There are no recollections or memoranda by Newton of this time; but four years afterwards, in London, while he was painting a sketch of Mr. John Inman of New York, brother of the painter, an incident occurred, from a relation of which, published in "The New York Mirror" for 1835, I take a few sentences, Mr. John Inman being the writer. It runs thus:

"The time had nearly elapsed, and I was about preparing to take my leave, when a carriage drew up at the door. A double knock reverberated through the house; and in the course of another minute I heard a strange clattering sound upon the stairs, that gave me the idea of a person coming up with a cane in each hand, planting them with considerable force at each step as he ascended. There is Sir Walter now!' exclaimed Newton; and I began to feel a little as though my head was too big and heavy for my body. The door opened, and a tall, robust, large-framed man, plainly but neatly dressed in black, entered the room. I was introduced to Sir Walter Scott. You may suppose that I examined him as closely as good-breeding would permit, and listened with all my ears to his conversation; taking good care to hold my tongue except when he addressed himself directly to me, which he did several times. Old age-a premature old age it may be called-was, at this time, advancing rapidly upon him. Although his frame was herculean, and his aspect rugged, he was evidently weak. The exertion of coming up the stairs had fatigued him; and, when he seated himself, it was with a languid heaviness very much in contrast with his broad shoulders and ample chest. His hair was long, thin, and as white as snow, the effect, I was told, of illness at some former period, and not of old age. One of his legs was apparently weak, and somewhat smaller - not shorter the other; and he was sometimes obliged, as in the present instance, to wear a mechanical contrivance an arrangement of iron rods, the construction of which I could not distinctly make out-to support it. His complexion was dark,- not swarthy, but sunburnt; indeed, I should suppose that it must have been originally fair, though somewhat florid; his features were large and prominent; his eyes of a light gray, or perhaps blue; his eyebrows long, and very heavy; and his head remarkably large. The most remarkable peculiarity of his face, as you perceive in the engraving, was the inordinate length of the upper lip, between the mouth and nose; of his head, its extreme depth from sinciput to occiput, which I should think was more than nine inches and a half. I am wrong, however, in saying that this was the most remarkable pecu

than

ÆT. 57.]

JOHN INMAN.

271

liarity of his head. Striking as it was, perhaps the eye would be more certainly and quickly caught by the height of the cranium; the immense pile of forehead towering above the eyes and rising to a conical elevation which I have never seen equalled, either in bust or living head. The predominant expression of his face was shrewdness. Meeting him in the street with his hat on, you would have been struck, certainly, by his physiognomy; but the impression it would make on you would be only that of strong, good sense, without a particle of ideality: you would say to yourself, There goes a sturdy, straightforward thinker, who knows what he is about as well as most people; a sort of man whom a lawyer would find it hard to puzzle if he were on a jury.' But, with the hat off, it was a different man that stood before you you could not look upon that mass of admirably-proportioned head-so enormously developed in its anterior portions-without being convinced that the intellect working within it was a mighty one. When he began to talk, — which he did in a rather low tone, and with rapid utterance, his face, usually heavy, became more animated, and an expression of grave humor-humor which seemed to be mingled largely with enjoyment of itself— lurked around the corners of his mouth, and sometimes, though not frequently, sparkled for a moment in his eyes. I can easily imagine, that earlier in life, before his health began to yield to incessant application, he must have been an admirable raconteur (excuse the French word; we have none in English that is exactly synonymous), and a most amusing companion. But, when I saw him, he was dull, and seemingly dispirited, Perhaps he already felt the approaches of disease: indeed, I feel confident that such was the fact, judging from an expression that dropped from him, as I thought, unaware.

"After he had sat perhaps half an hour, I felt so much emboldened by his hearty, homely, and most unassuming manner, of all men I ever saw, he had the happiest faculty of making people feel easy and comfortable, — that I ventured to say, half jestingly, something to the effect that I had never envied the artist, or coveted his talent, so much as I did at that moment; and how proud I should be, if I were an artist, to carry with me to America what I had never seen there, a good likeness of Sir Walter Scott. 'That you can do,' said Sir Walter, if Stuart here has a mind to be obliging to his countryman: he can make excellent likenesses from memory, or, indeed, from fancy, eh, Newton?' — ' I can make a likeness of you from memory, Sir Walter,' answered Newton; but if you will sit just as you are, three minutes, “my countryman" shall have one, drawn neither from memory nor fancy.' Sir Walter smiled, and gave me a side-glance, in which I thought I could read a little amusement at the idea of having piqued New

