future eminence. His entrance into animal existence was through pain and suffering, and the mental birth was destined to be attended with analogous pangs.

Here then we close that portion of our narrative dedicated to the boyhood of Walter Scott. As the infant gathers its physical strength in balmy slumber, "rocked by the beating of its mother's breast," so the mind in extreme youth collects its energies while swayed, without exertion of its own, hither and thither upon the heaving tide of circumstance. The history of a boy is more properly that of the persons and circumstances among which his lot has been cast. At the most, it is but the first feeble struggles of a human being to indicate an independent personality, like the flame on the domestic hearth forcing its way in brief and transient flashes through the superincumbent load of fuel, or like the crowing baby, exerting with ecstatic astonishment its newly discovered power of detaining objects in its grasp. The character of the earlier years of the period to which we are next to direct the reader's attention, will not differ materially from what we have hitherto been contemplating; but as we advance, the figure of the principal person concerned will naturally stand out in bolder relief. It is the attribute of mankind to aim at rendering all surrounding objects subordinate to their purposes; and a man is truly great, truly a man, only in so far as he attains the object of his wishes; he is good only in so far as that object is commendable.

CHAPTER II.

ADOLESCENCE. 1785-1796.'

ALMOST close upon the commencement of the winter session of 1784-85, to borrow the phraseology both of our Universities and our Courts of Justice, Walter Scott was subjected to a violent attack of sickness, for the only distinct account of which we are indebted to himself. "When boyhood," he says, " advancing into youth required more serious studies and graver cares, a long illness threw me back on the kingdom of fiction, as it were by a species of fatality. My indisposition arose, in part at least, from my having broken a blood-vessel; and motion and speech were for a long time pronounced positively dangerous. For several weeks I was confined strictly to my bed, during which time I was not allowed to speak above a whisper, to eat more than a spoonful or two of boiled rice, or to have more covering than one thin counterpane. When the reader is informed that I was at this time a growing youth, with the spirits, appetite, and impatience of fifteen, and suffered, of course, greatly under this severe regimen, which the repeated return of my disorder rendered indispensable, he will not be surprised that I was abandoned to my own discretion, so far as reading (my almost sole amusement) was concerned, and still less so, that I abused the indulgence which left my time so much at my own disposal.

"There was at this time a circulating library in Edinburgh, founded, I believe, by the celebrated Allan Ramsay, which, besides containing a most respectable collection of books of every description, was, as might have been expected, peculiarly rich

in works of fiction. It exhibited specimens of every kind, from the romances of chivalry, and the ponderous folios of Cyrus and Cassandra, down to the most approved works of later times. I was plunged into this great ocean of reading without compass or pilot; and unless when some one had the charity to play chess with me, I was allowed to do nothing save read, from morning to night. I was, in kindness and pity, which was perhaps erroneous, however natural, permitted to select my subjects of study at my own pleasure, upon the same principle that the humours of children are indulged to keep them out of mischief. As my taste and appetite were gratified in nothing else, I indemnified myself by becoming a glutton of books. Accordingly I believe I read almost all the romances, old plays, and epic poetry, in that formidable collection, and no doubt was unconsciously amassing materials for the task in which it has been my lot to be so much employed.

"At the same time, I did not in all respects abuse the license permitted to me. Familiar acquaintance with the specious mi racles of fiction brought with it some degree of satiety, and I began, by degrees, to seek in histories, memoirs, voyages, and the like, events nearly as wonderful as those which were the work of imagination, with the additional advantage that they were at least in a great measure true. The lapse of nearly two years, during which I was left to the exercise of my own free will, was followed by a temporary residence in the country, where I was again very lonely, but for the amusement which I derived from a good though old-fashioned library. The vague and wild use which I made of this advantage, I cannot describe better than by referring my reader to the desultory studies of Waverley in a similar situation; the passages concerning whose course of reading were imitated from recollections of my own."

