Antiquarian movement in Britain in the late XVIII century and Walter Scott

The article deals with one of little known aspects in formation of Walter Scott's views on history and philology during his early literary career. Due to participation in the late XVIII century antiquarian movement in Britain Scott both collected a great deal of historical, philological and folklore materials on the people of Scotland and learnt the methods of their systematizing. He also used the advanced ideas of the Scottish philosophical history to analysing and commenting of ancient ballads that promoted transformation of the antiquarian researches into scientific study of folklore.