“I’m sure, my lord,” said the pursuer, “I’m seeking nowt but what I’ve rowt for!”
“Ay, my man,” responded the judge, “but I’m thinking ye’ll hae to rowt a wee langer afore ye get it, though;” and nonsuited him.
[2] The company had been admiring a print of Banbury’s, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow—the dog sitting in misery on the one side—on the other, his widow with a child in her arms. These lines were written underneath:—
“Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain;
Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years—
The child of misery baptized in tears.”
Burns was so much affected by the picture, or rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind, that he actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that among all who were present, and the company included the celebrated Dugald Stewart, and other men of letters, young Scott alone remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne’s, called by the unpromising title of “The Justice of the Peace.”