Rokeby, one of Scott's steadiest correspondents and warmest friends, whose mansion he has immortalized, although at less expenditure of power than might have been desired. These, after all, are only a few of the élite of the Scotland of that day who sate often at Scott's hospitable board, and were privileged to hear his conversation while still in the prime of his early manhood.

Ashestiel had been a favourite residence of Scott's, and never lost its charm for his mind. But the lease expired; and besides, he began to hanker after a wider if not a more congenial sphere. The aspiration to be a landed proprietor, a feudal baron, arose in an evil hour in his mind. He was a baron already by nature. His tastes, habits, opinions, all proved it. Round his large, lord-like being gathered dependants, like the Ballantynes, Hogg, Laidlaw, and the rest, as if by inevitable instinct. His very dogs and horses-Camp, Maida, Lenore (his first charger), Captain, Lieutenant, and Brown Adam, who in succession bore him—seemed all to recognise in him, what he had playfully called himself, an 'Earl Walter,' and some of them would not allow themselves to be backed by any other rider. But Earl Walter' was 'landless, landless,' like his own Gregarach, and he could not fulfil his dream of feudal power till he had

broad acres as well as a large following. He set himself therefore to add field to field, and to build for himself a mansion worthy of a Norman, if not rather copied after some piece of aerial architecture-some castle in the clouds,

'For ever flushing round a summer's sky.'

The result was Abbotsford,

In 1811 his salary had, through a new arrangement of Court of Session matters, been increased from £800 to £1300. The Lady of the Lake had been a triumphant mercantile success. Flushed with this, Scott fixed his eyes on a small farm which lay a few miles from Ashestiel, and was soon to be in the market. It included a spot where a battle had taken place in 1526 between the Earls of Angus and Home and the two chiefs of the race of Kerr on the one side, and Buccleugh on the other; the possession of King James the Fifth being the object, and that prince himself a spectator, of the contest,-a rude stone still marking the spot

'Where gallant Cessford's life-blood dear
Reeked on dark Elliot's Border spear.'

This interested Scott; and the place, though only then a strip of meadow land along the river, with some undulating country above, was in the centre

of the Melrose district, so dear to the poet's mind, and had indeed once belonged to the Abbey, as the word Abbotsford itself indicated. At all events, the purchase was made, and Scott proceeded to improve, to plant, to annex, to build, and, in fine, to flit, in the end of May 1812, leaving Ashestiel with much regret, in which we think all his admirers must share. Yet Abbotsford, if it was to be the grave of Scott's towering worldly hopes, was to be the cradle of the Waverley Novels.

In 1812 he was occupied with minor matters: he read Byron's Childe Harold, and frankly admitted its transcendent power; began the poem Rokeby, and visited the place Rokeby; passed by Hexham, near which he met the famous blacksmith John Lundie, turned doctor, whose specifics were laudamy and calamy, and who consoled himself with the thought that if he did accidentally kill a few Southrons by his drugs, it would be long ere he made up for Flodden! corresponded with and cheered the heart of worthy George Crabbe, the poet; and, in fine, published Rokeby; and when that poem had appeared, returned to his 'Patmos of Abbotsford, as blithe as bird on tree.'

Rokeby was pronounced the first decided failure among his poems. The Vision of Don Roderick, indeed, which appeared a year or two before, was

not a great success; but then it was not a great effort. It claimed to be only an improvise, published for a benevolent purpose. Rokeby was a serious trial of strength. But although its sale was rapid and large, its reception was not nearly so favourable as even Roderick. It had less power than any of his previous poems, and consisted of more commonplace and Minerva press - like materials. It sprung, too, less from impulse than from a desire to gratify Mr. Morritt, by 'doing' his beautiful seat for him in song.

CHAPTER VIII.

VICISSITUDES IN LIFE, LITERATURE, AND
BUSINESS 'WAVERLEY' LAUNCHED.

T was sympathy with the Portuguese, at that time trampled under the iron hoof

of the French armies, which had led Scott in 1811 to write his Vision of Don Roderick, the profits of which he gave to the distressed patriots. There were in it two or three noble passages. Who has forgot the description of the landing of the three nations, English, Scotch, and Irish, on the shores of Portugal? and who that ever heard can forget Professor Wilson's recitation of that description in his class-room, in the deepest of his deep and lingering tones, with the fieriest of his soul-quelling glances, and with the most impassioned of his natural and commanding gestures? The book, however, was less admired than its review in the Edinburgh, where Jeffrey in his best