I know this task's most fit for learned men,
For Homer, Ovid, or for Virgil's pen;
These lines I have presum'd to dite;
It's known to your Honor I could never write.
"Your Honor's most obed. servant,
"Walter Scot of Satchels."
Satchels' chronicle deals largely in warlike matters. The Captain, indeed, seems to have a contempt for all not of his own honorable profession; consequently the book is full of the deeds, both foreign and domestic, of the "Bold Buccleugh," and the clans Scott and Elliott. Instigated, no doubt, by the example of John Barbour and Henry the Minstrel, the author aimed at doing for the Scotts what his prototypes so worthily achieved, respectively, for Robert Bruce and William Wallace.
As mentioned by T. G. S., there was another reprint of this curious book, that of Hawick, by Caw, 1784. I know not to whom we owe either. Looking, however, to the names of the printers and period of publication, I should say that the earliest of these may have been one of the publications of that friend to the literature of his country, Sir David Dalrymple; and as we know that Sir Walter Scott made his first appearance as a poet in the Poetical Museum, printed at Hawick, by Caw, in 1786, may he not, with his strong and early predilection for the honour of the clan Scott, and his special affection for this "True History" of his namesake, have prompted the worthy Mr. Caw to the enterprise? Any edition of the book is of rare occurrence; and it has often surprised me that Captain Walter Scot should have been overlooked, when the Bannatyne, Maitland, and Abbotsford Clubs were so nobly employed in resuscitating the old literature of Scotland.
J. O.