After being admitted an advocate, Scott undertook many excursions to various parts of Scotland, gaining that intimate knowledge of the country, and its people and traditions, which appears in his poems and novels.  Thus, he visited Northumberland, and made a close inspection of the battle-field of Flodden, and on another journey studied the Saxon cathedral of Hexam.  During seven successive years he made raids, as he called them, into the wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale, picking up the ancient “riding ballads” preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers.  To these rambles he owed much of the materials of his “Minstrelsy of the Border,” and here he came to know Willie Elliot, the original of Dandie Dinmont.  Another expedition, into Galloway, carried him into the scenery of Guy Mannering.  Stirlingshire, Perthshire and Forfarshire became familiar ground to him, and the scenery of Loch Katrine especially was associated with many a merry expedition.  His first appearance as counsel in a criminal court was at the Jedburgh assizes, where he helped a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape through the meshes of the law.

In June, 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocate’s Library and became an adept in the deciphering of old manuscript.  His highlands and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries as to ancient local history and legend, which could nowhere else have been pursued with equal advantage.

In the same year, a rhymed translation of Burger’s “Lenore,” from his pen, was shown by him to Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of Purgstall, who was delighted and astonished at it.  “Upon my word,” she wrote in a letter to a friend, “Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet—­something of a cross I think between Burns and Gray.”  This lady had the ballad elegantly printed in April, 1796, and Scott thus made his first appearance as an author.  In October, this translation, together with that of the “Wild Huntsman,” also from Burger, was published anonymously in a thin quarto by Manners and Miller, of Edinburgh.  The little volume found warm favour:  its free, masculine and lively style revealing the hand of a poet.

Marriage

In July, 1797, Scott set out on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied by his brother John and Adam Fergusson, visiting Tweeddale, Carlisle, Penrith, Ullswater and Windermere, and at length fixing their headquarters at Gilsland, a peaceful and sequestered little watering place.

He was riding one day with Fergusson when they met, some miles away from home, a young lady on horseback, whose appearance instantly struck both of them so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied themselves that she was staying in Gilsland.  The same evening there was a ball, at which Scott was introduced to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.

Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal attractions; a fairy-like form; a clear olive complexion; large, deep eyes of Italian brown; a profusion of silken tresses, raven-black; her address mingling the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman with a certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well her French accent.  A lovelier vision, as all who remember her youth have assured me, could hardly be imagined, and from that hour the fate of the poet was fixed.