Thus Scott was taking pains with his preparations.

The book was not written in post-haste.

Announced to Constable early in May, the last sheet was not corrected till about December 21, when Scott wrote to Ballantyne:-- DEAR JAMES,-- With great joy I send you Roy.
'T was a tough job, But we're done with Rob.
"Rob Roy" was published on the last day of 1817.

The toughness of the job was caused by constant pain, and by struggles with "the lassitude of opium." So seldom sentimental, so rarely given to expressing his melancholy moods in verse, Scott, while composing "Rob Roy," wrote the beautiful poem "The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill," in which, for this once, "pity of self through all makes broken moan." Some stress may be laid on the state of Sir Walter's health at this moment, because a living critic has tried to show that, in his case, "every pang of the stomach paralyses the brain;" that he "never had a fit of the cramp without spoiling a chapter."-- [Mr.Ruskin's "Fiction Fair and Foul," "Nineteenth Century," 1880, p.

955.]--"Rob Roy" is a sufficient answer to these theories.