Scott’s connection with John Leyden was altogether pleasant, and no one mourned more sincerely over the early death in the East of that indefatigable poet and scholar. Leyden was of great assistance to Scott in collecting material for his _Border Minstrelsy_. Once there was a hiatus in an interesting old ballad, when Leyden heard of an ancient reported able to recite the whole thing complete. He walked between forty and fifty miles and back again, turning the recovered verses over in his mind, and as Scott was sitting after dinner with some company “a sound was heard at a distance like that of the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of a vessel which scuds before it.” It was Leyden who presently burst into the room, chanting the whole of the recovered ballad. Leyden and Thomas Campbell had a very pretty quarrel about something or other. When Scott repeated to Leyden the poem of _Hohenlinden_, the latter burst out, “Dash it, man, tell the fellow that I hate him; but, dash him, he has written the finest verses that have been published these fifty years.” Scott, thinking to patch up a peace, repeated this to Campbell. He only said, “Tell Leyden that I detest him, but I know the value of his critical approbation.” Well he might! Leyden once repeated to Alexander Murray, the philologist, the most striking lines in Campbell’s _Lochiel_, adding, “That fellow, after all, we may say, is King of us all, and has the genuine root of the matter in him.” Campbell’s verse still lives, but our day would not place it so high. I have spoken of Scott’s modesty, also he was quiet under hostile criticism. Jeffrey had some hard things to say of _Marmion_ in the _Edinburgh Review_, and immediately after dined in Castle Street. There was no change in Scott’s demeanour, but Mrs. Scott could not altogether restrain herself. “Well, good-night, Mr. Jeffrey. They tell me you have abused Scott in the _Review_, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it,” which was rather an odd remark. As that Highland blue-stocking, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, observed, “Mr. Scott always seems to me like a glass through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it, but the bit of paper that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze—and no wonder.” Scott was “truest friend and noblest foe.” In June 1821, as he stood by John Ballantyne’s open grave in the Canongate Churchyard, the day, which had been dark, brightened up, and the sun shone forth, he looked up and said with deep feeling to Lockhart, “I feel as if there will be less sunshine for me from this time forth.” And yet through the Ballantynes Scott was involved in those reckless speculations which led to the catastrophe of his life. His very generosity and nobleness led him into difficulties. “I like Scott’s ain bairns, but Heaven preserve me from those of his fathering,” says Constable. As for those “ain bairns,” especially those Waverley Novels,