in poem, it enabled the author to
escape criticism for any violent innovations of style, since these could
always be attributed to the rude and wild school of poetry to which the
harper was supposed to belong. In these ways _The Lay of the Last
Minstrel_ gradually developed in its present form. Upon its publication
in 1805, it achieved an immediate success. The vividness of its
descriptive passages, the buoyant rush of its meter, the deep romantic
glow suffusing all its pages, took by storm a public familiar to
weariness with the decorous abstractions of the eighteenth century
poets. The first edition, a sumptuous quarto, was exhausted in a few
weeks; an octavo edition of fifteen hundred was sold out within the
year; and before 1830, forty-four thousand copies were needed to supply
the popular demand. Scott received in all something under eight hundred
pounds for the _Lay_, a small amount when contrasted with his gains from
subsequent poems, but a sum so unusual nevertheless that he determined
forthwith to devote as much time to literature as he could spare from
his legal duties; those he still placed foremost, for until near the
close of his life he clung to his adage that literature was "a good
staff, but a poor crutch."

A year before the publication of the _Lay_, Scott had removed to the
small country seat of Ashestiel, in Selkirkshire, seven miles from the
nearest town, Selkirk, and several miles from any neighbor. In the
introductions to the various cantos of _Marmion_ he has given us a
delightful picture of Ashestiel and its surroundings--the swift
Glenkinnon dashing through the estate in a deep ravine, on its way to
join the Tweed; behind the house the rising hills beyond which lay the
lovely scenery of the Yarrow. The eight years (1804-1812) at Ashestiel
were the serenest, and probably the happiest, of Scott's life. Here he
wrote his two greatest poems, _Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_. His
mornings he spent at his desk, always with a faithful hound at his feet
watching the tireless hand as it threw off sheet after sheet of
manuscript to make up the day's stint. By one o'clock he was, as he
said, "his own man," free to spend the remaining hours of light with his
children, his horses, and his dogs, or to indulge himself in his
life-long passion for tree-planting. His robust and healthy nature made
him excessively fond of all out-of-door sports, especially riding, in
which he was daring to foolhardiness. It i