the same kind which had amused my childhood, and still continued in
secret the Delilahs of my imagination, considered as the subject of
sober research, grave commentary, and apt illustration, by an editor
who showed his poetical genius was capable of emulating the best
qualities of what his pious labor preserved. I remember well the spot
where I read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge
platanus-tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an
old-fashioned arbor in the _garden_ I have mentioned. The summer day
sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of
thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety,
and was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and
to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I
overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me, with
tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time,
too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not common
occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved
volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or
with half the enthusiasm. About this period, also, I became acquainted
with the works of Richardson, and those of Mackenzie--(whom in later
years I became entitled to call my friend)--with Fielding, Smollett,
and some others of our best novelists.

To this period, also, I can trace distinctly the awaking of that
delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never
since deserted me. The neighborhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if
not the most romantic village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to
awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in themselves,
but venerable from their association. The meeting of two superb
rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song--the ruins of
an ancient abbey--the more {p.033} distant vestiges of Roxburgh
Castle--the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to
combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern
taste--are in themselves objects of the first class; yet are so mixed,
united, and melted among a thousand other beauties of a less prominent
description, that they harmonize into one general picture, and please
rather by unison than by concord. I believe I have written
unintelligibly upon this subject, but it is fitter for the pencil than
the pen. The romantic feelings which I have described as predominating
in my mind, naturally rested upon and associated themselves with these
grand features of the landscape around me; and the historical
incidents, or traditional legends connected with many of them, gave to
my admiration a sort of intense impression of reverence, which at
times made my heart feel too big for its bosom. From this time the
love of natural beauty, more especially when combined with ancient
ruins, or remains of our fathers' piety or splendor, became with me an
insatiable passion, which, if circumstances had permitted, I would
willingly have gratified by travelling over half the globe.

I was recalled to Edinburgh about the time when the College meets, and
put at once to the Humanity class, under Mr. Hill, and the first Greek
class, taught by Mr. Dalzell. The former held the reins of discipline
very loosely, and though beloved by his students, for he was a
good-natured man as well as a good scholar, he had not the art of
exciting our attention as well as liking. This was a dangerous
character with whom to trust one who relished labor as little as I
did, and amid the riot of his class I speedily lost much of what I had
learned under Adam and Whale. At the Greek class, I might have made a
better figure, for Professor Dalzell maintained a great deal of
authority, and was not only himself an admirable scholar, but was
always deeply interested in the progress of his students. But here lay
the villainy. Almost {p.034} all my companions who had left the High
School at the same time with myself had acquired a smattering of Greek
before they came to College. I, alas, had none; and finding myself far
inferior to all my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of
vindicating my equality than by professing my contempt for the
language, and my resolution not to learn it. A youth who died early,
himself an excellent Greek scholar, saw my negligence and folly with
pain, instead of contempt. He came to call on me in George's Square,
and pointed out in the strongest terms the silliness of the conduct I
had adopted, told me I was distinguished by the name of the _Greek
Blockhead_, and exhorted me to redeem my reputation while it was
called to-day. My stubborn pride received this advice with sulky
civility; the birth of my Mentor (whose name was Archibald, the son of
an innkeeper) did not, as I thought in my folly, authorize him to
intrude upon me his advice. The other was not sharp-sighted, or his
consciousness of a generous intention overcame his resentment. He
offered me his daily and nightly assistance, and pledged himself to
bring me forward with the foremost of my class. I felt some twinges of
conscience, but they were unable to prevail over my pride and
self-conceit. The poor lad left me more in sorrow than in anger, nor
did we ever meet again. All hopes of my progress in the Greek were now
over; insomuch that when we were required to write essays on the
authors we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in
which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in
the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and
flimsy argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the
same time he could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of
out-of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the
severe sentence--that dunce I was, and dunce was to remain--which,
however, my excellent and learned friend {p.035} lived to revoke
over a bottle of Burgundy, at our literary Club at Fortune's, of which
he was a distinguished member.

Meanwhile, as if to eradicate my slightest tincture of Greek, I fell
ill during the middle of Mr. Dalzell's second class, and migrated a
second time to Kelso--where I again continued a long time reading what
and how I pleased, and of course reading nothing but what afforded me
immediate entertainment. The only thing which saved my mind from utter
dissipation was that turn for historical pursuit, which never
abandoned me even at the idlest period. I had forsworn the Latin
classics for no reason I know of, unless because they were akin to the
Greek; but the occasional perusal of Buchanan's history, that of
Matthew Paris, and other monkish chronicles, kept up a kind of
familiarity with the language even in its rudest state. But I forgot
the very letters of the Greek alphabet; a loss never to be repaired,
considering what that language is, and who they were who employed it
in their compositions.

About this period--or soon afterwards--my father judged it proper I
should study mathematics, a study upon which I entered with all the
ardor of novelty. My tutor was an aged person, Dr. MacFait, who had in
his time been distinguished as a teacher of this science. Age,
however, and some domestic inconveniences, had diminished his pupils,
and lessened his authority amongst the few who remained. I think that,
had I been more fortunately placed for instruction, or had I had the
spur of emulation, I might have made some progress in this science, of
which, under the circumstances I have mentioned, I only acquired a
very superficial smattering.

In other studies I was rather more fortunate. I made some progress in
Ethics under Professor John Bruce, and was selected, as one of his
students whose progress he approved, to read an essay before Principal
Robertson. I {p.036} was farther instructed in Moral Philosophy at
the class of Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose striking and impressive
eloquence riveted the attention even of the most volatile student. To
sum up my academical studies, I attended the class of History, then
taught by the present Lord Woodhouselee, and, as far as I remember, no
others, excepting those of the Civil and Municipal Law. So that, if my
learning be flimsy and inaccurate, the reader must have some
compassion even for an idle workman, who had so narrow a foundation to
build upon. If, however, it should ever fall to the lot of youth to
peruse these pages--let such a reader remember that it is with the
deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of
learning which I neglected in my youth; that through every part of my
literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance;
and that 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 sound foundation of learning and science.

I imagine my father's reason for sending me to so few classes in the
College was a desire that I should apply myself particularly to my
legal studies. He had not determined whether I should fill the
situation of an Advocate or a Writer; but judiciously considering the
technical knowledge of the latter to be useful at least, if not
essential, to a barrister, he resolved I should serve the ordinary
apprenticeship of five years to his own profession. I accordingly
entered into indentures with my father about 1785-86, and entered upon
the dry and barren wilderness of forms and conveyances.

I cannot reproach myself with being entirely an idle apprentice--far
less, as the reader might reasonably have expected,

          "A clerk foredoom'd my father's soul to cross."

The drudgery, indeed, of the office I disliked, and the confinement
{p.037} I altogether detested; but I loved my father, and I felt the
rational pride and pleasure of rendering myself useful to him. I was
ambitious also; and among my companions in labor, the only way to
gratify ambition was to labor hard and well. Other circumstances
reconciled me in some measure to the confinement. The allowance for
copy-money furnished a little fund for the _menus plaisirs_ of the
circulating library and the theatre; and this was no trifling
incentive to labor. When actually at the oar, no man could pull it
harder than I, and I remember writing upwards of 120 folio pages with
no interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of attendance on
the office were lightened by the power of choosing my own books, and
reading them in my own way, which often consisted in beginning at the
middle or the end of a volume. A deceased friend, who was a
fellow-apprentice with me, used often to express his surprise that,
after such a hop-step-and-jump perusal, I knew as much of the book as
he had been able to acquire from reading it in the usual manner. My
desk usually contained a store of most miscellaneous volumes,
especially works of fiction of every kind, which were my supreme
delight. I might except novels, unless those of the better and higher
class; for though I read many of them, yet it was with more selection
than might have been expected. The whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe
I abhorred, and it required the art of Burney, or the feeling of
Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic tale. But all that was
adventurous and romantic I devoured without much discrimination, and I
really believe I have read as much nonsense of this class as any man
now living. Everything which touched on knight-errantry was
particularly acceptable to me, and I soon attempted to imitate what I
so greatly admired. My efforts, however, were in the manner of the
tale-teller, not of the bard.

My greatest intimate, from the days of my school-tide, was {p.038}
Mr. John Irving, now a Writer to the Signet. We lived near each other,
and by joint agreement were wont, each of us, to compose a romance for
the other's amusement. These legends, in which the martial and the
miraculous always predominated, we rehearsed to each other during our
walks, which were usually directed to the most solitary spots about
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags. We naturally sought seclusion, for
we were conscious no small degree of ridicule would have attended our
amusement, if the nature of it had become known. Whole holidays were
spent in this singular pastime, which continued for two or three
years, and had, I believe, no small effect in directing the turn of my
imagination to the chivalrous and romantic in poetry and prose.

Meanwhile, the translations of Mr. Hoole having made me acquainted
with Tasso and Ariosto, I learned from his notes on the latter, that
the Italian language contained a fund of romantic lore. A part of my
earnings was dedicated to an Italian class which I attended twice a
week, and rapidly acquired some proficiency. I had previously renewed
and extended my knowledge of the French language, from the same
principle of romantic research. Tressan's romances, the Bibliothèque
Bleue, and Bibliothèque de Romans, were already familiar to me, and I
now acquired similar intimacy with the works of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci,
and other eminent Italian authors. I fastened also, like a tiger, upon
every collection of old songs or romances which chance threw in my
way, or which my scrutiny was able to discover on the dusty shelves of
James Sibbald's circulating library in the Parliament Square. This
collection, now dismantled and dispersed, contained at that time many
rare and curious works, seldom found in such a collection. Mr. Sibbald
himself, a man of rough manners but of some taste and judgment,
cultivated music and poetry, and in his shop I had a distant view of
some literary characters, besides {p.039} the privilege of
ransacking the stores of old French and Italian books, which were in
little demand among the bulk of his subscribers. Here I saw the
unfortunate Andrew Macdonald, author of Vimonda; and here, too, I saw
at a distance the boast of Scotland, Robert Burns. Of the latter I
shall presently have occasion to speak more fully.

I am inadvertently led to confound dates while I talk of this remote
period, for, as I have no notes, it is impossible for me to remember
with accuracy the progress of studies, if they deserve the name, so
irregular and miscellaneous. But about the second year of my
apprenticeship my health, which, from rapid growth and other causes,
had been hitherto rather uncertain and delicate, was affected by the
breaking of a blood-vessel. The regimen I had to undergo on this
occasion was far from agreeable. It was spring, and the weather raw
and cold, yet I was confined to bed with a single blanket, and bled
and blistered till I scarcely had a pulse left. I had all the appetite
of a growing boy, but was prohibited any sustenance beyond what was
absolutely necessary for the support of nature, and that in vegetables
alone. Above all, with a considerable disposition to talk, I was not
permitted to open my lips without one or two old ladies who watched my
couch being ready at once to souse upon me,

          "imposing silence with a stilly sound."[31]

         [Footnote 31: [Home's _Douglas_.]]

My only refuge was reading and playing at chess. To the romances and
poetry, which I chiefly delighted in, I had always added the study of
history, especially as connected with military events. I was
encouraged in this latter study by a tolerable acquaintance with
geography, and by the opportunities I had enjoyed while with Mr.
MacFait to learn the meaning of the more ordinary terms of
fortification. While, therefore, I lay in this dreary and silent
solitude, I fell upon the resource of illustrating the {p.040}
battles I read of by the childish expedient of arranging shells, and
seeds, and pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies. Diminutive
cross-bows were contrived to mimic artillery, and with the assistance
of a friendly carpenter I contrived to model a fortress, which, like
that of Uncle Toby, represented whatever place happened to be
uppermost in my imagination. I fought my way thus through Vertot's
Knights of Malta--a book which, as it hovered between history and
romance, was exceedingly dear to me; and Orme's interesting and
beautiful History of Indostan, whose copious plans, aided by the clear
and luminous explanations of the author, rendered my imitative
amusement peculiarly easy. Other moments of these weary weeks were
spent in looking at the Meadow Walks, by assistance of a combination
of mirrors so arranged that, while lying in bed, I could see the
troops march out to exercise, or any other incident which occurred on
that promenade.

