Was Walter Scott Bowdlerized?
Sir Walter Scott - painted by Sir William Allan On March 24, 1826, Sir Walter Scott wrote in his Journal : ‘ JB clamorous for a motto. Go to. D—n the mot-toe. It is foolish to encourage people to expect mottoes and such-like Decoraments. You have no credit for success in finding them, and there is a disgrace in wanting them’ This is the text that appears in The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. From the Original Manuscript of Abbotsford , ed. W. E. K. Anderson (Oxford, 1972), 119, and in the Canongate 1999 edition, which has a footnote but does not comment on the textual variants. However, the words: 'Go to. D—n the mot-toe.' did not appear in John Gibson Lockhart 's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott , Volume 4, , p. 36, 1838; nor in 1845: 618; or 1852: 618 . [Possibly in 1851: 618 , but I've not been able to check that one] Is it to be surmised that D--n was deleted by Lockhart's wife, Sophia, Scott's daughter? Are there any other s