“Now, a word to your own private ear, my dear Sir Thomas.  I have understood that the Messrs. Hay Allan are young men of talent, great accomplishments, enthusiasm for Scottish manners, and an exaggerating imagination, which possibly deceives even themselves.  I myself saw one of these gentlemen wear the Badge of High Constable of Scotland, which he could have no more right to wear than the Crown.  Davidoff used also to amuse us with stories of knighthoods and orders which he saw them wear at Sir William Cumming Gordon’s.  Now this is all very well, and I conceive people may fall into such dreaming habits easily enough, and be very agreeable and talented men in other respects, and may be very amusing companions in the country, but their authority as antiquaries must necessarily be a little apocryphal when the faith of MSS. rests upon their testimony.  An old acquaintance of mine, Captain Watson of the navy, told me he knew these gentlemen’s father, and had served with him; he was lieutenant, and of or about Captain Watson’s age, between sixty I suppose, and seventy at present.  Now what chance was there that either from age or situation he should be receiving gifts from the young Chevalier of Highland Manuscripts.

“All this, my dear Sir Thomas, you will make your own, but I cannot conceal from you my reasons, because I would wish you to know my real opinion.  If it is an imitation, it is a very good one, but the title ‘Liber Vestiarium’ is false Latin I should think not likely to occur to a Scotsman of Buchanan’s age.  Did you look at the watermark of the MS.?  If the Manuscript be of undeniable antiquity, I consider it as a great curiosity, and most worthy to be published.  But I believe nothing else than ocular inspection will satisfy most cautious antiquaries....—­Yours, my dear Sir Thomas, always,

WALTER SCOTT.”

“EDINBURGH, 5 June 1829.”

The Messrs. Hay Allan subsequently took the names of John Sobieski Stuart (who assumed the title of Comte d’Albanie) and Charles Edward Stuart.  John Sobieski died in 1872, and Charles Edward in 1880.  The “original” of Sir Richard Forrester’s manuscript was never submitted to the inspection of the Deputy Register, as suggested by Scott; but it was published in a very handsome shape a dozen years later, and furnished a text for an article in the Quarterly, in which the authenticity of the book, and the claims of the author and his brother, were unsparingly criticised by the late Professor Skene of Glasgow.—­See “The Heirs of the Stuarts” in Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxii.

[334] Ante, vol. i. p. 91, 92.

[335] There are so few of “Darsie Latimer’s” letters preserved that the following may be given relating to the Bride of Lammermoor:—­

“EDIN. Sept. 1, 1829.

“MY DEAR SIR WALTER,—­I greet you well (which, by the way, is the proper mode of salutation in this cursed weather, that is enough to make us all greet).  But to come to my proposal, which is to forward to you a communication I had within these few days from Sir Robert Horne Dalrymple Elphinstone.