Note 51 — II. (continued 2)

The writer in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine 1846 says that ‘Maturin from the first knew him (Scott) to be the author of “The Waverley Novels,” from a letter which he received shortly after the publication of one of them, containing a peculiar Scotch proverb which Sir Walter had put into the mouth of one of his characters—“We keep our own fish-guts for our own sea-maws.”’—I regret not to have had the opportunity of seeing Maturin’s letters to Scott, which are still said to be in the Abbotsford archives.