Waverley, Volume 1

MP3 Audio CD. Waverley, Volume 1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and
solid deliberation which matters of importance demand from the
prudent. Even its first, or general denomination, was the result
of no common research or selection, although, according to the
example of my predecessors, I had only to seize upon the most
sounding and euphonic surname that English history or topography
affords, and elect it at once as the title of my work and the name
of my hero. But, alas! what could my readers have expected from
the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt, Mortimer, or Stanley,
or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of Belmour,
Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar to
those which have been so christened for half a century past? I
must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it
in unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have,
therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for
my hero, WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound
little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter
be pleased to affix to it. But my second or supplemental title was
a matter of much more difficult election, since that, short as it
is, may be held as pledging the author to some special mode of
laying his scene, drawing his characters, and managing his
adventures. Had I, for example, announced in my frontispiece,
'Waverley, a Tale of other Days,' must not every novel-reader have
anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho, of which
the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either
lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper,
whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were<