When weightier concerns permit we hope that you will again appear in our Review.  In confidence I may tell you that your long silence led us to avail ourselves of your friend Mr. Rose’s offer to review Ferriar, [Footnote:  Dr. Ferriar on “Apparitions.”] and his article is already printing.

I will send you a new edition of the “Giaour,” in which there are one or two stanzas added of peculiar beauty.

I trust that your family are well, and remain, dear Sir,

Your obliged and faithful Servant,

JOHN MURRAY.

Within a few months of this correspondence, Scott was looking into an old writing-desk in search of some fishing-tackle, when his eye chanced to light upon the Ashestiel fragment of “Waverley,” begun several years before.  He read over the introductory chapters, and then determined to finish the story.  It is said that he first offered it anonymously to Sir R. Phillips, London, who refused to publish it.  “Waverley” was afterwards accepted by Constable & Co., and published on half profits, on July 7, 1814.  When it came out, Murray got an early copy of the novel; he read it, and sent it to Mr. Canning, and wrote upon the title-page, “By Walter Scott.”  The reason why he fixed upon Scott as the author was as follows.  When he met Ballantyne at Boroughbridge, in 1809, to settle some arrangements as to the works which Walter Scott proposed to place in his hands for publication, he remembered that among those works were three—­1st, an edition of “Beaumont and Fletcher”; 2nd, a poem; and 3rd, a novel.  Now, both the edition of “Beaumont and Fletcher” (though edited by Weber) and the poem, the “Lady of the Lake,” had been published; and now, at last, appeared the novel. [Footnote:  Indeed, in Ballantyne & Co.’s printed list of “New Works and Publications for 1809-10,” issued August 1810 (now before us), we find the following entry:  “Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since; a novel in 3 vols. 12mo.”  The work was not, however, published until July 1814.] He was confirmed in his idea that Walter Scott was the author after carefully reading the book.  Canning called on Murray next day; said he had begun it, found it very dull, and concluded:  “You are quite mistaken; it cannot be by Walter Scott.”  But a few days later he wrote to Murray:  “Yes, it is so; you are right:  Walter Scott, and no one else.”

In the autumn of 1814 Mrs. Murray went to Leith by sailing-ship from the Thames, to visit her mother and friends in Edinburgh.  She was accompanied by her son John and her two daughters.  During her absence, Mr. Murray wrote to her two or three times a week, and kept her au courant with the news of the day.  In his letter of August 9 he intimated that he had been dining with D’Israeli, and that he afterwards went with him to Sadler’s Wells Theatre to see the “Corsair,” at which he was “woefully disappointed and enraged....  They have actually omitted his wife altogether, and made him a mere ruffian, ultimately overcome by the Sultan, and drowned in the New River!”