I, however, still think, as Mr.Croker said to me in one of his letters, that if they were not by Mr.Walter Scott, the only alternative is to give them to the devil, as by one or the other they must be written." On the other hand, Bernard Barton wrote to Mr.Murray, and said that he had "heard that James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was the author of 'Tales of my Landlord,' and that he had had intimation from himself to that effect," by no means an improbable story considering Hogg's vanity.
Lady Mackintosh also wrote to Mr.Murray: "Did you hear who this _new_ author of 'Waverley' and 'Guy Mannering' is?
Mrs.Thomas Scott, as Mr.
Thomas Scott assured Lord Selkirk (who had been in Canada), and his lordship, like Lord Monboddo, believes it." Murray again wrote to Blackwood (February 15, 1817): "What is your theory as to the author of 'Harold the Dauntless'?
I will believe, till within an inch of my life, that the author of 'Tales of my Landlord' is Thomas Scott." Thus matters remained until a few years later, when George IV.

was on his memorable visit to Edinburgh.

Walter Scott was one of the heroes of the occasion, and was the selected cicerone to the King.

One day George IV., in the sudden and abrupt manner which is peculiar to our Royal Family, asked Scott point-blank: "By the way, Scott, are you the author of 'Waverley' ?" Scott as abruptly answered: "No, Sire!" Having made this answer (said Mr.Thomas Mitchell, who communicated the information to Mr.Murray some years later), "it is supposed that he considered it a matter of honour to keep the secret during the present King's reign.

If the least personal allusion is made to the subject in Sir Walter's presence, Matthews says that his head gently drops upon his breast, and that is a signal for the person to desist." With respect to the first series of the "Tales of my Landlord," so soon as the 6,000 copies had been disposed of which the author, through Ballantyne, had covenanted as the maximum number to be published by Murray and Blackwood, the work reverted to Constable, and was published uniformly with the other works by the author of "Waverley.".