than real, since in cases of actual distress his pursestrings were freely opened. Then, again, the early disappointment in love which Scott suffered produced in him a soreness on the subject of the relations of the sexes, comparable to that impatience of the eternal woman which, in the fictitious old bachelor, originated in a similar misfortune. And do we not know that, careless and lavish as he was about spending large sums, Scott always kept an exact account of what he spent in turnpike-money?

Then there is the ruling passion common to boththe love of ballads. Take the chapter (the Fortieth) in which Oldbuck and his companions visit Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot on her death-bed. They had come to

take the old woman's confession as to certain dark doings of her youth which deeply concerned persons in whom the Antiquary was greatly interested, not to speak of the honour of the woman he had once loved. Yet, when the old crone wanderingly breaks forth into an old song, he will on no account have her interrupted :

"It's a historical ballad,' said Oldbuck, eagerly, 'a genuine and undoubted fragment of minstrelsy! Percy would admire its simplicity-Ritson could not impugn its authenticity.'

“Ay, but it's a sad thing,' said Ochiltree, 'to see human nature sae far owertaen as to be skirling at auld sangs on the back of a loss like hers."" [The recent drowning of her grandson, who had just taken part with Edie in the trick on Dousterswivel.]

"Hush! hush!' said the Antiquary-she has gotten the thread of the story again."

It was quite in keeping with Scott's character that he should make sport of the occasional mares'-nests into which a passion for antiquities may betray even the acutest of amateurs. "Monkbarns is no that ower wise himsell, in some things;-he wad believe a bodle [penny] to be an auld Roman coin, as he ca's it, or a ditch to be a camp, upon ony leasing [lie] that idle folk made about it. I hae garr'd him trow [made him believe] mony a queer tale mysell, gude forgie me," says Ochiltree, admitting that Oldbuck in ordinary matters was the wisest man in the neighbourhood.

About the original of Edie Ochiltree, the splendid old mendicant, who has such an important part in the development of the story, there is no dispute. Scott had in his youth often talked with Andrew Gemmels, a remarkable aged beggar, who was well known through great part of the Lowlands for his military bearing, good songs and stories, and especially for his sarcastic tongue, which, like that of Edie, spared neither gentle nor simple. He always had plenty of money, and once told a gentleman, who regretted that he had no silver in his pocket, that he could give him change for a note. One of the best anecdotes told of this droll is that of his discomfiture of the recruiting sergeant at St. Boswell's Fair. The sergeant, unaware that one of his audience had himself served with the colours, had been holding forth in glowing language upon the advantages of the military life, when all at once the ragged old gaberlunzie, springing up behind him, hoisted up the wretched meal

pocks that he carried at the end of his staff, and cried derisively, “Behold the end o''t!" A burst of laughter followed, and no more recruits were enlisted that day. According to the minister of Galashiels this same character had been seen playing brag with a gentleman of property for a heap of silver, the dignity of the latter being preserved by his sitting at the window of his own room, while the beggar occupied a stool in the yard out. side. The tomb of "Andrew Gemmels, alias Edie Ochiltree," the inscription upon which states that he reached the age of a hundred and six years, is in Roxburgh churchyard.

For

Though the plot of The Antiquary may be considered rather cumbrous, the interest of the story is well maintained, and few books are so rich in contrasts. pathos there is the often-quoted picture of the poor fisherman who has lost his son striving to do his daily work, but failing for sheer grief in presence of the pitying antiquary; for tragedy the death scene of old Elspeth; whilst for broad comedy the scenes in the ruined priory where Ochiltree plays upon the avarice and superstition of the knavish Dousterswivel, and for dry humour the overthrow of the disabled young soldier by a seal and the unending allusions to it with which Monkbarns torments his nephew, are of unsurpassed excellence. But the surpassing excellence of The Antiquary consists in its Dutch pictures of middle-class and peasant Scotch life. Northern men of the lower ranks, says the author, freely express their feelings, and

in the "strongest and most powerful language." He has been well called one of the "greatest masters of the commonplace"; that is, he could make ordinary incidents impressive and important by his force and accuracy of representation. In this he is at his best here. The little seaside Scottish village of a bygone century with all its tears and laughter, its small intrigues and hopes and fears, is set before us clear, definite, convincing. It is in The Antiquary that we first encounter the familiar heading "Old Play," the origin of which is said to be that Scott, having once asked John Ballantyne to find for him some passage in Beaumont and Fletcher which he wanted to quote, grew at length impatient of his want of success, and exclaimed, "Hang it, Johnny, I believe I can make a motto before you can find one!" and thenceforth found his invention a more serviceable helper than his memory.

A few days after the publication of The Antiquary Scott was visited at his house in Edinburgh by that Mr. Joseph Train whose services tempt one to play upon his name. When next morning the Sheriff entertained him at breakfast, the train may, in fact, be said to have been laid for at least two more novels; for the guest not only brought with him as a present Rob Roy's spleuchan, but also, struck by the sight of Claverhouse's portrait, made the suggestion that the Covenanters' scourge was fitting subject for romance. Moreover, to

Train is due the title which was given to the book when written taken not from any of the characters contained

in it, but from the person from whom it was supposed to be derived-as well as the imaginary framework of tales told by a schoolmaster at a village inn. "My Landlord" was the host of the "Shoulder of Mutton" at Newton Stewart, and a certain Mr. Broadfoot, Jedediah Cleishbotham; Old Mortality himself was a historic character, whose real name was Robert Paterson. This old man had a passion for repairing the tombstones of the Covenanters martyred under the later Stewarts. During one of his early vacation tours Scott had seen him at work in Dunnottar churchyard and had been in his company in the house of the parish minister; and, though on that occasion he was out of humour and uncommunicative, the invaluable Train, who knew his son very well, was through his information able to fill out the portrait. This singular person was so ardent an enthusiast that he left wife and children and wandered about the country for forty years with his chisel and mallet, satisfying his slender wants from the hospitality of sympathising Cameronians; and he died so obscurely that for some years it was not known where he had been buried. But his grave at Caerlaverock in Dumfriesshire is now distinguished by a memorial erected by the wellknown publishing firm of Black.

For the body of the tale Scott for the first time drew upon his reading, and made the past live without the aid of living witnesses. His boast of being "complete master" of the whole history of those times, "both of persecutors and persecuted," is amply vindicated by