at
"the author has cruelly falsified history," and relates the actual
circumstances in reference to these generals. "We know little," he says,
"that the author can say for himself to excuse these sophistications,
and, therefore, may charitably suggest that he was writing a romance,
and not a history." In conclusion, the reviewer observed, "We intended
here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of
certain trans-Atlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we
know nothing), assign a different author to these volumes than the party
suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused
seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily
expressed by Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had
been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver who used to hold forth at
conventicles. "I sent to seek the webster (weaver); they brought in his
_brother_ for him; though he maybe cannot preach like his brother, I
doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it
would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to the jail with
the rest."

Mr. Murray seems to have accepted the suggestion and wrote in January
1817 to Mr. Blackwood:

"I can assure you, but _in the greatest confidence_, that I have
discovered the author of all these Novels to be Thomas Scott, Walter
Scott's brother. He is now in Canada. I have no doubt but that Mr.
Walter Scott did a great deal to the first 'Waverley Novel,' because of
his anxiety to serve his brother, and his doubt about the success of the
work. This accounts for the many stories about it. Many persons had
previously heard from Mr. Scott, but you may rely on the certainty of
what I have told you. The whole country is starving for want of a
complete supply of the 'Tales of my Landlord,' respecting the interest
and merit of which there continues to be but one sentiment."

A few weeks later Blackwood wrote to Murray:

_January_ 22, 1817.

"It is an odd story here, that Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott are the authors
of all these Novels. I, however, still think, as Mr. Croker said to me
in one of his letters, that if they were not by Mr. Walter Scott, the
only alternative is to give them to the devil, as by one or the other
they must be written."

On the other hand, Bernard Barton wrote to Mr. Murray, and said that he
had "heard that James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was the author of
'Tales of my Landl