s imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which
kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library,
poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing
genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By the
time he was twenty-one he had made himself, almost unconsciously, an
expert paleographer and antiquarian, whose assistance was sought by
professional workers in those branches of knowledge. Carlyle has charged
against Scott that he poured out his vast floods of poetry and romance
without preparation or forethought; that his production was always
impromptu, and rooted in no sufficient past of acquisition. The charge
cannot stand. From his earliest boyhood until his thirtieth year, when
he began his brilliant career as poet and novelist, his life was one
long preparation--very individual and erratic preparation, perhaps, but
none the less earnest and fruitful.

In 1792, Scott, then twenty-one years old, was admitted a member of the
faculty of advocates of Edinburgh. During the five years which elapsed
between this date and his marriage, his life was full to overflowing of
fun and adventure, rich with genial companionship, and with experience
of human nature in all its wild and tame varieties. Ostensibly he was a
student of law, and he did, indeed, devote some serious attention to the
mastery of his profession. But the dry formalities of legal life his
keen humor would not allow him to take quite seriously. On the day when
he was called to the bar, while waiting his turn among the other young
advocates, he turned to his friend, William Clark, who had been called
with him, and whispered, mimicking the Highland lasses who used to stand
at the Cross of Edinburgh to be hired for the harvest: "We've stood here
an hour by the Tron, hinny, and deil a ane has speered[2] our price."
Though Scott never made a legal reputation, either as pleader at the
bar or as an authority upon legal history and principles, it cannot be
doubted that his experience in the Edinburgh courts was of immense
benefit to him. In the first place, his study of the Scotch statutes,
statutes which had taken form very gradually under the pressure of
changing national conditions, gave him an insight into the politics and
society of the past not otherwise to have been obtained. Of still more
value, perhaps, was the association with his young companions in the
profession, and daily contact with the racy