[5] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 194.
[6] See particularly Paul's Letters; Provincial Antiquities; and the Histories of the years 1814 and 1815, each a respectable volume, written for the Edinburgh Annual Register.
[7] Ruskin's remark that "The excellence of Scott's work is precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present nature," should not necessarily lead on to the condemnation which follows: "He does not see how anything is to be got out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawing-room chairs, and serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne." (Modern Painters, Part IV, ch. 16, § 32.)
[8] Letters to Richard Heber, etc. (by J.L. Adolphus), pp. 136-137.
[9] Mr. Herford distinguishes two lines of romantic sentiment—"the one pursuing the image of the past as a refuge from reality, the other as a portion of it: the mediaevalism of Tieck and the mediaevalism of Scott." The Age of Wordsworth, Introduction, p. xxiv, note.
[10] Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 249.
[11] Journal, Vol. I, p. 333; Lockhart, Vol. V, p. 81. The edition of Lockhart's Life of Scott to which reference is made throughout this study is that in five volumes, published by Macmillan & Co. in the "Library of English Classics."
[12] Chesterton, Varied Types, pp. 161-2.
[13] The fact that Scott was a Clerk of the Court of Sessions is remembered less frequently than the fact that he had business complications. But this employment of his, which could be undertaken only by a lawyer, occupied a large proportion of his time during twenty-four years. He once wrote, "I cannot work well after I have had four or five hours of the court, for though the business is trifling, yet it requires constant attention, which is at length exhausting." (Constable's Correspondence, Vol. III, p. 195.) Again he wrote, "I saw it reported that Joseph Hume said I composed novels at the clerk's table; but Joseph Hume said what neither was nor could be correct, as any one who either knew what belonged to composing novels, or acting as clerk to a court of justice, would easily have discovered." (Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, p. 252.)
[14] Journal, Vol. I, p. 60; Lockhart, Vol. IV, p. 390.