iformly entertaining;--and the author has nowhere shown more affinity
to that matchless spirit who could bring out his Falstaffs and his
Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every
time with scenes of unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting their
humour, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his
large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted
Ritt-master. The general idea of the character is familiar to our comic
dramatists after the Restoration--and may be said in some measure to
be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;--but the
ludicrous combination of the SOLDADO with the Divinity student of
Mareschal-College, is entirely original; and the mixture of talent,
selfishness, courage, coarseness, and conceit, was never so happily
exemplified. Numerous as his speeches are, there is not one that is not
characteristic--and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous."


POSTSCRIPT.

While these pages were passing through the press, the author received
a letter from the present Robert Stewart of Ardvoirlich, favouring him
with the account of the unhappy slaughter of Lord Kilpont, differing
from, and more probable than, that given by Bishop Wishart, whose
narrative infers either insanity or the blackest treachery on the part
of James Stewart of Ardvoirlich, the ancestor of the present family of
that name. It is but fair to give the entire communication as received
from my respected correspondent, which is more minute than the histories
of the period.

"Although I have not the honour of being personally known to you, I hope
you will excuse the liberty I now take, in addressing you on the subject
of a transaction more than once alluded to by you, in which an ancestor
of mine was unhappily concerned. I allude to the slaughter of Lord
Kilpont, son of the Earl of Airth and Monteith, in 1644, by James
Stewart of Ardvoirlich. As the cause of this unhappy event, and the
quarrel which led to it, have never been correctly stated

William Babington Maxwell (18661938) was a British novelist. He was a son of novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Though nearly 50 years old at the outbreak of the First World War, he was accepted as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and served in France until 1917.

Cyrus Townsend Brady (December 20, 1861 January 24, 1920) was a journalist, historian and adventure writer. His most well-known work is Indian Fights and Fighters. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1883. He was also a deacon in the Episcopal church. His first wife was Clarissa Guthrie, who died in 1890. His second wife was Mary Barrett.

Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833-1906), also known as Sophie May, was an American author of childrens fiction. Using her nieces and nephews as inspiration, she wrote realistic stories about children. She wrote 45 books between 1860 and 1903. The most popular being the Little Prudy books. She lived most of her life in her native town of Norridgewock, Maine, where she lived out her life with her sister, who was also a successful author.