. 'I have no objection to tell you in confidence, that, were Dundas to go out Governor-General to India, and were he willing to take me with him in a good situation, I would not hesitate to pitch the Court of Session and the booksellers to the Devil, and try my fortune in another climate. But this is strictlyentre nous.' Dundas, it seems, had on several occasions been spoken of as likely to be appointed Governor-General of India, and he had hinted at taking Scott with him. Fortunately the opportunity never occurred, the genius was not driven into exile, and the Court of Session and the booksellers obtained a temporary reprieve.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Scottish Bar—Two Careers open—Walter's Choice—Studies with William Clerk—The Law Professors—Hume's Lectures—Hard Study—Beginnings of social Distinction—Influence of Clerk—Early Love-story—Description of Walter Scott at Twenty.
Of the two branches of the legal profession, the bar offered the greatest attractions to young men ambitious of distinction. For mere financial success Walter Scott might have been tempted to take to the Writer's career. His father offered to take him at once into partnership, which would have meant 'an immediate prospect of a handsome independence.' But Walter was never very fond of money, and had then no expensive plans in view to make the acquisition of it a necessity. In all other respects he preferred the Advocate's life. It was the line of ambition and liberty. When he saw that his father also would prefer it, he hesitated no longer. Four arduous years of preparation (1789 to 1792) were devoted to the necessary legal studies. This period was utterly different from his Arts course. He studied with the greatest zeal and perseverance, giving his whole heart to the one aim. The companion of his studies was his cherished friend, William Clerk, whom he describes as 'a man of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, and who, should he ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by which he has been trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest degree.' At this time the Civil Law chair might be considered 'as inabeyance,' the Professor being almost in a state of dotage. It was different with the class of Scots Law. Under Professor David Hume, an enormous amount of legal learning had to be got up. Jeffrey, who attended the class in 1792, 'groaned over Hume's elaborate dulness,' but on Scott the subject seemed to exercise a charm. He considered Hume's prelections an honour to himself and an advantage to his country. He copied them over twice, which would mean the writing of four or five hundred closely packed pages. He speaks of Hume as having imported plan and order to the ancient and constantly altered structure of Scots Law by 'combining the past state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing clearly and judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes which led to them.'
Upon these years of legal study Scott could always look back with satisfaction. 'A little parlour (he tells in his fragment of Autobiography, referring to the 'den' where Jeffrey found him) was assigned me in my father's house, which was spacious and convenient (for a modest student), and I took possession of my new realms with all the feelings of novelty and liberty. Let me do justice to the only years of my life in which I applied to learning with stern, steady, and undeviating industry. The rule of my friend Clerk and myself was, that we should mutually qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination upon certain points of law every morning in the week, Sundays excepted.... His house being at the extremity of Princes Street, New Town, was a walk of two miles. With great punctuality, however, I beat him up to his task every morning before seven o'clock, and in the course of two summers, we went, by way of question and answer, through the whole of Heineccius'sAnalysis of the Institutes and Pandects, as well as through the smaller copy of Erskine'sInstitutes of the Law of Scotland.'
At this time, as a natural consequence of advancing years, his parents had given over entertaining company, unless in the case of near relations. Walter, however, though he was thus left in a great measure to form connections for himself, found no difficulty in making his way into good society. He scarcely ever refers to his social triumphs, but from other sources we can gather that he soon became a notable and a favourite figure. Before he had achieved any literary reputation, he had conquered local fame by the charm of his personality and the freshness of his conversation. Cockburn, speaking of the year 1811, has recorded that 'people used to be divided at this time as to the superiority of Scott's poetry or his talk. His novels had not yet begun to suggest another alternative. Scarcely, however, even in his novels was he more striking or delightful than in society, where the halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.'
