Introduction - Page 2

exertions of this civic Mentor to bear in
his pupil's behalf. I am, I own, no great believer in the moral
utility to be derived from fictitious compositions; yet, if in any
case a word spoken in season may be of advantage to a young person, it
must surely be when it calls upon him to attend to the voice of
principle and self-denial, instead of that of precipitate passion. I
could not, indeed, hope or expect to represent my prudent and
benevolent citizen in a point of view so interesting as that of the
peasant girl, who nobly sacrificed her family affections to the
integrity of her moral character. Still however, something I hoped
might be done not altogether unworthy the fame which George Heriot has
secured by the lasting benefits he has bestowed on his country.

It appeared likely, that out of this simple plot I might weave
something attractive; because the reign of James I., in which George
Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable,
while at the same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination
of character than could, with historical consistency, have been
introduced, if the scene had been laid a century earlier. Lady Mary
Wortley Montague has said, with equal truth and taste, that the most
romantic region of every country is that where the mountains unite
themselves with the plains or lowlands. For similiar reasons, it may
be in like manner said, that the most picturesque period of history is
that when the ancient rough and wild manners of a barbarous age are
just becoming innovated upon, and contrasted, by the illumination of
increased or revived learning, and the instructions of renewed or
reformed religion. The strong contrast produced by the opposition of
ancient manners to those which are gradually subduing them, affords
the lights and shadows necessary to give effect to a fictitious
narrative; and while such a period entitles the author to introduce
incidents of a marvellous and improbable character, as arising out of
the turbulent independence and ferocity, belonging to old habits of
violence, still influencing the manners of a people who had been so
lately in a barbarous state; yet, on the other hand, the characters
and sentiments of many of the actors may, with the utmost probability,
be described with great variety of shading and delineation, which
belongs to the newer and more improved period, of which the world has
but lately received the light.

The reign of James I. of England possessed this advantage in a
peculiar degree. Some beams of chivalry, although its planet had been
for some time set, continued to animate and gild the horizon, and
although probably no one acted precisely on its Quixotic dictates, men
and women still talked the chivalrous