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MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE
OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT
BART.
by
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
In Ten Volumes
VOLUME I
Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
MCMI
Copyright, 1901
by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
All Rights Reserved
Six Hundred Copies Printed
Number, 276
PUBLISHERS' NOTE {p.v}
Lockhart's _Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart._, which
divides with Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ the honor of leading all
lives of English men of letters, was first published in seven volumes
in 1837-1838. A second edition, with some corrections, some slight
revisions, and a few additions, mostly in the form of notes, was
published in 1839, and this has remained ever since the standard
edition. Later, in 1848, Lockhart prepared, at the request of the
publishers of that work, a condensation of his _magnum opus_, and took
that occasion to add a few facts bearing upon the _Life_ which had
occurred since the original publication, and a few comments which it
would not have been in good taste to make in the first instance.
Throughout his original work, Lockhart, with all his openness of
speech, yet refrained from certain personal references, the subjects
of which were too recent for remark, and he concealed many names under
the disguise of initials.
Since the edition of 1839 there have been many issues of this great
work on both sides of the Atlantic. As late as 1861, Messrs. Ticknor
and Fields, predecessors of the present publishers of the work, issued
an edition in nine volumes, and took occasion to insert some material
from Lockhart's abridgment. They prefaced the edition, which they
dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, with a brief sketch of Lockhart.
Neither {p.vi} these publishers nor any others, so far as we know,
have ever done more than reprint the original work, save for the
slight modification just mentioned. Meanwhile for the past sixty
years, and more especially during the past twenty years, a crowd of
books has been published throwing light on Lockhart's great subject.
Memoirs, reminiscences, editions of Scott's writings, literary
studies, articles in reviews and magazines have added materially to
our knowledge not only of Scott, but of many others of the personages
who throng the chapters of Lockhart's work. Lockhart himself has been
made the subject of a generous biography, and it would seem as though,
lasting as is the fame of the _Life_, its necessary silences were
becoming every year more conspicuous.
Accordingly, the present publishers resolved to issue an edition which
should repair the damage which Time had wrought, and they entrusted
the editing to Miss Susan M. Francis, who through her long conversance
with the original work, and her familiarity with the literature which
has grown up about Scott, as well as her knowledge of the more or less
obscure sources of information, was peculiarly competent not only to
do the service of Old Mortality, but to set in order the inscriptions
still to be added to the stones of Scott's associates.
The principle upon which Lockhart's Scott is now edited may be stated
in very few words. The original work is reprinted without change,
except that initials have been extended to full names in a great many
instances, obvious printers' errors corrected, and Scott's journals
revised to conform with the authoritative edition by Mr. David
Douglas. Then, the text has been annotated by fuller accounts of many
of the persons to whom Scott or Lockhart refer, and very many passages
have been expanded or {p.vii} illuminated by extracts from Scott's
letters and journals, and from a variety of books and articles bearing
upon the subject. In a number of instances the narrative of persons
who were living when Lockhart wrote has been carried forward to show
their after career. All the editor's work is indicated by its
enclosure in brackets. Lockhart's later notes are indicated by the
years 1839, 1845, and 1848, enclosed in parentheses.
In making this annotation recourse has been had first of all to the
editions of Scott's _Familiar Letters_ and _Journal_, so thoroughly
and admirably edited by Mr. David Douglas. No one who undertakes to
work at the life of Scott fails to confess a deep obligation to this
gentleman. Not only so, but Mr. Douglas has repeatedly come to the
editor's aid in settling those nice points which arise in any piece of
careful editing. His own notes when used always bear his initials at
the close. Lang's _Life and Letters of Lockhart_ has also been in
frequent use, and of general works _The Dictionary of National
Biography_ has been in constant demand. The more one uses it the more
one comes to value the accuracy of its statements, and the
thoroughness with which its subjects have been treated. Of the very
large number of memoirs and reminiscences consulted, mention may be
made of _Selections from the Manuscripts of Lady Louisa Stuart_, by
permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers, the American publishers of
the work; Mrs. Oliphant's _William Blackwood and his Sons_, and the
other two works on the great publishing houses, Smiles's _Memoir of
John Murray_ and _Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents_;
Carruthers's _Abbotsford Notanda_ and the _Catalogue of the Scott
Centenary Exhibition_ have been referred to, and the memoirs and
reminiscences connected with the names of Maria {p.viii} Edgeworth,
Washington Irving, Leslie, George Ticknor, Haydon, Byron, Moore,
Charles Mayne Young, Wordsworth, Crabbe, Lord Cockburn, Miss Ferrier,
Mrs. Kemble, and others; while for the later history of the Scott
family, the _Life of James Hope-Scott_ has been serviceable. The
attentive reader will readily understand that the editor has also gone
to numberless books and magazine articles for the proper confirmation
of petty facts and the assurance of accuracy.
To complete the worth of this edition, the publishers have taken pains
to illustrate it abundantly with portraits and other pictures, and to
obtain these they have gone as far as possible in every case to the
original sources. The result is a great English classic of abiding
value, faithfully reproduced, and so supplemented by editorial and
artistic labor as to be brought up to date in all essential
particulars.
4 PARK STREET, BOSTON.
Autumn, 1901.
TABLE OF CONTENTS {p.ix}
Page
Biographical Sketch of John Gibson Lockhart xiii
Lockhart's Preface xxxvii
Original Dedication xli
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT
Chap.
I. Memoir of the Early Life of Sir Walter Scott, written
by himself. 1
II. Illustrations of the Autobiographical Fragment. --
Edinburgh. -- Sandy-Knowe. -- Bath. -- Prestonpans.
1771-1778. 51
III. Illustrations of the Autobiography continued. -- High
School of Edinburgh. -- Residence at Kelso. 1778-1783. 78
IV. Illustrations of the Autobiography continued. --
Anecdotes of Scott's College Life. 1783-1786. 104
V. Illustrations continued. -- Scott's Apprenticeship to
his Father. -- Excursions to the Highlands, etc. --
Debating Societies. -- Early Correspondence, etc. --
Williamina Stuart. 1786-1790. 116
VI. Illustrations continued. -- Studies for the Bar. --
Excursion to Northumberland. -- Letter on Flodden
Field. -- Call to the Bar. 1790-1792. 149
VII. {p.x} First Expedition into Liddesdale. -- Study of
German. -- Political Trials, etc. -- Specimen of Law
Papers. -- Bürger's Lenore translated. -- Disappointment
in Love. 1792-1796. 169
VIII. Publication of Ballads after Bürger. -- Scott
Quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Horse. -- Excursion
to Cumberland. -- Gilsland Wells. -- Miss Carpenter. --
Marriage. 1796-1797. 227
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS {p.xi}
Page
WALTER SCOTT IN 1777 Frontispiece
From the miniature by Kay, in the Scottish National Portrait
Gallery, Edinburgh.
DR. ALEXANDER ADAM 28
From the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, R. A., in the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
WALTER SCOTT ("Beardie"), Great-grandfather of Sir Walter
Scott 60
After the painting at Abbotsford.
WALTER SCOTT, W. S., Father of Sir Walter Scott 66
After the painting at Abbotsford.
WILLIAMINA STUART 146
From the miniature by Richard Cosway, R. A. By permission
of the Century Co.
SCOTT'S FATHER'S HOUSE, 25 GEORGE'S SQUARE, EDINBURGH. 160
From a photograph.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH {p.xiii}
OF
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
John Gibson Lockhart was born in the manse of Cambusnethan, July 14,
1794. His father, the Rev. John Lockhart, was twice married, and of
the children of his first wife only one, William, the laird of
Milton-Lockhart, reached manhood. The second Mrs. Lockhart was
Elizabeth, the daughter of the Rev. John Gibson, minister of St.
Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, and that clergyman's namesake was her eldest
child. "Every Scottishman has his pedigree," says Scott in his
fragment of Autobiography, and there is no lack of interest in the
honorable one of his son-in-law, from the days of Simon Locard of the
Lee, in the county of Lanark, who was knighted by Robert the Bruce,
and after his king's death sailed with the good Lord James Douglas,
who was bearing his master's heart to the Holy Land,--the heart which
Locard rescued from the Moors, when Douglas fell fighting in Spain,
and brought back to Scotland with Lord James's body. Then the Locards
added to their armorial bearings a heart within a fetterlock, and took
the name of Lockhart. From Sir Stephen Lockhart of Cleghorn, a man of
note in the court of James III., was descended Robert Lockhart of
Birkhill, who fought for the Covenant, and led the Lanarkshire Whigs
at the battle of Bothwell Brig.
William {p.xiv} Lockhart, the Covenanter's grandson, married Violet
Inglis, the heiress of Corehouse. The Rev. John Lockhart was the
younger of their two sons. From his father Lockhart seems to have
inherited his scholarly tastes, while in person he appears to have
resembled his mother; to both he was always the most affectionate and
devoted of sons. His warmth of feeling, even in childhood, as well as
his constitutional reserve, is shown by his intense suffering at the
loss of a younger brother and sister, who died within a few days of
each other. He did not weep like the rest of the children, or show
other sign of emotion, but fell seriously ill, and was long in
recovering from the shock. From the first he was a delicate child, and
the removal of the family from country to town, when he was in his
second year, probably did not tend to strengthen him. Dr. Lockhart
became minister of the College Kirk in Glasgow, and his son in due
time entered the High School there. In after-years his schoolmates
remembered him as a very clever, but hardly a diligent boy. Though
frequently absent from illness (one of these childish maladies caused
the deafness in one ear from which he suffered), he always kept his
place at the head of his class. "He never seemed to learn anything
when the class was sitting down," wrote a fellow-pupil, "and on
returning after one of his illnesses, he of course went to the bottom,
but we had not been five minutes up when he began to take places, and
he invariably succeeded, sometimes before the class was dismissed at
noon, in getting to the top of it again."
In 1805, when he had but just entered his twelfth year, Lockhart
matriculated at the University of Glasgow. More than fifty years
later, two of his classmates wrote their recollections of the boy
student,--recollections vivid enough to show how strong an impression
he made on his companions. He still was somewhat delicate in health,
and {p.xv} kept a high position in his studies more from ability than
assiduity. A strong sense of the ludicrous, allied with a turn for
satire, was already one of his marked traits. At the close of the
session of 1805-6 a little incident shows the admiration felt for him
by some of his companions. He had been disappointed in not obtaining a
certain Latin prize, and several of his friends, sharing his feeling,
determined to present to him a testimonial. He was very fond of The
Lay of the Last Minstrel, then a new book, so the lads procured a
splendidly bound copy, and, at their suggestion, the Professor, at the
public distribution of prizes, gave the volume with warm commendations
to Johannes Lockhart, as a prize the students had themselves provided.
It was not till Lockhart joined the logic class (at the age of
thirteen), that he suddenly outstripped all his companions, whom he
later astonished by the amount of Greek which he _professed_ at the
Blackstone examination. It was thought a _profession_ of reasonable
amount "when a student intimated his willingness to translate and be
examined critically on Anacreon, two or three of Lucian's dialogues,
extracts from Epictetus, Bion, and Moschus, and perhaps a book or two
of Homer." "But," declares one of his former fellow-students,
"Lockhart professed the whole Iliad and Odyssey and I know not how
much besides." His brilliant success on this occasion led to his being
offered one of the Snell Exhibitions to Oxford,--an offer which was
accepted after some hesitation on account of his youth. He was not yet
fifteen, and still wore the round jacket of a schoolboy when he was
entered at Balliol College.
One of Lockhart's closest friends at Oxford and ever after, Mr. J. H.
