[131] Mr. Pole had long attended Sir Walter Scott’s daughters as teacher of the harp.  In the end Scott always spoke of his conduct as the most affecting circumstance that accompanied his disasters.—­J.G.L.  For Mr. Pole’s letter see Life, vol. viii. p. 205.  Mr. Pole went to live in England and died at Kensington.

[132] Scott’s mother’s sister.  See Life, vols. i., iii., v., and vi.

[133] Chevalier Yelin, the friend and travelling companion of Baron D’Eichthal, was a native of Bavaria.  His wife had told him playfully that he must not leave Scotland without having seen the great bard; and he prolonged his stay in Edinburgh until Scott’s return, hoping to meet him at the Royal Society on this evening.

[134] On the morning of this day Sir Walter wrote the following note to his friend:—­

“DEAR SKENE,—­If you are disposed for a walk in your gardens any time this morning, I would gladly accompany you for an hour, since keeping the house so long begins rather to hurt me, and you, who supported the other day the weight of my body, are perhaps best disposed to endure the gloom of my mind.—­Yours ever, W.S.

“CASTLE STREET, 23 January.

“I will call when you please:  all hours after twelve are the same to me.”

On his return from this walk, Mr. Skene wrote out his recollections of the conversation that had taken place.  Of his power to rebuild his shattered fortunes, Scott said, “’But woe’s me, I much mistrust my vigour, for the best of my energies are already expended.  You have seen, my dear Skene, the Roman coursers urged to their speed by a loaded spur attached to their backs to whet the rusty metal of their ager—­ay! it is a leaden spur indeed, and it goads hard.’

“I added, ’But what do you think, Scott, of the bits of flaming paper that are pasted on the flanks of the poor jades?  If we could but stick certain small documents on your back, and set fire to them, I think you might submit for a time to the pricking of the spur.’  He laughed, and said, ’Ay!  Ay!—­these weary bills, if they were but as the thing that is not—­come, cheer me up with an account of the Roman Carnival.’  And, accordingly, with my endeavour to do so, he seemed as much interested as if nothing had happened to discompose the usual tenor of his mind, but still our conversation ever and anon dropt back into the same subject, in the course of which he said to me, ’Do you know I experience a sort of determined pleasure in confronting the very worst aspect of this sudden reverse,—­in standing, as it were, in the breach that has overthrown my fortunes, and saying, Here I stand, at least an honest man.  And God knows, if I have enemies, this I may at least with truth say, that I have never wittingly given cause of enmity in the whole course of my life, for even the burnings of political hate seemed to find nothing in my nature to feed the flame.  I am not conscious of having borne a grudge towards any man, and at this moment of my overthrow, so help me God, I wish well and feel kindly to every one.  And if I thought that any of my works contained a sentence hurtful to any one’s feelings, I would burn it.  I think even my novels (for he did not disown any of them) are free from that blame.’