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883 Preface When I first saw Mr. Osgood's beautiful illustrated edition of The Ladyof the Lake, I asked him to let me use some of the cuts in a cheaperannotated edition for school and household use; and the present volumeis the result. The text of the poem has given me unexpected trouble. When I editedsome of Gray's poems several years ago, I found that they had not beencorrectly printed for more than half a century; but in the case of ScottI supposed that the text of Black's so-called "Author's Edition" couldbe depended upon as accurate. Almost at the start, however, I detectedsundry obvious misprints in one of the many forms in which this editionis issued, and an examination of others showed that they were as bad intheir way. The "Shilling" issue was no worse than the costly illustratedone of 1853, which had its own assortment of slips of the type. No twoeditions that I could obtain agreed exactly in their readings. I triedin vain to find a copy of the editio princeps (1810) in Cambridge andBoston, but succeeded in getting one through a London bookseller. ThisI compared, line by line, with the Edinburgh edition of 1821 (from theHarvard Library), with Lockhart's first edition, the "Globe" edition,and about a dozen others English and American. I found many misprintsand corruptions in all except the edition of 1821, and a few even inthat. For instance in i. 217 Scott wrote "Found in each cliff a narrowbower," and it is so printed in the first edition; but in every otherthat I have seen "cliff" appears in place of clift,, to the manifestinjury of the passage. In ii. 685, every edition that I have seen sincethat of 1821 has "I meant not all my heart might say," which is worsethan nonsense, the correct reading being "my heat." In vi. 396, theScottish "boune" (though it occurs twice in other parts of the poem)has been changed to "bound" in all editions since 1821; and, eight linesbelow, the old word "barded" has become "barbed." Scores of similarcorruptions are recorded in my Notes, and need not be cited here. I have restored the reading of the first edition, except in cases whereI have no doubt that the later reading is the poet's own correction oralteration. There are obvious misprints in the first edition which Scotthimself overlooked (see on ii. 115, 217,, Vi. 527, etc.), and it issometimes difficult to decide whether a later reading--a change of aplural to a singular, or like trivial variation--is a misprint or theauthor's correction of an earlier misprint. I have done the best Icould, with the means at my command, to settle these questions, and amat least certain that the text as I give it is nearer right than inany edition since 1821 As all the variae lectiones are recorded in theNotes, the reader who does not approve of the one I adopt can substitutethat which he prefers. I have retained all Scott's Notes (a few of them have been somewhatabridged) and all those added by Lockhart. [1] My own I have made asconcise as possible. There are, of course, many of them which many ofmy readers will not need, but I think there are none that may not be ofservice, or at least of interest, to some of them; and I hope that noone will turn to them for help without finding it. Scott is much given to the use of Elizabethan words and constructions,and I have quoted many "parallelisms" from Shakespeare and hiscontemporaries. I believe I have referred to my edition of Shakespearein only a single instance (on iii. 17), but teachers and others who havethat edition will find many additional illustrations in the Notes on thepassages cited. While correcting the errors of former editors, I may have overlookedsome of my own. I am already indebted to the careful proofreaders of theUniversity Press for the detection of occasional slips in quotations orreferences; and I shall be very grateful to my readers for a memorandumof any others that they may discover. Cambridge, June 23, 1883..
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