Christie, describes the young student at this time: "Lockhart
immediately made his general talents felt by his tutor and his
companions. His most remarkable characteristic, however, was the
exuberant spirits {p.xvi} which found vent in constant flashes of
merriment brightened and pointed with wit and satire at once droll and
tormenting. Even a lecture-room was not exempt from these
irrepressible sallies; and our tutor, who was formal and wished to be
grave, but had not the gift of gravity, never felt safe in the
presence of his mercurial pupil. Lockhart with great readiness
comprehended the habits and tone of the new society in which he was
placed, and was not for a moment wanting in any of its requirements;
but this adaptive power never interfered with the marked individuality
of his own character and bearing. He was at once a favorite and
formidable. In those days he was an incessant caricaturist; his
papers, his books, and the walls of his rooms were crowded with
portraitures of his friends and himself--so like as to be
unmistakable, with an exaggeration of any peculiarity so droll and so
provoking as to make the picture anything but flattering to the
self-love of its subject. This propensity was so strong in him that I
was surprised when in after-life he repressed it at once and forever.
In the last thirty years of his life I do not think he ever drew a
caricature."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Quarterly Review_, vol. cxvi. p. 447.]
In these days Lockhart read not only Greek and Latin, but French,
Italian, and Spanish. German interested him later. At Balliol he
formed some friendships which ended only with life; no man was ever
truer to his early friends than he, and few have had friends more
loyal.[2] He {p.xvii} gained his first class in 1813--he was not yet
nineteen--and returned to his father's house in Glasgow, which he was
to leave two years later for Edinburgh, there to read law and begin
the literary work which was to prove the real business of his life. He
became acquainted with William Blackwood, who, when the young advocate
was about to visit Germany in the vacation of 1817, enabled him to
undertake the then toilsome and expensive journey by paying liberally,
not less than £300, it is said, for a translation to be made later.
Schlegel's Lectures on the History of Literature was the work Lockhart
selected, and of this incident Mr. Gleig says: "Though seldom
communicative on such subjects, he more than once alluded to the
circumstance in after-life, and always in the same terms. 'It was a
generous act on Ebony's part, and a bold one too; for he had only my
word for it that I had any acquaintance at all with the German
language!'" It was a generous act, and also one showing keen
perception on the part of the publisher. At this time began Lockhart's
intimacy with John Wilson, with whom he was so largely to share the
achievements, glorious and inglorious, of Mr. Blackwood's magazine in
its reckless youth. Unfortunately, the older and more experienced
writer was no safe guide for his brilliant but very young co-worker,
still with a boy's fondness for mischief and a dangerous wit, to which
the almost sublime self-complacency of the dominant Whig coteries
would offer abundant opportunities of exercise. Lockhart was not a
sinner above others, but in the end he was made something like the
scapegoat of all the offenders, whose misdeeds, occasionally serious
enough, are sometimes in view of the journalistic and critical
amenities then prevailing in {p.xviii} the organs of both parties
hardly so heinous as to account for the excitement that attended them.
[Footnote 2: To one of these friends, the Rev. George Robert
Gleig, Chaplain General of the Forces, we owe the only
authoritative account of Lockhart's early life. This is to be
found in the interesting article, the _Life of Lockhart_, in
the Quarterly Review for October, 1864. Like his friend, Mr.
Gleig was educated at Glasgow University, was a Snell
Scholar, and was an early contributor to _Blackwood_ and to
_Fraser_. Later he wrote for both the great Reviews. He was
long the last survivor of the early _Blackwood_ and _Fraser_
groups. He died in 1888, in his ninety-third year. The name
which stood next to Lockhart in the alphabetical arrangement
of the first class was that of Henry Hart Milman, his dear
friend in later life, and one of his most constant and valued
allies in the _Quarterly_. His correspondence with Milman
forms an interesting feature of Lang's _Life_.]
What Lockhart thought of these youthful literary escapades in his
sober and saddened middle age is shown in a letter written in 1838: "I
was a raw boy who had never before had the least connection with
politics or controversies of any kind, when, arriving in Edinburgh in
October, 1817, I found my friend John Wilson (ten years my senior)
busied in helping Blackwood out of a scrape he had got into with some
editors of his Magazine, and on Wilson's asking me to try my hand at
some squibberies in his aid, I sat down to do so with as little malice
as if the assigned subject had been the Court of Pekin. But the row in
Edinburgh, the lordly Whigs having considered persiflage as their own
fee-simple, was really so extravagant that when I think of it now the
whole story seems wildly incredible. Wilson and I were singled out to
bear the whole burden of sin, though there were abundance of other
criminals in the concern; and by and by, Wilson passing for being a
very eccentric fellow, and I for a cool one, even he was allowed to
get off comparatively scot-free, while I, by far the youngest and
least experienced of the set, and who alone had no personal grudges
against any of Blackwood's victims, remained under such an
accumulation of wrath and contumely as would have crushed me utterly,
unless for the buoyancy of extreme youth. I now think with deep
sadness of the pain my jokes and jibes inflicted on better men than
myself, and I can say that I have omitted in my mature years no
opportunity of trying to make reparation where I really had been the
offender. But I was not the doer of half the deeds set down to my
account, nor can I, in the face of much evidence printed and
unprinted, believe that, after all, our Ebony (as we used to call the
man and his book) had half so much to answer for as the more regular
artillery {p.xix} which the old Quarterly played incessantly, in
those days, on the same parties.... I believe the only individuals
whom Blackwood ever really and essentially injured were myself and
Wilson."[3]
[Footnote 3: Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, vol. i. pp. 128-130.]
In May, 1818, occurred the day, memorable to Lockhart, when he first
met Scott, who later invited him to visit Abbotsford. The meeting and
visit have been described by Lockhart, as he alone could do it; but he
does not tell how speedily he won the regard and confidence of the
elder writer, feelings that were constantly to grow warmer and
stronger as the years went on. Scott heartily welcomed Peter's Letters
to his Kinsfolk the next year, those clever, vivid, and apparently
harmless sketches of the Edinburgh of that day,--literary, artistic,
legal, clerical,--which caused an outcry not now to be understood. In
April, 1820, Lockhart and Sophia Scott were married,--a perfect
marriage in its mutual love and trust. How willingly Sir Walter gave
the daughter, so peculiarly dear to him, to the husband of her choice,
his letters to his intimate correspondents show; and how fortunate the
union was to be for him in its results, he seems almost to have
divined. It gave him not only the most affectionate and devoted of
sons,--such love was already his,--but also the most complete
comprehension and sympathy in his home circle. And all the rare
literary gifts which he so early discerned and so heartily admired in
his young friend, informed by delicate insight, loving knowledge, and
a keen intelligence, were to be employed to make him known to the
world, so that the great author should be loved even above his works.
In the next few years, spent at Edinburgh and at Chiefswood, years
that Lockhart was to remember as the happiest of his life, he did much
literary work, beside the occasional articles for Blackwood. Valerius
was published in {p.xx} 1821,--the story of a visitor from Britain
to Rome in the time of the persecution of the Christians under Trajan.
It is admirably well written, and reads exactly like what it professes
to be,--a translation from the Latin. "I am quite delighted with the
reality of your Romans," wrote Scott to the author. But the very
correctness of the studies makes them seem remote and cold to the
ordinary reader.[4] A little later, appeared by far the best of
Lockhart's novels, Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair,
Minister of the Gospel at Cross Meikle. A story of the temptation and
fall of a good man, which his father told one day after dinner,
suggested this tale, which is written with force and feeling, a
passion that is still glowing, and a pathos which can still move,
while there are both strength and delicacy of touch in the
character-drawing. Reginald Dalton was published in 1823, and was at
the time a decided success; but these somewhat exaggerated sketches of
Oxford life are now chiefly interesting for the glimpses of personal
experience to be found in the early chapters. Matthew Wald followed in
1824, and was the last novel written by Lockhart. Scott characterized
it succinctly as "full of power, but disagreeable, and ends vilely
ill," a kind of tale which had not yet become popular. There is power
in the description of an ever growing selfishness and unrestrained
passion ending in madness; but the story is ill constructed, and,
despite some vigorous and graphic passages, has not real vitality.
[Footnote 4: It has been said of _Valerius_, that it
"contains as much knowledge of its period, and that knowledge
as accurate, as would furnish out a long and elaborate German
treatise on a martyr and his time;" so that, whether the
report that reached its author, that the novel had been used
in Harvard College as a handbook, was correct or no, it would
scarcely have been a misuse of the book. It is certain that
it was speedily appropriated by an American publisher, and we
have a traditional knowledge of its having been much read and
admired in certain New England circles.]
Lockhart {p.xxi} edited a new edition of Don Quixote in 1822, and the
next year published his Ancient Spanish Ballads, most of which had
been previously printed in Blackwood's Magazine. This was the first of
his books to bear his name, which the volume, winning wide and
enduring success, made well known. Some competent critics have agreed
with Scott in regarding the translations as "much finer than the
originals," but, however this may be, there is no question whatever as
to the excellence of the ballads in their English form. They have
vigor and swiftness of movement, grace and picturesqueness, simplicity
and spontaneity. And there are exquisite lyrics amongst them, witness
The Wandering Knight's Song. Mr. Lang has made a few selections from
Lockhart's scattered verse in Blackwood as further illustrations of
his poetic gift,--a number of admirable stanzas (in the character of
Wastle) in the _ottava rima_ of Whistlecraft and Beppo (1819); the
best known of his comic poems, Captain Paton's Lament; and some lines
from a translation in hexameters of the twenty-fourth book of the
Iliad, that appeared as late as 1843, which must have sent more than
one reader to the magazine, and made them echo the biographer's words,
that "Lockhart had precisely the due qualifications for a translator,
in sympathy, poetic feeling, and severe yet genial taste, and could
have left a name for a popular, yet close and spirited version of the
Iliad," had he not, after this single anonymous publication, abandoned
his half-formed project. As one of his friends wrote with great truth,
"Lockhart was guilty of injustice to his own surpassing powers. With
all his passion for letters, with all the ambition for literary fame
which burnt in his youthful mind, there was still his shyness,
fastidiousness, reserve. No doubt he might have taken a higher place
as a poet than by the Spanish Ballads, as a writer of fiction than by
his novels. These seem {p.xxii} to have been thrown off by a sudden
uncontrollable impulse to relieve the mind of its fulness, rather than
as works of finished art or mature study. They were the flashes of a
genius which would not be suppressed; no one esteemed them more humbly
than Lockhart, or, having once cast them on the world, thought less of
their fame."[5]
[Footnote 5: From the interesting obituary notice in the
_London Times_ for December 9, 1854, supposed to have been
written by Dean Milman and Lady Eastlake.]
The early years of Lockhart's married life were so intimately
connected with the life of Scott as to need no chronicle here. The
young advocate, with many of the qualities essential to the making of
a great lawyer, lacked one most needful to his branch of the
profession, facility as a public speaker; his extreme shyness would
account for this. As he said at the farewell dinner given to him by
his friends in Edinburgh: "You know as well as I, that if I had ever
been able to make a speech, there would have been no cause for our
present meeting." So literature had become more and more his
occupation,--it became entirely so when, in the autumn of 1826, he
accepted the editorship of the Quarterly Review,--a very responsible
and distinguished post for so young a man, when the position of the
Review at that time, in politics, literature, and society, is
considered. Such newspapers as were in a few years to become powerful
in the world of cultivated (and respectable) readers were as yet,
relatively speaking, in an undeveloped state. Editor of the Quarterly,
he was to remain, till hopelessly impaired health brought an end to
his labors, nearly twenty-eight years later. During these years he
contributed more than a hundred articles to the Review, on the
greatest possible variety of topics,--he could write on everything,
from poetry to dry-rot, it was said. He was that rare thing in our
race, a born critic; but he did not use the {p.xxiii} work
criticised as a text for a discourse of his own; but of deliberate
choice, it would seem, kept closely to his author. So, many of his
papers are simply admirable reviews written for the day, not essays
for future readers. But, as one turns the pages of the Quarterly, how
alive some of the most transient of these articles seem, in comparison
with the often excellent matter in which they are embedded! The clear,
forcible style, the keen wit, the thorough workmanship, are never
wanting. As would be expected, there is permanent interest in the
biographical studies; of these, one of the most interesting and
impressive was fortunately republished in another form.
