n order to read the romancers--Ariosto, Tasso, Pulci,
and Boiardo, preferring them to Dante. He studied Gothic architecture,
heraldry, and the art of fortification, and made drawings of famous ruins
and battle-fields. In particular he read eagerly every thing that he
could lay hands on relating to the history, legends, and antiquities of
the Scottish border--the vale of Tweed, Teviotdale, Ettrick Forest, and
the Yarrow, of all which land he became the laureate, as Burns had been
of Ayrshire and the "West Country." Scott, like Wordsworth, was an
out-door poet. He spent much time in the saddle, and was fond of horses,
dogs, hunting, and salmon-fishing. He had a keen {245} eye for the
beauties of natural scenery, though "more especially," he admits, "when
combined with ancient ruins or remains of our forefathers' piety or
splendor." He had the historic imagination, and, in creating the
historical novel, he was the first to throw a poetic glamour over
European annals. In 1803 Wordsworth visited Scott at Lasswade, near
Edinburgh; and Scott afterward returned the visit at Grasmere.
Wordsworth noted that his guest was "full of anecdote and averse from
disquisition." The Englishman was a moralist and much given to
"disquisition," while the Scotchman was, above all things, a _raconteur_,
and, perhaps, on the whole, the foremost of British story-tellers.
Scott's Toryism, too, was of a different stripe from Wordsworth's, being
rather the result of sentiment and imagination than of philosophy and
reflection. His mind struck deep root in the past; his local attachments
and family pride were intense. Abbotsford was his darling, and the
expenses of this domain and of the baronial hospitality which he there
extended to all comers were among the causes of his bankruptcy. The
enormous toil which he exacted of himself, to pay off the debt of 117,000
pounds, contracted by the failure of his publishers, cost him his life.
It is said that he was more gratified when the Prince Regent created him
a baronet, in 1820, than by all the public recognition that he acquired
as the author of the Waverley Novels.

Scott was attracted by the romantic side of {246} German literature. His
first published poem was a translation made in 1796 from Burger's wild
ballad, _Leonora_. He followed this up with versions of the same poet's
_Wilde Jaeger_, of Goethe's violent drama of feudal life, _Goetz Van
Berlichingen_, and with other translations from