THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. With Life and Notes W. & R. CHAMBERS 1885 280. f. 205. LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. DESCENDED from an old Border family-a branch of the noble house of Buccleuch-Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His father was a writer to the Signet, and the first of the Scott family whose life was passed in the city and devoted to a professional calling. An illness during the infancy of young Walter left him somewhat lame in the right leg for life. For the sake of his health the child was brought up in the country, chiefly at his grandfather's farm of Sandyknowe, on Tweedside. In his seventh year he returned to his father's house in Edinburgh. Educated at the High School and the University of his native city, he served an apprenticeship for the law in the office of his father. At the age of twenty-one he was called to the bar of the Court of Session. Glancing back, we may remark that the literary genius of Scott received its bent from the early associations of his life. The first impulse was given to his fancy, when, as a child, he listened to his grandmother as she recited to him the stirring old ballads and tales of the Borders. From the crags at Sandyknowe he looked upon the very scenes to which belong, by tradition, some of these stories of romance and heroism. From that time his craving for legendary lore and imaginative literature was remarkable. So active and vivid was his fancy, while he was engaged in this reading, that for him to read was nearly the same thing as to remember. Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry was his favourite book. For academic learning he cared little or nothing, to his own bitter regret in the future; but at school and college he excited admiration by his wonderful powers of memory and story-telling, and by the out-of-the-way kind of knowledge of which he showed himself possessed. During his apprenticeship, however, he seriously gave his mind to the study of modern languages and certain branches of law. But it was not from books merely that the youth sought and found the matter on which to gratify his fancy and natural tastes. The scenes of nature he had learned to love in his early years, and it was always his great delight to get away from the city on a long holiday ramble to the country. On these excursions he explored whatever places were at all celebrated in history, romance, or tradition, laying up a store of that knowledge |