As a biographer this variously accomplished man of letters was to show
a gift that can almost be called unique. His Life of Burns, published
in 1828, was written when the Scotland of the poet was still known to
all his mature countrymen, though it was too early for the
thoroughgoing scrutiny into every detail of his history practised by
later writers; but, setting that consideration aside, the sympathy,
intelligence, good taste, fairness, and above all, the sanity of the
work, to say nothing of its admirable literary quality, have given it
a position by itself, which it is not likely to lose. This memoir is
not an over-large book, but the Life of Theodore Hook--a reprint of a
Quarterly Review article written in 1843--is one of the smallest of
volumes, yet it is written with so fine an art, the presentment of its
subject, if rapidly sketched, is so vivid, that the reader feels no
sense either of crowded incidents or large omissions; with this
biographer the story is of perfect proportion, whether it fills seven
volumes or one, or does not extend beyond the limits of a _brochure_.
Nothing Lockhart did was ever in the smallest degree slovenly or
careless, but his admirable workmanship is specially evident in the
Life of Scott. The skill is masterly with which the immense mass of
material has been {p.xxiv} handled, making letters, diaries,
extracts, and narrative one harmonious whole, with never an occasional
roughness to cause the ordinary reader fully to realize the smoothness
of the road he is traversing. The absolute modesty and freedom from
self-consciousness of the author--the editor, he calls himself--in
telling a tale of which for a number of years he formed a part, is as
striking as it is rare. He is one of the actors in a great drama; if
it be necessary now and then that he should come to the front, he does
it simply and naturally--that is all. Always and everywhere the hero
is the central figure to whose full presentation all else is
subsidiary. There is no need to speak of the faultlessness of the
style, or of the deep but always manly feeling with which the more
intimate details of the story are told; effusiveness or sentimentality
was as alien to Lockhart as to Scott, and for these reasons no
familiarity or change in literary fashions can make the matchless
closing pages less moving; they are of the things that remain.
In January, 1837, Lockhart wrote a letter to William Laidlaw, of
singular autobiographic interest. After thanking his friend for a
letter and a present of ptarmigan, "both welcome as remembrances of
Scotland and old days," he says:--
"The account you give of your situation at present is, considering how
the world wags, not unsatisfactory. Would it were possible to find
myself placed in something of a similar locality, and with the means
of enjoying the country by day and my books at night, without the
necessity of dividing most of my time between labors of the desk--mere
drudge labors mostly--and the harassing turmoil of worldly society,
for which I never had much, and nowadays have rarely indeed any
relish! But my wife and children bind me to the bit, and I am well
pleased with the fetters. Walter is now a tall and very handsome
{p.xxv} boy of nearly eleven years; Charlotte a very winsome gypsy of
nine,--both intelligent in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all
possible spoiling, as simple, natural and unselfish as if they had
been bred on a hillside and in a family of twelve. Sophia is your old
friend,--fat, fair, and by and by to be forty, which I now am, and
over, God bless the mark! but though I think I am wiser, at least more
sober, neither richer nor more likely to be rich than I was in the
days of Chiefswood and Kaeside,--after all, our best days, I still
believe."
He goes on to say that he has quite forsworn politics, over which he
and his correspondent used sometimes to dispute, and has satisfied
himself "that the age of Toryism is by forever." He remains "a very
tranquil and indifferent observer."
"Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to passing affairs has
arisen from the call which has been made on me to live in the past,
bestowing for so many months all the time I could command, and all the
care I have really any heart in, upon the manuscript remains of our
dear friend. I am glad that Cadell and the few others who have seen
what I have done with these are pleased, but I assure you none of them
can think more lightly of my own part in the matter than I do myself.
My sole object is to do him justice, or rather to let him do himself
justice, by so contriving it that he shall be as far as possible, from
first to last, his own historiographer; and I have therefore willingly
expended the time that would have sufficed for writing a dozen books
on what will be no more than the compilation of one. A stern sense of
duty--that kind of sense of it which is combined with the feeling of
his actual presence in a serene state of elevation above all
terrestrial and temporary views--will induce me to touch the few
darker points in his life and character as freely as the others which
were so predominant; and my {p.xxvi} chief anxiety on the appearance
of the book will be, not to hear what is said by the world, but what
is thought by you and the few others who can really compare the
representation as a whole with the facts of the case. I shall,
therefore, desire Cadell to send you the volumes as they are printed,
though long before publication, in the confidence that they will be
kept sacred, while unpublished, to yourself and your own household;
and if you can give me encouragement on seeing the first and second,
now I think nearly out of the printer's hands, it will be very
serviceable to me in the completion of the others. I have waived all
my own notions as to the manner of publication, and so forth, in
deference to the bookseller, who is still so largely our creditor,
and, I am grieved to add, will probably continue to be so for many
years to come.
"Your letters of the closing period I wish you would send to me; and
of these I am sure some use, and some good use, may be made, as of
those addressed to myself at the same time, which all, however
melancholy to compare with those of the better day, have traces of the
man. Out of these confused and painful scraps I think I can contrive
to put together a picture that will be highly touching of a great mind
shattered, but never degraded, and always to the last noble, as his
heart continued pure and warm as long as it could beat."[6]
[Footnote 6: _Abbotsford Notanda_, pp. 190-193.]
A few weeks after this letter was written Mrs. Lockhart was seized
with an illness almost hopeless, it would seem, from the first. She
died May 17, and this bereavement overclouded the rest of her
husband's life, though, after a few months' retirement to
Milton-Lockhart, he returned to his usual occupations, more devoted
than ever to his children, their happiness and well-being having
become the object of his life. Of his own rarely expressed feelings,
we get a glimpse in a letter to Milman written {p.xxvii} five years
later (October, 1842), after he had attended the funeral of the wife
of a friend. His correspondent at this time was mourning the loss of a
daughter. "I lived over the hour when you stood by me,--but indeed
such an hour is eternally present. After that in every picture of life
the central figure is replaced by a black blot; every train of thought
terminates in the same blank gulf. I see you have been allowing
yourself to dwell too near this dreary region. Escape it while the
wife of your youth is still by you; in her presence no grief should be
other than gentle."[7]
[Footnote 7: Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, vol. ii. p. 214.]
When the earlier volumes of the Life had been published, Lockhart
wrote to Haydon: "Your approbation of the Life of Scott is valuable,
and might well console me for all the abuse it has called forth, both
on him and me. I trusted to the substantial goodness and greatness of
the character, and thought I should only make it more effective in
portraiture by keeping in the few specks. I despise with my heels the
whole trickery of erecting an alabaster image, and calling that a
_Man_.... The work is now done, and I leave it to its fate. I had no
personal object to gratify except, indeed, that I wished and hoped to
please my poor wife." From a letter to Miss Edgeworth we learn that
Mrs. Lockhart, who had been her husband's secretary for years in the
preparation of the Memoirs, only lived to see, not to read, the first
volume.[8] It should be said here that the work was in every sense a
labor of love on Lockhart's part, as all the profits of the book went
towards the payment of Sir Walter's debt.
[Footnote 8: _Ibid._ pp. 181, 182.]
One of the friends of these years was Carlyle, who had first met
Lockhart at a Fraser dinner in 1831, and "rather liked the man, and
shall like to meet him again." Long afterward he was to write of him
as one "whom in the {p.xxviii} distance I esteemed more than perhaps
he ever knew. Seldom did I speak to him; but hardly ever without
learning and gaining something." Though the two men did not meet
often, Carlyle became warmly attached to Lockhart, and so much of
their correspondence as has been preserved forms one of the most
interesting chapters in Mr. Lang's biography. Some of the letters show
Carlyle in his best mood, and are peculiarly affectionate in tone. On
one occasion he writes to Lockhart, as though sure of his sympathy, in
a time of sorrow, and the reply, which came quickly, contains a part
of a poem which was written in one of Lockhart's diary books in June,
1841, and cannot be omitted from any sketch of his life:--
"When youthful faith has fled,
Of loving take thy leave;
Be constant to the dead,
The dead cannot deceive.
"Sweet, modest flowers of spring,
How fleet your balmy day!
And man's brief year can bring
No secondary May.
"No earthly burst again
Of gladness out of gloom;
Fond hope and vision vain,
Ungrateful to the tomb!
"But 't is an old belief,
That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief,
Dear friends will meet once more.
"Beyond the sphere of time,
And sin, and fate's control,
Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul.
"That creed I fain would keep,
That hope I'll not forego;
Eternal be the sleep,
Unless to waken so."[9]
[Footnote 9: "A few lines sent to him by a friend whom he
rarely saw, who is seldom mentioned in connection with his
history, yet who then and always was exceptionally dear to
him. The lines themselves were often on his lips to the end
of his own life, and will not be easily forgotten by any one
who reads them." Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_, vol. i. p. 249.]
Carlyle {p.xxix} earnestly urged that Lockhart's memoirs should be
written while his old friends were yet living. Had this been done, not
only would more of his letters have been preserved, to the gain of
readers, but some misapprehensions regarding him might not have
hardened into conventions.[10] When the Lockharts left Scotland, Sir
Walter wrote with much feeling to his good friend, Mrs. Hughes, soon
to become and to remain their good friend as well, regarding the
painfulness of the separation, adding: "I wish to bespeak your
affection for Lockhart. When you come to know him you will not want to
be solicited, for I know you will love and understand him, but he is
not easy to know or to be appreciated, as he so well deserves, at
first; he shrinks at a first touch, but take a good hard hammer (it
need not be a sledge one), break the shell, and the kernel will repay
you. Under a cold exterior, Lockhart conceals the warmest affections,
and where he once professes regard he never changes."[11] Long
afterwards, the son-in-law of Lockhart was to speak of the "depth
{p.xxx} and tenderness of feeling which he so often hid under an
almost fierce reserve." This reserve, largely the result of
constitutional shyness, was intensified by the sharp sorrows of his
later life. In truth, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has said: "Lockhart was
one of the men who are predestined to be generally misunderstood. He
was an intellectual aristocrat, fastidious and over-sensitive, with
very fine perceptions, but endowed with rather too hearty a scorn of
fools as well as of folly.... The shyness due to a sensitive nature,
was mistaken, as is so often the case, for supercilious pride, and the
unwillingness to wear his heart on his sleeve, for coldness and want
of sympathy. Such men have to be content with scanty appreciation from
the outside."[12] Fortunately, there were those, not a few, who did
not remain outside, and when any of these have written of their
friend, there is a singular agreement in their testimony. In every-day
matters, in the performance of his editorial or social duties, he was
unfailingly prompt, exact, and courteous. Never a rich man, nor ever
extravagant in his personal expenditures, he was a most generous
giver, especially to unfortunate members of his own craft. Inclined to
be somewhat silent in large companies, among his friends he was a
brilliant talker, though always a ready and willing listener. He
asserted a power over society, Mr. Gleig has noted, "which is not
generally conceded to men having only their personal merits to rely
upon. He was never the lion of a season, or of two seasons, or of
more. He kept his place to the last." Being a gentleman and a man of
sense, he neither over-valued nor under-valued the attractions of the
great world. Regarding one of his personal attributes, all who saw him
were of the same mind: his quite exceptional and very striking beauty
of face and distinction of bearing never failed to impress those
brought into contact {p.xxxi} with him ever so slightly, even in the
sad days when broken health and much sorrow had made him an old man
long before his time. A proud man, he was absolutely without vanity,
and had little tolerance for it in others; undoubtedly, some measure
of this quality would have made him a happier man, and one more
ambitious of literary success. Almost from his boyhood he could
greatly admire great work even while it was yet not only caviare to
the general, but under the condemnation of the critical arbiters of
the day. It was said of him, that as a critic, "high over every other
consideration predominated the love of letters. If any work of genius
appeared, Trojan or Tyrian, it was one to him--his kindred spirit was
kindled at once, his admiration and sympathy threw off all trammel. He
would resist rebuke, remonstrance, to do justice to the works of
political antagonists--that impartial homage was at once freely,
boldly, lavishly paid."
