Marmion | Page 2

his project of a
complete edition of the poets, his friend George Ellis said, 'Much as I
wish for a corpus poetarum, edited as you would edit it, I should like
still better another Minstrel Lay by the last and best Minstrel; and the
general demand for the poem seems to prove that the public are of my
opinion.' The work of editing, however, he seemed at the time
determined on having, and he finally abandoned the idea of an
exhaustive issue of the British poetry previous to his own time and
settled down to edit Dryden. This was a work much needed, and Scott
did it extremely well, as may be seen by comparing his own issue of

Dryden's Life and Works in 1808 with the recent reproduction of it,
admirably edited by Mr. George Saintsbury.
He had likewise, as he mentions in the General Preface to the Novels,
begun Waverley 'about 1805,' and other literary engagements received
their share of attention. He wrote articles for the Edinburgh Review,
besides doing such minor if useful literary service as editing for
Constable 'Original Memoirs written during the Great Civil Wars,' and
so on. At the same time, there were prospects of professional
advancement, an account of which he gives in the following terms, in
the 1830 Introduction to 'Marmion':--
'An important circumstance had, about the same time, taken place in
my life. Hopes had been held out to me from an influential quarter, of a
nature to relieve me from the anxiety which I must have otherwise felt,
as one upon the precarious tenure of whose own life rested the principal
prospects of his family, and especially as one who had necessarily
some dependence upon the favour of the public, which is proverbially
capricious; though it is but justice to add, that, in my own case, I have
not found it so. Mr. Pitt had expressed a wish to my personal friend, the
Right Hon. William Dundas, now Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, that
some fitting opportunity should be taken to be of service to me; and as
my views and wishes pointed to a future rather than an immediate
provision, an opportunity of accomplishing this was soon found. One of
the Principal Clerks of Session, as they are called, (official persons who
occupy an important and responsible situation, and enjoy a
considerable income,) who had served upwards of thirty years, felt
himself, from age, and the infirmity of deafness with which it was
accompanied, desirous of retiring from his official situation. As the law
then stood, such official persons were entitled to bargain with their
successors, either for a sum of money, which was usually a
considerable one, or for an interest in the emoluments of the office
during their life. My predecessor, whose services had been unusually
meritorious, stipulated for the emoluments of his office during his life,
while I should enjoy the survivorship, on the condition that I
discharged the duties of the office in the meantime. Mr. Pitt, however,
having died in the interval, his administration was dissolved, and was

succeeded by that known by the name of the Fox and Grenville
Ministry. My affair was so far completed, that my commission lay in
the office subscribed by his Majesty; but, from hurry or mistake, the
interest of my predecessor was not expressed in it, as had been usual in
such cases. Although, therefore, it only required payment of the fees, I
could not in honour take out the commission in the present state, since,
in the event of my dying before him, the gentleman whom I succeeded
must have lost the vested interest which he had stipulated to retain. I
had the honour of an interview with Earl Spencer on the subject, and he,
in the most handsome manner, gave directions that the commission
should issue as originally intended; adding, that the matter having
received the royal assent, he regarded only as a claim of justice what he
would have willingly done as an act of favour. I never saw Mr. Fox on
this, or on any other occasion, and never made any application to him,
conceiving that in doing so I might have been supposed to express
political opinions contrary to those which I had always professed. In his
private capacity, there is no man to whom I would have been more
proud to owe an obligation, had I been so distinguished.
'By this arrangement I obtained the survivorship of an office, the
emoluments of which were fully adequate to my wishes; and as the law
respecting the mode of providing for superannuated officers was, about
five or six years after, altered from that which admitted the
arrangement of assistant and successor, my colleague very handsomely
took the opportunity of the alteration, to accept of the