It was afterwards placed in the hands of Sir Walter Scott, who was much interested with it, and strongly urged its publication, tendering his own services as editor, and offering to supply all the necessary explanatory notes. The reader cannot lament more than the editor, that, from some disinclination towards Sir Walter Scott's publisher, this most valuable offer should have been declined. Had the editor been aware of this fact at an earlier period, it is probable that he would have shrunk from an undertaking, in which, at every page, will be forced upon the reader the deteriorating comparison between what is, and what might have been.