significant intimation of that genius which as yet had lurked unseen, the work has now a separate value and interest, as forming the most curious of all illustrations for the history of its editor's mind and of his subsequent works. "One of the critics of that day," remarks Mr Lockhart, "said that the book contained 'the elements of a hundred historical romances ;' and this critic was a prophetic one. No person who has not gone through its volumes for the express purpose of comparing their contents with his great original works, can have formed a conception of the endless variety of incidents and images, now expanded and emblazoned by his mature art, of which the first hints may be found either in the text of those primitive ballads, or in the notes which the happy rambles of his youth had gathered together for their illustration."

But before the publication of the Border Minstrelsy, the poet had begun to attempt a higher flight. "In the third volume," says he, writing to his friend George Ellis in 1803, "I intend to publish a long poem of my own. It will be a kind of romance of border chivalry, in a light-horseman sort of stanza." This border romance was the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which, however, soon extended in plan and dimensions, and, originating as a ballad on a goblin story, became at length a long and varied poem. The first draught of it, in its present shape, was written in the autumn of 1802, and the whole history of its progress has been delightfully told by the author himself, and is well illustrated by his biographer.

In 1803, during a visit to London, Scott, already familiarly acquainted with Ellis, Heber, and other literary men, and now possessing high reputation based upon the Minstrelsy, was introduced to several of the first men of the time; and thenceforth, bland as he was in manner, and kind in heart, indefatigable and successful in his study of human character, and always willing to receive with cordiality the strangers whom his waxing fame brought about him, it is not surprising to find, that not to know personally Walter Scott, argued one's self unknown. The toleration and kindliness of his character are illustrated by the fact, that firm as his own political opinions were, and violently as excitement sometimes led him to express them, not only did he always continue on friendly terms with the chief men of the opposite party in Edinburgh, but several of them were his intimate friends and associates; and he even was for some years an occasional contributor to the Edinburgh Review.

In 1804 was published his edition of the ancient poem of Sir Tristrem, so valuable for its learned dissertations, and for that admirable imitation of the antique, which appears as a continuation of the early minstrel's work.

During that year and the preceding, the Lay was freely submitted to all the author's friends, Wordsworth and Jeffrey among the rest; and after undergoing various changes, and

receiving enthusiastic approval in several quarters from which commendation was wont to issue but sparingly, it was at length published, in the first week of 1805. The poet, now thirtythree years of age, took his place at once as a classic in English literature. Its circulation immediately became immense, and has since exceeded that of any other English poem.

At this culminating point of the poet's life, we must turn aside from the narrative of his literary triumphs, to notice a step of another kind, which proved the most important he ever took. In one of those interesting communications of 1830, which throw so much light on his personal history, he has told us, that from the moment when it became certain that literature was to form the principal employment of his days, he determined that it should at least not constitute a necessary source of his income. Few literary men, perhaps, have not nourished a wish of this sort; but very few indeed have possessed, like Scott, the means of converting the desire into an effectual resolution. In 1805, as his biographer tells us, he was, "independently of practice at the bar and of literary profits, in possession of a fixed revenue of nearly, if not quite, £1000 a year." To most men of letters this income would have appeared affluence; but Scott has frankly avowed, that he did not think it such. His mind was already filled with the ambition, not of founding a new family (for that was too mean an aim for his pride of birth to stoop to), but of adding to his own ancestral pretensions that claim to respect which ancient pedigree does not always possess when it stands alone, but which belongs to it beyond challenge when it is united with territorial possessions. The fame of a great poet, now within his reach, if not already grasped, seemed to him a little thing, compared with the dignity of a well-descended and wealthy Scottish landholder; and, while neither he nor his friends could yet have foreseen the immensity of those resources which his genius was afterwards to place at his disposal for the attainment of his favourite wish, two plans occurred and were executed, which promised to conduct him far at least towards the goal.

The first of these was the obtaining of one of the principal clerkships in the Scottish Court of Session, offices of high respectability, the duties of which were executed at a moderate cost of time and trouble, and remunerated at that time by an income of about £800 a year, which was afterwards increased to £1300. This object was attained early in 1806, through his ministerial influence, aided by the consideration paid to his talents; although, owing to a private arrangement with his predecessor, he did not receive any part of the emoluments till six years later.

The second plan was of a different sort, being in fact a commercial speculation. James Ballantyne, a schoolfellow of Scott, a man possessing considerable literary talent, having

become the editor and printer of a newspaper in Kelso, had been employed to print the Minstrelsy, and acquired great reputation by the elegance with which that work was produced. Soon afterwards, in pursuance of Scott's advice, he removed to Edinburgh, where, under the patronage of the poet and his friends, and assisted by his own character and skill, his printing business accumulated to an extent which his capital, even with pecuniary aid from Scott, proved inadequate to sustain. An application for a new loan was met by a refusal, accompanied, however, by a proposal, that Scott should make a large advance, on condition of being admitted as a partner in the firm, to the amount of a third share. Accordingly, in May 1805, Walter Scott became regularly a partner of the printinghouse of James Ballantyne and Company, though the fact remained for the public, and for all his friends but one, a profound secret. "The forming of this commercial connexion was," says his son-in-law, "one of the most important steps in Scott's life. He continued bound by it during twenty years, and its influence on his literary exertions and his worldly fortunes was productive of much good and not a little evil. Its effects were in truth so mixed and balanced during the vicissitudes of a long and vigorous career, that I at this moment doubt whether it ought, on the whole, to be considered with more of satisfaction or of regret."

