PREFATORY NOTICE. WALTER SCOTT is, pari passu with Lord Byron (and still more signally in the popular sense), the British-born author of by far the greatest world-wide fame among all who have flourished within a century past. Dickens might be added to their company so far as prose-writing is concerned: the double tiara of prose and of poetry belongs to Scott alone among the three. He was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771 (the same day of the month as the great Napoleon, but two years later on), and died at Abbotsford, the creation of his own genius and enthusiasm, on the 21st of September 1832. This space of but sixty-one years must always seem short to his admirers for the multifarious product and activity of his life-a life in which literary exertion, though the predominant, was by no means the sole, thing open to the notice of his contemporaries. Born with a naturally strong constitution, Walter Scott suffered nevertheless much early illness. He had attained the twenty-second month of his infancy when one morning his right leg was found to be powerless and perfectly cold : hence ensued a lameness which proved unsusceptible of cure, and which remained with him all his life. In his fifth year, a lonely contemplative boy, he went to reside with his grandfather at Sandy Knowe on the Tweed, near Kelso; and afterwards to the house of a maiden aunt, who took him off to Bath. This lady had an immense store of tales and legends: she was abundantly ready at imparting them to her nephew, and he was still more eager as a listener than she as a narrator. In his eighth year he was removed from a private academy to the High School of Edinburgh; his vigorous, courageous, enjoying character asserted itself, and, spite of his lameness, he joined in most of the active sports of the schoolboys. In other matters, his proficiency was nothing noticeable. In October 1783, he was transferred to Edinburgh University. Another casualty befell him about the end of the year 1784. He broke a bloodvessel, and remained confined to his bed for several weeks. In this second period of enforced inactivity, the habit of omnivorous reading-especially of anything having a romantic or traditional character-became powerfully confirmed. Scott read almost all the romances, old plays, and epics, pertaining to a circulating library which formed his solace; tales of chivalry, Cyrus and Cassandra, the novels of modern days-all furnished alike his pabulum; his strong sympathetic nature, quick fancy, and enormously retentive memory, assimilated and digested them all (it is said that he was able to repeat the whole of Campbell's Pleasures of Hope after a couple of readings). He thus attained an carly command of language; and a habit of inventing stories for the diversion of his college chums preluded the work of the future novelist. The chief enjoyment of Scott's holidays was to go out with a friend who had the like taste for tales, and the boys would then recite their wild inventions alternately: Arthur's Seat was a favourite spot for these performances, which were kept secret from the profane. The same tale, of knight-errantry or what not, would be continued from day to day. Nor had his early domestication with his grandfather failed to furnish its quota towards the same general direction of taste and faculty. The old gentleman was a farmer, who lived in habits of semipatriarchal familiarity with his domestics; and many traits of autochthonous Scotch character were here seen by young Walter-and, if seen, assuredly noted. In May 1786, relinquishing his wish for a military life, to which his lameness was a serious obstacle, he began an apprenticeship to his father, whose avocation was that of a Writer to the Signet, corresponding pretty nearly to an English attorney: this was the ordinary induction to the |