Stanza XXI.—‘Through his friend’s heart to wound his own.’
James.—Quære—Pierce, or rather stab—wound is faint.
Scott.—Pierce.”
Constable (iii. 84) says regarding this revision: “No better evidence of Scott’s constitutional good nature could be given than will be found in the strictures on this poem by James and John Ballantyne when it was passing through the press, and the genial manner in which he either agrees or declines to give effect to them.” And Mr. Andrew Lang in his “Life of Scott”[26] testifies: “The emendations made by John Ballantyne on the proof-sheets of this effort show considerable intelligence and taste, and in several cases were approved of and accepted by the author, though he once said that he was ‘The Black Brunswicker of literature, who neither took nor gave criticism.’”
“Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” a series of letters describing a visit to Belgium and the field of Waterloo, appeared in January 1816 as an octavo volume,—the first edition consisting of 6000 copies, followed in the course of a few years by second and third editions of 3000. The work, avowedly by Scott, was hailed as a specimen of his prose writing, suggesting a comparison with that of the “Great Unknown.” The last of the “copy” of these letters reached James Ballantyne on the 26th December 1815, and contained a few lines of Scott’s playful doggerel, having reference also to his next novel:—
“Dear James,
I’m done, thank God, with the long yarns
Of the most prosy of Apostles—Paul;
And now advance, sweet Heathen of Monkbarns,
Step out, old quiz, as fast as I can scrawl.”