His early cultivation of society, which was of course a wholesome thing for a youth of twenty, was greatly favoured by his friendship with William Clerk. We have Lockhart's authority for the opinion that 'of all the connections he formed in life there was no one to whom he owed more.' Clerk's influence helped to decide him to take to the bar, the line of ambition and liberty. He then, as we have seen, by his very physical inertia, supplied Scott with a stimulating object during their legal studies. His influence on Scott's personal habits even was good and great. Walter's modesty and kind good-nature had perhaps made him a trifle more free and easy with his father's apprentices than was quite desirable for either him or them. They were, of course, his professional equals and the sharers in his daily pursuits, but their ideas and manners were not calculated to promote ambition so much as liberty. Walter, during his apprenticeship, was intentionally careless of appearances, and apt to be slovenly in his dress. He condescended to the clubs and festive resorts of the apprentices, a most dangerous thing for a genius, as Ferguson's blasted career had just proved. It was a fortunate enough and useful episode for the future author ofGuy Mannering, but it was not a good school of manners or academy of habits for Walter Scott. Fortunately William Clerk, with his West-end prejudices, came just at the right time, to chaff his friend out of his slovenliness and to show him the way to a more wholesome and not less interesting society. Finally, of course, it was his own sound sense that made this amiable change in his habits so easy. To this period, that is, about 1790, belongs the most romantic episode of Walter Scott's life, his unrequited love for Margaret Stuart.[1] He had made her acquaintance in the Greyfriars churchyard on a wet Sunday afternoon, when she accepted his offered umbrella and his escort home, for 'young Walter Scott,' a Duchess of Sutherland at this time said, 'was a comely creature.' And here we may give Lockhart's description of Scott as seen by Clerk and Margaret and the rest of his Edinburgh friends:—
'His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging.... He had outgrown the sallowness of early ill-health, and had a fresh, brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, open, and well-set, with a changeful radiance, to which teeth of the most perfect regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble expanse and elevation of the brow gave to the whole aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His smile was always delightful; and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness and gravity with playful, innocent hilarity and humour in the expression, as being well calculated to fix a fair lady's eye. His figure, excepting the blemish in one limb, must in those days have been eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual standard, it was cast in the very mould of a young Hercules; the head set on with singular grace, the throat and chest after the truest model of the antique, the hands delicately finished; the whole outline that of extraordinary vigour, without as yet a touch of clumsiness.... I have heard him, in talking of this part of his life, say, with an arch simplicity of look and tone, which those who were familiar with him can fill in for themselves—"It was a proud night with me when I first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth her while to sit and talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of the ballroom, while all the world were capering in our view."'
[1] Scott's youthful love-dream lasted through several years. The lady eventually married Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, who was a banker in Edinburgh. Sir William acted a very friendly part during Scott's financial disaster of 1826-27.
CHAPTER XIX
The Advocate's 'Trials'—Scott and Clerk admitted to the Bar—Walter's first Fee—Connection of the Scotts with Lord Braxfield—Scottish Judges—Stories of Braxfield.
The trials set to candidates for admission into the Faculty of Advocates were duly passed by Scott and his friend Clerk on the same days. They were formally admitted to the fraternity on the 11th of July, 1792.
There is always some story of the young Advocate's first fee. When the ceremony of 'putting on the gown' was completed, Scott said to Clerk, putting on the air and tone of some Highland lassie waiting at the Cross to be 'fee'd' for the harvest, 'We've stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, an' deil a ane has speir'd our price.' The friends were about to leave the Outer Court, when a friend, a solicitor, came up and gave Scott his first guinea fee. As he and Clerk went down the High Street, they passed a hosier's shop, and Scott remarked, 'This is a sort of wedding-day, Willie; I think I must go in and buy me a new nightcap.' Thus he 'wared' his guinea, but it is pleasing to know that his first big fee was spent on a silver taper-stand for his mother, which (Lockhart tells) the old lady used to point to with great satisfaction, as it stood on her chimney-piece five-and-twenty years afterwards.
Scott's 'thesis'—no doubt, like Alan Fairford's, a very pretty piece of Latinity—was dedicated to the terrible Lord Braxfield, 'the giant of the bench,' as Cockburn calls him, 'whose very name makes people start yet.' Braxfield was a friend and near neighbour of the Scotts, his house being No. 28 George Square. It is said that he was rather kind to nervous young advocates at their first appearance in a case, so long as they were not 'Bar flunkies'—his term for brainless fops. Braxfield lives in popular tradition as a monster of rough and savage cruelty, and the sketch of the man by Cockburn bears out the character only too well. The sketch may be quoted in full, for its intrinsic interest, and for the vivid light it throws on the character and manners of Scottish judges in the century following the Union.
'Strong-built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and his dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive.... Within the range of the Feudal and the Civil branches, and in every matter depending on natural ability and practical sense, he was very great; and his power arose more from the force of his reasoning and his vigorous application of principle, than from either the extent or the accuracy of his learning.... He had a colloquial way of arguing, in the form of question and answer, which, done in his clear, abrupt style, imparted a dramatic directness and vivacity to the scene.
'With this intellectual force, as applied to law, his merits, I fear, cease. Illiterate, and without any taste for refined enjoyment, strength of understanding, which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. Despising the growing improvement of manners, he shocked the feelings even of an age which, with more of the formality, had far less of the substance of decorum than our own. Thousands of his sayings have been preserved, and the substance of them is indecency; which he succeeded in making many people enjoy, or at least endure, by hearty laughter, energy of manner, and rough humour. Almost the only story I ever heard of him that had some fun in it without immodesty, was when a butler gave up his place because his lordship's wife was always scolding him. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "ye 've little to complain o'; ye may be thankfu' ye 're no married to her."
