Scott was not a premature writer; he had reached his twenty-fifth year before he tried his strength in composition, excepting a few trivial attempts in childhood; and his name was still unknown to the public, when he resolved to devote his powers to literature. His first essays were made about 1796, when his attention was caught by the Leonora, and other poems of Bürger, which he translated and published anonymously. “The adventure,” he says, “proved a dead loss, and a great part of this edition was condemned to the service of the trunk-maker.” His next performance was a translation of Goethe’s drama, Goetz of Berlichingen, published in 1799. But he continued his devotion to ballad poetry, and as his confidence rose, essayed his strength in Glenfinlas, and the Eve of St. John, his first original compositions. At Lasswade on the banks of the Esk, about five miles from Edinburgh, where he spent several summers after his marriage, he prosecuted with increased zeal and success his favourite inquiries into the antiquities and legendary song of his country, and commenced the work which gave him a name in literature, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. “The materials for this work were collected during various excursions, or _raids_, as Sir Walter was wont to call them, through the most remote recesses of the border glens, made by the poetical compiler in person, assisted by one or two other enthusiasts in ballad lore. Pre-eminent among his coadjutors in this undertaking was Dr. John Leyden, an enthusiastic borderer and ballad-monger like himself, and to whom he has gratefully acknowledged his obligations both in verse and prose.” “Some amusing anecdotes have been printed, and others are still extant in oral tradition among the border hills, of the circumstances attending the collection of these ballads. The old women, who were almost the only remaining depositories of ancient song and tradition, though proud of being solicited to recite them by ‘so grand a man’ as an Edinburgh Advocate, could not repress their astonishment that ‘a man o’ sense and lair’ should spend his time in writing into a book ‘auld ballads and stories of the bluidy Border wars, and paipish times....’ The Minstrelsy was printed at Kelso, in 1802, at first in two volumes, to which a third was added in the second edition. Two years subsequently Scott published the romance of Sir Tristram, a Scottish metrical tale of the thirteenth century, which he showed, in a learned disquisition, to have been composed by Thomas of Ercildown, commonly called the Rhymer.”