gment, took occasion to remonstrate with the successful actor on
the subject of the grotesque vizard. They went wilily to their purpose,
observing that his classical and Attic wit, his delicate vein of humour,
his happy turn for dialogue, were rendered burlesque and ludicrous by
this unmeaning and bizarre disguise, and that those attributes would
become far more impressive if aided by the spirit of his eye and the
expression of his natural features. The actor's vanity was easily so
far engaged as to induce him to make the experiment. He played Harlequin
barefaced, but was considered on all hands as having made a total
failure. He had lost the audacity which a sense of incognito bestowed,
and with it all the reckless play of raillery which gave vivacity to
his original acting. He cursed his advisers, and resumed his grotesque
vizard, but, it is said, without ever being able to regain the careless
and successful levity which the consciousness of the disguise had
formerly bestowed.

Perhaps the Author of Waverley is now about to incur a risk of the same
kind, and endanger his popularity by having laid aside his incognito. It
is certainly not a voluntary experiment, like that of Harlequin; for
it was my original intention never to have avowed these works during my
lifetime, and the original manuscripts were carefully preserved (though
by the care of others rather than mine), with the purpose of supplying
the necessary evidence of the truth when the period of announcing
it should arrive. [These manuscripts are at present (August 1831)
advertised for public sale, which is an addition, though a small one,
to other annoyances.] But the affairs of my publishers having,
unfortunately, passed into a management different from their own, I had
no right any longer to rely upon secrecy in that quarter; and thus my
mask, like my Aunt Dinah's in "Tristram Shandy," having begun to wax a
little threadbare about the chin, it became time to lay it aside with
a good grace, unless I desired it should fall in pieces from my face,
which was now become likely.

Yet I had not the slightest intention of selecting the time and place in
which the disclosure was finally made; nor was there any concert betwixt
my learned and respected friend LORD MEADOWBANK and myself upon that
occasion. It was, as the reader is probably aware, upon the 23rd
February last, at a public meeting, called for establishing a
professional Theatrical Fund in Edinburgh, that