to us by the early perusal of Eastern tales,
that we are not embarrassed with utter ignorance upon the
subject. Vathek, bating some passages, would have made a
charming subject for a tale. The conclusion is truly grand.
I would give a great deal to know the originals from which
it was drawn. Excuse this hasty scrawl, and believe me, my
Lord, your Lordship's much obliged, very humble servant,

Walter SCOTT.

If January brought the writer of this letter "disappointment," there
was abundant consolation in store for February, 1815. Guy Mannering
was received with eager curiosity, and pronounced by acclamation fully
worthy to share the honors of Waverley. The easy transparent flow of
its style; the beautiful simplicity, and here and there the wild
solemn magnificence of its {p.026} sketches of scenery; the rapid,
ever heightening interest of the narrative; the unaffected kindliness
of feeling, the manly purity of thought, everywhere mingled with a
gentle humor and a homely sagacity; but, above all, the rich variety
and skilful contrast of characters and manners, at once fresh in
fiction, and stamped with the unforgeable seal of truth and nature:
these were charms that spoke to every heart and mind; and the few
murmurs of pedantic criticism were lost in the voice of general
delight, which never fails to welcome the invention that introduces to
the sympathy of imagination a new group of immortal realities.

The earlier chapters of the present narrative have anticipated much of
what I might, perhaps with better judgment, have reserved for this
page. Taken together with the author's Introduction and Notes, those
anecdotes of his days of youthful wandering must, however, have
enabled the reader to trace almost as minutely as he could wish, the
sources from which the novelist drew his materials, both of scenery
and character; and the Durham Garland, which I print in the Appendix
to this volume, exhausts my information concerning the humble
groundwork on which fancy reared this delicious romance.[10]

[Footnote 10: I leave my text as it stood in the former
editions; but since the last of these appeared, a writer
in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ (July, 1840) has pointed
out some very remarkable coincidences between the
narrative of _Guy Mannering_ and the very singular
history of