266 Statements concerning Sir Walter Scott. 



probable the novel is really entirely a long meditated 

 explanation and exculpation of her conduct. (Sir Walter 

 told Lockhart that Conochar — the unfortunate young chief 

 in the "Fair Maid of Perth," who runs away in extreme 

 danger, and subsequently commits suicide — was intended for 

 his brother Daniel, on whose weaknesses he thought he had 

 been too severe ia his lifetime. I have little doubt that 

 the Gow Chrom, the lame champion of the town, embodies 

 one side of his own personality.) Lady Forbes had been 

 dead eight or nine years when the novel was published — 

 dying of consumption, even as "Lady Baldoon, younger," 

 did ; though in the earlier case it was much more 

 rapid. 



There is a totally different view of the circumstances in 

 existence, and it is given in the notes to the novel. This 

 is nothing less than a congratulatory poem on the marriage, 

 followed by a similar lament for the death of the bride, 

 a month later, at the house of her husband's father. 

 (Preserved in Symson's Account of Galloway.) There is no 

 trace whatever of this in the novel, though the rejoicings 

 might have been made highly tragical : there is something 

 of this kind in Kenilworth. But not only would this have 

 altered the character of the story, but I am inclined to 

 think that Sir Walter had, for the time, entirely forgotten 

 these documents, in the half-delirious state in which he 

 dictated it. They were no part of his early knowledge of 

 the incidents. It was probably to them that an interesting 

 recollection of Mrs Stewart Mackenzie (Lady Hood's) referred. 

 She remembered overtaking him — "young Walter Scott" — 

 walking out from Edinburgh to Dalkeith, on the occasion of 

 some festivity there, and giving him a lift ; and on this 

 occasion he was full of talk and interest about the 

 discovery, he had lately made, of some documents concerning 

 the marriage of Sir David Dunbar's son to Sir James 

 Dalrymple's daughter. 



She appears to have thought it was his first knowledge 

 of the story, and probably, subsequently, identified him 

 as the author of the "Bride of Lammermoor" from his 

 using it. And no doubt the discovery would much increase 

 the interest of his mother and grand-aunt's recollections 

 for him. 



