a jaunty military step, with a kind of leer on
his face that seemed to quiz the whole matter." That the sketch was a
portrait, though doubtless disguised to such an extent as rendered its
introduction permissible, is very probable; and as it is beyond question
one of the masterpieces of English fiction, a few lines may well be
given to the point. With great justice the Quarterly Reviewer pronounces
the character of Lismahago in no whit inferior to that of Scott's Dugald
Dalgetty; and who would not go out of his way to trace any circumstance
in the history of such a conception as that of the valiant Laird of
Drumthwacket, the service-seeking Rittmaster of Swedish Black Dragoons?

Scott himself tells us that he recollected "a good and gallant officer"
who was said to have been the prototype of Lismahago, though probably
the opinion had its origin in "the striking resemblance which he bore in
externals to the doughty Captain." Sir Walter names no name; but there
is a tradition that a certain Major Robert Stobo was the real original
from which the picture was drawn. Stobo may fairly be said to fulfil the
necessary requisites for this theory. That he was as great an oddity as
ever lived is abundantly testified by his own "Memorial," written about
1760, and printed at Pittsburg in 1854, from a copy of the MS. in the
British Museum. At the breaking out of the Seven-Years' War, he was in
Virginia, seeking his fortune under the patronage of his countryman,
Dinwiddie, and thus obtained a captaincy in the expedition which
Washington, in 1754, led to the Great Meadows. On the fall of Fort
Necessity, he was one of the hostages surrendered by Washington to the
enemy; and thus, and by his subsequent doings at Fort Du Quesne and in
Canada, he has linked his name with some interesting passages of our
national history.[A] That he was known to Smollett in after life appears
by a letter from David Hume to the latter, in which his "strange
adventures" are alluded to; and there is considerable resemblance
between these, as narrated by Stobo himself, and those assigned by
the novelist to Lismahago. And, bearing in mind the ineffable
self-complacency with which Stobo always dwells on himself and his
belongings, the description of his person given in the "Memorial"
coincides very well with that of the figure which the novelist makes to
descend in the yard of the Durham inn. One circumstance further may be
noted. We are told of "the noble and so