Warton as the oldest specimen of English verse; a translation by a gentleman of Devonshire of the deathsong of Regner Lodbrog; and the beautiful quatrain omitted in Gray's Elegy

"There seated oft, the earliest of the year," &c.

After this we have an Italian canzonet on the praises of blue eyes; several pages of etymologies from Ducange; some more of notes on the Morte d'Arthur; extracts from the books of a journal about Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of Branxome of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and her husband; Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, called " Wicked Watt;" other extracts about Witches and Fairies; various couplets from Hall's Satires; a passage from Albania; notes on the second sight, with extracts from Aubrey and Glanville; a list of ballads to be discovered or recovered; extracts from Guerin de Montglave; and after many more similar entries, a table of the Mæso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Runic alphabets; with a fourth section headed German, but left blank. Of original composition in poetry Scott had as yet given little notice of his powers; when he translated Burger's ballad of Leonora for Miss Cranstoun, she wrote to a friend-" Upon my word, Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet,-something of a cross, I think, between Burns and Gray." And two other short poems, written about this time to the ladye of his first love, are given in Mr. Lockhart's pages.* But it was in his romantic retirement at Lasswade on the Esk, after his marriage, that the true, bold, and pure character of Scott's lyric poetry first appeared. Here he spent some happy summers, amidst some of the most romantic scenery that Scotland can boast, the haunt of his boyish rambles: he enjoyed the familiar society of Lord Woodhousclee and of Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling; but

Who knows not Melville's beechen grove,
And Roslin's rocky glen;

Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,

And classic Hawthornden?

"Amid these delicious solitudes (says Mr. Lockhart) Scott produced the pieces which laid the imperishable foundation of all his fame. It was here that, when his warm heart was beating with gay and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit were nerved by new motives of exertion; it was here that, in the ripened glow of manhood, he seems to have first felt something of his real strength, and poured himself out in those splendid original ballads which were at once to fix his name."†

It was at this period of his life that Mr. Lockhart considers Scott's character to have been completely formed and settled,-it had passed unmoved through the first blandishments of worldly applause, and no subsequent trials of that sort could ever shake it from its early balance. His calm delight in his own pursuits; the patriotic enthusiasm which mingled with all the best of his literary efforts; his modesty as to his own general merits, combined with a certain dogged resolution to maintain his own first view of a subject, however assailed; his readiness to interrupt his

*Vol. i. p. 243.

Two imperfect original ballads, on Bothwell and the Shepherd's Tale, are given in this place by Mr. Lockhart, vol. i. p. 307. They are in Scott's spirited picturesque style, but very inferior to those previously published. See also p. 353, for the Reiver's Wedding. Scott's profits for the first edition of the Minstrelsy was 787. 10s.! What spreading oaks in time grew out of that little parent acorn!

own tasks by any drudgery by which he could assist those of a friend; his steady and determined watchfulness over the struggling fortunes of genius and worth-all assisted his rapid advance in literary fame, and in the knowledge and esteem of persons themselves eminent for genius or talent. Mackintosh welcomed him to town as an old friend; and Samuel Rogers and Stewart Rose were added to the list of his acquaintance. The indefatigable Douce assisted his antiquarian researches, and his most accomplished and admirable friend George Ellis then first heard the Lay of the Last Minstrel, yet imperfect, read to him under an old oak in Windsor forest.

We have now accompanied Scott to that period of his life when the fruits of his various studies and acquirements began publicly to appear; when his genius had arranged its rich treasures of information, and was presenting them to the world, beautifully set and heightened by rich additions of his own. Of his Minstrelsy his Biographer says,

"To the task of selecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials, he brought a melange of old manners and phraseology, and a manly simplicity of taste, such as had never before been united in the person of a poetical antiquary. From among a hundred corruptions, he seized with intuitive tact the pristine diction and imagery, and produced strains in which the unbroken energy of halfcivilised ages, their stern and deep passions, their daring, adventurous, and cruel tragedies, and even their rude and wild humour, are reflected with almost the brightness of an Homeric mirror, interrupted by hardly a blot of what deserves to be called vulgarity, and totally free from any mixture of artificial sentimentalism. His introductory essays and notes teem with curious knowledge not hastily grasped for the occasion, but gradually gleaned and sifted by the patient labour of years, and presented with an easy unaffected propriety and elegance of argument and expression, which it may be doubted if he ever materially surpassed in the happiest of his imaginative narratives. I well remember when Waverley was a new book, and all the world were puzzling themselves about its authorship, to have heard the poet of the Isle of Palms exclaim, impatiently, I wonder what all these people are perplexing themselves about; have they forgotten the

