It has been said that there is a real affinity
between Scott and Homer. But the long and refluent music of Homer,
once naturalized in his mind, would have discontented him with that
quick, sharp, metrical tramp of his own moss-troopers, to which alone
his genius as a poet was perfectly suited.
It might be supposed that with these romantic tastes, Scott could
scarcely have made much of a lawyer, though the inference would, I
believe, be quite mistaken. His father, however, reproached him with
being better fitted for a pedlar than a lawyer,--so persistently did
he trudge over all the neighbouring counties in search of the beauties
of nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or legend.
On one occasion when, with their last penny spent, Scott and one of
his companions had returned to Edinburgh, living during their last day
on drinks of milk offered by generous peasant-women, and the hips and
haws on the hedges, he remarked to his father how much he had wished
for George Primrose's power of playing on the flute in order to earn a
meal by the way, old Mr.
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