Scott was writing a novel, not history. In “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” (1802-3) Sir Walter gave this account of the persecutions. “Had the system of coercion been continued until our day, Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only discovered their powers of eloquence and composition by rolling along a deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism. . . . The genius of the persecuted became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious.” He did not, in his romance, draw a complete picture of the whole persecution, but he did show, by that insolence of Bothwell at Milnwood, which stirs the most sluggish blood, how the people were misused. This scene, to Dr. McCrie’s mind, is “a mere farce,” because it is enlivened by Manse’s declamations. Scott displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as literature may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because Macbriar, the tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the Covenanters themselves called “the language of Canaan,” which is put into their mouths, “a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in ecclesiastical politics.” But what other language did many of them speak? “Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord’s people to try, by mourning and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for we fear, he will depart from it.” This is the theology of a savage, in the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander Peden’s.’ Mr. John Menzie’s “Testimony” (1670) is all about “hardened men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb, yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth of a dragon, pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides.” Manse Headrigg scarcely caricatures this eloquence, or Peden’s “many and long seventy-eight years left-hand defections, and forty-nine years right-hand extremes;” while “Professor Simson in Glasgow, and Mr. Glass in Tealing, both with Edom’s children cry Raze, raze the very foundation!” Dr. McCrie is reduced to supposing that some of the more absurd sermons were incorrectly reported. Very possibly they were, but the reports were in the style which the people liked. As if to remove all possible charge of partiality, Scott made the one faultless Christian of his tale a Covenanting widow, the admirable Bessie McLure. But she, says the doctor, “repeatedly banns and minces oaths in her conversation.” This outrageous conduct of Bessie’s consists in saying “Gude protect us!” and “In Heaven’s name, who are ye?” Next the Doctor congratulates Scott on his talent for buffoonery. “Oh, le grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire.” Scott is later accused of not making his peasants sufficiently intelligent. Cuddie Headrigg and Jenny