August 1771. A fever in infancy being attended with an effect fatal to the use of his right limb, he was sent to be brought up at the farm-house of his paternal grandfather, that free exercise in the open air might have a chance of working his cure by the recovery of the constitution. This new situation was romantic. Five or six miles from Kelso, and overlooking the course of the Tweed, is a little upland district, where the rocks push through a meagre soil, the highest being crowned by one of those tall narrow fortalices, once required by a warlike population on the Borders, but now almost all dismantled. Here was placed the retreat of the future poet. Decent and venerable relatives around the old-fashioned fireside the affairs of a pastoral farm out of doors-an extensive tract of beautiful country presented to the eye, and the rocks and turrets of Smailholm Tower to ramble amongst it was upon these things that the mind of Scott awoke from the nothing sleep of infancy. For a long time he could at the most crawl about the house and its neighbourhood; but the intellect was early active. He listened with deep interest to the stories which his relatives had to tell of the old riding times of the Border history, as well as to their recollections of the romantic war of 1745; and, learning to read beside the knee of a kind aunt, he quickly seized upon such specimens of poetry and history as were within his reach-Ramsay's "Tea-Table Miscellany," to wit, and Josephus's "Wars of the Jews."

A visit to Bath, under the charge of his aunt, proved of no avail in healing the lameness, which, however, gradually gave way in the course of years, so as to terminate in only such a shortening of the limb as was remediable by the use of a walking cane. The early schooling of Scott was rendered irregular by his bad health; yet he was fitted at seven years to commence the study of Latin in the High School of his native city. He did not distinguish himself as a scholar, yet often surprised his instructors by the miscellaneous knowledge which he possessed, and now and then was acknowledged to display a sense of the beauties of the Latin authors such as is seldom seen in boys. In the rough amusements which went on out of school, his spirit enabled him to take a leading share, notwithstanding his lameness. He would help to man the Cowgate Port in a snow-ball match, and pass the Kittle Nine Steps on the Castle rock with the best of them. In the winter evenings, when out-of-door exercise was not attractive, he would gather his companions round him at the fireside, and entertain them with stories, real and imaginary, of which he seemed to have an endless store. Unluckily, his classical studies, neglected as they comparatively were, experienced an interruption from bad health, just as he was beginning to acquire some sense of their value. He was sent to live with his aunt at Kelso, that he might recover strength. There, indeed, he gave some attendance at a school kept by one Whale (where

he first met with his future friend Mr James Ballantyne); but this did not compensate the break of his High School course. It would, nevertheless, be difficult to say whether Scott was the worse or the better of the interruptions he experienced in school learning. He lost a certain kind of knowledge, it is true, but he gained another. The vacant time at his disposal he gave to general reading. History, travels, poetry, and prose fiction, he devoured without discrimination, unless it were that he preferred imaginative literature to every other; and of all imaginative writers, was fondest of such as Spenser, whose knights and ladies, and dragons and giants, he was never tired of contemplating. Any passage of a favourite poet which pleased him particularly was sure to remain on his memory, and thus he was able to astonish his friends with his poetical recitations. At the same time he admits that solidly-useful matters had a poor chance of being remembered. His sober-minded parents and other friends regarded these acquirements without pride or satisfaction; they marvelled at the thirst for reading, and the powers memory, but thought it all to little good purpose, and only excused it in consideration of the infirm health of the young prodigy. Scott himself lived to lament the indifference he showed to that regular mental discipline which is to be acquired at school. He says "It is with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of study which I neglected in my youth; through every part of my literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance; and I would at this moment give half the reputation I have had the good fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could rest the remaining part upon a solid foundation of learning and science."

