ions (from Buerger) above referred to appeared in 1796. But he
did nothing important till after the beginning of the present century,
when the starting of the _Edinburgh Review_ and some other things
brought him forward; though he showed what he could do by contributing
two ballads, "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," to a collection of
terror-pieces started by Monk Lewis, and added Goethe's _Goetz von
Berlichingen_ to his translations. He had become in 1799 independent,
though not rich, by being appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire.

His beginnings as an author proper were connected, as was all his
subsequent career, partly for good but more for ill, with a school
friendship he had early formed for two brothers named Ballantyne at
Kelso. He induced James, the elder, to start a printing business at
Edinburgh, and unfortunately he entered into a secret partnership with
this firm, which never did him much good, which caused him infinite
trouble, and which finally ruined him. But into this complicated and
still much debated business it is impossible to enter here. James
Ballantyne printed the _Border Minstrelsy_, which appeared in 1802,--a
book ranking with Percy's _Reliques_ in its influence on the form and
matter of subsequent poetry,--and then Scott at last undertook original
work of magnitude. His task was _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_,
published in 1805. It may almost be said that from that day to his death
he was the foremost--he was certainly, with the exception of Byron, the
most popular--man of letters in Great Britain. His next poems--_Marmion_
(1808) and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810)--brought him fame and money
such as no English poet had gained before; and though Byron's
following--for following it was--for the time eclipsed his master, the
latter's _Rokeby, The Lord of the Isles_, and others, would have been
triumphs for any one else.

How, when the taste for his verse seemed to cool, he struck out a new
line in prose and achieved yet more fame and yet more money than the
verse had ever given him, will concern us in the next chapter. But as it
would be cumbrous to make yet a third division of his work, the part of
his prose which is not fiction may be included here, as well as the rest
of his life. He had written much criticism for the _Edinburgh_, until he
was partly disgusted by an uncivil review of _Marmion_, partly (and
more) by the tone of increasing Whiggery and non-intervention which
Jeffrey was impo