He wrote "The Talisman," "Ivanhoe," "Old Mortality," "Kenilworth," and many other novels; "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," and other

poems.

Read "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," "Ivanhoe," "The Talisman," and other poems and novels. Read also Hutton's "Life of Scott."

"He is the greatest of all war poets; his poetry might make a very coward fearless." WILSON

"The radiant and immortal four in English literature whose now ideal forms rise through the centuries of its long history, each preeminent in a broad domain, are John Milton in reli

gious poetry, William Shakespeare in the drama, Geoffrey Chaucer in the poetry of nature, and Walter Scott in all romance." - HUNNEWELL

He

"He died a great man, and, what is more, a good man. has left us a double treasure, the memory of himself, and the possession of his works. Both of them will endure."

Walter Scott was a boy whom you would like to have known. He had such a sweet temper and healthy, happy disposition that he was a general favorite, and despite his lameness he was agile and quick at all games. His lifelong lameness was the result of a fever when he was only eighteen months old.

This illness left him so delicate that he was sent from his Edinburgh home to an outdoor life with his grandfather in the country. On pleasant days he was left in charge of an old shepherd, and he would lie for hours on the turf among the sheep and lambs. One day he was forgotten and was left out in a thunderstorm. His aunt,

who missed him and ran in search of him, found him unfrightened, shouting "Bonny! bonny!" at every lightning flash.

As he grew older he clambered fearlessly among the crags and galloped about on his pony a little Shetland which would trot into the house to be fed and petted.

In one of his poems Scott tells us how, as a child, he loved to listen to stories, especially tales of feud and fight, and then

"Stretched at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o'er;
Pebbles and shells in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war displayed."

He early began to take delight in books, and he read "the usual, or rather ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, Eastern tales, and romances," as well as history and poetry.

At school he vibrated between the head and the foot of his class. Out of school he was always a leader, being foremost in all games and frolics, and winning his comrades' admiration by his powers as a story-teller.

The school days came to an end and the young man studied law, first with his father, and afterwards at Edinburgh University. His father reproached him with being better fitted for a peddler than a lawyer, so persistently did he trudge over the country, visiting picturesque places and scenes of battle, siege, and legend. These were days of wild enterprise and adventure, of thirty-mile walks and long rambles among scenes afterwards immortalized in his poems and romances.

One of the companions of those days said, "Eh me, sic an endless fund of humor and drollery as he had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring or singing. Whenever we stopped how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony airs in company." Scott, generous, manly, modest, and courteous, "was a gentleman even to his dogs."

He continued to practice law, nominally at least, for fourteen years, but little by little he was diverted into the field of literature. His first literary efforts were a translation of a German ballad, a collection of old Scottish poems, and some ballads of his own in which he tried to picture the "old, simple, violent world" of rugged activ

ity and excitement. This, too, was the purpose of his longer poems which followed, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," and "The Lord of the Isles." These poems won instant popularity, and took hold of the memory in a wonderful way.

Men and women read them until they knew whole cantos and poems by heart. One dark London night a gentleman was groping along the street, repeating to himself, half unconsciously, the battle scene in "Marmion." "Charge, Chester, charge!" he said. Out of the darkness a voice continued, “On, Stanley, on!" He and the stranger finished the death of Marmion between them, then saluted each other and parted.

"Marmion" is one of the greatest of Scott's narrative poems. The scene is laid during the war that culminated in the battle of Flodden. The poem was composed in great part in the saddle, and the stir of combat and charge of cavalry seem to be at the very core of it.

A biographer says that, just as history is divided into reigns, Scott's life might be divided by the succession of his horses and dogs. His letters and his friends make frequent mention of his horses, Captain, Lieutenant, Brown Adam, Daisy, Sybil Grey, and Douce Davie, and of his famous deer hounds, Camp, Maida, the "Bevis" of Woodstock," and Nimrod. On the death of Camp

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he relinquished a dinner invitation previously accepted, on the ground that "the death of an old friend” rendered him unwilling to dine out.

In the summer of 1814 Scott completed and published anonymously a story begun nine years before. That

story was "Waverley." Its great and immediate popularity, exceeding even the success of his poems, encouraged Scott to continue his work in prose. In the next fourteen years he wrote twenty-nine novels, besides shorter tales and other books.

Among the novels are historical tales of England, Scotland, and France, legends of the Border, and tales of the Crusades, besides stories of domestic life. "The Heart of Midlothian" ranks high among his stories of domestic life, and among the best of the historical novels are "Quentin Durward," a tale of the court of Louis XI. of France, "Kenilworth," which describes England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, "The Monastery," and "The Abbot," both stories of the times of Mary, Queen of Scots, and "The Talisman" and "Ivanhoe," the scenes of which are laid in the reign of Richard I. of England.

The best of Scott's novels are centered on public rather than mere private life and passions, and the romantic and historic elements are so blended that his heroes and heroines seem to influence and be influenced by the great events of their times. You can hardly read one of Scott's novels without learning something about the public life and historical conditions of the period described. The narrative is flowing and vivid, and his books are full of picturesque scenes and stirring adventures.

When Scott was about twenty-five, he married Miss Carpenter, a lively beauty of a kindly nature but no great depth of character. Several years after his marriage he bought a "mountain farm" at Abbotsford on the banks. of the Tweed, near the picturesque ruins of Melrose