It ruddied all the copsewood glen;'T was seen from Dreyden's groves of oak,
And seen from caverned Hawthornden.
The quiet of Lasswade gave Scott the opportunity for the compilation of the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' and its romantic beauty furnished the inspiration for his first serious attempts to write new ballads in imitation of the old ones. 'It was amidst these delicious solitudes,' says Lockhart, 'that he produced the pieces which laid the imperishable foundations of all his fame. It was here that when his warm heart was beating with young and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit were nerved with new motives for exertion—it was here in the ripened glow of manhood he seems to have first felt something of his real strength, and found himself out in those splendid original ballads which were at once to fix his name.'
At this period Scott was a man of unusually robust health. In spite of the lameness with which he had been afflicted from infancy, his powers of endurance were very great. He could walk thirty miles a day or ride one hundred without resting. He was quartermaster of the Edinburgh Volunteers and had a great reputation as a skilful horseman. 'He had a remarkably firm seat on horseback,' said Mr. Skene, 'and in all situations a fearless one: no fatigue ever seemed too much for him, and his zeal and animation served to sustain the enthusiasm of the whole corps.' His companions called him 'Earl Walter,' and whenever there came, at drills, a moment of rest, all turned intuitively to the quartermaster, whose ever ready fun never failed to lighten the burdens of the day. It was really this remarkable gift of good companionship, coupled with his fondness for horses and unusual powers of endurance, that enabled Scott to gather the materials for his poems.
'Eh me,' said Shortreed, his companion and guide in the Liddesdale raids, 'sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring or singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company.' It was literally true, as he said, that he 'had a home in every farmhouse.'
To his rare good fellowship and his powers of endurance, Scott added one other quality without which his vigorous search for literary material might have been of little use, namely, a most extraordinary memory, which enabled him to retain what he had heard and use it many years afterward. James Hogg, the eccentric Ettrick shepherd, gives a fine instance of this power. One night Scott, with his friends, Hogg and Skene, was out on a fishing expedition. 'While we three sat down on the brink of a river,' says Hogg, 'Scott desired me to sing them my ballad of Gilman's Cleugh. Now be it remembered that this ballad had never been printed: I had merely composed it by rote, and, on finishing it three years before, had sung it over once to Sir Walter. I began it, at his request, but at the eighth or ninth stanza I stuck in it and could not get on with another verse, on which he began it again and recited it every word from beginning to end. It being a very long ballad, consisting of eighty-eight stanzas, I testified my astonishment, knowing that he had never heard it but once, and even then did not appear to be paying particular attention. He said he had been out with a pleasure party as far as the opening of the Firth of Forth, and, to amuse the company, he had recited both that ballad and one of Southey's ("The Abbot of Aberbrothock"), both of which ballads he had only heard once from their respective authors, and he believed he recited them both without misplacing a word.'
Living in a country where new beauty appears at every turn in the road and romance is echoed from every hillside, happy in his domestic relations, blessed with the faculty of making friends wherever he went, whether among farmers and shepherds or lords and ladies, active in travelling into every nook or corner where material could be found, keen to appreciate a good story or a pleasing ballad, and able to remember all he ever heard or read, Walter Scott became a poet as easily and naturally as the rippling waters of his beloved Tweed find their way to the sea.
CHAPTER II
THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL
The years at Lasswade were marked by one of the most momentous decisions of Scott's life. He had reached the parting of the ways; one leading to the practice of the law; the other—and the more alluring one—to literature as a profession. Had his father been alive, it is probable that a high sense of duty and loyalty would have determined him to continue in the law, for the old gentleman had set his heart upon that, and Scott would have submitted to almost any irksome requirement rather than wound the feelings of his parent. But the worthy barrister's death a year or two after his son's marriage had put an end to any scruples on his account. Although Scott had not made a failure, his success at the Bar was not remarkable. In the year preceding his marriage and the fifth year of his practice, his fee-book showed an income of only one hundred forty-four pounds, ten shillings. He never had any fondness for the law. As he afterwards expressed it: 'My profession and I came to stand nearly upon the footing which honest Slender consoled himself on having established with Mistress Anne Page: "There was no great love between us at the beginning and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on farther acquaintance."' He began to realize that 'the Scottish Themis was peculiarly jealous of any flirtation with the Muses,' and that a young lawyer could not expect to succeed unless he kept up the appearance of being busy even when he had nothing to do. A barrister who spent his time 'running after ballads' was not to be trusted. To succeed in the law meant, therefore, a farewell to literature. It meant other sacrifices, too. His vigorous health at this period enabled him to indulge a natural fondness for country sports, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, and the like. His membership in the Edinburgh Volunteers gave him a most agreeable companionship with a fine class of men, among whom he was extremely popular and with whom he spent some of the happiest hours of his life. All this would have to be given up if he continued at the Bar, and instead he would feel obliged to tie himself down to a severe course of study in some musty old office in Edinburgh.
Two circumstances combined to make feasible the more attractive path. The first was Scott's appointment as Sheriff of Selkirk with an income of three hundred pounds a year, which gave him a certain degree of independence, while the duties were not onerous. The second was the success of the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' For several years Scott had travelled extensively through many remote nooks and corners in search of material for this compilation, and its publication had brought him into public notice as a man of no small literary skill. His gratification with its success may be judged from a letter to his brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, in 1803:—
I have continued to turn a very slender portion of literary talents to some account by a publication of the poetical antiquities of the Border, where the old people had preserved many ballads descriptive of the manners of the country during the wars with England. This trifling collection was so well received by a discerning public, that, after receiving about £100 profit for the first edition, which my vanity cannot omit informing you went off in six months, I have sold the copyright for £500 more.
This enterprise, paying as much as the entire proceeds of Scott's first five years of legal effort, gave assurance of a financial success in literature, which coupled with a certain income as Sheriff seemed to make the future fairly secure. Reasoning in this way, Scott finally reached his decision to abandon the law and devote his life to literature.
'The
