and Fletcher’s. The Legend of Montrose (chapter XIV) has a motto from Suckling’s Brennoralt.  In Anne of Geierstein ten of Shakspere’s plays were drawn upon, and Manfred was twice used.  Scott made his chapters much longer in these later novels, and used fewer mottoes, but the evidence of the selections would seem to indicate that he had lost something of his early familiarity with dramatic literature.]

  [Footnote 132:  Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays appeared
  in 1817; his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Queen
  Elizabeth in 1821.]

  [Footnote 133:  Scott first began to fabricate occasional mottoes for
  his chapters during the composition of The Antiquary in 1816.]

  [Footnote 134:  Saintsbury in Macmillan’s Magazine, lxx:  323.  Scott’s
  style in many sages is strongly colored by the influence of
  Shakspere.]

  [Footnote 135:  Introduction by Lang to The Fortunes of Nigel.]

[Footnote 136:  It is possible that among the various jobs of editing undertaken by Scott with a view to keeping the Ballantyne types busy, were certain collections of dramas. Ancient British Drama, in three volumes, and Modern British Drama, in five volumes, published in 1810 and 1811, are sometimes attributed to Scott in library catalogues, but on what authority it seems impossible to discover.  There is almost no commentary in the Ancient British Drama, but the Modern British Drama contains three brief introductions which I believe were written by Scott.  They show a striking likeness to some parts of the Essay on the Drama written several years later, and it is not probable that Scott took his criticism ready-made from another author.  In the preface to the Ancient British Drama we find this statement:  “The present publication is intended to form, with The British Drama and Shakspeare, a complete and uniform collection in ten volumes of the best English plays.”  The Shakspeare here referred to is doubtless that of which Constable the publisher afterwards spoke in his correspondence with Scott as “Ballantyne’s Shakespeare,” and Scott had no hand in the editorship. (Constable’s Correspondence, Vol.  III, p. 244.)

It is true, however, as R.S.  Mackenzie says in his Life of Scott, that Scott “had not only meditated, but partly executed an edition of Shakespeare.”  The work was suggested by Constable in 1822, was begun in 1823 or 1824, and three volumes of the proposed ten were printed by the time of Constable’s financial crash in the beginning of 1826.  The project was sometime afterwards abandoned, and the printed sheets, which apparently were not bound up, disappeared from view.  The first volume was to be a life of Shakspere by Scott, and this was probably not begun at all.  Of the commentary in the other volumes, Scott was to