The mind of Scott was no slave to his body.
The success of the story is pleasantly proved by a sentence in a review of the day: "It is an event unprecedented in the annals either of literature or of the custom-house that the entire cargo of a packet, or smack, bound from Leith to London, should be the impression of a novel, for which the public curiosity was so much upon the alert as to require this immense importation to satisfy." Ten thousand copies of a three-volume novel are certainly a ponderous cargo, and Constable printed no fewer in his first edition.

Scott was assured of his own triumph in February 1819, when a dramatised version of his novel was acted in Edinburgh by the company of Mr.William Murray, a descendant of the traitor Murray of Broughton.

Mr.Charles Mackay made a capital Bailie, and the piece remains a favourite with Scotch audiences.
It is plain, from the reviews, that in one respect "Rob Roy" rather disappointed the world.

They had expected Rob to be a much more imposing and majestic cateran, and complained that his foot was set too late on his native heather.

They found too much of the drover and intriguer, too little of the traditional driver of the spoil.