Scott made the transition from law to literature gradually. He
published a translation of Burger's "Lenore" in 1795. While he was
at the University he began to collect the materials which made up the
three volumes of "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," a collection
of ballads old and new in which the "old, simple, violent world" lived
again in song and story. The making of these books was congenial work,
and carried still further Scott's education in the spirit and temper of
the Scotland of clans and feuds, of reckless border warfare, dashing
foray, fierce revenge and superstition. The various introductions and
notes which accompanied the ballads show Scott's painstaking care for
fact and detail; he combined in rare degree the romantic spirit, the
antiquarian's zeal for the small details of history, and the methodical
habits of the literary drudge.
In 1805, in his thirty-fourth year, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"
appeared and secured a popular success of unprecedented proportions.
The picturesque or pictorial quality of the poem and its unqualified
romanticisms gave it a very broad appeal. It was popular in the good
sense of the word. Mountains and wild landscapes generally, which had
been shunned for generations, were coming into fashion, so to speak.
They have been "in fashion" ever since, and today their appeal to
city folk, to tired people, to men and women of imagination and active
temperament, is irresistible. To Dr. Johnson Scotland was a wild and
dreary waste, to Scott it was a wonderland; and a wonderland it has
remained ever since. In the confusion of an age when every sort of
opinion gets into print the "call of the wild" has a trumpet tone.
"I am sensible," wrote Scott, "that if there be anything good about
my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition
which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active
dispositions."
[Illustration: THE LADY OF THE LAKE
From the group by J. Adams Acton]
[Illustration: EFFIE DEANS AND HER SISTER, JEANIE, IN PRISON
This picture, illustrating Jeanie Deans' visit to her accused sister,
as related in "Heart of Midlothian," is from the painting by R.
Herdman]
Three years later the strongest and most stirring of the poems,
"Marmion," appeared. It is a poem of scenery as well as of action, its
descriptions are both exact and living; it tells a story with clear
and compelling vigor, and it shows at their best two of Scott's really
great qualities: simplicity and energy. It lacked the delicate shading
of the verbal music which gave some later English poetry a magical
charm; but it had a fine strength of outline, a noble ruggedness. He
said later that he loved the sternness and bold nakedness of the Border
landscape, and that if he did not see the heather at least once a year
he believed he would die. "The Lady of the Lake," "The Lay of the Last
Minstrel," "The Lord of the Isles," were less effective, but the fresh
vitality of the Highlands was in them all.