It was the fashion of those times for all persons of
the rank of gentlemen to wear scarlet waistcoats--a ball had struck
one of the brothers, and carried a part of this dress into his body;
it was also the practice to strip the captives. Thus wounded, and
nearly naked, having only a shirt on and an old sack about him, the
ancestor of the great poet was sitting along with his brother and a
hundred and fifty unfortunate gentlemen, in a granary at Preston. The
wounded man fell sick, as the story goes, and vomited the scarlet
which the ball had forced into the wound. "L----d, Wattie!" cried his
brother, "if you have got a wardrobe in your wame, I wish you would
bring me a pair of breeks, for I have meikle need of them." The wound
healed; I know not whether he was one of those fortunate men who
mastered the guard at Newgate, and escaped to the continent.
The mystery which hung so long over the authorship of the Waverley
Novels, was cleared up by a misfortune which all the world deplores,
and which would have crushed any other spirit save that of Scott. This
stroke of evil fortune did not, perhaps, come quite unexpected; it
was, however, unavoidable, and it arose from no mismanagement or
miscalculation of his own, unless I may consider--which I do not--his
embarking in the hazards of a printing-house, a piece of
miscalculation. It is said, that he received warnings: the paper of
Constable, the bookseller, or, to speak plainer, long money-bills were
much in circulation: one of them, for a large sum, made its appearance
in the Bank of Scotland, with Scott's name upon it, and a secretary
sent for Sir Walter.
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