CHAMBERS'S SUPPLEMENTARY READER No. 4. LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. SELECT POETRY OF SCOTT. ANECDOTES OF THE CAT AND THE RAT. A TALE OF NORFOLK ISLAND, AND OTHER (Selected from Miscellany of Instructive and Entertaining Tracts) ALTER SCOTT derived his origin from a family which was conspicuous in the rude and warlike times of the Scottish Border; but his father, as befitted a peaceable age, had devoted himself to legal business in Edinburgh: he was what is called in Scotland a writer to the signet, or practitioner of the highest grade, next to the barristers. The mother of the novelist was daughter to an eminent medical professor of the Edinburgh University, Dr Rutherford. Simple worth and good manners alone distinguished this couple, whose lot it was to have six children that survived infancy, of whom the subject of No. 73. I this notice was the third. He was born in Edinburgh on the 15th August 1771. A fever in infancy being attended with an effect fatal to the use of his right limb, he was sent to be brought up at the farm-house of his paternal grandfather, that free exercise in the open air might have a chance of working his cure by the recovery of the constitution. This new situation was romantic. Five or six miles from Kelso, and overlooking the course of the Tweed, is a little upland district, where the rocks push through a meagre soil, the highest being crowned by one of those tall narrow fortalices, once required by a warlike population on the Borders, but now almost all dismantled. Here was placed the retreat of the future poet. Decent and venerable relatives around the old-fashioned fireside-the affairs of a pastoral farm out of doors—an extensive tract of beautiful country presented to the eye, and the rocks and turrets of Smailholm Tower to ramble amongst-it was upon these things that the mind of Scott awoke from the sleep of infancy. For a long time he could at the most crawl about the house and its neighbourhood; but the intellect was early active. He listened with deep interest to the stories which his relatives had to tell of the old riding times of the Border history, as well as to their recollections of the romantic war of 1745; and, learning to read beside the knee of a kind aunt, he quickly seized upon such specimens of poetry and history as were within his reach-Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, to wit, and Josephus's Wars of the Jews. A visit to Bath, under the charge of his aunt, proved of no avail in healing the lameness, which, however, gradually gave way in the course of years, so as to terminate in only such a shortening of the limb as was remediable by the use of a walking-cane. The early schooling of Scott was rendered irregular by his bad health; yet he was fitted at seven years to commence the study of Latin in the High School of his native city. He did not distinguish himself as a scholar, yet often surprised his instructors by the miscellaneous knowledge which he possessed, and now and then was acknowledged to display a sense of the beauties of the Latin authors such as is seldom seen in boys. In the rough amusements which went on out of school, his spirit enabled him to take a leading share, notwithstanding his lameness. He would help to man the Cowgate Port in a snow-ball match, and pass the Kittle Nine Steps on the Castle Rock with the best of them. In the winter evenings, when out-of-door exercise was not attractive, he would gather his companions round him at the fireside, and entertain them with stories, real and imaginary, of which he seemed to have an endless store. Unluckily, his classical studies, neglected as they comparatively were, experienced an interruption from bad health, just as he was He was sent beginning to acquire some sense of their value. to live with his aunt at Kelso, that he might recover strength. There, indeed, he gave some attendance at a school kept by one Whale (where he first met with his future friend, Mr James Ballantyne); but this did not compensate the break of his High School course. It would, nevertheless, be difficult to say whether Scott was the worse or the better of the interruptions he experienced in school learning. He lost a certain kind of knowledge, it is true, but he gained another. The vacant time at his disposal he gave to general reading. History, travels, poetry, and prose fiction he devoured without discrimination, unless it were that he preferred imaginative literature to every other; and of all imaginative writers, was fondest of such as Spenser, whose knights and ladies, and dragons and giants, he was never tired of contemplating. Any passage of a favourite poet which pleased him particularly was sure to remain on his memory, and thus he was able to astonish his friends with his poetical recitations. At the same time, he admits that solidly useful matters had a poor chance of being remembered. His sober-minded parents and other friends regarded these acquirements without pride or satisfaction; they marvelled at the thirst for reading and the powers of memory, but thought it all to little good purpose, and only excused it in consideration of the infirm health of the young prodigy. Scott himself lived to lament the indifference he shewed to that regular mental discipline which is to be acquired at school. He says: 'It is with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of study which I neglected in my youth; through every part of my literary career, I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance; and I would at this moment give half the reputation I have had the good-fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could rest the remaining part upon a solid foundation of learning and science.' This acknowledgment refers more particularly to his subsequent career at the Edinburgh University, where, in the Latin class, he only lost what he had formerly acquired; while in the Greek he became stubborn, and refused to learn, so that the professor finally pronounced him a dunce; and he actually failed to impress even the letters of the alphabet upon his memory. The bursting of a blood-vessel in the lower bowels now laid him once more aside from even the appearance of learning, and he was again left to pursue his own course, first in his sick-chamber in his father's house, and afterwards at his uncle's residence at Kelso. He probably little lamented an illness which enabled him to cultivate still more deeply the society of the poets and romance-writers. Regaining strength, he was, in his fifteenth year, indentured as an apprentice to his father, who wished him to be his own successor in business. Respect for his parents and for the common duties of life, was always a strong feeling in Scott; he therefore applied himself without a murmur to the desk in his father's office, though he acknowledges that the recess beneath was generally stuffed with his favourite books, from which, at intervals, he would 'snatch a fearful joy.' He even made |