Scott preferred the best, the most
poetical readings.
In 1830, Scott also wrote an essay on "Imitations of the Ancient
Ballads," and spoke very leniently of imitations passed off as
authentic. "There is no small degree of cant in the violent
invectives with which impostors of this nature have been assailed."
As to Hardyknute, the favourite poem of his infancy, "the first that
I ever learned and the last that I shall forget," he says, "the
public is surely more enriched by the contribution than injured by
the deception." Besides, he says, the deception almost never
deceives.
His method in The Minstrelsy, he writes, was "to imitate the plan and
style of Bishop Percy, observing only more strict fidelity concerning
my originals." That is to say, he avowedly made up texts out of a
variety of copies, when he had more copies than one. This is
frequently acknowledged by Scott; what he does not acknowledge is his
own occasional interpolation of stanzas. A good example is The Gay
Gosshawk. He had a MS. of his own "of some antiquity," a MS.
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