Scotland Edinburgh Society--Lockhart's Opinion--Scott's Drives in Edinburgh--Love of Antiquities--The Sunday Dinners at 39 Castle Street--The Maclean Clephanes--Erskine, Clerk, C. K. Sharpe, Sir A. Boswell, W. Allan,--Favourite Dishes.
Ignorant prejudice gradually disappeared. The charm of Scott's conversation was found to be as great, in fact the same, as that of his writings. Mingling with and wishing to emulate London society, Edinburgh great folks came to understand that social intercourse ought to aim at enjoyment and relaxation, not at the display of alleged wit and amateur disquisitions on speculative themes. Then they discovered that Scott's easy, natural humour, his ever-ready and picturesque descriptions, his quaint old-world sayings and diverting sketches and anecdotes, nay, his very prejudices, always honest and so very lovable when understood to their foundation, were unique treasures even from the narrowest point of view. This was what all, long before 1818, recognised whose opinion was worth considering. But Lockhart, who had the best means of knowing, as being himself 'one of them,' says that even then the old theory, that Scott's conversation was 'commonplace,' lingered on in the general opinion of the city, especially among the smart praters of the _Outer House_. Of course it was the cue of these praters to differ from their elders, and few of them, after all, had perhaps enjoyed what they made a boast of affecting to depreciate. Lockhart, who was certainly in the Whig sense the strongest _intellect_ that ever adorned Edinburgh, both enjoyed and appreciated. And fortunately for us _minores_, he has told what he saw and rejoiced in. He says: 'It was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk than _wit_--and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of _vivid painting_--the true and primary sense of what is called _Imagination_. He was like Jacques--though not a "Melancholy Jacques"; and "moralised" a common topic into a "thousand similitudes." Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared _impromptus_ in London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemed _common-place_--not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,--to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.'