should arrive. [These manuscripts are at present (August 1831)
advertised for public sale, which is an addition, though a small
one, to other annoyances.] But the affairs of my publishers
having, unfortunately, passed into a management different from
their own, I had no right any longer to rely upon secrecy in that
quarter; and thus my mask, like my Aunt Dinah's in "Tristram
Shandy," having begun to wax a little threadbare about the chin,
it became time to lay it aside with a good grace, unless I
desired it should fall in pieces from my face, which was now
become likely.

Yet I had not the slightest intention of selecting the time and
place in which the disclosure was finally made; nor was there any
concert betwixt my learned and respected friend LORD MEADOWBANK
and myself upon that occasion. It was, as the reader is probably
aware, upon the 23rd February last, at a public meeting, called
for establishing a professional Theatrical Fund in Edinburgh,
that the communication took place. Just before we sat down to
table, Lord Meadowbank [One of the Supreme Judges of Scotland,
termed Lords of Council and Session.] asked me privately whether
I was still anxious to preserve my incognito on the subject of
what were called the Waverley Novels? I did not immediately see
the purpose of his lordship's question, although I certainly
might have been led to infer it, and replied that the secret had
now of necessity become known to so many people that I was
indifferent on the subject. Lord Meadowbank was thus induced,
while doing me the great honour of proposing my health to the
meeting, to say something on the subject of these Novels so
strongly connecting them with me as the author, that by remaining
silent I must have stood convicted, either of the actual