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 Rh in the poet's library, a portrait of Graham of Claverhouse.

"He expressed the surprise with which every one who had known Dundee only in the pages of the Presbyterian annalists must see for the first time that beautiful and melancholy visage, worthy of the most pathetic dreams of romance. Scott replied that no character had been so foully traduced as the Viscount of Dundee; that, thanks to Wodrow, Cruikshanks, and such chroniclers, he who was every inch a soldier and a gentleman still passed among the Scottish vulgar for a ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in league with the devil.

"'Might he not,' said Train, 'be made, in good hands, the hero of a national romance, as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince Charlie?'

"'He might,' said Scott, 'but your western zealots would require to be faithfully portrayed in order to bring him out with the right effect.'"

Train then described to Sir Walter the singular character of Old Mortality, and the result was that incomparable tale which took