and aunt of Lady Dundee. In point of style and arrangement, of taste and
temper--in everything, in short, which helps to make literature,
Napier's book is perhaps as bad as it is possible for a book to be. But
his industry is unimpeachable; and, through the kindness of the late
Duke of Buccleuch, he was able to publish no less than thirty-seven
letters written in Claverhouse's own hand to the first Duke of
Queensberry, not one of which had been included in the collection
printed for the Bannatyne Club in 1826, nor was, in fact, known to be in
existence by anyone outside the family of Buccleuch. His book includes
also the fragment of a memoir of Dundee and his times, left in
manuscript by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, of Hoddam, Walter Scott's
friend. The memoir was thrown up, it is said, in despair on the
appearance of "Old Mortality." Some idea of the extent to which Napier
suffered from the _Lues Boswelliana_ may be gathered from the fact that
he regards even the Claverhouse of that incomparable romance as a libel.

[3] "The Hell wicked-witted, bloodthirsty Graham of Claverhouse hated to
spend his time with wine and women."--"Life of Walter Smith," in
Walker's "Biographia Presbyteriana."

[4]

"I saw the man who at St. Neff did see
His conduct, prowess, martial gallantry:
He wore a white plumach that day; not one
Of Belgians wore a white, but him alone
And though that day was fatal, yet he fought,
And for his part fair triumphs with him brought."

Laing's "Fugitive Scottish Poetry of the Seventeenth Century."