The life of literature and the life of the Bar hardly
ever suit, and in Scott's case they suited the less, that he felt
himself likely to be a dictator in the one field, and only a postulant
in the other. Literature was a far greater gainer by his choice, than
Law could have been a loser. For his capacity for the law he shared
with thousands of able men, his capacity for literature with few or
none.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 269-71.]
[Footnote 6: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 206.]
[Footnote 7: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 221.]
CHAPTER III.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE.
One Sunday, about two years before his call to the bar, Scott offered
his umbrella to a young lady of much beauty who was coming out of the
Greyfriars Church during a shower; the umbrella was graciously
accepted; and it was not an unprecedented consequence that Scott fell
in love with the borrower, who turned out to be Margaret, daughter of
Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches, of Invernay. For near six years
after this, Scott indulged the hope of marrying this lady, and it does
not seem doubtful that the lady herself was in part responsible for
this impression.
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