e been saved from himself? and
who saved him?--for that great part of the book at least is his there
can be no doubt.

By way of answer to these questions I can at least point out certain
coincidences and probabilities. It has been seen that Lockhart's name
actually figures in the postscript to the book. Now at this time and for
long afterwards Lockhart was one of the closest of Hogg's literary
allies; and Hogg, while admitting that the author of _Peter's Letters_
hoaxed him as he hoaxed everybody, is warm in his praise. He describes
him in his _Autobiography_ as "a warm and disinterested friend." He
tells us in the book on Scott how he had a plan, even later than this,
that Lockhart should edit all his (the Shepherd's) works, for
discouraging which plan he was very cross with Sir Walter. Further, the
vein of the _Confessions_ is very closely akin to, if not wholly
identical with, a vein which Lockhart not only worked on his own account
but worked at this very same time. It was in these very years of his
residence at Chiefswood that Lockhart produced the little masterpiece of
"Adam Blair" (where the terrors and temptations of a convinced
Presbyterian minister are dwelt upon), and "Matthew Wald," which is
itself the history of a lunatic as full of horrors, and those of no very
different kind, as the _Confessions_ themselves. That editing, and
perhaps something more than editing, on Lockhart's part would have been
exactly the thing necessary to prune and train and direct the Shepherd's
disorderly luxuriance into the methodical madness of the Justified
Sinner--to give Hogg's loose though by no means vulgar style the dress
of his own polished manner--to weed and shape and correct and straighten
the faults of the Boar of the Forest--nobody who knows the undoubted
writing of the two men will deny. And Lockhart, who was so careless of
his work that to this day it is difficult, if not impossible, to
ascertain what he did or did not write unassisted, would certainly not
have been the man to claim a share in the book, even had it made more
noise; though he may have thought of this as well as of other things
when, in his wrath over the foolish blethering about Scott, he wrote
that the Shepherd's views of literary morality were peculiar. As for
Hogg himself, he would never have thought of acknowledging any such
editing or collaboration if it did take place; and that not nearly so
much from vanity or dishonesty as from simple carele