Let it never be objected that, if any one person living in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. had composed so many fine poems, he or she could not have remained till now all but unknown. In the first half of the present century, there appeared in Scotland a series of fugitive pieces--songs--which attained a great popularity, without their being traced to any author. Every reader will remember _The Land of the Leal_, _Caller Herring_, _The Laird o' Cockpen_, _The Auld House_, and _He's ower the Hills that I lo'e weel_. It was not till after many years of fame that these pieces were found to be the production of a lady of rank, Carolina Baroness Nairn, who had passed through a life of seventy-nine years without being known as a song-writer to more than one person. It was the fate of this songstress to live in days when there was an interest felt in such authorships, insuring that she should sooner or later become known; but, had she lived a hundred years earlier, she might have died and left no sign, as I conjecture to have been the case with the author of this fine group of ballads; and future Burnses might have pondered over her productions, with endless regret that the names of their _authors_ were 'buried among the wreck of things that were.' If there be any truth or force in this speculation, I shall be permitted to indulge in the idea that a person lived a hundred years before Scott, who, with his feeling for Scottish history, and the features of the past generally, constructed out of these materials a similar romantic literature. In short, Scotland appears to have had a Scott a hundred years before the actual person so named. And we may well believe that if we had not had the first, we either should not have had the second, or he would have been something considerably different, for, beyond question, Sir Walter's genius was fed and nurtured on the ballad literature of his native country. From his _Old Mortality_ and _Waverley_, back to his _Lady_ _of the Lake and Marmion_; from these to his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_; from that to his _Eve of St John_ and _Glenfinlas_; and from these, again, to the ballads which he collected, mainly the produce (as I surmise) of an individual precursor, is a series of steps easily traced, and which no one will dispute. Much significance there is, indeed, in his own statement, that _Hardyknute_ was the first poem he ever learned, and the last he should forget. Its author--if my suspicion be correct--was his literary foster-mother, and we probably owe the direction of his genius, and all its fascinating results, primarily to her.