[Illustration: ROLAND GRAEME AND CATHERINE SETON BEFORE QUEEN MARY.]



THE ABBOT.

BEING THE SEQUEL TO THE MONASTERY.

By Sir Walter Scott


* * * * *

INTRODUCTION--(1831.)

From what is said in the Introduction to the Monastery, it must
necessarily be inferred, that the Author considered that romance as
something very like a failure. It is true, the booksellers did not
complain of the sale, because, unless on very felicitous occasions, or
on those which are equally the reverse, literary popularity is not
gained or lost by a single publication. Leisure must be allowed for
the tide both to flow and ebb. But I was conscious that, in my
situation, not to advance was in some Degree to recede, and being
naturally unwilling to think that the principle of decay lay in
myself, I was at least desirous to know of a certainty, whether the
degree of discountenance which I had incurred, was now owing to an
ill-managed story, or an ill-chosen subject.

I was never, I confess, one of those who are willing to suppose the
brains of an author to be a kind of milk, which will not stand above a