“I stand informed. Come, proceed; who comes next?” continued Mrs. Baliol.
“Who comes next? Yon tall, thin made, savage looking man, with the petronel in his hand, must be Andrew Ker of Faldonside, a brother’s son, I believe, of the celebrated Sir David Ker of Cessford; his look and bearing those of a Border freebooter, his disposition so savage that, during the fray in the cabinet, he presented his loaded piece at the bosom of the young and beautiful Queen, that queen also being within a few weeks of becoming a mother.”
“Brave, beau cousin! Well, having raised your bevy of phantoms, I hope you do not intend to send them back to their cold beds to warm them? You will put them to some action, and since you do threaten the Canongate with your desperate quill, you surely mean to novelise, or to dramatise, if you will, this most singular of all tragedies?”
“Worse—that is less interesting—periods of history have been, indeed, shown up, for furnishing amusement to the peaceable ages which, have succeeded but, dear lady, the events are too well known in Mary’s days to be used as vehicles of romantic fiction. What can a better writer than myself add to the elegant and forcible narrative of Robertson? So adieu to my vision. I awake, like John Bunyan, ‘and behold it is a dream.’ Well enough that I awake without a sciatica, which would have probably rewarded my slumbers had I profaned Queen Mary’s bed by using it as a mechanical resource to awaken a torpid imagination.”
“This will never do, cousin,” answered Mrs. Baliol; “you must get over all these scruples, if you would thrive in the character of a romantic historian, which you have determined to embrace. What is the classic Robertson to you? The light which he carried was that of a lamp to illuminate the dark events of antiquity; yours is a magic lantern to raise up wonders which never existed. No reader of sense wonders at your historical inaccuracies, any more than he does to see Punch in the show box seated on the same throne with King Solomon in his glory, or to hear him hallooing out to the patriarch, amid the deluge, ‘Mighty hazy weather, Master Noah.’”
“Do not mistake me, my dear madam,” said I; “I am quite conscious of my own immunities as a tale teller. But even the mendacious Mr. Fag, in Sheridan’s Rivals, assures us that, though he never scruples to tell a lie at his master’s command, yet it hurts his conscience to be found out. Now, this is the reason why I avoid in prudence all well known paths of history, where every one can read the finger posts carefully set up to advise them of the right turning; and the very boys and girls, who learn the history of Britain by way of question and answer, hoot at a poor author if he abandons the highway.”
“Do not be discouraged, however, cousin Chrystal. There are plenty of wildernesses in Scottish history, through which, unless I am greatly misinformed, no certain paths have been laid down from actual survey, but which are only described by imperfect tradition, which fills up with wonders and with legends the periods in which no real events are recognised to have taken place. Even thus, as Mat Prior says:
“Geographers on pathless downs Place elephants instead of towns.”
“If such be your advice, my dear lady,” said I, “the course of my story shall take its rise upon this occasion at a remote period of history, and in a province removed from my natural sphere of the Canongate.”
It was under the influence of those feelings that I undertook the following historical romance, which, often suspended and flung aside, is now arrived at a size too important to be altogether thrown away, although there may be little prudence in sending it to the press.