BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

SIR WALTER SCOTT came of a family of Scotch gentle men. One of his ancestors, six generations before him, whose name also was Walter Scott, is celebrated in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel; " and his grandfather, Robert Scott, is described in the poetical introduction to "Mar mion," the third canto. Sir Walter's father, who was a successful solicitor in Edinburgh, was the first man “of the great riding and sporting and fighting clan to adopt a town life and a sedentary profession." It was in Edinburgh that Sir Walter, the ninth of twelve children, was born on August 15, 1771, precisely two years (as the date has usually been fixed) after the birth of Napoleon, whose life he wrote; a piece of literary work that was done for profit, that brought a large sum, and that has long ago been forgotten. Several more or less important dates in English literature fall near this time. During this very year, 1771, Gray died; the next year Coleridge was born and the year thereafter Goldsmith died. Dr. Johnson lived thirteen years after Scott's birth, and Byron was his contemporary, although he was seventeen years younger. The three great Scotchmen of our literature were alive at the same time, for a brief period; for Carlyle was born the year before Burns died, and Scott was then twenty-five years old.

In his early childhood, Scott was left lame by a fever which, as he said, rather disfigured than disabled him; for, in spite of his lameness, he became a very robust man, and he was exceedingly handsome. During the weakly period

of his childhood he was sent to his grandfather's, where he lived much in the open air and much alone. Since he was five years old, he once said, a troop of horse had been exercising in his head; and at a very early time he took the keenest delight in the ballads of border warfare — in all sorts of brave tales, indeed. He was thirteen when he first saw a copy of the collection of ballads called Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry." "I remember well the spot," he wrote many years afterwards, "where I read these volumes for the first time." He forgot the hour for dinner and "was sought for with anxiety." He stored them in his memory and was never tired of declaiming them, and he confesses that he never read any other book so frequently or with such enthusiasm.

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During his youth his studies were pursued somewhat irregularly. Late in life he read in a volume of anecdotes that he had been distinguished at school as an absolute dunce; and he wrote in a footnote to his autobiography, "I was never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but an incorrigibly idle imp who was always longing to do something else than what was enjoined him." But so far was he from idleness in fact that his feats of endurance, both in sport and in work, were extraordinary. He took such long tramps to visit historic places and scenes of legends in adjacent counties that his father once reproached him with being better fitted for a pedler than a lawyer. He sometimes did fourteen or fifteen hours' continuous work at copying law papers, without an interval for food or rest. No boy or man was ever more industrious. But the irregularity of some of his studies he afterwards deeply regretted.

He was trained to the law in his father's office and in the law classes at the University, and for fourteen years he was nominally a practitioner. But his fondness for

literature was so much greater than his liking for the law that he never gave himself very seriously to its practice, and he finally abandoned it. He began his literary career by translations from the German. It was not until 1802 that any considerable original work by him appeared, and that was "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," for which he had long been collecting material. This gave him at once a literary reputation.

In the meantime Scott had married in 1797, at the age of twenty-six — and had gone to live at a country place called Lasswade, about six miles from Edinburgh, where he took great joy in the country life. Later, he went to live. at Ashestiel, seven miles from Selkirk, having received the appointment as sheriff of Selkirkshire, a permanent post which brought an income of £300 a year. At Ashestiel, he was known as "the hardest worker and the heartiest player in the kingdom." Here he did the great work on which his fame as a poet rests. He rose at five; he was at his desk at six, with one of his dogs for companionship; and by breakfast he had "broken the neck of the day's work." After two or three hours more of writing, he was done for the day, and he was his "own man." Then came dinner, and by one o'clock he was on his horse. Thus he lived and worked and played eight years; and, besides a vast amount of other literary work, he produced his three great poems, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel " (1805), "Marmion" (1808), and "The Lady of the Lake" (1810). These gave him a well-established fame and a deal of money to boot.

"If there be anything good about my poetry or my prose either," he wrote afterwards, "it is a hurried frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors and young people of bold and active dispositions." Many pleasant stories are told that show how passages from hi‍ poems