'But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling companion, for two or three days preceding this; but he had not prepared for coursing fields, or had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's on a sudden thought; and his fisherman's costume—a brown hat with flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable fly-hooks; jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon—made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him.'
After a merry lunch at Newark Castle they all moved on towards Blackandro, and, Lockhart continues:
'Davy, next to whom I chanced to be riding, laid his whip about the fern like an experienced hand, but cracked many a joke, too, upon his own jack-boots; and, surveying the long eager battalion of bush-rangers, exclaimed: "Good Heavens, is it thus that I visit the scenery of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel'!" He then kept muttering to himself as his glowing eye (the finest and brightest that I ever saw) ran over the landscape, some of those beautiful lines from the conclusion of the 'Lay':
"But still
When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill,
And July's eve with balmy breath
Waved the blue bells on Newark heath,
When throstles sang on Hareheadshaw,
And corn was green in Catterhaugh,
And flourished, broad, Blackandro's oak,
The aged harper's soul awoke," etc., etc.
'Mackenzie ("The Man of Feeling"), spectacled though he was, saw the first sitting hare, gave the word to slip the dogs, and spurred after them like a boy. All the seniors, indeed, did well as long as the course was upwards; but when puss took down the declivity, they halted, and breathed themselves upon the knoll, cheering gaily, however, the young people who dashed past and below them. Coursing on such a mountain is not like the same sport over a set of fine English pastures. There were gulfs to be avoided, and bogs enough to be threaded; many a stiff nag stuck fast, many a bold rider measured his length among the peat-hags; and another stranger to the ground besides Davy plunged neck-deep into a treacherous well-head, which, till they were floundering in it, had borne all the appearance of a piece of delicate green turf. When Sir Humphry emerged from his involuntary bath, his habiliments garnished with mud, slime, and mangled water-cresses, Sir Walter received him with a triumphant "Encore!" But the philosopher had his revenge; for, joining soon after in a brisk gallop, Scott put Sibyl Grey to a leap beyond her prowess, and lay humbled in the ditch, while Davy, who was better mounted, cleared it and him at a bound. Happily there was little damage done, but no one was sorry that the "sociable" had been detained at the foot of the hill.
'I have seen Sir Humphry in many places, and in company of many descriptions; but never to such advantage as at Abbotsford. His host and he delighted in each other, and the modesty of their mutual admiration was a memorable spectacle. Davy was, by nature, a poet; and Scott, though anything but a philosopher in the modern sense of that term, might, I think it very likely, have pursued the study of physical science with zeal and success, had he chanced to fall in with such an instructor as Sir Humphry would have been to him, in his early life. Each strove to make the other talk, and they did so in turn more charmingly than I ever heard either on any other occasion whatsoever. Scott, in his romantic narratives, touched upon a deeper chord of feeling than usual, when he had such a listener as Davy; and Davy, when induced to open his views upon any subject of scientific interest in Scott's presence, did so with a degree of clear energetic eloquence, and with a flow of imagery and illustration, of which neither his habitual tone of table-talk (least of all in London) nor any of his prose writings (except, indeed, the posthumous "Consolations of Travel") could suggest an adequate notion. I say his prose writings, for who that has read his sublime quatrains on the "Doctrine of Spinoza" can doubt that he might have united, if he had pleased, in some great didactic form, the vigorous ratiocination of Dryden and the moral majesty of Wordsworth? I remember William Laidlaw whispering to me one night, when their "rapt talk" had kept the circle round the fire until long after the usual bed-time of Abbotsford: "Gude preserve us! this is a very superior occasion! Eh, sirs!" he added, cocking his eye like a bird. "I wonder if Shakespeare and Bacon ever met to screw ilk other up!"'
I am also indebted to Lockhart for the following story:
'When Sir Walter Scott was debating in his mind the Prince Regent's offer of a baronetcy, he wrote to his friend Morritt: "After all, if one must speak for themselves, I have my quarters and emblazonments free of all stain but Border theft and high treason, which I hope are gentlemanlike crimes; and I hope 'Sir Walter Scott' will not sound worse than 'Sir Humphry Davy,' though my merits are as much under his, in point of utility, as can well be imagined. But a name is something, and mine is the better of the two."' When Mrs. Davy, Dr. Davy's wife, told Sir Walter Scott, at Malta, that her husband was writing his brother's life, Sir Walter said, 'I am glad of it; I hope his mother lived to see his greatness.' And it is pleasant to be able to record such was the case.
Not only Sir Walter Scott, but even the cold and reserved Poet of the Lakes, was deeply impressed with Davy's genius. Lockhart tells us that when Sir Walter and Wordsworth ascended Helvellyn, 'they were accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, who was also a true poet, and might have been one of the greatest of poets had he chosen; and I have heard Mr. Wordsworth say that it would be difficult to express the feelings with which he, who so often had climbed Helvellyn alone, found himself standing on its summit with two such men as Scott and Davy.'