Mackintosh is informed on excellent authority that the
writer is Mrs. Thomas Scott. Writing to Blackwood in
February, 1817, Murray avers,--"I will believe, till
within an inch of my life, that the author of _Tales of
my Landlord_ is Thomas Scott."--See Smiles's _Memoir of
John Murray_, vol. i. pp. 461, 473, 474.]]

TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON.

EDINBURGH, 18th December, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,--I give you heartily joy of the success of the
Tales, although I do not claim that paternal interest in
them which my friends do me the credit to assign me. I
assure you I have never read a volume of them until they
were printed, and can only join with the rest of the world
in applauding the true and striking portraits which they
present of old Scottish manners. I do not expect implicit
reliance to be placed on my disavowal, because I know very
well that he who is disposed not to own a work must
necessarily deny it, and that otherwise {p.126} his secret
would be at the mercy of all who choose to ask the question,
since silence in such a case must always pass for consent,
or rather assent. But I have a mode of convincing you that I
am perfectly serious in my denial--pretty similar to that by
which Solomon distinguished the fictitious from the real
mother--and that is, by reviewing the work, which I take to
be an operation equal to that of quartering the child. But
this is only on condition I can have Mr. Erskine's
assistance, who admires the work greatly more than I do,
though I think the painting of the second Tale both true and
powerful. I knew Old Mortality very well; his name was
Paterson, but few knew him otherwise than by his nickname.
The first Tale is not very original in its concoction, and
lame and impotent in its conclusion. My love to Gifford. I
have been over head and ears in work this summer, or I would
have sent the Gypsies; indeed I was partly stopped by
finding it impossible to procure a few words of their
language.

Constable wrote to me about two months since, desirous of
having a new edition of Paul; but not hearing from you, I
conclude you are still on hand. Longman's people had then
only sixty copies.

Kind comp