GUY MANNERING TO KENILWORTH
“WAVERLEY”
“Waverley” is not, perhaps, the novel with which one would recommend a person anxious to find out whether or not Sir Walter can still be read, to begin his studies. The six chapters written in 1805 are prolix and unnecessary. A modern narrator would commence with Chapter VIII. “It was about noon when Captain Waverley entered the straggling village or rather hamlet of Tully-Veolan,” and would find easy means of enlightening us as to who Captain Waverley was. One sentence in the long preliminary account of the hero refers to Scott himself. “He would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by which past or imaginary scenes are presented, in action as it were, to the eyes of the muser.” Like Dickens and Thackeray, Scott was a natural “visualizer,” seeing in his mind’s eye the aspects of his characters, and hearing their voices. Perhaps there is no poetic genius without this gift, which Mr. Galton has found almost absent among, and unknown to men
{111}
 of science, though the presence of the power of visualization by no means implies that it is accompanied by genius. Scott’s friends did not conceal from him that they were little interested in his tale, before they entered the village and château of Tully-Veolan. From that point all was new to most of them, while no romance of the Forty-Five, a theme now so hackneyed, or of Highland life and manners at the date of Sixty Years Since had ever been offered to the world. Indeed the death of the last of the male line of Stuart was almost contemporary with the year in which Scott began his romance, and while there remained a shadowy King over the water, a Jacobite romance might seem a thing in doubtful taste. We cannot, after a century, feel the absolute freshness of impression which the novel made on contemporary readers.
“GUY MANNERING”
We know, in one way or another, all that can be said about Highland and Lowland life in 1745, and there are passages of Waverley in which we are almost reminded of Becker’s Charicles, and other instructive pictures of classical manners. Scott, of course, was accused of “slandering the Highlanders,” because he described the cattle stealings which, as contemporaries assert, were regularly organized by the furtive genius of Macdonnell of Barisdale, with intermediaries among the broken clan of the Macgregors, and the less reputable of
{112}
 the dwellers in Rannoch. The relations of Cluny Macpherson with the independent Highland companies had been not unlike those of Fergus MacIvor, a chief quite as much impelled by personal ambition, and the promise of a Jacobite earldom (Lovat was to be a duke, Glengarry an earl), as by any disinterested devotion to the White Rose. There were chiefs like Lochiel, as there were Lowlanders like the Oliphants of Gask, who fought purely for the sake of honour and devotion. The mass of the Jacobite clansmen were notoriously as loyal as steel to their Prince. But there are black sheep in every flock. “There is something,” says Scott, “in the severe judgment passed on my countrymen, that if they do not prefer Scotland to truth, they will always prefer it to inquiry.” Scott preferred inquiry, and gave us the results in Callum Beg and in the darker side of the character of Fergus MacIvor, which irritated some of the fiery Celts. Fergus redeems himself by the courage of his end, but the favourite characters of the novel are, as usual, the subordinates, that gallant, prosy, honourable pedant, the Baron Bradwardine, Davy Gellatley with his songs, Balmawhapple, Baillie Macwheeble, Evan Dhu Maccombich, the Gifted Gilfillan, the Prince himself, and how many others! The pictures of Holyrood and the Prince’s Court, of the rout of Prestonpans, and the march into
{113}
 England, are as brilliant as they then were unhackneyed, and though Waverley is not the best of the series of novels, it made an excellent beginning.
