Sir Walter Scott | Page 5

had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for these animals, which it
had ever since retained." Being forgotten one day upon the knolls when
a thunderstorm came on, his aunt ran out to bring him in, and found
him shouting, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash of lightning. One of the
old servants at Sandy-Knowe spoke of the child long afterwards as "a
sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the house," and certainly
the miniature taken of him in his seventh year confirms the impression
thus given. It is sweet-tempered above everything, and only the long
upper lip and large mouth, derived from his ancestress, Meg Murray,
convey the promise of the power which was in him. Of course the high,
almost conical forehead, which gained him in his later days from his
comrades at the bar the name of "Old Peveril," in allusion to "the peak"
which they saw towering high above the heads of other men as he
approached, is not so much marked beneath the childish locks of this
miniature as it was in later life; and the massive, and, in repose,
certainly heavy face of his maturity, which conveyed the impression of
the great bulk of his character, is still quite invisible under the sunny
ripple of childish earnestness and gaiety. Scott's hair in childhood was

light chestnut, which turned to nut brown in youth. His eyebrows were
bushy, for we find mention made of them as a "pent-house." His eyes
were always light blue. They had in them a capacity, on the one hand,
for enthusiasm, sunny brightness, and even hare-brained humour, and
on the other for expressing determined resolve and kindly irony, which
gave great range of expression to the face. There are plenty of materials
for judging what sort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he
early taught himself to clamber about with an agility that few children
could have surpassed, and to sit his first pony--a little Shetland, not
bigger than a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the
house to be fed by him--even in gallops on very rough ground. He
became very early a declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy
Knute, he shouted it forth with such pertinacious enthusiasm that the
clergyman of his grandfather's parish complained that he "might as well
speak in a cannon's mouth as where that child was." At six years of age
Mrs. Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius of a boy,
she ever saw. "He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I
made him read on: it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion
rose with the storm. 'There's the mast gone,' says he; 'crash it goes; they
will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me, 'That is too
melancholy,' says he; 'I had better read you something more amusing.'"
And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "she
was a virtuoso like himself." "Dear Walter," says Aunt Jenny, "what is
a virtuoso?" "Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will know
everything." This last scene took place in his father's house in
Edinburgh; but Scott's life at Sandy-Knowe, including even the old
minister, Dr. Duncan, who so bitterly complained of the boy's
ballad-spouting, is painted for us, as everybody knows, in the picture of
his infancy given in the introduction to the third canto of Marmion:--
"It was a barren scene and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled:
But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And
well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And
honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. I deem'd
such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round survey'd; And
still I thought that shatter'd tower The mightiest work of human power;
And marvell'd as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitch'd my

mind, Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down from that strength
had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the
distant Cheviots blue, And, home returning, fill'd the hall With revel,
wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The
gateway's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seam'd with
scars, Glared through the window's rusty bars; And ever, by the winter
hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, Of lovers' slights, of ladies'
charms, Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms, Of patriot battles, won of
old By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of later fields of feud and
fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans, in
headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away. While, stretch'd at
length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o'er, Pebbles