ind of
skeleton, and when you have pleased yourself with the line of
narrative, you may then leisurely clothe it with flesh and blood."
Some years afterwards, I reminded him of this advice. "Did you follow
it?" he inquired. "I tried," I said; "but I had not gone far on the
road till some confounded Will-o-wisp came in and dazzled my sight, so
that I deviated from the path, and never found it again."--"It is the
same way with myself," said he, smiling; "I form my plan, and then I
deviate."--"Ay, ay," I replied, "I understand--we both deviate--- but
you deviate into excellence, and I into absurdity."

I have seen many distinguished poets, Burns, Byron, Southey,
Wordsworth, Campbell, Rogers, Wilson, Crabbe, and Coleridge; but, with
the exception of Burns, Scott, for personal vigour, surpasses them
all. Burns was, indeed, a powerful man, and Wilson is celebrated for
feats of strength and agility; I think, however, the stalworth frame,
the long nervous arms, and well-knit joints of Scott, are worthy of
the best days of the Border, and would have gained him distinction at
the foray which followed the feast of spurs. On one occasion he talked
of his ancestry, Sir Thomas Lawrence, I think, was present. One of his
forefathers, if my memory is just, sided with the Parliament in the
Civil War, and the family estate suffered curtailment in consequence.
To make amends, however, his son, resolving not to commit the error of
his father, joined the Pretender, and with his brother was engaged in
that unfortunate adventure which ended in a skirmish and captivity at
Preston, in 1715. It was the fashion of those times for all persons of
the rank of gentlemen to wear scarlet waistcoats--a ball had struck
one of the brothers, and carried a part of this dress into his body;
it was also the practice to strip the captives. Thus wounded, and
nearly naked, having only a shirt on and an old sack about him, the
ancestor of the great poet was sitting along with his brother and a
hundred and fifty unfortunate gentlemen, in a granary at Preston. The
wounded man fell sick, as the story goes, and vomited the scarlet
which the ball had forced into the wound. "L----d, Wattie!" cried his
brother, "if you have got a wardrobe in your wame, I wish you would
bring me a pair of breeks, for I have meikle need of them." The wound
healed; I know not whether he was one of those fortunate men who
mastered the guard at Newgate, and escaped to the continent.

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