of more complete information on all desirable subjects.”  But in youth at least Clerk seems to have had what Sir Walter calls a characteristic Edinburgh complaint, the “itch for disputation,” and though he softened this down in later life, he had always that slight contentiousness of bias which enthusiastic men do not often heartily like, and which may have prevented Scott from continuing to the full the close intimacy of those earlier years.  Yet almost his last record of a really delightful evening, refers to a bachelor’s dinner given by Mr. Clerk, who remained unmarried, as late as 1827, after all Sir Walter’s worst troubles had come upon him.  “In short,” says the diary, “we really laughed, and real laughter is as rare as real tears.  I must say, too, there was a heart, a kindly feeling prevailed over the party.  Can London give such a dinner?"[21] It is clear, then, that Clerk’s charm for his friend survived to the last, and that it was not the mere inexperience of boyhood, which made Scott esteem him so highly in his early days.

If Clerk pricked, stimulated, and sometimes badgered Scott, another of his friends who became more and more intimate with him, as life went on, and who died before him, always soothed him, partly by his gentleness, partly by his almost feminine dependence.  This was William Erskine, also a barrister, and son of an Episcopalian clergyman in Perthshire,—­to whose influence it is probably due that Scott himself always read the English Church service in his own country house, and does not appear to have retained the Presbyterianism into which he was born.  Erskine, who was afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord Kinnedder—­a distinction which he did not survive for many months—­was a good classic, a man of fine, or, as some of his companions thought, of almost superfine taste.  The style apparently for which he had credit must have been a somewhat mimini-pimini style, if we may judge by Scott’s attempt in The Bridal of Triermain, to write in a manner which he intended to be attributed to his friend.  Erskine was left a widower in middle life, and Scott used to accuse him of philandering with pretty women,—–­ a mode of love-making which Scott certainly contrived to render into verse, in painting Arthur’s love-making to Lucy in that poem.  It seems that some absolutely false accusation brought against Lord Kinnedder, of an intrigue with a lady with whom he had been thus philandering, broke poor Erskine’s heart, during his first year as a Judge.  “The Counsellor (as Scott always called him) was,” says Mr. Lockhart, “a little man of feeble make, who seemed unhappy when his pony got beyond a footpace, and had never, I should suppose, addicted himself to any out of door’s sports whatever.  He would, I fancy, as soon have thought of slaying his own mutton as of handling a fowling-piece; he used to shudder when he saw a party equipped for coursing, as if murder was in the wind; but the cool, meditative angler was in his eyes the