that to this intercourse with Mr. Train we owe the whole machinery of the Tales of my Landlord, as well as the adoption of Claverhouse's period for the scene of one of its first fictions. I think it highly probable that we owe a further obligation to the worthy Supervisor's presentation of Rob Roy's _spleuchan_. [Footnote 54: [Scott's old friend, John Richardson, who was from the first in the secret of the Waverley Novels, was a stanch Whig, as beseemed the descendant of an old Covenanting family. Some of his ancestral traditions suggested certain passages in _Old Mortality_, and he has recorded that during a visit to Abbotsford Scott gave him the proof sheets of the first volume to read, and how he lost a night's sleep in doing it. Twelve years later, in writing to Scott regarding _The Tales of a Grandfather_, he says that in this work,--"You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in _Old Mortality_." Scott says in his reply (December, 1828): "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."--See _Journal_, note, vol. ii. p. 404.]] The original design for the First Series of Jedediah Cleishbotham was, as Scott told me, to include four separate tales illustrative of four districts of the country, in the like number of volumes; but, his imagination once kindled upon any theme, he could not but pour himself out freely--so that notion was soon abandoned. {p.135} CHAPTER XXXVIII. Harold the Dauntless Published. -- Scott Aspires to Be a Baron of the Exchequer. -- Letter to the Duke of Buccleuch Concerning Poachers, etc. -- First Attack of Cramp in the Stomach. -- Letters to Morritt, Terry, and Mrs. Maclean Clephane. -- Story of the Doom of Devorgoil. -- John Kemble's Retirement from the Stage. -- William Laidlaw Established at Kaeside. -- Novel of Rob Roy Projected. -- Letter to Southey on the Relief of the Poor, etc. -- Letter to Lord Montagu on Hogg's Queen's Wake, and on the Death of Frances, Lady Douglas. 1817.