'It is impossible to blame his conduct as a criminal judge too gravely, or too severely. It was a disgrace to the age. A dexterous and practical trier of ordinary cases, he was harsh to prisoners even in his jocularity, and to every counsel whom he chose to dislike.... It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest; over which he would chuckle the more from observing that correct people were shocked.[1] Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness....
[1] His remark to Margaret, one of the 'Friends of the People,' who made a speech in his own defence, was, 'Ye're a very clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the war o' a hanging.'
'In the political trials of 1793 and 1794 he was the Jeffreys of Scotland. He, as the head of the court, and the only very powerful man it contained, was the real director of its proceedings. The reports make his abuse of the judgment seat bad enough: but his misconduct was not so fully disclosed in formal decisions and charges, as it transpired in casual remarks and general manner. "Let them bring me prisoners and I'll find them law" used to be openly stated as his suggestion, when an intended political prosecution was marred by anticipated difficulties. Mr. Horner (father of Francis), who was one of the juniors in Muir's case, told me that when he was passing, as was often done then, behind the bench to get into the box, Braxfield, who knew him, whispered—"Come awa', Mr. Horner, come awa', and help to hang[2] ane o' thae damned scoondrels." The reporter of Gerald's case could not venture to make the prisoner say more than that "Christianity was an innovation." But the full truth is, that in stating this view he added that all great men had been reformers, "even our Saviour himself." "Muckle he made o' that," chuckled Braxfield in an under voice; "he was hanget." Before Hume'sCommentarieshad made our criminal record intelligible, the form and precedents were a mystery understood by the initiated alone, and by nobody so much as by Mr. Joseph Norris, the ancient clerk. Braxfield used to quash anticipated doubts by saying—"Hoot! just gie me Josie Norrie and a gude jury, an' I'll doo for the fallow." He died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year.'
[2]Hangwas his phrase for all kinds of punishment.
CHAPTER XX
Stories of the Judges—Lord Eskgrove—His Appearance—The Trials for Sedition—Anecdotes of Circuit Dinners—'Esky' andthe Harangue—The Soldier's Breeches—Esky and the Veiled Witness—Henderson and the Fine—The Luss Robbers—Death of Eskgrove.
Stories about one or other of the judges were apparently the leading feature of conversation in Edinburgh society at the end of the eighteenth century. Lord Eskgrove, who, almost in his dotage at the age of seventy-six, was appointed to succeed Braxfield as head of the Criminal Court, was about the most ludicrous and childishly eccentric of the race. For a time it seemed the whole occupation of the wits to relate anecdotes about old Eskgrove. To give these anecdotes with a recognisable mimicry of his voice and manner was, in Cockburn's phrase, 'a sort of fortune in society.' And Scott, he adds, in those days was famous for this particularly. It was not the wit or the humour of Eskgrove which amused. He seems to have had neither. It was simply his personal oddity, and the utter incongruity of such an incredible creature elevated to a position such as his. His face is described as varying from a scurfy red to a scurfy blue. His nose was prodigious: the under lip enormous, and supported on a huge clumsy chin, which moved like the jaw of a Dutch toy. He walked with a slow, stealthy step—something between a walk and a hirple, and helped himself on by short movements of his elbows, backwards and forwards, like fins. His voice was low and mumbling. His pronunciation seems to have been fantastic in the extreme, especially in the way of cutting even short words into two. The following anecdotes from Cockburn, who knew him, 'when he was in the zenith of his absurdity,' bring 'Esky' very vividly before us.
At the trial of Fysche Palmer for sedition, he made one of the very few remarks he ever made which had some little merit of their own. It was a retort to Mr. John Haggart, one of the prisoner's counsel, who, in defending his client against the charge of disrespect to the king, quoted Burke's statement that kings are naturally lovers of low company. "Then, sir, that says very little for you or your client! for if kinggs be lovers of low company, low company ought to be lovers of kinggs!"
'Nothing disturbed him so much as the expense of the public dinner for which the judge on the circuit has a fixed allowance, and out of which the less he spends the more he gains. His devices for economy were often very diverting. His servant had strict orders to check the bottles of wine by laying aside the corks. Once at Stirling his lordship went behind a screen, while the company was still at table, and seeing an alarming row of corks, got into a warm altercation, which everybody heard, with John; maintaining it to be "impossibill" that they could have drunk so much. On being assured that they had, and were still going on—"Well, then, John, I must just protect myself!" On which he put a handful of the corks into his pocket, and resumed his seat.
'Like the poor man in the story, Lord Eskgrove was "sair hauden doon by yon turkey cock." The plague of his life for more than a year was Henry Brougham. In revenge the judge used to sneer at Brougham's eloquence by styling it or himthe Harangue. "Well, gentle-men, what did the Harangue say next? Why, it said this" (mis-stating it); "but here, gentle-men, the Harangue was most plainly wrong, and not intelligibill."
