[170] No. 39 Castle Street, which had been occupied by him from 1802, when he removed from No. 10 in the same street.  The situation suited him, as the houses of nearly all his friends were within a circle of a few hundred yards.  For description see Life, vol. v. pp. 321, 333-4, etc.

[171] See below, March 12.

[172] Burns’s Dedication to Gavin Hamilton—­

“May ne’er misfortune’s gowling bark Howl through the dwelling o’ the Clerk.”

[173]

“O born to arms!  O worth in youth approved, O soft humanity in age beloved!”

—­See Pope, Epitaphs, 9.

[174] David Monypenny had been on the Bench from 1813; he retired in 1830, and died at the age of eighty-one in 1850.

[175] Parody on Moore’s Minstrel Boy.—­J.G.L.

[176] “Le Pas de la Fontaine des Pleurs.”—­Chroniques Nationales.

[177] This hint was taken up in Count Robert of Paris.—­J.G.L.

[178] James Ballantyne gives an interesting account of an interview a dozen years before this time, when “Tom Telltruth” had a somewhat delicate task to perform:—­

“The Lord of the Isles was by far the least popular of the series, and Mr. Scott was very prompt at making such discoveries.  In about a week after its publication he took me into his library, and asked me what the people were saying about The Lord of the Isles.  I hesitated, much in the same manner that Gil Blas might be supposed to do when a similar question was put by the Archbishop of Grenada, but he very speedily brought the matter to a point—­’Come, speak out, my good fellow, what has put it in your head to be on ceremony with me?  But the result is in one word—­disappointment!’ My silence admitted his inference to its fullest extent.  His countenance certainly did look rather blank for a few seconds (for it is a singular fact, that before the public, or rather the booksellers, gave their decision he no more knew whether he had written well or ill, than whether a die, which he threw out of a box, was to turn out a sise or an ace).  However, he almost instantly resumed his spirits and expressed his wonder rather that his popularity had lasted so long, than that it should have given way at last.  At length, with a perfectly cheerful manner, he said, ’Well, well, James, but you know we must not droop—­for you know we can’t and won’t give over—­we must just try something else, and the question is, what it’s to be?’ Nor was it any wonder he spoke thus, for he could not fail to be unconsciously conscious, if I dare use such a term, of his own gigantic, and as yet undeveloped, powers, and was somewhat under forty years old.  I am by no means sure whether he then alluded to Waverley, as if he had mentioned it to me for the first time, for my memory has greatly failed me touching this, or whether he alluded to it, as in fact appears to