us, he lost sight of his “Waverley” fragment.[*] Often looked for, it was never found, till the accident of a search for fishing-tackle led him to discover it in the drawer of an old bureau in a lumber-garret. This cabinet afterwards came into the possession of Mr. William Laidlaw, Scott’s friend and amanuensis, and it is still, the Editor understands, in the hands of Miss Laidlaw. The fishing-tackle, Miss Laidlaw tells the Editor (mainly red hackles, tied on hair, not gut), still occupies the drawer, except a few flies which were given, as relics, to the late Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart. In 1813, then, volume i. of “Waverley” was finished. Then Scott undertook some articles for Constable, and laid the novel aside. The printing, at last, must have been very speedy. Dining in Edinburgh, in June, 1814, Lockhart saw “the hand of Walter Scott” busy at its task. “Page after page is finished, and thrown on the heap of manuscripts, and still it goes on unwearied.”[**] The book was published on July 7, the press hardly keeping up with the activity of the author. Scott had written “two volumes in three summer weeks” and the printers had not shown less activity, while binders and stitchers must have worked extra tides. [* Mr. R. P. Gillies says that in 1811 “Waverley, in three volumes, had been announced by John Ballantyne, and a sheet or two set in types” (Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, p 204).] [** Lockhart, iv, 172.] “Waverley” was published without the Author’s name. Scott’s reasons for being anonymous have been stated by himself. “It was his humour,”—that is the best of the reasons, and the secret gave him a great deal of amusement. The Ballantynes, of course, knew it from the first; so did Mr. Morritt, Lady Louisa Stuart, and Lord and Lady Montague, and others were gradually admitted. In an undated letter, probably of November, 1816, Scott says to the Marchioness of Abercorn, a most intimate friend: “I cannot even conjecture whom you mean by Mr. Mackenzie as author of ‘The Antiquary.’ I should think my excellent old friend Mr. Harry Mackenzie [author of the ‘Man of Feeling,’ etc.] was too much advanced in years and plunged in business to amuse himself by writing novels; and besides, the style in no degree resembles his.” (Lady Abercorn meant “Young Harry Mackenzie,” not the patriarch.) “I am told one of the English reviews gives these works by name and upon alleged authority to George Forbes, Sir William’s brother; so they take them off my hands, I don’t care who they turn to, for I am really tired of an imputation which I am under the necessity of confuting at every corner. Tom will soon be home from Canada, as the death of my elder brother has left him a little money. He may answer for himself, but I hardly suspect him, unless much changed, to be possessed of the perseverance necessary to write nine volumes.” Scott elsewhere rather encouraged the notion that his brother Thomas was the author, and tried