EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

"THE ANTIQUARY" was-some early doubts and hesitations about its public effect being removed-Scott's "chief favourite among all his novels." 1 One sentence of his own, comparing and characterising it, in a letter to Daniel Terry the actor, reads like a proverbial foreshadowing of his natural art in other tales and other pages to come. Contrasting it with "Waverley" and "Guy Mannering," he says, "Yet there is some salvation about it, for if a man will paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking for it." Not one of his books has more in its pages of the colours of his impressionable years, and there is a note of personal fondness, not to be mistaken, in this history from the life. "The Antiquary" indeed is Scott, sketched in one particular mood or aspect. Although Scott fancied, wrote Lockhart, that, "in the principal personage, he had embalmed a worthy friend of his boyish days, his own antiquarian propensities, originating perhaps in the kind attentions of George Constable of Wallace-Craigie, and fostered not a little, at about as ductile a period, by those of old Clerk of Eldin, and John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, had by degrees so developed themselves, that he could hardly, even when The Antiquary was published, have scrupled about recognising a quaint caricature of the founder of Abbotsford Museum, in the inimitable portraiture of the Laird of Monkbarns. The Descriptive Catalogue of that collection, which he began towards the close of his life, but, alas! never finished, is entitled Reliquiæ Trottcosiana-or the Gabions of the late Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq.

"But laying this, which might have been little more than a good-humoured pleasantry, out of the question, there is assuredly no one of all his works on which more of his own early associations have left their image. Of those early associations, as his full-grown tastes were all the progeny, so his genius, in all its happiest efforts, was the 'Recording Angel'; and when George Constable first expounded his 'Gabions' to the child that was to immortalise his name, they were either wandering hand in hand over the field where the grass still grew rank upon the grave of 'Lockhart's Life, ch. xxxvii.

Balmawhapple, or sauntering on the beach where the Mucklebackets of Prestonpans dried their nets, singing,

'Weel may the boatie row, and better may she speed,

O weel may the boatie row that wins the bairns' bread '—

or telling wild stories about cliff-escapes and the funerals of shipwrecked fishermen."

If any appreciation of "The Antiquary" be worth perpetuating to-day, it is that of the same sound critic, who knew very well how Scott triumphed when he succeeded in representing himself.

"Considered by itself," writes Lockhart, "without reference to these sources of personal interest, this novel seems to me to possess, almost throughout, in common with its two predecessors, a kind of simple unsought charm, which the subsequent works of the series hardly reached, save in occasional snatches :—like them it is, in all its humbler and softer scenes, the transcript of actual Scottish life, as observed by the man himself. And I think it must also be allowed that he has nowhere displayed his highest art, that of skilful contrast, in greater perfection. Even the tragic romance of 'Waverley' does not set off its MacWheebles and Callum Begs better than the oddities of Jonathan Oldbuck and his circle are relieved, on the one hand by the stately gloom of the Glenallans, on the other by the stern affliction of the poor fisherman, who, when discovered repairing the 'auld black bitch o' a boat' in which his boy had been lost, and congratulated by his visitor on being capable of exertion, makes answer-'And what would you have me to do, unless I wanted to see four children starve, because one is drowned? It's weel wi" you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a friend; but the like ở us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer.'"

"The Antiquary" was written in the year of Waterloo, and published in May 1816. It was succeeded at the end of that year by "The Black Dwarf," one of the poorest, and "Old Mortality," one of the greatest, of his novels.

Constable published it; and it marked, in the negotiations that accompanied its appearance, a further knot in the twine stretched between him and the Ballantynes, on which Scott's novels were hung delusively like so many Chinese lanterns.

