own knowledge. Some mad young wags, wishing to test the
critical powers of an experienced collector, sent him a new-made
ballad, which they had been enabled to secure only in a fragmentary
form. To the surprise of its fabricator, it was duly printed; but what
naturally raised his surprise to astonishment, and revealed to him a
secret, was, that it was no longer a fragment, but a complete
ballad,--the collector, in the course of his industrious inquiries among
the peasantry, having been so fortunate as to recover the missing
fragments! It was a case where neither could say anything to the other,
though Cato might wonder _quod non rideret haruspex, haruspicem cum
vidisset_. This ballad has been printed in more than one collection, and
admired as an instance of the inimitable simplicity of the genuine old
versions!

It may perhaps do something to mitigate Surtees's offence in the eye of
the world, that it was he who first suggested to Scott the idea of
improving the Jacobite insurrections, and, in fact, writing Waverley. In
the very same letter, quoted above, where Scott acknowledges the
treacherous gift, he also acknowledges the hints he has received; and,
mentioning the Highland stories he had imbibed from old Stewart of
Invernahyle, says: "I believe there never was a man who united the
ardour of a soldier and tale-teller--or man of talk, as they call it in
Gaelic--in such an excellent degree; and as he was as fond of telling as
I was of hearing, I became a violent Jacobite at the age of ten years
old; and even since reason and reading came to my assistance, I have
never got rid of the impression which the gallantry of Prince Charles
made on my imagination. Certainly I will not renounce the idea of doing
something to preserve these stories, and the memory of times and manners
which, though existing as it were yesterday, have so strangely vanished
from our eyes."

So much for certain men of mark whose pursuits or hobbies induced them
to cluster round the cradle of this new literary organisation. When it
was full grown it gathered about it a large body of systematic workers,
who had their own special departments in the great republic of letters.
To offer a just and discriminating account of these men's services would
draw me through an extensive tract of literary biography.

There is a shallow prejudice very acceptable to all blockheads, that men
who are both learned and laborious must necessarily be stupid. It is
best