The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. XV
in itself, in the noble antique ballads, so industriously, tastefully, and yet conscientiously edited, in
the curious and lively information which overflows
through all the prose annotations, and in those
few original poems which gave the earliest and
most significant intimation of that genius which as
yet had lurked unseen, the work has now a separate value and interest, as forming the most curious
of all illustrations for the history of its editor's
mind and of his subsequent works. " One of the
critics of that day," remarks Mr. Lockhart, " said
that the book contained' the elements of a hundred historical romances;' and this critic was a
prophetic one. No person who has not gone
through its volumes for the express purpose of
comparing their contents with his great original
works, can have formed a conception of the endless variety of incidents and images, now expanded
and emblazoned by his mature art, of which the
first hints may be found either in the text of those
primitive ballads, or in the notes which the happy
rambles of his youth had gathered together for
their illustration."
But before the publication of the Border Minstrelsy, the poet had begun to attempt a higher
flight. " In the third volume," says he, writing
to his friend George Ellis in 1803, "I intend to
publish a long poem of my own. It will be a
kind of romance of border chivalry, in a lighthorseman sort of stanza." This border romance