sides of the land of the Border Minstrelsy; he was then enjoying as well as "making himself," and probably looked back, long afterwards, to this as to the happiest period of his life.

In July 1797, Scott, wearied with another dubious campaign at the Bar, where his gains were as yet very moderate, disappointed at the failure of his maiden poem, and with a little of his love-sickness still unmelted about his heart, turned his thoughts towards his favourite South of Scotland again— now perhaps dearer because it lay far off from the regions where he had loved not wisely but too well, and which were darkened in the shadow of his disappointed hopes. On this occasion, however, he extended his visit to England, where his matrimonial destiny lay waiting for him; and after a scamper through Peeblesshire, where he had his first and only interview with David Ritchie, the original of the "Black Dwarf"-(it is a dreary spot, moss and mountains clustering all around the mud-cottage where the misanthrope dwelt, a human spider in a grand but gloomy cellar)—and a rapid run through Carlisle, Penrith, Ulswater, and Windermere, he reached the little sequestered watering-place of Gilsland. His companions in this memorable tour were Adam Fergusson, and John, the brother of the poet. Riding one day near Gilsland, they met a young lady on horseback, whose appearance struck them so much, that they followed her, and found that she belonged to the party at the Spa, although they had not previously observed her. They became speedily acquainted. Her name was Charlotte Margaret Carpenter. She was the daughter of a French emigrant, whose widow had fled from the horrors of the Revolution to England, where she and her children found an efficient protector and guardian in the Marquis of Downshire, who had previously known the family abroad. The daughter and her governess were on a little excursion to some friends in the north of England, and had come for a few days to Gilsland. She was, as often happens, of exactly the opposite complexion to Scott's former innamorata, having dark hair, deep brown eyes, and an olive complexion, very beautiful withal, and "with an address hovering between the reserve

of a pretty young Englishwoman, who has not mingled largely in general society, and a certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well with the accompaniment of a French accent." She was a Protestant by faith. Instantly the poet's fate was fixed. Everything was favourable to the success of the courtship. She had come, it is not uncharitable to suppose, to Gilsland, like other young Calebinas, "in search of a husband," and here was an ardent youth, of great conversational powers, and a prepossessing appearance, "a comely creature,' according to the testimony of a lady of the time. He, on the other hand, was precisely in that degree of moderated lovemisery, and softened despair, when a new object is likely to surprise the heart into a delight, in the expectation of which it had almost forgotten to believe. As an expatriated French loyalist, too, there was something in her story to suit Scott's political feelings, as well as to captivate his romantic imagination. Then they met at a watering-place, a "St Ronan's Well," where conventional barriers were broken down, and where sudden and singular matches were the order of the day. The result was as might have been expected. He fell, or seemed to himself to fall, into a violent love-passion, which was returned by the lady. Recalled from his romantic courtship to the Jedburgh Assizes, he astonished his friend Shortreed by the ardour of his new affection. The two worthy young lawyers sate till one in the morning, on the 30th of September, Scott toasting and raving about Miss Carpenter, and Shortreed not daring to rebuke the madness of the poet. After some little obstructions, thrown in the way by the parents and guardians, had been surmounted, and some agreeable nonsense had been talked and written on both sides by the parties themselves, Walter Scott and the beautiful Charlotte Carpenter were wedded at Carlisle, on the 24th day of December 1797, about four months after they first met.

He took her with him to Edinburgh, where, notwithstanding some foreign peculiarities of manners and tastes, she began her matrimonial career with considerable éclat. When summer arrived, Scott hired a beautiful cottage at Lasswade, on

the banks of the Esk-a river sweeping down through the richest woodlands and scenery of varied enchantment from Hawthornden, and thus uniting, in a band of beauty, the abodes of Drummond and Scott, two of Scotland's greatest and most patriotic poets. It is curious that each period of Scott's literary history is linked with some spot of special natural loveliness. At Lasswade he commenced his literary career; at Ashestiel his poetic genius culminated; and with Abbotsford is connected the memory of his matchless fictions.

