LIBRARY EDITION. VOL. IV. ROB ROY. For why? Because the good old rule That they should take who have the power, ROB LOY'S GRAVE.... Wordsworth. FROM THE LAST REVISED EDITION, CONTAINING THE AUTHOR'S PARKER'S EDITION. BOSTON: SANBORN, CARTER AND BAZIN. NEW YORK: J. S. REDFIELD; C. S. FRANCIS & CO. 1855. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION, WHEN the Editor of the following volumes published, about two years since, the work called "The Antiquary," he announced that he was, for the last time, intruding upon the public in his present capacity. He might shelter himself under the plea that every anonymous writer is, like the celebrated Junius, only a phantom, and that therefore, although an apparition of a more benign, as well as much meaner description, he cannot be bound to plead to a charge of inconsistency. A better apology may be found in the imitating the confession of honest Benedict, that, when he said he would die a bachelor, he did not think he should live, to be married. The best of all would be, if, as has eminently happened in the case of some distinguished contemporaries, the merit of the work should, in the reader's estimation, form an excuse for the author's breach of promise. Without presuming to hope that this may prove the case, it is only further necessary to mention, that my resolution, like that of Benedict,fell a sacrifice, to temptation at least, if not to stratagem. It is now about six months since the Author, through the medium of his respectable Publishers, received a parcel of Papers, containing the Outlines of this narrative with a permission, or rather with a request, couched in highly flattering terms, that they might be given to the Public, with such alterations as should be found suitable.* These were of course so numerous, that, besides the suppression of names, and of incidents approaching too much to reality, the work may in a great measure be said to be new written. Several anachronisms have probably crept in during the course of these changes; and the mottoes for the Chapters have been selected without any reference to the supposed date of the incidents. For these, of course, the Editor is responsible. Some others occurred in the original materials, but they are of little consequence. In point of minute accuracy, it may be stated, that the bridge over the Forth, or rather the Avondhu, (or Black River,) near the hamlet of Aberfoil, had not an existence thirty years ago. It does not, however, become the Editor to be the first to point out these errors; and he takes this public opportunity to thank the unknown and nameless correspondent, to whom the reader will owe the principal share of any amusement which he may derive from the following pages 1st December, 1817. As it may be necessary, in the present Edition, to speak upon the square the Author thinks it proper to own, that the communication alluded to is eu tirely imaginary. |