countenance, as if enjoying his thoughts. Having once known him, it was impossible ever to forget him.'

But familiar as was the boy's intercourse with companions of his own age, Scott himself plainly lays great emphasis on the affectionate relation he held with his elders. After his studies at the High School and before he entered college, he lived for a while, and afterward frequently visited, with his aunt Janet at Kelso. Here he kept up some schooling with the village schoolmaster, who appears to have been the original of Dominie Sampson, but he also read voraciously in Spenser and Shakespeare, in the older novelists, and here he made the acquaintance of Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. I remember well,' he records in later life, '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 oldfashioned arbor in the garden. 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 found still entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows and all who would hearken to me with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy.' Among these school-fellows was James Ballantyne, so closely identified with his later fortunes. He soon discovered,' says Ballantyne in a reminiscence, 'that I was as fond of listening as he himself was of relating; and I remembered it was a thing of daily occurrence, that after he had made himself master of his own lesson, I, alas! being still sadly to seek in mine, he used to whisper to me: "come, slink over beside me, Jamie, and I'll tell you a story." And stories in abundance he afterward told to the listening Jamie.

If at Sandy-Knowe nature had stolen into his mind, as well as sent her healing messages into his body, at Kelso he entered upon that hearty, enthusiastic love of natural beauty, and especially of the mingling of man's deeds with nature's elements, which glows through his poems and his novels. The meeting,' there, he says, 'of two superb rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song - the ruins of an ancient Abbey — the more 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 any 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.'

In 1783, when he was twelve years old, he entered college at Edinburgh, after the manner of Scottish boys, and had three years of college life, such as it was, for he let Greek sink out of knowledge, kept up a smattering only of Latin, heard a little philosophy under Dugald Stewart, and attended a class in history. His health was not confirmed, and he had recourse more than once to the healing of Kelso, and by the time he was fifteen and had done with college, he was poorly enough equipped with learning. But

the flame of poetry and romance which had been kindled burned steadily within him and was fed with large draughts from literature, with delightfully free renderings amongst his chosen friends, and with now and then little exercises with his pen. It is, however, noticeable throughout the formative period of Scott's life, how little he was affected with the cacoethes scribendi. He had the healthier appetite which is appeased though never satiated with literature, and the natural gift which finds expression in improvised storytelling, or the free recital of what one has read. A friend recalling the delightful Saturday excursions to Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat, or Blackford Hill, when they carried books from the circulating library to read on the rocks in the intervals of hardy climbing, adds: After we had continued this practice of reading for two years or more together, he proposed that we should recite to each other alternately such adventures of knighterrants as we could ourselves contrive; and we continued to do so a long while. He found no difficulty in it, and used to recite for half an hour or more at a time, while I seldom continued half that space. The stories we told were, as Sir Walter has said, interminable for we were unwilling to have any of our favorite knights killed. Our passion for romance led us to learn Italian together; after a time we could both read it with fluency, and we then copied such tales as we had met with in that language, being a continued succession of battles and enchantments. He began early to collect old ballads, and as my mother could repeat a great many, he used to come and learn those she could recite to him. He used to get all the copies of these ballads he could, and select the best.' Scott himself, never given to subjective analysis, repeatedly stood off aud looked at himself, boy and man, to sketch the figure in some of one of his characters, and thus he has portrayed with great accuracy in the person of Waverley the course of voluntary study which he had followed up to this time.

'He had read, and stored in a memory of uncommon tenacity, much curious, though ill-arranged and miscellaneous information. In English literature he was master of Shakespeare and Milton, of our earlier dramatic authors, of many picturesque and interesting passages from our old historical chronicles, and was particularly well acquainted with Spenser, Drayton, and other poets, who have exercised themselves on romantic fiction, of all themes the most fascinating to a youthful imagination, before the passions have roused themselves, and demand poetry of a more sentimental description.'

In 1786 Scott was apprenticed to his father, and for five years he served his time; five more years were spent in the scanty practice of the law, before the first volume appeared of that long row which, compress it as we may, must always take up a great deal of shelf-room with the complete writings of Sir Walter Scott. These ten years witnessed the strengthening of a nature which, with all the early promise to be traced in the outlines we have drawn, had nothing in it of the forced ripening of a stimulated brain. Scott was twentyfive years old when he printed the thin volume of translations from the German; he was over thirty when he edited the Border Minstrelsy with the first essays into his own field of romantic verse, and he had entered upon the second of man's generations before he wrote The Lay of the Last Minstrel. There is nothing of the prodigy in this. Scott's industry was great. His productiveness was notable, especially when one takes into account the great body of letters and journal-writing, and remembers how popular he was in society; but before he entered on his career as an author, he was simply a full-blooded young Scotsman, delighting in excursions, with a capacious memory in which he stored and assimilated the records in prose and verse of Scottish achievements, an omnivorous reader, and a hearty companion. He was not even regarded as a leading figure in the literary society affected by the ingenious youth of Edinburgh. His essays in literature were

not very effective. As he himself humorously puts it, 'I never attempted them unless 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 and discharge, but making a powerful effect when by good chance any object did come within range of its shot.'

