EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

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THE PIRATE.

THE circumstances in which "The Pirate" was composed have for the Editor a peculiar interest. He has many times scribbled at the old bureau in Chiefswood whereon Sir Walter worked at his novel, and sat in summer weather beneath the great tree on the lawn where Erskine used to read the fresh chapters to Lockhart and his wife, while the burn murmured by from the Rhymer's Glen. So little altered is the cottage of Chiefswood by the addition of a gabled wing in the same red stone as the older portion, so charmed a quiet has the place, in the shelter of Eildon Hill, that there one can readily beget the golden time again, and think oneself back into the day when Mustard and Spice, running down the shady glen, might herald the coming of the Sheriff himself. Happy hours and gone: like that summer of 1821, whereof Lockhart speaks with an emotion the more touching because it is so rare,

the first of several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory as the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to partake as often as we liked of its brilliant society; yet could do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit which the daily reception of new visitors entailed upon all the society except Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not always proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of open-house-keeping. Even his temper sank sometimes under the solemn applause of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted and periwigged dowagers,

the horse-leech avidity with which underbred foreigners urged their questions, and the pompous simpers of condescending magnates. When sore beset in this way, he would every now and then discover that he had some very particular business to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and, craving the indulgence of his guests overnight, appear at the cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of reveillée under our window, were the signal that he had burst his bonds, and meant for that day to take his ease in his inn. . . . After breakfast he would take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter of "The Pirate"; and then, having made up and dispatched his parcel for Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie where the foresters were at work. . .

The constant and eager delight with which Erskine watched the progress of the tale has left a deep impression on my memory and indeed I heard so many of its chapters first read from the MS. by him, that I can never open the book now without thinking I hear his voice. Sir Walter used to give him at breakfast the pages he had written that morning, and very commonly, while he was again at work in his study, Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he might have the pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me under our favourite tree. 1

"The tree is living yet!" This long quotation from a book but too little read in general may be excused for its interest, as bearing on the composition of "The Pirate," in the early autumn of 1821. In "The Pirate" Scott fell back on his recollections of the Orcades, as seen by him in a tour with the Commissioners of Light Houses, in August 1814, immediately after

1 Lockhart, vi. 388-393. Erskine died before Scott, slain by a silly piece of gossip, and Mr. Skene says: "I never saw Sir Walter so much affected by any event, and at the funeral, which he attended, he was quite unable to suppress his feelings, but wept like a child." His correspondence with Scott fell into the hands of a lady, who, seeing that it revealed the secret of Scott's authorship, most unfortunately burned all the letters. (Journal, i. 416.)

the publication of "Waverley." They were accompanied by Mr. Stevenson, the celebrated engineer, "a most gentlemanlike and modest man, and well known by his scientific skill." It is understood that Mr. Stevenson also kept a diary, and that it is to be published by the care of his distinguished grandson, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, author of "Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," and other novels in which Scott would have recognised a not alien genius.

Sir Walter's Diary, read in company with "The Pirate," offers a most curious study of his art in composition. It may be said that he scarcely noted a nat ural feature, a monument, a custom, a superstition, or a legend in Zetland and Orkney which he did not weave into the magic web of his romance. In the Diary all those matters appear as very ordinary; in "The Pirate" they are transfigured in the light of fancy. History gives Scott the career of Gow and his betrothal to an island lady: observation gives him a few headlands, Picts' houses, ruined towers, and old stone monuments, and his characters gather about these, in rhythmic array, like the dancers in the sword-dance. We may conceive that Cleveland, like Gow, was originally meant to die, and that Minna, like Margaret in the ballad of Clerk Saunders, was to recover her troth from the hand of her dead lover. But, if Scott intended this, he was good-natured, and relented.

Taking the incidents in the Diary in company with the novel, we find, in the very first page of "The Pirate," mention of the roost, or rost, of Sumburgh, the running current of tidal water, which he hated so, because it made him so sea-sick. "All the landsmen sicker than sick, and our Viceroy, Stevenson, qualmish. It is proposed to have a light on Sumburgh Head.

1 Scott's Diary, July 29, 1814. Lockhart, vi. 183.