[536] Mr. Lockhart says:—­“My wife and I spent the summer of 1827 partly at a sea-bathing place near Edinburgh, and partly in Roxburghshire.  The arrival of his daughter and her children at Portobello was a source of constant refreshment to him during June, for every other day he came down and dined there, and strolled about afterwards on the beach, thus interrupting, beneficially for his health, and I doubt not for the result of his labours also, the new custom of regular night-work, or, as he called it, serving double tides.”

[537] See Swift, “Mary the cook to Dr. Sheridan.”

[538] The answer is printed in the Scott Centenary Catalogue by David Laing, from which the following extracts are given:—­

“The expression of the old metrical translation, though homely, is plain, forcible, and intelligible, and very often possesses a rude sort of majesty, which perhaps would be ill-exchanged for mere elegance.”  “They are the very words and accents of our early Reformers—­sung by them in woe and gratitude, in the fields, in the churches, and on the scaffold.”  “The parting with this very association of ideas is a serious loss to the cause of devotion, and scarce to be incurred without the certainty of corresponding advantages.  But if these recollections are valuable to persons of education, they are almost indispensable to the edification of the lower ranks whose prejudices do not permit them to consider as the words of the inspired poetry, the versions of living or modern poets, but persist, however absurdly, in identifying the original with the ancient translation.”—­p. 158.

[539] Sir James Stuart, the last baronet of Allanbank.

[540] “The Life of Bonaparte, then, was at last published about the middle of June 1827.”—­Life, ix. 117.

[541] Archdeacon Williams, Rector of the New Edinburgh Academy from 1824 to 1847.

[542] Among the letters which Sir Walter found time to write before leaving Edinburgh, was one to congratulate his old and true friend Mrs. Coutts on her marriage, which took place on the 16th of June.  That letter has not been preserved, but it drew from her Grace the following reply:—­

“My dear Sir Walter Scott,—­Your most welcome letter has ’wandered mony a weary mile after me.’  Thanks, many thanks for all your kind congratulations.  I am a Duchess at last, that is certain, but whether I am the better for it remains to be proved.  The Duke is very amiable, gentle, and well-disposed, and I am sure he has taken pains enough to accomplish what he says has been the first wish of his heart for the last three years.  All this is very flattering to an old lady, and we lived so long in friendship with each other that I was afraid I should be unhappy if I did not say I will—­yet (whisper it, dear Sir Walter) the name of Coutts—­and a right good one it is—­is, and ever will be, dear to my heart.  What a strange, eventful life has mine