ISBN: 9781011034215

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:THE… More...

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR. CHAPTER I. By cauk and keel to win your bread, Wi' wbigmalecries for them wha need, ivhilL 'a a gentle tradc indeed To carry the gaberlunzic on. Old Seng. Few have been in my secret while I was compiling these narratives, nor is it probable that they will ever become public during the life of their author. Even were that event to happen, I am not ambitious of the honoured distinction, digito monstrarier. 1 confess, that, were it safe to cherish such dreams at all, I should more enjoy the thought of remaining behind the curtain unseen, like the ingenious manager of Punch and his wife Joan, and enjoying the astonishment and conjectures of my audience. Then might I, perchance, hear the productions of the obscure Peter Pattieson praised by the judicious, and admired by the feeling, engrossing the young, and attracting even the old ; while the critic traced their fame up to some name of literary celebrity, and the question, when, and by whom, these tales were written, filled up the pause of conversation in a hundred circles and coteries. This I may never enjoy during my lifetime ; but farther than this, I im certain, my vanity should never induce me to aspire. 1 am too stubborn in habits, and too little polished in manners, to envy or aspire to the honours assigned to myliterary contemporaries. I could not think a whit more highly of myself, were I even found worthy to come in place as n lion, for a winter in the great metropolis. I could apt rise, turn round, and show all my honours, from the shaggy main: to the tufted tail, roaryouan't were any nightingale, and so lie down again like a well-behaved Least of show, and all at the cheap and easy rate of a cup of coffee, and a slice of bread and butter as thin as a wafer. And I could ill ... Trade Books>Trade Paperback>World History>World Hist>World History, Creative Media Partners, LLC Core >1<