“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.

OCTOBER.

INTERVAL.

I have been very ill, and if not quite unable to write, I have been unfit to do so.  I have wrought, however, at two Waverley things, but not well, and, what is worse, past mending.  A total prostration of bodily strength is my chief complaint.  I cannot walk half a mile.  There is, besides, some mental confusion, with the extent of which I am not perhaps fully acquainted.  I am perhaps setting.  I am myself inclined to think so, and, like a day that has been admired as a fine one, the light of it sets down amid mists and storms.  I neither regret nor fear the approach of death if it is coming.  I would compound for a little pain instead of this heartless muddiness of mind which renders me incapable of anything rational.  The expense of my journey will be something considerable, which I can provide against by borrowing L500 from Mr. Gibson.  To Mr. Cadell I owe already, with the cancels on these apoplectic books, about L200, and must run it up to L500 more at least; yet this heavy burthen would be easily borne if I were to be the Walter Scott I once was; but the change is great.  This would be nothing, providing that I could count on these two books having a sale equal to their predecessors; but as they do not deserve the same countenance, they will not and cannot have such a share of favour, and I have only to hope that they will not involve the Waverley, which are now selling 30,000 volumes a month, in their displeasure.  Something of a Journal and the Reliquiae Trotcosienses will probably be moving articles, and I have in short no fears in pecuniary matters.  The ruin which I fear involves that of my King and country.  Well says Colin Mackenzie:—­