tizen, even while
he did not disguise his own romantic interest in the former. He
extenuated, no doubt, the sins of all brave and violent defiers of the
law, as distinguished from the sins of crafty and cunning abusers of
the law. But the leaning he had to the former was, as he was willing
to admit, what he regarded as a "naughty" leaning. He did not attempt
for a moment to balance accounts between them and society. He paid his
tribute as a matter of course to the established morality, and only
put in a word or two by way of attempt to diminish the severity of the
sentence on the bold transgressor. And then, where what is called the
"law of honour" comes in to traverse the law of religion, he had no
scruple in setting aside the latter in favour of the customs of
gentlemen, without any attempt to justify that course. Yet it is
evident from various passages in his writings that he held Christian
duty inconsistent with duelling, and that he held himself a sincere
Christian. In spite of this, when he was fifty-six, and under no
conceivable hurry or perturbation of feeling, but only concerned to
defend his own conduct--which was indeed plainly right--as to a
political disclosure which he had made in his life of Napoleon, he
asked his old friend William Clerk to be his second, if the expected
challenge from General Gourgaud should come, and declared his firm
intention of accepting it. On the strength of official evidence he had
exposed some conduct of General Gourgaud's at St. Helena, which
appeared to be far from honourable, and he thought it his duty on that
account to submit to be shot at by General Gourgaud, if General
Gourgaud had wished it. In writing to William Clerk to ask him to be
his second, he says, "Like a man who finds himself in a scrape,
General Gourgaud may wish to fight himself out of it, and if the
quarrel should be thrust on me, why, _I will not baulk him, Jackie_.
He shall not dishonour the country through my sides, I can assure
him." In other words, Scott acted just as he had made Waverley and
others of his heroes act, on a code of honour which he knew to be
false, and he must have felt in this case to be something worse. He
thought himself at that time under the most stringent obligations both
to his creditors and his children, to do all in his power to redeem
himself and his estate from debt. Nay, more, he held that his life was
a trust from his Creator, which he had no right to throw away merely
becau