Note 73 — III.

In his letter to Terry, alluded to above, Scott says that Maturin ‘had our old friend Satan (none of your sneaking St. John Street devils, but the archfiend himself) brought on the stage bodily. I believe I have exorcised the foul fiend, for, though in reading he was a most terrible fellow, I feared for his reception in public.’ In the passage however which he quotes, the demon is only described by Bertram, and it is just this description whose beauty Scott, in his article in the Quarterly Review, is commending. The letter was apparently composed in a moment of absent-mindedness.