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CHAPTER XII.

Lockhart came on two of Scott’s notebooks dated 1792, and evidently written in that year. He gives a list of the contents of one of them, which is an illuminating criticism of those who depreciate him for a lack of pedantic scholarship. There were first seven closely-written quarto pages containing “Vegtain’s Kvitha, or the Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical version of Mr. Gray; with some account of the death of Balder, both as narrated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern historians—Auctore Gualtero Scott.” The Norse original, and the two versions follow. The whole is obviously an essay to be read before one of the Edinburgh literary or debating societies to which he belonged at this period. The book also contained these miscellaneous jottings:

A transcript of a receipt for some plate lent to King Charles I.

A copy of Langhorne’s Owen of Carron.

The verses of Canute on passing Ely.

The old English cuckoo-lyric, which has since become part of the common furniture of most Anthologies.

A translation by “a gentleman in Devonshire” of the death-song of Regner Lodbrog.

One of the quatrains of Gray’s Elegy,

“There scattered oft, the earliest of the year”

which he omitted from the published version.

An Italian canzonet praising blue eyes (Williamina’s colour).

Several pages of etymologies from Ducange.

Several pages of notes on the Morte D’Arthur.

Abstracts from the books of Adjournal, about Dame Janet

Beaton, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch (Wicked Watt), and his wife, who was to appear as the

real heroine of the Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Other abstracts concerning witches and fairies.

Some couplets from Hall’s Satires.

A passage from Albania.

Notes on Second Sight, with abstracts from Aubrey and Glanville.

A ‘list of Ballads to be discovered or re-discovered’.

Abstracts from Guerin de Montglave.

Many more ‘similar entries.’

A table of the Maeso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Runic Alphabets.

Beyond these, the book had a section headed German, and left blank.

Such was one of the note-books of a young man, who stands self-accused of neglecting his opportunities of study, and of whom Lockhart himself writes as though his defects of education need to be leniently explained away. The fact is that he was self-accumulating the stores of the erudition he needed, which none of the professional scholars of the University would have been competent to supply. There was a time when his mind, excited in a score of other directions, declined to engage itself in the study of Greek, which he afterwards regretted, but not sufficiently to induce him to repair the omission. It was regrettable, as all ignorance is. Had he felt sufficient occasion, he would doubtless have mastered the language, as he did Spanish about this time, or earlier) and German during the coming year....

The first year of an advocate’s life in the Edinburgh of that period, as is that of a young barrister of London today, was one of waiting for irregular opportunities, with many dissultory intervals which he would use or waste as his disposition led him to do. There were occasional briefs to be handed out by the Court for those who must be defended in forma pauperis, which were usually allotted to the junior advocates. The fees were small, but they gave opportunities of showing abilities which might be recognised by the watching attorneys from whom briefs of a more valuable kind would then be likely to follow. There was chamber practice in the preparation of “informations”, and kindred work, from attorneys, and busier advocates, which was ill-paid, but gave similar opportunities of showing ability where it would be valued, and establishing contacts, which might be of subsequent profit. Steadily, though not rapidly, Scott’s practice and income grew.

The younger advocates, idling for their opportunities around the door of the Court, formed themselves into a loosely organised club, which became known as the Mountain, of which Scott was a very popular member. He still carried the nickname of his college days—Duns Scotus, in recognition of his antiquarian zeals. William Clerk was a member also. His airs of indolent superiority had won him the good-humouredly-ironic title of Baronet, in evident allusion to Sir John Clerk, of the honour of which relationship he appears to have been sufficiently conscious.

With his genius for the right friendships, Scott added to his intimates at this time, Thomas Thomson, who became later a leading antiquarian authority; and William Erskine (Lord Kinedder), with whom he established a close and enduring friendship. Lockhart gives his opinion that Erskine had an important influence at this time in persuading Scott of the “extravagances both of thought and language” which disfigured the German literature which he was endeavouring to master. “His friendly critic” (Lockhart says) “was just, as well as delicate—and severity as to the mingled absurdities and vulgarities of German detail commanded deliberate attention coming from one who admired not less enthusiastically than himself the sublimity and pathos of his new favourites.”

William Erskine was one of the weaker members of a brilliant family. He was Scott’s contemporary, not his grandfather, nor his tutor. Lockhart calls him his ‘monitor’, but it is difficult to understand why, unless we regard it as axiomatic that one who knows Greek is the monitor of one who is ignorant of that language.

In fact, Scott, Erskine, Thomson and Clerk agreed to learn German together in this winter of 1792-3. They found a good teacher in Dr. Willich. It was the fashion to be interested in German literature. English literature was hesitating towards a new florescence. French literature was regarded as contaminated by the anarchistic activities at which Europe shivered. Interest in the work of Goethe and Schiller was a natural consequence. Scott took what it had to offer, learning, as did his companions, to read its poets in the original. He took what he wanted, as he did from his neighbours’ brains. That Erskine’s estimate of it was more accurate or more critical than his own, that their estimates differed, that Erskine influenced him rather than being influenced by him, that such influence materially altered Scott’s own poetry—these propositions may appear to be of a mounting improbability. Still, Lockhart appears confident. He writes not as one asserting an opinion, but as recording a fact. We may think as we will....

The first legal business of importance for which Scott was briefed, and of which there is any detailed record, was not a pleading before the Civil Court, but a matter of Ecclesiastical discipline. There was a certain minister named McNaught, of the kirk at Girthon in Galloway, who was charged with various scandalous proceedings, and the brief for his defence came into the hands of Mr. Scott, with a fee of five guineas marked upon it. It was a hopeless cause. He went down to Girthon, when the rising of the Edinburgh Court in March 1793 released him from attendance there, and marshalled such evidence and arguments as the nature of the case permitted. But the fact was that the reverend gentleman was not easy to defend. It appeared that he was most often drunk. That his songs were lewd and profane. That he danced with gingerbread-sellers of an improbable chastity. Robert Burns had done no less, and remained the hero of the national life, but while a poet may indulge in promiscuous familiarities with “the maids that make the bed for him”, and be thought of none the worse by his fellow-countrymen, the ethical standards of the manse are somewhat different, and the Scottish conscience was stirred.

Scott appeared in due course at the Bar of the Church Assembly, and argued McNaught’s case at considerable length, at which the Venerable Court was not pleased. He showed some ingenuity in establishing that there is an important legal distinction between ‘ebrius’ and ‘ebriosus’—between being drunk (which might happen to anyone) and being drunken, which is less capable of defence. He quoted one of the obscene phrases alleged to have been used by the reverend gentleman, and was rebuked for repeating such language with unseemly boldness. When he had occasion to quote a song of the same pattern, which was also at issue, he spoke so low that his legal friends, who crowded the gallery, and who may not have regarded the Kirk Assembly with as much respect as the Civil Court, shouted to him to speak up, and were promptly turned into the street by the order of the indignant Elders.

Such, at least, is the tale. It may be of as much truth, or as little, as such tales usually are. Scott probably did what was possible in a hopeless case.

But he was less fitted by temperament to be a barrister than a judge. He saw both sides. He would be a poor advocate of a poor cause. All his life, his tendency was to advise against litigation: to make peace where he could.

It is true that he went on to Jedburgh, and secured the acquittal of a poacher, which was no mean feat of advocacy in those times, but he had a kindness for this class of miscreant, as Tom Purdie found on a later day. Scott told the man that he was a lucky scoundrel, to which he agreed very cheerfully, and added that he would send him one of the hares when he got home, as no doubt he did.

But when the Jedburgh Court session was over, Scott was on the way to Liddesdale once again.