From this time we are to view Scott as incessantly engaged in that memorable course of literary industry whose toils advancing years served only to augment, and from which neither the duties of his two professional offices of clerk of session and sheriff, nor the increasing claims made on him by society, were ever able to divert him. He now stood deservedly high in the favour of the booksellers, not merely as a poet and man of genius, but as one possessed of an extraordinary mass of information, and of such habits as qualified him eminently for turning his knowledge to account. He was therefore soon embarked in undertakings, not indeed altogether inglorious, but involving an amount of drudgery to which, perhaps, no man of equal original genius has ever condescended. The earliest of these was his edition of Dryden, which, entered upon in 1805, was completed and published in 1898.

But the list of works in which his poetical genius shone forth, continued rapidly to increase amidst his multiplicity of other avocations. From the summer of 1804 till that of 1812, the spring and autumnal vacations of the court were spent by him and his family at Ashestiel, a small mansion romantically overhanging the Tweed some miles above Melrose, and rented from one of the poet's kinsmen. In this beautiful retreat, at intervals during twelve months, was chiefly composed the magnificent poem of Marmion, which was published in the beginning of 1808. At the same place, likewise, in 1805, were composed the opening chapters of a novel which, on the dis

approval of one of the author's critical friends, was thrown aside and not resumed for years.

Scott's commercial engagements must now again be adverted to. In the year 1808 he took a part, perhaps as suggester, certainly as a zealous promoter, of a scheme which terminated in the establishment of the Quarterly Review in London, as a political and literary counterpoise to the Edinburgh Review, the advocate of Whig opinions. But the poet had other than political grounds for embarking in this opposition. He had seriously quarrelled with the firm of Constable and Company, the publishers of the Edinburgh Review, and of several of his own earlier works; and his wish to check the enterprising head of that house in his attempts to obtain a monopoly of Scottish literature, is openly avowed, in Scott's correspondence at the time, as one of his principal motives for framing another scheme. His plan, as far as it was explained either to the public or to his own friends, amounted only to this: That a new publishing house should be set up in Edinburgh, under the management of John Ballantyne, a younger brother of James; and that this firm, with the acknowledged patronage of Scott and his friends, should engage in a series of extensive literary undertakings, including, amongst others, the annual publication of a historical and literary Register, conducted on Tory principles. But, unfortunately both for Scott's peace of mind, and ultimately also for his worldly fortunes, there was here, as in his previously formed connection with the same family, an undivulged secret. The profits of the printing-house had been large; Scott's territorial ambition had been growing faster than his prospect of being able to feed it; and these causes, inextricably mixed up with pique towards Constable, and kindliness for his Kelso proteges, led him into an entanglement which at length ruined both himself and his associates. By the contract of the publishing house of John Ballantyne and Company, executed in May 1808, Scott became a secret partner to the extent of one third. The unhappy issue of this affair will force itself on our notice at a later stage.

In the mean time we see him prosecuting for some time his career of poetical success. The Lady of the Lake, published in 1810, was followed by the Vision of Don Roderick in 1811; by Rokeby in 1812; and by the Bridal of Triermain, which came out anonymously in 1813. His poems may be said to have closed in 1815 with the Lord of the Isles and the Field of Waterloo; since Harold the Dauntless, in 1817, appeared without the writer's name, and the dramatic poems of 1822 and 1830 are quite unworthy of him. In the midst of these poetical employments he made his second and last great appearance as an editor and commentator of English classics, by publishing in 1814 his edition of Swift.

But from 1815 till 1825, Scott's name ceased almost en

tirely to be before the public as an avowed author; and for those who chose to believe that he was not the writer of the Waverley Novels it must have been a question not a little puzzling, if it ever occurred to them, how this man, who wrote with such ease, and seemed to take such pleasure in writing, was now occupying his hours of leisure. A few articles in the Quarterly Review, such works as Paul's Letters, and annotations in occasional editions of ancient tracts, accounted but poorly for his time during ten years.

No

About 1813 and 1814 his popularity as a poet was sensibly on the decline, partly from causes inherent in his later poems themselves, and partly from extraneous causes, among which a prominent place belongs to the appearance of Byron. mian was more quicksighted than Scott in perceiving the ebb of popular favour; and no man better prepared to meet the reverse with firmness. He put in serious execution a threat which he had playfully uttered to one of his own family even before the publication of the Lady of the Lake. "If I fail now," said he, "I will write prose for life." And in writing prose his genius discovered, on its first attempt, a field in which it earned triumphs even more splendid than its early ones in the domain of poetry.

The chapters of fiction begun at Ashestiel in 1805, which had already been resumed and again thrown aside, were once more taken up, and the work was finished with miraculous rapidity; the second and third volumes having been written during the afternoons of three summer weeks in 1814. The novel appeared in July of that year, under the title of Waverley, and its success from the first was unequivocal and unparalleled. In the midst of occupations which would have taken away all leisure from other men, the press poured forth novels and romances in a succession so rapid as to deprive of some part of its absurdity one of the absurd suppositions of the day, namely, that more persons than one were concerned in their production. Guy Mannering, the second of the series, in 1815, was followed in 1816 by the Antiquary and the First Series of the Tales of My Landlord. Rob Roy appeared in 1817; the Second Series of the Tales in 1818; and in 1819 the Third Series and Ivanhoe. Two romances a-year now seemed to be expected as the due of the public. The year 1820 gave them the Monastery and the Abbot: 1821, Kenilworth and the Pirate; the Fortunes of Nigel, coming out alone in 1822, was followed in 1823 by no fewer than three works of fiction, Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, and St. Ronan's Well; and the comparatively scanty number of novels in 1824 and 1825, which produced respectively only Redgauntlet and the Tales of the Crusaders, is accounted for by the fact that the author was engaged in preparing a large historical work.

It is impossible even to touch on the many interesting details which Scott's personal history presents during these