'Everything was connected by his terror with republican horrors. I heard him, in condemning a tailor to death for murdering a soldier by stabbing him, aggravate the offence thus: "And not only did you murder him, whereby he was bereaved of his life, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell, the le-thall weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which were his Majes-ty's!"
'In the trial of Glengarry for murder in a duel, a lady of great beauty was called as a witness. She came into court veiled. But before administering the oath Eskgrove gave her this exposition of her duty—"Young woman! you will now consider yourself as in the presence of Almighty God and of this High Court. Lift up your veil; throw off all modesty, and look me in the face."
'Sir John Henderson of Fordell, a zealous Whig, once came before the court, their lordships having to fix the amount of some discretionary penalty which he had incurred. Eskgrove began to give his opinion in a very low voice, but loud enough to be heard by those next him, to the effect that the fine ought to be £50; when Sir John, with his usual imprudence, interrupted him and begged him to raise his voice, adding that if judges did not speak so as to be heard, they might as well not speak at all. Eskgrove, who never could endure any imputation of bodily infirmity, asked his neighbour, "What does the fellow say?" "He says that, if you don't speak out, you may as well hold your tongue." "Oh, is that what he says? My lords, what I was sayingg was very simpell. I was only sayingg that in my humbell opinyon, this fine could not be less than two hundred and fifty pounds sterlingg"—this sum being roared out as loudly as his old angry voice could launch it.
'His tediousness in charging juries was most dreadful, and he was the only judge who insisted on the old custom of making juries stand during the judge's address. Often have I gone back to the court at midnight, and found him, whom I had left mumbling hours before, still going on, with the smoky unsnuffed tallow candles in greasy tin candlesticks, and the poor despairing jurymen, most of the audience having retired or being asleep; the wagging of his lordship's nose and chin being the chief signs that he was stillchar-ging.
'A very common arrangement of his logic to juries was this:—"And so, gentle-men, having shown you that the pannell's argument is utterly impossibill, I shall now proceed for to show you that it is extremely improbabill."
'He rarely failed to signalise himself in pronouncing sentences of death. It was almost a matter of style with him to console the prisoner by assuring him that, "whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be, or even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, there are plenty of rever-end gentle-men who will be most happy for to show you the way to yeternal life."
'He had to condemn two or three persons to die who had broken into a house at Luss, and assaulted Sir James Colquhoun and others, and robbed them of a large sum of money. He first, as was his almost constant practice, explained the nature of the various crimes, assault, robbery, and hamesucken—of which last he gave them the etymology; and he then reminded them that they attacked the house and the persons within it, and robbed them, and then came to this climax—"All this you did; and God preserve us! joost when they were sitten doon to their denner!'"
In concluding his reminiscences of Eskgrove Lord Cockburn says: 'He was the staple of the public conversation; and so long as his old age lasted, he nearly drove Napoleon out of the Edinburgh world.... A story of Eskgrove is still preferred to all other stories. Only, the things that he did and said every day are beginning to be incredible to this correct and fiat age.' Lord Eskgrove died in 1804, at the age of eighty.
CHAPTER XXI
Scott's Anecdote of Lord Kames—Judicial Cruelty—Lord Meadowbank's Marriage—'Declaim, Sir'—Judges and Drinking—Hermand and the Pope—Bacchus on the Bench—Hermand and the Middy.
When Scott dined at Carlton House in 1815, the Prince Regent is said to have been particularly delighted with his guest's anecdotes of the old Scottish judges and lawyers. The following story was considered among the best, and it is one which Scott was fond of telling: 'Lord Kames' (described by Cockburn as 'an indefatigable and speculative but coarse man'), 'whenever he went on the Ayr circuit, was in the habit of visiting Matthew Hay, a gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood, and staying at least one night, which, being both of them ardent chess players, they usually concluded with their favourite game. One spring circuit the battle was not concluded at daybreak, so the judge said—"Well, Matthew, I must e'en come back this gate in the harvest, and let the game lie ower for the present"; and back he came in September, but not to his old friend's hospitable house; for that gentleman had in the meantime been apprehended on a capital charge, and his name stood on thePorteous Roll, or list of those who were about to be tried under his former guest's auspices. The laird was indicted and tried accordingly, and the jury returned a verdict ofGuilty. The judge forthwith put on his cocked hat (which answers to the black cap in England), and pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual terms—"To be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon your unhappy soul!" Having concluded this awful formula in his most sonorous cadence, Kames, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod to his unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him in a sort of chuckling whisper—"And now, Matthew, my man, that's checkmate to you." The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of judicial humour; and, "I'faith, Walter," said he, "this old big-wig seems to have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me at breakfast—
"The table spread with tea and toast,Death warrants and theMorning Post"?'
