Finally, I have to express my obligation to many other friends, who never failed cordially to respond to any call I made upon them.

D.D.

     Edinburgh, 22 Drummond place, October 1, 1890.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL.  I.

Portrait, painted by john Graham Gilbert, R.S.A., for the Royal Society, Edinburgh.  Copied by permission of the Council of the Society, Frontispiece

Vignette on Title-page

“The Dial-Stone” in the Garden, from drawing made at Abbotsford by George Reid, R.S.A.

“Work while it is day.”

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[Greek:  Nux gar ERCHETAI.]

“I must home to ’work while it is called day; for the night cometh when no man can work.’  I put that text, many a year ago, on my dial-stone; but it often preached in vain.”—­Scott’s Life, x. 88.

Map of Abbotsford, from the Ordnance Survey, 1858, to face p. 414.

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SIR WALTER SCOTT’S JOURNAL.

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NOVEMBER.

[Edinburgh,] November 20, 1825.—­I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular Journal.  I have myself lost recollection of much that was interesting, and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information, by not carrying this resolution into effect.  I have bethought me, on seeing lately some volumes of Byron’s notes, that he probably had hit upon the right way of keeping such a memorandum-book, by throwing aside all pretence to regularity and order, and marking down events just as they occurred to recollection.  I will try this plan; and behold I have a handsome locked volume, such as might serve for a lady’s album. Nota bene, John Lockhart, and Anne, and I are to raise a Society for the suppression of Albums.  It is a most troublesome shape of mendicity.  Sir, your autograph—­a line of poetry—­or a prose sentence!—­Among all the sprawling sonnets, and blotted trumpery that dishonours these miscellanies, a man must have a good stomach that can swallow this botheration as a compliment.

I was in Ireland last summer, and had a most delightful tour.  It cost me upwards of L500, including L100 left with Walter and Jane, for we travelled a large party and in style.  There is much less exaggerated about the Irish than is to be expected.  Their poverty is not exaggerated; it is on the extreme verge of human misery; their cottages would scarce serve for pig-styes, even in Scotland, and their rags seem the very refuse of a rag-shop, and are disposed on their bodies with such ingenious variety of wretchedness that you would think nothing but some sort of perverted taste could have assembled so many shreds together.  You are constantly fearful that some knot or loop will give, and place the individual before you in all the primitive simplicity of Paradise.  Then for their food, they have only potatoes, and too few of them.  Yet the men look stout and healthy, the women buxom and well-coloured.