that he did not leave Leyden in poverty. Early in 1802, Leyden got
the promise of an East Indian appointment, read medicine furiously,
and sailed for the East in the beginning of 1803. It does not appear
that Leyden went ballad-hunting in Ettrick before he rode thither
with Scott in the spring of 1802. He was busy with books, with
editorial work, and in aiding Scott in Edinburgh. It was he who
insisted that a small volume at five shillings was far too narrow for
the materials collected.

Scott also corresponded with the aged Percy, Bishop of Dromore,
editor of the Reliques, and with Joseph Ritson, the precise
collector, Percy's bitter foe. Unfortunately the correspondence on
ballads with Ritson, who died in 1803, is but scanty; nor has most of
the correspondence with another student, George Ellis, been
published. Even in Mr. Douglas's edition of Scott's Familiar
Letters, the portion of an important letter of Hogg's which deals
with ballad-lore is omitted. I shall give the letter in full.

In 1800-01, "The Minstrelsy formed the editor's chief occupation,"
says Lockhart; but later, up to April 1801, the Forest and Liddesdale
had yielded little material. In fact, I do not know that Scott ever
procured much in Liddesdale, where he had no Hogg or Laidlaw always
on the spot, and in touch with the old people. It was in spring,
1802, that Scott first met his lifelong friend, William Laidlaw,
farmer in Blackhouse, on Douglasburn, in Yarrow. Laidlaw, as is
later proved completely, introduced Scott to Hogg, then a very
unsophisticated shepherd. "Laidlaw," says Lockhart, "took care that
Scott should see, without delay, James Hogg." {4a} These two men,
Hogg and Laidlaw, knowing the country people well, were Scott's chief
sources of recited balladry; and probably they sometimes improved, in