After one or two relapses, my constitution recovered the injury it had
sustained, though for several months afterwards I was restricted to a
severe vegetable diet. And I must say, in passing, that though I
gained health under this necessary restriction, yet it was far from
being agreeable to me, and I was affected whilst under its influence
with a nervousness which I never felt before or since. A disposition
to start upon slight alarms--a want of decision in feeling and acting,
which has not usually been my failing--an acute sensibility to
trifling inconveniences--and an unnecessary apprehension of contingent
misfortunes, rise to my memory as connected with my vegetable diet,
although they may very possibly have been entirely the result of the
disorder and not of the cure. Be this as it may, with this illness I
bade farewell both to disease and medicine; for since that time, till
the hour I am now writing, I have enjoyed a state of the most robust
health, having only had to complain of occasional headaches or
stomachic affections when I have been long without taking exercise,
{p.041} or have lived too convivially--the latter having been
occasionally, though, not habitually, the error of my youth, as the
former has been of my advanced life.

My frame gradually became hardened with my constitution, and being
both tall and muscular, I was rather disfigured than disabled by my
lameness. This personal disadvantage did not prevent me from taking
much exercise on horseback, and making long journeys on foot, in the
course of which I often walked from twenty to thirty miles a day. A
distinct instance occurs to me. I remember walking with poor James
Ramsay, my fellow-apprentice, now no more, and two other friends, to
breakfast at Prestonpans. We spent the forenoon in visiting the ruins
at Seton, and the field of battle at Preston--dined at Prestonpans on
_tiled haddocks_ very sumptuously--drank half a bottle of port each,
and returned in the evening. This could not be less than thirty miles,
nor do I remember being at all fatigued upon the occasion.

These excursions on foot or horseback formed by far my most favorite
amusement. I have all my life delighted in travelling, though I have
never enjoyed that pleasure upon a large scale. It was a propensity
which I sometimes indulged so unduly as to alarm and vex my parents.
Wood, water, wilderness itself, had an inexpressible charm for me, and
I had a dreamy way of going much farther than I intended, so that
unconsciously my return was protracted, and my parents had sometimes
serious cause of uneasiness. For example, I once set out with Mr.
George Abercromby[32] (the son of the immortal General), Mr. William
Clerk, and some others, to fish in the lake above Howgate, and the
stream which descends from it into the Esk. We breakfasted at Howgate,
and fished the whole day; and while we were on our return next
morning, I was easily seduced by William Clerk, then a great intimate,
to visit Pennycuik-house, the seat of his family. Here he and John
Irving, and I for their sake, were {p.042} overwhelmed with kindness
by the late Sir John Clerk and his lady, the present Dowager Lady
Clerk. The pleasure of looking at fine pictures, the beauty of the
place, and the flattering hospitality of the owners, drowned all
recollection of home for a day or two. Meanwhile our companions, who
had walked on without being aware of our digression, returned to
Edinburgh without us, and excited no small alarm in my father's
household. At length, however, they became accustomed to my escapades.
My father used to protest to me on such occasions that he thought I
was born to be a strolling pedlar; and though the prediction was
intended to mortify my conceit, I am not sure that I altogether
disliked it. I was now familiar with Shakespeare, and thought of
Autolycus's song--

               "Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
                  And merrily hent the stile-a:
                A merry heart goes all the day,
                  Your sad tires in a mile-a."

         [Footnote 32: Now Lord Abercromby.--(1826.)]

My principal object in these excursions was the pleasure of seeing
romantic scenery, or what afforded me at least equal pleasure, the
places which had been distinguished by remarkable historical events.
The delight with which I regarded the former, of course had general
approbation, but I often found it difficult to procure sympathy with
the interest I felt in the latter. Yet to me, the wandering over the
field of Bannockburn was the source of more exquisite pleasure than
gazing upon the celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling
castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to the feeling of
picturesque scenery; on the contrary, few delighted more in its
general effect. But I was unable with the eye of a painter to dissect
the various parts of the scene, to comprehend how the one bore upon
the other, to estimate the effect which various features of the view
had in producing its leading and general effect. I have never, indeed,
been capable of doing this with precision or {p.043} nicety, though
my latter studies have led me to amend and arrange my original ideas
upon the subject. Even the humble ambition, which I long cherished, of
making sketches of those places which interested me, from a defect of
eye or of hand was totally ineffectual. After long study and many
efforts, I was unable to apply the elements of perspective or of shade
to the scene before me, and was obliged to relinquish in despair an
art which I was most anxious to practise. But show me an old castle or
a field of battle, and I was at home at once, filled it with its
combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers by the
enthusiasm of my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near St.
Andrews, the spirit moved me to give a picture of the assassination of
the Archbishop of St. Andrews to some fellow-travellers with whom I
was accidentally associated, and one of them, though well acquainted
with the story, protested my narrative had frightened away his night's
sleep. I mention this to show the distinction between a sense of the
picturesque in action and in scenery. If I have since been able in
poetry to trace with some success the principles of the latter, it has
always been with reference to its general and leading features, or
under some alliance with moral feeling; and even this proficiency has
cost me study.--Meanwhile I endeavored to make amends for my ignorance
of drawing, by adopting a sort of technical memory respecting the
scenes I visited: Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch from a
tree--these constituted what I called my log-book; and I intended to
have a set of chessmen out of them, each having reference to the place
where it was cut--as the kings from Falkland and Holy-Rood; the queens
from Queen Mary's yew-tree at Crookston; the bishops from abbeys or
episcopal palaces; the knights from baronial residences; the rooks
from royal fortresses; and the pawns generally from places worthy of
historical note. But this whimsical design I never carried into
execution.

With {p.044} music it was even worse than with painting. My mother
was anxious we should at least learn Psalmody; but the incurable
defects of my voice and ear soon drove my teacher to despair.[33] It
is only by long practice that I have acquired the power of selecting
or distinguishing melodies; and although now few things delight or
affect me more than a simple tune sung with feeling, yet I am sensible
that even this pitch of musical taste has only been gained by
attention and habit, and, as it were, by my feeling of the words being
associated with the tune. I have, therefore, been usually unsuccessful
in composing words to a tune, although my friend, Dr. Clarke, and
other musical composers, have sometimes been able to make a happy
union between their music and my poetry.

         [Footnote 33: The late Alexander Campbell, a warm-hearted
         man, and an enthusiast in Scottish music, which he sang most
         beautifully, had this ungrateful task imposed on him. He was
         a man of many accomplishments, but dashed with a _bizarrerie_
         of temper which made them useless to their proprietor. He
         wrote several books--as a _Tour in Scotland_, etc.;--and he
         made an advantageous marriage, but fell nevertheless into
         distressed circumstances, which I had the pleasure of
         relieving, if I could not remove. His sense of gratitude was
         very strong, and showed itself oddly in one respect. He would
         never allow that I had a bad ear; but contended, that if I
         did not understand music, it was because I did not choose to
         learn it. But when he attended us in George's Square, our
         neighbor, Lady Cumming, sent to beg the boys might not be all
         flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had no
         doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord
         was really dreadful. Robert was the only one of our family
         who could sing, though my father was musical, and a performer
         on the violoncello at the _gentlemen's concerts_.--(1826.)]

In other points, however, I began to make some amends for the
irregularity of my education. It is well known that in Edinburgh one
great spur to emulation among youthful students is in those
associations called _literary societies_, formed not only for the
purpose of debate, but of composition. These undoubtedly have some
disadvantages, where a bold, petulant, and disputatious temper happens
to be combined with considerable information and talent. Still,
however, in order to such a person {p.045} being actually spoiled by
his mixing in such debates, his talents must be of a very rare nature,
or his effrontery must be proof to every species of assault; for there
is generally, in a well-selected society of this nature, talent
sufficient to meet the forwardest, and satire enough to penetrate the
most undaunted. I am particularly obliged to this sort of club for
introducing me about my seventeenth year into the society which at one
time I had entirely dropped; for, from the time of my illness at
college, I had had little or no intercourse with any of my
class-companions, one or two only excepted. Now, however, about 1788,
I began to feel and take my ground in society. A ready wit, a good
deal of enthusiasm, and a perception that soon ripened into tact and
observation of character, rendered me an acceptable companion to many
young men whose acquisitions in philosophy and science were infinitely
superior to anything I could boast.

In the business of these societies--for I was a member of more than
one successively--I cannot boast of having made any great figure. I
never was a good speaker unless upon some subject which strongly
animated my feelings; and, as I was totally unaccustomed to
composition, as well as to the art of generalizing my ideas upon any
subject, my literary essays were but very poor work. I never attempted
them unless when compelled to do so by the regulations of the society,
and then I was like the Lord of Castle Rackrent, who was obliged to
cut down a tree to get a few fagots to boil the kettle; for the
quantity of ponderous and miscellaneous knowledge, which I really
possessed on many subjects, was not easily condensed, or brought to
bear upon the object I wished particularly to become master of. Yet
there occurred opportunities when this odd lumber of my brain,
especially that which was connected with the recondite parts of
history, did me, as Hamlet says, "yeoman's service." My memory of
events was like one of the large, old-fashioned stone-cannons of the
Turks--very difficult to load well {p.046} and discharge, but making
a powerful effect when by good chance any object did come within range
of its shot. Such fortunate opportunities of exploding with effect
maintained my literary character among my companions, with whom I soon
met with great indulgence and regard. The persons with whom I chiefly
lived at this period of my youth were William Clerk, already
mentioned; James Edmonstoune, of Newton; George Abercromby; Adam
Ferguson, son of the celebrated Professor Ferguson, and who combined
the lightest and most airy temper with the best and kindest
disposition; John Irving, already mentioned; the Honorable Thomas
Douglas, now Earl of Selkirk; David Boyle,[34]--and two or three
others, who sometimes plunged deeply into politics and metaphysics,
and not unfrequently "doffed the world aside, and bid it pass."

         [Footnote 34: Now Lord Justice-Clerk.--(1826.)]

Looking back on these times, I cannot applaud in all respects the way
in which our days were spent. There was too much idleness, and
sometimes too much conviviality: but our hearts were warm, our minds
honorably bent on knowledge and literary distinction; and if I,
certainly the least informed of the party, may be permitted to bear
witness, we were not without the fair and creditable means of
attaining the distinction to which we aspired. In this society I was
naturally led to correct my former useless course of reading;
for--feeling myself greatly inferior to my companions in metaphysical
philosophy and other branches of regular study--I labored, not without
some success, to acquire at least such a portion of knowledge as might
enable me to maintain my rank in conversation. In this I succeeded
pretty well; but unfortunately then, as often since through my life, I
incurred the deserved ridicule of my friends from the superficial
nature of my acquisitions, which being, in the mercantile phrase, _got
up_ for society, very often proved flimsy in the texture; and thus the
gifts of an uncommonly {p.047} retentive memory and acute powers of
perception were sometimes detrimental to their possessor by
encouraging him to a presumptuous reliance upon them.

Amidst these studies, and in this society, the time of my
apprenticeship elapsed; and in 1790, or thereabouts, it became
necessary that I should seriously consider to which department of the
law I was to attach myself. My father behaved with the most parental
kindness. He offered, if I preferred his own profession, immediately
to take me into partnership with him, which, though his business was
much diminished, still afforded me an immediate prospect of a handsome
independence. But he did not disguise his wish that I should
relinquish this situation to my younger brother, and embrace the more
ambitious profession of the Bar. I had little hesitation in making my
choice--for I was never very fond of money; and in no other particular
do the professions admit of a comparison. Besides, I knew and felt the
inconveniences attached to that of a Writer; and I thought (like a
young man) many of them were "ingenio non subeunda meo." The
appearance of personal dependence which that profession requires was
disagreeable to me; the sort of connection between the client and the
attorney seemed to render the latter more subservient than was quite
agreeable to my nature; and, besides, I had seen many sad examples,
while overlooking my father's business, that the utmost exertions, and
the best meant services, do not secure the _man of business_, as he is
called, from great loss, and most ungracious treatment on the part of
his employers. The Bar, though I was conscious of my deficiencies as a
public speaker, was the line of ambition and liberty; it was that also
for which most of my contemporary friends were destined. And, lastly,
although I would willingly have relieved my father of the labors of
his business, yet I saw plainly we could not have agreed on some
particulars if we had attempted to conduct it together, and that I
should disappoint his expectations {p.048} if I did not turn to the
Bar. So to that object my studies were directed with great ardor and
perseverance during the years 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792.

