Of the proverbial frigidity of the Edinburgh public I had been forewarned, and of its probably disheartening effect upon myself.  Mrs. Harry Siddons had often told me of the intolerable sense of depression with which it affected Mrs. Siddons, who, she said, after some of her grandest outbursts of passion, to which not a single expression of applause or sympathy had responded, exhausted and breathless with the effort she had made, would pant out in despair, under her breath, “Stupid people, stupid people!” Stupid, however, they undoubtedly were not, though, as undoubtedly, their want of excitability and demonstrativeness diminished their own pleasure by communicating itself to the great actress and partially paralyzing her powers.  That this habitual reserve sometimes gave way to very violent exhibitions of enthusiasm, the more fervent from its general repression, there is no doubt; and I think it was in Edinburgh that my friend, Mr. Harness, told me the whole of the sleep-walking scene in “Macbeth” had once been so vehemently encored that my aunt was literally obliged to go over it a second time, before the piece was allowed to proceed.

Scott’s opinion of my acting, which would, of course, have been very valuable to me, let it have been what it would, was written to his friend and editor (eheu!), Ballantyne, who was also the editor of one of the principal Edinburgh papers, in which unfavorable criticisms of my performances had appeared, and in opposition to which Sir Walter Scott told him he was too hard upon me, and that for his part he had seen nothing so good since Mrs. Siddons.  This encouraging verdict was courteously forwarded to me by Mr. Ballantyne himself, who said he was sure I would like to possess it.  The first time I ever saw Walter Scott, my father and myself were riding slowly down Princes Street, up which Scott was walking; he stopped my father’s horse, which was near the pavement, and desired to be introduced to me.  Then followed a string of cordial invitations which previous engagements and our work at the theater forbade our accepting, all but the pressing one with which he wound up, that we would at least come and breakfast with him.  The first words he addressed to me as I entered the room were, “You appear to be a very good horsewoman, which is a great merit in the eyes of an old Border-man.”  Every r in which sentence was rolled into a combination of double u and double r by his Border burr, which made it memorable to me by this peculiarity of his pleasant speech.  My previous acquaintance with Miss Ferrier’s admirable novels would have made me very glad of the opportunity of meeting her, and I should have thought Sir Adam Ferguson delightfully entertaining, but that I could not bear to lose, while listening to any one else, a single word spoken by Walter Scott.