"The table spread with tea and toast,Death warrants and theMorning Post"?'
"The table spread with tea and toast,
Death warrants and theMorning Post"?'
This gruesome story, incredible as it appears and repulsive in its bare and uncalled-for cruelty, is an attested fact. Lord Cockburn, in referring to the above incident, says: 'Besides general and uncontradicted notoriety, I had the fact from Lord Hermand, who was one of the counsel at the trial, and never forgot a piece of judicial cruelty which excited his horror and anger.'
To pass to a more agreeable subject, there was Lord Meadowbank, who disappeared from the festive party an hour or two after his marriage. Search was made, and the oblivious Benedick was found busily engaged in writing a profound thesis on the subject of 'Pains and Penalties.'
He was a most versatile man, and his fondness for discussion made him often highly diverting. Referring to his power of discovering principles and tracking out their consequences, Jeffrey said that while the other judges gave the tree a tug, Meadowbank not only tore it up by the roots, but gave it a shake which dispersed the earth and exposed all the fibres.
One day Mr. Thomas Walker Baird was, in a dull technical way, stating a dry case to Lord Meadowbank, who was sitting single. This did not please the judge, who thought that his dignity required a grander tone. So he dismayed poor Baird, than whom no man could have less turn for burning in the Forum, by throwing himself back in his chair and saying, 'Declaim, sir, why don't you declaim? Speak to me as if I were a popular assembly.'
In the lively story of Mr. Pleydell and his clerk Driver, Scott has immortalised the convivial habits of the Scottish Bar. The actual incident, as stated in the note, occurred to Dundas of Arniston at the time he was Lord Advocate. How ably the judges comported themselves at the table is well proved in Cockburn's description of Lord Hermand, who, he says, 'had acted in more of the severest scenes of old Scotch drinking than any man at least living. Commonplace topers think drinking a pleasure; with Hermand it was a virtue. It inspired the excitement by which he was elevated, and the discursive jollity which he loved to promote. But beyond these ordinary attractions, he had a sincere respect for drinking, indeed a high moral approbation, and a serious compassion for the poor wretches who could not indulge in it; with due contempt for those who could, but did not. He groaned over the gradual disappearance of theFeriatdays of periodical festivity, and prolonged the observance, like a hero fighting amidst his fallen friends, as long as he could. The worship of Bacchus, which softened his own heart, and seemed to him to soften the hearts of his companions, was a secondary duty. But in its performance there was no violence, no coarseness, no impropriety, and no more noise than what belongs to well-bred jollity unrestrained. It was merely a sublimation of his peculiarities and excellences; the realisation of what poetry ascribes to the grape. No carouse ever injured his health, for he was never ill, or impaired his taste for home and quiet, or muddled his head: he slept the sounder for it, and rose the earlier and the cooler. The cordiality inspired by claret and punch was felt by him as so congenial to all right thinking, that he was confident that he could convert the Pope if he could only get him to sup with him. And certainly his Holiness would have been hard to persuade if he could have withstood Hermand about the middle of his second tumbler.'
The Bacchic religion of Lord Hermand sometimes found expression even on the Bench. On one occasion a young man was convicted of culpable homicide. In a wrangle with a friend, with whom he had been drinking all night, he had stabbed him and caused his death. The case being little more than a sad accident, the youth was sentenced to only a short imprisonment. At this Lord Hermand, who regarded the case as a discredit to the cause of drinking, was highly indignant at his colleagues' softness. He would have transported the homicide: 'We are told that there was no malice, and that the prisoner must have been in liquor. In liquor! Why, he was drunk! And yet he murdered the very man who had been drinking with him! They had been carousing the whole night; and yet he stabbed him! after drinking a whole bottle of rum with him! Good God, my Laards, if he will do this when he's drunk, what will he not do when he's sober?'
A somewhat similar case shows Lord Hermand in a different light. His love for children was a great feature in his character. A little English midshipman, being attacked by a much bigger lad in Greenock, defended himself with his dirk, and somehow killed his assailant. 'He was tried for this in Glasgow, and had the good luck to have Hermand for his judge; for no judge ever fought a more gallant battle for a prisoner. The boy appeared at the bar in his uniform. Hermand first refused "to try a child." After this was driven out of him, the indictment, which described the occurrence, and said that the prisoner had slain the deceased "wickedly and feloniously," was read; and Hermand then said, "Well, my young friend, this is not true, is it? Are you guilty or not guilty?" "Not guilty, my Lord." "I'll be sworn you're not!" In spite of all his exertions, his young friend was convicted of culpable homicide; for which he was sentenced to a few days' imprisonment.'