In the usual course of study, the Roman or Civil Law was the first
object of my attention--the second, the Municipal Law of Scotland. In
the course of reading on both subjects, I had the advantage of
studying in conjunction with my friend William Clerk, a man of the
most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, and who, should he
ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by which he has been
hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest
degree. We attended the regular classes of both laws in the University
of Edinburgh. The Civil Law chair, now worthily filled by Mr.
Alexander Irving, might at that time be considered as in _abeyance_,
since the person by whom it was occupied had never been fit for the
situation, and was then almost in a state of dotage. But the Scotch
Law lectures were those of Mr. David Hume, who still continues to
occupy that situation with as much honor to himself as advantage to
his country. I copied over his lectures twice with my own hand, from
notes taken in the class; and when I have had occasion to consult
them, I can never sufficiently admire the penetration and clearness of
conception which were necessary to the arrangement of the fabric of
law, formed originally under the strictest influence of feudal
principles, and innovated, altered, and broken in upon by the change
of times, of habits, and of manners, until it resembles some ancient
castle, partly entire, partly ruinous, partly dilapidated, patched and
altered during the succession of ages by a thousand additions and
combinations, yet still exhibiting, with the marks of its antiquity,
symptoms of the skill and wisdom of its founders, and capable of being
analyzed and made the subject of a methodical plan by an architect who
can understand the various styles of the different ages in which it
was subjected to alteration. Such an architect has Mr. Hume {p.049}
been to the law of Scotland, neither wandering into fanciful and
abstruse disquisitions, which are the more proper subject of the
antiquary, nor satisfied with presenting to his pupils a dry and
undigested detail of the laws in their present state, but combining
the past state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing
clearly and judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes
which led to them.

Under these auspices I commenced my legal studies. A little parlor was
assigned me in my father's house, which was spacious and convenient,
and I took the exclusive possession of my new realms with all the
feelings of novelty and liberty. Let me do justice to the only years
of my life in which I applied to learning with stern, steady, and
undeviating industry. The rule of my friend Clerk and myself was that
we should mutually qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination
upon certain points of law every morning in the week, Sundays
excepted. This was at first to have taken place alternately at each
other's houses, but we soon discovered that my friend's resolution was
inadequate to severing him from his couch at the early hour fixed for
this exercitation. Accordingly I agreed to go every morning to his
house, which, being at the extremity of Prince's Street, New Town, was
a walk of two miles. With great punctuality, however, I beat him up to
his task every morning before seven o'clock, and in the course of two
summers, we went, by way of question and answer, through the whole of
Heineccius's Analysis of the Institutes and Pandects, as well as
through the smaller copy of Erskine's Institutes of the Law of
Scotland. This course of study enabled us to pass with credit the
usual trials, which, by the regulations of the Faculty of Advocates,
must be undergone by every candidate for admission into their body. My
friend William Clerk and I passed these ordeals on the same
days--namely, the Civil Law trial on the [30th June, 1791], and the
Scots Law trial on the [6th July, 1792]. {p.050} On the [11th July,
1792], we both assumed the gown with all its duties and honors.

My progress in life during these two or three years had been gradually
enlarging my acquaintance, and facilitating my entrance into good
company. My father and mother, already advanced in life, saw little
society at home, excepting that of near relations, or upon particular
occasions, so that I was left to form connections in a great measure
for myself. It is not difficult for a youth with a real desire to
please and be pleased, to make his way into good society in
Edinburgh--or indeed anywhere; and my family connections, if they did
not greatly further, had nothing to embarrass my progress. I was a
gentleman, and so welcome anywhere, if so be I could behave myself, as
Tony Lumpkin says, "in a concatenation accordingly."

CHAPTER II {p.051}

     Illustrations of the Autobiographical Fragment. --
     Edinburgh. -- Sandy-Knowe. -- Bath. -- Prestonpans.

1771-1778.

Sir Walter Scott opens his brief account of his ancestry with a
playful allusion to a trait of national character, which has, time out
of mind, furnished merriment to the neighbors of the Scotch; but the
zeal of pedigree was deeply rooted in himself, and he would have been
the last to treat it with serious disparagement. It has often been
exhibited under circumstances sufficiently grotesque; but it has lent
strength to many a good impulse, sustained hope and self-respect under
many a difficulty and distress, armed heart and nerve to many a bold
and resolute struggle for independence; and prompted also many a
generous act of assistance, which under its influence alone could have
been accepted without any feeling of degradation.

He speaks modestly of his own descent; for, while none of his
predecessors had ever sunk below the situation and character of a
gentleman, he had but to go three or four generations back, and
thence, as far as they could be followed, either on the paternal or
maternal side, they were to be found moving in the highest ranks of
our baronage. When he fitted up, in his later years, the beautiful
hall of Abbotsford, he was careful to have the armorial bearings of
his forefathers blazoned in due order on the compartments of its roof;
and there are few in Scotland, under the titled nobility, who could
trace their blood to so many stocks of historical distinction.

In {p.052} the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Notes to The
Lay of the Last Minstrel, the reader will find sundry notices of the
"Bauld Rutherfords that were sae stout," and the Swintons of Swinton
in Berwickshire, the two nearest houses on the maternal side. An
illustrious old warrior of the latter family, Sir John Swinton,
extolled by Froissart, is the hero of the dramatic sketch, Halidon
Hill; and it is not to be omitted, that through the Swintons Sir
Walter Scott could trace himself to William Alexander, Earl of
Stirling, the poet and dramatist.[35] His respect for the worthy
barons of Newmains and Dryburgh, of whom, in right of his father's
mother, he was the representative, and in whose venerable sepulchre
his remains now rest, was testified by his Memorials of the
Haliburtons, a small volume printed (for private circulation only) in
the year 1820. His own male ancestors of the family of Harden, whose
lineage is traced by Douglas in his Baronage of Scotland back to the
middle of the fourteenth century, when they branched off from the
great blood of Buccleuch, have been so largely celebrated in his
various writings, that I might perhaps content myself with a general
reference to those pages, their only imperishable monument. The
antique splendor of the ducal house itself has been dignified to all
Europe by the pen of its remote descendant; but it may be doubted
whether his genius could have been adequately developed, had he not
attracted, at an early and critical period, the kindly recognition and
support of the Buccleuchs.

         [Footnote 35: On Sir Walter's copy of _Recreations with the
         Muses, by William, Earl of Stirling_, 1637, there is the
         following MS. note:--"Sir William Alexander, sixth Baron of
         Menstrie, and first Earl of Stirling, the friend of Drummond
         of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, died in 1640. His eldest son,
         William, Viscount Canada, died before his father, leaving one
         son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas,
         eldest daughter of William, first Marquis of Douglas.
         Margaret, the second of these daughters, married Sir Robert
         Sinclair of Longformacus in the Merse, to whom she bore two
         daughters, Anne and Jean. Jean Sinclair, the younger
         daughter, married Sir John Swinton of Swinton; and Jean
         Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmother of the
         proprietor of this volume."]

The race had been celebrated, however, long before his {p.053} day,
by a minstrel of its own; nor did he conceal his belief that he owed
much to the influence exerted over his juvenile mind by the rude but
enthusiastic clan-poetry of old _Satchells_ who describes himself _on
his title-page_ as

       "Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler,
                And one that can write nane,
                But just the Letters of his Name."

His True History of several honourable Families of the Right
Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of Roxburgh and Selkirk, and
others adjacent, gathered out of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and
Traditions of our Fathers, includes, among other things, a string of
complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of Raeburn; and the
copy which had belonged to that gentleman was in all likelihood about
the first book of verses that fell into the poet's hand.[36] How
continually its wild {p.054} and uncouth doggerel was on his lips to
his latest day all his familiars can testify; and the passages which
he quoted with the greatest zest were those commemorative of two
ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend against physical
misfortune similar to his own. The former of these, according to
Satchells, was the immediate founder of the branch originally designed
of Sinton, afterwards of Harden:--

          "It is four hundred winters past in order
           Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border;
           A son he had at that same tide,
           Which was so lame could neither run nor ride.
           John, this lame son, if my author speaks true,
           He sent him to St. Mungo's in Glasgu,
           Where he remained a scholar's time,
           Then married a wife according to his mind....
           And betwixt them twa was procreat
           Headshaw, Askirk, SINTON, and Glack."

         [Footnote 36: His family well remember the delight which he
         expressed on receiving, in 1818, a copy of this first
         edition, a small dark quarto of 1688, from his friend
         Constable. He was breakfasting when the present was
         delivered, and said, "This is indeed the resurrection of an
         old ally--I mind _spelling_ these lines." He read aloud the
         jingling epistle to his own great-great-grandfather, which,
         like the rest, concludes with a broad hint, that as the
         author had neither lands nor flocks--"no estate left except
         his designation"--the more fortunate kinsman who enjoyed,
         like Jason of old, a fair share of _fleeces_, might do worse
         than bestow on him some of King James's _broad pieces_. On
         rising from table, Sir Walter immediately wrote as follows on
         the blank leaf opposite to poor Satchells' honest
         title-page--

           "I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a poor scholar, no soldier,
               but a soldier's lover,
            In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover,
            That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four
               million times over;
            And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden pieces
            As ever were hairs in Jason's and Medea's golden fleeces."

         The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that
         the copy now at Abbotsford was the only one Mr. Constable had
         ever seen--and no wonder, for the author's envoy is in these
         words:--

           "Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly
            Amongst the nobles and gentility;
            Thou'rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns,
            But given to worthy persons of renown.
            The number's few I've printed, in regard
            My charges have been great, and I hope reward;
            I caus'd not print many above twelve score,
            And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more."]

But, if the scholarship of _John the Lamiter_ furnished his descendant
with many a mirthful allusion, a far greater favorite was the memory
of _William the Boltfoot_, who followed him in the sixth generation:--

          "The Laird and Lady of Harden
           Betwixt them procreat was a son
           Called William Boltfoot of Harden."

The emphasis with which this next line was quoted I can never
forget:--

          "_He did survive to be_ A MAN."

He was, in fact, one of the "prowest knights" of the whole
genealogy--a fearless horseman and expert spearman, renowned and
dreaded; and I suppose I have heard Sir Walter repeat a dozen times,
as he was dashing into the Tweed or Ettrick, "rolling red from brae to
brae," a stanza from what he called an old ballad, though it was most
likely one of his own early imitations:--

          "To tak the foord he aye was first,
             Unless the English loons were near;
           Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man,
             Auld Boltfoot rides into the rear."

"From {p.055} childhood's earliest hour," says the poet in one of his
last Journals, "I have rebelled against external circumstances." How
largely the traditional famousness of the stalwart _Boltfoot_ may have
helped to develop this element of his character, I do not pretend to
say; but I cannot avoid regretting that Lord Byron had not discovered
such another "Deformed Transformed" among his own chivalrous
progenitors.

So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he used to make an
autumnal excursion, with whatever friend happened to be his guest at
the time, to the tower of Harden, the _incunabula_ of his race. A more
picturesque scene for the fastness of a lineage of Border marauders
could not be conceived; and so much did he delight in it, remote and
inaccessible as its situation is, that, in the earlier part of his
life, he had nearly availed himself of his kinsman's permission to fit
up the dilapidated _peel_ for his summer residence. Harden (the ravine
of hares) is a deep, dark, and narrow glen, along which a little
mountain brook flows to join the river Borthwick, itself a tributary
of the Teviot. The castle is perched on the brink of the precipitous
bank, and from the ruinous windows you look down into the crows' nests
on the summits of the old mouldering elms, that have their roots on
the margin of the stream far below:--

         "Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand,
          Rolls her red tide to Teviot's western strand,
          Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn,
          Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn,
          Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale,
          And clouds of ravens o'er the turrets sail.
          A hardy race who never shrunk from war,
          The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar,
          Here fixed his mountain home;--a wide domain,
          And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain;
          But what the niggard ground of wealth denied,
          From fields more bless'd his fearless arm supplied."[37]

         [Footnote 37: Leyden, the author of these beautiful lines,
         has borrowed, as _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ did also,
         from one of Satchells's primitive couplets--

               "If heather-tops had been corn of the best,
               Then Buccleugh mill had gotten a noble grist."]

It {p.056} was to this wild retreat that the Harden of The Lay of the
Last Minstrel, the Auld Wat of a hundred Border ditties, brought home,
in 1567, his beautiful bride, Mary Scott, "the Flower of Yarrow,"
whose grace and gentleness have lived in song along with the stern
virtues of her lord. She is said to have chiefly owed her celebrity to
the gratitude of an English captive, a beautiful child, whom she
rescued from the tender mercies of Wat's moss-troopers, on their
return from a foray into Cumberland. The youth grew up under her
protection, and is believed to have been the composer both of the
words and the music of many of the best old songs of the Border. As
Leyden says,

         "His are the strains whose wandering echoes thrill
          The shepherd lingering on the twilight hill,
          When evening brings the merry folding hours,
          And sun-eyed daisies close their winking flowers.
          He lived o'er Yarrow's Flower to shed the tear,
          To strew the holly leaves o'er Harden's bier;
          But none was found above the minstrel's tomb,
          Emblem of peace, to bid the daisy bloom.
          He, nameless as the race from which he sprung,
          Saved other names, and left his own unsung."

