ligence, from his
warm affection for the noble representative of its author. This
inimitable Memorie of the Somervilles came out in October; and it was
speedily followed by an annotated reprint of the strange old treatise,
entitled "Rowland's letting off the humours of the blood in the head
vein, 1611." He had also kept up his private correspondence on a scale
which I believe never to have been exemplified in the case of any
other person who wrote continually for the press--except, perhaps,
Voltaire; and, to say nothing of strictly professional duties, he had,
as a vast heap of documents now before me proves, superintended from
day to day, except during his Hebridean voyage, the still perplexed
concerns of the Ballantynes, with a watchful assiduity that might have
done credit to the most diligent of tradesmen. The "machine" might
truly require "refreshment."

It was, as has been seen, on the 7th of November that Scott
acknowledged the receipt of that communication from Mr. Train which
included the story of the Galloway astrologer. There can be no doubt
that this story recalled to his mind, if not the Durham ballad, the
similar but more detailed corruption of it which he had heard told by
his father's servant, John MacKinlay, in the days of George's Square
and Green-breeks, and which he has preserved in the introduction to
Guy Mannering, as the groundwork of that tale. It has been shown that
the three last Cantos of The Lord of the Isles were written between
the 11th of November and the 25th of December; and it is therefore
scarcely to be supposed that any part of this novel had been penned
before he thus talked of "refreshing the machine." It is quite certain
that when James Ballantyne wrote to Miss Edgeworth on the {p.012}
11th November, he could not have seen one page of Guy Mannering, since
he in that letter announces that the new novel of his nameless friend
would depict manners _more ancient_ than those of 1745. And yet it is
equally certain, that before The Lord of the Isles was _published_,
which took place on the 18th of January, 1815, two volumes of Guy
Mannering had been not only written and copied by an amanuensis, but
printed.

Scott thus writes to Morritt, in sending him his copy of The Lord of
the Isles:--

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., WORTHING.

EDINBURGH, 19th January, 1815.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have been very foolishly putting off my
wri