of

This acknowledgment refers more particularly to his subsequent career at the Edinburgh university, where, in the Latin class, he only lost what he had formerly acquired; while in the Greek he became stubborn, and refused to learn, so that the professor finally pronounced him a dunce; and he actually failed to impress even the letters of the alphabet upon his memory. The bursting of a bloodvessel in the lower bowels now laid him once more aside from even the appearance of learning, and he was again left to pursue his own course, first in his sick chamber in his father's house, and afterwards at his uncle's residence at Kelso. He probably little lamented an illness which enabled him to cultivate still more deeply the society of the poets and romance-writers. Regaining strength, he was, in his fifteenth year, indentured as an apprentice to his father, who wished him to be his own successor in business. Respect for his parents, and for the common duties of life, was always a strong feeling in Scott. He therefore applied himself, without a murmur, to the desk in his father's office, though he acknowledges that the recess beneath was generally stuffed with his favourite books, from which, at intervals, he would "snatch a fearful joy." He

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even made his diligence in copying law-papers a means of gratifying his intellectual passions, often writing an unusual quantity, that with the result he might purchase some book or object of virtú which he wished to possess. It should be mentioned, that the little room assigned to him on the kitchen-floor of his father's house in George's Square was already made a kind of museum by his taste for curiosities, especially those of an antiquarian nature. He never was heard to grudge the years he had spent in his father's painstaking business. On the contrary, he recollected them with pleasure, for it was always a matter of pride with him to be a man of business as well as a man of letters. The discipline of the office gave him a number of little technical habits which he never afterwards lost. He was, for instance, much of a formalist in the folding and disposal of papers. The writer of this narrative recollects folding a paper in a wrong fashion in his presence, when he instantly undid it, and showed, with a schoolmasterlike nicety, but with great goodhumour, the proper way to perform this little piece of business.

While advancing to manhood, and during its few first years, Scott, besides keeping up his desultory system of reading, attended the meetings of a literary society composed of such youths as himself. A selection of these, and of his early schoolfellows, became his ordinary companions. Amongst them was Adam Ferguson, son of the well-known professor of that name; another was William Clerk, son of Mr Clerk of Eldin, and afterwards a member of the Scottish bar. It was the pleasure of this group of young men to take frequent rambles in the country, visiting any ancient castle or other remarkable object within their reach. Scott, notwithstanding his limp, walked as stoutly, and sustained fatigue as well, as any of them. Sometimes they would, according to the general habits of those days, resort to taverns for oysters and punch. Scott entered into such indulgences without losing self-control; but he lived to think this ill-spent time. As to other follies equally besetting to youth, it is admitted by all his early friends that he was in a singular degree pure and blameless. His genial good-humour made him a favourite with his young friends, and they could not deny his possessing much out-of-the-way knowledge; yet it does not appear that they saw in him any intellectual superiority, or reason to expect the brilliant destiny which awaited him. The tendency of all testimony from those who knew him at this time is rather to set him down as one from whom nothing extraordinary was to be looked for in mature manhood.

We can easily see the grounds of this opinion. Scott had not been a good scholar. He showed none of the peculiarities of the young sonneteer, for poetry was not yet developed in his nature. Any advantage he possessed over others of his own standing lay in a kind of learning which seemed useless. It is not, then, surprising that he ranked only with ordinary youths, or perhaps

a little below them. It is asserted, however, by James Ballantyne, that there was a certain firmness of understanding in Scott, which enabled him to acquire an ascendancy over some of his companions; giving him the power of allaying their quarrels by a few words, and disposing them to submit to him on many other occasions. Still, this must have looked like a quality of the common world, and especially unconnected with literary genius.

When Scott's apprenticeship expired, the father was willing to introduce him at once into a business which would have yielded a tolerable income; but the youth, stirred by ambition, preferred advancing to the bar, for which his service in a writer's office was the reverse of a disqualification. Having therefore passed through the usual studies, he was admitted of the faculty of advocates, July 1792. This is a profession in which a young man usually spends a few years to little purpose, unless peculiar advantages in the way of patronage help him

on.

