Author Please

‘…Have you seen Playfairs introductory essay in the Encyclopedia?  I am sure you will like it. It is distinguished for its elegance & perspicuity. I perused it some weeks ago, and thought it greatly preferable to Stewarts. Indeed I have often told you, that I am somewhat displeased with myself because I cannot admire this great philosopher, half as much as many critics do. He is so very stately—so transcendental—and withal so unintelligible, that I cannot look upon him with the needful veneration. I was reading the second volume of his ‘Philosophy of the human mind,’ lately. It is principally devoted to the consideration of Reason. The greater part of the book is taken up with statements of the opinions of others; and it often required all my penetration to discover what the Author's own views of the matter were. He talks much about Analysis & Mathematics, and disports him very pleasantly upon geometrical reasoning; but leaves what is to me the principal difficulty, untouched. Tell me if you have read it. You have no doubt seen the ‘Tales of my Landlord.’ Certainly Waverl[e]y and Mannering and the Black Dwarf were never written by the same person…’

In a letter Thomas Carlyle wrote to Robert Mitchell on February 12, 1817, he references two individuals who were known to Walter Scott, with at least Dugald Stewart being particularly important to Scott, yet at this point, the authorship of “Waverley” and “Tales of my Landlord” seemed unreconciled to him.

The Old Pretender

James Francis Edward Stuart died on January 1^st, 1766.  The Old Pretender had attempted an invasion of England to claim his throne, but failed to land in the Firth of Forth during March of 1708.  That attempted rising formed the backdrop for Walter Scott’s “The Black Dwarf”.

Warren Hastings

There is a connection to this date, August 22nd, Walter Scott, and the impeached (later acquitted) Warren Hastings (died 8/22/1818), who was the first Governor-General of Bengal (1773 - 1785). Apparently Hastings appropriated a group of unusually shaped stones for his property, that had been the subject of local superstition and folklore. The stones were known as the Grey Geese of Addle-strop Hill. The legend (in Scott's version) was that a witch was driving her geese to market, when, losing patience with their waywardness, she suddenly exclaimed: 'Deevil! that neither they nor I ever stir from this spot more!' and instantly she and her flock were transformed into blocks of stone, as they had ever since remained, until the Black Dwarf appropriated them for the building of his lonely cottage.

Scott employed the setting of this in the opening of his "The Tales of My Landlord", calling the stones the Grey Geese of Mucklestane Moor.