THE PIECES MARKED WITH an asterisk (*) HAVE NOT BEEN INCLUDED IN ANY FORMER BUITION
OF SIR WALTER SCOTT'S POETICAL WORKS.
Songs of Dick Hatteraick and Glossin, ib.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel:
A POEM, IN SIX CANTOS.
Dum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno,
Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini.
ADVERTISEMENT TO EDITION 1833.
THE INTRODUCTION to THE LAY OF THE LAST MIN-
STREL, written in April 1830, was revised by the
Author in the autumn of 1831, when he also made
some corrections in the text of the Poem, and several
additions to the notes. The work is now printed from
his interleaved copy.
was once so popular, may still attract public attention
and curiosity, it seems to me not without its use to
record the manner and circumstances under which
the present, and other Poems on the same plan, at-
tained for a season an extensive reputation.
I must resume the story of my literary labours at
the period at which I broke off in the Essay on the
Imitation of Popular Poetry, [see post,] when I had
enjoyed the first gleam of public favour, by the suc-
cess of the first edition of the Minstrelsy of the Scot-
tish Border. The second edition of that work, pub-
It is much to be regretted that the original MS. of
this Poem has not been preserved. We are thus
denied the advantage of comparing throughout the
Author's various readings, which, in the case of Mar-lished in 1803, proved, in the language of the trade,
mion, the Lady of the Lake, the Lord of the Isles, &c.
are often highly curious and instructive.-ED.
INTRODUCTION TO EDITION 1830.
A POEM of nearly thirty years' standing' may be sup-
posed hardly to need an Introduction, since, without
one, it has been able to keep itself afloat through
the best part of a generation. Nevertheless, as, in
the edition of the Waverley Novels now in course of
publication, [1830,] I have imposed on myself the
task of saying something concerning the purpose and
history of each, in their turn, I am desirous that the
Poems for which I first received some marks of the
public favour, should also be accompanied with such
scraps of their literary history as may be supposed to
carry interest along with them. Even if I should be
mistaken in thinking that the secret history of what
1 Published in 4to, (£1, 58.) January 1805.
rather a heavy concern. The demand in Scotland
had been supplied by the first edition, and the curio-
sity of the English was not much awakened by poems
in the rude garb of antiquity, accompanied with notes
referring to the obscure feuds of barbarous clans, of
whose very names civilized history was ignorant. It
was, on the whole, one of those books which are more
praised than they are read.
At this time I stood personally in a different posi-
tion from that which I occupied when I first dipt my
desperate pen in ink for other purposes than those of
my profession. In 1796, when I first published the
translations from Bürger, I was an insulated indivi-
dual, with only my own wants to provide for, and
having, in a great measure, my own inclinations alone
to consult. In 1803, when the second edition of the
Minstrelsy appeared, I had arrived at a period of life
"The Lay' is the best of all possible comments on the
Border Minstrelsy."-British Crític, August 1805
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