ng been warned about such company, and hearing the
party conversing together in an unknown tongue, the polite
old man had adopted, in his first salutation, what he considered
as the universal language. Some of the Celts, on their
part, took him for some foreign Abbe or Bishop, and were
doing their best to explain to him that they were not the
wild savages for which, from the startled glance he had thrown
on their hirsute proportions, there seemed but too much reason
to suspect he had taken them; others, more perspicacious,
gave in to the thing for the joke's sake; and there was high
fun when Scott dissolved the charm of their stammering, by
grasping Crabbe with one hand, and the nearest of these
figures with the other, and greeted the whole group with the
same hearty _good-morning_."

In spite, however, of banquets (at one of which Crabbe was present) and
other constant calls upon his host's time and labour, the southern poet
contrived to enjoy himself. He wandered into the oldest parts of
Edinburgh, and Scott obtained for him the services of a friendly caddie
to accompany him on some of these occasions lest the old parson should
come to any harm. Lockhart, who was of the party in Castle Street, was
very attentive to Scott's visitor, Crabbe had but few opportunities of
seeing Scott alone. "They had," writes Lockhart, "but one quiet walk
together, and it was to the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel and Mushat's
Cairn, which the deep impression made on Crabbe by _The Heart of
Midlothian_ had given him an earnest wish to see. I accompanied them;
and the hour so spent--in the course of which the fine old man gave us
some most touching anecdotes of his early struggles--was a truly
delightful contrast to the bustle and worry of miscellaneous society
which consumed so many of his few hours in Scotland. Scott's family were
more fortunate than himself in this respect. They had from infancy been
taught to reverence Crabbe's genius, and they now saw enough of him to
make them think of him ever afterwards with tender affection."

Yet one more trait of Scott's interest in his guest should not be
omitted. The strain upon Scott's strength of the King's visit was made
more severe by the death during that fortnight of Scott's old and dear
friend, William Erskine, only a few months before elevated to the bench,
with the title of Lord Kinedder. Erskine had been irrecoverably wounded
by the circulation of a cruel an