 is, the ride seemed agreeable to both gentlemen, because they
found amusement in each other's conversation, although their characters and
habits of thinking were in many respects totally opposite. Edward, we have
informed the reader, was warm in his feelings, wild and romantic in his ideas
and in his taste of reading, with a strong disposition towards poetry. Mr.
Bradwardine was the reverse of all this, and piqued himself upon stalking
through life with the same upright, starched, stoical gravity which
distinguished his evening promenade upon the terrace of Tully-Veolan, where for
hours together, the very model of old Hardyknute,
 
Stately stepped he east the wa',
And stately stepped he west.
 
As for literature, he read the classic poets, to be sure, and the Epithalamium
of Georgius Buchanan, and Arthur Johnston's Psalms, of a Sunday; and the Deliciæ
Poetarum Scotorum, and Sir David Lindsay's Works, and Barbour's Bruce, and Blind
Harry's Wallace, and the Gentle Shepherd, and the Cherry and the Slae. But
though he thus far sacrificed his time to the Muses, he would, if the truth must
be spoken, have been much better pleased had the pious or sapient apothegms, as
well as the historical narratives, which these various works contained, been
presented to him in the form of simple prose. And he sometimes could not refrain
from expressing contempt of the »vain and unprofitable art of poem-making,« in
which, he said, »the only one who had excelled in his time was Allan Ramsay, the
periwig-maker.«25
    But although Edward and he differed toto coelo, as the Baron would have
said, upon this subject, yet they met upon history as on a neutral ground, in
which each claimed an interest. The Baron, indeed, only cumbered his memory with
matters of fact - the cold, dry, hard outlines which history delineates. Edward,
on the contrary, loved to fill up and round the sketch with the colouring of a
warm and vivid imagination, which gives light and life to the actors and
speakers in the drama of past ages. Yet with tastes so opposite, they
contributed greatly to each other's amusement. Mr. Bradwardine's minute
narratives and powerful memory supplied to Waverley fresh subjects of the kind
upon which his fancy loved to labour, and opened to him a new mine of incident
and of character. And he repaid the pleasure thus communicated by an earnest
attention, valuable to all story-tellers, more especially to the Baron, who felt
his habits
