Library open i 1. The use of t Interior, who nni!- of identity from tl employed. 2. Before any b Librarian for pro) 3 Application i sickness or absem 4. Books classed be taken from the o person wi of works of more t C Hooks must l Librarian, the loa permitted. A days, only, withon 7. Borrow persons, whether < 8. When a book to the, disbursin me and return TRii ipartment of the ,rian a certificate >r Otiice in which lubmitted to the xept in cases of alogue must uot e, except in case once. pplication to the han two v. odicals for jy them to other ; will be certified ^Bo^^etufned will not be reissued uutil theyhave been examined and rep] UP 10 n Wtm^orWrirfng upon leaves or covers, folding or turning down leav. other defacement or injury of books is strictly prohibited. Books must be r< oct condition as when received. Any book injured or defaced while in p of a borrower must be replaced by a perfect copy. 11. In selecting books from tl. handle carefully and replace those not drawn up- from which they were taken. 12 Final payment of U be withheld by the disbursing ofheer iron, ploy 6a qu it titil he is satisfied that all books charged against th< th Vl h] 'l hPlIii'i 1 to suspend or refuse the issue of books to pei viol: i ' ^68. BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY : ED W AED M. DAWSON, Chief Cli 73 b— lm Robert Beall, okseller and Stationer, i5 Pennsylvania Ave., V LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH CANONGATE, FROM TOP OF HYNDFORD'S CLOSE, 5 HIGH STREET LITERARY LANDMARKS « OF EDINBURGH BY LAURENCE HUTTON AUTHOR OF "LITERARY LANDMARKS OF LONDON" " CURIOSITIES OF THE AMERICAN STAGE" ETC. THIS ILLUSTRATED VOL. IS THE PROPERTY OF THE NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1892 Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers, All rights reserved ly Transfer JUN • 1«M \c u» TO E. V. H. ILLUSTRATIONS Canongate, from Top of Hyndford's Close, 50 High Street Frontispiece, v Drummond . -. Facing p. 16 v Johnson " 18^ Boswell " 20^ Hume's Lodgings, Riddle's Close, 322 High Street " 22*^ James's Court, 501 High Street. ... " 24^ Smollett's House, St. John Street, Can- ongate " 26^ Adam Smith's House, Panmure Close, 129 Canongate " 28 ^ Gay . . " 32^ Stewart " 34V Craig's Close, 265 High Street .... " 36^ Burns's Lodgings, High Street, between Baxter's Close and Lady Stair's Close • 38^ xh ILLUSTRATIONS Lady Stair's Close buccleuch pend, 14 buccleuch street Burns Sciennes House Scott Scott Monument from the South End of the waverley bridge Wilson Old Harrow Inn, Candlemaker Row . 39 Castle Street Hogg Jeffrey . . Campbell Brougham Sydney Smith Brewster . 21 Comely Bank Carlyle Carlyle's Lodgings, Simon Square . . De Quincey's Cottage, Lasswade . . . De Quincey Facing p. 40 v 44/ 46^ 48^' 52 54 v' 56 v ry j.'Xu*' 58 v 58 */ 60 • 62 v/ 62 64 s/ 65 66 ^ 66 ^ 67 68^ INTRODUCTION NO city in the world of its age and size — for Athens is older and London is larger — is so rich as Edinburgh in its literary associations, and no citizens anywhere show so much respect and so much fondness for the his- tory and traditions of their literary men. This is partic- ularly noticeable among the more poorly housed and the less educated classes, in whom one would least expect to find it. Policemen and postmen, busy men and idlers, old women and maidens, no matter how poor in dress or how unclean in person, are ever ready to answer ques- tions or to volunteer information — sometimes imperti- nent, often pertinent — concerning the literary shrines of their own immediate neighborhoods , and they display a knowledge of books, and a familiarity with the lives and the deeds of the bookmen of past generations, most re- markable in persons of their squalid appearance and wretched surroundings. There is always some poor old man to be found, generally in some poor old public-house in the Old Town — both tavern and man having long ago seen their best days — who will, for the price of a "gill," give the literary pilgrim personal information concerning the literary history of an adjoining close or wynd or pend which is not to be gathered from any of the printed books. And because of his long and intimate acquaint- ance with the place of which he speaks, his identification of a particular old house — after it has been verified, and usually it can be verified — is often of more value than xiv INTRODUCTION that of all the guide-books put together. For while he contradicts himself sometimes, the guide-books sometimes contradict each other, to the utter confusion of the seeker after truth. It has been said that "the Scots wha hae do never spend." And yet the poor Scots of the Old Town of Edinburgh, rich only in local knowledge and tradition, are certainly generous in their information and lavish with their good • will ; and without the kindly help and friendly sympathy of many a miserably clad, rough-hand- ed, poverty-stricken Solon of the modern British Athens this book could not have been written. As it now appears it was a labor of affection as well as of necessity , for in no other single work could be found half of what I wanted to know. Inspired by a reveren- tial curiosity to learn something about the present con- dition of the Homes and the Haunts of the Scottish Men of Letters in their own Metropolis, I have studied scores of local histories and hundreds of biographies, while I have spent many pleasant weeks in patient, painstaking examination of the hallowed neuks and corners of both ends of the Town. By actual observation I have satis- fied myself of the truth of every statement made, and I have visited personally every one of the Literary Land- marks of which I write. There is no space here to enumerate the authorities read, or the local antiquaries consulted. To all of these, and more especially to Mr. Anthony C. McBryde for much valuable advice and assistance, I wash to extend my sincerest thanks. And whatever there may be of value in the book is dedicated to the citizens of Edin- burgh, and to the strangers within their hospitable gates. Laurence Hutton LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH From scenes like these Old Scotia's grandeur springs." THE Scottish men of letters seem to have been heroes even to their own valets — when they had valets — and they are certainly revered at home as much as they are honored abroad. While Scotch- men's sons in the antipodes organize Burns Clubs and Waverley Societies, their fathers erect statues to their Scott and to their cotter bard in every cor- ner of the motherland ; when the poets of Scotland ask for bread they are given baronetcies and posi- tions in the excise ; and love and reverence as well as stalled oxen go therewith. The first thing which attracts the eye of the stranger upon his arrival in Edinburgh is the Scott Monument, not the Castle. The figures of Allan Ramsay, Professor Wilson, and their peers, in bronze or marble, standing on the lofty pedestals upon which their countrymen have placed them, are as suggestive of Scotland's might and of Stotland's right as is the Palace of Holyrood or the Cathedral of St. Giles. And the long line of the creators of Scottish literature, from Drummond 2 16 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH of Hawthornden, the friend of Ben Jonson, to John Brown of Edinburgh, the friend of Rab, have done more to make and keep Scotland free than have all the belted knights her kings have ever made. The Roman alphabet was probably the first which found its way into Scotland ; its introduction, no doubt, was coeval with the introduction of Chris- tianity; and Richard, Abbot of St. Victor in Paris, a celebrated theologian, who died in 1 1 73, may be considered the earliest literary man of Scottish birth. This prior, however, had but little to do with Edin- burgh, and the first Scottish author of renown who was familiar with the Netherbow or the Castle Hill was, unquestionably, Michael Scott, who wrote " A Booke of Alchemy " towards the end of the thir- teenth century. Between his day and that of the other Michael Scott, who wrote " Tom Cringle's Log" in the beginning of the nineteenth century, many scores of brilliant Scotchmen have walked the High Street and the Canongate — men " with intellects fit to grapple with whole libraries," or men who have been the author of but one immortal song; and men, all of them, of whom Scotland and the world are justly proud. Although William Drummond of Hawthornden passed the greater part of his life as a Drummond x ° retired country gentleman at his fa- mous mansion on the banks of the Esk, he was edu- cated at the High-school at Edinburgh and at the Edinburgh University, to which latter institution he bequeathed his collection of books ; and from his DRUMMOND DRUMMOND 17 close neighborhood to the capital he was, without question, a frequent visitor to its streets and closes. The first " Hie Schule " of Edinburgh, in which Drummond was a pupil, was built in 1567, in the garden of the monastery of the Blackfriars, at the east end of the present Infirmary Street, and near the head of what was once the High-school Wynd. It was taken down