Scott, ‘into his heart and soul;’ he became nerveless and despondent, was finally attacked by fever and delirium, and died on 14 Aug. 1822. Lockhart states that he never saw Scott ‘in such a state of dejection’ as when he accompanied him in attendance upon Kinneder's funeral. At the time George IV was paying his memorable visit to Edinburgh, and Scott, owing to his grief, plunged into the gaiety of the moment with an aching heart. ‘If ever a pure spirit quitted this vale of tears,’ wrote Sir Walter to a friend, ‘it was William Erskine's. I must turn to, and see what can be done about getting some pension for his daughters.’ Lockhart thinks that Erskine was ‘the only man in whose society Scott took great pleasure, during the more vigorous part of his life, that had neither constitution nor inclination for any of the rough bodily exercise in which he himself delighted.’ If, as Erskine supposed, Redmond in ‘Rokeby’ is meant for a portrait of himself, Lockhart must have exaggerated Erskine's effeminacy. Erskine wrote several Scotch songs, one of which is published in Maidment's ‘Court of Session Garland’ (1888), p. 110.
Kinneder had two daughters by his wife, Euphemia Robinson, who died in September 1819. She was buried in the churchyard of Saline, Fife, where there is an epitaph on her tombstone written by Scott.
[Haig and Brunton's Senators of the College of Justice; Sir Walter Scott's Works; Lockhart's Life of Scott. A Sketch of Lord Kinneder, by Hay Donaldson, to which Scott contributed some particulars, was printed for private circulation shortly after his death.]
