Three generations

ELIZABETH TAYLOR 265
that his lecture-room resounded as often with the
Scotch songs so dear to his heart, and with the Scotch
versions of ancient philosophies, as with quotations
from the poets of Mount Parnassus and from the
sages of the porches and schools of Athens.
A resident in Edinburgh, Elizabeth Taylor, had just
struck an original powerful note in fiction by her
novel " Blindpits," followed by another novel, " Quick-
star," neither of which received all the attention it
deserved, while death cut her career short in early
middle-life. She began her authorship by a temperance
tale named " Rachel Noble," which won the prize
awarded to the best among a number of candidates.
She was a woman of much mental vigour. Intimately
connected with one of the earlier Dissenting churches
in Scotland, she had a great deal of the pungency
verging on good-natured defiance of many of its able
and militant sons. She was also not without the
limiting prejudices of the circle in which she had
moved. In person she was plain-featured, but one
soon forgot her looks in her bright, keen intelligence.
The friendship which sprung up between us I found
a great boon, while I was aware of her scorn, for the
dash of sentimentality which had its snares for me, as
for most women, had left me at her mercy. But when
an editor who greatly admired Miss Taylor's work
urged me to suggest to her some trifling changes in
the style of her stories, which might render them more
widely popular, and I with many misgivings, so clear
was my conviction of her superiority to her adviser,
complied with his request, she met the few halting
hints with the utmost magnanimity and candour, to
my relieved surprise.
She used to profess that I had the advantage of her