In allotting the period of two years to his confinement in town after this attack of sickness, Sir Walter must have spoken from a very vague recollection; for although unable to recover precise information respecting the dates of its commencement and termination, circumstances enable us to approximate very closely to them, and the result seems to confine both the duration of his illness and of his residence in the country considerably within the limits of the time he has mentioned. We find his name, as

has already been stated, entered in the books of the University of Edinburgh in his own hand, in November 1784, sufficient evidence that he was then in good health, and looking forward to a winter's attendance upon the classes. Next we find the following entry in the minute-book of the Society of Writers to the Signet :"15th May, 1786.-Compeared Walter Scott, and presented an indenture, dated 31st March last, entered into between him and Walter Scott, his son, for five years from the date thereof, under a mutual penalty of L.40 sterling." Lastly, we have Sir Walter's own testimony that he met Burns in Edinburgh in the winter of 1786-87. The ascertained dates of subsequent events forbid us to assign this illness to a later period of his career; and the certainty of a near relative who still sur vives, that he paid a long visit to the neighbourhood of Kelso during his fourteenth or fifteenth year, is an additional circumstance for believing that it occurred at the time we have fixed upon. We assume, therefore, that his long confinement and his subsequent visit to the country, occurred between the close of 1784, and some time in 1786. He may have returned to his father's house in May, the date of the registry of his indenture, or he may have been allowed to remain in the country till the fall of the year, but certain it is that he was in Edinburgh, and alive and merry in the winter of 1786.

To the list given by Sir Walter of the amusements of his sick-chamber, the reminiscences of a cotemporary authorize us to add Drawing. We speak on the authority of an amateur artist, a lady no less conspicuous for her early beauty, than for a strong and original cast of mind, an intimate friend, moreover, of that wayward genius Skirving, when we say that Scott's mother was no mean proficient in this elegant accomplishment. It was natural, therefore, that with the imitative propensities of boyhood, he should betake him during the tedious hours of sickness to the scratching of flowers on paper. At that early age, however, the real sense of art has never been found developed. It is merely the power of imitating form or colour with more or less accuracy, and feeling a harmless pride in comparative success. To express beauty through the medium of counterfeit resemblance of external nature, is a faculty which lies dormant till a later period of life. That Sir Walter never in after-life

felt any vocation to the pencil, is one strong ground for believing that he was not possessed of this faculty. That he found pleasure in gazing upon the creations of art, and in the conversation of eminent artists, is undoubted, but in like manner many who have the sense of harmony and melody very imperfectly developed, are susceptible of being much excited by music. Another ground yet more relevant is a paper which he not many years ago communicated to a fashionable annual, in reply to a note from the editor, requesting him to point out a subject for the engraver. The subject which he does suggest is little adapted for pictorial representation, and the mode of handling still less. The truth is, that although the object both of the poet and the painter is to create the beautiful, the media of their operations is so different as to require in the workman faculties totally distinct, and, to judge by experience, almost incompatible in the human mind; at least Michael Angelo alone seems to have united them. The poet presents us with a thousand restless and shifting associations, which the mind reviews with rapture as they flutter past, and out of which it strives to collect and create an enduring image. The painter presents us with one fixed and defined image, which pleases, partly by its own loveliness, but more (in most minds) by the associations of passion and breathing life which it suggests. Intense passion is the soul of both creations, but in the one it is clothed in a body of palpable visible form, in the other it tenants a Proteus-like succession of vague and airy shapes.

We return from this digression to record the existence of a Ferishable memorial of this period of Scott's life. On a window of the house in George Square, at that time inhabited by his father's family, there may still be seen the following inscription, scratched with a diamond, in a hand strikingly similar to that which he wrote to the last, but with more ambitious tails to the capital letters. "Walter Scott-1785-ha, who art thou ?-Begone." It is perhaps a foolish fancy which connects this trifle with the impatience of the tardy convalescent; but still the name and the date lend it an importance which rarely attaches to scrawls upon a pane of glass. Such of our readers as are not too old to remember the feelings of fifteen, when the impetuosity of young emotion, unable as yet to vent itself in deeds or thought, prompts