In 1803 Wordsworth visited Scott at Lasswade, near
Edinburgh; and Scott afterward returned the visit at Grasmere.
Wordsworth noted that his guest was "full of anecdote, and averse from
disquisition." The Englishman was a moralist and much given to
"disquisition," while the Scotchman was, above all things, a
_raconteur_, and, perhaps, on the whole, the foremost of British
story-tellers. Scott's Toryism, too, was of a different stripe from
Wordsworth's, being rather the result of sentiment and imagination than
of philosophy and reflection. His mind struck deep root in the past; his
local attachments and family pride were intense. Abbotsford was his
darling, and the expenses of this domain and of the baronial hospitality
which he there extended to all comers were among the causes of his
bankruptcy. The enormous toil which he exacted of himself, to pay off
the debt of L117,000, contracted by the failure of his publishers, cost
him his life. It is said that he was more gratified when the Prince
Regent created him a baronet, in 1820, than by the public recognition
that he acquired as the author of the Waverley Novels.
Scott was attracted by the romantic side of German literature. His first
published poem was a translation made in 1796 from Buerger's wild ballad,
_Leonora_.
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