Thomas Scott being the real author of Waverley, at the
close of the article, was never penned; and I think it
includes a confession over which a misanthrope might
have chuckled: "We intended here to conclude this long
article, when a strong report reached us of certain
Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of
this we know nothing), assign a different author to
these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish
correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon
the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily
expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl of
Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted
weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I sent
for the webster (weaver), they brought in his _brother_
for him: though he, maybe, cannot preach like his
brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he,
wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give
him the trouble to go to jail with the
rest!'"--_Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xix. pp. 85,
86.]

Before the first Tales of my Landlord were six weeks old, two editions
of 2000 copies disappeared, and a third of 2000 was put to press; but
notwithstanding this rapid success, which was still further continued,
and the friendly relations which always subsisted between the {p.130}
author and Mr. Murray, circumstances erelong occurred which carried
the publication of the work into the hands of Messrs. Constable.

The author's answer to Dr. M'Crie, and his Introduction of 1830, have
exhausted the historical materials on which he constructed his Old
Mortality; and the origin of The Black Dwarf--as to the conclusion of
which story he appears on reflection to have completely adopted the
opinion of honest Blackwood--has already been sufficiently illustrated
by an anecdote of his early wanderings in Tweeddale. The latter tale,
however imperfect, and unworthy as a work of art to be placed high in
the catalogue of his productions, derives a singular interest from its
delineation of the dark feelings so often connected with physical
deformity; feelings which appear to have diffused their shadow over
the whole genius of Byron--and which, but for this single