with him for an exuberant love of fun in his light writings, which he has caught, I think, from Wilson, a man of greater genius than himself perhaps, but who disputes with low adversaries, which I think a terrible error, and indulges in a sort of humour which exceeds the bounds of playing at ladies and gentlemen, a game to which I have been partial all my life.” (Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 225.)]

  [Footnote 243:  Familiar Letters, Vol.  II, p. 400.]

  [Footnote 244:  Lang’s Lockhart, Vol.  I, p. 406.]

  [Footnote 245:  Life of Murray, Vol.  I, pp. 146-7.]

  [Footnote 246:  Quarterly, February, 1809.]

  [Footnote 247:  Lockhart, Vol.  I, p. 327.]

[Footnote 248:  Scott wrote a poetical epitaph for the burial place of Miss Seward and her father.  See Edinburgh Annual Register, Vol.  II, pt. 2.  In the introduction to The Tapestried Chamber, Scott said, “It was told to me many years ago by the late Miss Anna Seward, who, among other accomplishments that rendered her an amusing inmate in a country house, had that of recounting narratives of this sort with very considerable effect; much greater, indeed, than anyone would be apt to guess from the style of her written performances.”  It must be remembered that Miss Seward was one of the first persons of any literary note, outside of Edinburgh, to show an interest in Scott’s work, and he committed himself to admiration of her poetry when he was still in a rather uncritical stage.  In regard to his later feeling about her see Recollections, by R.P.  Gillies, Fraser’s, xiii:  692, January, 1836.]

[Footnote 249:  J.L.  Adolphus, in an interesting passage in his Letters to Heber on the Authorship of Waverley, noted many of the references to contemporary poets.  See pp. 53-4.  See also Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age, art. Sir Walter Scott]

  [Footnote 250:  Familiar Letters, Vol.  II, p. 341.  See also a similar
  anecdote in Forster’s Life of Landor, Vol.  II, p. 244.]

  [Footnote 251:  Lockhart, Vol.  I, pp. 116-17.]

  [Footnote 252:  Ibid., Vol.  II, p. 132.]

  [Footnote 253:  Journal, Vol.  I, p. 321.]

  [Footnote 254:  Review of Cromek’s Reliques of Burns, Quarterly,
  February, 1809.]

  [Footnote 255:  Ibid.]

  [Footnote 256:  Ibid.]

[Footnote 257:  Crabbe Robinson, in his diary (quoted by Knight in his edition of Wordsworth, Vol.  X, p. 189), says that Coleridge and his friends “consider Scott as having stolen the verse” of Christabel.  On this point see also a letter by Coleridge, given in Meteyard’s Group of Englishmen, pp. 327-8.  In 1807 Coleridge wrote to Southey:  “I did not over-hugely admire the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’