w of Claverhouse in
_Old Mortality_. His character is inconceivable to me: the atrocity of
his murder of those peasants, as undauntedly devoted to their own good
cause as himself to his, his personal (almost hangman-like)
superintendence of their executions, are wholly irreconcilable with a
chivalrous spirit, which, however scornful of the lowly, could never, in
my mind, be cruel," Scott, in reply, gave his matured opinion in the
following words:--

"As to Covenanters and Malignants, they were both a set of cruel and
bloody bigots, and had, notwithstanding, those virtues with which
bigotry is sometimes allied. Their characters were of a kind much more
picturesque than beautiful; neither had the least idea either of
toleration or humanity, so that it happens that, so far as they can be
distinguished from each other, one is tempted to hate most the party
which chances to be uppermost for the time."

[459] See Miss Ferrier's account of this visit prefixed to Mr. Bentley's
choice edition of her works, 6 vols. cr. 8vo, London, 1881.

[460] Mr. Carruthers remarks in his Abbotsford _Notanda_:--"Joanna
Baillie published a thin volume of selections from the New Testament
'regarding the nature and dignity of Jesus Christ.' The tendency of the
work was Socinian, or at least Arian, and Scott was indignant that his
friend should have meddled with such a subject. 'What had she to do with
questions of that sort?' He refused to add the book to his library and
gave it to Laidlaw."--p. 179.

[461] A long staff.

[462] See Crabbe's _Sir Eustace Grey_.

[463] _Life_, vol. x. pp. 100-1.

[464] See _Life_, vol. x. pp. 76-106.

OCTOBER.

INTERVAL.

I have been very ill, and if not quite unable to write, I have been
unfit to do so. I have wrought, however, at two Waverley things, but not
well, and, what is worse, past mending. A total prostration of bodily
strength is my chief complaint. I cannot walk half a mile. There is,
besides, some mental confusion, with the extent of which I am not
perhaps fully acquainted. I am perhaps setting. I am myself inclined to
think so, and, like a day that has been admired as a fine one, the light
of it sets down amid mists and storms. I neither regret nor fear the
approach of death if it is coming. I would compound for a little pain
instead of this heartless muddiness of mind which renders me incapable
of anything rational. The expense of my journey will be something
considerable, which