lar, that,
instead of drawing up a long-promised disquisition on the Gypsies in a
separate shape, whatever he had to say concerning that picturesque
generation might be introduced by way of comment on the character of
Meg Merrilies. What Scott's original conception had been I know not;
he certainly gave his reviewal all the breadth which Murray could have
wished, and, _inter alia_, diversified it with a few anecdotes of the
Scottish Gypsies. But the late excellent biographer of John Knox, Dr.
Thomas M'Crie, had, in the mean time, considered the representation of
the Covenanters, in the story of Old Mortality, as so unfair as to
demand at his {p.129} hands a very serious rebuke. The Doctor
forthwith published, in a magazine called the Edinburgh Christian
Instructor, a set of papers, in which the historical foundations of
that tale were attacked with indignant warmth; and though Scott, when
he first heard of these invectives, expressed his resolution never
even to read them, he found the impression they were producing so
strong, that he soon changed his purpose, and finally devoted a very
large part of his article for the Quarterly Review to an elaborate
defence of his own picture of the Covenanters.[51]

[Footnote 51: Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I
may as well, to avoid recurrence to it, express here my
conviction, that Erskine, not Scott, was the author of
the critical estimate of the Waverley Novels which it
embraces--although, for the purpose of mystification,
Scott had taken the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs
in which that estimate is contained. At the same time I
cannot but add that, had Scott really been the sole
author of this reviewal, he need not have incurred the
severe censure which has been applied to his supposed
conduct in the matter. After all, his judgment of his
own works must have been allowed to be not above, but
very far under the mark; and the whole affair would, I
think, have been considered by every candid person
exactly as the letter about Solomon and the rival
mothers was by Murray, Gifford, and the "four o'clock
visitors" of Albemarle Street--as a good joke. A better
joke, certainly, than the allusion to the report of