You are my friend--you are right, replied poor Dick, his eye kindling with enthusiasm; why should shun name of an--an--(he hesitated for a phrase)--an out-of-doors artist? --Walter The Bride of Lammermoor That there are subjects of secrecy and confidence between us, is most certain; but to such, his communications to you could have no relation; and with such, I, as an individual, have no concern. --Walter Rob Roy THE CONCLUDING SECTION OF JAMES HOGG'S PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND Confessions of a Justified Sinner burlesques an editorial apology and explanation for disjointed state of text. Our unnamed editor narrates his skeptical expedition, which is provoked by a letter James Hogg wrote to Blackwood's Magazine, to Scottish Borders in search of perfectly preserved corpse of a suicide lately uncovered. Hogg himself appears in text, at an Ettrick livestock sale, and gives a fine performance of rural Scots obstinacy: I hae mair ado than can manage day, foreby ganging to houk up hunder-year-auld banes. (1) The editor, despite Hogg's stubbornness, finds body. He goes searching in company of Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law John Gibson Lockhart and Scott's sometime steward at Abbotsford, William Laidlaw (half-heartedly disguised as L--t of C--d and L--w) and even accepts Lockhart's offer to procure a horse, from his father-in-law. The amateur investigators find that lower half of suicide's body has not been disturbed: limbs, from loins to toes, seemed perfect and entire, but they could not bear handling. Before got them returned again to grave they were all shaken in pieces (251). Concealed in clothing is sinner's narrative, which have just finished reading. Neither Mr. Laidlaw nor Mr. Lockhart wishes to take possession of document, though former remarks that it `will maybe reveal some mystery that mankind disna ken naething about yet' (253). Lockhart responds, `it is not for your handling, my dear friend, who are too much taken up about mysteries already' (253). Such a rejoinder to a domestic employee of Walter Scott seem to refer to a mystery that, in 1824, was officially still a mystery. In practical terms, mystery of the Great Unknown, Author of Waverley, was no mystery at all. In 1824 Waverley novels were appearing in both Europe and America under Scott's name, and in same year William Hazlitt published The Spirit of Age, including a substantial discussion of Scott and his novels. (2) Four years earlier, first number of London Magazine had announced, we should be very much mortified were it afterwards to turn out that these fine works have been improperly attributed by public voice to--Walter Scott, and three months later same magazine, affecting no uncertainty, wished that Scott would either declare himself, or give himself a nom de guerre, that might speak of him without either a periphrasis or impertinence. (3) Of course do not wish to deny that there was any interest in identity of Author; though, as Richard Waswo observes, curiosity was in fact baffled neither very widely nor very long in public (307). My interest is in secret's Brobdingnagian protraction and overdetermination. Scott remained intent upon keeping up his incognito until 1827, when bankruptcy of his publisher forced a public avowal. On that occasion, London Magazine declared, world stared, not so much at unexpectedness of disclosure, for it was virtually well known before, but that declaration should be made at that particular moment; and in Blackwood's John Wilson, writing as Christopher North, disdained the silliest of all recorded controversies on fathership of novels and romances by Author of Waverley. …