ifficult
indeed to select from them such a collated edition as might in any
degree suit the taste of 'these more light and giddy-paced times.'"
Notes on some others of the ballads say that "a few conjectural
emendations have been found necessary," but no one of these remarks
would seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider how far
the "conjectural emendations" extended. Moreover, changes were often
made without the slightest clue in introduction or note.[51]

The case was complicated for Scott by the poetical tastes of his
assistants. Leyden[52] was apparently quite capable of taking down a
ballad from recitation in such a way as to produce a more finished poem
than one would expect a traditional ballad to be. And Hogg,[53] who
supplied several ballads from the recitations of his mother and other
old people, was probably still less strict. "Sure no man," he is quoted
as having said, "will think an old song the worse of being somewhat
harmonious."[54] Yet it is easy to see that Scott's friends might have
acted differently if his own practice had favored absolute fidelity to
the texts.

A remark in Scott's review of Evans's _Old Ballads_ seems a pretty
definite arraignment of his own procedure. "It may be asked by the
severer antiquary of the present day, why an editor, thinking it
necessary to introduce such alterations in order to bring forth a new,
beautiful, and interesting sense from a meagre or corrupted original,
did not in good faith to his readers acquaint them with the liberties he
had taken and make them judge whether in so doing he transgressed his
limits. We answer that unquestionably such would be the express duty of
a modern editor, but such were not the rules of the service when Dr.
Percy first opened the campaign."[55]

One wonders whether the "rules of the service" did not in Scott's
opinion occasionally permit a little wilful mystification. The case of
_Kinmont Willie_ tempts one to such an explanation. Besides the capital
instance of his anonymity as regards the novels, Scott several times
seemed to amuse himself in perplexing the public. There was the case of
the _Bridal of Triermain_, which he tried by means of various careful
devices to pass off as the work of a friend. But perhaps the best
example appears in connection with _The Fortunes of Nigel_. He first
designed the material of that book for a series of "private letters"
purporting to have been written in the reign of James I