Scott familiarly as "Charlotte."[23] Hogg wrote certain short poems,
the beauty of which in their kind Sir Walter himself never approached;
but he was a man almost without self-restraint or self-knowledge,
though he had a great deal of self-importance, and hardly knew how
much he owed to Scott's magnanimous and ever-forbearing kindness, or
if he did, felt the weight of gratitude a burden on his heart. Very
different was William Laidlaw, a farmer on the banks of the Yarrow,
always Scott's friend, and afterwards his manager at Abbotsford,
through whose hand he dictated many of his novels. Mr. Laidlaw was
one of Scott's humbler friends,--a class of friends with whom he seems
always to have felt more completely at his ease than any others--who
gave at least as much as he received, one of those wise, loyal, and
thoughtful men in a comparatively modest position of life, whom Scott
delighted to trust, and never trusted without finding his trust
justified. In addition to these Scotch friends, Scott had made, even
before the publication of his _Border Minstrelsy_, not a few in London
or its neighbourhood,--of whom the most important at this time was the
grey-eyed, hatchet-faced, courteous George Ellis, as Leyden described
him, the author of various works on ancient English poetry and
romance, who combined with a shrewd, satirical vein, and a great
knowledge of the world, political as well as literary, an exquisite
taste in poetry, and a warm heart.
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