Many
sought distant lands, to return no more. Others, dispersed in different
paths of life, "my dim eyes now seek for in vain." Of five brothers, all
healthy and promising in a degree far beyond one whose infancy was
visited by personal infirmity, and whose health after this period seemed
long very precarious, I am, nevertheless, the only survivor. The best
loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had destined this incident
to be the foundation of literary composition, died "before his day," in a
distant and foreign land; and trifles assume an importance not their own,
when connected with those who have been loved and lost.
WAVERLEY;
OR,
'T IS SIXTY YEARS SINCE.
"Under which King, Bezonian? Speak, or die!"
Henry IV., Part II.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO WAVERLEY.
"What is the value of a reputation that probably will not last above one
or two generations?" Sir Walter Scott once asked Ballantyne. Two
generations, according to the usual reckoning, have passed; "'T is Sixty
Years since" the "wondrous Potentate" of Wordsworth's sonnet died, yet
the reputation on which he set so little store survives. A constant tide
of new editions of his novels flows from the press; his plots give
materials for operas and plays; he has been criticised, praised,
condemned: but his romances endure amid the changes of taste, remaining
the delight of mankind, while new schools and little masters of fiction
come and go.
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