With his mind filled with the sayings and doings of the Braxfields and the Eskgroves, Walter Scott could scarcely nourish many illusions regarding his chosen profession. Fortunately he went 'where his own nature would be leading.'
CHAPTER XXII
Political Lawyers—Politics an 'accident' in Scott's History—Early Days at the Bar—Peter Peebles—The Mountain—Anecdote of Scott and Clerk—The German Class—Friendship with William Erskine—German Romance—Seniors of the Bar—Robert Blair—Greatest of Scottish Judges—Anecdote of Hermand and Henry Erskine.
In speaking of Scottish politics in 1792—it was in 1792, November, that Scott and Clerk began their regular attendance at the Parliament House—it is desirable to repeat that Scott is not to be regarded as ever having been in any circumstances a politician. It is absurd even to mention his name among the crowd of Tory juniors seeking to push their way to preferment by party services and loud-mouthed partisan zeal. This crowd, of which Lord Cockburn speaks, 'produced several most excellent men and very respectable lawyers, but not one person, except Walter Scott, who rose to distinction in literature.' Scott was in no sense a 'product' of so ignoble a school. There is perhaps nothing in creation so utterly mean and odious as the person who deliberately engineers his course to legal office by excessive partisanship. Meanness and narrowness of mind must be born in the creature who does it. Who would expect literary distinction from such? If there be any instances on record—and there is most unfortunately that of Francis Bacon—of genius united with such a career, they are distinguished by their singularity, and operate as exceptions. Walter Scott was one of the junior bar, but he was never one of these political aspirants. His conscience, not the main chance, was the ruling principle with him. Party was a small thing to Scott: not the be-all and the end-all of existence as it was to many others of his contemporaries. It was natural for Cockburn and the Whigs, who were struggling for existence against very real oppression and injustice, to exaggerate to themselves the importance of the whole wretched business.
'They took the rustic murmur of their bourgFor the great wave that circles round the world.'
'They took the rustic murmur of their bourgFor the great wave that circles round the world.'
'They took the rustic murmur of their bourg
For the great wave that circles round the world.'
Scott's good sense and utter lack of conceit preserved him from falling into their mistake. Like most other men of culture and honour, both then and now, he frankly took a side in politics rather than be always posing as an independent and as if he were the only conscientious man in a neighbourhood. Historical sentiment, the glamour of romance and the tradition of great names, made him prefer the Tory side. That was all. But he retained his independence complete and unsullied. Whenever at any time he took an active part in militant politics, it was not to curry favour and gain the spoils, but because his whole heart and soul were with the cause.
Scott certainly started life with the idea of making his career in the law. Work gradually came to him. Friendly solicitors were pleased to put certain kinds of business in the young man's hands, chiefly at first, as was natural, for his father's sake. 'By and by,' says Clerk, 'he crept into a tolerable share of such business as may be expected from a Writer's connexion.' That is, of course, from his father's connection, and the business would consist of long writteninformationsand other papers for the Court, on which young counsellors of the Scottish Bar were expected to bestow a great deal of trouble for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely any chance of displaying their ability or making a name. Another part of every young advocate's work, even less important in fees or in fame, was that of acting for pauper litigants, as Alan Fairford did in the famous case of Poor Peter Peebles. In the note Scott says that he himself had at one time the honour to be counsel for the actual Peter.