in 1777, to make room for the second High -school, which is now the City Hos- pital. The present University buildings, dating back only from 1789, stand upon the site of the original establishment, no portion of which has been preserved. Hawthornden, which its owner, anticipating Gray's famous line, described as a sweet flowery place, " far from the madding worldlings' hoarse discords," is but seven miles from Edinburgh by country road, and half an hour by rail. Unfortunately it is not the identical mansion which Ben Jonson knew, al- though it was enlarged and altered by the poet's friend in 1638, eleven years before Drummond's death, and twenty years after that memorable visit, upon which, perhaps, in most minds, the Scotch poet's fame now rests. If Drummond, as he sat under his sycamore-tree that memorable afternoon, watching Jonson's approach, did not cry, " Wel- come, welcome, royal Ben," and if Jonson did not reply on the instant, " Thank'e, thank'e, Hawthorn- den," as tradition has ever since asserted, there can be no question that the welcome was a right royal one. Jonson might not have been so free with his 2* 18 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH thanks and his speech, however, if he had known that his " Hawthornden " was to become, at his ex- pense, the inventor of interviewing. Drummond died at Hawthornden in 1649, and lies in the church- yard of Lasswade, not very far distant. The Scotchman who was to outshine Drummond Johnson as an interviewer, and to excel all the Bosweii writing world in that particular line, brought another if not a greater Johnson to Scot- land in 1773. On the night of the 14th of August of that year the following note was written and received in Edinburgh : " Mr. Johnson sends his compliments to Mr. Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd's." His sojourn at this time lasted but four days. After their return from the Hebrides, on the 9th of November, Johnson remained about a fort- night in the Scottish capital, as Boswell's guest ; but, except to Boswell, neither visit was freighted with much importance. The great man was shown the Parliament House, the Advocates' Library, the Cathedral, the Castle, the College, and the Cowgate, and he had something disagreeable to say about each. He supped heartily, he dined heavily, and he talked ponderously. He made a deep impression upon his host's " daughter Veronica, then a child about four months old;" and, although his host for- got to mention it, he so pleased Mr. Henry Erskine, who was presented to him in the Parliament House, that Erskine slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was " for the sight of the bear." " Boyd's," at which Johnson alighted on his first JOHNSON JOHNSON — BOSWELL 19 arrival in Edinburgh, was The White Horse Inn, in Boyd's Close, St. Mary's Wynd, Canongate ; but tavern, close, and wynd have all been swept away by the besom of improvement. St. Mary's Wynd stood where now stands St. Mary Street, and the site of the tavern, on the northeast corner of Boyd's Entry and the present St. Mary Street, is marked with a tablet recording its association with Boswell and Johnson. The White Horse continued to be a coaching house until the close of the eighteenth century, and in Boswell's day it was one of the best hostelries in the town. It must not, however, be confounded with The White Horse Inn, a pictu- resque ruin, with its shattered gables, its broken chimneys, and the date 1523 over its window 7 , still standing at the foot of White Horse Wynd, at the other end of the Canongate. This is one of the most antique buildings left in Edinburgh, and it was the lodging -place of Captain Waverley " in stirring '45." The only other place of public refreshment asso- ciated with Johnson in Edinburgh or its neighbor- hood is the old inn at Roslin, at which the bear's ward and the bear once stopped for a dish of tea on their way to Hawthornden. No longer an inn, it stands almost directly opposite the chapel, back from the road, and is now a private house, of gray stone, with a tiled roof, little more than a cottage in size or condition. Some one has called Boswell's Ursa Major " the Jupiter of English letters with one satellite," which 20 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH sounds very epigrammatic, but is not very true. The grand old primary planet of Bolt Court, who revolved about Fleet Street and the Temple in the days of the Georges, had more little stars in his train than the naked eye could see. Granting that James Boswell was the first satellite — a stellar body, by the way, which the astronomers describe as having no " sensible eccentricity " — how can the scientists ignore " Tom " Davies, Arthur Murphy, Topham Beauclerc, Bennet Langton, " Peter Pindar," Lucy Porter, Letitia Hawkins, Anna Williams, Char- lotte Lenox, or Mrs. Thrale? If these were not Jupiter's moons, the whole planetary system is a delusion and a snare. How much this literary Jupiter owes to his liter- ary satellites, particularly to the first one, it is not easy, at this distance of time, to tell. But who reads his " Journey to the Western Islands of Scot- land " in these days ? How often is his " Dictionary " consulted ? What influence has his " Rambler " upon modern letters? Which sweet girl graduate or cultivated Harvard " man " of to-day can quote a line from " The Vanity of Human Wishes," or knows whether that production is in prose or verse? What would the world have thought of Samuel Johnson at the end of a hundred years if a silly little Scottish laird had not made a hero of him, to be worshipped as no literary man was ever wor- shipped before or since, and if he had not written a biography of him which is the best in any language, and the model for all others? BO SWELL JOHNSON — BOSWELL 21 Mr. Croker in his preface calls attention to the curious fact that Boswell's personal intercourse with Johnson was exceedingly infrequent and limited ; a fact which is very apt to be overlooked even by the more careful readers of the " Life/' They first met about twenty years before Johnson's death ; and after that meeting Boswell was not in England more than a dozen times. Mr. Croker even counted the days they were together in London, as well as dur- ing the visits to Edinburgh and the tour to the Hebrides, and shows them to have been but two hundred and seventy-six in all ; so that this mar- vellous biography, with its minuteness of detail, its small-talk and gossip, its wise and foolish disclosures, is the result of but nine months of actual observa- tion of its subject by its author. Were nine months ever so profitably and so industriously employed? Boswell's house in James's Court, Lawn-market (a continuation and part of the High Street), to which he conducted Johnson as soon as the new arrival had thrown the lemonade out of Lucky Boyd's window, and had threatened Boyd's waiter with a similar mode of exit, is no longer in exist- ence. James's Court, a little square, has three dis- tinct entrances from the Lawn-market, and is sur- rounded by houses eight or nine stories in height. In its present state it is picturesque enough and exceedingly unsavory, filled as it is with ragged women, beer and whiskey soddened men, dirty chil- dren, and clothes which are hung out to dry and are supposed to be clean. Robert Chambers was 22 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH ' of the opinion that Boswell had two different suites of apartments in this court, and there is every reason to believe that as tenant of the earlier of these he succeeded David Hume, who had gone there in 1762. This " land " was accidentally and totally de- stroyed by fire in 1857. Fortunately for Boswell's own peace of mind, he had left Hume's old lodgings when Johnson was his guest, for if Johnson had been told that the rooms he occupied had ever been profaned by the presence of " that echo of Voltaire," it is to be feared that Mrs. Boswell's tea, and Veronica herself, and all of the Boswell family, would have gone the way of Lucky Boyd's lemonade. Hume's first Edinburgh home was in Riddle's Close, on the opposite side of the Lawn- market — No. 322 High Street — his fam- ily consisting of himself, a maid, a cat, and now and then a sister, but never a wife. His house has been described as " in the first court reached on entering the close, and it is approached by a projecting tur- ret stair." It is black with age and dust and with the petrified smoke of many a score of years. It may not be out of place here to say that a " close," as defined in Jamieson's " Scottish Dictionary" and by other authorities, is a passage, an entry, an area before a house, a place fenced in; a " wynd " is an alley, a lane ; a " pend " is an arch ; a " bow " is the curve or bending of a street ; a " port " is a gate ; a " land " is a house consisting of different stories, generally including different tenements; a " toll" HUME S LODGINGS, RIDDLE'S CLOSE, 322 HIGH STREET HUME 23 is a turnpike; a "tolbothe," or a " tollbooth," is a jail; a " trone," or " tron," is a weighing- beam ; a " brig " is a bridge ; a " change-hoose " is a