378 Ifcings of tbe tRofc, IRtfle, ant) 6un 



sport not unnaturally set up the back of the Radical 

 cobbler. 



But whilst I can excuse John Younger for his bitter 

 feeling towards Scrope, it is not so easy to forgive him 

 for the contempt which he always expressed for his 

 great neighbour Walter Scott, who, to use the shoe- 

 maker's own words, " devoted a mind of considerable 

 ability to the building for himself a monumental house 

 and a name out of materials ferreted from amongst 

 the dirty rubbish of a very few late ages three-fourths 

 of the whole, of course, a mere low bagatelle of literary 

 flummery." " A mind of considerable ability " \ \ Was 

 there ever an estimate of human intellect which 

 reflected less credit on the sense of the man who made 

 it ! What strange twist was there in John Younger's 

 mental vision that so distorted his view of the Wizard 

 of the North, the greatest of all Scotsmen? And 

 yet, with all my anger at his narrow-mindedness, there 

 mingles a feeling of admiration for the courage of the 

 man who within sight of Abbotsford never hesitated 

 to express his contempt for the Waverley Novels and 

 their illustrious author. 



But Sir Walter Scott and William Scrope were not 

 the only eminent persons for whom John Younger dared 

 to entertain an opinion very different from that held 

 by the rest of the world. In illustration of his con- 

 tention that " a man seldom prides himself upon his 

 best quality, but often upon something in which he is 

 never likely to excel or become even equal with the 

 run of his neighbours," he takes, amongst others, the 

 case of Sir Humphry Davy, of whom he writes thus : 



