In the same year, 1806, Scott supplied with editorial apparatus and
issued anonymously _Original Memoirs Written during the Great Civil
War_, the first of what proved to be a long list of publications having
historical interest, sometimes reprints, sometimes original editions
from old manuscripts, to which he contributed a greater or less amount
of material in the shape of introductions and notes. These were
undertaken in a few cases for money, in others simply because they
struck him as interesting and useful labors. It is easy to trace the
relation of this to his other work, particularly to the novels. He once
wrote to a friend, "The editing a new edition of _Somers's Tracts_ some
years ago made me wonderfully well acquainted with the little traits
which marked parties and characters in the seventeenth century, and the
embodying them is really an amusing task."[4] Among the works which he
edited in this way the number of historical memoirs is noticeable. After
the volume that has been mentioned as the first, he prepared another
book of _Memoirs of the Great Civil War_; and we find in the list a
_Secret History of the Court of James I._, _Memoirs of the Reign of King
Charles I._, Count Grammont's _Memoirs of the Court of Charles II._, _A
History of Queen Elizabeth's Favourites_, etc. Such books as these,
besides furnishing material for his novels, led Scott to acquire a mass
of information that enabled him to perform with great facility and with
admirable results whatever editorial work he might choose to undertake.

These labors Scott always considered as trifles to be dispatched in the
odd moments of his time, but the great edition of _Dryden's Complete
Works_, which he began to prepare soon after the _Minstrelsy_ appeared,
was more important. This, next to the _Minstrelsy_, was probably the
most notable of all Scott's editorial enterprises. It was published in
eighteen volumes in 1808, the year in which _Marmion_ also appeared.
When the poet was reproached by one of his friends for not working more