., but when he
had finally complied with the advice of his friends and used it for a
novel, he said to Lockhart, "You were all quite right: if the letters
had passed for genuine, they would have found favour only with a few
musty antiquaries."[56] This suggests comparison with the conduct of his
friend Robert Surtees, who palmed off upon him three whole ballads of
his own and got them inserted in the _Minstrelsy_ as ancient, with a
plausible tale concerning the circumstances of their recovery. Surtees,
one is interested to observe, never dared tell Scott the truth, and
Scott always accepted the ballads as genuine--a lack of discernment
rather compromising in an editor, though one may perhaps excuse him on
the ground of his confidence in his brother antiquary.[57]

In one direction Scott seems to have been more conscientious than we
might be inclined to suppose after seeing the discrepancy between the
standard of exactness that his own statements lead us to expect and the
results that actually appear. I believe that he intended to preserve the
manuscript texts just as he received them, and that he would have wished
to have them given to the public when the public was prepared to want
them. To support this theory we have first the fact that most of his own
emendations have been traced by means of the manuscripts which he
used.[58] It is significant that in speaking of a poet who had altered a
manuscript to suit a revised reading he grew indignant over that fault
far more than over the mere change in the published version. _The Raid
of the Reidswire_, he said, "first appeared in Allan Ramsay's
_Evergreen_, but some liberties have been taken by him in transcribing
it; and, what is altogether unpardonable, the manuscript, which is
itself rather inaccurate, has been interpolated to favour his readings;
of which there remain obvious marks."[59] Scott said also that the time
had come for the publication of Percy's folio manuscript; though we must
believe that he would not have wished to see the manuscript published
until the ballads had become familiar to the world in what he considered
a beautified form.

The changes Scott made were usually in style rather than in substance.
Often he merely substituted an archaic word for a modern one; but often
whole lines and longer passages offered temptations which the poet in
him could not resist, and he "improved" lavishly. For example, we have
his note on _Earl Richard_--"The best vers