The authorship of Joanna Baillie’s first volume of plays did not long remain a secret. Sir Walter Scott was the first to make a successful guess as to the personality of the writer; and the discovery led to the formation of a warm friendship between him and Joanna, which only terminated with his life. Many of Scott’s most delightful and characteristic letters were written to her. It was perhaps Scott’s too generous appreciation of Joanna’s powers as a dramatist that led to her plays being so much overrated, as they certainly were when they first appeared. Scott compared her to Shakespeare. Miss Mitford followed suit, saying of her sister-writer, “Her tragedies have a boldness and grasp of mind, a firmness of hand, and resonance of cadence that scarcely seem within the reach of a female writer.” Byron made her an exception to his sweeping generalities concerning the female sex, saying, “Woman (save Joanna Baillie) cannot write tragedy.” In 1825 the golden mists which had surrounded the sunrise of her literary life had melted away. Charles Lamb was too keen a critic probably to have been carried away by the stream of fashion at any time; but in the year mentioned, writing to his friend Bernard Barton, he says: “I think you told me your acquaintance with the drama was confined to Shakespeare and Miss Baillie: some read only Milton and Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a turnip.” Lamb’s contemptuous reference measures the rapid fall from the heights of fame which Joanna Baillie endured, and endured without any failure of sweetness and dignity of character.