small inn or ale-house ; a " hole i' the wa' " is literally a hole in the wall, a doorway in a piece of masonry which has no window, or other door, or other embrasure of any kind; "scale stairs" are a straight flight of steps, as opposed to a "turnpike stair," which is of a spiral form; and "luckie," or "lucky," is a desig- nation given to an elderly woman, the mistress of an ale-house. Hume began his " History of England " in Rid- dle's Close, but wrote the greater part of it in Jack's Land, in the Canongate, to which he removed in 1753, and where he lived for nine years. Jack's Land, now numbered 229 Canongate, on the north side, is an old, dusky, dingy, four -storied building, entered from Little Jack's Close, and still standing as Hume left it to go to James's Court. After his return from the Continent, seven or eight years later, Hume built for himself a more pretentious house in the New Town. It is now No. 21 South St. David Street, and No. 8 St. Andrew Square, the entrance being on St. David Street, facing Rose Street. John Hill Burton, the author of " The Book Hunter," in his " Life of Hume," says that a tradi- tion existed among the domestics of Hume's house- hold that St. David Street was so called in derision, because David Hume lived in it, and that he is said to have told one of his " lassies," who protested against what she considered an insult, that "many 3 24 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH a waur man than he had been made a saint before." He died in his new house in 1776 ; and he lies under an ugly round tower, which is supposed to be of classic form, in the Old Calton Burying- ground. There is no record of the place of Hume's birth, ex- cept that it was in the " Tron Church Parish, Edin- burgh." It is a curious coincidence that the man so closely associated with Hume as the historian of England should have lived for some time in a house directly opposite the house once occupied by Hume in the Canongate. Mrs. Telfer, a sister of Tobias Smollett, occupied the second flat of the house 182 Canongate, over the archway lead- ing into St. John Street ; and here the novelist spent some time in 1766. The house is unchanged; the front windows look out upon the Canongate, al- though the apartments are entered from that thor- oughfare through the first door to the right after passing the pend, and up the circular steps in the tall abutment now numbered 22 St. John Street. Robert Chambers, writing almost sixty years after this visit of Smollett to Edinburgh, describes him as he heard him described by " a person who recollects seeing him there, as dressed in black clothes, tall and extremely handsome, but quite unlike the portraits at the front of his works, all of which are disclaimed by his relations." This is a picture which will interest those collectors who need to be assured by contem- porary evidence that perhaps no genuine engraved picture of the author of " Peregrine Pickle" exists. JAMES'S COURT, 501 HIGH STREET SMOLLETT— ROBERTSON — BLAIR 25 Smollett studied the Scottish capital and its inhabitants, and introduced them both into his " Humphry Clinker," published in 1 77 1 , a very curious and ingenious commingling of facts and fancy. Picturing himself as Matt Bramble, he writes to " Dr. Lewis": "Edinburgh is a hot-bed of genius; I have the good fortune to be made acquainted with many authors of the first distinc- tion, such as the two Humes, Robertson, Smith, Wallace, Blair, Ferguson, Wilkie, etc., and I have found them all as agreeable in conversation as they are instructive and entertaining in their writings. These acquaintances I owe to the friendship of Dr. Carlyle." The Robertson in question was William Robert- son, D.D., the historian, who died in Robertson 1793, in the Grange House, still stand- ing south of the Grange Cemetery; Wallace was Robert Wallace, D.D., author of the Wallace "Dissertation on the Numbers of Man- kind," who died in the then suburban village of Broughton in 1771 ; Blair was Hugh Blair & . . Blair, D.D., the rhetorician, who was the first to introduce the poems of Ossian to the world, who occupied Hume's apartments in James's Court when Hume was on the Continent, who once lived in Argyle Square, and who was buried in the Grey- friars' Churchyard, his monument standing on the south side of the church ; Wilkie was Wilkie William Wilkie, D.D., whom Henry Mackenzie in his " Life of Home" called the "Scot- 3* 26 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH tish Homer*'; Ferguson was Adam Ferguson, the Adam professor of moral philosophy, in whose Ferguson h ouse Burns and Scott had their first and only meeting, of which more anon ; Dr. Carlyle — known as " Jupiter Carlyle," from his imposing Alexander appearance — was the Rev. Alexander cariyie Carlyle, of Inveresk and Musselburgh, who became unpopular in his church on account of his assistance to Home in the production of " Doug- las " ; and Smith was Adam Smith, author of " The Wealth of Nations," one of the most remarkable books which bear a Scotchman's name — and that is saying much for it, and for him. Adam Smith spent the last twelve years of his life in Panmure House, Panmure Close, 129 Canon- gate. This edifice still stands on the right-hand side of the close, numbered 15, as one enters from the Canongate. He died here in 1790, and was buried in the Canongate Church-yard, a tall mural tablet on the wall of the rear of the Court-house, on the extreme left of the ground, recording that fact. "The two Humes" of whom Smollett wrote were unquestionably David Hume and John Home, the author of " Douglas," as both of them were often in his society in Edin- burgh. It is said that the only approaches to a dis- agreement in the long and intimate friendship ex- isting between these "two Humes" were regarding the relative merits of claret and port, and in relation to the spelling of their name, the philosopher in n Smollett's house, st. john street, canongate HOME 27 early life having adopted the orthography indicated by the pronunciation, the poet and preacher always clinging to the old and invariable custom of his family. David carried the discussion so far that on his death-bed he added a codicil to his will, written with his own hand, to this effect : " I leave to my friend Mr. John Home, of Kilduff, ten dozen of my old claret at his choice ; and one other bottle of that other liquor called port. I also leave him six dozen of port, provided that he attests, under his hand, signed John Hume, that he has himself alone fin- ished that bottle at a sitting. By this concession he will at once terminate the only difference that ever arose between us concerning temporal mat- ters. ,, It is to be inferred that this is a joke which got into the head of one Scotchman without a sur- gical operation. John Home was born on the east side of Quality Street, near Bernard Street, Leith, in a house no longer standing. He was educated in the grammar- school of his native town, and at the University of Edinburgh. In 1767 he bought the farm of Kilduff, in East Lothian, where he remained until he re- moved to Edinburgh, thirteen years later. In "Home's Life and Letters" no hint is given as to his Edinburgh abiding-place. He died there, at a ripe old age, in 1808, and was buried in the yard of South Leith Parish Church, on the outer wall of which, on the south side, is a tablet with a simple inscription to his memory. It is visible, but not legible, from Kirkgate Street. 28 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH " Douglas " was first produced upon the regular stage on the 14th of December, 1756, at the Canon- gate Theatre (of which there is no sign now), in Play- house Close, 200 Canongate. According to tradi- tion, however — and very misty tradition — it was performed privately some time before at the lodg- ings of Mrs. Sarah Warde, a professional actress, who lived in Horse Wynd, near the foot of the Can- ongate, and with the following most astonishing amateur cast : Lord Randolph.. Rev. Dr. Robertson [principal of the Uni- versity of Edinburgh]. Glenalvon Dr. David Hume [historian]. Old Norval Rev. Dr. Carlyle [minister of Mussel- burgh]. Douglas Rev. John Home [the author of the trag- edy]. Lady Randolph. .Dr. Ferguson [professor of moral philos- ophy in the University of Edinburgh]. Anna (the Maid)... Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair [minister of the High Church of Edinburgh]. Adam Ferguson as Lady Randolph and Hugh Blair as Anna must have added an unexpectedly comic element to the tragedy. It is not more than justice to say that Dugald Stewart, the biographer of Principal Robertson, asserts that the Randolph of this cast " never entered a play-house in his life." On the other hand, the Lady Randolph of this occa- sion, writing to Home some years later, used very professional and rather unfeminine language when she said : " Dear John, damn the actors that damned ADAM SMITH S HOUSE, PANMURE CLOSE, I2Q CANONGATE MACKENZIE 29 the play/' Lord and Lady Randolph, by the way, were billed as Lord and Lady Barnet when " Doug- las " was originally produced, and the original Nor- val originally declared his name to be " Forman, on the Grampian Hills," etc. Henry Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling and the biographer of Home, was born in 174; Mackenzie t 1 > in Liberton s Wynd, which ran north and south between the Lawn-market and the Cow- gate, where George IV. Bridge now stands. Like so many of his towns-people, he was educated in the High -school and the University. He had many residences in Edinburgh during his long life. An umbrella-maker occupying the present No. 36 Cham- bers Street in 1889 pointed out with no little pride that tenement as having once been Mackenzie's home, when it was known as No. 4 Brown Square. The last years of his life were passed at No. 6 Her- iot Row, in one of a long line of eminently "gen- teel " houses facing the Queen Street Gardens, over which he had shot as a boy. The last of his own generation, he was the connecting link between the men of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth. He could remember the figures of Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson, and he was himself in his old age a familiar figure to some of the men of his guild who walk the streets of Edinburgh to-day. He died in Heriot Row in 183 1, at the age of eighty-six, and he lies under a plain mural tablet in the Greyfriars' Church-yard, on the north side of the terrace. He is described thereon as " an author who for no short 30 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH time and in no small part supported the literary reputation of his country;'' and yet the custodian of the little city cemetery, an enthusiastic lover of the spot and of its associations, said, in a regretful way, to an American visitor not very long ago, that Mackenzie was entirely forgotten by the men of the present day, and that no one had asked to see his resting-place in many years. Such graves as his should be pilgrim shrines ; but the only shrine in Greyfriars' which pilgrims care for now is the grave of a man of whom nothing is known except the fact that his single mourner was a mythical little terrier- dog ! A review of the first (or Kilmarnock) edition of Burns's poems, contributed by Mackenzie to a short- lived periodical called " The Lounger," may be said to have been the turning-point in the career of the poet, and to have decided his fate and his fame. Burns was on the eve of emigration perhaps when this article, coupled with the friendly efforts of Dr. Blacklock, brought him into public notice and into Edinburgh, and procured for him the patronage which encouraged his later efforts. A neighbor of Mackenzie's in that little city of the dead is another man of letters almost equally forgotten by the world, yet of whom it was said when he died that Scottish poetry died with him. For Allan Ramsay is believed to lie Ramsay . . under a birch-tree almost in front of the tablet to his memory, on the south side of the Grey- friars' Church, although there is no stone to mark his RAMSAY 31 grave. Ramsay began his life in Edinburgh as an apprentice to a periwig- maker in 1701, but some time between the years 1716 and 1720 he became a maker and a seller of books, his publications after the latter date bearing an imprint which stated that they were "sold at the sign of the Mercury, oppo- site the head of Niddry's Wynd." In 1726 he re- moved from this shop to one on the second floor of a building which stood upon the line of the High Street, " alongside St. Giles's Church," his windows commanding the City Cross and the lower part of the High Street. Here he changed his sign, substituting the heads of Ben Jonson and Drum- mond of Hawthornden for that of Mercury ; and here he added to his business a circulating library, the first in Scotland. Below him, on the ground- floor, was the shop of William Creech, who published the second, or " Edinburgh," edition of Burns's Poems in 1787, and hence the name Creech's Land, so often given to Ramsay's second and last shop, to the confusion of the interested inquirer after literary landmarks. It was a part of the Luckenbooths, a group of queer -looking buildings which stood in, not on, the High Street, blocking up and disfiguring that thoroughfare in the days of Ramsay and Creech, but long since removed. " The Gentle Shepherd " was written and pub- lished while Ramsay was trading, and living too, in the establishment opposite Niddry's Wynd — now Niddry Street — and the house, still standing at 155 High Street, is, for its associations' sake, one of the 32 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH most interesting of the old buildings in Edinburgh to-day. It has now but two stories (the gables that surmounted it have lately been removed) and a high and sloping roof, from which rises an enormous square chimney, that might pass in the frequent mists of the place for a cupola or a bell tower. The last years of Ramsay's life were passed in a straggling stucco house off the present Ramsay Place and Ramsay Gardens, standing now very much as Ramsay built it, with a little bit of green behind it, and all of the New Town of Edinburgh at its front ; having from its windows a fine view of the Castle, of a long line of streets and spires, and of a beautiful stretch of open country. Architecturally it cannot be commended, but it is superbly placed, and it hardly merits the name " Goose Pie," given it because of its peculiar shape by the would-be humorists of Ramsay's day. A statue of Ramsay stands in Princes Street Gardens, immediately in front of this house. The theatre built by Ramsay in 1736, and in which he lost so much of the money his books had brought him, stood at the foot of Carrubber's Close, No. 135 High Street. It was afterwards converted, and became a church called Whitfield Chapel; but no stick or stone of chapel or play-house now re- mains. Ramsay and Gay often met in an ale-house called " Jenny Ha's Change- house," which used to stand in front of Queensberry House, in the Canongate, the mansion of Gay's patroness, described by Walpole as " Prior's Kitty gHiitiiiniiiipiiimnmnT^ if MiiMMliii^ GAY— STEWART 33 ever fair." Johnson in his " Lives of the Poets " says nothing of Gay's Edinburgh experiences, but he certainly spent some time there, and tradition used to point out his lodgings in the upper story of a poor tenement opposite Queensberry House, not far from Jenny Ha's establishment. Queensberry House, No. 64 Canongate, is now a House of Ref- uge for the Destitute. It is considerably altered in outward appearance, and is now an ugly, dark, unin- viting pile of gray stone, with no attempt at orna- mentation or architectural display. Jenny Ha's Change-house has entirely disappeared. Dugald Stewart, a contemporary and friend of Mackenzie, and the biographer of Dr. Stewart - ' ° \ Robertson, lies not very far from Adam Smith in the Canongate Church-yard, near the south- west corner, under a large altar tomb of gray stone. He lived in Lothian Hut in the Horse Wynd, Can- ongate, upon the site of which a brewery now stands, and he died at No. 5 Ainslie Place, in the New Town, in a house on a little square at the west end of Queen Street, surrounded by aristocratic private res- idences. He was a constant frequenter of Creech's, although he had, naturally, no association with Ramsay, who died when Stewart was a boy of ten studying at the High-school, and living in the pre- cincts of the University, of which his father was pro- fessor of mathematics. Two notable Scotchmen, whose mortal parts now keep company with Smith and Stewart in the Can- ongate Church-yard, are " the two Fergusons," Rob- 34 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH ert and Adam, men far apart in thought and char- acter during their lives, but closely united in death. Robert Robert Ferguson, whom Burns acknowl- Ferguson edged as his master, was born in 175 1 in Cap and Feather Close, the site of which is now covered by the buildings standing on the east side of the North Bridge. He went to a small school in Niddry's Wynd, and later to the first High-school, and before he had reached the age of twenty-four he died in the pauper lunatic asylum called Old Darien House, which was demolished a century later. A tablet on the comparatively modern building No. 15 Bristo Place states that there the Bedlam of poor Ferguson stood. Like so many children of genius, Ferguson's conduct reflected but little credit on his dam, and he was a relentless enemy towards himself, if not towards his brothers and sisters. He aban- doned the study of medicine because he fancied himself afflicted with every disease of which he read the description, and no doubt he died in a mad- house from fear that he would die insane. Ferguson can be traced to his taverns and his clubs in Edinburgh more easily than to any of his homes, except the last one ; and wherever fun was rampant and gin cheap, there was Ferguson to be found. He would often, as he sang in his " Cauler Oyster," " To Luckie Middlemist's loup in, And sit fu' snug Owre oysters and a dram o' gin Or haddock lug." STEWART a 1 H 1 1 s VOL. IS THE PROPERTY OF THE ROBERT FERGUSON 35 Lucky