kpatrick Sharpe, his
friend in life, disported himself in jealous and ribald mockery of
Scott's archaeological knowledge, when Scott was dead. In a letter of
the enigmatic Thomas Allen, or James Stuart Hay, father of John Sobieski
and Charles Edward Stuart, this mysterious person avers that he never
knew Scott's opinion to be held as of any value by antiquaries (1829).
They probably missed in him "a sort of pettifogging intimacy with dates,
names, and trifling matters of fact,--a tiresome and frivolous accuracy
of memory" which Sir Arthur Wardour reproves in Monkbarns. Scott, in
brief, was not as Dry-as-dust; all the dead bones that he touches come
to life. He was as great an archeologist as a poet can be, and, with
Virgil, was the greatest antiquary among poets. Like Monkbarns, he was
not incapable of being beguiled. As Oldbuck bought the bodle from the
pedlar at the price of a rare coin, so Scott took Surtees's "Barthram's
Dirge," and his Latin legend of the tourney with the spectre knight, for
genuine antiquities. No Edie Ochiltree ever revealed to him the truth
about these forgeries, and the spectre knight, with the ballad of
"Anthony Featherstonhaugh," hold their own in "Marmion," to assure the
world that this antiquary was gullible when the sleight was practised by
a friend. "Non est tanti," he would have said, had he learned the truth;
for he was ever conscious of the humorous side of the study of the
mouldering past. "I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much
from the sullens as a trifling discourse about antiquarian oldwomanries.
It is like knitting a stocking,--diverting the mind without occupying
it." ("Journal," March 9, 1828).

Begun about Jan. 1, 1816, "The Antiquary" was published before May 16,
1816, when Scott writes to say that he has sent Mr. Morritt the novel
"some time since." "It is not so interesting as its predecessors; the
period does not admit of so much romantic situation. But it has been
more fortunate than any of them in the sale, for six thousand went off
in the first six days, and it is now at press again." The Preface of the
first edition ends with the melancholy statement that the author "takes
his respectful leave, as one who is not likely again to solicit favour."
Apparently Scott had already determined not to announce his next novels
("The Black Dwarf" and "Old Mortality") as "by the Author of Waverley."
Mr. Constable, in the biography of his father, says (iii. 84): "Even