poet was reproached by one of his friends for not working more steadily at his vocation, he replied, “The public, with many other properties of spoiled children, has all their eagerness after novelty, and were I to dedicate my time entirely to poetry they would soon tire of me.  I must therefore, I fear, continue to edit a little."[5] His interest in scholarly pursuits appears even in his first attempt at writing prose fiction, since Joseph Strutt’s unfinished romance, Queenhoo Hall, for which Scott wrote a conclusion, is of consequence only on account of the antiquarian learning which it exhibits.

Having become seriously alarmed over the political influence of the Edinburgh Review, Scott was active in forwarding plans for starting a strong rival periodical in London, and 1809 saw the establishment of the Quarterly Review.  By that time he had done a considerable amount of work in practically every kind except the novel, and he was recognized as a most efficient assistant and adviser in any such enterprise as the promoters of the Quarterly were undertaking.  Moreover, his own writings were prominent among the books which supplied material for the reviewer.  He worked hard for the first volume.  But after that year he wrote little for the Quarterly until 1818, and again little until after Lockhart became editor in 1825.  From that time until 1831 he was an occasional contributor.

1814 was the year of Waverley.  Before that the poems had been appearing in rapid succession, and Scott had been busy with the Works of Swift, which came out also in 1814.  The thirteen volumes of the edition of Somers’ Tracts, already mentioned, and several smaller books, bore further witness to his editorial energy.  The last of the long poems was published in 1815, about the same time with Guy Mannering, the second novel, and after that the novels continued to appear with that rapidity which constitutes one of the chief facts of Scott’s literary career.  For a few years after this period he did comparatively little in the way of editorial work, but his odd moments were occupied in writing about history, travels, and antiquities.[6]

In 1820 Scott wrote the Lives of the Novelists, which appeared the next year in Ballantyne’s Novelists’ Library.  By this time he had begun, with Ivanhoe, to strike out from the Scottish field in which all his first novels had been placed.  The martial pomp prominent in this novel reflects the eager interest with which he was at that time following his son’s opening career in the army; just as Marmion, written by the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse, also expresses the military ardor which was so natural to Scott, and which reminds us of his remark that in those days a regiment of dragoons was tramping through his head day and night.  Probably we might trace many a reason for his literary preoccupations at special times besides those that he has himself commented upon.  In the case of the critical work, however, the matter was usually determined for him by circumstances of a much less intimate sort, such as the appeal of an editor or the appearance of a book which excited his special interest.