Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature | Page 3

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 writing prose fiction, since Joseph Strutt's unfinished romance, Queenhoo Hall, for which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence only on account of the antiquarian learning which it exhibits.
Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence of the Edinburgh Review, Scott was active in forwarding plans for starting a strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw the establishment of the Quarterly Review. By that time he had done a considerable amount of work in practically every kind except the novel, and he was recognized as a most efficient assistant and adviser in