existence as I had ever previously thought it worth while to bestow on
shadows of the same convenient tribe. Of course, it had never been in
my contemplation to invite the assistance of any real person in the
sustaining of my quasi-editorial character and labours. It had long been
my opinion, that any thing like a literary PICNIC is likely to end
in suggesting comparisons, justly termed odious, and therefore to
be avoided; and, indeed, I had also had some occasion to know, that
promises of assistance, in efforts of that order, are apt to be more
magnificent than the subsequent performance. I therefore planned a
Miscellany, to be dependent, after the old fashion, on my own resources
alone, and although conscious enough that the moment which assigned to
the Author of Waverley "a local habitation and a name," had seriously
endangered his spell, I felt inclined to adopt the sentiment of my old
hero Montrose, and to say to myself, that in literature, as in war,--

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."

To the particulars explanatory of the plan of these Chronicles, which
the reader is presented with in Chapter II. by the imaginary Editor, Mr.
Croftangry, I have now to add, that the lady, termed in his narrative,
Mrs. Bethune Balliol, was designed to shadow out in its leading points
the interesting character of a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Murray Keith,
whose death occurring shortly before, had saddened a wide circle, much
attached to her, as well for her genuine virtue and amiable qualities of
disposition, as for the extent of information which she possessed, and
the delightful manner in which she was used to communicate it. In truth,
the author had, on many occasions, been indebted to her vivid memory for
the SUBSTRATUM of his Scottish fictions, and she accordingly had been,
from an early period, at no loss to fix the Waverley Novels on the right
culprit.

[The Keiths of Craig, in Kincardineshire, descended from John Keith,
fourth son of William, second Earl Marischal, who got from his father,
about 1480, the lands of Craig, and part of Garvock, in that county. In
Douglas's Baronage, 443 to 445, is a pedigree of that family. Colonel
Robert Keith of Craig (the seventh in descent from John) by his wife,
Agnes, daughter of Robert Murray of Murrayshall, of the family of
Blackbarony, widow of Colonel Stirling, of the family of K