SELECTION FROM OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. EDITED BY MORTIMER COLLINS. WARD, LOCK, AND Co. LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E. C. SURPASSING excellence in any one pursuit is not easily forgiven by those who cannot excel: wherefore Sir Walter Scott, who has been without challenge crowned king of prose romance, has suffered detraction as a poet. Not perchance among his country men, who have a commendable belief in their own great men, at any rate after death; but by the majority of English readers of this generation, too young to remember when quarto poetry sold in editions of thousands, and when the stirring stories of the romantic North were succeeded by narratives full of a wilder fire from the mysterious East. But the poetry of Scott, which was the vivid voice of that mountainous North, is destined to hold its own through whatsoever changes English taste may undergo. Its thorough truth, its clear unaffected flow, its embodiment of all that is noblest in the |