romances.

ANDREW LANG.

INTRODUCTION TO THE TALES OF MY LANDLORD.

As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official description
prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting
part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself,
such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the
careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a
candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those
recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from
the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as
Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who will whisper,
that albeit my learning and good principles cannot (lauded be the
heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at Gandercleugh hath
been more favourable to my acquisitions in learning than to the
enlargement of my views of the ways and works of the present generation.
To the which objection, if, peradventure, any such shall be started, my
answer shall be threefold:

First, Gandercleugh is, as it were, the central part--the navel (_si fas
sit dicere_) of this our native realm of Scotland; so that men, from
every corner thereof, when travelling on their concernments of business,
either towards our metropolis of law, by which I mean Edinburgh, or
towards our metropolis and mart of gain, whereby I insinuate Glasgow, are
frequently led to make Gandercleugh their abiding stage and place of rest
for the night. And it must be acknowledged by the most sceptical, that I,
who have sat in the leathern armchair, on the left-hand side of the fire,
in the common room of the Wallace Inn, winter and summer, for every
evening in my life, during forty years bypast, (the Christian Sabbaths
only excepted,) must have seen more of the manners and customs of various
tribes and people, than if I had sought them out by my own painful travel
and bodily labour. Even so doth the tollman at the well-frequented
turnpike on the Wellbrae-head, sitting at his ease in his own dwelling,
gather more receipt of custom, than if, moving forth upon the road, he
were to require a contribution from each person whom he chanced to meet
in his journey, when, according to the vulgar adage, he might possibly be
greeted with more kicks than halfpence.

But, secondly, supposing it again urged, that Ithacus, the most wise of
the Greeks, acquired his renown, as