hour by the Tron, hinny, and deil a ane has speered our price.”  Scott continued to practise at the bar—­nominally at least—­for fourteen years, but the most which he ever seems to have made in any one year was short of 230_l._, and latterly his practice was much diminishing instead of increasing.  His own impatience of solicitors’ patronage was against him; his well-known dabblings in poetry were still more against him; and his general repute for wild and unprofessional adventurousness—­which was much greater than he deserved—­was probably most of all against him.  Before he had been six years at the bar he joined the organization of the Edinburgh Volunteer Cavalry, took a very active part in the drill, and was made their Quartermaster.  Then he visited London, and became largely known for his ballads, and his love of ballads.  In his eighth year at the bar he accepted a small permanent appointment, with 300_l._ a year, as sheriff of Selkirkshire; and this occurring soon after his marriage to a lady of some means, no doubt diminished still further his professional zeal.  For one third of the time during which Scott practised as an advocate he made no pretence of taking interest in that part of his work, though he was always deeply interested in the law itself.  In 1806 he undertook gratuitously the duties of a Clerk of Session—­a permanent officer of the Court at Edinburgh—­and discharged them without remuneration for five years, from 1806 to 1811, in order to secure his ultimate succession to the office in the place of an invalid, who for that period received all the emoluments and did none of the work.  Nevertheless Scott’s legal abilities were so well known, that it was certainly at one time intended to offer him a Barony of the Exchequer, and it was his own doing, apparently, that it was not offered.  The life of literature and the life of the Bar hardly ever suit, and in Scott’s case they suited the less, that he felt himself likely to be a dictator in the one field, and only a postulant in the other.  Literature was a far greater gainer by his choice, than Law could have been a loser.  For his capacity for the law he shared with thousands of able men, his capacity for literature with few or none.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 5:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, i. 269-71.]

[Footnote 6:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, i. 206.]

[Footnote 7:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, ix. 221.]

CHAPTER III.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE.