One of Scott's intimate friends, the master of Rokeby,
by whose house and neighbourhood the poem of that name was suggested,
Mr. Morritt, walked along the Esk in 1808 with Scott four years after
he had left it, and was taken out of his way to see it. "I have been
bringing you," he said, "where there is little enough to be seen, only
that Scotch cottage, but though not worth looking at, I could not pass
it. It was our first country house when newly married, and many a
contrivance it had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for
it with my own hands. Look at these two miserable willow-trees on
either side the gate into the enclosure; they are tied together at the
top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet
decayed. To be sure it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I
wanted to see it again myself, for I assure you that after I had
constructed it, _mamma_ (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us thought it so
fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked backwards from
it to the cottage-door, in admiration of our own magnificence and its
picturesque effect.
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