on contained additions as well as compressions. But even
this abridgment is itself a bulky volume of 800 pages, containing, I
should think, considerably more than a third of the reading in the
original ten volumes, and is not, therefore, very likely to be
preferred to the completer work. In some respects I hope that this
introduction may supply, better than that bulky abbreviation, what Mr.
Gladstone probably meant to suggest,--some slight miniature taken from
the great picture with care enough to tempt on those who look on it to
the study of the fuller life, as well as of that image of Sir Walter
which is impressed by his own hand upon his works.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER II.

YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION

CHAPTER III.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

CHAPTER IV.

EARLIEST POETRY AND BORDER MINSTRELSY

CHAPTER V.

SCOTT'S MATURER POEMS

CHAPTER VI.

COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST COUNTRY HOMES

CHAPTER VIII.

REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LIFE THERE

CHAPTER IX.

SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES

CHAPTER X.

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS

CHAPTER XI.

SCOTT'S MORALITY AND RELIGION

CHAPTER XII.

DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD

CHAPTER XIII.

SCOTT AND GEORGE IV

CHAPTER XIV.

SCOTT AS A POLITICIAN

CHAPTER XV.

SCOTT IN ADVERSITY

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LAST YEAR

CHAPTER XVII.

THE END OF THE STRUGGLE

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD.

Sir Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding,
sporting, and fighting clan. Indeed, his father--a Writer to the
Signet, or Edinburgh solicitor--was the first of his race to adopt a
town life and a sedentary profession. Sir Walter was the lineal
descendant--six generations removed--of that Walter Scott commemorated
in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, who is known in Border history and
legend as Auld Wat of Harden. Auld Wat's son William, captured by Sir
Gideon Murray, of Elibank, during a raid of the Scotts on Sir Gideon's
lands, was, as tradition says, given his choice between being hanged
on Sir Gideon's private gallows, and marrying the ugliest of Sir
Gideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle-mouthed Meg, reputed as carrying
off the prize of ugliness among the women of four counties. Sir
William was a handsome man. He took three days to consider the
alternative proposed to him, but chose life with the large-mouthed
la