t the same time he was a delightful and
stimulating friend to other scholars. Southey was becoming known as an
authority on the history and literature of the Spanish peninsula. A
review in the _Quarterly_ a dozen years later mentions these
three,--Ellis, Scott, and Southey,--as "good men and true" to serve as
guides in the remote realms of literature.[38] Ellis's friend, John
Hookham Frere, had great abilities but was an incurable dillettante.
Scott particularly admired a Middle-English version of _The Battle of
Brunanburgh_ which Frere wrote in his school-boy days, and considered
him an authoritative critic of mediaeval English poetry. Robert
Surtees[39] and Francis Douce[40] were antiquaries of some importance,
and both, like all the others named, were friends of Scott. Mr. Herford
calls this period a day of "Specimens" and extracts: "Mediaeval romance
was studied in Ellis's _Specimens_," he says, "the Elizabethan drama in
Lamb's, literary history at large in D'Israeli's gently garrulous
compilations of its 'quarrels,' 'amenities,' 'calamities,' and
'curiosities.'"[41] But the scholarship of the time on the whole is
worthy of respect. In the case of ballads and romances notable work had
been done before Scott entered the field,[42] and he and his
contemporaries were carrying out the promise of the half century before
them--continuing the work that Percy and Warton had begun.

Among the problems connected with ballad study, that which arises first
is naturally the question of origins. Scott made no attempt to formulate
a theory different in any main element from that which was held by his
predecessors. He agreed with Percy that ballads were composed and sung
by minstrels, and based his discussion on the materials brought forward
by Percy and Ritson for use in their great controversy.[43] Ritson
himself never doubted that ballads were composed and sung by individual
authors, though he might refuse to call them minstrels. The idea of
communal authorship, which Jacob Grimm was to suggest only half a dozen
years after the first edition of the _Minstrelsy_, would doubtless have
been rejected by Scott, even if he had considered it. But we have no
evidence that he did so. Probably he did not, as he never felt the need
of a new theory.[44]

Scott's opinion in regard to the transmission of ballads followed
naturally from his theory of their origin. His aristocratic instincts
perhaps helped to determine his belief that ballads