The opening of Preface
On the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832, his entire literary remains were placed at the disposal of his son-in-law, Mr. John Gibson Lockhart. Among these remains were two volumes of a Journal which had been kept by Sir Walter from 1825 to 1832. Mr. Lockhart made large use of this Journal in his admirable life of his father-in-law. Writing, however, so short a time after Scott's death, he could not use it so freely as he might have wished, and, according to his own statement, it was "by regard for the feelings of living persons" that he both omitted and altered; and indeed he printed no chapter of the Diary in full.
There is no longer any reason why the Journal should not be published in its entirety, and by the permission of the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott it now appears exactly as Scott left it--but for the correction of obvious slips of the pen and the omission of some details chiefly of family and domestic interest.