If Hogg and Scott forged the poem, then when Scott told his
tale of its acquisition by himself from Laidlaw, Scott lied.
Colonel Elliot is ignorant of the facts in the case. He gropes his
way under the misleading light of a false date, and of fragments torn
from the context of a letter which, in its complete form, has never
till now been published. Where positive and published information
exists, it has not always come within the range of the critic's
researches; had it done so, he would have taken the information into
account, but he does not. Of the existence of Scott's "first copy"
of the ballad in manuscript our critic seems never to have heard;
certainly he has not studied the MS. Had he done so he would not
assign (on grounds like those of Homeric critics) this verse to Hogg
and that to Scott. He would know that Scott did not interpolate a
single stanza; that spelling, punctuation, and some slight verbal
corrections, with an admirable emendation, were the sum of his
industry: that he did not even excise two stanzas of, at earliest,
eighteenth century work.
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