" He used to tease Grahame of "The Sabbath," "but never
out of his good humour, by praising Dundee, and laughing at the
Covenanters." Even as a boy he had been familiar with that godly company
in "the original edition of the lives of Cameron and others, by Patrick
Walker." The more curious parts of those biographies were excised by the
care of later editors, but they may all be found now in the "Biographia
Presbyteriana" (1827), published by True Jock, chief clerk to "Leein'
Johnnie," Mr. John Ballantyne. To this work the inquirer may turn, if he
is anxious to see whether Scott's colouring is correct. The true blue of
the Covenant is not dulled in the "Biographia Presbyteriana."
With all these materials at his command, Scott was able almost to dwell
in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of
this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete
manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to modern
readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle
consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could
not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, "black cattle" whom he
neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent exceptions, as
in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose Cleishbotham. Once
launched in his legend, with the shooting of the Popinjay, he never
falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell, the dour Burley,
the handful of Preachers, representing every current of opinion in the
Covenant, the awful figure of Habakkuk Mucklewrath, the charm of goodness
in Bessie McLure, are all immortal, deathless as Shakspeare's men and
women.
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