We are told that when the last bullock which Auld Wat had provided
from the English pastures was consumed, the Flower of Yarrow placed on
her table a dish containing a pair of clean spurs; a hint to the
company that they must bestir themselves for their next dinner. Sir
Walter adds, in a note to the Minstrelsy, "Upon one occasion when the
village herd was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird
heard him call loudly to drive out Harden's cow. 'Harden's _cow_!'
echoed the affronted chief; 'is it come to that pass? By my faith they
shall soon say Harden's _kye_' (cows). Accordingly, he sounded his
bugle, set out with his followers, and next day returned with _a bow
of kye, and a bassen'd_ (brindled) _bull_. On his return with this
gallant prey, he passed a very large haystack. It occurred to the
provident laird {p.057} that this would be extremely convenient to
fodder his new stock of cattle; but as no means of transporting it
were obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apostrophe, now
become proverbial--'_By my saul, had ye but four feet, ye should not
stand lang there._' In short, as Froissart says of a similar class of
feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them that was not _too heavy or
too hot_."

Another striking chapter in the genealogical history belongs to the
marriage of Auld Wat's son and heir, afterwards Sir William Scott of
Harden, distinguished by the early favor of James VI., and severely
fined for his loyalty under the usurpation of Cromwell. The period of
this gentleman's youth was a very wild one in that district. The
Border clans still made war on each other occasionally, much in the
fashion of their forefathers; and the young and handsome heir of
Harden, engaging in a foray upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of
Elibank, treasurer-depute of Scotland, was overpowered by that baron's
retainers, and carried in shackles to his castle, now a heap of ruins,
on the banks of the Tweed. Elibank's "doomtree" extended its broad
arms close to the gates of his fortress, and the indignant laird was
on the point of desiring his prisoner to say a last prayer, when his
more considerate dame interposed milder counsels, suggesting that the
culprit was born to a good estate, and that they had three unmarried
daughters. Young Harden, not, it is said, without hesitation, agreed
to save his life by taking the plainest of the three off their hands,
and the contract of marriage, executed instantly on the parchment of a
drum, is still in the charter-chest of his noble representative.

Walter Scott, the third son of this couple, was the first Laird of
Raeburn, already alluded to as one of the patrons of Satchells. He
married Isabel Macdougal, daughter of Macdougal of Makerstoun--a
family of great antiquity and distinction in Roxburghshire, of whose
{p.058} blood, through various alliances, the poet had a large share
in his veins. Raeburn, though the son and brother of two steady
Cavaliers, and married into a family of the same political creed,
became a Whig, and at last a Quaker; and the reader will find, in one
of the notes to The Heart of Mid-Lothian, a singular account of the
persecution to which this backsliding exposed him at the hands of both
his own and his wife's relations. He was incarcerated (A. D. 1665),
first at Edinburgh and then at Jedburgh, by order of the Privy
Council--his children were forcibly taken from him, and a heavy sum
was levied on his estate yearly, for the purposes of their education
beyond the reach of his perilous influence. "It appears," says Sir
Walter, in a MS. memorandum now before me, "that the Laird of
Makerstoun, his brother-in-law, joined with Raeburn's own elder
brother, Harden, in this singular persecution, as it will now be
termed by Christians of all persuasions. It was observed by the people
that the male line of the second Sir William of Harden became extinct
in 1710, and that the representation of Makerstoun soon passed into
the female line. They assigned as a cause, that when the wife of
Raeburn found herself deprived of her husband, and refused permission
even to see her children, she pronounced a malediction on her
husband's brother as well as on her own, and prayed that a male of
their body might not inherit their property."

The MS. adds, "of the first Raeburn's two sons it may be observed
that, thanks to the discipline of the Privy Council, they were both
good scholars." Of these sons, Walter, the second, was the poet's
great-grandfather, the enthusiastic Jacobite of the autobiographical
fragment,--who is introduced,

              "With amber beard and flaxen hair,
               And reverend apostolic air,"

in the epistle prefixed to the sixth canto of Marmion. A good
{p.059} portrait of Bearded Wat, painted for his friend Pitcairn, was
presented by the Doctor's grandson, the Earl of Kellie, to the father
of Sir Walter. It is now at Abbotsford; and shows a considerable
resemblance to the poet. Some verses addressed to the original by his
kinsman Walter Scott of Harden are given in one of the Notes to
Marmion. The old gentleman himself is said to have written verses
occasionally, both English and Latin; but I never heard more than the
burden of a drinking-song--

              "Barba crescat, barba crescat,
               Donec carduus revirescat."[38]

         [Footnote 38: Since this book was first published, I have
         seen in print _A Poem on the Death of Master Walter Scott,
         who died at Kelso, November 3, 1729_, written, it is said, by
         Sir William Scott of Thirlestane, Bart., the male ancestor of
         Lord Napier. It has these lines:--

           "His converse breathed the Christian. On his tongue
            The praises of religion ever hung;
            Whence it appeared he did on solid ground
            Commend the pleasures which himself had found....
            His venerable mien and goodly air
            Fix on our hearts impressions strong and fair.
            Full seventy years had shed their silvery glow
            Around his locks, and made his beard to grow;
            That decent beard, which in becoming grace
            Did spread a reverend honor on his face," etc.--(1838.)]

Scantily as the worthy Jacobite seems to have been provided with this
world's goods, he married the daughter of a gentleman of good
condition, "through whom," says the MS. memorandum already quoted,
"his descendants have inherited a connection with some honorable
branches of the _Slioch nan Diarmid_, or Clan of Campbell." To this
connection Sir Walter owed, as we shall see hereafter, many of those
early opportunities for studying the manners of the Highlanders, to
which the world are indebted for Waverley, Rob Roy, and The Lady of
the Lake.

Robert Scott, the son of Beardie, formed also an honorable alliance.
{p.060} His father-in-law, Thomas Haliburton,[39] the last but one of
the "good lairds of Newmains," entered his marriage as follows in the
domestic record, which Sir Walter's pious respect induced him to have
printed nearly a century afterwards:--"My second daughter Barbara is
married to Robert Scott, son to Walter Scott, uncle to Raeburn, upon
this sixteen day of July, 1728, at my house of Dryburgh, by Mr. James
Innes, minister of Mertoun, their mothers being cousings; may the
blessing of the Lord rest upon them, and make them comforts to each
other and to all their relations;" to which the editor of the
Memorials adds this note--"May God grant that the prayers of the
excellent persons who have passed away may avail for the benefit of
those who succeed them!--_Abbotsford_, Nov., 1824."

         [Footnote 39: "From the genealogical deduction in the
         Memorials, it appears that the Haliburtons of Newmains were
         descended from and represented the ancient and once powerful
         family of Haliburton of Mertoun, which became extinct in the
         beginning of the eighteenth century. The first of this latter
         family possessed the lands and barony of Mertoun by a charter
         granted by Archibald, Earl of Douglas and Lord of Galloway
         (one of those tremendous lords whose coronets counterpoised
         the Scottish crown), to Henry de Haliburton, whom he
         designates as his standard-bearer, on account of his service
         to the earl in England. On this account the Haliburtons of
         Mertoun and those of Newmains, in addition to the arms borne
         by the Haliburtons of Dirleton (the ancient chiefs of that
         once great and powerful, but now almost extinguished
         name)--viz. _or_, on a bend _azure_, three mascles of the
         first--gave the distinctive bearing of a buckle of the second
         in the sinister canton. These arms still appear on various
         old tombs in the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, as well as
         on their house at Dryburgh, which was built in 1572."--_MS.
         Memorandum_, 1820. Sir Walter was served heir to these
         Haliburtons soon after the date of this Memorandum, and
         thenceforth quartered the arms above described with those of
         his paternal family.]

I need scarcely remind the reader of the exquisite description of the
poet's grandfather, in the Introduction to the third canto of
Marmion--

          ----"the thatched mansion's gray-hair'd sire,
          Wise without learning, plain and good,
          And sprang of Scotland's gentler blood;
          Whose {p.061} eye, in age quick, clear, and keen,
          Showed what in youth its glance had been;
          Whose doom discording neighbors sought,
          Content with equity unbought."

In the Preface to Guy Mannering, we have an anecdote of Robert Scott
in his earlier days: "My grandfather, while riding over Charterhouse
Moor, then a very extensive common, fell suddenly among a large band
of gypsies, who were carousing in a hollow surrounded by bushes. They
instantly seized on his bridle with shouts of welcome, exclaiming that
they had often dined at his expense, and he must now stay and share
their cheer. My ancestor was a little alarmed, for he had more money
about his person than he cared to risk in such society. However, being
naturally a bold, lively spirited man, he entered into the humor of
the thing, and sat down to the feast, which consisted of all the
varieties of game, poultry, pigs, and so forth, that could be
collected by a wide and indiscriminate system of plunder. The dinner
was a very merry one, but my relative got a hint from some of the
older gypsies, just when 'the mirth and fun grew fast and furious,'
and mounting his horse accordingly, he took a French leave of his
entertainers." His grandson might have reported more than one scene of
the like sort in which he was himself engaged, while hunting the same
district, not in quest of foxes or of cattle sales, like the Goodman
of Sandy-Knowe, but of ballads for the Minstrelsy. Gypsy stories, as
we are told in the same Preface, were frequently in the mouth of the
old man when his face "brightened at the evening fire," in the days of
the poet's childhood. And he adds that, "as Dr. Johnson had a shadowy
recollection of Queen Anne as a stately lady in black, adorned with
diamonds," so his own memory was haunted with "a solemn remembrance of
a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long red cloak, who
once made her appearance beneath the thatched roof of Sandy-Knowe,
commenced acquaintance by {p.062} giving him an apple, and whom he
looked on, nevertheless, with as much awe as the future doctor, High
Church and Tory as he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen."
This was Madge Gordon, granddaughter of Jean Gordon, the prototype of
Meg Merrilies.

Of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, also, there is a very tolerable portrait at
Abbotsford, and the likeness of the poet to his grandfather must have
forcibly struck every one who has seen it. Indeed, but for its wanting
some inches in elevation of forehead--(a considerable want, it must be
allowed)--the picture might be mistaken for one of Sir Walter Scott.
The keen, shrewd expression of the eye, and the remarkable length and
compression of the upper lip, bring him exactly before me as he
appeared when entering with all the zeal of a professional
agriculturist into the merits of a pit of marle discovered at
Abbotsford. Had the old man been represented with his cap on his head,
the resemblance to one particular phasis of the most changeful of
countenances would have been perfect.

Robert Scott had a numerous progeny, and Sir Walter has intimated his
intention of recording several of them "with a sincere tribute of
gratitude" in the contemplated prosecution of his autobiography. Two
of the younger sons were bred to the naval service of the East India
Company; one of whom died early and unmarried; the other was the
excellent Captain Robert Scott, of whose kindness to his nephew some
particulars are given in the Ashestiel fragment, and more will occur
hereafter. Another son, Thomas, followed the profession of his father
with ability, and retired in old age upon a handsome independence,
acquired by his industrious exertions. He was twice married,--first to
his near relation, a daughter of Raeburn; and secondly to Miss
Rutherford of Know-South, the estate of which respectable family is
now possessed by his son Charles Scott, an amiable and high-spirited
{p.063} gentleman, who was always a special favorite with his eminent
kinsman. The death of Thomas Scott is thus recorded in one of the MS.
notes on his nephew's own copy of the Haliburton Memorials:--"The said
Thomas Scott died at Monklaw, near Jedburgh, at two of the clock, 27th
January, 1823, in the 90th year of his life, and fully possessed of
all his faculties. He read till nearly the year before his death; and
being a great musician on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his deathbed,
a favorite tune played over to him by his son James, that he might be
sure he left him in full possession of it. After hearing it, he hummed
it over himself, and corrected it in several of the notes. The air was
that called Sour Plums in Galashiels. When barks and other tonics were
given him during his last illness, he privately spat them into his
handkerchief, saying, as he had lived all his life without taking
doctor's drugs, he wished to die without doing so."

