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those who sought the higher qualities find them in Wordsworth; but Scott also, with his vigour of invention and his masculine sense of flowing style, took a prominent and honourable part in the reformation of English poetry.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was one of the twelve children of Mr. Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet, and of Anne Rutherford his wife. Six died in infancy, and he was the fourth of the survivors. He was born on the 15th of August 1771,

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Abbotsford, Scott's residence from 1811 to his death in 1832

in a house at the head of the College Wynd in Edinburgh. He showed, he tells us, every sign of health and strength until he was about eighteen months old, when, as the result of a fever, he lost for life all power in his right leg. He was taken into the country, where he was placed under the care of a nurse, who afterwards proved to be a lunatic, and who, just in time to be prevented, confessed an intention to cut the child's throat with her scissors and bury him in the moss on the Craigs. He was early instructed in literature by his aunt, Mrs. Janet Scott, who encouraged the romantic bent of his temper. In 1778 Scott was sent to the High School of Edinburgh, without brilliant results: "I was never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but an incorrigibly idle imp, who was always longing to something else than what was enjoined him." As he grew fast, his health became delicate, and after leaving school, before proceeding to college, it was thought well

that he should spend half a year in his aunt's house at Kelso. To this episode Scott attributed the awakening in his soul of an appreciation of natural beauty, "especially when combined with ancient ruins." For some months of 1782-83

he was taught at the grammar-school of Kelso. On the lad's return to Edinburgh he began to throw himself with great ardour into the study of the romantic literature of Europe, especially Italian. It was in the midst of these emotions, in 1786, that Scott, a boy of fifteen, saw Burns at the height of his renown. At this time Scott had left college, and had entered into indentures with his father with a view

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to becoming a Writer to the Signet. He disliked the drudgery, although he worked hard at the business out of pride in and love for his father, but in the spring of 1788 he broke a blood-vessel, and a lengthy illness was the result. From this, strange to say, he rose to health far more robust than he had ever before enjoyed, tall, muscular, and active both on foot and on horseback. About this time Scott began to "take his ground" in society; he displayed an ardour, a flow of agreeable spirits, and an acute perception which rendered him noticeably welcome in any company. From 1789 to 1792 he studied assiduously for the Bar, and these were "the only years of his life which he applied to learning with stern, steady, and undeviating industry." He passed his examinations in Civil Law in June 1791, and in Scots Law in July 1792, and a week later assumed the gown of a barrister. Walter Scott was now, as the Duchess of Sutherland said, "a comely creature,"

remarkably vigorous, but never clumsy, in form and movement, brilliant in colour and complexion. He fell in love with Miss Williamina Belches of Invermay, whom he courted for several years, but without success, for she became Lady Forbes of Pitsligo. In the autumn of 1792 Scott made his earliest study of the wild country of the Border, and in the following year he explored, in the spirit of a romantic antiquarian, great part of the central portion of Scotland. In 1796 he translated Bürger's Lenore, and published this anonymously with one or two other fragments of the new German poetry in a thin quarto; this was Scott's first appearance in

Scott's Study at Abbotsford

print. He was now attracted to a young French lady of great beauty, Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter (or rather Charpentier), whom he married in December 1797, after a very brief courtship. The young couple settled in Edinburgh, at lodgings in George Street, until the house he had taken in South Castle Street was ready for them; a few months later he supplemented this by a cottage six miles out of the city, at Lasswade. Under the influence of "Monk" Lewis, Scott began imitating and translating more busily from the German, and in 1799 he published a version of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen. He now began the serious composition of English verse, and he formed, or reopened, a friendship with James Ballantyne, the printer of Kelso, which was destined to lead to great results. At the end of this year, 1799, Scott was appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire, an office which brought him into close relations with a romantic part of Scotland to which his poetic atten

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tion had already been called. He began to contribute in 1803 to the Edinburgh Review, but his chief occupation now became the collection of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, of which three volumes appeared in 1802 and 1803. Scott was now fairly launched on the flood of his romantic work, and in the first days of 1805 the Lay of the Last Minstrel was brought out in London with a success so encouraging that Scott determined henceforth to make literature his principal profession. This determination became the more fixed as he saw his chances of success at the Scotch Bar to be very scanty, "for more than ten years he

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had persisted in surveying the floor of the Parliament House, without meeting with any employment but what would have suited the dullest drudge." He therefore quitted the law, and secretly entered into partnership with James Ballantyne as a printerpublisher. In this same eventful year, 1805, he began to write Waverley, although he soon dropped it. Ashestiel, a small house most romantically situated close to the Tweed, was now his home, and he had settled down with ardour into the life of an active country squire and sportsman. At Edinburgh he added to his emoluments by being Clerk of Session, a post which he held from 1806 to 1830. He was now engaged in editing Dryden, in writing Marmion, which appeared in 1808, in starting Ballantyne on vast schemes as a publisher, and in encouraging the foundation of the Quarterly Review. He then turned to the task of editing Swift, and completed an unfinished historical romance by Joseph Strutt (1749-1802), called Queenhoo Hall, which

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