excursion to the lennox, glasgow, and drumlanrig. — purchase of toftfield. — establishment of the ferguson family at huntly burn. — lines written in illness. — visits of washington irving, lady byron, and sir david wilkie. — progress of the building at abbotsford. — letters to morritt, terry, etc. — conclusion of rob roy.
1817.
During the summer term of 1817, Scott seems to have labored chiefly on his History of 1815 for the Register, which was published in August; but he also found time to draw up the Introduction for a richly embellished quarto, entitled Border Antiquities, which came out a month later. This valuable essay, containing large additions to the information previously embodied in the Minstrelsy, has been included in the late collection of his Miscellaneous Prose, and has thus obtained a circulation not to be expected for it in the original costly form.
Upon the rising of the Court in July, he made an excursion to the Lennox, chiefly that he might visit a cave at the head of Loch Lomond, said to have been a favorite retreat of his hero, Rob Roy. He was accompanied to the seat of his friend, Mr. Macdonald Buchanan, by Captain Adam Ferguson—the long Linton of the days of his apprenticeship; and thence to Glasgow, where, under the auspices of a kind and intelligent acquaintance, Mr. John Smith, bookseller, he refreshed his recollection of the noble cathedral, and other localities of the birthplace of Bailie Jarvie. Mr. Smith took care also to show the tourists the most remarkable novelties in the great manufacturing establishments of his flourishing city; and he remembers particularly the delight which Scott expressed on seeing the process of singeing muslin—that is, of divesting the finished web of all superficial knots and irregularities, by passing it, with the rapidity of lightning, over a bar of red-hot iron. "The man that imagined this," said Scott, "was the Shakespeare of the Wabsters,—
'Things out of hope are compass'd oft with vent'ring.'"[68]
The following note indicates the next stages of his progress:—
TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, DRUMLANRIG CASTLE.
Sanquhar, 2 o'clock, July 30,[69] 1817.
From Ross, where the clouds on Benlomond are sleeping—
From Greenock, where Clyde to the Ocean is sweeping—
From Largs, where the Scotch gave the Northmen a drilling—
From Ardrossan, whose harbor cost many a shilling—
From Old Cumnock, where beds are as hard as a plank, sir—
From a chop and green pease, and a chicken in Sanquhar,
This eve, please the Fates, at Drumlanrig we anchor.
W. S.