Scott's friend, William Erskine, had met in London the celebrated Monk Lewis, and shewn him the versions of "Bürger's Ballads." This led to a correspondence; and Lewis, shortly after visiting Edinburgh, invited Scott to his hotel-an invitation which "elated Scott" more than anything that had ever befallen him. Lewis was a man of considerable genius, and of real warmth of heart; but vain, coxcombical, and what is technically called "gay" in his habits. It was a matter of astonishment to many how such a ludicrously little and over-dressed mannikin (the fac-simile of Lovel in "Evelina") should be the lion of London literary society; and how the Prince of Dandies should have such a taste for the weird and wonderful, and be the first to transfer to English the spirit of the great German bards. On Scott, his tales such as " Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogine," extravagant and absurd as he deemed them afterwards, exerted much influence. The two became speedily intimate, although the intimacy seems now as ill-proportioned as were that of a monkey with a mammoth; and in January 1799, Lewis negotiated the publication of Scott's version of Goethe's "Goetz von Berlichingen." One Bell bought it for twenty-five guineas, and it appeared in February, but like his "Lenore" failed to make much impression. It swarms with errors, yet must ever be interesting, not only as one of Scott's earliest productions, but because it exhibits two of the mightiest minds of the age in contact, as mirrored and mirroring. Whatever may be thought of Goethe as a man, or even as an author-and there will always be conflicting opinions on his merits-there can be no doubt of the powerful influence he has exerted on con

temporary men of genius. To his "Faust" we owe Manfred," the "Deformed Transformed," and "Festus ;" and to his "Goetz of the Iron Hand," we trace much of the chivalric spirit which burns in Scott's poetry and prose. In 1799, after "Goetz" was published, he took his wife to London, where he had not been since infancy, and was introduced by Lewis to many literary and fashionable people. While in London, his worthy father died in his seventieth year. On his return, Scott wrote another Germanised drama, the "House of Aspen," which was forwarded to London to be acted, but it did not please on rehearsal. The author printed it thirty years afterwards in one of the Annuals. He spent a good deal of time, too, in contributing revised versions of his "Lenore" and "Wild Huntsman," and some other pieces, to the "hobgoblin repast" which Lewis was preparing for the public in his "Tales of Wonder."

This summer he wrote his fine ballads of "Glenfinlas," the "Eve of St John," the "Fire-King," and one or two others of a similar kind; and toward the close of the year he printed with Ballantyne, who had established his inimitable press at Kelso, a dozen copies of some of these pieces under the title of "Apology for Tales of Wonder," Mat. Lewis' collection having been long of appearing. The specimen pleased Scott, and led him to project an issue from the same press of the Border ballads which he had collected-in other words, to form the idea of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," the publication of which became an era in the history of James Ballantyne, of Scott, of Scottish poetry, and of literature in general. In December this year, through the influence of the Earl of Dalkeith, of Lord Montagu, and of Robert Dundas, afterwards the second Lord Melville, with "Old Hal Dundas," then the real King of Scotland, our poet was constituted Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire, with £300 a-year, little to do, and a still freer and fuller access than before to the regions of Border beauty and Border song, so peculiarly dear to his imagination. In completing the design of the "Minstrelsy," Scott found able coadjutors-the accomplished and learned Richard Heber; Dr Jamieson, the author of the

"Scottish Dictionary," himself a mine of antique lore, even richer than his book; and the famous John Leyden, the most determined of students, and most eccentric of men-a " gigantic genius grappling with whole libraries"-a Behemoth of strong endeavour-who took in a language "like Jordan" into his mouth-could master a whole art, such as medicine, in six months-who once walked forty miles and back again to procure a missing ballad, and entered a company singing it with enthusiastic gestures, and in the "saw tones" of a most energetic voice-whose Border blood asserted itself even amidst the languid atmosphere of India, and on the sick-bed whence he shouted out the old chorus

"Wha daur meddle wi' me?"—

and in whom a certain dash of charlatanry, and more perhaps, than a dash of derangement, only served as foils to the solidity of his learning, the vigour of his mind, the freshness of his literary enthusiasm, and the fervour of his poetic genius; for although not, like Scott, a great poet, yet a poet he was.

In 1800 and 1801, our author was busy with the "Minstrelsy;" with the duties, such as they were, of his sheriffship; and with the Bar, where he was slowly increasing his business. In some of his professional visits to Selkirkshire, he became acquainted with William Laidlaw and James Hogg, both remarkable men: the one possessing the canine fidelity and fondness of a Boswell, with qualities of sense, simplicity, and poetic feeling which were denied to Jemmy; and the other, a wild touch of the truest genius, and an Alpine elevation and enthusiasm of mind, strangely co-existing with the coarsest tastes, manners, and habits, whom poetry had inspired without in the slightest degree refining, and who had envy, spite, and conceit sufficient to set up all Grub Street, blended with a simplicity and rough kindness which partly redeemed his failings, and partly served to render the whole compound inore intensely ridiculous. Genius, like Misery, has often dwelt with strange bed-fellows, but seldom with so many, and seldom in such a monstrous mésalliance, as in the idiosyncrasy of James Hogg. Both these men adored Scott, both