Mr.Laidlaw was one of Scott's humbler friends,--a class of friends with whom he seems always to have felt more completely at his ease than any others--who gave at least as much as he received, one of those wise, loyal, and thoughtful men in a comparatively modest position of life, whom Scott delighted to trust, and never trusted without finding his trust justified.

In addition to these Scotch friends, Scott had made, even before the publication of his _Border Minstrelsy_, not a few in London or its neighbourhood,--of whom the most important at this time was the grey-eyed, hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Leyden described him, the author of various works on ancient English poetry and romance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a great knowledge of the world, political as well as literary, an exquisite taste in poetry, and a warm heart.

Certainly Ellis's criticism on his poems was the truest and best that Scott ever received; and had he lived to read his novels,--only one of which was published before Ellis's death,--he might have given Scott more useful help than either Ballantyne or even Erskine.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 19: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i.

214.] [Footnote 20: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii.

344.] [Footnote 21: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix.