Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official description prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself, such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who will whisper, that albeit my learning and good principles cannot (lauded be the heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at Gandercleugh hath been more favourable to my acquisitions in learning than to the enlargement of my views of the ways and works of the present generation. To the which objection, if, peradventure, any such shall be started, my answer shall be threefold:
The Black Dwarf (Tales of My Landlord)
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The Edinburgh Edition is a monument to scholarly industry ! a must for Scott scholars. -- Alan Bold The Edinburgh Edition presents a slimmer, more handsome and more readable Scott. There is no parade of scholarship; the notes are concise and anticipate exactly what the general reader will want to have explained. This new edition provides just the right combination of readability and unobtrusive scholarly editing. The Edinburgh Edition is a monument to scholarly industry ! a must for Scott scholars. The Edinburgh Edition presents a slimmer, more handsome and more readable Scott. There is no parade of scholarship; the notes are concise and anticipate exactly what the general reader will want to have explained. This new edition provides just the right combination of readability and unobtrusive scholarly editing.
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When and How A Rose Softened A Destructive Spirit of Madness,
By T. Patrick Killough "All about Patrick" (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Black Dwarf (The Waverley Novels) (Hardcover)
Sir Walter Scott's short novel of 1816, THE BLACK DWARF, begins by presenting the back side of a tapestry: colors dull, patterns obscure. Mysterious, too, but not without clues leading from one isolated insight to another. Only at novel's end is the tapestry turned and all piercingly revealed.
Let's look at the mysteries as they appear to the principal female of the BLACK DWARF, beautiful teen-age Miss Isabella Vere of Ellieslaw Castle. What does she know of herself and her family? Her long dead mother is buried in the castle's chapel in a tomb of Italianate beauty (Ch. 17). Her wealthy, stern father is a political schemer, aiming to become more powerful to restore the male line of the Stuarts. To that end he is pressuring Isabella to wed the odious Jacobite, Sir Frederick Langley. Yet Isabella herself is fonder of a young nobleman named Earnscliff. She is being visited by two cousins, Nancy and Lucy Ilderton. Lucy in particular knows that Isabella hates the one and loves the other. There is also some dark but hushed up ancient stain on Isabella's father's honor; he was almost killed in a brawl when his best friend, Sir Edward Mauley, saved his life by slaying his opponent. After a year's imprisonment for manslaughter, Sir Edward disappeared. Meanwhile Isabella's father had married Isabella's mother, a kinswoman of Sir Edward. Isabella unknowingly meets her destiny one day in 1707 riding in the wilds of Scotland near the English border with her two cousins. They come upon a tiny hut recently constructed on Mucklestane Moor. They had heard that it was built by a strong but hideous misanthropic dwarf who calls himself Elshender the Recluse. In the few months he has been there, despite his constantly invoking the deserved doom of the entire human race, he has done much grudgingly offered good to the local people by way of healing and advice. From them he has earned from the names Canny Elshie and the Wise Wight of Mucklestane Moor (Ch. 5). The dwarf dismisses with sarcasm the cousins after Lucy offers to pay to have her fortune told. But Elshender detains Miss Vere, whom he calls Isabel. He has known her parents. Does he also know her, Isabella asks. "Yes; this is the first time you have crossed my waking eyes, but I have seen you in my dreams." He added that he was no common fortune-teller but knew that her life was beset with real and potential evils. These included "unsuccessful love, crossed affections, the gloom of a convent, or an odious alliance." Her sad situation combined with her kind words to him made the ugly little man shed a rare tear. Those tears had been a good deed done to him by her. The dwarf rewarded her with a rose from his garden and the promise that if ever she needed him, she should deliver to him in person that rose or one of its petals. Who is this Wise Wight of Mucklestane Moor? Why does he except Isabella Vere from his general self-pitying loathing of the human race. It would spoil the ending to provide more clues. Suffice it to say that THE BLACK DWARF is a masterly study of what happens when a deformed but sensitive, generous young nobleman is betrayed by fiancee and best friend, loses his mind, partially recovers it and is caught up in a planned rebellion of Scots against Queen Anne and the recently created United Kingdom. -OOO-
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