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           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 others upon
what is termed literary reputation in the abstract, or at least upon the
species of popularity which had fallen to my share; for though it
were worse than affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my
success in the department in which chance had in some measure enlisted
me, I was, nevertheless, far from thinking that the novelist or
romance-writer stands high in the ranks of literature. But I spare the
reader farther egotism on this subject, as I have expressed my opinion
very fully in the Introductory Epistle to the Fortunes of Nigel, first
edition; and, although it be composed in an imaginary character, it is
as sincere and candid as if it had been written "without my gown and
band."

In a word, when I considered myself as having been unsuccessful in the
Monastery, I was tempted to try whether I could not restore, even at
the risk of totally losing, my so-called reputation, by a new hazard--I
looked round my library, and could not but observe, that, from the time
of Chaucer to that of Byron, the most popular authors had been the
most prolific. Even the aristarch Johnson allowed that the quality
of readiness and profusion had a merit in itself, independent of the
intrinsic value of the composition. Talking of Churchill, I believe,
who had little merit in his prejudiced eyes, he allowed him that of
fertility, with some such qualification as this, "A Crab-apple can bear
but crabs after all; but there is a great difference in favour of that
which bears a large quantity of fruit, however indifferent, and that
which produces only a few."

Looking more attentively at the patriarchs of literature, whose earner
was as long as it was brilliant, I thought I perceived that in the
