Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddesdale companions, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg, the consternation of the dame, and the rueful despair with which the young clergyman closed the book."[5] No wonder old Mr.Scott felt some doubt of his son's success at the bar, and thought him more fitted in many respects for a "gangrel scrape-gut."[6] In spite of all this love of excitement, Scott became a sound lawyer, and might have been a great lawyer, had not his pride of character, the impatience of his genius, and the stir of his imagination rendered him indisposed to wait and slave in the precise manner which the prepossessions of solicitors appoint.
For Scott's passion for romantic literature was not at all the sort of thing which we ordinarily mean by boys' or girls' love of romance.

No amount of drudgery or labour deterred Scott from any undertaking on the prosecution of which he was bent.

He was quite the reverse, indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in his manners or his literary interests.

As regards the history of his own country he was no mean antiquarian.

Indeed he cared for the mustiest antiquarian researches--of the mediaeval kind--so much, that in the depth of his troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and herald as one of the things which soothed him most.