EDITOR‘S INTRODUCTION TO ST. RONAN‘S WELL
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EDITOR‘S INTRODUCTION TO ST. RONAN‘S WELL
"‘St. Ronan‘s Well‘ is not so much my favourite as certain of its predecessors," Lady Louisa Stuart wrote to Scott on March 26, 1824. "Yet still I see the author‘s hand in it, _et c‘est tout dire_. Meg Dods, the meeting" (vol. i. chap. ix.), "and the last scene between Clara and her brother, are marked with the true stamp, not to be matched or mistaken. Is the Siege of Ptolemais really on the anvil?" she goes on, speaking of the projected Crusading Tales, and obviously anxious to part company with "St. Ronan‘s Well." All judgments have not agreed with Lady Louisa‘s. There is a literary legend or fable according to which a number of distinguished men, all admirers of Scott, wrote down separately the name of their favourite Waverley novel, and all, when the papers were compared, had written "St. Ronan‘s." Sydney Smith, writing to Constable on Dec. 28, 1823, described the new story as "far th

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