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THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL; MARMION;

THE LADY OF THE LAKE; THE VISION OF DON RODERICK;
ROKEBY; THE LORD OF THE ISLES; LYRICAL PIECES;
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AND BALLADS.

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS.

EDINBURGH:

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, NORTH BRIDGE,

BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS TO THE QUEEN.

MDCCCLVI.

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STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY STEVENSON & CO.

THISTLE STREET, EDINBURGH.

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MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

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SIR WALTER SCOTT was born at Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771, the same day which gave birth to Napoleon Bonaparte. "My birth," says he, was neither distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed gentle, as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient families, both by my father's and mother's side." His paternal great-grandfather—a cadet of the border family of Harden-was sprung in the fourteenth century from the great house of Buccleuch; his grandfather became a farmer in Roxburghshire; and his father, Walter Scott, was a writer to the signet in the Scottish capital. His mother, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of one of the medical professors in the university of Edinburgh.

Neither Scott's poetical turn nor his extraordinary powers of memory seem to have been inherited from either of his parents. His early years displayed little precocity of talent; and the uneventful tenor of his childhood and youth seemed little calculated to awaken in his mind a love of the imaginative or romantic.

Before he had completed his second year, delicacy of constitution, and lameness which proved permanent, assailed him, and soon afterwards caused his removal to the country. There, at his grandfather's farm-house of Sandy knowe, situated beneath the crags of a ruined baronial tower, and overlooking a district famous in border-history, the poet passed his childhood till about his eighth year, with scarcely any interruption but a year at Bath. At this early age was evinced his warm sympathy with the beauty and grandeur of nature; and the ballads and legends, recited to him amid the scenes in which their events were laid, co-operated in after-days with family and national pride to decide the bent of the border-minstrel's fancy.

His health being partially confirmed, he was recalled home; and from the end of 1778 till 1783 his education was conducted in the High School of Edinburgh, with the assistance of a tutor resident in his father's house. Prior to this change, he had shewn a decided inclination towards literary pursuits; but now, introduced with imperfect preparation into a large and thoroughly trained class, consisting of boisterous boys,

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