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 Lay of the Last Minstrel' was the immediate result. Scott felt the responsibility of his position. He was now the head of a family, having a wife and three children of whom he might well be proud, and he felt impelled to make a financial as well as literary success of his chosen profession. He had previously tried his hand at original composition. Inspired perhaps by his familiarity with the old Scottish ballads, he had essayed something of the same character. The first of these productions was 'Glenfinlas,' growing out of his early visits to the Highlands. Glenfinlas is a forest in Perthshire, north of the Trossachs and east of Loch Katrine. Next came 'The Eve of St. John,' in which Scott rebuilt and repeopled the old tower of Smailholm which had so fascinated his boyish fancy. In 'The Gray Brother,' an incomplete ballad of this period, the poet sang the praises of the vale of the Esk, then the scene of his almost daily walks. The fourth of these early poems was 'Cadyow Castle,' a ballad on the assassination of the Regent Murray. Cadyow Castle is a very dilapidated old ruin in a park of wondrous beauty near Hamilton, southeast of Glasgow. There is a deep glen, through which runs a little river, the Avon, and on the banks are many tall and beautiful trees. The park was once a part of the old Caledonian forest, a few of the ancient oaks of which still remain standing. It was the habitation of the fierce wild cattle which furnished the liveliest and most dangerous sport whenever a hunt was arranged. Something of the spirit and fire of Scott's later work is seen in these lines:—
Mightiest of all the beasts of chase
That roam in woody Caledon,
Crashing the forest in his race,
The Mountain Bull comes thundering on.
Fierce on the hunter's quivered band
He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow,
Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand
And tosses high his mane of snow.
The man who could write such lines as these must have felt an instinct for poetry which no amount of reasoning could ever set aside. It was, therefore, well that Scott did not attempt to resist his natural inclinations.
We find him, then, deliberately turning to poetry, and carefully surveying the field to choose his first subject. Three influences, widely different in character, combined to solve this problem. The first was his interest in the stories of Border warfare aroused by the tales of his childhood and immensely stimulated by his thorough search for ballads to make up the 'Border Minstrelsy.' The second was his membership in the Edinburgh Volunteers which gave a military trend to his thoughts. The third was his desire to oblige a lady. The young Countess of Dalkeith, afterward Duchess of Buccleuch, was an intellectual woman of extreme beauty and lovely character. She was, moreover, the wife of the chief of the clan of Scott, and therefore entitled, in the poet's view at least, to the fealty of her kinsmen. Having heard the legend of Gilpin Horner, a goblin dwarf in whom most of the people implicitly believed, the Countess, much delighted with the story, enjoined upon Scott the task of composing a ballad on the subject. The slightest wish of one so beloved was a command.
The poet soon realized that the goblin was likely to prove a veritable imp of mischief, threatening to ruin his ballad, and before the poem was finished, relegated him to the kitchen