[87] Henry Savary, son of a banker in Bristol, had been tried for forgery a few months before.

[88] From What d’ye call it? by John Gay.

[89] Life of Napoleon.—­J.G.L.

[90] See Scott’s Poetical Works, vol. xii. pp. 194-97.—­J.G.L.

[91] William Erskine of Kinnedder was Scott’s senior by two years at the bar, having passed Advocate in 1790.  He became Sheriff of Orkney in 1809, and took his seat on the Bench as Lord Kinnedder, 29 January 1822; he died on the 14th of August following.  Scott and he met first in 1792, and, as is well known, he afterwards “became the nearest and most confidential of all his Edinburgh associates.”  In 1796 he arranged with the publishers for Scott’s earliest literary venture, a thin 4to of some 48 pages entitled The Chase, etc.  See Life throughout, more particularly vol. i. pp. 279-80, 333-4, 338-9; ii. pp. 103-4; iv. pp. 12, 166, 369; v. p. 174; vi. p. 393; vii. pp. 1, 5, 6, 70-74.  See Appendix for Mr. Skene’s account of the destruction of the letters from Scott to Erskine.

[92] Patrick Brydone, author of A Tour through Sicily and Malta, 2 vols. 8vo, 1773.

[93] Gilbert, Earl of Minto, died in June 1814.—­J.G.L.

[94] See Canning’s German Play, in the Anti-Jacobin.—­J.G.L.

[95] See Johnson’s Musical Museum, No. 490, slightly altered.

[96] See Candide.—­J.G.L.

[97] James Clarkson, Esq., surgeon, Melrose, son to Scott’s old friend, Dr. Clarkson of Selkirk.—­J.G.L.

[98] See Constable’s Miscellany, vol. v.—­J.G.L.

[99] See the Quarterly Review for January 1820—­or Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose Works.—­J.G.L.

[100] As You Like it, Act IV.  Sc. 3.—­J.G.L.

[101] Formerly tutor at Abbotsford.  Mr. Lockhart says:  “I observe, as the sheet is passing through the press, the death of the Rev. George Thomson—­the happy ‘Dominie Thomson’ of the happy days of Abbotsford:  he died at Edinburgh on the 8th of January 1838.”

[102] Burns’s “O poortith cauld and restless love.”

[103] John Rutty, M.D., a physician of some eminence in Dublin, died in 1775, and his executors published his very curious and absurd “Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies.”  Boswell describes Johnson as being much amused with the Quaker doctor’s minute confessions.  See the Life of Johnson sub anno 1777.—­J.G.L.

[104] Woodstock—­contracted for in 1823.

[105] A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III.  Sc. 1.

[106] George Huntly Gordon, amanuensis to Scott.

1826

1826.—­JANUARY.