ments which have remained uncontradicted; sometimes to written memoranda, by the poet's own hand, or the hands of friends; and often to my own memory, which is far from treacherous in aught connected with men of genius.

Sir Walter Scott could claim descent from a long line of martial ancestors. Through his father, whose name he bore, he reckoned kin with those great families who scarcely count the Duke of Buccleugh their head; and through his mother, Elizabeth Rutherford, he was connected with the warlike family of Swinton of Swinton, long known in the Scottish wars. His father was a Writer to the Signet, in Edinburgh, and much esteemed in his profession, but not otherwise remarkable; his mother had great natural talents, and was not only related to that lady, who sang so sweetly of the 'Flowers of the Forest,' but was herself a poetess of taste and genius, and a lover of what her son calls "the art unteachable, untaught." She was acquainted with Allan Ramsay, and intimate with Blacklock, Beattie, and Burns. Sir Walter, the eldest of fourteen children, all of whom he survived, was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August, 1771. Before he was

two years old, he received a fall out of the arms of a careless nurse, which injured his right foot, and rendered him lame for life: this accident did not otherwise affect his health. He was, as I have been informed by a lady who chanced to live near him, a remarkably active and dauntless boy; full of all manner of fun, and ready for all manner of mischief. He calls himself, in one of his introductions to Marmion,

A self-willed imp; a grandame's child.

And I have heard it averred, that the circumstance of his lame foot prompted him to take the lead among all the stirring boys in the street where he lived, or the school which he attended. He desired, perhaps, to show them, that there was a spirit which could triumph over all impediments. He was taught the rudiments of knowledge by his mother, and was placed afterwards under Dr. Adam, of the High School: no one, however, has recorded any anecdote of his early talents. Adam considered him rather dull than otherwise; but Hugh Blair, it is said, at one of the examinations, foretold his future eminence. I have not heard this confirmed by anything like good

authority; the author of the 'Belles Lettres ' was not reckoned so very discerning. The remark of Burns is better authenticated; the poet, while at Professor Ferguson's one day, was struck by some lines attached to a print of a soldier dying in the snow, and inquired who was the author; none of the old or the learned spoke, when the future author of Marmion answered, "They are by Langhorne." Burns fixed his large bright eyes on the boy, and striding up to him, said, "It is no common. course of reading, which has taught you this. This lad," said he to the company," will be heard of yet." Of his acquirements at school, I can say little I never heard scholars praise his learning; and his Latin has been called in question, where he had only some four lines to write if he did not know that well, he seems to have known everything else.

That a love of poetry and romance should have come upon him early, will not be wondered at by those who know anything of the lowlands of Scotland-more particularly the district where his paternal home lay, and where he often lived during vacation time. The whole land is alive with song and story : almost every stone that stands above the

ground, is the record of some skirmish or single combat ; and every stream, although its waters be so inconsiderable as scarcely to moisten the pasture through which they run, is renowned in song and in ballad. "I can stand," said Sir Walter one day to me, "on the Eildon Hill, and point out forty-three places, famous in war and in verse." How the Muse, that loves him who walks by himself

Along some wimpling burn's meander,

found out Scott, among the hills and holms of the border, need not, therefore, form any part of our inquiry; it will be more difficult to discover, how a love of delineating landscapes came to him. I do not mean landscapes copied from the works of the professors, but scenes copied from nature herself; this bespeaks a deeper acquaintance with art, than I could have given him credit for. Such, however, I am told, is the fact; and though he never made. much progress in the art, it is my duty to relate it, were it but to show the spirit and bent of the boy. With regard to his inclination for song and story, we have his own testimony.

"I must refer," says Sir Walter, "to a very early period of my life, were I to point out my

first achievements as a tale-writer: but I believe some of my old school-fellows can still bear witness, that I had a distinguished character for that talent, at a time when the арplause of my companions was my recompense for the disgraces and punishments which the future romance-writer incurred, for being idle himself, and keeping others idle during hours that should have been employed on their tasks. The chief enjoyment of holidays was, to escape with a chosen friend who had the same taste with myself, and alternately to recite to each other such wild adventures as we were able to devise. We told, each in turn, interminable tales of knight-errantry, and battles, and enchantments, which were continued from one day to another, as opportunity offered, without ever thinking of bringing them to a conclusion. As we observed a strict secresy on the subject of this intercourse, it acquired all the character of a concealed pleasure, and we used to select for the scenes of our indulgence, long walks through the solitary and romantic environs of Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, Braid Hills, and similar places in the vicinity of Edinburgh; and the recollection of those holidays still forms an oasis in the pilgrimage which I have to look