Scott Sir Walter

Scott, Sir WALTER, was born on August 15th, 1771. The descendant of an old clan, he was early filled with reverence for the past, which was fostered by his mother's tales of bygone days. As a child, he developed a lameness which lasted through his life, but never interfered with his enjoyment of all kinds of exercise. "Always the more mischief the better sport for him," wrote a witness of one of his freaks in a boat; and his love of outdoor pursuits was increased by a hospitality which made him happiest when the centre of the largest party. His sympathy won the affection of all classes. "He was the only one," said Hogg, "I ever knew whom no man, either poor or rich, held at ill-will," and his kindliness, extending itself beyond his friends, constituted almost a personal tie between him and his horses and dogs. He was an ideal Scotch laird, and people wondered when he found time for his literary labours; yet in this profusion of enjoyment, his life was filled with hard and varied work.

During his education at Edinburgh High School, and at Kelso, he learned no Greek, but gained a knowledge of Latin, to which he added a study of Italian and Spanish. On leaving school he attended classes at the university of Edinburgh, and served an apprenticeship to his father, a writer to the signet. Five years of his youth were passed in love for Miss Stuart Belches, who married his friend Sir William Forbes, in 1796. In the following year he married Miss Charpentier or Carpenter, a lady of French descent, by whom he had four children, who all survived him for a short time. His practice at the bar, to which he had been called in 1792, was never great; but two years after his marriage he was made sheriff of Selkirkshire and in 1812 clerk of session. These appointments, together with his success in literature, enabled him to indulge his desire to possess an estate, He therefore purchased Abbotsford, where he spent much of his time and money in planting and building. In 1815 he refused the laureateship, which, at his request, was given to Southey. In 1818 the Prince Regent offered him a baronetcy, which he accepted, although he did not assume the title until 1820. Meamwhile his expenditure at Abbotsford, and his secret connection with the publishing and printing firms of the Ballantynes, were preparing a disaster. His partners became involved in the bankruptcy of Constable at the end of 1825, and Scott found himself confronted with a debt of £117,000. This he determined to pay with his pen, and in five years he actually reduced it to £54,000, by writing entirely for his creditors. In 1826 his wife died; in 1830 he had an attack of paralysis. His brain was affected, and in the following year he tried a journey to Italy, without success. He returned to Abbotsford, where he died on September 21, 1832.

His literary work began with a translation from Burger in 1796, and a translation of Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen in 1799, but his mark in his own department was made in 1802 with his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In 1805 The Lay of the Last Minstrel brought him immediate popularity. Marmion appeared in 1808, The Lady of the Lake in 1810, Rokeby and The Bridal of Triermain in 1813; and The Lord of the Isles in 1815. Meanwhile Scott had felt his inferiority to Byron in poetry, and had determined to try his powers in prose. He took up the first chapters of Waverley, which he had thrown aside some years before, completed the story in a few weeks, and published it in 1814. Its reception, in spite of the anonymity on which Scott insisted for all his novels, until the year 1827, was so favourable that it decided the author's future. The rest of the Waverley Novels followed in rapid succession right up to 1832, some of them published as separate stories, others as parts of the various series of Tales of my Landlord, and Chronicles of the Canongate. Scott, however, displayed his activity not only in poetry and fiction; he edited State papers, poured forth article after article, published biographies of Dryden (1808), and Swift (1814), with editions of their works, and brought out a life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1827). His Tales of a Grandfather appeared in three series in 1828, 1829, and 1830. The popularity gained by his first poem, and incresed by each subsequent work, has never been lessened. The influence of Scott has been marked in the development of romantic literature in England and France, while the glamour which he threw around the life of the Middle Ages admittedly contributed to the ecclesiastical movement caused by the Oxford Tracts for the Times. The secret of his power lies not in the subtle analysis of character, but, as he himself recognised, in the hurried frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active dispositions. With no deep spiritual message, he teaches a doctrine of broad, sound life, and, as one of his biographers has observed, he takes his readers out of the trivial interests of private society, and places them in the current of national feeling. It is not too much to say that he has transformed the past into a living present, and thus already has quickened the study of history for several generations.