[456] Falconer's _Shipwreck_, p. 162--"The Storm." 12mo ed. London,
Albion Press, 1810.
[457] Scotch Metrical Version of the 90th Psalm.
[458] On the 18th October Sir Walter sent Mr. Burn the following
inscription for the monument he had commissioned, and which now stands
in the churchyard of Irongray:--
"This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory of Helen
Walker, who died in the year of God 1791. This humble individual
practised in real life the virtues with which fiction has invested the
imaginary character of Jeanie Deans; refusing the slightest departure
from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless
showed her kindness and fortitude, in rescuing her from the severity of
the law, at the expense of personal exertions, which the time rendered
as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of Poverty
when combined with the love of Truth and dear affection."
It is well known that on the publication of _Old Mortality_ many people
were offended by what was considered a caricature of the Covenanters,
and that Dr. M'Crie, the biographer of Knox, wrote a series of papers in
the _Edinburgh Christian Instructor_, which Scott affected to despise,
and said he would not read. He not only was obliged to read the
articles, but found it necessary to inspire or write an elaborate
defence of the truth of his own picture of the Covenanters in the Number
for January 1817 of the _Quarterly Review_.
In June 1818, however, he made ample amends, and won the hearts of all
classes of his countrymen by his beautiful pictures of national
character in the _Heart of Midlothian_.
It is worth noticing also that ten years later, viz., in December 1828,
his friend Richardson having written that in the _Tales of a
Grandfather_ "You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the
Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew 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.