I visited this old man two years before his death, in company with Sir
Walter, and thought him about the most venerable figure I had ever set
my eyes on--tall and erect, with long flowing tresses of the most
silvery whiteness, and stockings rolled up over his knees, after the
fashion of three generations back. He sat reading his Bible without
spectacles, and did not, for a moment, perceive that any one had
entered his room, but on recognizing his nephew he rose, with cordial
alacrity, kissing him on both cheeks, and exclaiming, "God bless thee,
Walter, my man! thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always
good." His remarks were lively and sagacious, and delivered with a
touch of that humor which seems to have been shared by most of the
family. He had the air and manner of an ancient gentleman, and must in
his day have been eminently handsome. I saw more than once, about the
same period, this respectable man's sister, who had married her cousin
Walter, Laird of Raeburn--thus adding a new link to the closeness of
the {p.064} family connection. She also must have been, in her
youth, remarkable for personal attractions; as it was, she dwells on
my memory as the perfect picture of an old Scotch lady, with a great
deal of simple dignity in her bearing, but with the softest eye, and
the sweetest voice, and a charm of meekness and gentleness about every
look and expression; all which contrasted strikingly enough with the
stern dry aspect and manners of her husband, a right descendant of the
moss-troopers of Harden, who never seemed at his ease but on
horseback, and continued to be the boldest fox-hunter of the district,
even to the verge of eighty. The poet's aunt spoke her native language
pure and undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that
vulgarity which now seems almost unavoidable in the oral use of a
dialect so long banished from courts, and which has not been avoided
by any modern writer who has ventured to introduce it, with the
exception of Scott, and I may add, speaking generally, of Burns. Lady
Raeburn, as she was universally styled, may be numbered with those
friends of early days whom her nephew has alluded to in one of his
prefaces, as preserving what we may fancy to have been the old Scotch
of Holyrood.

The particulars which I have been setting down may help English
readers to form some notion of the structure of society in those
southern districts of Scotland. When Satchells wrote, he boasted that
Buccleuch could summon to his banner one hundred lairds, all of his
own name, with ten thousand more--landless men, but still of the same
blood. The younger sons of these various lairds were, through many
successive generations, portioned off with fragments of the
inheritance, until such subdivision could be carried no farther, and
then the cadet, of necessity, either adopted the profession of arms,
in some foreign service very frequently, or became a cultivator on the
estate of his own elder brother, of the chieftain of his branch, or of
the great chief and patriarchal protector of the whole clan. Until the
commerce of England and, {p.065} above all, the military and civil
services of the English colonies were thrown open to the enterprise of
the Scotch, this system of things continued entire. It still remained
in force to a considerable extent at the time when the Goodman of
Sandy-Knowe was establishing his children in the world--and I am happy
to say, that it is far from being abolished even at the present day.
It was a system which bound together the various classes of the rural
population in bonds of mutual love and confidence: the original
community of lineage was equally remembered on all sides; the landlord
could count for more than his rent on the tenant, who regarded him
rather as a father or an elder brother, than as one who owed his
superiority to mere wealth; and the farmer who, on fit occasions,
partook on equal terms of the chase and the hospitality of his
landlord, went back with content and satisfaction to the daily labors
of a vocation which he found no one disposed to consider as derogating
from his gentle blood. Such delusions, if delusions they were, held
the natural arrogance of riches in check, taught the poor man to
believe that in virtuous poverty he had nothing to blush for, and
spread over the whole being of the community the gracious spirit of a
primitive humanity.

Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, appears to have
been the first of the family that ever adopted a town life, or
anything claiming to be classed among the learned professions. His
branch of the law, however, could not in those days be advantageously
prosecuted without extensive connections in the country; his own were
too respectable not to be of much service to him in his calling, and
they were cultivated accordingly. His professional visits to
Roxburghshire and Ettrick Forest were, in his vigorous life, very
frequent; and though he was never supposed to have any tincture either
of romance or poetry in his composition, he retained to the last a
warm affection for his native district, with {p.066} a certain
reluctant flavor of the old feelings and prejudices of the Borderer. I
have little to add to Sir Walter's short and respectful notice of his
father, except that I have heard it confirmed by the testimony of many
less partial observers. According to every account, he was a most
just, honorable, conscientious man; only too high of spirit for some
parts of his business. "He passed from the cradle to the grave," says
a surviving relation, "without making an enemy or losing a friend. He
was a most affectionate parent, and if he discouraged, rather than
otherwise, his son's early devotion to the pursuits which led him to
the height of literary eminence, it was only because he did not
understand what such things meant, and considered it his duty to keep
his young man to that path in which good sense and industry might,
humanly speaking, be thought sure of success."

Sir Walter's mother was short of stature, and by no means comely, at
least after the days of her early youth. She had received, as became
the daughter of an eminently learned physician, the best sort of
education then bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland. The poet,
speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the school at
which his mother was reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr.
Robert Chambers, said that "she must have been possessed of uncommon
talents for education, as all her young ladies were, in after-life,
fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted
with history and the belles-lettres, without neglecting the more
homely duties of the needle and accompt book; and perfectly well-bred
in society." Mr. Chambers adds: "Sir W. further communicated that his
mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair's pupils, were sent
afterwards _to be finished off_ by the Honorable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady
who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be
considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early
training upon the mind {p.067} of Mrs. Scott, that even when she
approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching
her chair with her back as if she had still been under the stern eye
of Mrs. Ogilvie."[40] The physiognomy of the poet bore, if their
portraits may be trusted, no resemblance to either of his parents.

         [Footnote 40: See Chambers's _Traditions of Edinburgh_, vol.
         ii. pp. 127-131. The functions here ascribed to Mrs. Ogilvie
         may appear to modern readers little consistent with her rank.
         Such things, however, were not uncommon in those days in poor
         old Scotland. Ladies with whom I have conversed in my youth
         well remembered an _Honorable Mrs. Maitland_ who practised
         the obstetric art in the Cowgate.]

Mr. Scott was nearly thirty years of age when he married, and six
children, born to him between 1759 and 1766, all perished in
infancy.[41] A suspicion that the close situation of the College Wynd
had been unfavorable to the health of his family was the motive that
induced him to remove to the house which he ever afterwards occupied
in George's Square.[42] This removal took place shortly after the
poet's birth; and the children born subsequently were in general
healthy. Of a family of twelve, of whom six lived to maturity, not one
now survives; nor have any of them left descendants, except Sir Walter
himself, and his next and dearest brother, Thomas Scott.

         [Footnote 41: In Sir Walter Scott's desk, after his death,
         there was found a little packet containing six locks of hair,
         with this inscription in the handwriting of his mother:--

           "1. Anne Scott, born March 10, 1759.
            2. Robert Scott, born August 22, 1760.
            3. John Scott, born November 28, 1761.
            4. Robert Scott, born June 7, 1763.
            5. Jean Scott, born March 27, 1765.
            6. Walter Scott, born August 30, 1766.

         "All these are dead, and none of my present family was born
         till some time afterwards."]

         [Footnote 42: [No. 25.]]

He says that his consciousness of existence dated from Sandy-Knowe;
and how deep and indelible was the impression which its romantic
localities had left on his imagination, I need not remind the readers
of Marmion and The Eve of St. John. On the summit of the Crags which
{p.068} overhang the farmhouse stands the ruined tower of Smailholme,
the scene of that fine ballad; and the view from thence takes in a
wide expanse of the district in which, as has been truly said, every
field has its battle, and every rivulet its song:--

         "That lady sat in mournful mood,
            Looked over hill and vale,
          O'er Tweed's fair flood, and Mertoun's wood,
            And all down Teviotdale."--

Mertoun, the principal seat of the Harden family, with its noble
groves; nearly in front of it, across the Tweed, Lessudden, the
comparatively small but still venerable and stately abode of the
Lairds of Raeburn; and the hoary Abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with
yew-trees as ancient as itself, seem to lie almost below the feet of
the spectator. Opposite him rise the purple peaks of Eildon, the
traditional scene of Thomas the Rhymer's interview with the Queen of
Faerie; behind are the blasted peel which the seer of Ercildoune
himself inhabited, "the Broom of the Cowdenknowes," the pastoral
valley of the Leader, and the bleak wilderness of Lammermoor. To the
eastward, the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon, as
the eye travels towards the range of the Cheviot. A few miles
westward, Melrose, "like some tall rock with lichens grey," appears
clasped amidst the windings of the Tweed; and the distance presents
the serrated mountains of the Gala, the Ettrick, and the Yarrow, all
famous in song. Such were the objects that had painted the earliest
images on the eye of the last and greatest of the Border Minstrels.

As his memory reached to an earlier period of childhood than that of
almost any other person, so assuredly no poet has given to the world a
picture of the dawning feelings of life and genius, at once so simple,
so beautiful, and so complete, as that of his epistle to William
Erskine, the chief literary confidant and counsellor of his prime of
manhood.

         "Whether {p.069} an impulse that has birth
          Soon as the infant wakes on earth,
          One with our feelings and our powers,
          And rather part of us than ours;
          Or whether fitlier term'd the sway
          Of habit, formed in early day,
          Howe'er derived, its force confest
          Rules with despotic sway the breast.
          And drags us on by viewless chain,
          While taste and reason plead in vain....
          Thus, while I ape the measure wild
          Of tales that charm'd me yet a child,
          Rude though they be, still with the chime
          Return the thoughts of early time,
          And feelings rous'd in life's first day,
          Glow in the line and prompt the lay.
          Then rise those crags, that mountain tower
          Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour.
          It was a barren scene and wild
          Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;
          But ever and anon between
          Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
          And well the lonely infant knew
          Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
          And honey-suckle loved to crawl
          Up the low crag and ruin'd wall.
          I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade
          The sun in all its round surveyed;
          And still I thought that shattered tower
          The mightiest work of human power,
          And marvelled as the aged hind,
          With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind,
          Of forayers who, with headlong force,
          Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse,
          Their southern rapine to renew,
          Far in the distant Cheviots blue,
          And home returning, fill'd the hall
          With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl.
          Methought that still with trump and clang
          The gateway's broken arches rang;
          Methought grim features, seam'd with scars,
          Glared through the windows' rusty bars;
          And ever, by the winter hearth,
          Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
          Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms,
          Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms--
          Of patriot battles won of old
          By Wallace Wight and Bruce the Bold--
          Of {p.070} later fields of feud and fight,
          When, pouring from their Highland height,
          The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,
          Had swept the scarlet ranks away.
          While 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,
          And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,
          And still the scattered Southron fled before."[43]

         [Footnote 43: [_Poetical Works_, Cambridge Edition, p. 108.]]

There are still living in that neighborhood two old women who were in
the domestic service of Sandy-Knowe when the lame child was brought
thither in the third year of his age. One of them, Tibby Hunter,
remembers his coming well; and that "he was a sweet-tempered bairn, a
darling with all about the house." The young ewe-milkers delighted,
she says, to carry him about on their backs among the crags; and he
was "very gleg (quick) at the uptake, and soon kenned every sheep and
lamb by headmark as well as any of them." His great pleasure, however,
was in the society of the "aged hind," recorded in the epistle to
Erskine. "Auld Sandy Ormistoun," called, from the most dignified part
of his function, "the Cow-bailie," had the chief superintendence of
the flocks that browsed upon "the velvet tufts of loveliest green." If
the child saw him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the
old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep
him company as he lay watching his charge.

         "Here was poetic impulse given
          By the green hill and clear blue heaven."

The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, which signified
to the maid-servants in the house below when the little boy wished to
be carried home again. He told his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, when
spending a summer day in his old age among these well-remembered
crags, that he delighted to roll about on the grass all day long in
the midst of the flock, and that "the sort of {p.071} fellowship he
thus formed with the sheep and lambs had impressed his mind with a
degree of affectionate feeling towards them which had lasted
throughout life." There is a story of his having been forgotten one
day among the knolls when a thunderstorm came on; and his aunt,
suddenly recollecting his situation, and running out to bring him
home, is said to have found him lying on his back, clapping his hands
at the lightning, and crying out, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash.

I find the following marginal note on his copy of Allan Ramsay's
Tea-Table Miscellany (edition 1724): "This book belonged to my
grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught Hardiknute by
heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I
ever learnt--the last I shall ever forget." According to Tibby Hunter,
he was not particularly fond of his book, embracing every pretext for
joining his friend the Cow-bailie out of doors; but "Miss Jenny was a
grand hand at keeping him to the bit, and by degrees he came to read
brawly."[44] An early acquaintance of a higher class, Mrs. Duncan, the
wife of the present excellent minister of Mertoun, informs me, that
though she was younger than Sir Walter, she has a dim remembrance of
the interior of Sandy-Knowe--"Old Mrs. Scott sitting, with her
spinning-wheel, at one side of the fire, in a _clean clean_ parlor;
the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his elbow-chair opposite; and
the little boy lying on the carpet, at the old man's feet, listening
to the Bible, or whatever good book Miss Jenny was reading to
them."[45]

         [Footnote 44: This old woman still possesses "the _banes_"
         (bones)--that is to say, the boards--of a Psalm-book, which
         Master Walter gave her at Sandy-Knowe. "He chose it," she
         says, "of a very large print, that I might be able to read it
         when I was _very auld--forty year auld_; but the bairns
         pulled the leaves out langsyne."]

