; to reverence those
institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire,
cherish, and reverence all these with the same plainness, simplicity,
and sincerity as our ancestors did of old."[30]

By temperament, then, Scott was enthusiastic over the past and cheerful
in regard to his own day; he was imaginative, practical, genial; and
these traits must be taken into account in judging his critical
writings. These and other qualities may be deduced from the most
superficial study of his creative work. The mere bulk of that work bears
witness to two things: first that Scott was primarily a creative writer;
again, that he was of those who write much rather than minutely. It is
obvious that to attack details would be easy. And since he was only
secondarily a critic, it is natural that his critical opinions should
not have been erected into any system. But while they are essentially
desultory, they are the ideas of a man whose information and enthusiasm
extended through a wide range of studies; and they are rendered
impressive by the abundance, variety, and energy, which mark them as
characteristic of Scott.

CHAPTER III

SCOTT'S WORK AS STUDENT AND EDITOR IN THE FIELD OF LITERARY HISTORY

THE MEDIAEVAL PERIOD

_Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_

Scott's early interest in ballads--Casual origin of the
_Minstrelsy_--Importance of the book in Scott's career--Plan of the
book--Mediaeval scholarship of Scott's time--His theory as to the
origin of ballads and their deterioration--His attitude toward the
work of previous editors--His method of forming texts--Kinds of
changes he made--His qualifications for emending old poetry--Modern
imitations of the ballad included in the _Minstrelsy_--Remarks on
the ballad style--Impossibility of a scientific treatment of
folk-poetry in Scott's time--Real importance of the _Minstrelsy_.

We think of the _Border Minstrelsy_ as the first work which resulted
from the preparation of Scott's whole youth, between the days when he
insisted on shouting the lines of _Hardyknute_ into the ears of the
irate clergyman making a parish call, and the time when he and his
equally ardent friends gathered their ballads from the lips of old women
among the hills. But we have seen that the inspiration for his first
attempts at writing poetry came only indirectly from the ballads of his
own country. We learn from the introduction to the third part of t