.. a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero
from the Barouche Club or the Four in Hand, with a set
of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen
Anne Street, East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow
Street Office?"
Yet Scott himself had once trodden in these well-worn paths of
romance. In the general preface to the collected edition of 1829,
wherein he seeks to "ravel out his weaved-up follies," he refers
to "a tale of chivalry planned thirty years earlier in the style
of _The Castle of Otranto_, with plenty of Border characters and
supernatural incident." His outline of the plot and a fragment of
the story, which was to be entitled _Thomas the Rhymer_, are
printed as an appendix to the preface. Scott intended to base his
story on an ancient legend, found in Reginald Scot's _Discovery
of Witchcraft_, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas of
Hercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by a
mysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a long
range of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and by
every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword
in his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out of
marble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like the
halls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancient
table, a horn and a sword.
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