



Produced by Alan Millar, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team








           THE ABBOT.

BEING THE SEQUEL TO THE MONASTERY.

     By Sir Walter Scott



[Illustration: ROLAND GRAEME AND CATHERINE SETON BEFORE QUEEN MARY.]




INTRODUCTION--(1831.)

From what is said in the Introduction to the Monastery, it must
necessarily be inferred, that the Author considered that romance as
something very like a failure. It is true, the booksellers did not
complain of the sale, because, unless on very felicitous occasions,
or on those which are equally the reverse, literary popularity is not
gained or lost by a single publication. Leisure must be allowed for the
tide both to flow and ebb. But I was conscious that, in my situation,
not to advance was in some Degree to recede, and being naturally
unwilling to think that the principle of decay lay in myself, I was
at least desirous to know of a certainty, whether the degree of
discountenance which I had incurred, was now owing to an ill-managed
story, or an ill-chosen subject.

I was never, I confess, one of those who are willing to suppose the
brains of an author to be a kind of milk, which will not stand above
a single creaming, and who are eternally harping to young authors to
husband their efforts, and to be chary of their reputation, lest it grow
hackneyed in the eyes of men. Perhaps I was, and have always been, the
more indifferent to the degree of estimation in which I might be held
as an author, because I did not put so high a value as many