The Project Gutenberg EBook of Quentin Durward, by Sir Walter Scott

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Title: Quentin Durward

Author: Sir Walter Scott

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7853]
Posting Date: July 25, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUENTIN DURWARD ***

Produced by Martin Robb

QUENTIN DURWARD

by Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

The scene of this romance is laid in the fifteenth century, when the
feudal system, which had been the sinews and nerves of national defence,
and the spirit of chivalry, by which, as by a vivifying soul, that
system was animated, began to be innovated upon and abandoned by those
grosser characters who centred their sum of happiness in procuring the
personal objects on which they had fixed their own exclusive attachment.
The same egotism had indeed displayed itself even in more primitive
ages; but it was now for the first time openly avowed as a professed
principle of action. The spirit of chivalry had in it this point
of excellence, that, however overstrained and fantastic many of its
doctrines may appear to us, they were all founded on generosity and self
denial, of which, if the earth were deprived, it would be difficult to
conceive the existence of virtue among the human race.

Among those who were the first to ridicule and abandon the self denying
principles in which the young knight was instructed and to which he
was so carefully trained up, Louis XI of France was the chief. That
sovereign was of a character so purely selfish--so guiltless of
entertaining any purpose unconnected with his ambition, covetousness,
and desire of selfish enjoyment--that he almost seems an incarnation of
the devil himself, permitted to do his utmost to corrupt our ideas
of honour in its very source. Nor is it to be forgotten that Louis
possessed to a great extent that caustic wit which can turn into
ridicule all that a man does for any other person's advantage but his
own, and was, therefore, peculiarly qualified to play the part of a cold
hearted and sneering fiend.

The cruelties, the perjuries, the suspicions of this prince, were
rendered more detestable, ra