Waverley or Tis sipty years since Author:Walter Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GENERAL PREFACE -And must I ravel out My wcaved-up follies ? Richard II. Act IV. Having undertaken to give an Introductory Account of the impositions... more » which are here offered to the public, with Notes md Illustrations, the author, under whose name they are now 'or the first time collected, feels that he has the delicate task )f speaking more of himself and his personal concerns, than nay perhaps be either graceful or prudent. In this particular, ie runs the risk of presenting himself to the public in the (elation that the dumb wife in the jest-book held to her husband, when, having spent half of his fortune to obtain the cure of her imperfection, he was willing to have bestowed the other half to restore her to her former condition. But iis is a risk inseparable from the task which the author has mdertaken, and he can only promise to be as little of an sgotist as the situation will permit. It is perhaps an indifferent iign of a disposition to keep his word, that having introduced limself in the third person singular, he proceeds in the second Paragraph to make use of the first. But it appears to him hat the seeming modesty connected with the former mode )f writing, is overbalanced by the inconvenience of stiffness Lnd affectation which attends it during a narrative of some ength, and which may be observed less or more in every work n which the third person is used, from the Commentaries rf Caesar, to the Autobiography of Alexander the Corrector. I must refer to a very early period of my life, were I to point out my first achievements as a tale-teller—but I believe tome of my old schoolfellows can still bear witness that I had distinguished character for that talent, at a time when the ipplause of my companions was my recompense for the disgraces and punishments which ...« less