"Who comes in foreign trashery Of tinkling chain and spur, A walking haberdashery Of feathers, lace, and fur; In Rowley's antiquated phrase, Horse-milliner of modern days"-- there is a sly reference to the incidents of a certain ball, of August, 1797, at the Gilsland Spa.[20] Among the more prominent Erskinisms, are the eulogistic mention of Glasgow, the scene of Erskine's education; and the lines on Collins--a supplement to whose Ode on the Highland Superstitions is, as far as I know, the only specimen that ever was published of Erskine's verse.[21] As a whole, The Bridal of Triermain appears to me as characteristic of Scott as any of his larger poems. His genius pervades and animates it beneath a thin and playful veil, which perhaps adds as much of grace as it takes away of splendor. As Wordsworth says of the eclipse on the lake of Lugano-- "'T is sunlight sheathed and gently charmed;" and I think there is at once a lightness and a polish of versification beyond what he has elsewhere attained. If it be a miniature, it is such a one as a Cooper might have hung fearlessly beside the masterpieces of Vandyke. The Introductions contain some of the most exquisite passages he ever produced; but their general effect has always struck me as unfortunate. No art can reconcile us to contemptuous satire of the merest frivolities of modern life--some of them already, in twenty years, grown obsolete--interlaid between such bright visions of the old world of romance, when "Strength was gigantic, valor high, And wisdom soared beyond the sky, And beauty had such matchless beam As lights not now a lover's dream." The fall is grievous, from the hoary minstrel of Newark, and his feverish tears on Killiecrankie, to a pathetic swain, who can stoop to denounce as objects of his jealousy-- "The landaulet and four blood bays-- The Hessian boot and pantaloon." Before Triermain came out, Scott had taken wing for Abbotsford; and indeed he seems to have so contrived it in his earlier period, that he should not be in Edinburgh when any unavowed work of his was published; whereas, from the first, in the case of books that bore his name on the title-page, he walked as usual to the Parliament House, and bore all the buzz and tattle of friends and acquaintance with an air of good-humored equanimity, or rather total apparent indifference. The following letter, which contains some curious matter of more kinds than one, was written partly in town and partly in the country:-- TO MISS JOANNA BAILLIE, HAMPSTEAD. EDINBURGH, March 13, 1813.