to construct fantastic journeys. It was the same with Dickens.
A lit tavern, a stage-coach, post-horses, the clack of hoofs on a
frosty road, went to his head like wine. He was a Jacobite not
because he had any views on Divine Right, but because he had always
before his eyes a picture of a knot of adventurers in cloaks, new
landed from France among the western heather.

On this select basis he had built up his small library--Defoe,
Hakluyt, Hazlitt and the essayists, Boswell, some indifferent
romances, and a shelf of spirited poetry. His tastes became known,
and he acquired a reputation for a scholarly habit. He was
president of the Literary Society of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk, and
read to its members a variety of papers full of a gusto which rarely
became critical. He had been three times chairman at Burns
Anniversary dinners, and had delivered orations in eulogy of the
national Bard; not because he greatly admired him--he thought him
rather vulgar--but because he took Burns as an emblem of the
un-Burns-like literature which he loved. Mr. McCunn was no scholar
and was sublimely unconscious of background. He grew his flowers in
his small garden-plot oblivious of their origin so long as they gave
him the colour and scent he sought. Scent, I say, for he
appreciated more than the mere picturesque. He had a passion for
words and cadences, and would be haunted for weeks by a cunning
phrase, savouring it as a connoisseur savours a vintage.
Wherefore long ago, when he could ill afford it, he had purchased
the Edinburgh Stevenson. They were the only large books on his
shelves, for he had a liking for small volumes--things he could
stuff into his pocket in that sudden journey which he loved to
contemplate.