Middlemist's establishment in the Cowgate has given place to the south pier of the South Bridge. Another favorite resort of Ferguson's, where, " wi' sang and glass he'd flee the power o' care, that wad harras the hour," was the Cape Club, which met at The Isle of Man's Arms, Craig's Close (265 High Street). In Craig's Close is still to be seen the broken - down and neglected sign of the Cockburn Tavern, in front of a broken-down and neglected tenement, about half-way up the close on the east side, with all of its flashes of merriment gone this many a year. Standing as it does " between the back and front tenements," this may perhaps have been once The Isle of Man. Still another of the inns to which Ferguson went to " get his cares and pother laid " was Johnnie Dowie's Tavern, in Liber- ton's Wynd, which was later a favorite resort of Burns, and which has been dubbed " The Mermaid of Edinburgh." It was famous as the " Burns Tav- ern" in the last years of its existence, and was long one of the architectural lions of the Old Town for Burns's sake; but when George IV. Bridge was built both tavern and wynd were swept away, and, like everything else associated with Ferguson in life, no trace of it is left. There is even no absolutely authentic portrait of him known to the collectors ; and the best, if the most homely, of the contempo- rary descriptions of him represents him as being u very smally and delicate, a little in -kneed, and vvaigled a good deal in walking." 36 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH How far Burns was really influenced by the verse of Ferguson it is not easy to say ; he certainly was ever ready to acknowledge that influence. " The Cotter's Saturday Night " was assuredly inspired by " The Farmer's Ingle," and there is no doubt that one of the first visits Burns made in Edinburgh was to the neglected grave of his " elder brother in the Muses." If he did not "sit him down and weep, uncovered," by the side of that lowly mound in the Canongate Church-yard, there can be no question that many a hat — of American make, at all events — has since been lifted in reverence there, for Burns's sake if not for Ferguson's. Burns, in his letter to The Honorable Bailies of Canongate, showed his feeling on this subject, and in a most substantial way. " I am sorry," he wrote, " to be told that the remains of Robert Ferguson, the so justly celebrated poet, a man whose talents for ages to come will do honor to our Caledonian name, lie in your church- yard among the ignoble dead, unnoticed and un- known. Some memorial to direct the steps of the lovers of Scottish song when they wish to shed a tear over the narrow house of the bard who is now no more is surely a Tribute due to Ferguson's mem- ory — a Tribute I wish to have the honor of paying. I petition you, then, gentlemen, to permit me to lay a simple stone over his reverend ashes, to remain an unalienable property to his deathless fame." The simple stone which " directs Pale Scotia's way to pour her Sorrows o'er her Poet's Dust " is on the west side of the church, not many steps from craig's close, 265 high street BURNS 37 the gateway, and on the left as one enters the church -yard. It is always well cared for, and a royal Scottish thistle, planted by some devout hand, rises, as if defiantly, to guard the spot. Time has dealt kindly with the landmarks of Burns in the Scottish metropolis, and Burns . .... improvement in its disastrous march has passed around, not over them. He reached town for the first time towards the end of November, 1786, when he found lodgings in Baxter's Close ; during the same winter he is said to have lived on the Buccleuch Road ; and in the winter of 1787-88 he had rooms in St. James Square in the New Town. These houses are fortunately still standing, as are also the Lodge of Freemasons in St. John Street, the residence of his friend Lord Monboddo in the same street, The Hole-in-the-Wa' in Buccleuch Pend, the inn at Ros- lin, and Sciennes House. Lockhart in his " Life of Burns " quotes from the manuscript note-book of R. H. Cromek as follows: " Mr. Richmond, of Mauchline, told me that Burns spent the first winter of his residence in Edinburgh in his [Richmond's] lodgings. They slept in the same bed, and had only one room, for which they paid three shillings a week. It was in the house of a Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter's Close, Lawn - market, first scale stair on the left hand going down, first door in the stair." John Richmond was merely a lawyer's clerk, but the apartment was not quite so humble as Allan Cunningham represents it in his " Life of Burns" — "a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff 38 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH bed." It is a fair-sized room, panelled with wood; the window, however, looks out upon Lady Stair's Close (No. 477 High Street), not upon Baxter's Close (No. 469 High Street). The house itself was an old house even in Burns's day, and now it is re- duced to the very lowest social level. It holds no tablet to tell the passer-by of its former famous ten- ant; but nearly all of its present humble occupants are well aware, and very proud, of the fact that they sleep under the roof that once sheltered Robert Burns. Lockhart is the authority for saying that Burns lodged with William Nicoll, one of the teachers of the High-school, on the Buccleuch Road (now Buc- cleuch Street), during the winter of 1786-87. This house is over the pend — now called Buccleuch Pend — leading into St. Patrick Square, and directly op- posite Buccleuch Place ; and Nicoll's apartments were on the top floor. If Burns did not lodge with Nicoll, he was certainly familiar with the neighbor- hood, for in the archway was, and still is, a hole-in- the-wall, leading, a century ago, to an underground public-house kept by one Lucky Pringle, and much frequented both by Nicoll and Burns. The oldest inhabitants of the street and the square have no recollection of Lucky Pringle or of her dram-shop; but, no doubt, it was in the basement of the house just to the north of Buccleuch Pend, and numbered now 14 Buccleuch Street. When Burns revisited Edinburgh he lodged with William Cruikshank, another teacher of the High- BURNS'S LODGINGS, HIGH STREET, BETWEEN BAXTER'S CLOSE AND LADY STAIR'S CLOSE BURNS 39 school, in a house on the southwest corner of St. James Square, in the New Town, and his was the topmost, or attic, window in the gable looking tow- ards the General Post - office, in Waterloo Place. Herefrom Burns wrote: "I am certain I saw you, Clarinda; but you don't look to the proper story for a poet's lodging — 'where speculation roosted near the sky.' I could almost have thrown myself over for very vexation. Why didn't you look higher? It has spoiled my peace for the day. To be so near my charming Clarinda — to miss her look when it was searching for me! ... I am sure the soul is capable of disease, for mine has convulsed itself into an inflammatory fever." This window of Burns's was pointed out to an enthusiastic pilgrim, one summer morning in 1889, by an old resident of St. James Square to whom Clarinda had pointed it out herself. He remem- bered Clarinda (Mrs. M'Lehose) in her old age, when she lived beneath his own father in a small flat in a house at Greenside, upon an insignificant annuity allowed her by her brother. She went once to her husband in Jamaica, but did not leave the ship, as Mr. M'Lehose insisted upon her immediate return, on the ground that the climate would not agree with her. She was in very poor circumstances dur- ing her later years, but never wearied of telling the story of her flirtation with Burns. As the aged resi- dent remarked: " The auld donnert leddy bodie spoke o' her love for the poet just like a hellicat bit lassie in her teens, and while exhibitin' to her cronies 40 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH the faded letters from her Robbie she would just greet like a bairn. Puir auld creature, she never till the moment o' her death jaloused or dooted Rob- bie's professed love for her; but, sir, you ken he was juist makin' a fule o' her, as his letters amply show." Mrs. M'Lehose, deserted by her husband, lived, in Burns's time, with two young children in General's Entry, which lay between the Potterrow and Bristo Street ; but no houses dating back to Clarinda's day stand within a stone's-throw of Clarinda's flat. The somewhat pretentious public school on Marshall Street was built upon General's Entry. On the 14th of January, 1787, Burns wrote: "I went to a Mason lodge yesternight, where the M. W. Grand Master Charteris and all the Grand Lodge of Scotland visited. The meeting was numerous and elegant ; all the different lodges about town were present in all their pomp. The Grand Master, who presided with all solemnity, among other general toasts gave * Caledonia and Caledonia's bard, Brother B ,' which rang through the whole assembly with multiplied honors and repeated acclamations. As I had no idea such a thing would happen I was downright thunderstruck, and, trembling in every nerve, made the best return in my