to fall out by ane uncontrollable and unavoidable necessitie, is a
question not yet decided." [SIR JAMES TURNER'S MEMOIRS, Bannatyne
edition, p. 59.]

In quoting these ancient authorities, I must not forget the more modern
sketch of a Scottish soldier of the old fashion, by a masterhand, in
the character of Lesmahagow, since the existence of that doughty
Captain alone must deprive the present author of all claim to absolute
originality. Still Dalgetty, as the production of his own fancy, has
been so far a favourite with its parent, that he has fallen into the
error of assigning to the Captain too prominent a part in the story.
This is the opinion of a critic who encamps on the highest pinnacles of
literature; and the author is so far fortunate in having incurred his
censure, that it gives his modesty a decent apology for quoting the
praise, which it would have ill-befited him to bring forward in an
unmingled state. The passage occurs in the EDINBURGH REVIEW, No. 55,
containing a criticism on IVANHOE:--

"There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty,--or, rather, he engrosses
too great a proportion of the work,--for, in himself, we think he is
uniformly entertaining;--and the author has nowhere shown more affinity
to that matchless spirit who could bring out his Falstaffs and his
Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every
time with scenes of unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting their
humour, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his
large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted
Ritt-master. The general idea of the character is familiar to our comic
dramatists after the Restoration--and may be said in some measure to
be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;--but the
ludicrous combination of the SOLDADO with the Divinity student of