iction Fair
and Foul," "Nineteenth Century," 1880, p. 955.]--"Rob Roy" is a
sufficient answer to these theories. The mind of Scott was no slave to
his body.

The success of the story is pleasantly proved by a sentence in a review
of the day: "It is an event unprecedented in the annals either of
literature or of the custom-house that the entire cargo of a packet, or
smack, bound from Leith to London, should be the impression of a novel,
for which the public curiosity was so much upon the alert as to require
this immense importation to satisfy."

Ten thousand copies of a three-volume novel are certainly a ponderous
cargo, and Constable printed no fewer in his first edition. Scott was
assured of his own triumph in February 1819, when a dramatised version of
his novel was acted in Edinburgh by the company of Mr. William Murray, a
descendant of the traitor Murray of Broughton. Mr. Charles Mackay made a
capital Bailie, and the piece remains a favourite with Scotch audiences.
It is plain, from the reviews, that in one respect "Rob Roy" rather
disappointed the world. They had expected Rob to be a much more imposing
and majestic cateran, and complained that his foot was set too late on
his native heather. They found too much of the drover and intriguer, too
little of the traditional driver of the spoil. This was what Scott
foresaw when he objected to "writing up to a title." In fact, he did not
write up to, it, and, as the "Scots Magazine" said, "shaped his story in
such a manner as to throw busybodies out in their chase, with a slight
degree of malicious finesse." "All the expeditions to the wonderful cave
have been thrown away, for the said cave is not once, we think, mentioned
from beginning to end."

"Rob Roy" equals "Waverley" in its pictures of Highland and Lowland
society and character. Scott had clearly set himself to state his
opinions about the Highlands as they were under the patriarchal system of
government. The Highlanders were then a people, not lawless, indeed, but
all their law was the will of their chief. Bailie Nicol Jarvie makes a
statement of their economic and military condition as accurate as it is
humorous. The modern "Highland Question" may be studied as well in the
Bailie's words as in volumes of history and wildernesses of blue-books.
A people patriarchal and military as the Arabs of the desert were
suddenly dragged into modern commercial and industrial society. All old
bonds were snapped in a moment