prose of the Minstrelsy?' It is not to be denied, however, that the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border has derived a very large accession of interest from the subsequent career of its editor. One of the critics of the day said, that the book contained the elements of a hundred Historical Romances,' and this critic was a prophetic one. No one 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 pristine ballads, or in the notes which the happy rambles of his youth had gathered together for their illustration. In the edition of the Minstrelsy, published since his death, not a few such instances are pointed out, but the list might have been extended far beyond the limits which such an edition allowed. The taste and fancy of Scott appear to have been formed as early as his moral character; and he had, before he passed the threshold of authorship, assembled about him in the uncalculating delight of native enthusiasm, almost all the materials on which his genius was destined to be employed for the gratification and instruction of the world."

At length the poem appeared which Mr. Lockhart calls the bright consummate flower in which the dreams of Scott's youthful fancy had found expansion for their spirit and beauty. Genius not only follows no other or inferior path, but even makes its own as it proceeds. Therefore, as our object is not to give any history of Scott's life, or any regular account of his works,—not to lead our readers into the long gallery of his finished works, but, taking them with us into the studio and the workshop, to observe the progress of the author's chisel and the growing development of his thoughts, we shall trace from the biography, in this instance,

the small beginnings and gradual progress of the design of the Lay of the Last Minstrel; in the formation of which, all that Scott has derived from natural gifts, and all he had acquired and added by well-directed research, were called into action. It burst, as we remember well, upon the public mind with a sudden and brilliant effect; but, like all other valuable things, it was long prepared, and formed of thoughts, images, and associations, which composed part of a body of poetical literature that he had long and rightfully made his own.

Thus was the poetic fabric raised; by so many fairy links of hints and associations and analogies were its component masses joined. Imprimis, the Countess of Dalkeith hears a wild rude legend of Border diablerie, and sportingly asks him to make it the subject of a ballad. He assents, and casts about for some new variety of rhyme and diction. Sir John Stoddart's casual recitation, a year or two before, of Coleridge's unpublished Christabel, had fixed the music of that noble fragment in his memory, and it occurs to him that by throwing the story of Gilpin Horner into somewhat of a similar cadence, he might produce such an echo of the latter metrical romance as would serve to connect his conclusion of the pristine Sir Tristram with his imitation of the common popular ballad in the Grey Brothers and the Eve of St. John. A single scene of feudal festivity in the hall of Branksome, disturbed by some pranks of a nondescript goblin, was probably all that he contemplated; but his accidental confinement in the midst of a volunteer camp gave him leisure to meditate his theme to the sound of the bugle; and suddenly there flashes on him the idea of extending his simple outline so as to embrace a vivid panorama of the old Border life of war and tumult and all the worst passions, with which his researches in the Minstrelsy had by degrees fed his imagination, until every the minutest feature had been taken home and realised with unconscious intenseness of sympathy; so that he had won for himself in the past, another world, hardly less complete or familiar than the present. Erskine or Cranstoun suggests that he would do well to divide the poem into cantos, and prefix to each of them a motto explanatory of the action, after the fashion of Spenser in the Faery Queen. He pauses for a moment, and the happiest conception of the framework of a picturesque narrative that ever occurred to any poet-one that Homer might have envied-the creation of the ancient Harper, starts to life. By such steps did the Lay of the Last Minstrel grow out of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The intelligent biographer of Scott closes his account of this original and beautiful poem with the following remarks, which, though called forth by that, are meant to apply to the spirit and character of all his works :

"The arch allusions which run through the introductions, without in the least interrupting the truth and graceful pathos of their main impression, seem to me equally characteristic of Scott, whose delight and pride it was to play with the genius which nevertheless mastered him at will. For in truth what is it that gives to all his works their unique and marking charms, except the matchless effort which sudden effusions of the purest heart-blood of nature derive from their being poured out to all appearance involuntarily, amidst diction and sentiment cast equally in the

mould of the busy world, and the seemingly habitual desire to dwell on nothing but what might be likely to excite curiosity, without too much disturbing deeper feelings in the saloons of polished life? Such outbursts come forth dramatically in all his writings; but in the interludes and passionate parentheses of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, we have the poet's own inner soul and temperament laid bare and throbbing before us,—even here indeed he has a mask and he trusts it, but fortunately it is a transparent one."

