LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. SHEPARD, CLARK AND BROWN. CINCINNATI: MOORE, WILSTACH, KEYS AND CO. M.DCCC.LVII. ADVERTISEMENT. THE Poems of Sir Walter Scott are reprinted from the standard edition of Cadell, Edinburgh, 1851. The smaller pieces, dispersed through several volumes in that edition, are here, with the "Imitations of the Ancient Ballad," from the Border Minstrelsy, arranged continuously; and in compliance with a demand for completeness, we have inserted immediately after these, various trifles printed in Lockhart's Biography, and not generally received into the collections, together with the poetry of the Waverley Novels. The Memoir is extracted from an edition of Scott's poetry, by Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1853. MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 66 SIR WALTER SCOTT was born at Edinburgh on the 15th of August, 1771, the same day which gave birth to Napoleon Bonaparte. "My birth," says he, was neither distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed gentle, as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient families, both by my father's and mother's side." His paternal great-grandfather-a cadet of the border family of Harden— was sprung, in the fourteenth century from the great house of Buccleuch; his grandfather became a farmer in Roxburghshire; and his father, Walter Scott, was a writer to the signet in the Scottish capital. His mother, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of one of the medical professors in the university of Edinburgh. Neither Scott's poetical turn nor his extraordinary powers of memory seem to have been inherited from either of his parents. His early years displayed little precocity of talent; and the |