On the whole, Scott in these early days had probably plenty of leisure time on his hands. He spent some of it at all events among the 'unemployed' of the Bar. They were in the habit of congregating at a particular spot at the north end of the Outer House, which, according to Lockhart, was called by a name which easily recalls the date—the Mountain. From Cockburn's account it would appear that the loungers of the Mountain were all Whigs, separated into a sect of their own and all branded with the same mark. As he mentions among them Thomas Thomson, who we know was at this time one of Scott's most intimate daily associates, we must infer that the separation was not quite absolute. The following story of Clerk's shows that he also was one of the group. One morning finding them all convulsed with laughter, he complained thatDuns Scotushad been forestalling him in a good story which he had told him privately the day before—adding, moreover, that his friend had not only stolen it, but disguised it. 'Why,' answered Scott, skilfully waiving the main charge, 'this is always the way with theBaronet. He is continually saying that I change his stories, whereas in fact I only put a cocked hat on their heads, and stick a cane into their hands—to make them fit for going into company.' About Christmas of this eventful year, Scott, Clerk, Thomson, and William Erskine (afterwards Lord Kinedder) joined a German class; and all the four soon qualified themselves to read Schiller and Goethe. Erskine was a Tory: Scott's other young advocate friends were by descent and connection Whigs. From the time of the German class Erskine and Scott drew closer together, and Erskine became by and by, as we learn from Lockhart, 'the nearest and most confidential' of all Scott's Edinburgh associates. We also know that, though politics never shook the mutual regard of the others, 'the events and controversies of the immediately ensuing years could not but disturb, more or less, the social habits of young barristers who adopted opposite views on the French Revolution and the policy of Pitt. His friendship exercised an influence which Lockhart rates very high, on Scott's literary tastes. Along with a sincere love of the classics, Erskine had cherished from boyhood a strong passion for Old English literature, especially the Elizabethan dramatists. He sympathised with, and understood the real value of, Scott's taste for antiquity and national lore. He delighted in the bold and picturesque style, the strength and originality, of the native English school, but he warned Scott of the necessity of paying some deference to modern taste. In short, he knew how to "sift and sunder," and understood that the absurdities and extravagances of great works form no part of their greatness, though they are exactly the parts most likely to be selected for imitation.' Lockhart, in pointing out that Scott was mainly influenced in his first literary attempts by the founders of German drama and romance, states the opinion that he ran at first no trivial risk of adopting some of their extravagances both of idea and expression. Erskine's vigorous condemnation of the mingled absurdities and vulgarities of German detail, coming from one who so enthusiastically admired their great qualities, and who approved of their new departure in choosing romantic subjects, had no doubt full weight in guiding the judgment of so sane and sound a genius as Scott.
The seniors of the Bar about this time were, on the Government or Tory side, Robert Blair, Charles Hope, and Robert Dundas. Of Blair it has been said by Cockburn that he was a species of man not very common in Scotland: he might have said in any country, if his own description is correct. 'He had a fine manly countenance, a gentleman-like, portly figure, a slow dignified gait, and a general air of thought and power. Too solid for ingenuity, and too plain for fancy, soundness of understanding was his peculiar intellectual quality. Within his range nobody doubted, or could doubt, Blair's wisdom. Nor did it ever occur to any one to doubt his probity. He was all honesty. The sudden opening of the whole secrets of his heart would not have disclosed a single speck of dishonour. And all his affections, personal and domestic, were excellent and steady.'
If not indolent, Blair seems to have been strongly averse to letting himself be bothered with mean details or drudgery. He maintained, as few can do, a noble independence of small and mean interests. But with his great love of rest, repose, and ease he combined a fiery and excitable disposition. The combination is said to be rare. It is always noble.
Blair is a splendid example of this truth. He was absolutely indifferent to preferment. Lord Melville says that George III. used to speak of him as 'the man who would not go up.' Literally as well as morally he kept his own way. There was a line, it is said, in the Outer House, which was kept clear for him whenever he was present. Even his official superiors, and the judges themselves, stood in awe of him. He was, by preference and practice, a silent man. He was one who could play a long game with a dozen people, and yet not speak. In politics he was a loyal party man, but as void of malignity as he was free from self-seeking. He was one of the few who 'have greatness thrust upon them,' having been made Lord President of the Court of Session a few years before his death. His memory is still revered as that of the greatest of Scottish judges. His character and the marvellous clearness of his judicial 'opinions' made him the pride of Edinburgh during his all too short reign, which closed in 1811. His death was very sudden, and affected the whole population like the unexpected loss of a dear personal friend. Lord Cockburn has described the scene: 'It overwhelmed us all. Party made no division about Blair. All pleasure and all business were suspended. I saw Hermand that night. He despised Blair's abstinence from the pollution of small politics. He did not know that he could love a man who neither cared for claret nor for whist; but, at near seventy years of age, he was crying like a child. Next day the Court was silent, and adjourned. The Faculty of Advocates, hastily called together, resolved to attend him to his grave. Henry Erskine tried to say something, and because he could only try it, it was as good a speech as he ever made.' From his grave in Greyfriars Churchyard to the edge of the Castlehill, the vast concourse of spectators stood silent and uncovered when the sod was laid.
CHAPTER XXIII
Seniors (continued)—Charles Hope—His Voice—Tribute by Cockburn—Robert Dundas, Nephew of Henry, Lord Melville—His Manner and Moderation—Anecdote of Lords Blair and Melville—Lord Melville's Son—Scott's Project of Emigration.
Charles Hope may be considered one of the very best representatives of his profession. He had an extensive practice as an advocate, and afterwards filled successively, with great distinction, the offices of Lord Advocate, Lord Justice-Clerk, and Lord President. But his great forte was public speaking. For this his qualifications were great: a tall figure, commanding presence, natural manner, great command of language, and a magnificent voice, which Cockburn describes as 'surpassed by that of the great Mrs. Siddons alone, which, drawn direct from heaven and worthy to be heard there, was the noblest that ever struck the human ear.'