[Footnote 10: There were untruths as well; some of them so
grotesquely false as now to cause amusement rather than
anger. An article on Lockhart in _Temple Bar_ for June, 1895
(vol. cv. p. 175), touches on some of these legends, and
pleads for a memoir. Gratitude is due to the anonymous
writer, for he was, says Mr. Andrew Lang, "the onlie
begetter" of that gentleman's biography of Lockhart, which
gives so interesting a portrait of its subject, whom, it is
plain, the author has learned to love. It is a book written
with such sympathetic insight and genuine feeling, that it
should hereafter make Lockhart known as he was. Mr. Lang was
somewhat hampered (though not very seriously so) by an
occasional lack of material, including want of access to the
archives of the houses of Blackwood and Murray; but this is
partly set right by Mrs. Oliphant's admirable history of
_William Blackwood and His Sons_, which gives as graphic a
description of the early days of Maga and of Lockhart's
connection therewith, indeed of all his relations to the
magazine and its publishers, as could be desired.]
[Footnote 11: Scott's _Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 389.]
[Footnote 12: _Studies of a Biographer_, vol. ii. p. 1.]
"The love of children," wrote Mr. Christie, "was stronger in Lockhart
than I have ever known it in any other man. I never saw so happy a
father as he was with his first-born child in his arms. His first
sorrow was the breaking of the health of this child." There is no need
here to tell the pathetic story of that brief life; but the same
devoted love which had watched over it, was given in full measure to
the children who remained. Of the daughter, Mr. Gleig writes: "She was
the brightest, merriest, and most affectionate of creatures; and her
marriage, in 1847, to Mr. James Hope, met her father's entire
approval. He was satisfied that in giving her to Mr. Hope, he
entrusted his chief earthly treasure to a tender guardian, and strove,
in that reflection, to overshadow the thought that he must himself
henceforth be to her an object of secondary interest only. She never
voluntarily caused him one moment's pain. Nevertheless, it must not
be {p.xxxii} concealed that the secession of Mr. and Mrs. Hope-Scott
to the Roman Catholic faith greatly distressed Lockhart, although he
did full justice to the conscientious motives by which they were
actuated."[13] His attitude is best shown in the letter written to Mr.
Hope at this time, in which he says: "I had clung to the hope that you
would not finally quit the Church of England, but am not so
presumptuous as to say a word more on that step as respects yourself,
who have not certainly assumed so heavy a responsibility without much
study and reflection. As concerns others, I am thoroughly aware that
they may count upon any mitigation which the purest intentions and the
most generous and tender feelings on your part can bring. And I trust
that this, the only part of your conduct that has ever given me pain,
need not now, or ever, disturb the confidence in which it has been of
late a principal consolation for me to live with my son-in-law."[14]
[Footnote 13: _Quarterly Review_, vol. cxvi. p. 475.]
[Footnote 14: Ornsby's _Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott_, vol. ii
p. 138.]
Lockhart's letters show how well pleased he was with his daughter's
marriage, though it left him alone in his home. His diary says of
1847: "A year to me of very indifferent health and great anxieties.
Charlotte's marriage _the only good thing_." The beginning of the year
had been saddened by the death of his brother-in-law, Sir Walter
Scott; and the extravagance and waywardness of his son, now the laird
of Abbotsford, had already greatly distressed the father and were to
inflict more torturing anxiety and keener suffering as time went on.
Walter Lockhart, in his happy, healthy boyhood, did not show the
intellectual precocity of his elder brother; but he was a handsome,
intelligent, and winning lad, with no foreshadowing of the
recklessness of his later years. Mr. Lang, who can speak from
knowledge, says: "Could all be known and told, it is not too much to
say that Lockhart's fortitude {p.xxxiii} during these last years, so
black with affliction, bodily and mental, was not less admirable than
that of Sir Walter Scott himself. Thus, the trials from which we are
tempted to avert our eyes, really brought out the noblest manly
qualities of cheerful endurance, of gentle consideration for all, who,
being sorry for his sorrow, must be prevented from knowing how deep
and incurable were his wounds." And it should be said that in these
years Lockhart had to suffer that sharpest of griefs which happily Sir
Walter never knew.
Outwardly, Lockhart's life went on much as usual, save that constantly
failing health made editorial labors more fatiguing, and social
relaxations less and less frequent. But in his letters there is little
change; nothing could overcome "a kind of intellectual high spirits
when his pen was in his hand." His ill health is but slightly dwelt
upon, and only to his daughter is the ever present anxiety revealed.
At last came a ray of hope to the father's heart, a reconciliation,
and then Walter's sudden death. Sorely tried as it had been, the
father's love had never weakened; and after those inexpressibly sad
days at Versailles, recorded with such self-restraint in his letters
to his daughter, his health declined rapidly. On July 5, 1853, he
notes that his doctors agree that he must not attempt the next Review,
and a few days later, he writes, "I suppose my last number of the
Quarterly Review." He had never ceased to be an occasional contributor
to Blackwood; the pages in memory of its founder, which appeared in
October, 1834, were from his pen, and in those days he still took
pleasure in sometimes "making a Noctes." The annalist of the
Blackwoods has given the last note to the publisher, written very near
the end:--
"Dear B.,--If you think the enclosed worth a page, any time, they are
at the service of Maga, from her very old servant, now released from
all service, J. G. L."
That {p.xxxiv} service had lasted for more than the length of a
generation.
Dean Boyle, in his interesting notes on Lockhart in his later life,
recalls his remark: "If I had to write my Life of Scott over again,
now, I should say more about his religious opinions. Some people may
think passages in his novels conventional and commonplace, but he
hated cant, and every word he said came from his heart." Of Lockhart's
own religious opinions, Mr. Gleig writes: "A clergyman, with whom he
had lived in constant intimacy from his Oxford days [probably the
writer himself], was in the frequent habit, between 1851 and 1853, of
calling upon Lockhart in Sussex Place, and taking short walks with
him, especially in the afternoons of Sunday. With whatever topic their
colloquy might begin, it invariably fell off, so to speak, of its own
accord, into discussions upon the character and teachings of the
Saviour; upon the influence exercised by both over the opinions and
habits of mankind; upon the light thrown by them on man's future state
and present destiny; and the points both of similitude and its
opposite between the philosophy of Greece in its best days and the
religion of Christ. Lockhart was never so charming as in these
discussions. It was evident that the subject filled his whole mind,
for the views which he enunciated were large, and broad, and most
reverential--free at once from the bigoted dogmatism which passes
current in certain circles for religion ... and from the loose,
unmeaning jargon which is too often accepted as rational
Christianity."[15]
[Footnote 15: _Quarterly Review_, vol. cxvi. p. 475.]
Lockhart spent the autumn and winter of 1853-54 in Rome, seeking too
late for such amendment as rest and change might give. He was too ill
to take much pleasure in his sojourn there, but his bodily feebleness
did not dull his mental vigor, and it is characteristic that he at
once {p.xxxv} began to read Dante with Dr. Lucentini. He knew the
language well, but wished to master the difficulties of the great
poet, and so turned to the most accomplished of helpers, who naturally
found Lockhart a brilliant and acute pupil, the mention of whom ever
after roused the teacher to enthusiasm. No one, he declared, had ever
put him so on his mettle. The invalid wrote long letters, descriptive
of his Roman life, to his daughter, which show that he exerted himself
much beyond the little strength that remained to him, and in the
spring he gladly turned his face homeward. His resignation of his
editorship was now made absolute, and, with greatly diminished income
(his expenses in consequence of his son's follies had been heavy), he
prepared to leave the house which had been so long his, and seek some
new abiding-place. But his release was at hand. In August, he went to
Milton-Lockhart, to the kind care of his brother's household, always
writing as cheerfully as might be of himself to his daughter. "The
weather is delicious," he says in one of the last letters, "warm, very
warm, but a gentle breeze keeping the leaves in motion all about, and
the sun sheathed, as Wordsworth hath it, with a soft gray layer of
cloud. I am glad to fancy you all enjoying yourselves (I include sweet
M. M.) in this heavenly summer season. If people knew beforehand what
it is to lose health, and all that can't survive health, they would in
youth be what it is easy to preach; do you _try_? I fancy it costs
none of you very much effort either to be good or happy." In October
he went to Abbotsford, and it was at once seen that he was a dying
man. He had gone one day in "most heavenly weather," from
Milton-Lockhart to Douglas, where he had spent, in the old time, a
memorable summer day with the stricken Scott, of which he has left us
the record; and he now desired to be driven about to take leave of the
places on Tweedside, which then had been {p.xxxvi} a part of his
life. His little granddaughter was very dear to him in these last
days. It is still remembered, how, as he lay ill, he loved to hear her
running about the house. "It is life to me," he said. He died November
25, 1854, and was buried, as he had desired, in Dryburgh Abbey, "at
the feet of Sir Walter Scott."
PREFACE {p.xxxvii}
LONDON, December 20, 1836.
In obedience to the instructions of Sir Walter Scott's last will, I
had made some progress in a narrative of his personal history, before
there was discovered, in an old cabinet at Abbotsford, an
autobiographical fragment, composed by him in 1808--shortly after the
publication of his Marmion.
This fortunate accident rendered it necessary that I should altogether
remodel the work which I had commenced. The first chapter of the
following Memoirs consists of the Ashestiel fragment; which gives a
clear outline of his early life down to the period of his call to the
Bar--July, 1792. All the notes appended to this chapter are also by
himself. They are in a handwriting very different from the text, and
seem, from various circumstances, to have been added in 1826.
It appeared to me, however, that the author's modesty had prevented
him from telling the story of his youth with that fulness of detail
which would now satisfy the public. I have therefore recast my own
collections as to the period in question, and presented the substance
of them, in five succeeding chapters, as _illustrations_ of his too
brief autobiography. This procedure has been attended with many
obvious disadvantages; but I greatly preferred it to printing the
precious fragment in an Appendix.
I foresee that some readers may be apt to accuse me of trenching
{p.xxxviii} upon delicacy in certain details of the sixth and seventh
chapters in this volume. Though the circumstances there treated of had
no trivial influence on Sir Walter Scott's history and character, I
should have been inclined, for many reasons, to omit them; but the
choice was, in fact, not left to me,--for they had been mentioned, and
misrepresented, in various preceding sketches of the Life which I had
undertaken to illustrate. Such being the case, I considered it as my
duty to tell the story truly and intelligibly; but I trust I have
avoided unnecessary disclosures; and, after all, there was nothing to
disclose that could have attached blame to any of the parties
concerned.
For the copious materials which the friends of Sir Walter have placed
at my disposal I feel just gratitude. Several of them are named in the
course of the present volume; but I must take this opportunity of
expressing my sense of the deep obligations under which I have been
laid by the frank communications, in particular, of William Clerk,
Esq., of Eldin,--John Irving, Esq., W. S.,--Sir Adam Ferguson,--James
Skene, Esq., of Rubislaw,--Patrick Murray, Esq., of Simprim,--J. B. S.
