he volume.

WAVERLEY or 'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid
deliberation, which matters of importance demand from the prudent. Even
its first, or general denomination, was the result of no common research
or selection, although, according to the example of my predecessors,
I had only to seize upon the most sounding and euphonic surname that
English history or topography affords, and elect it at once as the title
of my work, and the name of my hero. But, alas! what could my readers
have expected from the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt,
Mortimer, or Stanley, or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of
Belmour, Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar
to those which have been so christened for half a century past? I
must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it in
unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have, therefore,
like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for my hero,
WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound little of good
or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter be pleased to affix
to it. But my second or supplemental title was a matter of much more
difficult election, since that, short as it is, may be held as pledging
the author to some special mode of laying his scene, drawing his
characters, and managing his adventures. Had I, for example, announced
in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, a Tale of other Days,' must not every
novel reader have anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
of which the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either
lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose
trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were doomed to
guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl
have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could
it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to
introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity
of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the
heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and
horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title
borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as
not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive d