



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE.

By Sir Walter Scott, Bart.



Transcriber's Note: Footnotes and references to the notes at the end of
the printed book have been inserted in the etext in square brackets
("[]") close to the place where they were indicated by a suffix in the
original text. The notes at the end are now numbered instead of using
pages to identify them as was done in the printed text.

Text in italics has been written in capital letters.

The Pound Sterling symbol has been written as "L".



CONTENTS.

  Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.
  Appendix to Introduction--The Theatrical Fund Dinner.
  Introductory--Mr. Chrystal Croftangry.
  The Highland Widow.
  The Two Drovers.
  Notes.




INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE.

The preceding volume of this Collection concluded the last of the pieces
originally published under the NOMINIS UMBRA of The Author of Waverley;
and the circumstances which rendered it impossible for the writer to
continue longer in the possession of his incognito were communicated
in 1827, in the Introduction to the first series of Chronicles of the
Canongate, consisting (besides a biographical sketch of the imaginary
chronicler) of three tales, entitled "The Highland Widow," "The Two
Drovers," and "The Surgeon's Daughter." In the present volume the two
first named of these pieces are included, together with three detached
stories which appeared the year after, in the elegant compilation called
"The Keepsake." "The Surgeon's Daughter" it is thought better to defer
until a succeeding volume, than to

  "Begin, and break off in the middle."

I have, perhaps, said enough on former occasions of the misfortunes
which led to the dropping of that mask under which I had, for a long
series of years, enjoyed so large a portion of public favour. Through
the success of those literary efforts, I had been enabled to indulge
most of the tastes which a retired person of my station might be
supposed to entertain. In the pen of this nameless romancer, I seemed
to possess something like the secret fountain of coined gold and pearls
vouchsafed to the traveller of the Eastern Tale; and no doubt believed
that I might venture, without silly imprudence, to extend my personal
expenditure considerably beyond what I should have thought of, had my
means been limited to the competence which I derived from inheritance,
with the moderate income of a professional situation. I bought, and
built, and planted, and was considered by myself, as by the rest of the
world, in the safe possession of an easy fortune. My riches, however,
like the other riches of this world, were liable to accidents, under
which they were ultimately destined to make unto themselves wings, and
fly away. The year 1825, so disastrous to many branches of industry and
commerce, did not spare the market of literature; and the sudden
ruin that fell on so many of the booksellers could scarcely have been
expected to leave unscathed one whose career had of necessity connected
him deeply and extensively with the pecuniary transactions of that
profession. In a word, almost without one note of premonition, I found
myself involved in the sweeping catastrophe of the unhappy time,
and called on to meet the demands of creditors upon commercial
establishments with which my fortunes had long been bound up, to the
extent of no less a sum than one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.

The author having, however rashly, committed his pledges thus largely
to the hazards of trading companies, it behoved him, of course, to
abide the consequences of his conduct, and, with whatever feelings, he
surrendered on the instant every shred of property which he had been
accustomed to call his own. It became vested in the hands of gentlemen
whose integrity, prudence, and intelligence were combined with all
possible liberality and kindness of disposition, and who readily
afforded every assistance towards the execution of plans, in the
success of which the author contemplated the possibility of his ultimate
extrication, and which were of such a nature that, had assistance of
this sort been withheld, he could have had little prospect of carrying
them into effect. Among other resources which occurred was the project
of that complete and corrected edition of his Novels and Romances (whose
real parentage had of necessity been disclosed at the moment of
the commercial convulsions alluded to), which has now advanced with
unprecedented favour nearly to its close; but as he purposed also to
continue, for the behoof of those to whom he was indebted, the exercise
of his pen in the same path of literature, so long as the taste of his
countrymen should seem to approve of his efforts, it appeared to him
that it would have been an idle piece of affectation to attempt getting
up a new incognito, after his original visor had been thus dashed from
his brow. Hence the personal narrative prefixed to the first work of
fiction which he put forth after the paternity of the "Waverley Novels"
had come to be publicly ascertained; and though many of the particulars
originally avowed in that Notice have been unavoidably adverted to in
the Prefaces and Notes to some of the preceding volumes of the present
collection, it is now reprinted as it stood at the time, because some
interest is generally attached to a coin or medal struck on a special
occasion,