Meanwhile stern necessity urged Scott to that grinding of verses, invita Minerva, to which he said that “the peine forte et dure is nothing in comparison,” and his mood was “devilish repulsive” to the task of working on The Lord of the Isles. So he wrote the last three cantos in five weeks, and set out for Abbotsford to “refresh the machine” by writing Guy Mannering in six! He had only gleaned the story of the Astrologer on November 7, from Mr. Train, and between that date and some time in February 1815, he had finished both The Lord of the Isles and the novel of The Astrologer. He announced to Mr. Morritt at once that “The Lord of the Isles closes my poetic labours upon an extended scale,” this before the book proved not quite satisfactory to the public. He was wont to say that he abandoned poetry “on an extended scale” because Byron “beat” him, but he was now forty-five, was confessedly weary of “grinding verses,” and had found an easier, a more congenial, and a more lucrative form of work, one which suited his genius better, and was of a more permanent appeal than the romance in verse. Since his time, setting apart the temporary vogue of Byron’s Giaours and Laras, rhymed ro
{114}
mances on Oriental themes, the world has steadily declined to read long narrative poems. Mr. William Morris alone, for a while, won some readers back to his peculiar form of this genre. In The Lord of the Isles we remember little but the Battle of Bannockburn, which has all the fiery energy of Scott in his Homeric mood, and makes a fit pendant to his Flodden Field. Though Scott, before he learned from Ballantyne that the book was a comparative failure, had meant to abandon rhymed romances, he was a little damped by knowledge of the fact, and, pointing to The Giaour, which Byron had sent to him, he remarked, “James, Byron hits the mark where I don’t even pretend to fledge my arrow.” Says Lockhart, “he always appeared to me quite blind to the fact that in The Giaour, in The Bride of Abydos, in Parisina, and indeed in all his early serious narratives, Byron owed at least half his success to clever though perhaps unconscious imitation of, Scott.” He also owed much to his Oriental themes, to the vogue of his beauty and life of adventure, and to his fluttering of the dovecotes of propriety. Byron spoke as generously of Scott as Scott did of Byron: neither felt for the other the indifference of Wordsworth nor the contempt of Coleridge. In contact with Scott all that is finest in Byron’s character glows like the diamond in the presence of radium.
{115}
“GUY MANNERING”
Guy Mannering made up for Scott’s disappointment. His advisers, from the first, deemed it “more interesting” than Waverley, perhaps because it dealt with their own times and manners, for the topic is not in itself nearly so rich in romance. The strength of the book is in the characters, the donnert good humoured laird, that customary villain, the attorney, the smugglers, the gipsies, Meg Merrilees, honest Dandie Dinmont, and the lawyers whether at high jinks or in more sober mood, while the scene of the old maid’s funeral and the reading of her will cannot be surpassed. Dominie Sampson was a great favourite, though a sample of “Scott’s bores,” and too apt to return like a refrain, with his peculiarities, in the manner of some of Dickens’s characters.
Scott went up to London with his laurels fresh, and met Byron; the pair, in Homeric fashion, exchanged gifts, Scott offering a gold-hilted Oriental dagger, and Byron a silver vase, containing the dust of Athenian men of old. Scott remarked in Byron a trait of Rousseau’s, starts of suspicion, when he seemed to pause and consider whether there had not been a secret, and perhaps offensive, meaning in something casually said to him. At times he was “almost gloomy,” and, in short, he must have been “gey ill to live with.” But Scott quietly allowed the black dog to leave his shoulder,
{116}
 and consoled himself with the less perilous gaieties of the Prince Regent. Scott always denied the story that the Prince asked him point blank whether he was the author of Waverley. The Duke of York, however, said “my brother went rather too near the wind about Waverley, but nobody could have turned the thing more prettily than Walter Scott did.” In fact his reply sailed as near the wind as the insinuation of the Prince.
The news of Waterloo, the triumph of his nation, allured Scott to the scene of the battle. He left London for the Continent a month after the fight. His expenses and more were paid by Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, journal letters written to the Abbotsford circle. These contain so perfect a picture of the man at this juncture that, if people had time to read Lockhart’s Life of him, the book might well be added to it as a supplementary volume of autobiography. Scott’s enthusiasm for the national victory did not swallow up his observation of every trait of foreign life, or his excitement over “the tiniest relics of feudal antiquity.” He saw the battlefield under the guidance of Costar, the peasant who, according to his own account, accompanied Napoleon, a point on which there were sceptics.
WATERLOO
Already the British myth of the battle was current, and is reported by Scott in a letter to the Duke
{117}
 of Buccleuch. The legend was that the Prussian fire was not heard, nor did the Prussian columns appear from within the woods, till the moment when a part of the French Imperial Guard made the last attack on our position. Now the Prussians really made themselves felt on the French right about four or half-past four o’clock, and three hours were occupied by them in furious fighting at Planchenoit, while the French captured La Haye Sainte on our front; and the Prussians, in reinforcements constantly coming up, were doing the business on the French right, and beginning to menace the French rear, when the last charge by a portion of their Guard was made and failed. Scott understands all this in his Life of Napoleon, though even there he does not quite make clear the length and severity of the Prussian task. But even British officers engaged at Waterloo seem to have gravely misconceived the magnitude of Blücher’s share in the victory.