Morritt, Esq., of Rokeby,--William Wordsworth, Esq.,--Robert Southey,
Esq., Poet Laureate,--Samuel Rogers, Esq.,--William Stewart Rose,
Esq.,--Sir Alexander Wood,--the Right Hon. the Lord Chief Commissioner
Adam,--the Right Hon. Sir William Rae, Bart.,--the late Right Hon. Sir
William Knighton, Bart.,--the Right Hon. J. W. Croker,--Lord
Jeffrey,--Sir Henry Halford, Bart., G. C. H.,--the late Major-General
Sir John Malcolm, G. C. B.,--Sir Francis Chantrey, R. A.,--Sir David
Wilkie, R. A.,--Thomas Thomson, Esq., P. C. S.,--Charles Kirkpatrick
Sharpe, Esq.,--William Scott, of Raeburn, Esq.,--John Scott, of Gala,
Esq.,--Alexander Pringle, of Whytbank, Esq., M. P.,--John Swinton,
{p.xxxix} of Inverleith-Place, Esq.,--John Richardson, Esq., of
Fludyer Street,--John Murray, Esq., of Albemarle Street,--Robert
Bruce, Esq., Sheriff of Argyle,--Robert Fergusson, Esq., M. D.,--G. P.
R. James, Esq.,--William Laidlaw, Esq.,--Robert Cadell, Esq.,--John
Elliot Shortreed, Esq.,--Allan Cunningham, Esq.,--Claud Russell,
Esq.,--James Clarkson, Esq., of Melrose,--the late James Ballantyne,
Esq.,--Joseph Train, Esq.,--Adolphus Ross, Esq., M. D.,--William
Allan, Esq., R. A.,--Charles Dumergue, Esq.,--Stephen Nicholson
Barber, Esq.,--James Slade, Esq.,--Mrs. Joanna Baillie,--Mrs. George
Ellis,--Mrs. Thomas Scott,--Mrs. Charles Carpenter,--Miss Russell of
Ashestiel,--Mrs. Sarah Nicholson,--Mrs. Duncan, Mertoun-Manse,--the
Right Hon. the Lady Polwarth, and her sons, Henry, Master of Polwarth,
the Hon. and Rev. William, and the Hon. Francis Scott.
I beg leave to acknowledge with equal thankfulness the courtesy of the
Rev. Dr. Harwood, Thomas White, Esq., Mrs. Thomson, and the Rev.
Richard Garnett, all of Lichfield, and the Rev. Thomas Henry White, of
Glasgow, in forwarding to me Sir Walter Scott's early letters to Miss
Seward: that of the Lord Seaford, in entrusting me with those
addressed to his late cousin, George Ellis, Esq.: and the kind
readiness with which whatever papers in their possession could be
serviceable to my undertaking were supplied by the Duke and Duchess of
Buccleuch, and the Lord Montagu;--the Duchess-Countess of Sutherland,
and the Lord Francis Egerton;--the Lord Viscount Sidmouth,--the Lord
Bishop of Llandaff,--the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart.,--the Lady
Louisa Stuart,--the Hon. Mrs. Warrender, and the Hon. Catharine
Arden,--Lady Davy,--Miss Edgeworth,--Mrs. Maclean Clephane, of
Torloisk,--Mrs. Hughes, of Uffington,--Mrs. Terry now (Richardson),--Mrs.
Bartley,--Sir George {p.xl} Mackenzie of Coul, Bart.,--the late Sir
Francis Freeling, Bart.,--Captain Sir Hugh Pigott, R. N.,--the late
Sir William Gell,--Sir Cuthbert Sharp,--the Very Rev. Principal
Baird,--the Rev. William Steven of Rotterdam,--the late Rev. James
Mitchell, of Wooler--Robert William Hay, Esq., lately Under Secretary
of State for the Colonial Department,--John Borthwick, of Crookstone,
Esq.,--John Cay, Esq., Sheriff of Linlithgow,--Captain Basil Hall, R.
N.,--Thomas Crofton Croker, Esq.,--Edward Cheney, Esq.,--Alexander
Young, Esq., of Harburn,--A. J. Valpy, Esq.,--James Maidment, Esq.,
Advocate,--the late Donald Gregory, Esq.,--Robert Johnston, Esq., of
Edinburgh,[16]--J. J. Masquerier, Esq., of Brighton,--Owen Rees, Esq.,
of Paternoster Row,[17]--William Miller, Esq., formerly of Albemarle
Street,--David Laing, Esq., of Edinburgh--and John Smith the Youngest,
Esq., of Glasgow.
J. G. LOCKHART.
[Footnote 16: Bailie Johnston died 4th April, 1838, in his
73d year.]
[Footnote 17: Mr. Rees retired from the house of Longman
and Co. at Midsummer, 1837, and died 5th September following,
in his 67th year.]
TO {p.xli}
JOHN BACON SAWREY MORRITT
OF ROKEBY PARK, Esq.
THESE MEMOIRS OF HIS FRIEND
ARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED
BY
THE AUTHOR
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE
OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT
CHAPTER I {p.001}
Memoir of the Early Life of Sir Walter Scott, Written by
Himself.
ASHESTIEL, April 26, 1808.
The present age has discovered a desire, or rather a rage, for
literary anecdote and private history, that may be well permitted to
alarm one who has engaged in a certain degree the attention of the
public. That I have had more than my own share of popularity, my
contemporaries will be as ready to admit as I am to confess that its
measure has exceeded not only my hopes, but my merits, and even
wishes. I may be therefore permitted, without an extraordinary degree
of vanity, to take the precaution of recording a few leading
circumstances (they do not merit the name of events) of a very quiet
and uniform life--that, should my literary reputation survive my
temporal existence, the public may know from good authority all that
they are entitled to know of an individual who has contributed to
their amusement.
From the lives of some poets a most important moral lesson may
doubtless be derived, and few sermons can be read with so much profit
as the Memoirs of Burns, of Chatterton, or of Savage. Were I conscious
of anything peculiar {p.002} in my own moral character which could
render such development necessary or useful, I would as readily
consent to it as I would bequeath my body to dissection, if the
operation could tend to point out the nature and the means of curing
any peculiar malady. But as my habits of thinking and acting, as well
as my rank in society, were fixed long before I had attained, or even
pretended to, any poetical reputation,[18] and as it produced, when
acquired, no remarkable change upon either, it is hardly to be
expected that much information can be derived from minutely
investigating frailties, follies, or vices, not very different in
number or degree from those of other men in my situation. As I have
not been blessed with the talents of Burns or Chatterton, I have been
happily exempted from the influence of their violent passions,
exasperated by the struggle of feelings which rose up against the
unjust decrees of fortune. Yet, although I cannot tell of difficulties
vanquished, and distance of rank annihilated by the strength of
genius, those who shall hereafter read this little Memoir may find in
it some hints to be improved, for the regulation of their own minds,
or the training those of others.
[Footnote 18: I do not mean to say that my success in
literature has not led me to mix familiarly in society much
above my birth and original pretensions, since I have been
readily received in the first circles in Britain. But there
is a certain intuitive knowledge of the world, to which most
well-educated Scotchmen are early trained, that prevents them
from being much dazzled by this species of elevation. A man
who to good nature adds the general rudiments of good
breeding, provided he rest contented with a simple and
unaffected manner of behaving and expressing himself, will
never be ridiculous in the best society, and so far as his
talents and information permit, may be an agreeable part of
the company. I have therefore never felt much elevated, nor
did I experience any violent change in situation, by the
passport which my poetical character afforded me into higher
company than my birth warranted.--(1826).]
Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a national prerogative as
unalienable as his pride and his poverty. My birth was neither
distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country,
it was esteemed _gentle_, {p.003} as I was connected, though
remotely, with ancient families both by my father's and mother's side.
My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, well known in Teviotdale by
the surname of _Beardie_. He was the second son of Walter Scott, first
Laird of Raeburn, who was third son of Sir William Scott, and the
grandson of Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition _Auld Watt_, of
Harden. I am therefore lineally descended from that ancient chieftain,
whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair
dame, the Flower of Yarrow--no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel.
_Beardie_, my great-grandfather aforesaid, derived his cognomen from a
venerable beard, which he wore unblemished by razor or scissors, in
token of his regret for the banished dynasty of Stuart. It would have
been well that his zeal had stopped there. But he took arms, and
intrigued in their cause, until he lost all he had in the world, and,
as I have heard, run a narrow risk of being hanged, had it not been
for the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth.
Beardie's elder brother, William Scott of Raeburn, my great-grand-uncle,
was killed about the age of twenty-one, in a duel with Pringle of
Crichton, grandfather of the present Mark Pringle of Clifton. They
fought with swords, as was the fashion of the time, in a field near
Selkirk, called from the catastrophe the _Raeburn Meadow-spot_.
Pringle fled from Scotland to Spain, and was long a captive and slave
in Barbary. _Beardie_ became, of course, _Tutor of Raeburn_, as the
old Scottish phrase called him--that is, guardian to his infant
nephew, father of the present Walter Scott of Raeburn. He also managed
the estates of Makerstoun, being nearly related to that family by his
mother, Isobel MacDougal. I suppose he had some allowance for his care
in either case, and subsisted upon that and the fortune which he had
by his wife, a Miss Campbell of Silvercraigs, in the west, through
which connection my father used to _call cousin_, as they say, with
{p.004} the Campbells of Blythswood. Beardie was a man of some
learning, and a friend of Dr. Pitcairn, to whom his politics probably
made him acceptable. They had a Tory or Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in
which the conversation is said to have been maintained in Latin. Old
Beardie died in a house, still standing, at the northeast entrance to
the Churchyard of Kelso, about ... [November 3, 1729.]
He left three sons. The eldest, Walter, had a family, of which any
that now remain have been long settled in America:--the male heirs are
long since extinct. The third was William, father of James Scott, well
known in India as one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales
Island:--he had, besides, a numerous family both of sons and
daughters, and died at Lasswade, in Mid-Lothian, about....
The second, Robert Scott, was my grandfather. He was originally bred
to the sea; but, being shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial voyage, he
took such a sincere dislike to that element, that he could not be
persuaded to a second attempt. This occasioned a quarrel between him
and his father, who left him to shift for himself. Robert was one of
those active spirits to whom this was no misfortune. He turned Whig
upon the spot, and fairly abjured his father's politics and his
learned poverty. His chief and relative, Mr. Scott of Harden, gave him
a lease of the farm of Sandy-Knowe, comprehending the rocks in the
centre of which Smailholm or Sandy-Knowe Tower is situated. He took
for his shepherd an old man called Hogg, who willingly lent him, out
of respect to his family, his whole savings, about £30, to stock the
new farm. With this sum, which it seems was at the time sufficient for
the purpose, the master and servant set off to purchase a stock of
sheep at Whitsun-Tryste, a fair held on a hill near Wooler in
Northumberland. The old shepherd went carefully from drove to drove,
till he found a _hirsel_ likely to answer their purpose, and {p.005}
then returned to tell his master to come up and conclude the bargain.
But what was his surprise to see him galloping a mettled hunter about
the racecourse, and to find he had expended the whole stock in this
extraordinary purchase!--Moses's bargain of green spectacles did not
strike more dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield's family than my
grandfather's rashness into the poor old shepherd. The thing, however,
was irretrievable, and they returned without the sheep. In the course
of a few days, however, my grandfather, who was one of the best
horsemen of his time, attended John Scott of Harden's hounds on this
same horse, and displayed him to such advantage that he sold him for
double the original price. The farm was now stocked in earnest; and
the rest of my grandfather's career was that of successful industry.
He was one of the first who were active in the cattle trade,
afterwards carried to such extent between the Highlands of Scotland
and the leading counties in England, and by his droving transactions
acquired a considerable sum of money. He was a man of middle stature,
extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in his temper, stubbornly
honest, and so distinguished for his skill in country matters that he
was the general referee in all points of dispute which occurred in the
neighborhood. His birth being admitted as _gentle_ gave him access to
the best society in the county, and his dexterity in country sports,
particularly hunting, made him an acceptable companion in the field as
well as at the table.[19]
[Footnote 19: The present Lord Haddington, and other
gentlemen conversant with the south country, remember my
grandfather well. He was a fine, alert figure, and wore a
jockey cap over his gray hair.--(1826.)]
Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe married, in 1728, Barbara Haliburton,
daughter of Thomas Haliburton of Newmains, an ancient and respectable
family in Berwickshire. Among other patrimonial possessions, they
enjoyed the part of Dryburgh, now the property of the Earl of Buchan,
comprehending the ruins of the Abbey. My {p.006} grand-uncle, Robert
Haliburton, having no male heirs, this estate, as well as the
representation of the family, would have devolved upon my father, and
indeed old Newmains had settled it upon him; but this was prevented by
the misfortunes of my grand-uncle, a weak, silly man, who engaged in
trade, for which he had neither stock nor talents, and became
bankrupt. The ancient patrimony was sold for a trifle (about £3000),
and my father, who might have purchased it with ease, was dissuaded by
my grandfather, who at that time believed a more advantageous purchase
might have been made of some lands which Raeburn thought of selling.
And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father's
maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching our bones where mine
may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own glances over these pages.
Walter Scott, my father, was born in 1729, and educated to the
profession of a Writer to the Signet. He was the eldest of a large
family, several of whom I shall have occasion to mention with a
tribute of sincere gratitude. My father was a singular instance of a
man rising to eminence in a profession for which nature had in some
degree unfitted him. He had indeed a turn for labor, and a pleasure in
analyzing the abstruse feudal doctrines connected with conveyancing,
which would probably have rendered him unrivalled in the line of a
special pleader, had there been such a profession in Scotland; but in
the actual business of the profession which he embraced, in that sharp
and intuitive perception which is necessary in driving bargains for
himself and others, in availing himself of the wants, necessities,
caprices, and follies of some, and guarding against the knavery and
malice of others, Uncle Toby himself could not have conducted himself
with more simplicity than my father. Most attorneys have been
suspected, more or less justly, of making their own fortune at the
expense of their clients--my father's fate was to vindicate his
calling from {p.007} the stain in one instance, for in many cases
his clients contrived to ease him of considerable sums. Many
worshipful and be-knighted names occur to my memory, who did him the
honor to run in his debt to the amount of thousands, and to pay him
with a lawsuit, or a commission of bankruptcy, as the case happened.
But they are gone to a different accounting, and it would be
ungenerous to visit their disgrace upon their descendants. My father
was wont also to give openings, to those who were pleased to take
them, to pick a quarrel with him. He had a zeal for his clients which
was almost ludicrous: far from coldly discharging the duties of his
employment towards them, he thought for them, felt for their honor as
for his own, and rather risked disobliging them than neglecting
anything to which he conceived their duty bound them. If there was an
old mother or aunt to be maintained, he was, I am afraid, too apt to
administer to their necessities from what the young heir had destined
exclusively to his pleasures. This ready discharge of obligations
which the Civilians tell us are only natural and not legal, did not, I
fear, recommend him to his employers. Yet his practice was, at one
period of his life, very extensive. He understood his business
theoretically, and was early introduced to it by a partnership with
George Chalmers, Writer to the Signet, under whom he had served his
apprenticeship.
His person and face were uncommonly handsome, with an expression of
sweetness of temper, which was not fallacious; his manners were rather
formal, but full of genuine kindness, especially when exercising the
duties of hospitality. His general habits were not only temperate, but
severely abstemious; but upon a festival occasion, there were few whom
a moderate glass of wine exhilarated to such a lively degree. His
religion, in which he was devoutly sincere, was Calvinism of the
strictest kind, and his favorite study related to church history. I
suspect the good old man was often engaged with Knox and
Spottiswoode's {p.008} folios, when, immured in his solitary room,
he was supposed to be immersed in professional researches. In his
political principles he was a steady friend to freedom, with a bias,
however, to the monarchical part of our constitution, which he
considered as peculiarly exposed to danger during the later years of
his life. He had much of ancient Scottish prejudice respecting the
forms of marriages, funerals, christenings, and so forth, and was
always vexed at any neglect of etiquette upon such occasions. As his
education had not been upon an enlarged plan, it could not be expected
that he should be an enlightened scholar, but he had not passed
through a busy life without observation; and his remarks upon times
and manners often exhibited strong traits of practical though untaught
philosophy. Let me conclude this sketch, which I am unconscious of
having overcharged, with a few lines written by the late Mrs.
Cockburn[20] upon the subject. They made one among a set of poetical
characters which were given as toasts among a few friends; and we must
hold them to contain a striking likeness, since the original was
recognized so soon as they were read aloud:--
"To a thing that's uncommon--
A youth of discretion,
Who, though vastly handsome,
Despises flirtation:
To the friend in affliction,
The heart of affection,
Who may hear the last trump
Without dread of detection."
[Footnote 20: Mrs. Cockburn (born Miss Rutherford of
Fairnalie) was the authoress of the beautiful song--
"I have seen the smiling
Of fortune beguiling."--(1826.)]
In [April, 1758] my father married Anne Rutherford, eldest daughter of
Dr. John Rutherford, professor of medicine in the University of
Edinburgh. He was one of those pupils of Boerhaave, to whom the school
of medicine in our northern metropolis owes its rise, and a man
distinguished {p.009} for professional talent, for lively wit, and
for literary acquirements. Dr. Rutherford was twice married. His first
wife, of whom my mother is the sole surviving child, was a daughter of
Sir John Swinton of Swinton, a family which produced many
distinguished warriors during the Middle Ages, and which, for
antiquity and honorable alliances, may rank with any in Britain. My
grandfather's second wife was Miss Mackay, by whom he had a second
family, of whom are now (1808) alive, Dr. Daniel Rutherford, professor
of botany in the University of Edinburgh, and Misses Janet and
Christian Rutherford, amiable and accomplished women.
My father and mother had a very numerous family, no fewer, I believe,
than twelve children, of whom many were highly promising, though only
five survived very early youth. My eldest brother (that is, the eldest
whom I remember to have seen) was Robert Scott, so called after my
uncle, of whom I shall have much to say hereafter. He was bred in the
King's service, under Admiral, then Captain William Dickson, and was
in most of Rodney's battles. His temper was bold and haughty, and to
me was often checkered with what I felt to be capricious tyranny. In
other respects I loved him much, for he had a strong turn for
literature, read poetry with taste and judgment, and composed verses
himself, which had gained him great applause among his messmates.
Witness the following elegy upon the supposed loss of the vessel,
composed the night before Rodney's celebrated battle of April the
12th, 1782. It alludes to the various amusements of his mess:--
"No more the geese shall cackle on the poop,
No more the bagpipe through the orlop sound,
No more the midshipmen, a jovial group,
Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round.
In death's dark road at anchor fast they stay,
Till Heaven's loud signal shall in thunder roar;
Then starting up, all hands shall quick obey,
Sheet home the topsail, and with speed unmoor."
Robert {p.010} sung agreeably--(a virtue which was never seen in
me)--understood the mechanical arts, and when in good humor, could
regale us with many a tale of bold adventure and narrow escapes. When
in bad humor, however, he gave us a practical taste of what was then
man-of-war's discipline, and kicked and cuffed without mercy. I have
often thought how he might have distinguished himself, had he
continued in the navy until the present times, so glorious for
nautical exploit. But the Peace of Paris [Versailles, 1783] cut off
all hopes of promotion for those who had not great interest; and some
disgust which his proud spirit had taken at harsh usage from a
superior officer, combined to throw poor Robert into the East India
Company's service, for which his habits were ill adapted. He made two
voyages to the East, and died a victim to the climate in....
John Scott, my second brother, is about three years older than me. He
addicted himself to the military service, and is now brevet-major in
the 73rd regiment.[21]
[Footnote 21: He was this year made major of the second
battalion, by the kind intercession of Mr. Canning at the War
Office--1809. He retired from the army, and kept house with
my mother. His health was totally broken, and he died, yet a
young man, on 8th May, 1816.--(1826.)]
I had an only sister, Anne Scott, who seemed to be from her cradle the
butt for mischance to shoot arrows at. Her childhood was marked by
perilous escapes from the most extraordinary accidents. Among others,
I remember an iron-railed door leading into the area in the centre of
George's Square being closed by the wind, while her fingers were
betwixt the hasp and staple. Her hand was thus locked in, and must
have been smashed to pieces, had not the bones of her fingers been
remarkably slight and thin. As it was, the hand was cruelly mangled.
On another occasion she was nearly drowned in a pond, or old quarry
hole, in what was then called Brown's Park, on the south side of the
square. But the most unfortunate accident, and which, though it
happened while she {p.011} was only six years old, proved the remote
cause of her death, was her cap accidentally taking fire. The child
was alone in the room, and before assistance could be obtained, her
head was dreadfully scorched. After a lingering and dangerous illness,
she recovered--but never to enjoy perfect health. The slightest cold
occasioned swellings in her face, and other indications of a delicate
constitution. At length, in [1801], poor Anne was taken ill, and died
after a very short interval. Her temper, like that of her brothers,
was peculiar, and in her, perhaps, it showed more odd, from the habits
of indulgence which her nervous illnesses had formed. But she was at
heart an affectionate and kind girl, neither void of talent nor of
feeling, though living in an ideal world which she had framed to
herself by the force of imagination. Anne was my junior by about a
year.
A year lower in the list was my brother Thomas Scott, who is still
alive.[22]
[Footnote 22: Poor Tom, a man of infinite humor and excellent
parts, pursued for some time my father's profession; but he
was unfortunate, from engaging in speculations respecting
farms and matters out of the line of his proper business. He
afterwards became paymaster of the 70th regiment, and died in
Canada. Tom married Elizabeth, a daughter of the family of
M'Culloch of Ardwell, an ancient Galwegian stock, by whom he
left a son, Walter Scott, now second lieutenant of engineers
in the East India Company's service, Bombay--and three
daughters; Jessie, married to Lieutenant-Colonel Huxley; 2.
Anne; 3. Eliza--the two last still unmarried.--(1826.)]
Last, and most unfortunate of our family, was my youngest brother,
Daniel. With the same aversion to labor, or rather, I should say, the
same determined indolence that marked us all, he had neither the
vivacity of intellect which supplies the want of diligence, nor the
pride which renders the most detested labor better than dependence or
contempt. His career was as unfortunate as might be augured from such
an unhappy combination; and after various unsuccessful attempts to
establish himself in life, he died on his return from the West Indies,
in [July, 1806].
Having {p.012} premised so much of my family, I return to my own
story. I was born, as I believe, on the 15th August, 1771, in a house
belonging to my father, at the head of the College Wynd. It was pulled
down, with others, to make room for the northern front of the new
College. I was an uncommonly healthy child, but had nearly died in
consequence of my first nurse being ill of a consumption, a
circumstance which she chose to conceal, though to do so was murder to
both herself and me. She went privately to consult Dr. Black, the
celebrated professor of chemistry, who put my father on his guard. The
woman was dismissed, and I was consigned to a healthy peasant, who is
still alive to boast of her _laddie_ being what she calls _a grand
gentleman_.[23] I showed every sign of health and strength until I was
about eighteen months old. One night, I have been often told, I showed
great reluctance to be caught and put to bed; and, after being chased
about the room, was apprehended, and consigned to my dormitory with
some difficulty. It was the last time I was to show such personal
agility. In the morning I was discovered to be affected with the fever
which often accompanies the cutting of large teeth. It held me three
days. On the fourth, when they went to bathe me as usual, they
discovered that I had lost the power of my right leg. My grandfather,
an excellent anatomist as well as physician, the late worthy Alexander
Wood, and many others of the most respectable of the faculty, were
consulted. There appeared to be no dislocation or sprain; blisters and
other topical remedies were applied in vain.[24] When the efforts of
regular physicians had been exhausted without the slightest success,
my anxious parents, during the course of many years, eagerly grasped
at every prospect of cure which was held out by the promise of
empirics, or of ancient ladies or gentlemen who {p.013} conceived
themselves entitled to recommend various remedies, some of which were
of a nature sufficiently singular. But the advice of my grandfather,
Dr. Rutherford, that I should be sent to reside in the country, to
give the chance of natural exertion, excited by free air and liberty,
was first resorted to; and before I have the recollection of the
slightest event, I was, agreeably to this friendly counsel, an inmate
in the farmhouse of Sandy-Knowe.