It was at the beginning of this period that Scott caught a glimpse of that other great Scotsman, Burns, with whom, though he did not know it, he was to share the bench which Scotland owns on the slope of Parnassus. Quite as notable was the acquaintance which he first made about the same time with the Highlands. Though business for his father took him into this region, his delight in the scenery and the people took precedence of his occupation with affairs, and long after he had forgotten the trivial errands in the interest of the law, he remembered the tales he had heard, and his imagination built upon his experience those characters and scenes which live in the lines of The Lady of the Lake and in the pages of Rob Roy.

The record of Scott's life during the ten years of his legal training and early practice is delightfully varied with narratives of these excursions. The ardor of the young Scotsman carried him into the midst of scenes which were to prove the unfailing quarry from which he was to draw the material for his work of romance and fiction; and when one looks back upon his years of adolescence from the vantage ground of a full knowledge of his career, it would seem as if never did a writer qualify himself for his work of creation in so thorough and direct a fashion. Yet happily this preparation was unpremeditated and unconscious, for the naturalness which is the supreme characteristic of Sir Walter's verse and prose was due to the integrity and simplicity of his nature expending itself during these years of preparation upon occupations and interests which were ends in themselves. His healthy spirit found outlet in this hearty enjoyment of nature and history and human life, with apparently no thought of what use he should put his acquisitions to; it was enough for the time that he should share his enjoyment with his cherished friends, or at the most shape his knowledge into some amateur essay for his literary club.

In the midst of this active, wholesome life he entered upon an experience which made a deep furrow in his soul. It is witness to the sincerity of his first real passion we may pass over the youthful excitement which gave him a constancy of affection for a girl when he was in his twentieth year that it should have found expression in the earliest of his own poems, The Violet,' have risen into view more than once in direct and indirect reference in poems and novels, and even late in life should have called out a deep note of yearning regret in his journal. The tale of his disappointment in love has been spread before the world recently with sufficient detail in Mr. Adam Scott's book and in Miss Skene's magazine article. As we have intimated, it was an experience of no idle sort, but the outcome is another tribute, if one were needed, to the

1 The Story of Sir Walter Scott's First Love, with illustrative passages from his Life and Works, and portraits of Sir Walter and Lady Scott, and of Sir William and Lady Forbes. By Adam Scott. Edinburgh: Macniven & Wallace, 1896.

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wholesomeness and freedom from morbid self-love which make Scott in these latter days so eminently the friend in literature of the young and whole hearted. It is a comment on the absence of bitterness in his nature that he did not disengage himself from his kind, but threw himself into the affairs of the hour and organized the Edinburgh Lighthorse, of which he became quartermaster, writing a spirited war song, and using his pen thus as an instrument of service, before he was regarded as a man of the pen at all. There is something very consonant with our largest knowledge of Scott's temper in the incidents which led up to his marriage. The story in its beginning shall be told by Lockhart Riding one day with Fergusson, they met, some miles from Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on horseback, whom neither of them had previously remarked, and whose appearance instantly struck both so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied themselves that she also was one of the party at Gilsland [the watering-place where they had halted]. The same evening there was a ball, at which Captain [John] Scott produced himself in his regimentals, and Fergusson also thought proper to be equipped in the uniform of the Edinburgh Volunteers. There was no little rivalry among the young travellers as to who should first get presented to the unknown beauty of the morning's ride; but though both the gentlemen in scarlet had the advantage of being dancing partners, their friend succeeded in handing the fair stranger to supperand such was his first introduction to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.

'Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal attractions; "a form that was fashioned as light as a fay's ;" a complexion of the clearest and lightest olive; eyes large, deep-set and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown; and a profusion of silken tresses, black as the raven's wing; her address hovering between the reserve of a pretty young English woman who has not mingled largely in general society, and a certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well with the accompaniment of a French accent. A lovelier vision, as all who remember her in the bloom of her days have assured me, could hardly have been imagined; and from that hour the fate of the young poet was fixed.' The lady was a daughter of a French royalist who had died at the beginning of the revolution, but who had foreseen the approaching perils and had secured a moderate sum in English securities, so that his widow and her family at once fled across the channel and made their home in London. Miss Carpenter at the time was making a summer tour under the direction of a Scotswoman who had been her governess. Here was a young fellow just emerging from a bitter disappointment, who falls head over ears in love with a saucy, piquant girl whose letters, after the acquaintance had ripened swiftly into passion, disclose a capricious, teasing nature. Scott could write to his mother and to Lord Downshire, who was a sort of guardian of Miss Carpenter, in a reasonable manner, but it is clear from his impetuous love-making and the eagerness he showed to bring matters to a head, that he was swept away by his zeal and impatient of all obstacles. It is just possible that in all this there was something of a reaction from the hurt he had suffered, and that Miss Carpenter's winsomeness and little imperious ways blinded him to all considerations of a prudent sort. He was ready at one time to throw aside all other considerations and take his bride to one of the colonies, there to win a place by the sheer force of energy in a new land. But his impetuousness shows the gay spirit with which he threw himself into all his enterprises, and the ardor with which he pursued an end which he thought he must attain. He removed one difficulty after another, and the sudden encounter in July was followed by marriage on the eve of Christmas, 1797. Lady Scott bore Sir Walter four children, who lived and grew to maturity, two sons and two daughters. It is not easy to escape the impression that

though she was lively and volatile, there was a certain lack of profound sympathy between husband and wife; that with all her love of society, Lady Scott was not able to bring to her husband the kind of appreciation of his genius which he found in such friends as Lady Louisa Stuart, the Duchess of Buccleuch, and the Marchioness of Abercorn. But it would be a mistake to infer that there was any lack of loyalty and tenderness on the part of either; and when Scott, broken in his fortunes, is obliged also to see his wife pass out of his life, the pathos of his utterance shows how intimately their interests had been blended. Yet Scott's own frank expression of the relation between them (see below, p. 152) must stand as indicating the limitations of their union.

The young couple at first set up their home in Edinburgh not far from the residence of Scott's mother and father, who were now feeble and soon to leave them. Scott was shortly appointed sheriff of Selkirk, an office which carried no very heavy duties and a moderate salary. With this and such other property as he and his wife enjoyed, they were able to live modestly and cheerfully, and Scott let slip the practice of his profession, never very congenial to him, and turned with zest to the semi-literary occupations which had begun to engross his attention.

For shortly before his marriage he had made a little venture in the field of books by publishing his translation of a couple of German ballads that were then highly popular, and not a great while after his marriage, he made a similar effort in the same direction by translating Goethe's drama of Goetz von Berlichengen; but his more zealous pursuit was in the collection of Scottish ballads, and by a natural sequence in patching these where they were broken, and by making very good imitations. Thus, stimulated also by a group of similar collectors, he published in 1802 and 1803 the three volumes of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and by the most natural transition took up a theme suggested by his ballad studies and wrought with great celerity The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

The Introductory Note to that poem, including as it does Scott's own Introduction, describes in some detail the origin of the poem and the motives which led Scott to undertake it. With the frankness always characteristic of him in his addresses to the public and his letters to his friends, he spoke as if he was moved chiefly by the need to better his circumstances, and the same confession is very openly made in connection with the writing of Rokeby, when he was full of the notion of realizing his dreams in the establishment of Abbotsford. But it is given to us with our large knowledge of Scott's career to place motives in a more just relation; and though it is entirely true that Scott wanted money and found his want an incentive to the writing of poems and novels, it is equally true that the whole course of his life up to the time of writing The Lay of the Last Minstrel was a direct preparation for this form of expression, and that his generous enthusiasm and warm imagination found this outlet with a simplicity and directness which explain how truly this writer, though a deliberate maker of books, had yet always that delightful quality which we recognize most surely in the improvisatore. It was his nature to write just such poetry as the free, swinging lines of his long poems.

Before the Lay was completed and published, Scott moved with his little family to Ashestiel, a country farm seven miles from the small town of Selkirk, and having a beautiful setting on the Tweedside with green hills all about. Here he lived as a tenant of the Buccleuch estate for seven of the happiest years of his life. It was here that he wrote the poems preceding Rokeby and here that he began the Waverley, and tossed the fragment aside. His income, which, at the beginning of his poetical career, was from all sources about £1000 a year, enabled him to live at ease, and the successive productions greatly augmented his property. Mr. Morritt, one of his closest friends, visited him at