The following is a list of the works of Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832:"Disputatio Juridica," etc., 1792 (Exercise on being called to the Bar); The Chase, and William and Helen (from German of Bürger), 1796; Goetz of Berlichingen (translation of Goethe's Tragedy); Apology for Tales of Terror (includes some of Author's ballads), privately printed, 1799; The Eve of St. John: A Border Ballad, 1800; Ballads in Lewis's "Tales of Wonder," 1801; Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802, 1803; Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805; Ballads and Lyrical Pieces, 1806; Marmion: a Tale of Flodden Field, 1808; Life of Dryden; The Lady of the Lake, 1810; Vision of Don Roderick, 1811; Rokeby, 1813; The Bridal of Triermain, 1813; Abstract of Eyrbiggia Saga, in Jamieson's "Northern Antiquities," 1814; Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since, 1814; Life of Swift (prefixed to works), 1814; The Lord of the Isles, 1815; Guy Mannering, 1815; The Field of Waterloo, 1815; Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, 1815; The Antiquary, 1816; Black Dwarf, Old Mortality (Tales of my Landlord, first series), 1817 (1816); Harold the Dauntless, 1817; The Search after Happiness, or the Quest of Sultan Solimaun, 1817; Rob Roy, 1818; Heart of Midlothian (Tales of my Landlord, second series), 1818; The Bride of Lammermoor, Legend of Montrose (Tales of my Landlord, third series), 1819; Description of the Regalia of Scotland, 1819; Ivanhoe, 1820; The Monastery, 1820; The Abbot, 1820; Kenilworth, 1821; Biographies in Ballantyne's "Novelists, 1821; Account of the Coronation of George IV, 1821; The Pirate, 1822; Halidon Hill, 1822; Macduff's Cross (Joanna Baillie's Poetical_Miscellanies), 1822; The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822; Peveril of the Peak, 1822; Quentin Durward, 1823; St. Ronan's Well, 1824; Redgauntlet, 1824; The Betrothed, The Talisman (Tales of the Crusaders), 1825; Woodstock, or the Cavaliers: a tale of 1651, 1826; Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, 1827; The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, The Surgeon's Daughter (Chronicles of the Canongate, first series), 1827; Tales of a Grandfather, First Series, 1828; Second Series, 1829; Third Series, 1830; Fourth Series, 1830; St. Valentine's Day, or The Fair Maid of Perth (Chronicles of the Canongate, second series), 1828; My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, The Tapestried Chamber, The Laird's Jock (Keepsake, 1828); Religious Discourses, by a Layman, 1828; Anne of Geierstein, 1829; History of Scotland (Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopædia "), 1830; Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 1830; House of Aspen (Keepsake, 1830); Doom of Devorgoil; Auchindrane, or the Ayrshire Tragedy, 1830; Essays on Ballad Poetry, 1830; Count Robert of Paris, Castle Dangerous, 1832 (Tales of My Landlord, fourth series).

Letters and Articles were contributed to Encyclopædia Britannica, 1814 (Chivalry; Drama); "Provincial Antiquities of Scotland," 1819-1826; "Edinburgh Weekly Journal," 1820, 1826; as well as frequent articles to the "Edinburgh" and " Quarterly" Reviews, and " Edinburgh Annual Register."

Collected Poems: 1820, 1821, 1823, 1830 (with Author's Prefaces); 1834 (Lockhart).

Collected Novels: 1820 (Novels and Tales); 1822 (Historical Romances); 1824 (Historical Romances), 26 vols. With Author's Notes, 1829-33, 48 vols. People's Edition, 1844-8; Abbotsford, 1842-7; Roxburghe, 1859-61; Dryburgh, 1892-4; Border (A. Lang), 1892-4; The Temple Edition (C. K. Shorter), 1897-9.

ADVERTISEMENT

THE present Work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. WAVERLEY embraced the age of our fathers, Guy MANNERING that of our own youth, and the ANTIQUARY refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have, in the

two last narratives especially, sought my principal personages in the class of society who are the last to feel the influence of that general polish which assimilates to each other the manners of different nations. Among the same class I have placed some of the scenes, in which I have endeavoured to illustrate the operation of the higher and more violent passions; both because the lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and because I agree with my friend Wordsworth, that they seldom fail to express them in the strongest and most powerful language. That is, I think, peculiarly the case with the peasantry of my own country, a class with whom I have long been familiar. The antique force and simplicity of their language, often tinctured with the Oriental eloquence of Scripture, in the mouths of those of an elevated understanding, give pathos to their grief, and dignity to their resentment.

I have been more solicitous to describe manners minutely, than to arrange in any case an artificial and combined narrative, and have but to regret that I felt myself unable to unite these two requisites of a good Novel.

The knavery of the Adept in the following sheets may appear forced and improbable; but we have had very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity to a much greater extent, and the reader may be assured, that this part of the narrative is founded on a fact of actual occurrence.

I have now only to express my gratitude to the public, for the distinguished reception which they have given to works, that have little more than some truth of colouring to recommend them, and to take my respectful leave, as one who is not likely again to solicit their favour.

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