“France is not, and cannot be crushed,” said Scott, and, in 1815, he foresaw the Orleanist conspiracy of fifteen years, and the fall of the Bourbons. On meeting the Duke of Wellington he felt those emotions of awe which he attributes to Roland Graeme in the presence of the Regent Moray, “the eminent soldier and statesman, the wielder of a nation’s power, and the leader of its
{118}
 armies.” “To have done things worthy to be written was, in his eyes, a dignity to which no man had made any approach, who had only written things worthy to be read.” The gallant Wolfe expressed the converse opinion, when he recited Gray’s Elegy in the boat, on the way to the capture of Quebec, and to his death, Scott’s belief in doing as far superior to writing, embraced the achievements of peace as well as of war. He “betrayed painful uneasiness when his works were alluded to as reflecting honour on the age that had produced Watt’s improvement of the steam engine, and the safety lamp of Sir Humphry Davy.” In brief, Scott was a born man of action, and only the accident of his lameness prevented him from being the mate of Hill and Picton in the field, and perhaps the rival of Napier as the historian of warfare. That gift of seeing with the mind’s eye, which was noted in Wellington as well as in Napoleon, would have served his purposes as a general.
He came home, with presents for all the people on his estate, and with that poem of Waterloo which was the subject of amusing banter,
None, by sabre or by shot,
Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.
“THE ANTIQUARY”
The emendations made by John Ballantyne on the proof sheets of this effort show considerable intel
{119}
ligence and taste, and in several cases were approved of and accepted by the author, though he once said that he was “the Black Brunswicker of literature who neither took nor gave criticism.” In fact he took rather too much, in some cases, as in St. Ronan’s Well, altered and spoiled to please the prudery of James Ballantyne. The profits of the first edition of Waterloo went to the fund for the widows and orphans of soldiers. By December 1815, Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk were published, and the “sweet heathen of Monkbarns,” The Antiquary, was in hand.
In this novel Scott wrote of his own day, and with one or two old friends, was himself the composite model for The Antiquary. As usual, the reader cares not much for Lovel and his lady, Miss Wardour, but the humour of the portraits of the sturdy Whig antiquary, his sense, and his foibles, and of his rival and friend the foolish Tory, Sir Arthur Wardour, are perennially delightful. Perhaps only archæological amateurs can thoroughly appreciate the learning of which Monkbarns is so profuse, and this, no doubt, is a drawback to the popularity of the tale. The charlatan, Dousterswivel, is in a rather forced vein of humour, but the figures of Edie Ochiltree, of the gossips in the village post-office, of the barber, and all the country folk, with the incident of the escape from the rising
{120}
 tide, and the romance of Elspeth of the Burnfoot and the stoicism of Mucklebackit, are, in their various ways, examples of Scott at his very best, while the ballad of the Red Harlaw stands absolutely alone, far above all modern attempts to imitate ancient popular Volkslieder.
Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,
And listen, great and sma’,
And I will sing of Glenallan’s Earl
That fought on the red Harlaw.
The cronach’s cried on Bennachie,
And doun the Don and a’,
And hieland and lawland may mournfu’ be
For the sair field of Harlaw.
They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae bridled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse’s head,
And a good knight upon his back.
They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae
Wi’ twenty thousand men.
Their tartans they were waving wide,
Their glaives were glancing clear,
The pibrochs rung frae side to side,
Would deafen ye to hear.
{121}
HARLAW
The great Earl in his stirrups stood
That Highland host to see;
“Now here a knight that’s stout and good
May prove a jeopardie:
“What wouldst thou do, my squire so gay,
That rides beside my reyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl the day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?
“To turn the rein were sin and shame,
To fight were wondrous peril,
What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl?”
“Were I Glenallan’s Earl this tide
And ye were Roland Cheyne,
The spur should be in my horse’s side,
And the bridle upon his mane.
“If they hae twenty thousand blades,
And we twice ten times ten,
Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,
And we are mail-clad men.
“My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude,
As through the moorland fern,
Then ne’er let the gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Highland kerne.”
In this novel Scott began his practice of inventing mottoes, mainly from “Old Plays,” for the headings of his chapters, and among these scraps
{122}
 are plain warrants for his title of poet. When they were collected into a little volume he owned that he could not, in all cases, profess to be certain of his authorship. His memory of the works of others was better than his memory of his own. “Pretty verses these, are they Byron’s?” he said, on hearing some lady sing Cleveland’s song from The Pirate. Of his memory Hogg tells the following anecdote, which may be given verbatim, as Hogg’s Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott is a rather rare little book.
“He, and Skene of Rubislaw, and I were out one night about midnight, leistering kippers in Tweed, about the end of January, not long after the opening of the river for fishing, which was then on the tenth, and Scott having a great range of the river himself, we went up to the side of the rough haugh of Elibank; but when we came to kindle our light, behold, our peat was gone out. This was a terrible disappointment, but to think of giving up our sport was out of the question, so we had no other shift save to send Bob Fletcher all the way through the darkness, the distance of two miles, for another fiery peat.
HOGG
“The night was mild, calm, and as dark as pitch, and while Fletcher was absent we three sat down on the brink of the river, on a little green sward which I will never forget, and Scott desired
{123}
 me to sing them my ballad of ‘Gilman’s-cleuch.’ Now, be it remembered that this ballad had never been printed, I had merely composed it by rote, and, on finishing it three years before, had sung it once over to Sir Walter. I began it, at his request, but at the eighth or ninth stanza I stuck in it, and could not get on with another verse, on which he began it again and recited it every word from beginning to end. It being a very long ballad, consisting of eighty-eight stanzas, I testified my astonishment, knowing that he had never heard it but once, and even then did not appear to be paying particular attention. He said he had been out with a pleasure party as far as the opening of the Frith of Forth, and, to amuse the company, he had recited both that ballad and one of Southey’s (‘The Abbot of Aberbrothock’), both of which ballads he had only heard once from their respective authors, and he believed he recited them both without misplacing a word.”
In May 1816 The Antiquary appeared; in April he had begun The Tales of my Landlord, he wrote the historical part of The Annual Register, and he trifled with Harold the Dauntless, while as busy as ever with official duties, society, and sport, adding 850 acres to his estate, by purchases of small farms at exorbitant prices. Meanwhile he did not clear off the cargoes of encumbrances of useless
{124}
 books, and wind up the Ballantyne affairs. Instead of making a firm bargain with Constable, John Ballantyne negotiated the business of The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality with Mr. Blackwood and Mr. Murray—the volumes were not to bear the name of “the Author of Waverley.” Now Mr. Blackwood, very naturally, did not care for The Black Dwarf, and “without seeking any glossy periphrase,” spoke out his demand for alterations to James Ballantyne. Scott’s temper was not governed on this occasion, but James did not report to Mr. Blackwood the very unparliamentary terms of the reply to his “most impudent proposal.”
“OLD MORTALITY”
Old Mortality and The Black Dwarf came out, at the end of 1816, in four volumes. The Black Dwarf is of little account, but Old Mortality is in the first three of the Waverley novels in merit. Scott knew the Covenanting literature well, and, if he has made errors, for example where he writes as if the English Liturgy were in use, in the Scotland of the Restoration, he may be merely seeking effect. But the learned Dr. M’Crie, the biographer of Knox, a most painful student of manuscript sources, published a long set of criticisms historical, in an Edinburgh serial, to which Scott thought fit to reply in a review of the romance in The Quarterly. Erskine wrote the literary parts
{125}
 of the criticism, while Scott replied, with much humour and great good humour, to his clerical censor. The Covenanters of the Restoration were a peculiar people. In 1660, when the King came to his own, the leaders of the milder party were ready to abate the claims of the preachers to “rule the roast” in politics; and one of the leaders wished to see the preachers of the fiercer party banished to the Orkneys. The zealots, on the other hand, desired Charles II to put down the Church of England in England, which meant civil war. But both parties were equally struck at by the introduction of Episcopacy without a Liturgy. Like the zealots on divers occasions, the Governors under Charles II expelled the Non-conformists from their pulpits. A rising followed, and then a skimble-skamble Government which offered “Indulgences” to Presbyterians. The milder sort were satisfied with being tolerated, the wilder sort wished to be intolerant, and the Kirk split into divers sections, hating each other nearly as much as they hated prelatists. Strange wandering prophets, prophesying balderdash, scoured the country, pursued by dragoons, and in their utterances are many ludicrous things and anarchic doctrines, reprobated by the more peaceful section.
