PREFATORY NOTE.
The present Memoir of Sir Walter Scott was written by my brother, the late Dr R. Chambers, immediately after the decease of the great novelist, and having been issued at a small price for popular reading, had what was then considered a large circulation—180,000 copies. It was subsequently republished, with some improvements. The Memoir is now reproduced in somewhat better style, as a small but fitting contribution in homage of the great man, the centenary of whose birth, 15th August 1871, is about to be very generally celebrated. I have taken the liberty of adding only a few paragraphs, distinguishable by being enclosed within brackets. The principal of these insertions refers to the manner in which my brother had the honour to become acquainted with, and acquired the esteem of, Sir Walter Scott.
To the Memoir are now appropriately appended certain ‘Abbotsford Notanda,’ descriptive of the friendly intercourse which long subsisted between Sir Walter and his factor and amanuensis, William Laidlaw, prepared by one well qualified to write on the subject, Dr R. Carruthers, Inverness.
W. C.
Edinburgh, June 1871.