power." This was at the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge of Freemasons, of which Burns afterwards was made poet -laureate; and his inauguration, painted by William Stewart Watson, is familiar to all Scotch- men and Scotchmen's sons on both sides of the At- lantic, by reason of the many engravings made of it. J 1 LADY STAIR'S CLOSE BURNS 41 The hall of the Kilwinning Lodge is still standing, on the west side of St. John Street, and is square and grim and rigid in appearance, the exterior and interior remaining as Burns saw them. Nearly opposite the Kilwinning Lodge lived Lord Monboddo and his daughter, the lovely Miss Bur- net, whose untimely death the poet mourned in verse. At this house, still left, commonplace and in itself uninteresting, half-way between the Canongate and the South Back of the Canongate, and now num- bered 13 St. John Street, Burns was a frequent guest, as he was at the town residence of many a belted knight and at the humble home of many an honest man in Edinburgh during his happy life there, in houses of which no record need be given here. The old inn at Roslin, already described as a stopping-place once of Boswell and Johnson, is per- haps more famous still because of certain lines to the landlady written by Burns on the back of a wooden platter, in which he declares that although "he ne'er was here before, he'll ne'er again gang by her door." A print of Dowie's Tavern is to be found in Hone's "Year-book," accompanied by a verbal de- scription written in 1 83 1, when the place was doom- ed to destruction. At that time, the writer states, " few strangers omitted to call in to gaze at the coffin [?] of the bard ; this was a small dark room which could barely accommodate, even by squeez- ing, half a dozen, but in which Burns used to sit. 42 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH Here he composed one or two of his best songs, and here are preserved to the last the identical seats and table which had accommodated him/' Another favorite tavern of Burns which has long since disappeared was that of Dawney Douglas, in Anchor Close, where met the Crochallan Fencibles, whose performances Burns has chronicled in more places than one ; and where " rattlin', roarin' Willie," and other rattlin', roarin' gentlemen, sat at the board with him on many a rattlin', roarin' occasion. At the foot of this same Anchor Close, 243 High Street, was the printing-office of William Smellie, where Burns corrected the proofs of his poems in that win- ter of 1786-87. This establishment was taken down in 1859 when Cockburn Street was constructed, and, strangely enough, the modern presses of the " Scots- man " newspaper roll and tumble now upon the spot where Black and Blair, and Smith and Hume, and Burns and Ferguson watched the printing of their own works. One of the most interesting of all the literary landmarks of Edinburgh, naturally, is the house in which Burns and Scott met for the first and only time. The story of this famous encounter, as told by Scott himself, is here given in full: — " As for Burns " (he wrote to Lockhart, many years later), " I may truly say, Virgiliiim vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-87, when he came first to Edin- burgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him ; but I had very little acquaint- BUCCLEUCH PEND, 14 BUCCLEUCH STREET BURNS 43 ance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the West Country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity to keep his word, otherwise I might have seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where there were several gen- tlemen of literary reputation, among whom I re- member the celebrated Dr. Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's manner was the effect produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on the other his widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : " ' Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain ; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew; The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery, baptized in tears.' " Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself re- membered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising title of 'The Justice of the Peace.' I whispered my infor- 44 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH mation to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word which, though of mere civility, I then received and still recollect with very great pleasure. " His person was strong and robust ; his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect per- haps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary tal- ents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious coun- try farmer of the old Scotch school — t. e., none of your modern agriculturists who keep laborers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most dis- tinguished men of my time. His conversation ex- pressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed him- self with perfect firmness, but without the least in- trusive forwardness ; and when he differed in opin- ion he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at BURNS BURNS 45 the same time with modesty. I do not remember any of his conversation distinctly enough to be quoted, nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, where he did not recognize me, as I could not expect he should. " The story itself is familiar to all admirers of both the poets, but the question of the identity of the house has been the subject of much discussion among the local historians and antiquaries for many years. That it was the house of Professor Adam Ferguson there is no doubt, but as to where the professor at that time lived the doctors differ. In Peter Williamson's "Edinburgh Directory " of 1786-88, his address is given as Argyle Square — which is near the University, and which disappeared on the construction of Chambers Street — and this fact led to the inference that the meeting must have occurred in that place, as Burns was in Edinburgh during the winter of 1786-87. But Scott himself speaks of Ferguson as living in an insulated house some distance from the town (Argyle Square was almost in the heart of the city); in a biographical sketch of Ferguson, printed in " The Transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society" (1861-64), the writer says he lived at that time "in a suburb called the Sciennes;" Henry Cockburn in his " Memorials" says, " Old Adam Ferguson lived just east of my father's house," which would point clearly to the neighborhood of the Sciennes ; and to crown all, Mr. Archibald Munro, in a letter to one of the Edin- burgh papers published about ten years ago, says 46 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH he found a printed record in the Register Office showing that Professor Ferguson disposed of his house in Argyle Square on the 3d of October, 1786 — almost two months before Burns arrived in town — and that he got possession of Sciennes House on the nth of October of the same year. This must surely settle the question of locality. Certain anti- quaries assert that the stone cottage now called Alice Villa, and numbered 2 Sciennes Hill, was Fer- guson's home — a claim which neither the size nor the modern construction of the house would seem to warrant. So that the old building, or what is left of it, still known as Sciennes House — and here for the first time pictured — certainly appears to have been "the spot Where Robert Burns ordained Sir Walter Scott." It stands on the north side of Braid's Place — which is not numbered — two doors from the street called "The Sciennes." The present front, entirely rebuilt, was the back of the house occupied by Fer- guson. The original front, still remaining in part, looked out upon its own grounds, now a paved yard full of children and of drying clothes. This front is not visible from the streets about it, and the fact of its existence is comparatively unknown even to the inhabitants of its own immediate neighborhood. Sciennes House in its day must have been an im- posing mansion. It has four windows in breadth, and is three stories high ; on its roof is a balustrade, SCOTT 47 and groups of flowers and fruits carved in stone are still to be seen upon it. The name Sciennes, by the way, is derived from the old Convent of St. Katherine of Siena, which once stood near by, and the word is pronounced in the local vernacular as if spelled " Sheens." The fact that all of these points are now for the first time established and made public must be the excuse for the devotion of so much space to this particular matter. Those lovers of Scott who love the inanimate things which Scott loved will find much Scott . to interest them in Edinburgh ; for, with the exception of the house in which he was born, almost all of his homes and haunts in the metropolis are still to be seen there, and in very much the same state as that in which he saw them. A tablet upon the modern- house No. 8 Chambers Street, between South Bridge Street and West Col- lege Street, states that it was built upon