ton into making a sketch for me, as I supposed, by an allusion to some former event which the artist did not care to have referred to; and the latter, having selected a piece of thick drawing-paper, in about five minutes made the sketch from which your engraving is taken, and which I pronounce the most perfect likeness of Sir Walter, as he was when I saw him, that possibly could be made,giving an accurate presentment of the shape of his head, the outline of his features in profile, and of his habitual expression when not speaking. It is the only direct profile-likeness of him I have ever seen; and therefore more valuable, as giving what no other that I have ever seen does give,—a distinct idea of the grand formation of his head."

Considering that Mr. Inman's account is" as good as manuscript" (as Coleridge used to say of interesting but scarcely known productions), I have not hesitated to use it rather in extenso.

Of Mr. S. G. Goodrich's meeting Scott twice in 1824, during a short visit to Edinburgh, I have made mention elsewhere. During his hurried visit to Paris, in 1826, to consult the French archives for his "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte," Sir Walter Scott twice met Mr. J. F. Cooper the novelist, whose "Pilot" he had strongly eulogized, not long before, in a letter to Miss Edgeworth. But the intercourse of the two novelists was very slight. Scott considered that Brockden Brown was the greatest master of prose fiction that America had produced up to that time.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Rob Roy" published.-Wordsworth's Poem.-The Novel Terry-fied.Mackay's Bailie Nicol Jarvie.-Scott at the Play.-Finding the Scottish Regalia.- Lockhart introduced to Scott.-Christopher North." The Chaldee Manuscript."—"Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk."-The Author's Den in Edinburgh. -"Heart of Mid-Lothian" published.-Ballantyne's Reading.-Original of Jeanie Deans.- House-heating at Abbotsford.Baronetcy offered. - Profitable Copyright Remainders.

1818.

OB ROY" was published on the last day of

"R1817; the first edition of ten thousand copies

going off in a fortnight. Like "Waverley," it was a Jacobite story, only that this related to the attempt of the Stuarts, in 1715, to regain the British crown; whereas the other, of which Prince Charlie was the hero, was a tale of 1745. "Rob Roy" is written in the autobiographical manner; and the opening account of Francis Osbaldistone's early fancy for literature is somewhat in the vein of Edward Waverley's loitering over the same field. In other respects, the two romances have not much in common. Diana Vernon, the heroine, a charming sketch, is finely contrasted with the force and deep shadow of Helen McGregor's character; Rob Roy himself has been called the Scotch Robin Hood; Bailie Nicol Jarvie stands out as one of the most natural and amusing humorists in fiction; while Rashleigh Osbaldistone — bold, bad, and brave seems as if he had walked out of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances or a popular melodrama. The death of Morris is a tragedy, told

in the fewest words, and therefore the more impressive. Owen, the smug clerk from London, is fairly balanced by Nicol Jarvie, pragmatical and selfinterested, yet capable of doing a generous action. The wholesale manner in which the six sons of Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone come to violent deaths, to insure the succession to their cousin Frank, shows a certain clumsiness, and perhaps carelessness, of workmanship, which rather increased than diminished in future years.

The motto to this novel, taken from a poem by Wordsworth, entitled "Rob Roy's Grave," was this: :

"For why? Because the good old rule
Sufficeth them; the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”

The story goes, that Wordsworth received the three volumes of "Rob Roy" when half a dozen visitors, who had dropped in to see him in his den, were sitting in his little parlor at Ambleside. Opening the parcel, one of the books fell on the ground; and the gentleman who picked it up read the title-page aloud, including the motto. Wordsworth solemnly strode to his book-shelf, - for his very few books never were so numerous as to deserve the title of library, opened a volume, read aloud his verses, "Rob Roy's Grave," then, emphatically closing the book, exclaimed, "That's all that need be said about Rob Roy!" and, without saluting his visitors, stalked out of the house into the garden. It is so characteristic, that it might have happened.

The success of "Rob Roy," at least its hold on the popular mind, was largely owing to the fact of its having been well dramatized, and still better acted. The author's friend Mr. Terry, who was in the se