CHAPTER I. SCOTT IN BOYHOOD. HE child is father of the man;' and this is true of none more, or so much, as of Sir Walter Scott. Nay, in him, as in many great men, the man and the child refuse to be separated they are always one. In his boyhood we find clear and full exemplification of all his noble qualities, his enthusiasm, warm-hearted affection, bold manly feelings, sense, honesty, and invincible perseverance. Afterwards these characteristics ripened and expanded, but they never changed; and hence a unity, amidst great breadth, in Scott as a man and as a writer, which has been rarely equalled, and perhaps never surpassed. Walter Scott-the possessor of a name and fame only inferior in extent, and probably equal in duration, to those of Homer and Shakspearewas born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August A MIA OL 1771, the same day of the month as had been signalized two years before by the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was the son of Walter Scott, W.S., and Anne Rutherford, daughter of Dr. John Rutherford, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. Sir Walter, by his father, was descended from a family on the Border, of old extraction, which had branched off from the main stem of the house of Buccleugh, and produced some remarkable characters: such as Auld Wat of Harden, famous in Border story and in the song of his great descendant; and Beardie (so called from an enormous beard, which—as was also said of Thomas Dalziel the Cavalier general-he never cut, in token of his regret for the banished house of Stuart), who was the great-grandfather of the poet. Through his mother he was connected with two other ancient families: the Bauld Rutherfords, mentioned in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; and the Swintons, one of whom (Sir John) is extolled by Froissart as having unhorsed, at the battle of Beaugé in France, the Duke of Clarence, brother to Henry, and is the hero of Scott's own poetic sketch, Halidon Hill. Through the Swintons Scott could also trace a connection between himself and William Alexander Earl of Stirling, the well-known poet and dramatist. Sir Walter |