SIR WALTER SCOTT

AS A CRITIC OF LITERATURE

BY

MARGARET BALL, PH.D.

New York
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1907

Copyright, 1907
BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Printed from type November, 1907

PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.

PREFACE

The lack of any adequate discussion of Scott's critical work is asufficient reason for the undertaking of this study, the subject ofwhich was suggested to me more than three years ago by Professor Trentof Columbia University. We still use critical essays and monumentaleditions prepared by the author of the Waverley novels, but thecriticism has been so overshadowed by the romances that its importanceis scarcely recognized. It is valuable in itself, as well as in theopportunity it offers of considering the relation of the critical to thecreative mood, an especially interesting problem when it is presentedconcretely in the work of a great writer.

No complete bibliography of Scott's writings has been published, andperhaps none is possible in the case of an author who wrote so muchanonymously. The present attempt includes some at least of the books andarticles commonly left unnoticed, which are chiefly of a critical orscholarly character.

I am glad to record my gratitude to Professor William Allan Neilson, nowof Harvard University, and to Professors A.H. Thorndike, W.W. Lawrence,G.P. Krapp, and J.E. Spingarn, of Columbia, for suggestions inconnection with various parts of the work. From the beginning ProfessorTrent has helped me constantly by his advice as well as by theinspiration of his scholarship, and my debt to him is one which can beunderstood only by the many students who have known his kindness.

MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE,

June, 1907.

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