It is easy to see how his own contributions of word and phrase might slip in, since his avowed method was to collate the different texts secured from manuscripts or recitation or both, and so to give what to his mind was the worthiest version. Believing that the ballads had been composed by men not unlike himself, he assumed, in the manner well known to classical text-critics, that his familiarity with the conditions of the ancient social order gave him some license for changing here and there a word or a line. In determining which stanzas or lines to choose, when choice was possible, he was guided by his antiquarian knowledge and by the general principle of selecting the most poetic rendering among those at his command. This was his way of showing his respect for the minstrel bards of whom he was fond of considering himself a successor.
So far it is perfectly easy to take his point of view. But it is more difficult to reconcile his practice with his professions. We find this declaration in the forefront of the book: "No liberties have been taken either with the recited or written copies of these ballads, farther than that, where they disagreed, which is by no means unusual, the editor, in justice to the author, has uniformly preserved what seemed to him the best or most poetical rendering of the passage.... Some arrangement was also occasionally necessary to recover the rhyme, which was often, by the ignorance of the reciters, transposed or thrown into the middle of the line. With these freedoms, which were essentially necessary to remove obvious corruptions and fit the ballads for the press, the editor presents them to the public, under the complete assurance that they carry with them the most indisputable marks of their authenticity."[49] In the face of this fair announcement we are surprised, to say the least, at the number of lines and stanzas which scholars have discovered to be of Scott's own composition.[50]
Occasionally his notes give some slight indication of his method of treatment, as for instance this, on The Dowie Dens of Yarrow: "The editor found it easy to collect a variety of copies; but very difficult indeed to select from them such a collated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of 'these more light and giddy-paced times.'" Notes on some others of the ballads say that "a few conjectural emendations have been found necessary," but no one of these remarks would seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider how far the "conjectural emendations" extended. Moreover, changes were often made without the slightest clue in introduction or note.[51]
The case was complicated for Scott by the poetical tastes of his assistants. Leyden[52] was apparently quite capable of taking down a ballad from recitation in such a way as to produce a more finished poem than one would expect a traditional ballad to be. And Hogg,[53] who supplied several ballads from the recitations of his mother and other old people, was probably still less strict. "Sure no man," he is quoted as having said, "will think an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious."[54] Yet it is easy to see that Scott's friends might have acted differently if his own practice had favored absolute fidelity to the texts.
A remark in Scott's review of Evans's Old Ballads seems a pretty definite arraignment of his own procedure. "It may be asked by the severer antiquary of the present day, why an editor, thinking it necessary to introduce such alterations in order to bring forth a new, beautiful, and interesting sense from a meagre or corrupted original, did not in good faith to his readers acquaint them with the liberties he had taken and make them judge whether in so doing he transgressed his limits. We answer that unquestionably such would be the express duty of a modern editor, but such were not the rules of the service when Dr. Percy first opened the campaign."[55]
One wonders whether the "rules of the service" did not in Scott's opinion occasionally permit a little wilful mystification. The case of Kinmont Willie tempts one to such an explanation. Besides the capital instance of his anonymity as regards the novels, Scott several times seemed to amuse himself in perplexing the public. There was the case of the Bridal of Triermain, which he tried by means of various careful devices to pass off as the work of a friend. But perhaps the best example appears in connection with The Fortunes of Nigel. He first designed the material of that book for a series of "private letters" purporting to have been written in the reign of James I., but when he had finally complied with the advice of his friends and used it for a novel, he said to Lockhart, "You were all quite right: if the letters had passed for genuine, they would have found favour only with a few musty antiquaries."[56] This suggests comparison with the conduct of his friend Robert Surtees, who palmed off upon him three whole ballads of his own and got them inserted in the Minstrelsy as ancient, with a plausible tale concerning the circumstances of their recovery. Surtees, one is interested to observe, never dared tell Scott the truth, and Scott always accepted the ballads as genuine—a lack of discernment rather compromising in an editor, though one may perhaps excuse him on the ground of his confidence in his brother antiquary.[57]
In one direction Scott seems to have been more conscientious than we might be inclined to suppose after seeing the discrepancy between the standard of exactness that his own statements lead us to expect and the results that actually appear. I believe that he intended to preserve the manuscript texts just as he received them, and that he would have wished to have them given to the public when the public was prepared to want them. To support this theory we have first the fact that most of his own emendations have been traced by means of the manuscripts which he used.[58] It is significant that in speaking of a poet who had altered a manuscript to suit a revised reading he grew indignant over that fault far more than over the mere change in the published version. The Raid of the Reidswire, he said, "first appeared in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, but some liberties have been taken by him in transcribing it; and, what is altogether unpardonable, the manuscript, which is itself rather inaccurate, has been interpolated to favour his readings; of which there remain obvious marks."[59] Scott said also that the time had come for the publication of Percy's folio manuscript; though we must believe that he would not have wished to see the manuscript published until the ballads had become familiar to the world in what he considered a beautified form.
The changes Scott made were usually in style rather than in substance. Often he merely substituted an archaic word for a modern one; but often whole lines and longer passages offered temptations which the poet in him could not resist, and he "improved" lavishly. For example, we have his note on Earl Richard—"The best verses are here selected from both copies, and some trivial alterations have been adopted from tradition,"—with the comment by Mr. Henderson—"The emendations of Scott are so many, and the majority relate so entirely to style, that no mere tradition could have supplied them."[60] His versions are in general characterized by a smoothness and precision of meter which to the student of ballads is very suspicious. But he seems occasionally to have altered or supplied incidents as well as phrases. The historical event which furnished the purpose for the expedition of Sir Patrick Spens seems to have been introduced into the ballad by Scott, and Mr. Henderson thinks that "when the deeds of his ancestors were concerned it was impossible for him to resist the temptation to employ some of his own minstrel art on their behalf."[61]
Certainly Scott's qualifications for evolving true poetry out of the crude fragments that sometimes served as a basis formed a very unusual combination when they were united with his knowledge of early history and literature. He had such confidence in his own powers in this direction that he at one time intended to write a series of imitations of Scottish poets of different periods, from Thomas the Rhymer down, and thus to exhibit changes in language as well as variations in literary style.[62] He evidently thought that the ballads as they appeared in the Minstrelsy were truer to their originals than were the copies he was able to procure from recitation. Lockhart gives him precisely the kind of praise he would have desired, in saying, "From among a hundred corruptions he seized with instinctive tact the primitive diction and imagery."[63]
It is evident that Scott's public did not wish him to be more careful than he was in discriminating between new and old matter. One of his moments of strict veracity seems even to have occasioned some annoyance to the writer of the Edinburgh article, who apparently preferred to believe in the antiquity of The Flowers of the Forest rather than to learn that "the most positive evidence" proved its modern origin. The editor's introduction to the poem seems perfectly clear; he names his authority and quotes two verses which are ancient;[64] but the reviewer says with a perverse irritability: "Mr. Scott would have done well to tell us how much he deems ancient, and to give us the 'positive evidence' that convinced him the whole was not so."[65] This review was, however, for the most part favorable.