Sir Walter, quotes as the most expressive of his lines:--

"Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth a world without a name."

And undoubtedly this gives us the key-note of Scott's personal life as
well as of his poetic power. Above everything he was high-spirited, a
man of noble, and, at the same time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis
Doyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers the
undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath of
Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles immortal;" and I do not doubt
that there was something in Scott's face, and especially in the
expression of his mouth, to suggest this even to his early college
companions. Unfortunately, however, even "one crowded hour of glorious
life" may sometimes have a "sensual" inspiration, and in these days of
youthful adventure, too many such hours seem to have owed their
inspiration to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland whisky.
In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott had
many a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse. It
was soon after this time that he first began those raids into
Liddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in the
sketches--embodied subsequently in _Guy Mannering_--of Dandie Dinmont,
his pony Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards from whose breed
there were afterwards introduced into Scott's own family, generations
of terriers, always named, as Sir Walter expressed it, after "the
cruet." I must quote the now classic record of those youthful
escapades:--