charitable, and learned, exercised his ingenuity so cruelly upon a
trusting correspondent and a staunch friend, it is hardly possible
to guess. The biographers of Surtees maintain that he wanted to
try his skill on Scott, then only known to him by correspondence;
and that, having succeeded, he was afraid to risk Scott's
friendship by a confession. This is plausible; and if good may
come out of evil, we may remember that two picturesque parts of
"Marmion" are due to one confessed and another certain supercherie
of Surtees. It cannot be said in his defence that he had no
conception of the mischief of literary frauds; in more than one
passage of his correspondence he mentions Ritson's detestation of
these practices. "To literary imposition, as tending to obscure
the path of inquiry, Ritson gave no quarter," says this arch
literary impostor.

A brief account of Surtees' labour in the field of sham ballad
writing may be fresh to many people who merely know him as the real
author of "Barthram's Dirge" and of "The Slaying of Anthony
Featherstonhaugh." In an undated letter of 1806, Scott, writing
from Ashestiel, thanks Surtees for his "obliging communications."
Surtees manifestly began the correspondence, being attracted by the
"Border Minstrelsy." Thus it appears that Surtees did NOT forge
"Hobbie Noble" in the first edition of the "Minstrelsy"; for he
makes some suggestions as to the "Earl of Whitfield," dreaded by
the hero of that ballad, which Scott had already published. But he
was already deceiving Scott, who writes to him about "Ralph Eure,"
or "Lord Eure," and about a "Goth, who melted Lord Eure's gold
chain." This Lord Eure is doubtless the "Lord Eurie" of the ballad
in the later editions of the "Border Minstrelsy," a ballad actually
composed by Surtees. That wily person immediately sent Scott a