Tales of Chivalry and the Olden Time Author:Walter Scott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE LATER LIFE OF SCOTT. To the somewhat detailed account of Scott's early years given in the preceding pages, we may add a brief sketch of his after-life. ... more » In 1792 he was admitted to the Scottish bar. Through his father's influence he obtained some employment, but s not enough to keep him busy. It was not, however, until 1796 that he turned his attention to literature. In that year he published translations of the German Burger's ballads, Lenore and The Wild Huntsman. These attracted some attention, and led to his contributing a ' few pieces to Lewis's Tales of Wonder. In 1799 he translated Goethe's Gb'tz von Berlichingen. In 1802 he published the first two volumes of the Border Minstrelsy, printed by his old schoolmate Ballantyne, who had just set up in business at Kelso. The work was received 15 with great favor, which was augmented by the appearance of the third volume (1803) containing some original imitations of the old ballads. The next important event in Scott's literary life was the publication of The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805. , Its success was extraordinary, and the author became at once the most popular poet of the day. Marmion fol- lowed in 1808, and T/1eLadyofJheLffke in 1810. With the latter his poetic fame may be said to have reached its height. The Vision of Don Roderick, Rokeby, The Lord is of the Isles, and other poems that followed, were not so well received. Meanwhile Scott had been appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire and one of the clerks of the Court of Session, the combined salaries being about £1800 ($9000) a 3 year, independent of his large receipts from his books. He became ambitious to be a large landed proprietor, and ran into debt by the purchase of the estate of Ab- botsford and the erection of the mansion, to which he removed in 1...« less