588 Sir Walter Scott. 



perhaps when you come to have a house of your own. I am clone with prac~ 

 tice, you see, and here is my legacy. Never keep a large watchdog out o* 

 doors we can always silence them cheaply indeed if it be a dog 'tis easier 

 than whistling but tie a little tight yelping terrier within ; and secondly, 

 put no trust in nice, clever, gimcrack locks the only thing that bothers us is 

 a huge old heavy one, no matter how simple the construction, and the ruder 

 and rustier the key, so much the better for the housekeeper.' I remember 

 hearing him tell this story some thirty years after at a Judges' dinner at Jed- 

 burgh, and he summed it up with a rhyme 'Ay, ay, my lord,' (I think he 

 addressed his friend Lord Meadowbank) 



11 ' Yelping terrier, rusty key, 



Was Walter Scott's best Jeddart fee.' " 



Vol. i. p. 213214. 



Hurrying- over many a page of the memoirs and some years 

 of Scott's life, regretting- all the while that our space allows no 

 longer details, and passing over in silence the adventurous publication 

 of his translation of Burger's Lenore and his military atchievements 

 in the Mid- Lothian volunteers, and omitting with great want of gal- 

 lantry all beyond a bare mention of Lady Scott's love-letters, we most 

 prosaically announce the fact, that Walter Scott was married to Miss 

 Charlotte Carpenter or Charpentier, daughter of a royalist of Lyons, 

 on the 24th of December, 1797. Soon after the appearance of what 

 seems to us a very wretched production his translation of " Gbtz 

 von Berlichingen," he and Mrs. Scott visited London, where by his 

 acquaintance with Monk Lewis he gained the entree of much literary 

 society, while led by his own predilections, he sought out the musty 

 parchments of the Westminster chapter-house, the Tower, and the 

 British Museum. From this visit the hand of death laid on his male 

 parent speedily recalled him in 1799; and at the close of the same 

 year he was appointed to the sheriffship of Selkirkshire, an office, 

 whose salary added very considerably to his resources and relieved 

 him from the anxieties of an increasing anxiety. 



The year 1800, if we may rest our evidence on Scott's letter to 

 Ballantyne (dated Castle-street, April 22, 1800), was the period at which 

 he first formed the idea of entering into those trading speculations which 

 afterwards involved him in ruin. We have accused him of an in- 

 firmity of moral purpose^ we should have said judgment} in these trans- 

 actions : others would make him the unconscious victim of daring- 

 speculators ; but we think the result will show, that this was not the 

 case. But we must not anticipate. The above letter will show that 

 we are not very wrong- in our suppositions. 



Lockhart's account of James Hogg is extremely well told, and the 

 subject is so well known and so justly celebrated, that we pass over 

 the pages with a lingering regret ; but we must proceed onwards 

 with giant strides ; for much is required of us, and our space is 

 limited. The first two volumes of the Border Minstrelsy appeared 

 in 1802: the edition of 800 copies was exhausted in the course of 

 the year, and the author's half- profits were only 787. 10s.* The 



* It may be said without exaggeration that 18,000 copies of the Border Min- 

 strelsy have been sold either sooner or later, by itself or in connexion with his 

 other poems. 



