829.

GENERAL PREFACE TO THE WAVERLEY NOVELS

And must I ravel out
My weaved-up follies?
Richard II, Act IV.

Having undertaken to give an Introductory Account of the compositions
which are here offered to the public, with Notes and Illustrations, the
Author, under whose name they are now for the first time collected, feels
that he has the delicate task of speaking more of himself and his
personal concerns than may perhaps be either graceful or prudent. In this
particular he runs the risk of presenting himself to the public in the
relation that the dumb wife in the jest-book held to her husband, when,
having spent half of his fortune to obtain the cure of her imperfection,
he was willing to have bestowed the other half to restore her to her
former condition. But this is a risk inseparable from the task which the
Author has undertaken, and he can only promise to be as little of an
egotist as the situation will permit. It is perhaps an indifferent sign
of a disposition to keep his word, that, having introduced himself in the
third person singular, he proceeds in the second paragraph to make use of
the first. But it appears to him that the seeming modesty connected with
the former mode of writing is overbalanced by the inconvenience of
stiffness and affectation which attends it during a narrative of some
length, and which may be observed less or more in every work in which the
third person is used, from the Commentaries of Caesar to the
Autobiography of Alexander the Corrector.

I must refer to a very early period of my life, were I to point out my
first achievements as a tale-teller; but I believe some of my old
schoolfellows can still bear witness that I had a distinguished character
for that talent, at a time when the applause of my companions was my
recompense for the disgraces and punishments which the future
romance-writer incurred for being idle himself, and keeping others idle,
during hours that should have been employed on our tasks. The chief
enjoyment of my holidays was to escape with a chosen friend, who had the
same taste with myself, and alternately to recite to each other such wild
adventures as we were able to devise. We told, each in turn, interminable
tales of knight-errantry and battles and enchantments, which were
continued from one day to another as opportunity offered, without our
ever thinking of bringing them to a conclusion. As we observed a strict
secrecy on the subject of this intercou