SIR WALTER SCOTT.

352. Literary Rank.— The greatest literary figure during the first quarter of the nineteenth century is undoubtedly Sir Walter Scott. He occupied scarcely less relative prominence for a time than did Samuel Johnson a few decades earlier. It is not uncommon to associate his name with the period in which he was preeminent. He distinguished himself in both poetry and prose. He created a species of romantic poetry that was received with great applause until it was eclipsed by the intenser productions of Byron. "Why did you quit poetry?" a friend once inquired of Scott. "Because Byron beat me," was the remarkably frank reply. He then turned to fiction; and in his splendid series of historical romances he stands preeminent not only among the writers of England, but of the world.

353. Ancestry.- Sir Walter Scott descended from a line distinguished for sports and arms rather than letters. His father was a dignified man, orderly in his habits, and fond of ceremony. It is said that he absolutely loved a funeral"; and from far and near he was sent for to superintend mortuary ceremonies. As a lawyer he frequently lost clients by insisting that they should be just a sturdy uprightness that was transmitted to his illustrious son.

Sir Walter's mother was a woman of superior native ability and of excellent education. She had a good memory and a talent for narration. "If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting past times," he once wrote, "it is very much from the studies with which she presented me." He loved his mother tenderly; and the evening after his burial a number of small objects that had once belonged to her were found arranged in careful order in his desk, where his eye might rest upon them every morning before he began his task. This is an instance of filial piety as touching as it is beautiful.

354. Childhood.- Walter Scott, the ninth of twelve children, was born in Edinburgh, Aug. 15, 1771. On account of feeble health he was sent into the country, where his childhood was spent in the midst of attractive scenery.

At school he established a reputation for irregular ability. He possessed great energy, vitality, and pride, and was naturally a leader among his fellow-pupils. He had the gift of storytelling in a remarkable degree. He found difficulty in confining himself to the prescribed studies and persistently declined to learn Greek. In Latin he made fair attainments. He delighted in the past, reverenced existing institutions, sympathized with royalty, and as a boy, as in after life, he was a Tory.

355. Romantic Tastes. As a student of law at the University of Edinburgh Scott was noted for his gigantic memory and enormous capacity for work. His literary tastes ran in the direction of medieval life, and he devoured legend and romance and border song with great avidity. He learned Italian to read Ariosto, and Spanish to read Cervantes, whose novels, he said, “first inspired him with the desire to excel in fiction." But his memory retained only what suited his genius. He used to illustrate this characteristic by the story of an old borderer who once said to a Scotch divine: "No, sir, I have no command of my memory. It only retains what hits my fancy; and probably, sir, if you were to preach to me for two hours, I would not be able, when you finished, to remember a word you had been saying."

356. As a Lawyer.- As a lawyer Scott was not notably successful. He was fond of making excursions over the country to visit localities celebrated for natural beauty or historic events. In view of this habit, his father reproached him as being better fitted for a pedler than for a lawyer. He was rather fond, it must be said, of living

"One crowded hour of glorious life."

"But drunk or sober," such is the testimony of one of his companions at this time, "he was aye the gentleman." Scott practiced at the bar fourteen years; but his earnings never

amounted to much more than two hundred pounds a year. In 1799 he was made sheriff of Selkirkshire on a salary of three hundred pounds; and a few years later he became clerk of the session, an officer in the court of Edinburgh,— a position that increased his income to sixteen hundred pounds. He was not eloquent as a pleader; his tastes were averse to legal drudgery; and his proclivities for poetry and for rambling over the country did not enhance his reputation as a lawyer. But whether practicing at the bar or wandering over the country, "he was makin' himself a' the time" storing his mind with the facts, legends, and characters which he was afterward to embody in his immortal works.

357. "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."-Though Scott's greatest literary work was to be in prose, he began with poetry. His first undertaking was a translation from the German of Bürger's spectral ballad, "Lenore." Though his rendering is spirited, he was far too healthy-minded to be perfectly at home in treating spectral themes. He soon turned to more congenial subjects. From his college days he had been making a collection of old Scottish ballads. In 1802 he published in two volumes The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," which was an immediate success.

This "proved to be a well," says Carlyle, "from which flowed one of the broadest rivers. Metrical Romances (which in due time pass into Prose Romances); the old life of men resuscitated for us; it is a mighty word! Not as dead tradition, but as a palpable presence, the past stood before us. There they were, the rugged old fighting men; in their doughty simplicity and strength, with their heartiness, their healthiness, their stout self-help, in their iron basnets, leather jerkins, jack-boots, in their quaintness of manner and costume; there as they looked and lived. It was like a new-discovered continent in literature." 358. The Last Minstrel.-The native bent of his mind, and his studies for many years peculiarly fitted him to restore and illustrate the simplicity and violence of the old border life. The transition to original poems, in which the legends and history of the same region were embodied, was easily made. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in 1805 and at once