bestowed on Scott. The incomparable Sir Walter at that time was
dwelling far away amid the swamps and grim hills and shaggy thickets
of Ashestiel. Town-life was not for him, and he grudged the hours
spent in musty law-courts. Before dawn he went joyously to his work,
and long before the household was astir he had made good progress. At
noon he was free to lead the life of a country farmer and sportsman;
the ponies were saddled, the greyhounds uncoupled, and a merry company
set off across the hills. The talk was refined and gladsome, and
visitors came back refreshed and improved to the cottage. And now
comes the strange part of the story--this healthy retired sporting
farmer was in correspondence with the greatest and cleverest men in
the British Isles, and the most masterly criticisms of literature were
exchanged with a lavish freedom which seems impossible to us in the
days of the post-card and the hurried gasping telegram. In our day
there is absolutely no time for that leisurely conscientious study
which was usual in the time when men bought their books and paid
heavily for them. Even Mr. Ruskin, in his retirement on the shores of
Coniston, cannot carry on that graceful and ineffably instructive
correspondence which was so easy to Southey, Coleridge, and the others
of that fine company who dwelt in the Lake District. Marvellous it is
to observe the splendid quality of the literary criticisms which were
sent to the great ones by men who had no intention of writing or
selling a line. In studying the memoirs of the century we find that,
long before the education movement began, there were scores of men and
women who had no need to make literature a profession, but who were
nevertheless skilled and cultured as the writers who worked for bread.
Who now talks of Mr. Morritt of Rokeby? Yet Morritt carried on a
voluminous correspondence with Scott and the rest of that brilliant
school. Who ever thinks of George Ellis? But Ellis was the most
learned of antiquaries, and devoid of the pedantry which so often