e was to prepare himself for
admission to the bar, he entered law classes in the University of
Edinburgh, with the result that in 1792 he was admitted into the Faculty
of Advocates.

The first years of his practice, though not without profit, might have
seemed dull and irksome to the young lawyer, had not his summers been
spent in journeys about Scotland in which he came into possession of a
wealth of popular legends and ballads. It was during one of these
excursions, made in 1797, that he met the attractive young French woman,
Charlotte Carpenter, who a few months later became his wife. A previous
and unfortunate love affair had considerably sobered Scott's ardent
nature, but his friendship and marriage with Miss Carpenter brought him
much of the happiness of which he had believed himself to have been
deprived.

The young couple spent their winters in Edinburgh and their summers at
the suburb Lasswade. During the resting time passed in the country
cottage, Scott found enjoyment in composing poems based upon some of the
legends and superstitions with which he had become familiar in his
jaunts among ruined castles and scenes in the Highlands. Some of these
verses, shown in an offhand manner to James Ballantyne, who was the head
of a printing establishment in Kelso, met with such favorable
recognition that Scott was encouraged to lay bare to his friend a plan
that had been forming in his mind for publishing a great collection of
Scotch ballads. As a result Scott entered upon the work of editing them
and by 1803 had published the three volumes of his _Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border_. So successful was this venture that shortly afterward
he began the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, a lengthy poem in which his
keen interest in the thrilling history of the Scottish Border found full
expression. This poem, published in 1805, was heartily welcomed, and
opened to its author the career for which he was best fitted.

The popularity of the _Lay_, together with the fact that the young poet
had won no honors as an advocate, doubtless accounts for his retiring
from the bar in 1806. He had been made sheriff of Selkirkshire in 1799,
and to the income thus received was added that of a clerk of the Court
of Sessions, an office to which he was appointed in 1806. More than
this, he had in the preceding year become a partner in the Ballantyne
printing establishment, which had moved to Edinburgh, and his growing
fame as a writer seemed to p