In the next place, he was a genuine historian, and one of the antiquarian kind himself; he was himself really interested in all sorts of historical and antiquarian issues,--and very mistakenly gave the public credit for wishing to know what he himself wished to know.

I should add that Scott's good nature and kindness of heart not only led him to help on many books which he knew in himself could never answer, and some which, as he well knew, would be altogether worthless, but that it greatly biassed his own intellectual judgment.

Nothing can be plainer than that he really held his intimate friend, Joanna Baillie, a very great dramatic poet, a much greater poet than himself, for instance; one fit to be even mentioned as following--at a distance--in the track of Shakespeare.

He supposes Erskine to exhort him thus:-- "Or, if to touch such chord be thine, Restore the ancient tragic line, And emulate the notes that rung From the wild harp which silent hung By silver Avon's holy shore, Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er,-- When she, the bold enchantress, came With fearless hand and heart on flame, From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure, And swept it with a kindred measure, Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, Awakening at the inspired strain, Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again." Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, I think, if they had deemed anything of the kind.

Joanna Baillie's dramas are "nice," and rather dull; now and then she can write a song with the ease and sweetness that suggest Shakespearian echoes.