But the dead will feel no pain." The dead, as Aristotle says, if they
care for such things at all, care no more than we do for what has passed
in a dream.

The general sketch probably began to take full shape about the last day
of 1815. On December 29 Scott wrote to Ballantyne:--

DEAR JAMES,--
I've done, thank'God, with the long yarns
Of the most prosy of Apostles--Paul, 1
And now advance, sweet heathen of Monkbarns,
Step out, old quizz, as fast as I can scrawl.

In "The Antiquary" Scott had a subject thoroughly to his mind. He
had been an antiquary from his childhood. His earliest pence had
been devoted to that collection of printed ballads which is still
at Abbotsford. These he mentions in the unfinished fragment of his
"Reliquiae Trotcosienses," in much the same words as in his manuscript
note on one of the seven volumes.

"This little collection of Stall tracts and ballads was formed by me,
when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. Until put into
its present decent binding it had such charms for the servants that it
was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. It
contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since,
and, I dare say, many that could not now be procured for any price
(1810)."

Nor did he collect only--

"The rare melody of some old ditties
That first were sung to please King Pepin's cradle.

"Walter had soon begun to gather out-of-the-way things of all sorts. He
had more books than shelves [sic]; a small painted cabinet with Scotch
and Roman coins in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochaber axe,
given him by old Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince
Charlie; and Broughton's Saucer was hooked up on the wall below it." He
had entered literature through the ruined gateway of archleology, in the
"Border Minstrelsy," and his last project was an edition of Perrault's
"Contes de Ma Mere l'Oie." As pleasant to him as the purchase of new
lands like Turn Again, bought dearly, as in Monkbarns's case, from
"bonnet lauds," was a fresh acquisition of an old book or of old armour.
Yet, with all his enthusiasm, he did not please the antiquaries of his
own day. George Chalmers, in Constable's "Life and Correspondence"
(i. 431), sneers at his want of learning. "His notes are loose and
unlearned, as they generally are." Charles Kir