training in barracks, and at times drilling for hours before breakfast.

The amount and variety of his literary work was much greater than is
understood by most of his admirers today. He contributed largely, in
succession, to the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly' reviews, and having become a
secret partner in the printing firm of the Ballantyne brothers, two of his
school friends, exerted himself not only in the affairs of the company but
in vast editorial labors of his own, which included among other things
voluminously annotated editions of Dryden and Swift. His productivity is
the more astonishing because after his removal to Abbotsford he gave a
great part of his time not only to his family but also to the entertainment
of the throngs of visitors who pressed upon him in almost continuous
crowds. The explanation is to be found partly in his phenomenally vigorous
constitution, which enabled him to live and work with little sleep; though
in the end he paid heavily for this indiscretion.

The circumstances which led him to turn from poetry to prose fiction are
well known. His poetical vein was really exhausted when in 1812 and 1813
Byron's 'Childe Harold' and flashy Eastern tales captured the public fancy.
Just about as Scott was goodnaturedly confessing to himself that it was
useless to dispute Byron's supremacy he accidentally came across the first
chapters of 'Waverley,' which he had written some years before and had
thrown aside in unwillingness to risk his fame by a venture in a new field.
Taking it up with renewed interest, in the evenings of three weeks he wrote
the remaining two-thirds of it; and he published it with an ultimate
success even greater than that of his poetry. For a long time, however,
Scott did not acknowledge the authorship of 'Waverley' and the novels which
followed it (which, however, was obvious to every one), chiefly because he
feared that the writing of prose fiction would seem undignified in a Clerk
of Session. The rapidity of the appearance of his novels testified to the