has given a very full account of the genesis of _Waverley_. These
introductions, written before the final inroad had been made on his
powers by the united strength of physical and moral misfortune, animated
at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm
of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance,
are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and
essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered
why they have not been published separately as a History of the Waverley
Novels by their author. Yet the public, I believe, with what I fear must
be called its usual lack of judgment in some such matters, seems never
to have read them very widely. An exception, however, may possibly have
been made in the case of this first one, opening as it has long done
every new issue of the whole set of novels. At anyrate, in one way or
another, it is probably known, at least to those who take an interest in
Scott, that he had begun _Waverley_ and thrown it aside some ten years
before its actual appearance, at a time when he was yet a novice in
literature. He had also attempted one or two other things,--a completion
of Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_, the beginning of a tale about Thomas the
Rhymer, etc., which are now appended to the introduction itself,--and he
had once, in 1810, resumed _Waverley_, and again thrown it aside. At
last, when his supremacy as a popular poet was threatened by Byron, and
when, perhaps, he himself was a little wearying of the verse tale, he
discovered the fragment while searching for fishing-tackle in the old
desk where he had put it, and after a time resolved to make a new and
anonymous attempt on public favour.

By the time--1814--when the book actually appeared, considerable
changes, both for good and for bad, had occurred in Scott's
circumstances; and the total of his literary work, independently of the
poems mentioned in the last chapter, had been a good deal increased.
Ashestiel had been exchanged for Abbotsford; the new house was being
planned and carried out so as to become, if not exactly a palace,
something much more than the cottage which had been first talked of; and
the owner's passion for buying, at extravagant prices, every
neighbouring patch of mostly thankless soil that he could get hold of
was growing by indulgence. He himself, in 1811 and the following years,
was extremely happy and extremely busy, planting trees,