They lay wait for the minister and pistol him, the Illustrious
Friend managing not only to avert all suspicion from themselves, but to
throw it with capital consequences on a perfectly innocent person. After
this initiation in blood Robert is fully reconciled to the "great work"
and, going to Edinburgh, is led by his Illustrious Friend without
difficulty into the series of plots against his brother which had to
outsiders so strange an appearance, and which ended in a fresh murder.
When Robert in the course of events above described becomes master of
Dalchastel, the family estate, his Illustrious Friend accompanies him
and the same process goes on. But now things turn less happily for
Robert. He finds himself, without any consciousness of the acts charged,
accused on apparently indubitable evidence, first of peccadillos, then
of serious crimes. Seduction, forgery, murder, even matricide are hinted
against him, and at last, under the impression that indisputable proofs
of the last two crimes have been discovered, he flies from his house.
After a short period of wandering, in which his Illustrious Friend
alternately stirs up all men against him and tempts him to suicide, he
finally in despair succumbs to the temptation and puts an end to his
life. This of course ends the _Memoir_, or rather the _Memoir_ ends just
before the catastrophe. There is then a short postscript in which the
editor tells a tale of a suicide found with some such legend attaching
to him on a Border hillside, of an account given in _Blackwood_ of the
searching of the grave, and of a visit to it made by himself (the
editor), his friend Mr. L----t of C----d [Lockhart of Chiefswood], Mr.
L----w [Scott's Laidlaw] and others. The whole thing ends with a very
well written bit of rationalisation of the now familiar kind,
discussing the authenticity of the _Memoirs_, and concluding that they
are probably the work of some one suffering from religious mania, or
perhaps a sort of parable or allegory worked out with insufficient
skill.

Although some such account as this was necessary, no such account,
unless illustrated with the most copious citation, could do justice to
the book. The first part or Narrative is not of extraordinary, though it
is of considerable merit, and has some of Hogg's usual faults. The
_Memoirs_ proper are almost wholly free from these faults. In no book
known to me is the grave treatment of the topsy-turvy and improbable
better managed; al