e of the utmost value. It was during
these years that he saw Glamis Castle in its unspoiled state, during
these that, in connection with the case of the unfortunate but rather
happily named devotee of Bacchus and Venus, M'Naught, he explored
Galloway, and obtained the decorations and scenery, if not the story, of
_Guy Mannering_. He also repeated his visits to the English side of the
Border, not merely on the occasion during which he met Miss Carpenter,
but earlier, in a second excursion to Northumberland.

But, above all, these were the years of his famous 'raids' into
Liddesdale, then one of the most inaccessible districts of Scotland,
under the guidance of Mr. Shortreed of Jedburgh--raids which completed
the information for _Guy Mannering_, which gave him much of the material
for the _Minstrelsy_, and the history of which has, I think, delighted
every one of his readers and biographers, except one or two who have
been scandalised at the exquisite story of the Arrival of the Keg.[3] Of
these let us not speak, but, regarding them with a tender pity not
unmixed with wonder, pass to the beginnings of his actual literary life
and to the history of his early married years. The literature a little
preceded the life; but the life certainly determined the growth of the
literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] His friend Shortreed's well-known expression for the results of the
later Liddesdale 'raids.'

[2] See General Preface to the Novels, or Lockhart, i. 136.

[3] He attributes to Lady Balcarres the credit of being his earliest
patroness, and of giving him, when a mere shy boy, the run of her
drawing-room and of her box at the theatre.

[4] He himself, in his entries of his children's births, always gives
the order of the names as Margaret Charlotte.

[5] The Boar of the Forest seems, not unnaturally, to have had a rather
less warm 'cradle' in Lady Scott's feelings. She thought he took
liberties; and though he meant no harm, he certainly did.

[6] Lockhart, i. 270. I quote, as is usual, the second or ten-volume
edition. But, for reading, some may prefer the first, in which the
number of the volumes coincides with their real division, which has the
memories of the death of Sophia Scott and others connected with its
course, and to which the second made fewer positive additions than may
be thought.--[It has been pointed out to me in reference to the word
'whomle' on the opposite page that Fergusson has 'whumble' in 'The
Rising o