of his hearers.  The commencement of the story I had not heard, but soon perceived that a shipwreck was the theme, which he described with all the vivid touches of his fancy, marshalling the incidents and striking features of the situation with a degree of dexterity that seemed to bring all the horrors of a polar storm home to every one’s mind, and although it occurred to me that our rencontre in the morning with the shipwrecked Whaler might have recalled a similar story to his recollection, it was not until he came to mention the tea-table of ice that I recognised the identity of my friend’s tale, which had luxuriated to such an extent in the fertile soil of the poet’s imagination, as to have left the original germ in comparative insignificance.  He cast a glance towards me at the close, and observed, with a significant nod, ’You see, you did not hear one-half of that honest seaman’s story this morning.’  It was such slender hints, which in the common intercourse of life must have hourly dropped on the soil of his retentive memory, that fed the exuberance of Sir Walter’s invention, and supplied the seemingly inexhaustible stream of fancy, from which he drew forth at pleasure the ground-work of romance.”—­Reminiscences.

[287] Painted for Lord Montagu in 1822.—­See Life, vol. vii. p. 13.

Raeburn apparently executed two “half lengths” of Scott almost identical at this time, giving Lord Montagu his choice.  The picture chosen remained at Ditton, near Windsor, until 1845, when at Lord Montagu’s death it became the property of his son-in-law, the Earl of Home, and it is now (1889) at the Hirsel, Coldstream.  The engraving referred to was made from the replica, which remained in the artist’s possession, by Mr. Walker, and published in 1826.  Sir Henry Raeburn died in July 1823, and I do not know what became of the original, which may be identified by an official chain round the neck, not introduced in the Montagu picture.

[288] Song of The Hunting of the Hare.—­J.G.L.

[289] This entry reminds one of Hannah More’s account of Mrs. Garrick’s conduct after her husband’s funeral.  “She told me,” says Mrs. More, “that she prayed with great composure, then went and kissed the dear bed, and got into it with a sad pleasure.”—­See Memoirs of Mrs. More, vol. i. p. 135.—­J.G.L.

[290] Campbell’s Turkish Lady, slightly altered.  The poet was then editor of the New Monthly Magazine, but he soon gave it up.—­J.G.L.

[291] Viz.:  the first series of Chronicles of the Canongate, which was published in 1827.  The title originally proposed was The Canongate Miscellany or Traditions of the Sanctuary.

Woodstock had just been launched under the following title:—­Woodstock, or the Cavalier; a Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred and Fifty-one, by the author of Waverley, Tales of the Crusaders, etc.  “He was a very perfect gentle knight” (Chaucer).  Edinburgh:  Printed for Archibald Constable and Co., Edinburgh; and Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London, 1826. (At the end) Edinburgh:  Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. 3 vols. post 8vo.