[Footnote 23: She died in 1810.--(1826.)]
[Footnote 24: [Regarding this illness, see a medical note by
Dr. Creighton to the article, "Scott," in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_.]]
An odd incident is worth recording. It seems my mother had sent a maid
to take charge of me, that I might be no inconvenience in the family.
But the damsel sent on that important mission had left her heart
behind her, in the keeping of some wild fellow, it is likely, who had
done and said more to her than he was like to make good. She became
extremely desirous to return to Edinburgh, and as my mother made a
point of her remaining where she was, she contracted a sort of hatred
at poor me, as the cause of her being detained at Sandy-Knowe. This
rose, I suppose, to a sort of delirious affection, for she confessed
to old Alison Wilson, the housekeeper, that she had carried me up to
the Craigs, meaning, under a strong temptation of the Devil, to cut my
throat with her scissors, and bury me in the moss. Alison instantly
took possession of my person, and took care that her confidant should
not be subject to any farther temptation so far as I was concerned.
She was dismissed, of course, and I have heard became afterwards a
lunatic.
It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal
grandfather, already mentioned, that I have the first consciousness of
existence; and I recollect distinctly that my situation and appearance
were a little whimsical. Among the odd remedies recurred to to aid my
lameness, some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was killed
for the use of the family, I should be stripped, and swathed up in the
skin, warm as it was flayed from the carcase {p.014} of the animal.
In this Tartar-like habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of
the little parlor in the farmhouse, while my grandfather, a venerable
old man with white hair, used every excitement to make me try to
crawl. I also distinctly remember the late Sir George MacDougal of
Makerstoun, father of the present Sir Henry Hay MacDougal, joining in
this kindly attempt. He was, God knows how,[25] a relation of ours,
and I still recollect him in his old-fashioned military habit (he had
been colonel of the Greys), with a small cocked hat, deeply laced, an
embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a light-colored coat, with
milk-white locks tied in a military fashion, kneeling on the ground
before me, and dragging his watch along the carpet to induce me to
follow it. The benevolent old soldier and the infant wrapped in his
sheepskin would have afforded an odd group to uninterested spectators.
This must have happened about my third year, for Sir George MacDougal
and my grandfather both died shortly after that period.
[Footnote 25: He was a second cousin of my grandfather's.
Isobel MacDougal, wife of Walter, the first Laird of Raeburn,
and mother of Walter Scott, called Beardie, was grand-aunt, I
take it, to the late Sir George MacDougal. There was always
great friendship between us and the Makerstoun family. It
singularly happened, that at the burial of the late Sir Henry
MacDougal, my cousin William Scott younger of Raeburn, and I
myself, were the nearest blood relations present, although
our connection was of so old a date, and ranked as
pall-bearers accordingly.--(1826.)]
My grandmother continued for some years to take charge of the farm,
assisted by my father's second brother, Mr. Thomas Scott, who resided
at Crailing, as factor or land steward for Mr. Scott of Danesfield,
then proprietor of that estate.[26] This was during the heat of the
American war, and I remember being as anxious on my uncle's weekly
visits (for we heard news at no other time) {p.015} to hear of the
defeat of Washington, as if I had had some deep and personal cause of
antipathy to him. I know not how this was combined with a very strong
prejudice in favor of the Stuart family, which I had originally
imbibed from the songs and tales of the Jacobites. This latter
political propensity was deeply confirmed by the stories told in my
hearing of the cruelties exercised in the executions at Carlisle, and
in the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden. One or two of our own
distant relations had fallen on that occasion, and I remember of
detesting the name of Cumberland with more than infant hatred. Mr.
Curle, farmer at Yetbyre, husband of one of my aunts, had been present
at their execution; and it was probably from him that I first heard
these tragic tales which made so great an impression on me. The local
information, which I conceive had some share in forming my future
taste and pursuits, I derived from the old songs and tales which then
formed the amusement of a retired country family. My grandmother, in
whose youth the old Border depredations were matter of recent
tradition, used to tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie
of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and other heroes--merry
men all, of the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood and Little John.
A more recent hero, but not of less note, was the celebrated _Diel of
Littledean_, whom she well remembered, as he had married her mother's
sister. Of this extraordinary person I learned many a story, grave and
gay, comic and warlike. Two or three old books which lay in the window
seat were explored for my amusement in the tedious winter days.
Automathes and Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany were my favorites,
although at a later period an odd volume of Josephus's Wars of the
Jews divided my partiality.
[Footnote 26: My uncle afterwards resided at Elliston, and
then took from Mr. Cornelius Elliot the estate of Woollee.
Finally he retired to Monklaw in the neighborhood of
Jedburgh, where he died, 1823, at the advanced age of ninety
years, and in full possession of his faculties. It was a fine
thing to hear him talk over the change of the country which
he had witnessed.--(1826.)]
My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose memory will
ever be dear to me, used to read these works to me with admirable
patience, until I could repeat long {p.016} passages by heart. The
ballad of Hardyknute I was early master of, to the great annoyance of
almost our only visitor, the worthy clergyman of the parish, Dr.
Duncan, who had not patience to have a sober chat interrupted by my
shouting forth this ditty. Methinks I now see his tall, thin,
emaciated figure, his legs cased in clasped gambadoes, and his face of
a length that would have rivalled the Knight of La Mancha's, and hear
him exclaiming, "One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as
where that child is." With this little acidity, which was natural to
him, he was a most excellent and benevolent man, a gentleman in every
feeling, and altogether different from those of his order who cringe
at the tables of the gentry, or domineer and riot at those of the
yeomanry. In his youth he had been chaplain in the family of Lord
Marchmont--had seen Pope--and could talk familiarly of many characters
who had survived the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Though valetudinary,
he lived to be nearly ninety, and to welcome to Scotland his son,
Colonel William Duncan, who, with the highest character for military
and civil merit, had made a considerable fortune in India. In [1795],
a few days before his death, I paid him a visit, to inquire after his
health. I found him emaciated to the last degree, wrapped in a tartan
night-gown, and employed with all the activity of health and youth in
correcting a history of the Revolution, which he intended should be
given to the public when he was no more. He read me several passages
with a voice naturally strong, and which the feelings of an author
then raised above the depression of age and declining health. I begged
him to spare this fatigue, which could not but injure his health. His
answer was remarkable. "I know," he said, "that I cannot survive a
fortnight--and what signifies an exertion that can at worst only
accelerate my death a few days?" I marvelled at the composure of this
reply, for his appearance sufficiently vouched the truth of his
prophecy, and rode home {p.017} to my uncle's (then my abode),
musing what there could be in the spirit of authorship that could
inspire its votaries with the courage of martyrs. He died within less
than the period he assigned--with which event I close my digression.
I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that the Bath
waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. My affectionate
aunt, although such a journey promised to a person of her retired
habits anything but pleasure or amusement, undertook as readily to
accompany me to the wells of Bladud as if she had expected all the
delight that ever the prospect of a watering-place held out to its
most impatient visitants. My health was by this time a good deal
confirmed by the country air, and the influence of that imperceptible
and unfatiguing exercise to which the good sense of my grandfather had
subjected me; for when the day was fine, I was usually carried out and
laid down beside the old shepherd, among the crags or rocks round
which he fed his sheep. The impatience of a child soon inclined me to
struggle with my infirmity, and I began by degrees to stand, to walk,
and to run. Although the limb affected was much shrunk and contracted,
my general health, which was of more importance, was much strengthened
by being frequently in the open air, and, in a word, I, who in a city
had probably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, was
now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy
child--_non sine diis animosus infans_.
We went to London by sea, and it may gratify the curiosity of minute
biographers to learn that our voyage was performed in the Duchess of
Buccleuch, Captain Beatson, master. At London we made a short stay,
and saw some of the common shows exhibited to strangers. When,
twenty-five years afterwards, I visited the Tower of London and
Westminster Abbey, I was astonished to find how accurate my
recollections of these celebrated places {p.018} of visitation
proved to be, and I have ever since trusted more implicitly to my
juvenile reminiscences. At Bath, where I lived about a year, I went
through all the usual discipline of the pump-room and baths, but I
believe without the least advantage to my lameness. During my
residence at Bath, I acquired the rudiments of reading at a
day-school, kept by an old dame near our lodgings, and I had never a
more regular teacher, although I think I did not attend her a quarter
of a year. An occasional lesson from my aunt supplied the rest.
Afterwards, when grown a big boy, I had a few lessons from Mr. Stalker
of Edinburgh, and finally from the Rev. Mr. Cleeve. But I never
acquired a just pronunciation, nor could I read with much propriety.
In other respects my residence at Bath is marked by very pleasing
recollections. The venerable John Home, author of Douglas, was then at
the watering-place, and paid much attention to my aunt and to me. His
wife, who has survived him, was then an invalid, and used to take the
air in her carriage on the Downs, when I was often invited to
accompany her. But the most delightful recollections of Bath are dated
after the arrival of my uncle, Captain Robert Scott, who introduced me
to all the little amusements which suited my age, and above all, to
the theatre. The play was As You Like It; and the witchery of the
whole scene is alive in my mind at this moment. I made, I believe,
noise more than enough, and remember being so much scandalized at the
quarrel between Orlando and his brother in the first scene, that I
screamed out, "A'n't they brothers?" A few weeks' residence at home
convinced me, who had till then been an only child in the house of my
grandfather, that a quarrel between brothers was a very natural event.
The other circumstances I recollect of my residence in Bath are but
trifling, yet I never recall them without a feeling of pleasure. The
beauties of the parade (which of them I know not), with the river Avon
winding around it, {p.019} and the lowing of the cattle from the
opposite hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only rivalled by
the splendors of a toy-shop somewhere near the Orange Grove. I had
acquired, I know not by what means, a kind of superstitious terror for
statuary of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Calvinist could
have looked on the outside of the Abbey church (if I mistake not, the
principal church at Bath is so called) with more horror than the image
of Jacob's Ladder, with all its angels, presented to my infant eye. My
uncle effectually combated my terrors, and formally introduced me to a
statue of Neptune, which perhaps still keeps guard at the side of the
Avon, where a pleasure boat crosses to Spring Gardens.
After being a year at Bath, I returned first to Edinburgh, and
afterwards for a season to Sandy-Knowe;--and thus the time whiled away
till about my eighth year, when it was thought sea bathing might be of
service to my lameness.
