intractable under any one but Scott.  Scott’s life might well be fairly divided—­just as history is divided into reigns—­by the succession of his horses and dogs.  The reigns of Captain, Lieutenant, Brown Adam, Daisy, divide at least the period up to Waterloo; while the reigns of Sybil Grey, and the Covenanter, or Douce Davie, divide the period of Scott’s declining years.  During the brilliant period of the earlier novels we hear less of Scott’s horses; but of his deerhounds there is an unbroken succession.  Camp, Maida (the “Bevis” of Woodstock), and Nimrod, reigned successively between Sir Walter’s marriage and his death.  It was Camp on whose death he relinquished a dinner invitation previously accepted, on the ground that the death of “an old friend” rendered him unwilling to dine out; Maida to whom he erected a marble monument, and Nimrod of whom he spoke so affectingly as too good a dog for his diminished fortunes during his absence in Italy on the last hopeless journey.

Scott’s amusements at Ashestiel, besides riding, in which he was fearless to rashness, and coursing, which was the chief form of sporting in the neighbourhood, comprehended “burning the water,” as salmon-spearing by torchlight was called, in the course of which he got many a ducking.  Mr. Skene gives an amusing picture of their excursions together from Ashestiel among the hills, he himself followed by a lanky Savoyard, and Scott by a portly Scotch butler—­both servants alike highly sensitive as to their personal dignity—­on horses which neither of the attendants could sit well.  “Scott’s heavy lumbering buffetier had provided himself against the mountain storms with a huge cloak, which, when the cavalcade was at gallop, streamed at full stretch from his shoulders, and kept flapping in the other’s face, who, having more than enough to do in preserving his own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any time to control the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and pesting at the sacre manteau, in language happily unintelligible to its wearer.  Now and then some ditch or turf-fence rendered it indispensable to adventure on a leap, and no farce could have been more amusing than the display of politeness which then occurred between these worthy equestrians, each courteously declining in favour of his friend the honour of the first experiment, the horses fretting impatient beneath them, and the dogs clamouring encouragement."[24] Such was Scott’s order of life at Ashestiel, where he remained from 1804 to 1812.  As to his literary work here, it was enormous.

Besides finishing The Lay of the Last Minstrel, writing Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, part of The Bridal of Triermain, and part of Rokeby, and writing reviews, he wrote a Life of Dryden, and edited his works anew with some care, in eighteen volumes, edited Somers’s Collection of Tracts, in thirteen volumes, quarto, Sir Ralph Sadler’s Life, Letters, and State