Few men, surely, have ever received or deserved such an encomium from a political opponent as Cockburn has left us of Lord President Hope:—'It is a pleasure to me to think of him. He was my first—I might almost say my only, professional patron, and used to take me with him on his circuits; and in spite of my obstinate and active Whiggery has been kind to me through life. When his son, who was Solicitor-General in 1830, lost that office by the elevation of the Reform Ministry, and I succeeded him, his father shook me warmly by the hand, and said, "Well, Harry, I wish you joy. Since my son was to lose it, I am glad that your father's son has got it." It was always so with him. Less enlightened than confident in his public opinions, his feelings towards his adversaries, even when ardently denouncing their principles, were liberalised by the native humanity and fairness of his dispositions.'
Perhaps the most interesting public character in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth century was Robert Dundas of Arniston. He was the son of a Lord President Dundas, whose father had also occupied that high position. His uncle was Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, the famous friend of Pitt. The uncle, it is supposed, greatly influenced the policy of the nephew, whose power in Scotland was for a time almost unlimited. At all events, in a position almost certain to provoke jealousy and enmity on all hands, he was able to maintain a character for moderation and fairness even in the cases of political prosecution which his office of Lord Advocate required him to conduct. In those troublous times the powers given to the Lord Advocate were extravagant and arbitrary. Dundas seems to have been a man of moderate abilities and ordinary acquirements, but Cockburn's lively picture sufficiently explains his remarkable success in his trying and difficult duties. 'He had two qualifications which suited his position, and made him not only the best Lord Advocate that his party could have supplied, but really a most excellent one. These consisted in his manner, and in his moderation. He was a little, alert, handsome, gentleman-like man, with a countenance and air beaming with sprightliness and gaiety, and dignified by considerable fire; altogether inexpressibly pleasing. It was impossible not to like the owner of that look. No one could contemplate his animated and elegant briskness, or his lively benignity, without feeling that these were the reflections of an ardent and amiable heart. His want of intellectual depth and force seemed to make people like him the better. And his manner was worthy of his appearance. It was kind, polite, and gay; and if the fire did happen to break out, it was but a passing flash, and left nothing painful after it was gone.'
Dundas had his town residence at No. 57 George Square. His uncle, Lord Melville, had come here on the 26th of May 1811, with the intention of attending the funeral of Lord Blair next day. He retired to rest apparently in his usual health, but was found next morning dead in bed. Thus, strange to say, the two friends, who had both been alive and active a week before, were lying dead with but a wall between them, for Blair's house was No. 56, next door to that of Dundas. A strange incident is related by Lord Cockburn, which he says he was inclined to regard as true: viz., that a letter written by Lord Melville was found on his table, or in a writing-case after his death, in which he drew a moving picture of his feelings at the funeral of Lord Blair. Little had he imagined that he himself would be dead before that funeral took place. The letter was addressed to a member of the government, with a view to obtain some public provision for Blair's family. 'Such things,' adds Lord Cockburn, 'are always awkward when detected; especially when done by a skilful politician. Nevertheless an honest and a true man might do this. It is easy to anticipate one's feelings at a friend's burial; and putting the description into the form of having returned from it is mere rhetoric.'
Scott enjoyed the personal friendship of Viscount Melville, and still more of the younger members of the Dundas family. Robert Dundas was Lord Advocate at the time of Scott's appointment to the sheriffship of Selkirk. Another Robert Dundas, Lord Melville's son, had been one of Scott's admirers in the story-telling days of the High School, and their intimacy continued later on. In fact Arniston and Melville supplied Walter Scott with quite a troop of warm friends. An anecdote which connects Lord Melville and Scott may be given here, though it belongs to the end of the next decade (1810). Great changes had at that time been proposed in the Scottish law and judicature. They did not commend themselves to Scott's judgment. In fact, he wrote a remarkable essay in theEdinburgh Annual Registeragainst the rash attempt at a general innovation. He was at the same time uneasy in regard to the affairs of his Ballantyne publishing business, and fretting a little at the drudgery of his clerkship, which as yet yielded him no income. It was a crisis very like that in the life of Burns when he proposed to emigrate to Jamaica. Scott indeed seriously entertained the idea of going to India, as is clear from his letter to his brother Thomas in November 1810. 'I have no objection to tell you in confidence, that, were Dundas to go out Governor-General to India, and were he willing to take me with him in a good situation, I would not hesitate to pitch the Court of Session and the booksellers to the Devil, and try my fortune in another climate. But this is strictlyentre nous.' Dundas, it seems, had on several occasions been spoken of as likely to be appointed Governor-General of India, and he had hinted at taking Scott with him. Fortunately the opportunity never occurred, the genius was not driven into exile, and the Court of Session and the booksellers obtained a temporary reprieve.