Among the choicest parts and passages of the Life of Scott, none

convey more interest to our mind than the account of his habits and occupations, which, uniting with the favourite subjects of his study, formed the entire character of the poet and the novelist. Inspiration, and that of the purest and brightest kind, came to Pope and to Gray in the studious seclusion of their libraries, and among the artificial refinements of social life; but Scott's poetry breathed the wilder and more enthusiastic spirit of the ancient time. The poet diffused his own character through his poetry. He lived among the scenes of his own creations; he not only read books, but studied men, and worshipped nature. The man of active life was not lost in the student and the recluse; and he is probably the first great poet, who ever planted, built, felled timber, hunted, shot, coursed, speared salmon, waded fords, leapt torrents, commanded a troop of cavalry, presided at matches of football between rival clans, and whose poetry was the result of the active powers of his mind, as well as of its sensibility and refinement. The blood of the borderer and the mosstrooper was mingled in his veins with that of the poet and the knights of the Morte d'Arthur.* Scott's Life was indeed a poetic action going on through its changes. Speaking of Marmion, Mr. Lockhart says:

"There is a knoll with some tall ashes on the adjoining farm of the Peel, where Scott was very fond of sitting by himself, and it still bears the name of the Sheriff's Knowe; another favourite seat was beneath a huge oak hard by the Tweed, at the extremity of the haigh of Ashestiel. It was here that, while meditating his verses, he used

To stray,

And waste the solitary day, &c. He frequently wandered far from home, however, attended only by his dog, and would return late in the evening, having let hours and hours slip away among the soft and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow creeps from her fountains; but when the theme was of a more stirring order, he enjoyed pursuing it over brake and fell at the full speed of his Lieutenant. I well remember his saying, as I rode with him across the hills from Ashestiel to Newark, one day in his declining years, 'Oh! man, I had many a grand gallop among these braes when I was thinking of Marmion; but a trifling canny poney must serve me now.' His friend, McSkene, however, informs me that many of the more energetic descriptions, and particularly that of the battle of Flodden, were struck out while he was in quarters again with his cavalry in the autumn of 1807. In the intervals of drilling, he says, Scott used to delight in walking his powerful black steed up and down by himself upon the Portobello Sands, within the beating of the surge; and now and then you would see him plunge in his spurs, and go off as if at the

charge, and with the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh he often came and placed himself beside me to repeat the verses he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise.

"Mr. Morritt's testimony of Scott's character harmonizes with the preceding account. He describes him as the friend and neighbour of every Selkirkshire yeo

man.

He carried us (he says) one day to Melrose or Newark,-another to course with mountain greyhounds by Yarrow braes or St. Mary's Loch, repeating every ballad or legendary tale connected with the scenery; and on a third we must all go to a farmer's harvest-home, to dance with border lasses on a barn-floor, drink whisky punch, and enter in all the gossip and good fellowship of his neighbours.

"At this period (says the same accomplished and observing friend) his conversation was more equal and animated than any man's that I ever knew. It was most characterised by the extreme facility and fun of the illustrations drawn from the whole encyclopædia of life and nature, in a style sometimes too exuberant for a written narrative, but which to him was natural and spontaneous. A hundred stories, always apposite, and often interesting the mind by strong pathos or eminently ludicrous, were daily told, which, with many more, have since been transplanted, almost in the same language, into the Waverley novels and his other writings. These and his recitations of poetry, which can never be forgotten by those who knew him, made up the charm

*See vol. iii. p. 131.

Mr. Lockhart bears testimony of Scott's capacity for practical dealing and rule among men.

It is, then, to this ready and powerful memory, to this ever-active imagination, to this profound and poetical sensibility, to the well-arranged masses and groups of his knowledge, and to the quickness of his associtions from which he could command and distribute them, that we are to attribute the otherwise almost marvellous rapidity of his inventions. The two last volumes of Waverley were written in three weeks. Mr. B. Hall says,

When Mr. B. Hall turns from the writer to the man, he thus gives his opinion of Scott's character: