"He always talked to Camp as if he understood what was said — and the animal certainly did understand not a little of it; in particular, it seemed as if he perfectly comprehended on all occasions that his master considered him as a sensible and steady friend, the greyhounds as volatile young creatures whose freaks must be borne with."

When Camp died, Scott rescinded an invitation to a dinner-party, for the reason that the death "of an old friend" made it impossible to attend.

In the early part of the same year in which the works of Dryden were published, 1808, "Marmion" appeared, usually regarded as Scott's greatest poem. Constable, an Edinburgh publisher, offered him a thousand guineas for the work without having seen a line of it, and the offer was accepted. Poets had been eagerly awaiting its appearance. Southey wrote him: "Marmion is expected as impatiently by me as he is by ten thousand others. Believe me, Scott, no man of real genius was ever a puritanical stickler for correctness, or fastidious about any faults except his own. The best artists, both in poetry and painting, have produced the most. Give us more lays, and correct them at leisure for after editions - not laboriously, but when the amendment comes naturally and unsought for. It never does to sit down doggedly to correct."

After "Marmion" was published Southey wrote again: "The story is made of better materials than the Lay, yet they are not so well fitted together. As a whole, it has not pleased me so much-in parts, it has pleased. me more. There is nothing so finely conceived in your former poem as the death of Marmion; there is nothing finer in its conception anywhere."

In less than a month after "Marmion was published the first edition of two thousand copies was sold. It went rapidly through many editions. Before 1836 over fifty thousand copies had been disposed of in Great Britain. The people read and re-read it. The following story told by Hutton is not at all improbable. Two strangers met on a dark night in London. Both were repeating aloud the last lines of the account of Flodden Field. One man exclaimed, "Charge, Chester, charge!" when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, "On, Stanley, on!" whereupon they finished the death of Marmion between them, took off their hats to each other, and parted, laughing.

Before this time Scott had been appointed one of the seven Clerks of Sessions in Edinburgh, a position which he held for twenty-five years, with a salary of £1,300 yearly. The work required from four to six hours daily during about half the year. For the first five years he received no pay for his work, as the position was virtually held by another. At the end of that time the former holder of the office was pensioned and retired.

Before the publication of "Dryden," Scott was asked by Constable to edit Swift's works in the same manner, with an offer of £1,500 for the labor. The offer was accepted, though the work was not completed until 1814. Before this he edited "Somers's Collection of Tracts in thirteen volumes, for which he received thirteen hundred guineas, and published his "Lady of the Lake" in 1810, when he was thirty-nine.

While these were extremely busy years, Scott still found time to enjoy his family. "No father," says Lockhart, "ever devoted more time and tender care to his offspring than he did to each of his, as they success

ively reached the age when they could listen to him and understand his talk. Like their mute playmates, Camp and the greyhounds, they had at all times free access to his study; he never considered their tattle as any disturbance; they went and came as pleased their fancy. He was always ready to answer their questions; and when they, unconscious how he was engaged, entreated him to lay down his pen and tell them a story, he would take them on his knee, repeat a ballad or a legend, kiss them, and set them down again to their marbles or ninepins, and resume his labor as if refreshed by the interruption."

His children had the same passion for horsemanship as himself. He taught them to think nothing of tumbles. "Without courage," he said, "there can be no truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue.”

While Scott was thus gentle in his family, he could be severe where he deemed a person in the wrong. When his dissipated brother Daniel returned to Scotland from Jamaica, dishonored for deficiency of spirit against an insurgent body of negroes, though he found shelter and compassion from his mother, Scott would never see him again. He died young, and Scott would not attend the funeral nor wear mourning for him like the rest of the family. Years afterwards the poet regretted this austerity, and did all in his power to make amends by caring for a child whom Daniel had bequeathed to his mother's

care.

The "Lady of the Lake," for the copyright of which Scott received two thousand guineas, had a most enthusiastic reception. In a few months over twenty thousand copies were sold. "Marmion" may be greater, but to me the " Lady of the Lake" is the most poetic in

thought and polished in expression of any of Scott's works. When in my school days the poem was acted at the closing exercises of the year, and a brave boy with a sword at his side repeated, as he gazed upon Fitz-James,

"How say'st thou now?

These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true,

And, Saxon, I am Roderick Dhu!"

I thought it spirited and thrilling. Years later, when the Scottish lakes and other scenes of Scott's novels had become familiar ground, anything associated with Ellen Douglas still retained a peculiar charm.

6

The "Lady of the Lake" brought Scott hearty praises from his contemporaries. One that pleased him much was from his old friend Adam Ferguson, a captain in the British army under Wellington. "In the course of the day when the Lady of the Lake' first reached Sir Adam, he was posted with his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery, somewhere, no doubt, on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered to lie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the captain, kneeling at the head, read aloud the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza when the French struck the bank close above them."

"At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,

As all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had peal'd the banner-cry of hell!"

In 1811, Scott, whose income was now enough to support him in comfort, purchased one hundred acres of land on the Tweed, for £4,000, half of which he borrowed from

his brother, the other half being raised on the security of a poem, then unwritten, "Rokeby." This place, Abbotsford, like Cedarcroft to Bayard Taylor, became his idol, and alas! his burden in later years. "The Tweed," says Lockhart, "was everything to him-a beautiful river, flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it darkened into a deep pool, overhung, as yet, only by the birches and alders which had survived the statelier growth of the primitive forest; and the first hour that he took possession he claimed for his farm the name of the adjoining ford, situated just above the influx of the classical tributary Gala. As might be guessed from the name of Abbotsford, these lands had all belonged of old to the great Abbey of Melrose."

The next year, 1812, through the intervention of Murray the publisher, a pleasant correspondence began between Scott and Lord Byron. When "Marmion" was published, Byron, in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," spoke contemptuously of a man who wrote for pay.

"Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested, haughty Marmion,

For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,

And bid a long good-night to Marmion."

Bitter feelings naturally resulted, but these were forgotten when Byron wrote: "I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the evil works of my nonage. The Satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions."

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