Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature | Page 3

Scottish minstrelsy first awakened his
literary sense, and the stimulus supplied by ballads and romances never
lost its force. We may say that the little volumes of ballad chap-books
which he collected and bound up before he was a dozen years old
suggested the future editor, as the long poem on the Conquest of
Grenada, which he is said to have written and burned when he was
fifteen, foreshadowed the poet and romancer.
Yet Scott's career as an author began rather late. He published a few
translations when he was twenty-five years old, but his first notable
work, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, did not appear until 1802-3,
when he was over thirty. This book, the outgrowth of his early interest
in ballads and his own attempts at versifying, exhibited both his

editorial and his creative powers. It led up to the publication of two
important volumes which contained material originally intended to
form part of the Minstrelsy, but which outgrew that work. These were
the edition of the old metrical romance Sir Tristrem, which showed
Scott as a scholar, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the first of Scott's
own metrical romances. So far his literary achievement was all of one
kind, or of two or three kinds closely related. In this first period of his
literary life, perhaps even more than later, his editorial impulse, his
scholarly activity, was closely connected with the inspiration for
original writing. The Lay of the Last Minstrel was the climax of this
series of enterprises.
With the publication of the Minstrelsy, Scott of course became known
as a literary antiquary. He was naturally called upon for help when the
Edinburgh Review was started a few weeks afterwards, especially as
Jeffrey, who soon became the editor, had long been his friend. The
articles that he wrote during 1803 and 1804 were of a sort that most
evidently connected itself with the work he had been doing: reviews,
for example, of Southey's Amadis de Gaul, and of Ellis's Early English
Poetry. During 1805-6 the range of his reviewing became wider and he
included some modern books, especially two or three which offered
opportunity for good fun-making. About 1806, however, his aversion to
the political principles which dominated the Edinburgh Review became
so strong that he refused to continue as a contributor, and only once,
years later, did he again write an article for that periodical.
In the same year, 1806, Scott supplied with editorial apparatus and
issued anonymously Original Memoirs Written during the Great Civil
War, the first of what proved to be a long list of publications having
historical interest, sometimes reprints, sometimes original editions from
old manuscripts, to which he contributed a greater or less amount of
material in the shape of introductions and notes. These were undertaken
in a few cases for money, in others simply because they struck him as
interesting and useful labors. It is easy to trace the relation of this to his
other work, particularly to the novels. He once wrote to a friend, "The
editing a new edition of Somers's Tracts some years ago made me
wonderfully well acquainted with the little traits which marked parties

and characters in the seventeenth century, and the embodying them is
really an amusing task."[4] Among the works which he edited in this
way the number of historical memoirs is noticeable. After the volume
that has been mentioned as the first, he prepared another book of
Memoirs of the Great Civil War; and we find in the list a Secret History
of the Court of James I., Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I.,
Count Grammont's Memoirs of the Court of Charles II., A History of
Queen Elizabeth's Favourites, etc. Such books as these, besides
furnishing material for his novels, led Scott to acquire a mass of
information that enabled him to perform with great facility and with
admirable results whatever editorial work he might choose to
undertake.
These labors Scott always considered as trifles to be dispatched in the
odd moments of his time, but the great edition of Dryden's Complete
Works, which he began to prepare soon after the Minstrelsy appeared,
was more important. This, next to the Minstrelsy, was probably the
most notable of all Scott's editorial enterprises. It was published in
eighteen volumes in 1808, the year in which Marmion also appeared.
When the poet was reproached by one of his friends for not working
more steadily at his vocation, he replied, "The public, with many other
properties of spoiled children, has all their eagerness after novelty, and
were I to dedicate my time entirely to poetry they would soon tire of
me. I must therefore, I fear, continue to edit a little."[5] His interest in
scholarly pursuits appears even in his first attempt at