In quoting these ancient authorities, I must not forget the more modern sketch of a Scottish soldier of the old fashion, by a masterhand, in the character of Lesmahagow, since the existence of that doughty Captain alone must deprive the present author of all claim to absolute originality.  Still Dalgetty, as the production of his own fancy, has been so far a favourite with its parent, that he has fallen into the error of assigning to the Captain too prominent a part in the story.  This is the opinion of a critic who encamps on the highest pinnacles of literature; and the author is so far fortunate in having incurred his censure, that it gives his modesty a decent apology for quoting the praise, which it would have ill-befited him to bring forward in an unmingled state.  The passage occurs in the Edinburgh review, No. 55, containing a criticism on Ivanhoe:—­

“There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty,—­or, rather, he engrosses too great a proportion of the work,—­for, in himself, we think he is uniformly entertaining;—­and the author has nowhere shown more affinity to that matchless spirit who could bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every time with scenes of unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting their humour, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Ritt-master.  The general idea of the character is familiar to our comic dramatists after the Restoration—­and may be said in some measure to be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;—­but the ludicrous combination of the soldado with the Divinity student of Mareschal-College, is entirely original; and the mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, coarseness, and conceit, was never so happily exemplified.  Numerous as his speeches are, there is not one that is not characteristic—­and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous.”

POSTSCRIPT.

While these pages were passing through the press, the author received a letter from the present Robert Stewart of Ardvoirlich, favouring him with the account of the unhappy slaughter of Lord Kilpont, differing from, and more probable than, that given by Bishop Wishart, whose narrative infers either insanity or the blackest treachery on the part of James Stewart of Ardvoirlich, the ancestor of the present family of that name.  It is but fair to give the entire communication as received from my respected correspondent, which is more minute than the histories of the period.