In quoting these ancient authorities, I must not forget
the more modern sketch of a Scottish soldier of the
old fashion, by a masterhand, in the character of
Lesmahagow, since the existence of that doughty Captain
alone must deprive the present author of all claim
to absolute originality. Still Dalgetty, as the
production of his own fancy, has been so far a favourite
with its parent, that he has fallen into the error
of assigning to the Captain too prominent a part in
the story. This is the opinion of a critic who
encamps on the highest pinnacles of literature; and
the author is so far fortunate in having incurred his
censure, that it gives his modesty a decent apology
for quoting the praise, which it would have ill-befited
him to bring forward in an unmingled state. The
passage occurs in the Edinburghreview, No.
55, containing a criticism on Ivanhoe:—
“There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty,—or,
rather, he engrosses too great a proportion of the
work,—for, in himself, we think he is uniformly
entertaining;—and the author has nowhere
shown more affinity to that matchless spirit who could
bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after
act, and play after play, and exercise them every
time with scenes of unbounded loquacity, without either
exhausting their humour, or varying a note from its
characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated
specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Ritt-master.
The general idea of the character is familiar to our
comic dramatists after the Restoration—and
may be said in some measure to be compounded of Captain
Fluellen and Bobadil;—but the ludicrous
combination of the soldado with the Divinity student
of Mareschal-College, is entirely original; and the
mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, coarseness,
and conceit, was never so happily exemplified.
Numerous as his speeches are, there is not one that
is not characteristic—and, to our taste,
divertingly ludicrous.”
POSTSCRIPT.
While these pages were passing through the press,
the author received a letter from the present Robert
Stewart of Ardvoirlich, favouring him with the account
of the unhappy slaughter of Lord Kilpont, differing
from, and more probable than, that given by Bishop
Wishart, whose narrative infers either insanity or
the blackest treachery on the part of James Stewart
of Ardvoirlich, the ancestor of the present family
of that name. It is but fair to give the entire
communication as received from my respected correspondent,
which is more minute than the histories of the period.
