s probability of succeeding as a
novelist, and I confess my expectations were not very sanguine. He saw
this and said, 'Well, I don't see why I should not succeed as well as
other people. Come, faint heart never won fair lady--let us try.' I
remember when the work was put into my hands, I could not get myself to
think much, of the Waverley Honour scenes, but to my shame be it spoken,
when he had reached the exquisite scenes of Scottish manners at
Tully-Veolan, I thought them, and pronounced them, vulgar! When the
success of the book so utterly knocked me down as a man of taste, all
that the good-natured Author observed was, 'Well, I really thought you
might be wrong about the Scotch. Why, Burns had already attracted
universal attention to all about Scotland, and I confess I could not see
why I should not be able to keep the flame alive, merely because I wrote
in prose in place of rhyme.'"--_Memorandum_.

[179] This was a club-house on the London plan, in Princes Street [No.
54], a little eastward from the Mound. On its dissolution soon
afterwards, Sir W. was elected by acclamation into the elder Society,
called the _New Club_, who had then their house in St. Andrew Square
[No. 3], and since 1837 in Princes Street [No. 85].

[180] Mr. Skene's house was No. 126 Princes Street. Scott's written
answer has been preserved:--

"MY DEAR SKENE,--A thousand thanks for your kind proposal. But I am a
solitary monster by temper, and must necessarily couch in a den of my
own. I should not, I assure you, have made any ceremony in accepting
your offer had it at all been like to suit me.

"But I must make an arrangement which is to last for years, and perhaps
for my lifetime; therefore the sooner I place myself on my footing it
will be so much the better.--Always, dear Skene, your obliged and
faithful, W. SCOTT."

[181] Pope's _Imitation of Horace_, Bk. ii Sat. 6.--J.G.L.

[182] These Letters appeared in the _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_ in
February and March 1826. "They were then collected into a pamphlet, and
ran through numerous editions; in the subsequent discussions in
Parliament, they were frequently referred to; and although an elaborate
answer by the then Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Croker, attracted
much notice, and was, by the Government of the time, expected to
neutralise the effect of the northern lucubrations--the proposed
measure, as regarded Scotland, was ultimately abandoned, and that result
was universal