the site of the birthplace of Sir Walter Scott. This stood at the head of College Wynd, described as " a steep and straitened alley " ascending from the Cowgate towards the southern side of the town. It was orig- inally called the Wynd of the Blessed-Mary-in-the- Field, and what is left of it is now called Guthrie Street, perhaps after the famous Dr. Guthrie, who never officially recognized the Blessed Mary any- where. Scott's house and others about it were pulled down, when Scott was a child, to make room for the front of the new College, and the family 48 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH moved to No. 25 George Square, into a broad and rather imposing mansion in what was once a fash- ionable quarter, and is still the home of those who belong to the upper middle class if not to the gentry. It may be described as the Washington Square or Chester Park of Edinburgh. The Scotts' house is entirely unchanged, although the buildings on each side of it have been retouched and regar- nished. It is close to the Meadows, and almost in the country. This, according to his own statement, continued to be his " most established place of residence (after his return from Prestonpans in 1776) until his mar- riage in 1797." Here Mrs. Cockburn, who wrote "The Flowers of the Forest," found in 1777 "the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made him read on. It was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands. ' That's the mast gone,' says he ; ' crash it goes. They will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me. ' That is too melan- choly,' says he; 'I had better read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little chat, and asked him his opinion of Milton and other books he was reading, which he gave me wonderfully. . . . Pray what age do you suppose this boy to be? Why, twelve or fourteen. No such thing. He is not quite six years old !" In this same George Square house, in 1791, Jeffrey went to see the young Scott "in a small den in the sunk floor, surrounded by SCOTT SCOTT 49 dingy books ;" and here he made the translation of Burger's " Lenore," his first published literary work. Scott's earliest school was in a " small cottage-like building with a red-tiled roof, in Hamilton's Entry, off Bristo Street." It was taken down not very long ago, the rear of the house No. 30 Bristo Street occu- pying its site now. In 1779 he went to the High- school, where he remained some years. He entered the University in 1783. Scott's High -school was the second of that name. It is now the City Hos- pital, at the foot of Infirmary Street, and so far as its exterior is concerned it is entirely unchanged. A story of his conduct here, as told by himself, is too good to be lost. " There was a boy in my class at school who stood always at the top, nor could I with all my efforts supplant him. Day came after day and still he kept his place, do what I would, till at length I observed that when a question was asked him he always fumbled with his fingers at a partic- ular button in the lower part of his waistcoat. To remove it, therefore, became expedient in my eyes, and in an evil moment it was removed with a knife. Great was my anxiety to know the success of my measure ; and it succeeded too well. When the boy was again questioned, his fingers sought again for the button, but it was not to be found. In his distress he looked down for it ; it was to be seen no more than to be felt. He stood confounded, and I took possession of his place; nor did he ev S^ Burton, John Hill, 23. Cad ell, Robert, 51. Campbell, Thomas, 44, 55, 60-1. Carfrae, Mrs., 37. Carlyle, Alexander, 25, 26, 28. Carlyle, Thomas, 60, 65-7. Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas, 65-6. Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., 69. Chambers, Robert, 21-2, 24. 61,63-4. Chambers, William, 63-4. Charteris, Francis (Lord El- cho), 40. "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose), 39-44- Cockburn, Mrs. Catherine, 48-9, 69. Cockburn, Henry, 45. Constable, Archibald, 54, 56. Creech, William, 31, 33. Croker, John Wilson, 21. Cromek, R. H., 37. Cruikshank, William, 38. Cunningham, Allan, yj. Davies, Thomas, 20. De Foe, Daniel, 69. De Quincey, Thomas, 66, 67-8. Dickens, Charles, 66. Douglas, Downey, 42. Dowie, "Johnnie," 35, 41-2, 55, 62. Drummond, William, 15, 16- 18,31. Elcho, Lord (Francis Char- teris), 40. Elliot, Jean, 69. Erskine, Henry, 18. 74 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH Ferguson, Adam, 25, 26, 28, 33-4,42,43,45-6. ' Ferguson, Robert, 29, 33, 34-7. Gay, John, 32-3. Goethe, John Wolfgang, 66. Goldsmith, Oliver, 69. Grant, Alexander, 52. Gray, Thomas, 17. Grierson, Thomas, 43. Guthrie, Thomas, D.D.,47, 69. Hawkins, Letitia, 20. Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 55- Hogg, James, 54, 55> 5^-8. Holland Lady, 63. Home, John, 25, 26-9. Hone, William, 41. Horace, 64. Horner, Francis, 62. Hume, David, 22-4, 25, 26, 27, 28, 42. Jamieson, John, 22. Jeffrey, Francis, 48, 54, 59-60, 63, 65-6. Johnson, Samuel, 18-22, 31,41. Jonson, Ben, 16, 17, 18. Laing, David, 59. Laing, William, 59. Lamb, Charles, 67. Langhorne, John, 43. Langton, Bennet, 20. Lenox, Charlotte, 20. Lindsay, Lady Anne, 69. Lockhart, John Gibson, 38, 42, 50,51,52,56,57,58-9. Manderson, Mr., 62. Masson, David, 68. McBryde, Anthony C, xiv., 6 1 . McKenzie, Henry, 25, 29-30, 33- Middlemist, " Lucky," 34-5. Miller, Hugh, 69. Milton, John, 48. M'Lehose, Mrs. (" Clarinda"), 39-4o. Monboddo, Lord, 37, 41, 53. Munro, Archibald, 45-6. Murphy, Arthur, 20. Nasmyth, Alexander, 44. Nicoll, William, 38. ■ " Peter Pindar" (John Wol- cot), 20. Pollok, Robert, 64-5. Porter, Lucy, 20. Pringle, " Lucky," 38. Prior, Matthew, 32. Procter, Bryan Waller, 60. Queensberry, Duchess of, 32-3. Ramsay, Allan, 15, 29, 30-2, 33- Ramsay, Edward Bannerman, D.D., 69. Reed, Stuart J., 63. Richard, Prior, 16. Richmond, John, 37. Robertson, William, D.D., 25, 28, 33- Scott, Michael (1214-1300), 16. Scott, Michael (1789-1835), 16. Scott, Lady, 50, 51, 57-8. Scott, Walter, Mr., 52. Scott, Mrs. Walter, 52. Scott, Walter, Sir, 15, 26, 42- 54,55,57-8,59,60,63,66. Sinclair, Catherine, 69-70. Smellie, William, 42. Smith, Adam, 25, 26, 33, 42. Smith, Sydney, 59, 62-3. Smollett, Tobias, 24-5, 26. Steele, Sir Richard, 69. INDEX OF PERSONS 75 Stewart, Dugald, 28, 33, 43. Telfer, Mrs., 24. Thackeray, William Make- peace, 70-71. Thrale, Mrs. Henry, 20. Voltaire, 22. Walker, Helen, 53. Wallace, Robert, D.D., 25. Walpole, Horace, 32-3. Warde, Sarah, 28. Watson, William Stewart, 40. Wesley, John, 69. Wilkie, William, D.D., 25. Williams, Anna, 20. Williamson, Peter, 45. Wilson, John, 15, 54-6,66. Wilson, Jane Emily fMrs. Ay- toun), 55. Wolcot, John, 20. INDEX t>F PLACES Abbotsford, 51, 52, 58. Advocates' Library, 18. Ainslie Place, 33, 69. Alison Square, 55, 61. Ambrose's Tavern, 55, 56. Anchor Close, 42. Ann Street, 56. Anne Street, 54, 64. Apollo Club, 62. Argyle Square, 25, 45, 46. Arthur's Seat, 60. Assembly Rooms, George Street, 5 1 . Athens, xiii. Athol Crescent, 51, 58. Baxter's Close, 37-8. Bernard Street, Leith, 27. Blackfriars' Monastery, 17. Blair's Close, 69. Boak's Land, 64. Boyd's Close, 19. Braid's Place, 46. Bristo Place, 34, 66. Bristo Street, 40, 49, 63. Broughton, 25. Brown Square, 29. 69. Buccleuch Parish Church, 69. Buccleuch Pend, 37, 38. Buccleuch Place, 38, 59, 63. Buccleuch Road, 37, 38. Buccleuch Street, 38. Burns Tavern, 35. Cafe Royal, 56. Calton Burying-ground, 24. Calton Hill, 61. Candlemaker Row, 56, 61. Canongate, 16, 19, 23, 24, 26, 28,32-3,41, 52,59. Canongate Church-yard, 26, 33> 34, 36-7. Canongate Theatre, 28. Cap and Feather Close, 34. Cape Club, 35. Carrubber's Close, 32. Castle, The, 15, 18, 32. Castle Hill, 16,69. Castle Street, 50, 54, 57. Chambers Street, 29, 45, 47. Chapel Street, 69. Charles Street, 59. Charlotte Chapel, 63. Church-hill, 69. City Cross, 31. City Hospital, 14, 49. City of Glasgow Insurance Company, 61. Coates Crescent, 51, 64. Cockburn Street, 42. Cockburn Tavern, 35. College Wynd, 47, 52, 69. Comely Bank, 65-6. Convent of St. Katherine of Siena, 47. Corstorphine Hill, 70-1. Cowgate, 18, 29, 35, 47, 52, 61. Craig's Close, 35. Cranston Street, 53. Creech's Land, 31, 33. Crichton Street, 69. 