; but perhaps after all there was less harm
done than appears, and not more of the fearful tribute of young life
which our fated race is always paying than is still exacted amid a
population much less generally addicted to excess. But that of course
increased rather than diminished the jovial aspect of Edinburgh life
when Walter Scott was young, and when the few cares he had in hand, the
occasional bit of work, interfered very little with the warm and lively
social life in the midst of which he had been born. He dwelt, in every
sense of the word, among his own people, his friends, the sons of his
father's friends, his associates all belonging to families like his own,
of good if modest rank and lineage, the "kent folk" of whom Scotland
loves to keep up the record. This, which is perhaps one of the greatest
advantages with which a young man can enter on life, was his from his
infancy. He and his companions had been at school together, together in
the college classes, in frequent social meetings, on the floor of the
Parliament House. Familiar faces and kind greetings were round him
wherever he went. No doubt these circumstances, so genial, so friendly
and favourable, helped to perfect the most kind, the most generous and
sunshiny of natures. And thus no man could be more completely at once
the best product and most complete representative of his native soil.

His life too was as prosperous and full of good fortune and happiness as
a man could desire. He married at twenty-six, and a few years later
received the appointment of Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, which
rendered him independent of the precarious incomings of his profession,
and made the pleasure he always took in roaming the country into a
necessary part of his life's work. He had begun a playful and
pleasurable authorship some time before with some translations from the
German, Buerger's _Lenore_ and Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_--the
first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and
bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little
premeditated, was this beginning. With equal simplicity and absence of
intention he slid into the Border Minstrelsy, which he intended not for
the beginning of a long literary career, but in the first place for "a
job" to Ballantyne the printer, whom he had persuaded to establish
himself in Edinburgh--the best of printers and the most attached of
faithful and humble friends--and for fun