ISBN: 2940014928243

INTRODUCTION.Sir Walter Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft were hiscontribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, whichappeared between the years 1829 and 1847, an… Plus…

INTRODUCTION.Sir Walter Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft were hiscontribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, whichappeared between the years 1829 and 1847, and formed a collection ofeighty volumes known as Murray's Family Library. The series wasplanned to secure a wide diffusion of good literature in cheapfive-shilling volumes, and Scott's Letters, written and published in1830, formed one of the earlier books in the collection.The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had been founded inthe autumn of 1826, and Charles Knight, who had then conceived a plan ofa National Library, was entrusted, in July, 1827, with thesuperintendence of its publications. Its first treatises appeared insixpenny numbers, once a fortnight. Its British Almanac and Companionto the Almanac first appeared at the beginning of 1829. Charles Knightstarted also in that year his own Library of Entertaining Knowledge.John Murray's Family Library was then begun, and in the spring of1832--the year of the Reform Bill--the advance of civilization by thediffusion of good literature, through cheap journals as well as cheapbooks, was sought by the establishment of Chambers's Edinburgh Journalin the North, and in London of The Penny Magazine.In the autumn of that year, 1832, on the 21st of September, Sir WalterScott died. The first warning of death had come to him in February,1830, with a stroke of apoplexy. He had been visited by an old friendwho brought him memoirs of her father, which he had promised to revisefor the press. He seemed for half an hour to be bending over the papersat his desk, and reading them; then he rose, staggered into thedrawing-room, and fell, remaining speechless until he had been bled.Dieted for weeks on pulse and water, he so far recovered that to friendsoutside his family but little change in him was visible. In thatcondition, in the month after his seizure, he was writing these Letters,and also a fourth series of the Tales of a Grandfather. The slightsoftening of the brain found after death had then begun. But the olddelight in anecdote and skill in story-telling that, at the beginning ofhis career, had caused a critic of his Border Minstrelsy to say thatit contained the germs of a hundred romances, yet survived. It gave toScott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft what is for us now apathetic charm. Here and there some slight confusion of thought or stylerepresents the flickering of a light that flashes yet with its oldbrilliancy. There is not yet the manifest suggestion of the loss ofpower that we find presently afterwards in Count Robert of Paris andCastle Dangerous, published in 1831 as the Fourth Series of Tales ofMy Landlord, with which he closed his life's work at the age of sixty.Milton has said that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to writewell in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem. Scott's lifewas a true poem, of which the music entered into all he wrote. If in hisearlier days the consciousness of an unlimited productive power temptedhim to make haste to be rich, that he might work out, as founder of afamily, an ideal of life touched by his own genius of romance, there wasnot in his desire for gain one touch of sordid greed, and his ideal oflife only brought him closer home to all its duties. Sir Walter Scott'sgood sense, as Lord Cockburn said, was a more wonderful gift than hisgenius. When the mistake of a trade connection with James Ballantynebrought ruin to him in 1826, he repudiated bankruptcy, took on himselfthe burden of a debt of £130,000, and sacrificed his life to thesuccessful endeavour to pay off all. What was left unpaid at his deathwas cleared afterwards by the success of his annotated edition of hisnovels. No tale of physical strife in the battlefield could be as heroicas the story of the close of Scott's life, with five years of adeath-struggle against adversity, animated by the truest sense ofhonour. When the ruin was impending he wrote in his diary, If things gobadly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in hisgrasp. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence.He shall no longer have the delight of waking in the morning with brightideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to paper, and count themmonthly, as the means of planting such scaurs and purchasing suchwastes; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective visions ofwalks by'Fountain-heads, and pathless groves; Places which pale passion loves.' Digital Content>E-books>Classics>Coll Classics>Coll Classics, SAP Digital >16<

ISBN: 2940014928243

INTRODUCTION.Sir Walter Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft were hiscontribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, whichappeared between the years 1829 and 1847, an… Plus…

INTRODUCTION.Sir Walter Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft were hiscontribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, whichappeared between the years 1829 and 1847, and formed a collection ofeighty volumes known as Murray's Family Library. The series wasplanned to secure a wide diffusion of good literature in cheapfive-shilling volumes, and Scott's Letters, written and published in1830, formed one of the earlier books in the collection.The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had been founded inthe autumn of 1826, and Charles Knight, who had then conceived a plan ofa National Library, was entrusted, in July, 1827, with thesuperintendence of its publications. Its first treatises appeared insixpenny numbers, once a fortnight. Its British Almanac and Companionto the Almanac first appeared at the beginning of 1829. Charles Knightstarted also in that year his own Library of Entertaining Knowledge.John Murray's Family Library was then begun, and in the spring of1832--the year of the Reform Bill--the advance of civilization by thediffusion of good literature, through cheap journals as well as cheapbooks, was sought by the establishment of Chambers's Edinburgh Journalin the North, and in London of The Penny Magazine.In the autumn of that year, 1832, on the 21st of September, Sir WalterScott died. The first warning of death had come to him in February,1830, with a stroke of apoplexy. He had been visited by an old friendwho brought him memoirs of her father, which he had promised to revisefor the press. He seemed for half an hour to be bending over the papersat his desk, and reading them; then he rose, staggered into thedrawing-room, and fell, remaining speechless until he had been bled.Dieted for weeks on pulse and water, he so far recovered that to friendsoutside his family but little change in him was visible. In thatcondition, in the month after his seizure, he was writing these Letters,and also a fourth series of the Tales of a Grandfather. The slightsoftening of the brain found after death had then begun. But the olddelight in anecdote and skill in story-telling that, at the beginning ofhis career, had caused a critic of his Border Minstrelsy to say thatit contained the germs of a hundred romances, yet survived. It gave toScott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft what is for us now apathetic charm. Here and there some slight confusion of thought or stylerepresents the flickering of a light that flashes yet with its oldbrilliancy. There is not yet the manifest suggestion of the loss ofpower that we find presently afterwards in Count Robert of Paris andCastle Dangerous, published in 1831 as the Fourth Series of Tales ofMy Landlord, with which he closed his life's work at the age of sixty.Milton has said that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to writewell in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem. Scott's lifewas a true poem, of which the music entered into all he wrote. If in hisearlier days the consciousness of an unlimited productive power temptedhim to make haste to be rich, that he might work out, as founder of afamily, an ideal of life touched by his own genius of romance, there wasnot in his desire for gain one touch of sordid greed, and his ideal oflife only brought him closer home to all its duties. Sir Walter Scott'sgood sense, as Lord Cockburn said, was a more wonderful gift than hisgenius. When the mistake of a trade connection with James Ballantynebrought ruin to him in 1826, he repudiated bankruptcy, took on himselfthe burden of a debt of £130,000, and sacrificed his life to thesuccessful endeavour to pay off all. What was left unpaid at his deathwas cleared afterwards by the success of his annotated edition of hisnovels. No tale of physical strife in the battlefield could be as heroicas the story of the close of Scott's life, with five years of adeath-struggle against adversity, animated by the truest sense ofhonour. When the ruin was impending he wrote in his diary, If things gobadly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in hisgrasp. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence.He shall no longer have the delight of waking in the morning with brightideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to paper, and count themmonthly, as the means of planting such scaurs and purchasing suchwastes; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective visions ofwalks by'Fountain-heads, and pathless groves; Places which pale passion loves.' Digital Content>E-books>Literature>Literature>Literature, SAP Digital >16<

ISBN: 2940014928243

Letters On Demonology & Witchcraft Letters-On-Demonology-Witchcraft~~Sir-Walter-Scott Literature>Literature>Literature NOOK Book (eBook), SAP