Mr. Scott to John Murray.

December 18, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,

I give you hearty joy of the success of the Tales, although I do not claim that paternal interest in them which my friends do me the credit to assign to me.  I assure you I have never read a volume of them till they were printed, and can only join with the rest of the world in applauding the true and striking portraits which they present of old Scottish manners.

I do not expect implicit reliance to be placed on my disavowal, because I know very well that he who is disposed not to own a work must necessarily deny it, and that otherwise his secret would be at the mercy of all who chose to ask the question, since silence in such a case must always pass for consent, or rather assent.  But I have a mode of convincing you that I am perfectly serious in my denial—­pretty similar to that by which Solomon distinguished the fictitious from the real mother—­and that is by reviewing the work, which I take to be an operation equal to that of quartering the child....  Kind compliments to Heber, whom I expected at Abbotsford this summer; also to Mr. Croker and all your four o’clock visitors.  I am just going to Abbotsford, to make a small addition to my premises there.  I have now about seven hundred acres, thanks to the booksellers and the discerning public.

Yours truly,

WALTER SCOTT.

The happy chance of securing a review of the Tales by the author of “Waverley” himself exceeded Murray’s most sanguine expectations, and filled him with joy.  He suggested that the reviewer, instead of sending an article on the Gypsies, as he proposed, should introduce whatever he had to say about that picturesque race in his review of the Tales, by way of comment on the character of Meg Merrilies.  The review was written, and appeared in No. 32 of the Quarterly, in January 1817, by which time the novel had already gone to a third edition.  It is curious now to look back upon the author reviewing his own work.  He adopted Murray’s view, and besides going over the history of “Waverley,” and the characters introduced in that novel, he introduced a disquisition about Meg Merrilies and the Gypsies, as set forth in his novel of “Guy Mannering.”  He then proceeded to review the “Black Dwarf” and “Old Mortality,” but with the utmost skill avoided praising them, and rather endeavoured to put his friends off the scent by undervaluing them, and finding fault.  The “Black Dwarf,” for example, was full of “violent events which are so common in romance, and of such rare occurrence in real life.”  Indeed, he wrote, “the narrative is unusually artificial; neither hero nor heroine excites interest of any sort, being just that sort of pattern people whom nobody cares a farthing about.”