e city to be with his grandmother in the open country at Sandy Knowe, in
Roxburghshire, near the Tweed. This grandmother was a perfect treasure-
house of legends concerning the old Border feuds. From her wonderful tales
Scott developed that intense love of Scottish history and tradition which
characterizes all his work.

By the time he was eight years old, when he returned to Edinburgh, Scott's
tastes were fixed for life. At the high school he was a fair scholar, but
without enthusiasm, being more interested in Border stories than in the
text-books. He remained at school only six or seven years, and then entered
his father's office to study law, at the same time attending lectures at
the university. He kept this up for some six years without developing any
interest in his profession, not even when he passed his examinations and
was admitted to the Bar, in 1792. After nineteen years of desultory work,
in which he showed far more zeal in gathering Highland legends than in
gaining clients, he had won two small legal offices which gave him enough
income to support him comfortably. His home, meanwhile, was at Ashestiel on
the Tweed, where all his best poetry was written.

Scott's literary work began with the translation from the German of
Buerger's romantic ballad of _Lenore_ (1796) and of Goethe's _Goetz von
Berlichingen_ (1799); but there was romance enough in his own loved
Highlands, and in 1802-1803 appeared three volumes of his _Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border_, which he had been collecting for many years. In 1805,
when Scott was 34 years old, appeared his first original work, _The Lay of
the Last Minstrel_. Its success was immediate, and when _Marmion_ (1808)
and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810) aroused Scotland and England to intense
enthusiasm, and brought unexpected fame to the author,--without in the
least spoiling his honest and lovable nature,--Scott gladly resolved to
abandon the law, in which he had won scant success, and give himself wholly
to literature. Unfortunately, however, in order to increase his earnings,
he entered secretly into partnership with the firms of Constable and the
brothers Ballantyne, as printer-publishers,--a sad mistake, indeed, and the
cause of that tragedy which closed the life of Scotland's greatest writer.

The year 1811 is remarkable for two things in Scott's life. In this year he
seems to have realized that, notwithstanding the success of his poems, he
had not yet "found himself"; t