TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
1868.

I am about to do what very few could do without emotion—revisea book which I wrote forty-five years ago. This littlework came out in the Augustan days of Edinburgh, when Jeffreyand Scott, Wilson and the Ettrick Shepherd, Dugald Stewart andAlison, were daily giving the productions of their minds to thepublic, and while yet Archibald Constable acted as the unquestionedemperor of the publishing world. I was then an insignificantperson of the age of twenty; yet, destitute as I was both of meansand friends, I formed the hope of writing something which wouldattract attention. The subject I proposed was one lying readilyat hand, the romantic things connected with Old Edinburgh. If,I calculated, a first part or number could be issued, materials forothers might be expected to come in, for scores of old inhabitants,even up perhaps to the very ‘oldest,’ would then contribute theirreminiscences.

The plan met with success. Materials almost unbounded cameto me, chiefly from aged professional and mercantile gentlemen,who usually, at my first introduction to them, started at myyouthful appearance, having formed the notion that none but anold person would have thought of writing such a book. A friendgave me a letter to Mr Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who, I wastold, knew the scandal of the time of Charles II. as well as he didthe merest gossip of the day, and had much to say regarding thegood society of a hundred years ago.

Looking back from the year 1868, I feel that C. K. S. hashimself become, as it were, a tradition of Edinburgh.

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