Scott does not appear to have done more for some sessions than pass creditably enough through certain routine duties which his father and others imposed upon him, and for which only moderate remuneration was made. He wanted the ready fluent address which is required for pleading, and his knowledge of law was not such as to attract business to him as a consulting counsel. While lingering out the first few idle years of professional life, he studied the German language, and some of its modern writers. He also continued the same kind of antiquarian reading for which he had already become remarkable. Amongst other things giving a character to his mind, were certain annual journeys he made into the pastoral district of Liddesdale, where the castles of the old Border chiefs, and the legends of their exploits, were still rife. On these occasions he was accompanied by an intelligent friend, Mr Robert Shortreed, long after sheriffsubstitute at Jedburgh. No inns, and hardly any roads, were then in Liddesdale. The farmers were a simple race, knowing nothing of the outer world. So much was this the case, that one honest fellow, at whose house the travellers alighted to spend a night, was actually frightened at the idea of meeting an Edinburgh advocate. Willie o' Milburn, as this hero was called, at length took a careful survey of Scott round a corner of the stable, and getting somewhat reassured from the sight, said to Mr Shortreed, "Weel, de'il ha'e me if I's be a bit feared for him now; he's just a chield like ourselves, I think." On these excursions Scott took down from old people anecdotes of the old rough times, and copies of the ballads in which the adventures of the Elliots and Armstrongs were recorded. Thus were laid the foundations of the collection which became in time the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The friendship of Mr EdmonStone of Newton led him, in like manner, to visit those districts of Stirlingshire and lower Perthshire where he afterwards localised his Lady of the Lake. There he learned much of the

more recent rough times of the Highlands, and even conversed with one gentleman who had had to do with Rob Roy. These things constituted the real education of Scott's mind, as far as his character as a literary man is concerned.

Overlooking some boyish efforts in verse, which he had long forgotten, Scott could not be said to have as yet attempted the vocation of a poet. He must be considered as somewhat singu lar in the tuneful list, as having written no poetry worthy of the name before his twenty-fifth year. The cause of this undoubtedly lay in the preponderance which circumstances had hitherto given to other portions of his well-poised character, his anxiety to be a successful man of business, and a respected man of the world. It becomes, however, the more wonderful, as Scott, from early youth, had entertained a zealous affection for a young lady somewhat above his own rank in life, and who was well qualified to inspire a sonnet. At length, in 1796, the hearing a translation of Bürger's ballad of “ Lenore" roused him to a similar attempt, and he produced in one night a most spirited version of this remarkable production. It was appreciated highly by a few persons of sensibility, among whom was Jane Anne Cranstoun, afterwards Countess Purgstall. In October of the above-named year, he was induced to venture into print with his translation of Lenore, joined to that of another of Bürger's ballads, The Wild Huntsman; but the little volume entirely failed to attract public attention.

From his earliest thinking years, Scott had been of Tory leanings. Montrose, Claverhouse, and the heroes of the '15 and '45, were his favourites in Scottish history, by reason of the romantic circumstances with which they were connected. More retrospective at all times than prospective, he partook deeply in the zeal with which liberal politics were now discouraged in Britain. In April 1794-the time when Robespierre was at his zenith in France-some Irish students produced a riot in the Edinburgh theatre by calling for revolutionary tunes. Scott, and some other young zealots of the opposite side, distinguished themselves much in the tumult; he himself was bound over to keep the peace, with three broken heads laid to his especial charge. In the early part of 1797, we find him exhibiting his political sentiments in a more laudable manner, by joining a troop of volunteer cavalry as their quarter-master, and writing a war-song for them. In the drills and other doings of this corps, he displayed an ardour which lay deep in his nature, and which had a strong affinity for military affairs. But the affair told in no discernible way on his future life. He was about this time subjected to a severe trial of spirit by the marriage of his mistress to a more fortunate lover. Even thirty years afterwards he could not set down & few words about this lady in his journal without some agitation. His disappointment, by perhaps a natural reaction of feeling, led soon after to a change in his condition. Spending a few idle