We find that the personages in his books are often distinguished by that love of stirring poetry, particularly of popular and national poetry, which was a dominant trait in Scott's whole literary career.
With Scotland and with popular poetry any discussion of Sir Walter properly begins.

The love of Scottish minstrelsy first awakened his literary sense, and the stimulus supplied by ballads and romances never lost its force.

We may say that the little volumes of ballad chap-books which he collected and bound up before he was a dozen years old suggested the future editor, as the long poem on the Conquest of Grenada, which he is said to have written and burned when he was fifteen, foreshadowed the poet and romancer.
Yet Scott's career as an author began rather late.

He published a few translations when he was twenty-five years old, but his first notable work, the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, did not appear until 1802-3, when he was over thirty.

This book, the outgrowth of his early interest in ballads and his own attempts at versifying, exhibited both his editorial and his creative powers.