         [Footnote 45: [In writing of his little grandson's earliest
         lessons, Scott recalls these days in a letter to Lockhart
         (March 3, 1826):--

         "I rejoice to hear of Johnnie's grand flip towards
         instruction. I hope Mrs. Mactavish, whom I like not the
         worse, you may be sure, for her name, will be mild in her
         rule, and let him listen to reading a good deal without
         cramming the alphabet and grammar down the poor child's
         throat. I cannot at this moment tell how or when I learned to
         read, but it was by fits and snatches, as one aunt or another
         in the old rumble-tumble farmhouses could give me a lesson,
         and I am sure it increased my love and habit of reading more
         than the austerities of a school could have done. I gave
         trouble, I believe, in wishing to be taught, and in
         self-defence gradually acquired the mystery myself. Johnnie
         is infirm a little, though not so much so as I was, and often
         he has brought back to my recollection the days of my own
         childhood. I hope he will be twice any good that was in me,
         with less carelessness."--Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, vol. i.
         p. 397.]]

Robert {p.072} Scott died before his grandson was four years of age;
and I heard him mention when he was an old man that he distinctly
remembered the writing and sealing of the funeral letters, and all the
ceremonial of the melancholy procession as it left Sandy-Knowe. I
shall conclude my notices of the residence at Sandy-Knowe with
observing that in Sir Walter's account of the friendly clergyman who
so often sat at his grandfather's fireside, we cannot fail to trace
many features of the secluded divine in the novel of St. Ronan's Well.

I have nothing to add to what he has told us of that excursion to
England which interrupted his residence at Sandy-Knowe for about a
twelvemonth, except that I had often been astonished, long before I
read his autobiographic fragment, with the minute recollection he
seemed to possess of all the striking features of the city of Bath,
which he had never seen again since he quitted it before he was six
years of age. He has himself alluded, in his Memoir, to the lively
recollection he retained of his first visit to the theatre, to which
his Uncle Robert carried him to witness a representation of As You
Like It. In his reviewal of the Life of John Kemble, written in 1826,
he has recorded that impression more fully, and in terms so striking,
that I must copy them in this place:--

     "There are few things which those gifted with any degree of
     imagination recollect with a sense of more anxious and mysterious
     delight than the first dramatic representation which they have
     witnessed. The unusual form of the house, filled with such
     groups {p.073} of crowded spectators, themselves forming an
     extraordinary spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it
     before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, whose
     dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern the momentary
     glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some sandalled
     foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as
     that of day; then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient
     in every other situation, our inexperience mistakes for the very
     play we came to witness; then the slow rise of the shadowy
     curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a new land, with
     woods, and mountains, and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by
     another sun, and inhabited by a race of beings different from
     ourselves, whose language is poetry,--whose dress, demeanor, and
     sentiments seem something supernatural,--and whose whole actions
     and discourse are calculated not for the ordinary tone of
     every-day life, but to excite the stronger and more powerful
     faculties--to melt with sorrow, overpower with terror, astonish
     with the marvellous, or convulse with irresistible laughter:--all
     these wonders stamp indelible impressions on the memory. Those
     mixed feelings, also, which perplex us between a sense that the
     scene is but a plaything, and an interest which ever and anon
     surprises us into a transient belief that that which so strongly
     affects us cannot be fictitious; those mixed and puzzling
     feelings, also, are exciting in the highest degree. Then there
     are the bursts of applause, like distant thunder, and the
     permission afforded to clap our little hands, and add our own
     scream of delight to a sound so commanding. All this, and much,
     much more, is fresh in our memory, although, when we felt these
     sensations, we looked on the stage which Garrick had not yet
     left. It is now a long while since; yet we have not passed many
     hours of such unmixed delight, and we still remember the sinking
     lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain longings which we
     felt that the music would again sound, the magic curtain once
     more arise, and the enchanting dream recommence; and the
     astonishment with which we looked upon the apathy of the elder
     part of our company, who, having the means, did not spend every
     evening in the theatre."[46]

         [Footnote 46: _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xx. p. 154.]

Probably it was this performance that first tempted him {p.074} to
open the page of Shakespeare. Before he returned to Sandy-Knowe,
assuredly, notwithstanding the modest language of his autobiography,
the progress which had been made in his intellectual education was
extraordinary; and it is impossible to doubt that his hitherto almost
sole tutoress, Miss Jenny Scott, must have been a woman of tastes and
acquirements very far above what could have been often found among
Scotch ladies, of any but the highest class at least, in that day. In
the winter of 1777, she and her charge spent some few weeks--not happy
weeks, the Memoir hints them to have been--in George's Square,
Edinburgh; and it so happened, that during this little interval, Mr.
and Mrs. Scott received in their domestic circle a guest capable of
appreciating, and, fortunately for us, of recording in a very striking
manner the remarkable development of young Walter's faculties. Mrs.
Cockburn, mentioned by him in his Memoir as the authoress of the
modern Flowers of the Forest, born a Rutherford, of Fairnalie, in
Selkirkshire, was distantly related to the poet's mother, with whom
she had through life been in habits of intimate friendship. This
accomplished woman was staying at Ravelston, in the vicinity of
Edinburgh, a seat of the Keiths of Dunnottar, nearly related to Mrs.
Scott, and to herself. With some of that family she spent an evening
in George's Square. She chanced to be writing next day to Dr. Douglas,
the well-known and much respected minister of her native parish,
Galashiels; and her letter, of which the Doctor's son has kindly given
me a copy, contains the following passage:--

  "Edinburgh, Saturday night, 15th of 'the gloomy month when the
  people of England hang and drown themselves.'

     ... "I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the most
     extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem
     to his mother when I went in. I made him read on; it was the
     description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. He
     lifted his eyes and hands. 'There's the {p.075} mast gone,'
     says he; 'crash it goes!--they will all perish!' After his
     agitation, he turns to me. 'That is too melancholy,' says he; 'I
     had better read you something more amusing.' I preferred a little
     chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books he was
     reading, which he gave me wonderfully. One of his observations
     was, 'How strange it is that Adam, just new come into the world,
     should know everything--that must be the poet's fancy,' says he.
     But when he was told he was created perfect by God, he instantly
     yielded. When taken to bed last night, he told his aunt he liked
     that lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs. Cockburn; for I
     think she is a virtuoso like myself.' 'Dear Walter,' says Aunt
     Jenny, 'what is a virtuoso?' 'Don't ye know? Why, it's one who
     wishes and will know everything.'[47]--Now, sir, you will think
     this a very silly story. Pray, what age do you suppose this boy
     to be? Name it now, before I tell you. Why, twelve or fourteen.
     No such thing; he is not quite six years old.[48] He has a lame
     leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the
     perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he came, and
     he reads like a Garrick. You will allow this an uncommon exotic."

         [Footnote 47: It may amuse my reader to recall, by the side
         of Scott's early definition of "a virtuoso," the lines in
         which Akenside has painted that character--lines which might
         have been written for a description of the Author of
         _Waverley_:--

           "He knew the various modes of ancient times,
            Their arts and fashions of each various guise;
            Their weddings, funerals, punishments of crimes;
            Their strength, their learning eke, and rarities.
            Of old habiliment, each sort and size,
            Male, female, high and low, to him were known;
            Each gladiator's dress, and stage disguise,
            With learned clerkly phrase he could have shown."]

         [Footnote 48: He was, in fact, six years and three months old
         before this letter was written.]

Some particulars in Mrs. Cockburn's account appear considerably at
variance with what Sir Walter has told us respecting his own boyish
proficiency--especially in the article of pronunciation. On that last
head, however, Mrs. Cockburn was not, probably, a very accurate judge;
all that can be said is, that if at this early period he had acquired
anything which could be justly described as {p.076} an English
accent, he soon lost, and never again recovered, what he had thus
gained from his short residence at Bath. In after-life his
pronunciation of words, considered separately, was seldom much
different from that of a well-educated Englishman of his time; but he
used many words in a sense which belonged to Scotland, not to England,
and the tone and accent remained broadly Scotch, though, unless in the
_burr_, which no doubt smacked of the country bordering on
Northumberland, there was no _provincial_ peculiarity about his
utterance. He had strong powers of mimicry--could talk with a peasant
quite in his own style, and frequently in general society introduced
rustic _patois_, northern, southern, or midland, with great truth and
effect; but these things were inlaid dramatically, or playfully, upon
his narrative. His exquisite taste in this matter was not less
remarkable in his conversation than in the prose of his Scotch novels.

Another lady, nearly connected with the Keiths of Ravelston, has a
lively recollection of young Walter, when paying a visit much about
the same period to his kind relation,[49] the mistress of that
picturesque old mansion, which furnished him in after-days with many
of the features of his Tully-Veolan, and whose venerable gardens, with
their massive hedges of yew and holly, he always considered as the
ideal of the art. The lady, whose letter I have now before me, says
she distinctly remembers the sickly boy sitting at the gate of the
house with his attendant, when a poor mendicant approached, old and
woe-begone, to claim the charity which none asked for in vain at
Ravelston. When the man was retiring, the servant remarked to Walter
that he ought to be thankful to Providence for having placed him above
the want and misery he had been contemplating. The child looked up
with a half-wistful, half-incredulous expression, {p.077} and said,
"_Homer was a beggar_!" "How do you know that?" said the other. "Why,
don't you remember," answered the little virtuoso, "that

  'Seven _Roman_ cities strove for Homer dead,
  Through which the living Homer begged his bread?'"

The lady smiled at the "_Roman_ cities,"--but already

  "Each blank in faithless memory void
  The poet's glowing thought supplied."

         [Footnote 49: Mrs. Keith of Ravelston was born a Swinton of
         Swinton, and sister to Sir Walter's maternal grandmother.]

It was in this same year, 1777, that he spent some time at
Prestonpans; made his first acquaintance with George Constable, the
original of his Monkbarns; explored the field where Colonel Gardiner
received his death-wound, under the learned guidance of Dalgetty; and
marked the spot "where the grass long grew rank and green,
distinguishing it from the rest of the field,"[50] above the grave of
poor Balmawhapple.

         [Footnote 50: _Waverley_, chap, xlvii. note.]

His Uncle Thomas, whom I have described as I saw him in extreme old
age at Monklaw, had the management of the farm affairs at Sandy-Knowe,
when Walter returned thither from Prestonpans; he was a kind-hearted
man, and very fond of the child. Appearing on his return somewhat
strengthened, his uncle promoted him from the Cow-bailie's shoulder to
a dwarf of the Shetland race, not so large as many a Newfoundland dog.
This creature walked freely into the house, and was regularly fed from
the boy's hand. He soon learned to sit her well, and often alarmed
Aunt Jenny, by cantering over the rough places about the tower. In the
evening of his life, when he had a grandchild afflicted with an
infirmity akin to his own, he provided him with a little mare of the
same breed, and gave her the name of _Marion_, in memory of this early
favorite.

CHAPTER III {p.078}

     Illustrations of the Autobiography Continued. -- High School
     of Edinburgh. -- Residence at Kelso.

1778-1783.

The report of Walter's progress in horsemanship probably reminded his
father that it was time he should be learning other things beyond the
department either of Aunt Jenny or Uncle Thomas, and after a few
months he was recalled to Edinburgh. But extraordinary as was the
progress he had by this time made in that self-education which alone
is of primary consequence to spirits of his order, he was found too
deficient in lesser matters to be at once entered in the High School.
Probably his mother dreaded, and deferred as long as she could, the
day when he should be exposed to the rude collision of a crowd of
boys. At all events he was placed first in a little private school
kept by one Leechman in Bristo Port; and then, that experiment not
answering expectation, under the domestic tutorage of Mr. James
French, afterwards minister of East Kilbride in Lanarkshire. This
respectable man considered him fit to join Luke Fraser's class in
October, 1778.

