The Students' Series of English Classics. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner A Ballad Book Edited by KATHARINE LEE BATES, Wellesley College. Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration Milton, Lyrics Edited by LOUISE MANNING HODGKINS. Edited by MARY HARRIOTT NORRIS, Instructor, New York. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers from The Spectator 42.. Macaulay's Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham 42 .. Edited by W. W. CURTIS, High School, Pawtucket, R.I. Johnson's History of Rasselas 42.. Edited by FRED N. SCOTT, University of Michigan. Joan of Arc and Other Selections from De Quincey 42 .. Edited by HENRY H. Belfield, Chicago Manual Training School. Carlyle's The Diamond Necklace 42 .. Edited by W. F. MOZIER, High School, Ottawa, Ill. Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison 42.. Edited by JAMES CHALMERS, Ohio State University. Lays of Ancient Rome [Nearly ready] Edited by VIOLA V. PRICE, Southwest Kansas College. Edited by JAMES ARTHUR TUFTS, Phillips Exeter Academy. Charles Sumner's True Grandeur of Nations. [Nearly ready] Edited by GEO. L. MARIS, Friends' Central School, Philadelphia. Edited by C. A. WHITING, University of Utah. Several others are in preparation, and all are substantially bound in cloth. LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, Publishers, The Students' Series of English Classics. SIR WALTER SCOTT'S MARMION. EDITED BY MARY HARRIOTT NORRIS, INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. EDITOR OF GEORGE ELIOT'S "SILAS MARNER." AUTHOR OF "PHEBE," "DOROTHY DELAFIELD," "A DAMSEL OF THE LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN. BOSTON, NEW YORK, CHICAGO. COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN. C. J. PETERS & SON, PRESS OF BERWICK & SMITH, د PREFACE. THE prolific genius of Walter Scott has seldom had a parallel. Under the stress of grief and need, Johnson composed Rasselas in a week. Lope de Vega wrote whole dramas in a day, and exhibited something of the marvellous uniform capacity for composition in both quality and quantity that characterized the great Scotch romance writer. But Walter Scott was also a singular example of versatility, a gift, indeed, which is seldom attended by either profundity or great achievement. Scotland's revealer, however, while not highly original or philosophical in conception, was notably and meritoriously successful as poet and romancist; if not profound, he was highly dramatic in his instincts and writings. He left to his contemporaries and posterity poems and tales which will always place him among the foremost masters in English literature of the nineteenth century. He covered the whole field of Scotch folk-lore in which Macpherson and Bishop Percy were worthy pioneers. iii 193914 |