Not so. That open thieving had no dishonesty in it whatsoever. Far the contrary. Of all conceivable ways of getting a living, except by actual digging of the ground, this is precisely the honestest. All other gentlemanly professions but this have taint of dishonesty in them. Even the best—the physician’s—involves temptation to many forms of cozening. How many second-rate mediciners have lived, think you, on prescriptions of bread pills and rose-coloured water?—how many, even of leading physicians, owe all their success to skill unaided by pretence? Of clergymen, how many preach wholly what they know to be true without fear of their congregations? Of lawyers, of authors, of painters, what need we speak? These all, so far as they try to please the mob for their living, are true cozeners,—unsound in the very heart’s core. But Wat of Harden, setting my farm on fire, and driving off my cattle, is no rogue. An enemy, yes, and a spoiler; but no more a rogue than the rock eagles. And Robert the first cattle-dealer’s honesty is directly inherited from his race, and notable as a virtue, not in opposition to their character, but to ours. For men become dishonest by occult trade, not by open rapine.
There are, nevertheless, some very definite faults in our pastoral Robert of Sandy-Knowe, which Sir Walter himself inherits and recognizes in his own temper, and which were in him severely punished. Of the rash investment of the poor shepherd’s fortune, we shall presently hear what Sir Walter thought. Robert’s graver fault, the turning Whig to displease his father, is especially to be remembered in connection with Sir Walter’s frequent warnings against the sacrifice to momentary passion of what ought to be the fixed principles of youth. It has not been enough noticed that the design of his first and greatest story is to exhibit and reprehend, while it tenderly indicates the many grounds for forgiving, the change of political temper under circumstances of personal irritation.
But in the virtues of Robert Scott, far outnumbering his failings, and above all in this absolute honesty and his contentment in the joy of country life, all the noblest roots of his grandson’s character found their happy hold.
Note every syllable of the description of him given in the introduction to the third canto of ‘Marmion:’
“Still, with vain fondness, could I trace
Anew each kind familiar face
That brightened at our evening fire;
From the thatched mansion’s grey-haired sire,
Wise without learning, plain, and good,
And sprung of Scotland’s gentler blood;