His own account of his progress at this excellent seminary is, on the
whole, very similar to what I have received from some of his surviving
schoolfellows. His quick apprehension and powerful memory enabled him,
at little cost of labor, to perform the usual routine of tasks, in
such a manner as to keep him generally "in a decent place" (so he once
expressed it to Mr. Skene) "about the middle of the class; with
which," he continued, "I {p.079} was the better contented, that it
chanced to be near the fire."[51] Mr. Fraser was, I believe, more
zealous in enforcing attention to the technicalities of grammar, than
to excite curiosity about historical facts, or imagination to strain
after the flights of a poet. There is no evidence that Scott, though
he speaks of him as his "kind master," in remembrance probably of
sympathy for his physical infirmities, ever attracted his special
notice with reference to scholarship; but Adam, the Rector, into whose
class he passed in October, 1782, was, as his situation demanded, a
teacher of a more liberal caste; and though never, even under his
guidance, did Walter fix and concentrate his ambition so as to
maintain an eminent place, still the vivacity of his talents was
observed, and the readiness of his memory in particular was so often
displayed, that (as Mr. Irving, his chosen friend of that day, informs
me) the Doctor "would constantly refer to him for dates, the
particulars of battles, and other remarkable events alluded to in
Horace, or whatever author the boys were reading, and used to call him
the historian of the class." No one who has read, as few have not, Dr.
Adam's interesting work on Roman Antiquities will doubt the author's
capacity for stimulating such a mind as young Scott's.

         [Footnote 51: According to Mr. Irving's recollections,
         Scott's place, after the first winter, was usually between
         the 7th and the 15th from the top of the class. He adds, "Dr.
         James Buchan was always the _dux_; David Douglas (Lord
         Reston) _second_; and the present Lord Melville _third_."]

He speaks of himself as occasionally "glancing like a meteor from the
bottom to the top of the form." His schoolfellow, Mr. Claud Russell,
remembers that he once made a great leap in consequence of the
stupidity of some laggard on what is called the _dult's_ (dolt's)
bench, who being asked, on boggling at _cum_, "what part of speech is
_with_?" answered, "_a substantive_." The Rector, after a moment's
pause, thought it worth while to ask his _dux_--"Is _with_ ever a
substantive?" but all were silent {p.080} until the query reached
Scott, then near the bottom of the class, who instantly responded by
quoting a verse of the book of Judges:--"And Samson said unto Delilah,
If they bind me with seven green _withs_ that were never dried, then
shall I be weak, and as another man."[52] Another upward movement,
accomplished in a less laudable manner, but still one strikingly
illustrative of his ingenious resources, I am enabled to preserve
through the kindness of a brother poet and esteemed friend, to whom
Sir Walter himself communicated it in the melancholy twilight of his
bright day.

         [Footnote 52: Chap. xvi. verse 7.]

Mr. Rogers says--"Sitting one day alone with him in your house, in the
Regent's Park--(it was the day but one before he left it to embark at
Portsmouth for Malta)--I led him, among other things, to tell me once
again a story of himself, which he had formerly told me, and which I
had often wished to recover. When I returned home, I wrote it down, as
nearly as I could, in his own words; and here they are. The subject is
an achievement worthy of Ulysses himself, and such as many of his
schoolfellows could, no doubt, have related of him; but I fear I have
done it no justice, though the story is so very characteristic that it
should not be lost. The inimitable manner in which he told it--the
glance of the eye, the turn of the head, and the light that played
over his faded features, as, one by one, the circumstances came back
to him, accompanied by a thousand boyish feelings, that had slept
perhaps for years--there is no language, not even his own, could
convey to you; but you can supply them. Would that others could do so,
who had not the good fortune to know him!--The memorandum (Friday,
October 21, 1831) is as follows:--

"There was a boy in my class at school, who stood always at the
top,[53] nor could I with all my efforts supplant him. {p.081} Day
came after day, and still he kept his place, do what I would; till at
length I observed that, when a question was asked him, he always
fumbled with his fingers at a particular button in the lower part of
his waistcoat. To remove it, therefore, became expedient in my eyes;
and in an evil moment it was removed with a knife. Great was my
anxiety to know the success of my measure; and it succeeded too well.
When the boy was again questioned, his fingers sought again for the
button, but it was not to be found. In his distress he looked down for
it; it was to be seen no more than to be felt. He stood confounded,
and I took possession of his place; nor did he ever recover it, or
ever, I believe, suspect who was the author of his wrong. Often in
after-life has the sight of him smote me as I passed by him; and often
have I resolved to make him some reparation; but it ended in good
resolutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with him, I often
saw him, for he filled some inferior office in one of the courts of
law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I believe he is dead; he took early to
drinking."

         [Footnote 53: Mr. Irving inclines to think that this incident
         must have occurred during Scott's attendance on Luke Fraser,
         not after he went to Dr. Adam; and he also suspects that the
         boy referred to sat at the top, not of the _class_, but of
         Scott's own bench or division of the class.]

The autobiography tells us that his translations in verse from Horace
and Virgil were often approved by Dr. Adam. One of these little
pieces, written in a weak boyish scrawl, within pencilled marks still
visible, had been carefully preserved by his mother; it was found
folded up in a cover inscribed by the old lady--"_My Walter's first
lines_, 1782."

         "In awful ruins Ætna thunders nigh,
          And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky
          Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire,
          From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire;
          At other times huge balls of fire are toss'd,
          That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost:
          Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn,
          Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne
          With loud explosions to the starry skies,
          The stones made liquid as the huge mass flies,
          Then back again with greater weight recoils,
          While Ætna thundering from the bottom boils."

I {p.082} gather from Mr. Irving that these lines were considered as
the second best set of those produced on the occasion--Colin Mackenzie
of Portmore, through life Scott's dear friend, carrying off the
premium.

In his Introduction to the Lay, he alludes to an original effusion of
these "schoolboy days," prompted by a thunderstorm, which he says "was
much approved of, until a malevolent critic sprung up in the shape of
an apothecary's blue-buskined wife, who affirmed that my most sweet
poetry was copied from an old magazine. I never" (he continues)
"forgave the imputation, and even now I acknowledge some resentment
against the poor woman's memory. She indeed accused me unjustly when
she said I had stolen my poem ready made; but as I had, like most
premature poets, copied all the words and ideas of which my verses
consisted, she was so far right. I made one or two faint attempts at
verse after I had undergone this sort of daw-plucking at the hands of
the apothecary's wife, but some friend or other always advised me to
put my verses into the fire; and, like Dorax in the play, I submitted,
thought with a swelling heart." These lines, and another short piece
"On the Setting Sun," were lately found wrapped up in a cover,
inscribed by Dr. Adam, "Walter Scott, July, 1783," and have been
kindly transmitted to me by the gentleman who discovered them.

                    ON A THUNDERSTORM.

         "Loud o'er my head though awful thunders roll,
          And vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole,
          Yet 't is thy voice, my God, that bids them fly,
          Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky.
          Then let the good thy mighty name revere,
          And hardened sinners thy just vengeance fear."

                    ON THE SETTING SUN.

         "Those evening clouds, that setting ray
          And beauteous tints, serve to display
            Their great Creator's praise;
          Then let the short-lived thing call'd man,
          Whose {p.083} life's comprised within a span,
            To Him his homage raise.

         "We often praise the evening clouds,
            And tints so gay and bold,
          But seldom think upon our God,
            Who tinged these clouds with gold!"[54]

         [Footnote 54: I am obliged for these little memorials to the
         Rev. W. Steven of Rotterdam, author of an interesting book on
         the history of the branch of the Scotch Church long
         established in Holland, and still flourishing under the
         protection of the enlightened government of that country. Mr.
         Steven found them in the course of his recent researches,
         undertaken with a view to some memoirs of the High School of
         Edinburgh, at which he had received his own early education.]

It must, I think, be allowed that these lines, though of the class to
which the poet himself modestly ascribes them, and not to be compared
with the efforts of Pope, still less of Cowley at the same period,
show, nevertheless, praiseworthy dexterity for a boy of twelve.

The fragment tells us that on the whole he was "more distinguished in
_the yards_ (as the High School playground was called) than in _the
class_;" and this, not less than the intellectual advancement which
years before had excited the admiration of Mrs. Cockburn, was the
natural result of his lifelong "rebellion against external
circumstances." He might now with very slender exertion have been the
_dux_ of his form; but if there was more difficulty, there was also
more to whet his ambition, in the attempt to overcome the
disadvantages of his physical misfortune, and in spite of them assert
equality with the best of his compeers on the ground which they
considered as the true arena of honor. He told me, in walking through
these same _yards_ forty years afterwards, that he had scarcely made
his first appearance there, before some dispute arising, his opponent
remarked that "there was no use to hargle-bargle with a cripple;" upon
which he replied, that if he might fight _mounted_, he would try his
hand with any one of his inches. "An elder boy," said he, "who had
perhaps been chuckling over our friend Roderick {p.084} Random when
his mother supposed him to be in full cry after Pyrrhus or Porus,
suggested that the two little tinklers might be lashed front to front
upon a deal board--and--'O gran bonta de' cavalier antichi'--the
proposal being forthwith agreed to, I received my first bloody nose in
an attitude which would have entitled me, in the blessed days of
personal cognizances, to assume that of a _lioncel seiant gules_. My
pugilistic trophies here," he continued, "were all the results of such
_sittings in banco_." Considering his utter ignorance of fear, the
strength of his chest and upper limbs, and that the scientific part of
pugilism never flourished in Scotland, I dare say these trophies were
not few.

The mettle of the High School boys, however, was principally displayed
elsewhere than in their own _yards_; and Sir Walter has furnished us
with ample indications of the delight with which he found himself at
length capable of rivalling others in such achievements as required
the exertion of active locomotive powers. Speaking of some scene of
his infancy in one of his latest tales, he says--"Every step of the
way after I have passed through the green already mentioned" (probably
the _Meadows_ behind George's Square) "has for me something of an
early remembrance. There is the stile at which I can recollect a cross
child's-maid upbraiding me with my infirmity as she lifted me coarsely
and carelessly over the flinty steps which my brothers traversed with
shout and bound. I remember the _suppressed bitterness_ of the moment,
and, conscious of my own infirmity, the envy with which I regarded the
easy movements and elastic steps of my more happily formed brethren.
Alas!" he adds, "these goodly barks have all perished in life's wide
ocean, and only that which seemed, as the naval phrase goes, so little
seaworthy, has reached the port when the tempest is over." How
touching to compare with this passage that in which he records his
pride in being found before he left the High School one of the
boldest {p.085} and nimblest climbers of "the kittle nine stanes," a
passage of difficulty which might puzzle a chamois-hunter of the Alps,
its steps, "few and far between," projected high in air from the
precipitous black granite of the Castle rock. But climbing and
fighting could sometimes be combined, and he has in almost the same
page dwelt upon perhaps the most favorite of all these juvenile
exploits--namely, "the manning of the Cowgate Port,"--in the season
when snowballs could be employed by the young scorners of discipline
for the annoyance of the Town-guard. To understand fully the feelings
of a High School boy of that day with regard to those ancient
Highlanders, who then formed the only police of the city of Edinburgh,
the reader must consult the poetry of the scapegrace Fergusson. It was
in defiance of their Lochaber axes that the Cowgate Port was
manned--and many were the occasions on which its defence presented a
formidable mimicry of warfare. "The gateway," Sir Walter adds, "is now
demolished, and probably most of its garrison lie as low as the
fortress! To recollect that I, however naturally disqualified, was one
of these juvenile dreadnoughts, is a sad reflection for one who cannot
now step over a brook without assistance."

I am unwilling to swell this narrative by extracts from Scott's
published works, but there is one juvenile exploit told in the General
Preface to the Waverley Novels, which I must crave leave to introduce
here in his own language, because it is essentially necessary to
complete our notion of his schoolboy life and character. "It is well
known," he says, "that there is little boxing at the Scottish schools.
About forty or fifty years ago, however, a far more dangerous mode of
fighting, in parties or factions, was permitted in the streets of
Edinburgh, to the great disgrace of the police, and danger of the
parties concerned. These parties were generally formed from the
quarters of the town in which the combatants resided, {p.086} those
of a particular square or district fighting against those of an
adjoining one. Hence it happened that the children of the higher
classes were often pitted against those of the lower, each taking
their side according to the residence of their friends. So far as I
recollect, however, it was unmingled either with feelings of democracy
or aristocracy, or indeed with malice or ill-will of any kind towards
the opposite party. In fact, it was only a rough mode of play. Such
contests were, however, maintained with great vigor with stones, and
sticks, and fisticuffs, when one party dared to charge, and the other
stood their ground. Of course, mischief sometimes happened; boys are
said to have been killed at these _bickers_, as they were called, and
serious accidents certainly took place, as many contemporaries can
bear witness.

