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.'
[The Baron ought to have remembered that the joyous Allan literally drew
his blood from the house of the noble Earl, whom he terms--
Dalhousie of an old descent,
My stoup, my pride, my ornament.]
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.
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