SCOTT’S WORK AS STUDENT AND EDITOR IN THE FIELD OF LITERARY HISTORY

THE MEDIAEVAL PERIOD

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border

Scott’s early interest in ballads—­Casual origin of the Minstrelsy—­Importance of the book in Scott’s career—­Plan of the book—­Mediaeval scholarship of Scott’s time—­His theory as to the origin of ballads and their deterioration—­His attitude toward the work of previous editors—­His method of forming texts—­Kinds of changes he made—­His qualifications for emending old poetry—­Modern imitations of the ballad included in the Minstrelsy—­Remarks on the ballad style—­Impossibility of a scientific treatment of folk-poetry in Scott’s time—­Real importance of the Minstrelsy.

We think of the Border Minstrelsy as the first work which resulted from the preparation of Scott’s whole youth, between the days when he insisted on shouting the lines of Hardyknute into the ears of the irate clergyman making a parish call, and the time when he and his equally ardent friends gathered their ballads from the lips of old women among the hills.  But we have seen that the inspiration for his first attempts at writing poetry came only indirectly from the ballads of his own country.  We learn from the introduction to the third part of the Minstrelsy that some of the young men of Scott’s circle in Edinburgh were stimulated by what the novelist, Henry Mackenzie, told them of the beauties of German literature, to form a class for the study of that language.  This was when Scott was twenty-one, but it was still four years before he found himself writing those translations which mark the sufficiently modest beginning of his literary career.  His enthusiasm for German literature was not at first tempered by any critical discrimination, if we may judge from the opinions of one or two of his friends who labored to point out to him the extravagance and false sentiment which he was too ready to admire along with the real genius of some of his models.[31] Apparently their efforts were useful, for in a review written in 1806 we find Scott, in a remark on Buerger, referring to “the taste for outrageous sensibility, which disgraces most German poetry."[32] His special interest in the Germans was an early mood which seems not to have returned.  After the process of translation had discovered to him his verse-making faculty, he naturally passed on to the writing of original poems, and circumstances of a half accidental sort determined that the Scottish ballads which he had always loved should absorb his attention for the next two or three years.

The publication of a book of ballads was first suggested by Scott as an opportunity for his friend Ballantyne to exhibit his skill as a printer and so increase his business.  “I have been for years collecting old Border ballads,” Scott remarked, “and I think I could with little trouble put together such a selection from them as might make a neat little volume to sell for four or five shillings."[33] From this casual proposition resulted The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in three volumes in 1802-3 and often revised and reissued during the editor’s lifetime.