"The author's father residing in George's Square, in the southern side
of Edinburgh, the boys belonging to that family, with others in the
square, were arranged into a sort of company, to which a lady of
distinction presented a handsome set of colors.[55] Now, this company
or regiment, as a matter of course, was engaged in weekly warfare with
the boys inhabiting the Cross-causeway, Bristo-Street, the
Potterrow--in short, the neighboring suburbs. These last were chiefly
of the lower rank, but hardy loons, who threw stones to a
hair's-breadth, and were very rugged antagonists at close quarters.
The skirmish sometimes lasted for a whole evening, until one party or
the other was victorious, when, if ours were successful, we drove the
enemy to their quarters, and were usually chased back by the
reinforcement of bigger lads who came to their assistance. If, on the
contrary, we were pursued, as was often the case, into the precincts
of our square, we were in our turn supported by our elder brothers,
domestic servants, and similar auxiliaries. It followed, from our
frequent opposition to each other, that, {p.087} though not knowing
the names of our enemies, we were yet well acquainted with their
appearance, and had nicknames for the most remarkable of them. One
very active and spirited boy might be considered as the principal
leader in the cohort of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, thirteen or
fourteen years old, finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair,
the very picture of a youthful Goth. This lad was always first in the
charge, and last in the retreat--the Achilles at once and Ajax of the
Cross-causeway. He was too formidable to us not to have a cognomen,
and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from the most
remarkable part of his dress, being a pair of old green livery
breeches, which was the principal part of his clothing; for, like
Pentapolin, according to Don Quixote's account, Green-breeks, as we
called him, always entered the battle with bare arms, legs, and feet.

         [Footnote 55: This young patroness was the Duchess-Countess
         of Sutherland.]

"It fell, that once upon a time when the combat was at its thickest,
this plebeian champion headed a charge so rapid and furious, that all
fled before him. He was several paces before his comrades, and had
actually laid his hands upon the patrician standard, when one of our
party, whom some misjudging friend had entrusted with a _couteau de
chasse_, or hanger, inspired with a zeal for the honor of the corps,
worthy of Major Sturgeon himself, struck poor Green-breeks over the
head, with strength sufficient to cut him down. When this was seen,
the casualty was so far beyond what had ever taken place before, that
both parties fled different ways, leaving poor Green-breeks, with his
bright hair plentifully dabbled in blood, to the care of the watchman,
who (honest man) took care not to know who had done the mischief. The
bloody hanger was thrown into one of the Meadow ditches, and solemn
secrecy was sworn on all hands; but the remorse and terror of the
actor were beyond all bounds, and his apprehensions of the most
dreadful character. The wounded hero was for a few days in the
Infirmary, {p.088} the case being only a trifling one. But though
inquiry was strongly pressed on him, no argument could make him
indicate the person from whom he had received the wound, though he
must have been perfectly well known to him. When he recovered and was
dismissed, the author and his brothers opened a communication with
him, through the medium of a popular gingerbread baker, of whom both
parties were customers, in order to tender a subsidy in the name of
smart-money. The sum would excite ridicule were I to name it; but sure
I am that the pockets of the noted Green-breeks never held as much
money of his own. He declined the remittance, saying that he would not
sell his blood; but at the same time reprobated the idea of being an
informer, which he said was _clam_, that is, base or mean. With much
urgency, he accepted a pound of snuff for the use of some old
woman--aunt, grandmother, or the like--with whom he lived. We did not
become friends, for the _bickers_ were more agreeable to both parties
than any more pacific amusement; but we conducted them ever after
under mutual assurances of the highest consideration for each other."
Sir Walter adds--"Of five brothers, all healthy and promising in a
degree far beyond one whose infancy was visited by personal infirmity,
and whose health after this period seemed long very precarious, I am,
nevertheless, the only survivor. The best loved, and the best
deserving to be loved, who had destined this incident to be the
foundation of a literary composition, died 'before his day,' in a
distant and foreign land; and trifles assume an importance not their
own when connected with those who have been loved and lost."

During some part of his attendance on the High School, young Walter
spent one hour daily at a small separate seminary of writing and
arithmetic, kept by one Morton, where, as was, and I suppose continues
to be, the custom of Edinburgh, young girls came for instruction as
{p.089} well as boys; and one of Mr. Morton's female pupils has been
kind enough to set down some little reminiscences of Scott, who
happened to sit at the same desk with herself. They appear to me the
more interesting, because the lady had no acquaintance with him in the
course of his subsequent life. Her nephew, Mr. James (the accomplished
author of Richelieu), to whose friendship I owe her communication,
assures me, too, that he had constantly heard her tell the same things
in the very same way, as far back as his own memory reaches, many
years before he had ever seen Sir Walter, or his aunt could have
dreamt of surviving to assist in the biography of his early days.

"He attracted," Mrs. Churnside says, "the regard and fondness of all
his companions, for he was ever rational, fanciful, lively, and
possessed of that urbane gentleness of manner which makes its way to
the heart. His imagination was constantly at work, and he often so
engrossed the attention of those who learnt with him, that little
could be done--Mr. Morton himself being forced to laugh as much as the
little scholars at the odd turns and devices he fell upon; for he did
nothing in the ordinary way, but, for example, even when he wanted ink
to his pen, would get up some ludicrous story about sending his doggie
to the mill again. He used also to interest us in a more serious way,
by telling us the _visions_, as he called them, which he had lying
alone on the floor or sofa, when kept from going to church on a Sunday
by ill health. Child as I was, I could not help being highly delighted
with his description of the glories he had seen--his misty and sublime
sketches of the regions above, which he had visited in his trance.
Recollecting these descriptions, radiant and not gloomy as they were,
I have often thought since that there must have been a bias in his
mind to superstition--the marvellous seemed to have such power over
him, though the mere offspring of his own imagination, that the
expression of his face, habitually that of genuine {p.090}
benevolence, mingled with a shrewd innocent humor, changed greatly
while he was speaking of these things, and showed a deep intenseness
of feeling, as if he were awed even by his own recital.... I may add,
that in walking he used always to keep his eyes turned downwards as if
thinking, but with a pleasing expression of countenance, as if
enjoying his thoughts. Having once known him, it was impossible ever
to forget him. In this manner, after all the changes of a long life,
he constantly appears as fresh as yesterday to my mind's eye."

This beautiful extract needs no commentary. I may as well, however,
bear witness, that exactly as the schoolboy still walks before her
"mind's eye," his image rises familiarly to mine, who never saw him
until he was past the middle of life: that I trace in every feature of
her delineation the same gentleness of aspect and demeanor which the
presence of the female sex, whether in silk or in russet, ever
commanded in the man; and that her description of the change on his
countenance when passing from the "doggie of the mill" to the dream of
Paradise is a perfect picture of what no one that has heard him recite
a fragment of high poetry, in the course of table talk, can ever
forget. Strangers may catch some notion of what fondly dwells on the
memory of every friend, by glancing from the conversational bust of
Chantrey to the first portrait by Raeburn, which represents the Last
Minstrel as musing in his prime within sight of Hermitage.

I believe it was about this time that, as he expresses it in one of
his latest works, "the first images of horror from the scenes of real
life were stamped upon his mind," by the tragical death of his
great-aunt, Mrs. Margaret Swinton. This old lady, whose extraordinary
nerve of character he illustrates largely in the introduction to the
story of Aunt Margaret's Mirror, was now living with one female
attendant, in a small house not far from Mr. Scott's residence in
George's Square. The maid-servant, in {p.091} a sudden access of
insanity, struck her mistress to death with a coal-axe, and then
rushed furiously into the street with the bloody weapon in her hand,
proclaiming aloud the horror she had perpetrated. I need not dwell on
the effects which must have been produced in a virtuous and
affectionate circle by this shocking incident. The old lady had been
tenderly attached to her nephew, "She was," he says, "our constant
resource in sickness, or when we tired of noisy play, and closed round
her to listen to her tales."

It was at this same period that Mr. and Mrs. Scott received into their
house, as tutor for their children, Mr. James Mitchell, of whom the
Ashestiel Memoir gives us a description, such as I could not have
presented had he been still alive. Mr. Mitchell was living, however,
at the time of his pupil's death, and I am now not only at liberty to
present Scott's unmutilated account of their intercourse, but enabled
to give also the most simple and characteristic narrative of the other
party. I am sure no one, however nearly related to Mr. Mitchell, will
now complain of seeing his keen-sighted pupil's sketch placed by the
side, as it were, of the fuller portraiture drawn by the unconscious
hand of the amiable and worthy man himself. The following is an
extract from Mr. Mitchell's MS., entitled "Memorials of the most
remarkable occurrences and transactions of my life, drawn up in the
hope that, when I shall be no more, they may be read with profit and
pleasure by my children." The good man was so kind as to copy out one
chapter for my use, as soon as he heard of Sir Walter Scott's death.
He was then, and had for many years been, minister of a Presbyterian
chapel at Wooler, in Northumberland, to which situation he had retired
on losing his benefice at Montrose, in consequence of the Sabbatarian
scruples alluded to in Scott's Autobiography.

     "In 1782," says Mr. Mitchell, "I became a tutor in Mr. Walter
     Scott's family. He was a Writer to the Signet in George's
     {p.092} Square, Edinburgh. Mr. Scott was a fine-looking man,
     then a little past the meridian of life, of dignified, yet
     agreeable manners. His business was extensive. He was a man of
     tried integrity, of strict morals, and had a respect for religion
     and its ordinances. The church the family attended was the Old
     Greyfriars, of which the celebrated Doctors Robertson and Erskine
     were the ministers. Thither went Mr. and Mrs. Scott every
     Sabbath, when well and at home, attended by their fine young
     family of children, and their domestic servants--a sight so
     amiable and exemplary as often to excite in my breast a glow of
     heartfelt satisfaction. According to an established and laudable
     practice in the family, the heads of it, the children, and
     servants, were assembled on Sunday evenings in the drawing-room,
     and examined on the Church Catechism and sermons they had heard
     delivered during the course of the day; on which occasions I had
     to perform the part of chaplain, and conclude with prayer. From
     Mrs. Scott I learned that Mr. Scott was one that had not been
     seduced from the paths of virtue; but had been enabled to
     venerate good morals from his youth. When he first came to
     Edinburgh to follow out his profession, some of his
     schoolfellows, who, like him, had come to reside in Edinburgh,
     attempted to unhinge his principles, and corrupt his morals; but
     when they found him resolute, and unshaken in his virtuous
     dispositions, they gave up the attempt; but, instead of
     abandoning him altogether, they thought the more of him, and
     honored him with their confidence and patronage; which is
     certainly a great inducement to young men in the outset of life
     to act a similar part.

     "After having heard of his inflexible adherence to the cause of
     virtue in his youth, and his regular attendance on the ordinances
     of religion in after-life, we will not be surprised to be told
     that he bore a sacred regard for the Sabbath, nor at the
     following anecdote illustrative of it. An opulent farmer of East
     Lothian had employed Mr. Scott as his agent, in a cause depending
     before the Court of Session. Having a curiosity to see something
     in the papers relative to the process, which were deposited in
     Mr. Scott's hands, this worldly man came into Edinburgh on a
     Sunday to have an inspection of them. As there was no immediate
     necessity for this measure, Mr. Scott asked the farmer if an
     ordinary week-day would not answer equally well. {p.093} The
     farmer was not willing to take this advice, but insisted on the
     production of his papers. Mr. Scott then delivered them to him,
     saying, it was not his practice to engage in secular business on
     the Sabbath, and that he would have no difficulty in Edinburgh to
     find some of his profession who would have none of his scruples.
     No wonder such a man was confided in, and greatly honored in his
     professional line.--All the poor services I did to his family
     were more than repaid by the comfort and honor I had by being in
     the family, the pecuniary remuneration I received, and
     particularly by his recommendation of me, some time afterwards,
     to the Magistrates and Town Council of Montrose, when there was a
     vacancy, and this brought me on the carpet, which, as he said,
     was all he could do, as the settlement would ultimately hinge on
     a popular election.

     "Mrs. Scott was a wife in every respect worthy of such a
     husband. Like her partner, she was then a little past the
     meridian of life, of a prepossessing appearance, amiable manners,
     of a cultivated understanding, affectionate disposition, and fine