It is too little to say that I am enchanted with the third volume [of ‘Plays on the Passions’], especially with the two first plays, which in every point not only sustain, but even exalt your reputation as a dramatist. [Miss Baillie had written him that this was to be her last publication, and that she was “getting her knitting-needles in order”----meaning to begin her new course of industry by making him a purse.] The whole character of ‘Orra’ is exquisitely supported as well as imagined, and the language distinguished by a rich variety of fancy, which I know no instance of excepting in Shakespeare. After I had read ‘Orra’ twice to myself, Terry [the comedian, Scott’s warm friend and admirer] read it over to us a third time, aloud, and I have seldom seen a little circle so much affected as during the whole fifth act. I think it would act charmingly.... Yet I have a great quarrel with this beautiful drama, for you must know that you have utterly destroyed a song of mine, precisely in the turn of your outlaw’s ditty, and sung by persons in somewhat the same situation.... I took out my unfortunate manuscript to look at it, but alas! it was the encounter of the iron and the earthen pitchers in the fable. I was clearly sunk, and the potsherds not worth gathering up. But only conceive that the chorus should have run thus _verbatim_---- “’Tis mirk midnight with peaceful men, With us ’tis dawn of day”---- and again---- “Then boot and saddle, comrades boon, Nor wait the dawn of day.” [Note by Lockhart: These lines were accordingly struck out of the outlaw’s song in ‘Rokeby.’ The verses of ‘Orra,’ to which Scott alludes, are no doubt the following: “The wild fire dances on the fen, The red star sheds its ray, Up rouse ye then, my merry men, It is our opening day.”] To return, I really think ‘Fear’ the most dramatic passion you have hitherto touched, because capable of being drawn to the most extreme paroxysm on the stage. In ‘Orra’ you have all gradations, from a timidity excited by a strong and irritable imagination, to the extremity which altogether unhinges the understanding. SIR WALTER SCOTT: _Letter to Joanna Baillie_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by J. G. Lockhart. * * * * * [Sidenote: Joanna’s personal appearance.] She is small in figure, and her gait is mean and shuffling, but her manners are those of a well-bred woman. She has none of the unpleasant airs too common to literary ladies. Her conversation is sensible. She possesses apparently considerable information, is prompt without being forward, and has a fixed judgment of her own, without any disposition to force it on others. Wordsworth said of her with warmth: “If I had to present any one to a foreigner as a model of an English gentlewoman, it would be Joanna Baillie.” HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: _Diary_, 1812, in ‘Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1871. * * * * *