Sir Walter Scott | Page 7

praise for his interpretation of the spirit of his authors than for his
knowledge of their language. Out of school his fame stood higher. He
extemporized innumerable stories to which his school-fellows
delighted to listen; and, in spite of his lameness, he was always in the
thick of the "bickers," or street fights with the boys of the town, and
renowned for his boldness in climbing the "kittle nine stanes" which are
"projected high in air from the precipitous black granite of the
Castle-rock." At home he was much bullied by his elder brother Robert,
a lively lad, not without some powers of verse-making, who went into
the navy, then in an unlucky moment passed into the merchant service
of the East India Company, and so lost the chance of distinguishing
himself in the great naval campaigns of Nelson. Perhaps Scott would
have been all the better for a sister a little closer to him than
Anne--sickly and fanciful--appears ever to have been. The masculine
side of life appears to predominate a little too much in his school and
college days, and he had such vast energy, vitality, and pride, that his
life at this time would have borne a little taming under the influence of
a sister thoroughly congenial to him. In relation to his studies he was
wilful, though not perhaps perverse. He steadily declined, for instance,
to learn Greek, though he mastered Latin pretty fairly. After a time
spent at the High School, Edinburgh, Scott was sent to a school at
Kelso, where his master made a friend and companion of him, and so
poured into him a certain amount of Latin scholarship which he would
never otherwise have obtained. I need hardly add that as a boy Scott
was, so far as a boy could be, a Tory--a worshipper of the past, and a
great Conservative of any remnant of the past which reformers wished
to get rid of. In the autobiographical fragment of 1808, he says, in
relation to these school-days, "I, with my head on fire for chivalry, was
a Cavalier; my friend was a Roundhead; I was a Tory, and he was a
Whig; I hated Presbyterians, and admired Montrose with his victorious
Highlanders; he liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the deep and politic

Argyle; so that we never wanted subjects of dispute, but our disputes
were always amicable." And he adds candidly enough: "In all these
tenets there was no real conviction on my part, arising out of
acquaintance with the views or principles of either party.... I took up
politics at that period, as King Charles II. did his religion, from an idea
that the Cavalier creed was the more gentlemanlike persuasion of the
two." And the uniformly amicable character of these controversies
between the young people, itself shows how much more they were
controversies of the imagination than of faith. I doubt whether Scott's
convictions on the issues of the Past were ever very much more decided
than they were during his boyhood; though undoubtedly he learned to
understand much more profoundly what was really held by the ablest
men on both sides of these disputed issues. The result, however, was, I
think, that while he entered better and better into both sides as life went
on, he never adopted either with any earnestness of conviction, being
content to admit, even to himself, that while his feelings leaned in one
direction, his reason pointed decidedly in the other; and holding that it
was hardly needful to identify himself positively with either. As
regarded the present, however, feeling always carried the day. Scott
was a Tory all his life.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Lockhart's Life of Scott, vi. 172-3. The edition referred to
is throughout the edition of 1839 in ten volumes.]
[Footnote 2: Lockhart's Life of Scott, x. 241.]
[Footnote 3: Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 243-4.]
[Footnote 4: Lockhart's Life of Scott, i. 128.]
CHAPTER II.
YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
As Scott grew up, entered the classes of the college, and began his legal
studies, first as apprentice to his father, and then in the law classes of

the University, he became noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic
memory,--the rich stores of romantic material with which it was
loaded,--his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose,--his
delight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises,--his great enjoyment
of youthful "rows," so long as they did not divide the knot of friends to
which he belonged, and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set.
During his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slender
allowance with funds which he could devote to his favourite studies,
was to earn money by copying, and he tells us himself that he
remembered writing "120 folio pages with no interval either for food or
rest,"