Scott knew all the parties, and was not tender to the absurdities. He had written a novel, not a
{126}
 history, and had used the licence of a novelist. Meanwhile in the beautiful character of Bessie Maclure, Scott surely made amends for his maniac preacher, his indulged preacher, and the rest of his warring Covenanters. The Claverhouse of the novel is not, of course, the actual Claverhouse of history, but he is more like the man than the absurd Claverhouse of Macaulay. One fault is attributed to the gallant Graham which he did not possess. Far from being reckless of plebeian as opposed to “gentle” blood, he urged the policy of sparing the multitude and punishing their “gentle leaders.” It is improbable that Claverhouse was given to quoting Froissart, as in the novel, but he did quote Lucan, an author admired by Scott.
 
“OLD MORTALITY”
We cannot go into a criticism of the historical accuracy of a novel. Old Mortality is not only one of Scott’s most stirring tales, but it contains even an unusual number of his most admirable characters, Cuddie and Mause Headrigg, Gudyill, the Major, Goose Gibbie, Old Milnwood (a true “Laird Nippy”), the murderer Burly, Bessie Maclure, Jenny Dennison, that unscrupulous coquette, Milnwood’s housekeeper, the fallen Bothwell, the fanatics of every shade, and Claverhouse himself. Indeed, be the inaccuracies of detail what they may, and they are trivial, no romance based
{127}
 on book knowledge displays so correct a general picture of the men and the times.
Old Mortality himself, about whom Scott heard much from his friend, Mr. Train (who suggested the novel), had been met by the author in his youth at Dunottar Castle among the graves of the Covenanters who died of ill-usage in the castle dungeons. That a number of soldiers in like manner perished of hunger when the Whigs got the upper hand at Edinburgh in 1688 is a circumstance generally omitted by the Whiggish Muse of Modern History. What would not have been said had hundreds of prisoners taken by Montrose been starved to death? Yet even Mr. Gardiner does not mention the hundreds of Royalist prisoners taken by Cromwell at Dunbar, immured in Durham Cathedral, and there permitted to die of hunger. To be sure the levies of Montrose took very few prisoners indeed, but settled all scores with the claymore.
Old Mortality contains a striking scene in which the appearance of Henry Morton is taken by Edith for his apparition, after or at the moment of death. The novels, like the poems, are seldom without a touch of “the supernatural,” which, in the case of Morton’s appearance, was the normal. In Waverley there is the death warning to Fergus MacIvor; in Guy Mannering there is the fulfilled
{128}
 horoscope: in The Antiquary the apparition to the hero is explained away, to some extent, but yields the desired effect. Scott was very much interested in phantasms and witchcraft, his library is rich in rare old books full of ghostly narratives, Bovet, Lavaterus, Sinclair, Petrus Thyraeus and crowds of others. Neither his friends nor he himself knew the precise frontiers of his belief and disbelief. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double-bedded room, while a dead man occupied the other. He was insensible to fear, in these airy matters, and says that he had only twice in his life felt “eery.” Once it was at Glamis Castle, haunted for long by a legend of a Presence in a secret chamber. The secret of the chamber is no secret, and the Presence is borrowed bodily from a story current, in the eighteenth century, about Vale Royal in Cheshire. The other occasion on which Scott felt “eery” is not given by Lockhart, but is probably revealed by this anecdote of Gillies.
GHOST STORIES
“The most awkward circumstance about well-authenticated hobgoblins,” said he, “is that they, for the most part, come and disappear without any intelligible object or purpose, except to frighten people; which, with all due deference, seems rather foolish! Very many persons have either seen a
{129}
 ghost, or something like one, and I am myself among the number; but my story is not a jot better than the others I have heard, which, for the most part, were very inept. The good stories are sadly devoid of evidence; the stupid ones only are authentic.
“There is a particular turning of the high road through the Forest near Ashestiel, at a place which affords no possible means of concealment; the grass is smooth, and always eaten bare by the sheep; there is no heather, nor underwood, nor cavern, in which any mortal being could conceal himself. Towards this very spot I was advancing one evening on horseback—please to observe it was before dinner, and not long after sunset, so that I ran no risk either of seeing double, or wanting sufficient light for my observations. Before me, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, there stood a human figure, sharply enough defined by the twilight. I advanced; it stalked about with a long staff in its hand, held like a wand of office, but only went to and fro, keeping at the same corner, till, as I came within a few yards, my friend all in an instant vanished. I was so struck with his eccentric conduct, that although Mrs. Scott was in delicate health, and I was anxious to get home to a late dinner, I could not help stopping to examine the
{130}
 ground all about, but in vain; he had either dissolved into air, or sunk into the earth, where I knew well there was no coal-pit to receive him. Had he lain down on the greensward, the colour of his drapery, which was dusky brown, would have betrayed him at once, so that there was no practicable solution of the mystery.
