QUENTIN DURWARD

by

Sir Walter Scott, Bart.







AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION


The scene of this romance is laid in the fifteenth century, when
the feudal system, which had been the sinews and nerves of national
defence, and the spirit of chivalry, by which, as by a vivifying soul,
that system was animated, began to be innovated upon and abandoned
by those grosser characters who centred their sum of happiness in
procuring the personal objects on which they had fixed their own
exclusive attachment. The same egotism had indeed displayed itself
even in more primitive ages; but it was now for the first time openly
avowed as a professed principle of action. The spirit of chivalry
had in it this point of excellence, that, however overstrained and
fantastic many of its doctrines may appear to us, they were all
founded on generosity and self denial, of which, if the earth were
deprived, it would be difficult to conceive the existence of virtue
among the human race.