Note 154 — MARCH.
Reading edition
It may have been with this packet that the following admonitory note was sent to Ballantyne:—"DEAR JAMES,—I return the sheets of Tales with some waste of Napoleon for ballast. Pray read like a lynx, for with all your devoted attention things will escape. Imagine your printing that the Douglases after James II. had dirked the Earl, trailed the royal safe-conduct at the TAIL of a serving man, instead of the tail of a starved Mare.—Yours truly, however, W.S." So printed in first edition, vol. ii. p. 129, but corrected in the subsequent editions to "a miserable cart jade."