liments to Heber, whom I expected at Abbotsford
this summer; also to Mr. Croker and all your four o'clock
visitors. I am just going to Abbotsford to make a small
addition to my premises there. I have now about 700 acres,
thanks to the booksellers and the discerning public. Yours
truly,

Walter SCOTT.

P. S.--I have much to ask about Lord Byron if I had time.
The third canto of the Childe is inimitable. Of the last
poems, there are one or two which indicate rather an
irregular play of imagination.[48] What a pity that a man of
such exquisite genius will not be contented {p.127} to be
happy on the ordinary terms![49] I declare my heart bleeds
when I think of him, self-banished from the country to which
he is an honor.[50]

[Footnote 48: _Parisina_--_The Dream_--and the "Domestic
Pieces," had been recently published.]

[Footnote 49: (On November 27 Scott had written to
Joanna Baillie, who had just returned from a tour on the
Continent:--

"All I ever longed for on the Continent was their light
wines, which you do not care about, and their fine
climate, which we should both value equally; and to say
truth, I never saw scene or palace which shook my
allegiance to Tweedside and Abbotsford, though so
inferior in every respect, and though the hills, or
rather braes, are just high enough 'to lift us to the
storm' when the storms are not so condescending as to
sweep both crest and base, which, to do them justice, is
seldom the case. What have I got to send you?... Alas,
nothing but the history of petty employments and a
calendar of increasing bad weather. The latter was much
mitigated by enjoying for a good portion of the summer
the society of John Morritt, of Rokeby, who has so much
of that which is delightful, both in his grave and gay
moods, that he can make us forget the hillside while
sitting by the fireside. His late loss has cast a
general shade of melancholy over him, which renders him
yet dearer to his friends, by the gentle and unaffected
manner in which his natural