'Prominent among these was a set of the poems of Walter Scott, and in his unwonted geniality and provisional spirit of compromise, my Father must do no less than read these works aloud to my stepmother in the quiet spring evenings. This was a sort of aftermath of courtship, a tribute of song, to his bride, very sentimental and pretty. She would sit, sedately, at her work-box, while he, facing her, poured forth the verses at her like a blackbird ... My Father read the verse admirably, with full, - some people ( but not I) might say with a too full - perception of the metre as well as of rhythm, rolling out the rhymes, and glorying in the proper names. He began, and it was a happy choice, with "The Lady of the Lake"...'