cal
attendance, and with very dangerous temptations to carry on the use of
his brain, which was now becoming almost deadly. Yet he would never give
in. The pleasant and not exhausting task of arranging the _Magnum_
(which was now bringing in from eight to ten thousand a year for the
discharge of his debts) was supplemented by other things, especially
_Count Robert of Paris_, and a book on Demonology for Murray's _Family
Library_.

This last occupied him about the time of his seizure, and after the
_Diary_ was resumed, it was published in the summer of 1830. Scott was
himself by this time conscious of a sort of aphasia of the pen (the
direct result of the now declared affection of his brain), which
prevented him from saying exactly what he wished in a connected manner;
and the results of this are in part evident in the book. But it must
always remain a blot, quite unforgivable and nearly inexplicable, on
the memory of Wilson, that 'Christopher North' permitted himself to
comment on some lapses in logic and style in a way which would have been
rather that side of good manners and reasonable criticism in the case of
a mere beginner in letters. It is true that he and Scott were at no time
very intimate friends, and that there were even some vague antipathies
between them. But Wilson had been deeply obliged to Scott in the matter
of his professorship;[44] he at least ought to have been nearly as well
aware as we are of the condition of his benefactor's health; and even if
he had known nothing of this, the rest of Sir Walter's circumstances
were known to all the world, and should surely have secured silence. But
it seems that Wilson was for the moment in a pet with Lockhart, to whom
the _Letters on Demonology_ were addressed, and so he showed, as he
seldom, but sometimes did, the 'black drop,' which in his case, though
not in Lockhart's, marred at times a generally healthy and noble nature.
As a matter of fact, it needs either distinct malevolence or silly
hypercriticism to find any serious fault with the _Demonology_. If not a
masterpiece of scientific treatment in reference to a subject which
hardly admits of any such thing, it is an exceedingly pleasant and
amusing and a by no means uninstructive medley of learning, traditional
anecdote, reminiscence, and what not, on a matter which, as we know, had
interested the writer from very early days, and which he regarded from
his usual and invaluable combined standpoint of shrewd