About the time of the appearance of this volume, Joanna fixed her residence with her mother and sister, among the lanes and fields of Hampstead, where they continued throughout their lives.  The first volume of ‘Miscellaneous Plays’ came out in 1804.  In the preface she stated that her opinions set forth in her first preface were unchanged.  But the plays had a freer construction.  “Miss Baillie,” wrote Jeffrey in his review, “cannot possibly write a tragedy, or an act of a tragedy, without showing genius and exemplifying a more dramatic conception and expression than any of her modern competitor” ‘Constantine Palaeologus,’ which the volume contained, had the liveliest commendation and popularity, and was several times put upon the stage with spectacular effect.

In the year of the publication of Joanna’s ‘Miscellaneous Plays,’ Sir Walter Scott came to London, and seeking an introduction through a common friend, made the way for a lifelong friendship between the two, He had just brought out ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel.’  Miss Baillie was already a famous writer, with fast friends in Lucy Aikin, Mary Berry, Mrs. Siddons, and other workers in art and literature; but the hearty commendation of her countryman, which she is said to have come upon unexpectedly when reading ‘Marmion’ to a group of friends, she valued beyond other praise.  The legend is that she read through the passage firmly to the close, and only lost self-control in her sympathy with the emotion of a friend:—­

     “—­The wild harp that silent hung
     By silver Avon’s holy shore
     Till twice one hundred years rolled o’er,
        When she the bold enchantress came,
     From the pale willow snatched the treasure,
        With fearless hand and heart in flame,
     And swept it with a kindred measure;
     Till Avon’s swans, while rung the grove
     With Montfort’s hate and Basil’s love,
     Awakening at the inspired strain,
     Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again.”

The year 1810 saw ‘The Family Legend,’ a play founded on a tragic history of the Campbell clan.  Scott wrote a prologue and brought out the play in the Edinburgh Theatre.  “You have only to imagine,” he told the author, “all that you could wish to give success to a play, and your conceptions will still fall short of the complete and decided triumph of ‘The Family Legend.’”

The attacks which Jeffrey had made upon her verse were continued when she published, in 1812, her third volume of ‘Plays on the Passions.’  His voice, however, did not diminish the admiration for the character-drawing with which the book was greeted, or for the lyric outbursts occurring now and then in the dramas.

Joanna’s quiet Hampstead life was broken in 1813 by a genial meeting in London with the ambitious Madame de Stael, and again with the vivacious little Irishwoman, Maria Edgeworth.  She was keeping her promise of not writing more; but during a visit to Sir Walter in 1820 her imagination was touched by Scotch tales, and she published ‘Metrical Legends’ the following year.  In this vast Abbotsford she finally consented to meet Jeffrey.  The plucky little writer and the unshrinking critic at once became friends, and thenceforward Jeffrey never went to London without visiting her in Hampstead.