All readers of his novels know how Scott delights in the humours of
the law. By way of illustration take the following passage, which is
both short and amusing, in which Saunders Fairford--the old solicitor
painted from Scott's father in _Redgauntlet_--descants on the law of
the stirrup-cup. "It was decided in a case before the town bailies of
Cupar Angus, when Luckie Simpson's cow had drunk up Luckie Jamieson's
browst of ale, while it stood in the door to cool, that there was no
damage to pay, because the crummie drank without sitting down; such
being the circumstance constituting a Doch an Dorroch, which is a
standing drink for which no reckoning is paid." I do not believe that
any one of Scott's contemporaries had greater legal abilities than he,
though, as it happened, they were never fairly tried. But he had both
the pride and impatience of genius. It fretted him to feel that he was
dependent on the good opinions of solicitors, and that they who were
incapable of understanding his genius, thought the less instead of the
better of him as an advocate, for every indication which he gave of
that genius.
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