



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team








THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL

By Sir Walter Scott



A Tale Which Holdeth Children From Play & Old Men From The Chimney
Corner --Sir Philip Sidney




INTRODUCTION

  But why should lordlings all our praise engross?
  Rise, honest man, and sing the Man of Ross.

                                        Pope

Having, in the tale of the Heart of Mid-Lothian, succeeded in some
degree in awakening an interest in behalf of one devoid of those
accomplishments which belong to a heroine almost by right, I was next
tempted to choose a hero upon the same unpromising plan; and as worth of
character, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, were necessary
to one who laid no claim to high birth, romantic sensibility, or any of
the usual accomplishments of those who strut through the pages of this
sort of composition, I made free with the name of a person who has left
the most magnificent proofs of his benevolence and charity that the
capital of Scotland has to display.

To the Scottish reader little more need be said than that the man
alluded to is George Heriot. But for those south of the Tweed, it may
be necessary to add, that the person so named was a wealthy citizen of
Edinburgh, and the King's goldsmith, who followed James to the English
capital, and was so successful in his profession, as to die, in 1624,
extremely wealthy for that period. He had no children; and after making
a full provision for such relations as might have claims upon him, he
left the residue of his fortune to establish an hospital, in which the
sons of Edinburgh freemen are gratuitously brought up and educated for
the station to which their talents may recommend them, and are finally
enabled to enter life under respectable auspices. The hospital in which
this charity is maintained is a noble quadrangle of the Gothic order,
and as ornamental to the city as a building, as the manner in which the
youths are provided for and educated, renders it useful to the community
as an institution. To the honour of those who have the management, (the
Magistrates and Clergy of Edinburgh), the funds of the Hospital have
increased so much under their care, that it now supports and educates
one hundred and thirty youths annually, many of whom have done honour to
their country in different situations.

The founder of such a charity as this may be reasonably supposed to have
walked through life with a steady pace, and an observant eye, neglecting
no opportunity of assisting those who were not possessed of the
experience necessary for their own guidance. In supposing his
efforts directed to the benefit of a young nobleman, misguided by the
aristocratic haughtiness of his own time, and the prevailing tone
of selfish luxury which seems more peculiar to ours, as well as the
seductions of pleasure which are predominant in all, some amusement,
or even some advantage, might, I thought, be derived from the manner in
which I might bring the exertions of this civic Mentor to bear in his
pupil's behalf. I am, I own, no great believer in the moral utility
to be derived from fictitious compositions; yet, if in any case a word
spoken in season may be of advantage to a young person, it must surely
be when it calls upon him to attend to the voice of principle and
self-denial, instead of that of precipitate passion. I could not,
indeed, hope or expect to represent my prudent and benevolent citizen
in a point of view so interesting as that of the peasant girl, who
nobly sacrificed her family affections to the integrity of her moral
character. Still however, something I hoped might be done not altogether
unworthy the fame which George Heriot has secured by the lasting
benefits he has bestowed on his country.

It appeared likely, that out of this simple plot I might weave something
attractive; because the reign of James I., in which George Heriot
flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at the
same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of character
than could, with historical consistency, have been introduced, if the
scene had been laid a century earlier. Lady Mary Wortley Montague has
said, with equal truth and taste, that the most romantic region of every
country is that where the mountains unite themselves with the plains or
lowlands. For similiar reasons, it may be in like manner said, that the
most picturesque period of history is that when the ancient rough and
wild manners of a barbarous age are just becoming innovated upon, and
contrasted, by the illumination of increased or revived learning, and
the instructions of renewed or reformed religion. The strong contrast
produced by the opposition of ancient manners to those which are
gradually subduing them, affords the lights and shadows necessary to
give effect to a fictitious narrative; and while such a period entitles
the author to introduce incidents of a marvellous and improbable
character, as arising out of the turbulent independence and ferocity,
belonging to old habits of violence, still influencing the manners of
a people who had been so lately in a barbarous state; yet, on the other
hand, the characters and sentiments of many of the actors may, with
the utmost probability, be described with great variety of shading and
delineation, which belongs to the newer and more improved period, of
which the world has but lately received the light.

The reign of James I. of England possessed this advantage in a peculiar
degree. Some beams of chivalry, although its planet had been for some
time set, continued to animate and gild the horizon, and although
probably no one acted precisely on its Quixotic dictates, men and women
still talked the chivalrous language of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia; and
the ceremonial of the tilt-yard was yet exhibited, though it now only
flourished as a Place de Carrousel. Here and there a high-spirited
Knight of the Bath, witness the too scrupulous Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
was found devoted enough to the vows he had taken, to imagine himself
obliged to compel, by the sword's-point, a fellow-knight or squire
to restore the top-knot of ribbon which he had stolen from a fair
damsel;[Footnote: See Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Memoirs.] but yet,
while men were taking each other's lives on such punctilios of honour,
the hour was already arrived when Bacon was about to teach the world
that they were no longer to reason from authority to fact, but to
establish truth by advancing from fact to fact, till they fixed an
indisputable authority, not from hypothesis, but from experiment.

The state of society in the reign of James I. was also strangely
disturbed, and the license of a part of the community was perpetually
giving rise to acts of blood and violence. The bravo of the Queen's day,
of whom Shakspeare has given us so many varieties, as Bardolph, Nym,
Pistol, Peto, and the other companions of Falstaff, men who had their
humours, or their particular turn of extravaganza, had, since the
commencement of the Low Country wars, given way to a race of sworders,
who used the rapier and dagger, instead of the far less dangerous sword
and buckler; so that a historian says on this subject, "that private
quarrels were nourished, but especially between the Scots and English;
and duels in every street maintained; divers sects and peculiar titles
passed unp