78 LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH Cross Causeway, 69. Darien House, 34. Davie Street, 65. Dean Cemetery, 54, 60. Dean Road, 70. Dean Terrace, 57. Deanhaugh Street, 54, 56-7. Divinity Hall, 64. Douglas Hotel, 51. Dowie's Tavern, 35, 41-2, 55, 62. Duddingston, 68. Duddingston Church, 53. East Richmond Street, 65. Forres Street, 68, 69. Gabriel's Road, 55, 56. General Post-office, 39. General's Entry, 40. George IV. Bridge, 29, 35. George Square, 48-9, 64. George Street, 50, 51, 52, 54, 59, 60,61, 62, 65. Gibb's Entry, 66. Gloucester Place, 54. Grange Cemetery, 25, 69. Grange House, 25. Grass-market, 56. Great King Street, 68. Great Stuart Street, 55. Greenside, 39. Greyfriars' Church-yard, 25, 29-30,30-1, 52,61,69. Guthrie Street, 47. Hamilton's Entry, 49, 63. Hanover Street, 51. Harrow Inn, 56. Hawthornden, 16, 17, 18, 19, 31,68. Heriot Row, 29, 69. High School, 16, 17, 29, 33, 34, 38, 39> 49> 64. High School Wynd, 17. High Street, 16, 21, 22, 31-2, 35,38,42,52,69. High Street, Portobello, 69. Holyrood Palace, 15. Horse Wynd, 28, 33. House of Refuge, 33. Howgate, 56. Hyndford's Close, 52, 69. India Place, 64. Infirmary Street, 17,49. Inveresk, 26. Inverleith Terrace, 55. Isle of Man's Arms Tavern, 35. Jack's Land, 23. James's Court, 21, 23, 25. Jamaica, 39. " Jennie Dean's Cottage," 53. "Johnnie" Dowie's Tavern, 35,41-2,55,62. Kennedy's Close, 69. Kilduff, 27. Kilmarnock, 30. Kilwinning Lodge of Free- masons, 37, 40-1, 58. Kirkgate Street, Leith, 27. Lady Stair's Close, 38, 69. Lasswade, 18, 68. Lawn-market, 21, 22, 29, 37. Leith, 27. Leith Walk, 64, 66. Leith Wynd, 53. Liberton's Wynd, 29, 35. Little Jock's Close, 23. London, xiii., 20, 62. Lothian Hut, 33. Lothian Road, 68. Lothian Street, 68. Luckenbooths, 31. Maitland Street, 51, 58. Marshall Street, 40, 61. INDEX OF PLACES 79 Mauchline, 37. Meadows, The, 48, 63. Melville Street, Portobello, 58. Middlefield Street, 66. Midford House, 68. Moray Place, 54, 59-60. Morningside, 69. Murray Street, 66. Mussleburgh, 26, 28. Netherbow, 16. New Calton Cemetery, 70. New Register House, 55, 56. Nicolson Square, 61. Nicolson Street, 61, 65, 66. Niddry Street, 31. Niddry's Wynd, 31, 34. North Bridge, 34, 56, 62. North St. David Street, 64. Northumberland Street, 58. Old Calton Burying-ground, 24. Panmure Close, 26. Panmure House, 26. Paris, France, 16. Parliament House, 18. Pilrig Street, 64, 66. Playhouse Close, 28. Polton Mill, 68. Portobello, 58, 63, 69. Post-office, 39. Potterrow, 40, 61. Prestonpans, 48. Princes Street, 51, 52, 54. Princes Street Gardens, 32. Quality Street, Leith, 27. Queen Street, 33, 54, 59, 62. Queen Street Gardens, 29, 54, 59- Queensberry House, 32-3. Raeburn Place, 57. Ramsay Gardens, 32. Ramsay Place, 32. Regent's Road, 70. Register House, 46, 55. Riddle's Close, 22, 23. Rose Street, 23, 63. Roslin, 19, 37, 41. Rutland Street, 70. St. Andrews, Fife, 64. St. Andrew Square, 23, 51, 52, 61. St. Cuthbert's Church, 64. St. Cuthbert's Church -yard, 68. St. David Street, 23, 50-1, 61. St. Giles Church, 15, 18, 31. St. James Square, 37, 39. St. John Street, 24, 37, 41, 53. St. John's Church, 52. St. John's Church-yard, yo. St. Leonard's Hill, 53. St. Mary Street, 19. St. Mary's Wynd, 19, 59. St. Patrick Square, 38. " Saut Market," 50. Sciennes, The, 45, 46. Sciennes Hill, 46. Sciennes House, 37, 46-7. Scottish Union and Insurance Company, 51. Scott Monument, 15. Shandwick Place, 51. Signet Library, 59. Silvermills, 56. Simon Square, 66. Six-Feet Club, 55. South Back of Canongate, 41. South Bridge, 35, 56, 59. South Bridge Street, 47. South Castle Street, 50. South Hanover Street, 62. South Leith Parish Church, 27. Spey Street, 66. Stockbridge, 64. 8o LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH Stockbridge Public Park, 65. Tron Church, 24, 69. United Presbyterian Church, Rose Street, 65. University, 16, 17, 18, 27, 28, 29.33,45.49,55,61,64. Walker Street, 51. Waterloo Place, 39. Water of Leith, 54, 57. Waverley Bridge, 56. West College Street, 47. West Kirk (St. Cuthbert's), 64. West Nicolson Street, 63. West Port, 64. West Register Street, 56. West Richmond Street, 65. White Horse Inn, Boyd's Close, 19. White Horse Inn, White Horse Wynd, 19. White Horse Wynd, 19. Whitfield Chapel, 32. Wynd of the Blessed-Mary- in-the-Field, 47. THE END. LITERARY LANDMARKS OF LONDON. By Laurence Hutton. pp. xii., 363. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth. New Edition in Press. It is a volume that every one should possess who takes an interest in the local associations which London is so full of, unknown though they be to the vast majority of its inhabitants. With this compen- dium in one's hand there is hardly a walk that one can take in London in which some fresh feature of interest would not be disclosed for all persons who have any taste for, and knowledge of, literature and letters. — Standard, London. It is brief and to the point, yet is enriched with many a quaint story and many a pleasing reminiscence. It is a model of industry. — Literary World, London. A book which is so obviously what we all constantly want that it seems odd and hard to believe that it has not been forestalled long ago. True, places of literary association are noted incidentally in ordinary hand-books, but this is the first work in which a systematic attempt has been made to trace the residences of literary worthies in London. Mr. Hutton has attained a great measure of completeness in his task, and it would be difficult to name any author of importance he has omitted. . . . Altogether, this is a book of which literary America may be proud, and literary London ashamed. Mr. Hutton has done for us what we have never done for ourselves. — Saturday Review, London. The plan laid down by the author is admirably carried out, and the main object is distinctly kept in view from beginning to end. There is no attempt to write lives of the persons chronicled, but all the facts connected with the London residences of those authors included in the book are marshalled with care, and the result is a most readable volume. Mr. Hutton has not been content to gather his materials from the various sources available, but he has taken care to verify the different statements on the spot. — Athenceu??i, London. It would be difficult to praise Mr. Hutton too highly for the spirit in which he has conceived his design, and for the thoroughness with which he has carried it out. Not content with collecting the occa- sional references of his predecessors, he has cheerfully undertaken the double drudgery of verifying their statements (wherever possible), by means of contemporary documents, and by tracing the succession of bricks and mortar down to the year 1885. He has thus written not only for the present but also for the future. . . . Our children will therefore be grateful to Mr. Hutton for commemorating in each case the result of his own inspection of every historic house, its condition, and its present name and number. And we ourselves thank him for having incalculably augmented the value of his book for use by two exhaustive indexes — the one of names, the other of places. — Acad- emy, London. , Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. The above work will be sent by mail ', postage paid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. THE AMERICAN STAGE. Curiosities of the American Stage. By Laurence Hut- ton. With Copious and Characteristic Illustrations, pp. xi., 347. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $2 50. Mr. Hutton has packed a marvellous amount of curious informa- tion into his pages. ... To collectors this volume must be quite in- dispensable, and there is no lover of the theatre who will not find it entertaining and instructive. — JV. Y. Tribune. Mr. Hutton writes entertainingly and with knowledge of the stage, and his new book is crammed full of facts. . . . No writer on this sub- ject is more painstaking and accurate than Laurence Hutton. His sources of information are as trustworthy as possible. His memory is generally clear and unerring. — N. Y. Times. Theatrical literature has nothing better and few things as good. . . . Mr. Hutton seems to have an inexhaustible fund of personal reminis- cences, and to these he has added all sorts of curious information from other sources. — Cincinnati Times- Star. One of the most important contributions yet made to the history of our native drama. ... It is not only a history of the American stage, but it suggests the interests and amusements of the American people for the past century, and the advance in literary and dramatic stand- ards. This is a book which will fill a valuable and permanent place as a book of reference, and as a cleverly told and interesting history of the people who have amused the American public. . . . Mr. Hut- ton is to be congratulated upon the clearness and fulness of his work, which, taken as a whole, is a unique and valuable addition to the lit- erature of this century. — Boston Traveller. This is by far the best book of its kind; some readers may go fur- ther and pronounce it the only book of its kind. Neither historical nor biographical, it is full of interesting chat about stage people — more than five hundred of them. — N. Y. Herald. Mr. Hutton has brought to bear on his subject both sympathy and appreciation. Moreover, his well-tested knowledge and his well- known accuracy stamp all his statements with a double value, all of these things giving to his " Curiosities " an importance not to be attained by the average collection, and carrying his volume far beyond the level of his own modest estimate. — N. Y. Mail and Express. Mr. Hutton has an unerring instinct for discerning what to collect and what to omit from his book. A more delightful treasury of the " Curiosities of the American Stage " it would be difficult to conceive. — Philadelphia Ledger. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS,New York. TJie above work will be sent by mail, postage Paid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.