"Original communications to Notes and Queries" reprinted "with some trifling alteration" in the first edition of his pamphlet, Mr. Fitzpatrick most disingenuously, as we thought at the time, gave a mutilated extract from a letter of Scott's, which seemed to give some countenance to his theory; omitting the context by which that theory was directly negatived. The letter runs thus:

Dear Tom-A novel here called Waverley has had enormous success. I send you a copy, and will send you another with the Lord of the Isles, which will be out at Christmas. The success which it has had, with some other circumstance, has induced people To lay the bantling at a certain door Where lying store of faults, they'd fain heap more.'

You will guess for yourself how far such a report has credibility; but by no means give the weight of your opinion to the TransAtlantic public; for you must know there is a counter report that you have written the said Waverley.

Encouraged by the success of this novel, the third edition of which had recently been published, and influenced by the high opinion he entertained of his brother's talents, Scott then proceeds to advise him to write a novel embodying his Canadian experiences, and promises, in case he did, to revise the MS. and to dispose of the copy-right. The letter then continues :

Keep this matter a dead secret, and look knowing when Waverley is spoken of. If you are not Sir John Falstaff, you are as good a man as he, and may therefore face Colville of the Dale. You may believe I don't want to make you the author of a book you have never seen; but if people will, upon their own judgment,suppose so, and also on their own judgment give you £500 to try your hand on a new novel, I don't see that you are a pin's Joint the worse.

To any unbiassed mind this letter is demonstrative of the fact that reither Thomas Scott nor his wife could have had any idea of the existence of Waverley, till they received the foregoing communication from Sir Walter. Let us see how

Mr. Fitzpatrick treats this letter in his second edition. His treatment of it will convey a just conception of the peculiar species of ingenuity by which his pamphlet is characterized

throughout. In the first place, Mr. Fitzpatrick omits the words "by no means give the weight of your opinion to the Trans-Atlantic public." He omits the words, "look knowing when Waverley is spoken of." He omits the words, "I don't want to make you the author of a book you have never seen." But this is not all, "A novel here called Waverley," says Sir Walter, " has had enormous

success.

"Waverley at this period,"

says Mr. Fitzpatrick, "had only mediocre success, and "from the context," he says, it is evident that the letter was "sent to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott for the purpose of cheering and encouraging them." We cannot well imagine a more gratuitous assertion. Scott's letter was written "on the publication of the third edition" of the novel. The first edition of 1000 copies disappeared in five weeks after its publication on the 7th July. A second edition of 2000 copies was projected by the 24th of the same month, and had disappeared by October, when the third edition was published. Mr. Fitzpatrick's interpretation of Sir Walter Scott's letter is too rich a treat to be withheld from the reader. "It is known," he says, "that Thomas Scott, like many other literary men, was so careless of his papers and of the account books appertaining to his office, as on one occasion to have brought him into a temporary scrape. Through the medium of a guarded and cautiously written letter, Walter apprised his brother of the increasing sale of a book, in the profits of which, as Moore was assured many years after, it was designed from the first that Thomas Scott should participate. There was no knowing into what hands the letter would fall, either through the habitual carelessness of Thomas Scott, the precariousness of postal transit consequent on the war then raging in America, or as a portion of the correspondence which posthumously would doubtless be sought to illustrate the life of Walter Scott. What man in his senses would act on such an interpretation of motives in the ordinary affairs of life? Every thing is possible, as Macaulay says on a similar occasion, which does not involve a contradiction in terms. This is the utmost that can be said in favour of Mr. Fitzpatrick's hypothesis.

Nor is Mr. Fitzpatrick's argument more legitimate or more convincing in the case of Guy Mannering. The scene of much of Guy Mannering, as every body knows, is laid in Galloway; and in order to prove that Sir Walter Scott was incapable of sketching the localities, Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us, with all the emphasis of italics, that "it is stated in Sir Walter Scott's family, that he never was in Galloway." But what is the real state of the case? Lockhart tells us that in March, 1793, Scott proceeded to Galloway, where he had not before been, in order to make himself acquainted with the persons and localities mixed up with the case of a certain Rev. Mr. M'Naught, who was about to be tried by the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland; and he tells us also that the list of witnesses comprises several of the names of the minor characters of the novel (that of M'Guffog, for example) the very names to which Mr. Fitzpatrick alludes "en passant," as exhibiting "traces of a thorough personal acquaintance with the Gallovidians." It is true Lockhart says, "the research he had made, with a view to pleading this man's cause, carried him for the first, and, I believe, for the last time, into the scenery of his Guy Mannering" but Lockhart does not seem to have been then aware of a fact which he subsequently records, that in the summer of 1807 Scott took "a trip to Dumfries,” in company with Mr. Guthrie Wright, and spent "two or three days" in visiting "Sweetheart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, and some other ancient buildings in the neighbourhood," Caerlaverock Castle, as is generally supposed, being the prototype of Ellangowan. But Mr. Fitzpatrick's inferences are as solid as his facts are accurate. Mrs. Scott, it seems, was born at Dumfries--she was intimately acquainted with Galloway - the family names of some of her ancestry appear in the novel therefore it was she who wrote the Waverley Novels! Such logic we had thought relegated to the domain of low comedy and farce. When Box inquires of Cox, "Have you a mole on your left shoulder?" and Cox answers the interrogatory with a "No," Box exclaims, "Then you are my brother." For our part we can see little difference between the logic of Box and

the logic of Mr. Fitzpatrick. Notions, however, differ as to what constitutes "moral demonstration," and we leave the matter to the decision of the ingenious reader. But we have not yet done with the novel of Guy Mannering. Lockhart gives it as his opinion that no portion of Guy Mannering had been penned before the 25th of December, 1814; and yet he says that before the 18th of January, 1815, "two volumes of Guy Mannering had been not only written and copied by an amanuensis, but printed." Now though no portion of the novel had been penned before the 25th of December, it is certain that on the 7th of November Scott acknowledged the receipt of the communication from Mr. Train which supplied its groundwork; and it is also certain, from a letter addressed by James Ballantyne to Miss Edgworth on the 11th, that Scott already contemplated the publication of a new work of fiction. Scott's mind, therefore, may well be supposed to have been brooding over Guy Mannering, although he had not as yet penned a single page. From the 25th of December to the 18th of January, Scott had upwards of three weeks to write two volumes of his novel. Now how does Mr. Fitzpatrick discuss this question? "We will allow him, I suppose," he says, "at least a week of repose after the intellectual labour described by Mr. Lockhart." The remainder of Mr. Fitzpatrick's argument may be anticipated. "Two volumes of Guy Mannering," he exclaims, "composed, written, transcribed, and printed in sixteen days! The printing and proof correcting alone could hardly have been accomplished in twice the time." Is it possible that Mr. Fitzpatrick should have undertaken the settlement of the authorship of the Waverley Novels, without knowing that, in the case of all Scott's prose works, transcription, printing, and proof correcting proceeded pari passu with composition? The only question to be decided, then, is the time the composition would demand. Instead of the sixteen days that Mr. Fitzpatrick conceded, let us take the twenty-four which we are equally entitled to assume. That

Scott was able to write two volumes of Guy Mannering in twenty-four days is proved by the fact, that on his own testimony, he wrote two volumes

Mr.

of Waverley in twenty-one-during the whole of which he "attended his duty in court, and proceeded, without loss of time or hindrance of business." Or take another proof. In Scott's diary, under the date of February 3, 1826, we have the following entry with regard to Woodstock :- From the 19th of January to the 2nd February, inclusive, is exactly fifteen days, during which time, with the intervention of some days' idleness to let imagination brood on the task a little, I have written a volume; I think for a bet I could have done it in ten days." Now recollect that at this period Sir Walter's fortunes were ruined, his health shattered, his imagination all but exhausted-he was a broken and decrepit old man, and Mr. Thomas Scott was dead. If, under such circumstances, he could have written a volume of Woodstock in ten days, who can doubt that, when in the full vigour of his faculties, and with his genius a virgin mine, he could have produced, as his biographer says he produced, two volumes of Guy Mannering in twenty-four? Fitzpatrick's remaining argument may be disposed of with equal ease. There seem to be some casual coincidences between the story of Harry Bertram, the hero of Guy Mannering, and the history of James Annesley, as recorded by Smollett in his Peregrine Pickle. Scott makes no mention of this story in his historical introduction; and Mr. Fitzpatrick thinks "there is only one solution of the mystery." "A proverbially retentive memory like Scott's," he says, "could never have forgotten the obvious groundwork of his best novel;" and therefore, that groundwork must have been supplied by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott. Mr. Fitzpatrick here seems to have forgotten the "distinct line of argument" which was to "crush antagonism "-ramolissement of the brain. This ramolissement, it seems, could account very well for his forgetting Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott, but it cannot be allowed to account for his forgetting Dr. Smollett. Such is the consistency of the "evidence amounting to moral demonstration." But what are these coincidences of which we have heard so much? Honestly we can find none more striking than that celebrated one discovered by the in

genious Captain Fluellen--" There is a river in Macedon; and there is also, moreover, a river at Monmouth -and there is salmons in both."

With regard to the Antiquary, the Black Dwarf, and Old Mortality, not a particle of evidence is adduced to identify Mr. or Mrs. Thomas Scott with their authorship, unless we are to regard as evidence an anonymous and unauthenticated letter in a Canadian newspaper, the value of which may be estimated by the single assertion that "Flora M'Ivor's character was written by Mrs. Scott herself"—Mrs. Scott, who, as we have already shown, was not even aware of the existence of Waverley till she received the intelligence from her brother-in-law ! Mr. Fitzpatrick quotes the advertisement to the first edition of Rob Roy, in which Sir Walter declares that, "six months previously, he received a parcel of papers containing the outlines of the narrative." He omits the note appended in the collected edition, in which Sir Walter declares that "the communication alluded to is entirely imaginary." He adduces evidence to show that during the October and November of 1817, Scott was involved in a constant round of occupation and amusement. He entirely ignores the fact that Rob Roy was in petto as early as April; and that it was not published till the 31st of December. Mr. Fitzpatrick's arguments are worthy of his facts. Major M'Gregor of the 70th, seems to have sat for his portrait in Rob Roy. Why? "The appearance of the Highland chieftain as therein given was strongly suggestive of Major M'Gregor." In what respects? The Major, it seems, was "a broadshouldered, swarthy man, of stern aspect." Why we had always thought that Rob Roy meant Rob the Red, and that he was constantly designated in the novel "the Red Gregarach." It seems we were mistaken. We

were mistaken also in supposing that Rob Roy was styled Rob Roy M'Gregor because the clan Gregor was the sept to which he historically belonged. The name, it seems, was suggested to the novelist because it belonged to Major M'Gregor of the 70th.

This brings to our recollection the list of names belonging to "imaginary military characters," on which Mr. Fitzpatrick insisted so strongly

in his first edition. Among these imaginary military characters we find the Earl of Leven, the Covenanting general who was driven out of the field of Long Marston Moor by the charge of Prince Rupert. We find also Colonel Graham of Claverhouse, Colonel Kirke, and Colonel Gardiner. Nay, we find even General Harrison the Regicide, and General Monk, the Restorer of the Monarchy. These names are omitted by Mr. Fitzpatrick in his second edition. We congratu late him on the progress of his historical studies. We congratulate him also on the fact that he at length sees there is no force of argument in any of the coincidences on which he formerly so much insisted. "I wish it to be distinctly understood," he says, "that I look on them more as curious than important." But is it, after all, so very curious that such patronymics as "White," and "Black," and "Smith," and "Brown," and "Jones," and "Jenkins," should occur both in a Waverley novel and in a Canadian regiment? Is it so curious that among the names of the two thousand characters that figure in the Waverley novels, there are some half dozen which by distortion and forced analogy may be made to bear some resemblance to some half dozen extracted from the Army List? Are we to believe that the author of the Heart of Midlothian could not have thought of the name of Dolly Dutton but for his acquaintance with Lieut. Dutton, or that the name of Jenny Dennison must have have been suggested by Captain Denniss? The type of these coincidences, and the type of the argument based upon them, is supplied by an example to be found in the first edition of the pamphlet, but unfortunately omitted in the second. Mons. Le Chevalier de Beaujeu is the keeper of the gambling house in Nigel-Beaujeu is fair play-fair play is play fair-Playfair was a lieutenant in the 104th, and the 104th was one of the regiments stationed in Canada in the time of Thomas Scott. Ergo "it must have been in Canada (which Sir Walter Scott never visited) that some person intimately concerned in the production of the Waverley novels mainly looked about for names." If Mr.

Fitzpatrick thinks there is any force in such an argument, why does he

endeavour to disarm criticism by pointing to the coincidences as merely "curious?" If he regards them as merely "curious," why does he devote four or five pages of his pamphlet to their enumeration? especially when he knows that there was no portion of his original pamphlet which attracted such marked attention as this very list of names.

But the most disagreeable portion of our task remains to be discharged. "It is surely a significant fact," says Mr. Fitzpatrick, "that the entire of Sir Walter's letters to Mrs. Thomas Scott, and her letters to him, should have been suppressed by his literary executor." This is a charge which, if substantiated, must load the memory of Lockhart with infamy. "Sir Walter Scott," says Mr. Fitzpatrick, "loved his accomplished sister-in-law warmly. A true friendship existed betwen them; they regularly corresponded." What proof has Mr. Fitzpatrick given of the existence of this regular correspondence? Absolutely none. From the very circumstances of the case, it is evident there could have been no regular correspondence. During the publication of" the earlier Waverley novels"-and be it remembered, it is with these alone we have to dealMrs. Thomas Scott was living with her husband in Canada, and all Sir Walter's correspondence would naturally have been carried on with his brother. "Many of Sir Walter Scott's letters to Thomas Scott," says Mr. Fitzpatrick, "are evidently suppressed." Again we ask, what evidence is adduced in support of this momentous charge? Again we have to answer-absolutely none. Here again we have powerful presumptions to the contrary. From the very fact that the waters of the Atlantic rolled between them, the correspondence between Sir Walter and his brother could not have been frequent. The interchange of letters on the occasion of their mother's death actually covered a space of more than seven months. But we have evidence on this point that is decisive. "I hope very soon to hear from you," says Sir Walter, under the date of October, 1819, shortly after the publication of the Bride of Lammermoor, and the Legend of Montrose" respecting our silence, I, like a ghost, only waited

to be spoken to, and you may depend on me as a regular correspondent when you find time to be one yourself." And yet with this letter in existence, Mr. Fitzpatrick ventures to ascribe the authorship of the Bride of Lammermoor, and the Legend of Montrose, to Thomas Scott. Mr. Fitzpatrick's next statement is one at the mention of which we can scarcely repress our indignation. Many of Sir Walter's letters to Thomas Scott," he says, "are evidently suppressed. A plentiful sprinkling of stars in those really printed, clearly intimates the obliteration of entire paragraphs." What will be the feelings of every gentleman and man of honour when we assert that in the whole of the letters addressed by Sir Walter Scott to his brother from the period of the publication of Waverley, there is not a single one that contains a single star, with the exception of the letter in which he makes a formal statement of the family affairs of Major Scott, and advises Thomas Scott if possible to get rid of the drudgery of the paymastership?

Such is a specimen of the "evidence amounting to moral demonstration," on the faith of which we are called upon to believe that it was Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott "who wrote the earlier Waverley novels," and that Sir Walter Scott's relation to those celebrated works was merely that of an editor. If we were to expose all the mis-statements and gratuitous suppositions into which Mr. Fitzpatrick has been betrayed in his efforts to establish his paradox, we should swell this article far beyond all legitimate bounds. From the specimens which we have adduced, the reader will be able to estimate the value of this "moral demonstration," the strength of this "strong chain of striking circumstantial evidence." When we consider the absence of all evidence of literary talent in the case of Mrs. Scott, when we reflect on the reckless, desultory, and convivial habits of her husband, when we remember the slowness of transatlantic communication at the period in question, when we add the utter absence of all direct evidence of co-operation on the part of either Mr. or Mrs. Thomas Scott in the production of these immortal works, we shall arrive at the conclusion that, of all Sir Walter Scott's contemporaries,

his brother and his brother's wife were the least likely to have afforded him literary assistance. If Mr. Fitzpatrick had selected for the hero of his discovery Lord Kenneder, if he had selected Sir Adam Ferguson, if he had selected William Laidlaw, or John Ballantyne, or the Ettrick Shepherd, there might have been some plausibility, some primâ facie evidence, in support of his view. In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott there is absolutely none.

Whether Thomas Scott and his wife communicated facts, traditions, and traits of character to Sir Walter is another matter. The genius, the originality, the authorship of Shakspeare are not affected by the knowledge that Hamlet was founded on the history of Saxo-Grammaticus, or that Othello was based on one of the Hecatommithi of Cinthio; neither is the authorship of Scott affected by our knowledge that Waverley was founded on a fact communicated by Invernahyle, or that Guy Mannering was based on a story told by John MacKinlay, or that George Constable was the prototype of the Antiquary, or that the materials for Old Mortality were derived from Peter Walker's Life and Death of Three Famous Worthies, or that the Bride of Lammermoor was a chapter from the family history of Lord Stair, or that the best character in the Legend of Montrose was suggested by the Memoirs of Sir John Turner. We may concede to Mr. Fitzpatrick that Sir Walter Scott did not disdain to employ materials communicated by others. But the whole series of his Historical Introductions proves likewise that he did not disdain to acknowledge the assistance which he received. How far he received such assistance from his brother is another matter. "There is no passage in any of Scott's writings," says Mr. Fitzpatrick," which acknowledges having received from Thomas even materials" for his novels. But this is only another instance of heedless assertion. If any one chooses to read the introduction to Peveril of the Peak, he will find that, in the case of that novel, Sir Walter acknowledges his obligations to his brother in the amplest terms. If he did so in the case of one novel, why should he not have done so in all the earlier