An entry in the diary which Scott kept in 1827, after Constable's and Ballantyne's failure, and his wife's death, seems to me to suggest that there may have been some misunderstanding between the young people, though I am not sure that the inference is justified.

The passage completes the story of this passion--Scott's first and only deep passion--so far as it can ever be known to us; and as it is a very pathetic and characteristic entry, and the attachment to which it refers had a great influence on Scott's life, both in keeping him free from some of the most dangerous temptations of the young, during his youth, and in creating within him an interior world of dreams and recollections throughout his whole life, on which his imaginative nature was continually fed--I may as well give it.

"He had taken," says Mr.
Lockhart, "for that winter [1827], the house No.

6, Shandwick Place, which he occupied by the month during the remainder of his servitude as a clerk of session.

Very near this house, he was told a few days after he took possession, dwelt the aged mother of his first love; and he expressed to his friend Mrs.Skene, a wish that she should carry him to renew an acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted from the period of his youthful romance.