The Monastery
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Оглавление
Вальтер Скотт. The Monastery
INTRODUCTION – (1830.)
INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE
ANSWER BY “THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY,”
Chapter the First
Chapter the Second
Chapter the Third
Chapter the Fourth
Chapter the Fifth
Chapter the Sixth
Chapter the Seventh
Chapter the Eighth
Chapter the Ninth
Chapter the Tenth
Chapter the Eleventh
Chapter the Twelfth
Chapter the Thirteenth
Chapter the Fourteenth
Chapter the Fifteenth
Chapter the Sixteenth
Chapter the Seventeenth
Chapter the Eighteenth
Chapter the Nineteenth
Chapter the Twentieth
Chapter the Twenty-First
Chapter the Twenty-Second
Chapter the Twenty-Third
Chapter the Twenty-Fourth
Chapter the Twenty-Fifth
Chapter the Twenty-Sixth
Chapter the Twenty-Seventh
Chapter the Twenty-Eighth
Chapter the Twenty-Ninth
Chapter the Thirtieth
Chapter the Thirty-First
Chapter the Thirty-Second
Chapter the Thirty-Third
Chapter the Thirty-Fourth
Chapter the Thirty-Fifth
Chapter the Thirty-Sixth
Chapter the Thirty-Seventh
Отрывок из книги
Although I do not pretend to the pleasure of your personal acquaintance, like many whom I believe to be equally strangers to you, I am nevertheless interested in your publications, and desire their continuance; – not that I pretend to much taste in fictitious composition, or that I am apt to be interested in your grave scenes, or amused by those which are meant to be lively. I will not disguise from you, that I have yawned over the last interview of MacIvor and his sister, and fell fairly asleep while the schoolmaster was reading the humours of Dandie Dinmont. You see, sir, that I scorn to solicit your favour in a way to which you are no stranger. If the papers I enclose you are worth nothing, I will not endeavour to recommend them by personal flattery, as a bad cook pours rancid butter upon stale fish. No, sir! what I respect in you is the light you have occasionally thrown on national antiquities, a study which I have commenced rather late in life, but to which I am attached with the devotions of a first love, because it is the only study I ever cared a farthing for.
You shall have my history, sir, (it will not reach to three volumes,) before that of my manuscript; and as you usually throw out a few lines of verse (by way of skirmishers, I suppose) at the head of each division of prose, I have had the luck to light upon a stanza in the schoolmaster’s copy of Burns which describes me exactly. I love it the better, because it was originally designed for Captain Grose, an excellent antiquary, though, like yourself, somewhat too apt to treat with levity his own pursuits:
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As I knew nothing earthly at the time about the community of St. Maur, and their learned labours, I could only return a mumbling assent to this proposition. I have since seen this noble work in the library of a distinguished family, and I must own I am ashamed to reflect, that, in so wealthy a country as ours, a similar digest of our historians should not be undertaken, under the patronage of the noble and the learned, in rivalry of that which the Benedictines of Paris executed at the expense of their own conventual funds.
“I perceive,” said the ex-Benedictine, smiling, “that your heretical prejudices are too strong to allow us poor brethren any merit, whether literary or spiritual.”
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