The Centenary Garland / Being Pictorial Illustrations of the Novels of Sir Walter Scott

Who comes, alone, with soul of fire, And in his hand the Border lyre? He sweeps the strings, and in his strain Old times and manners live again; 'Tis Scott! great Master of his art, He fires, subdues, or storms the heart! Rapt by the magic of his rhymes, I seem to live in feudal times; I hear the swelling bugle's call, And see the warder on the wall; And many a squire, and many a knight, In mail and gloves of steel bedight, Impatient for the fiery fight. Captain Charles Gray. The land was charm'd to list his lays; It knew the harp of ancient days. The Border chiefs, that long had been In sepulchres unhearsed and green, Passed f rom their mouldy vaults away, In armour red and stern array, And by their moonlight halls were seen, In visor helm, and habergean. Even fairies sought our land again, So powerful was the magic strain. The Ettrick Shepherd.



THE enthusiasm with which Scotsmen and others have hailed the proposal to celebrate in public demonstration the Centenary of Sir Walter Scott's birth, has suggested the publication of this little work. The Memoir includes some interesting particulars omitted by preceding biographers; while a history of the Scott Monument at Edinburgh has been prepared from original materials. The illustrations are printed on stone by Messrs Schenck & M'Farlane, from steel plates by artists of eminence. The spirited etchings by Mr George Cruikshank will be especially welcomed by the numerous admirers of that distinguished artist. It has been the Editor's aim to produce a souvenir worthy of the occasion, and he is inclined to believe that his intentions have been in some measure realised.
Snowdoun Villa,
Lewisham, Kent,
June 1871.
CONTENTS


ON the 15th of August 1771, at Edinburgh, it is believed, Sir Walter Scott was born, but his birth does not seem to have been entered in any Register. The Scots Magazine recorded only births in families of distinction, and Edinburgh newspapers had not yet begun to notify domestic changes. The Kirk-session Registers of the capital were indeed well kept, but parents who claimed for their children baptism in the Established Church were those only who systematically enrolled the names of their offspring in the Presbyterian Records. The father of the great novelist, Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet, was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, in which, doubtless, his children were baptized. He therefore ignored the Presbyterian registers; yet it is sufficiently singular that, albeit a man of business of good capacity, he was not careful to secure elsewhere a record of his children's births.