Letter LV

Summary

I KNOW not how many days I might have lingered in the delightful society of Abbotsford, had it not been that I had promised Wastle to be back in Edinburgh by a particular day at dinner, and I was the less willing to break my engagement, as I understood Mr Scott was to come to town in the course of a week, so that I should not be compelled to take my final leave of him at his own seat. I quitted, however, with not a little reluctance, the immediate scene of so much pleasure—and the land of so many noble recollections. The morning, too, on which I departed, was cold and misty; the vapours seemed unwilling to melt about the hill-tops; and I forded the darkened waters of the Tweed in assuredly a very pensive mood. Muffled in my cloak above the ears, I witnessed rather than directed the motions of the shandrydan, and arrived in Auld Reekie, after a ride of more than thirty miles, almost without having escaped, for a single second, from the same cloud of reverie in which I had begun the journey.

The character of the eminent man whom I had been seeing, and the influence which his writings have produced upon his country, were, as might be supposed, the main ingredients of all my meditation. After having conversed with Mr Scott, and so become familiar with the features of his countenance, and the tones of his voice, it seemed to me as if I had been furnished with a new key to the whole purpose of his intellectual labours, and was, for the first time, in a situation to look at the life and genius of the man with an eye of knowledge. It is wonderful how the mere seeing of such a person gives concentration, and compactness, and distinctness to one's ideas on all subjects connected with him; I speak for myself—to my mind, one of the best commentaries upon the meaning of any author, is a good image of his face—and, of course, the reality is far more precious than any image can be.