amount of drudgery or labour deterred Scott from any undertaking on
the prosecution of which he was bent. He was quite the reverse,
indeed, of what is usually meant by sentimental, either in his manners
or his literary interests. As regards the history of his own country
he was no mean antiquarian. Indeed he cared for the mustiest
antiquarian researches--of the mediæval kind--so much, that in the
depth of his troubles he speaks of a talk with a Scotch antiquary and
herald as one of the things which soothed him most. "I do not know
anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling
discussions about antiquarian _old womanries_. It is like knitting a
stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it."[7] Thus his love
of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind
which only feeds on romantic excitements; rather was it that of one
who was so moulded by the transmitted and acquired love of feudal
institutions with all their incidents, that he could not take any deep
interest in any other fashion of human society. Now the Scotch law
was full of vestiges and records of that period,--was indeed a great
standing monument of it; and in numbers of his writings Scott shows
with how deep an interest he had studied the Scotch law from this
point of view. He remarks somewhere that it was natural for a
Scotchman to feel a strong attachment to the principle of rank, if
only on the ground that almost any Scotchman might, under the Scotch
law, turn out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title or estate
by the death of intervening relations. And the law which sometimes
caused such sudden transformations, had subsequently a true interest
for him of course as a novel writer, to say nothing of his interest in
it as an antiquarian and historian who loved to repeople the earth,
not merely with the picturesque groups of the soldiers and courts of
the past, but with the actors in all the various quaint and homely
transactions and puzzlements which the feudal ages had brought forth.