“I rode on, and had not advanced above fifty yards, when, on looking back, my friend was there again, and even more clearly visible than before. ‘Now,’ said I to myself, ‘I most certainly have you!’ so wheeled about and spurred Finella; but the result was as before, he vanished instantaneously. I must candidly confess I had now got enough of the phantasmagoria; and whether it were from a love of home, or a participation in my dislike of this very stupid ghost, no matter, Finella did her best to run away, and would by no means agree to any further process of investigation. I will not deny that I felt somewhat uncomfortable, and half inclined to think that this apparition was a warning of evil to come, or indication, however obscure, of misfortune that had already occurred. So strong was this impression, that I almost feared to ask for Mrs. Scott when I arrived at Ashestiel; but, as Dr. Johnson said on a similar occasion, ‘nothing ever came of it.’”
SECOND SIGHT
The strange disturbances at Abbotsford, as if
{131}
 all the heavy furniture were being moved about, did not make Scott “eery.” He arose,
Bolt upright
And ready to fight,
armed for war with the sword of his Jacobite ancestor, Auld Beardie. But when the noises, never accounted for, were found to have been coincident with the death of the purveyor of the furniture, Mr. Bullock, in London, Lockhart admits that Scott was not only puzzled but considerably impressed.
Such rackets, preceding or accompanying a death, are familiar to writers whom he knew well, Lavaterus, Thyraeus, Theophilus Insulanus on the Second Sight, and the rest, and persist among the beliefs of Highlands and Lowlands. There is always a hammering in the shop of a certain Highland carpenter, on the night before a coffin is ordered. On the whole Scott’s frame of mind was akin, on this point, to that of Kant, who did not believe in any special ghost story, but did not disbelieve in ghost stories in general. He would say that the only men known to him who had seen ghosts were either mad, or later went mad, yet he had seen some kind of apparition himself. Everything connected with hypnotism (then styled Animal Magnetism) he dismissed as part of “the peck
{132}
 of dirt,” which each generation must eat in its turn. Yet he was anxious to investigate the ink-gazing of Egypt, which he could easily have done, with a glass ball, at home. In short he enjoyed the human thrill which is awakened by good stories of the “supernormal,” and communicated the thrill in Wandering Willie’s Tale, in the appearance of the death wraith of old Alice to the Master of Ravenswood (the best wraith in fiction), in My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror, and in the terrible story, gleaned from Hannah More, of The Tapestried Chamber. His Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft are the work of his declining age, and adopt the dull line of sturdy common-sense. But his explanation of the information received in a dream, in The Antiquary, is that of St. Augustine, and even, in many cases, of Mr. F. W. H. Myers, with his theory of the more normal workings of the “Subliminal Self.”
HEALTH
For more than twenty years Scott had enjoyed unbroken health, and had treated “the machine,” his body and brain, as few men except Napoleon have overtaxed that engine. In Edinburgh he lived, he says, “too genially.” Lockhart has described his plain but Gargantuan breakfasts; he took little or no exercise, driving to court with other advocates, and we must remember that the dinner parties of that age began early and ended late,
{133}
 while the champagne and sherry and port and Burgundy were followed by a “shass caffy” (as Mr. Henry Foker calls it), in the shape of rummers of whisky and water, “hot, with.” A healthier generation is justly horrified by these excesses of conviviality, in which Scott took his part, like other advocates and judges of his time, rising at five o’clock next morning to write twenty or thirty printed pages of his novel. At Abbotsford, he said, he never sat down, as in Edinburgh he was always seated, at one kind of table or another. His task done before breakfast, he rode or drove, or worked in his plantations, or underwent the toil of receiving bores, he coursed, he passed the midnight hours in “burning the water,” that is, spearing salmon by torchlight, a picturesque but now, happily, an illegal pastime.
The refreshment of the machine was writing at a furious pace, and, in 1817, the longsuffering mechanism resented its treatment. Scott had still eight years of apparent prosperity before him, but he had no more years of unbroken health. Violent “cramps in the stomach,” as they were called, seized him, and drove this stoic, “bellowing like a b............