For this purpose, still under my aunt's protection, I remained some
weeks at Prestonpans, a circumstance not worth mentioning, excepting
to record my juvenile intimacy with an old military veteran, Dalgetty
by name, who had pitched his tent in that little village, after all
his campaigns, subsisting upon an ensign's half-pay, though called by
courtesy a Captain. As this old gentleman, who had been in all the
German wars, found very few to listen to his tales of military feats,
he formed a sort of alliance with me, and I used invariably to attend
him for the pleasure of hearing those communications. Sometimes our
conversation turned on the American war, which was then raging. It was
about the time of Burgoyne's unfortunate expedition, to which my
Captain and I augured different conclusions. Somebody had showed me a
map of North America, and, struck with the rugged appearance of the
country, and the quantity of lakes, I expressed some doubts on the
subject of the General's {p.020} arriving safely at the end of his
journey, which, were very indignantly refuted by the Captain. The news
of the Saratoga disaster, while it gave me a little triumph, rather
shook my intimacy with the veteran.[27]
[Footnote 27: Besides this veteran, I found another ally at
Prestonpans, in the person of George Constable, an old friend
of my father's, educated to the law, but retired upon his
independent property, and generally residing near Dundee. He
had many of those peculiarities of temper which long
afterwards I tried to develop in the character of Jonathan
Oldbuck. It is very odd, that though I am unconscious of
anything in which I strictly copied the _manners_ of my old
friend, the resemblance was nevertheless detected by George
Chalmers, Esq., solicitor, London, an old friend, both of my
father and Mr. Constable, and who affirmed to my late friend,
Lord Kinedder, that I must needs be the author of _The
Antiquary_, since he recognized the portrait of George
Constable. But my friend George was not so decided an enemy
to womankind as his representative Monkbarns. On the
contrary, I rather suspect that he had a _tendresse_ for my
Aunt Jenny, who even then was a most beautiful woman, though
somewhat advanced in life. To the close of her life, she had
the finest eyes and teeth I ever saw, and though she could be
sufficiently sharp when she had a mind, her general behavior
was genteel and ladylike. However this might be, I derived a
great deal of curious information from George Constable, both
at this early period, and afterwards. He was constantly
philandering about my aunt, and of course very kind to me. He
was the first person who told me about Falstaff and Hotspur,
and other characters in Shakespeare. What idea I annexed to
them I know not; but I must have annexed some, for I remember
quite well being interested on the subject. Indeed, I rather
suspect that children derive impulses of a powerful and
important kind in hearing things which they cannot entirely
comprehend; and therefore, that to write _down_ to children's
understanding is a mistake: set them on the scent, and let
them puzzle it out. To return to George Constable, I knew him
well at a much later period. He used always to dine at my
father's house of a Sunday, and was authorized to turn the
conversation out of the austere and Calvinistic tone, which
it usually maintained on that day, upon subjects of history
or auld langsyne. He remembered the forty-five, and told many
excellent stories, all with a strong dash of a peculiar
caustic humor.
George's sworn ally as a brother antiquary was John Davidson,
then Keeper of the Signet; and I remember his flattering and
compelling me to go to dine there. A writer's apprentice with
the Keeper of the Signet, whose least officer kept us in
order!--It was an awful event. Thither, however, I went with
some secret expectation of a scantling of good claret. Mr. D.
had a son whose taste inclined him to the army, to which his
father, who had designed him for the Bar, gave a most
unwilling consent. He was at this time a young officer, and
he and I, leaving the two seniors to proceed in their chat as
they pleased, never once opened our mouths either to them or
each other. The Pragmatic Sanction happened unfortunately to
become the theme of their conversation, when Constable said
in jest, "Now, John, I'll wad you a plack that neither of
these two lads ever heard of the Pragmatic Sanction."--"Not
heard of the Pragmatic Sanction!" said John Davidson; "I
would like to see that;" and with a voice of thunder he asked
his son the fatal question. As young D. modestly allowed he
knew nothing about it, his father drove him from the table in
a rage, and I absconded during the confusion; nor could
Constable ever bring me back again to his friend
Davidson's.--(1826.)]
From {p.021} Prestonpans I was transported back to my father's house
in George's Square, which continued to be my most established place of
residence, until my marriage in 1797. I felt the change from being a
single indulged brat, to becoming a member of a large family, very
severely; for under the gentle government of my kind grandmother, who
was meekness itself, and of my aunt, who, though of an higher temper,
was exceedingly attached to me, I had acquired a degree of license
which could not be permitted in a large family. I had sense enough,
however, to bend my temper to my new circumstances; but such was the
agony which I internally experienced, that I have guarded against
nothing more in the education of my own family, than against their
acquiring habits of self-willed caprice and domination. I found much
consolation during this period of mortification in the partiality of
my mother. She joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong
turn to study poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely
devout, but her religion was, as became her sex, of a cast less
austere than my father's. Still, the discipline of the Presbyterian
Sabbath was severely strict, and I think injudiciously so. Although
Bunyan's Pilgrim, Gessner's Death of Abel, Rowe's Letters, and one or
two other books, which, for that reason, I still have a favor for,
were admitted to relieve the gloom of one dull sermon succeeding to
another--there was far too much tedium annexed to the duties of the
day; and in the end it did none of us any good.
My week-day tasks were more agreeable. My lameness and {p.022} my
solitary habits had made me a tolerable reader, and my hours of
leisure were usually spent in reading aloud to my mother Pope's
translation of Homer, which, excepting a few traditionary ballads, and
the songs in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, was the first poetry which I
perused. My mother had good natural taste and great feeling: she used
to make me pause upon those passages which expressed generous and
worthy sentiments, and if she could not divert me from those which
were descriptive of battle and tumult, she contrived at least to
divide my attention between them. My own enthusiasm, however, was
chiefly awakened by the wonderful and the terrible--the common taste
of children, but in which I have remained a child even unto this day.
I got by heart, not as a task, but almost without intending it, the
passages with which I was most pleased, and used to recite them aloud,
both when alone and to others--more willingly, however, in my hours of
solitude, for I had observed some auditors smile, and I dreaded
ridicule at that time of life more than I have ever done since.
In [1778] I was sent to the second class of the Grammar School, or
High School of Edinburgh, then taught by Mr. Luke Fraser, a good Latin
scholar and a very worthy man.[28] Though I had received, with my
brothers, in private, lessons of Latin from Mr. James French, now a
minister of the Kirk of Scotland, I was nevertheless rather behind the
class in which I was placed both in years and in progress. This was a
real disadvantage, and one to which a boy of lively temper and talents
ought to be as little exposed as one who might be less expected to
make up his leeway, as it is called. The situation has the unfortunate
effect of reconciling a boy of the former {p.023} character (which
in a posthumous work I may claim for my own) to holding a subordinate
station among his class-fellows--to which he would otherwise affix
disgrace. There is, also, from the constitution of the High School, a
certain danger not sufficiently attended to. The boys take precedence
in their _places_, as they are called, according to their merit, and
it requires a long while, in general, before even a clever boy, if he
falls behind the class, or is put into one for which he is not quite
ready, can force his way to the situation which his abilities really
entitle him to hold. But, in the mean while, he is necessarily led to
be the associate and companion of those inferior spirits with whom he
is placed; for the system of precedence, though it does not limit the
general intercourse among the boys, has nevertheless the effect of
throwing them into clubs and coteries, according to the vicinity of
the seats they hold. A boy of good talents, therefore, placed even for
a time among his inferiors, especially if they be also his elders,
learns to participate in their pursuits and objects of ambition, which
are usually very distinct from the acquisition of learning; and it
will be well if he does not also imitate them in that indifference
which is contented with bustling over a lesson so as to avoid
punishment, without affecting superiority or aiming at reward. It was
probably owing to this circumstance that, although at a more advanced
period of life I have enjoyed considerable facility in acquiring
languages, I did not make any great figure at the High School--or, at
least, any exertions which I made were desultory and little to be
depended on.
[Footnote 28: [Lord Cockburn, in his _Life of Jeffrey_,
quotes with approval Scott's commendation of Mr. Fraser, and
adds, that this teacher had the singular good fortune to turn
out from three successive classes Walter Scott, Francis
Jeffrey, and Henry Brougham.]]
Our class contained some very excellent scholars. The first _Dux_ was
James Buchan, who retained his honored place, almost without a day's
interval, all the while we were at the High School. He was afterwards
at the head of the medical staff in Egypt, and in exposing himself to
the plague infection, by attending the hospitals there, {p.024}
displayed the same well-regulated and gentle, yet determined,
perseverance which placed him most worthily at the head of his
schoolfellows, while many lads of livelier parts and dispositions held
an inferior station. The next best scholars (_sed longo intervallo_)
were my friend David Douglas, the heir and _élève_ of the celebrated
Adam Smith, and James Hope, now a Writer to the Signet, both since
well known and distinguished in their departments of the law. As for
myself, I glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to the
other, and commonly disgusted my kind master as much by negligence and
frivolity, as I occasionally pleased him by flashes of intellect and
talent. Among my companions my good-nature and a flow of ready
imagination rendered me very popular. Boys are uncommonly just in
their feelings, and at least equally generous. My lameness, and the
efforts which I made to supply that disadvantage, by making up in
address what I wanted in activity, engaged the latter principle in my
favor; and in the winter play hours, when hard exercise was
impossible, my tales used to assemble an admiring audience round Lucky
Brown's fireside, and happy was he that could sit next to the
inexhaustible narrator. I was also, though often negligent of my own
task, always ready to assist my friends, and hence I had a little
party of stanch partisans and adherents, stout of hand and heart,
though somewhat dull of head--the very tools for raising a hero to
eminence. So, on the whole, I made a brighter figure in the _yards_
than in the _class_[29]
[Footnote 29: I read not long since, in that authentic
record called the _Percy Anecdotes_, that I had been educated
at Musselburgh school, where I had been distinguished as an
absolute dunce; only Dr. Blair, seeing farther into the
millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was
at Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr.
Blair at my father's and elsewhere, I never had the good
fortune to attract his notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, 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.--(1826.)]
My {p.025} father did not trust our education solely to our High
School lessons. We had a tutor at home, a young man of an excellent
disposition, and a laborious student. He was bred to the Kirk, but
unfortunately took such a very strong turn to fanaticism, that he
afterwards resigned an excellent living in a seaport town, merely
because he could not persuade the mariners of the guilt of setting
sail of a Sabbath,--in which, by the bye, he was less likely to be
successful, as, _cæteris paribus_, sailors, from an opinion that it is
a fortunate omen, always choose to weigh anchor on that day. The
calibre of this young man's understanding may be judged of by this
anecdote; but in other respects he was a faithful and active
instructor; and from him chiefly I learned writing and arithmetic. I
repeated to him my French lessons, and studied with him my themes in
the classics, but not classically. I also acquired, by disputing with
him (for this he readily permitted), some knowledge of school divinity
and church history, and a great acquaintance in particular with the
old books describing the early history of the Church of Scotland, the
wars and sufferings of the Covenanters, and so forth. I, with a 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 dark and politic Argyle: so that we never wanted subjects of
dispute; but our disputes were always amicable. In all these tenets
there was no real conviction on my part, arising out of acquaintance
with the views or principles of either party; nor had my antagonist
address enough to turn the debate on such topics. I took up my
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.
After having been three years under Mr. Fraser, our class was, in the
usual routine of the school, turned over to {p.026} Dr. Adam, the
Rector. It was from this respectable man that I first learned the
value of the knowledge I had hitherto considered only as a burdensome
task. It was the fashion to remain two years at his class, where we
read Cæsar, and Livy, and Sallust, in prose; Virgil, Horace, and
Terence, in verse. I had by this time mastered, in some degree, the
difficulties of the language, and began to be sensible of its
beauties. This was really gathering grapes from thistles; nor shall I
soon forget the swelling of my little pride when the Rector
pronounced, that though many of my schoolfellows understood the Latin
better, _Gualterus Scott_ was behind few in following and enjoying the
author's meaning. Thus encouraged, I distinguished myself by some
attempts at poetical versions from Horace and Virgil. Dr. Adam used to
invite his scholars to such essays, but never made them tasks. I
gained some distinction upon these occasions, and the Rector in future
took much notice of me; and his judicious mixture of censure and
praise went far to counterbalance my habits of indolence and
inattention. I saw I was expected to do well, and I was piqued in
honor to vindicate my master's favorable opinion. I climbed,
therefore, to the first form; and, though I never made a first-rate
Latinist, my schoolfellows, and what was of more consequence, I
myself, considered that I had a character for learning to maintain.
Dr. Adam, to whom I owed so much, never failed to remind me of my
obligations when I had made some figure in the literary world. He was,
indeed, deeply imbued with that fortunate vanity which alone could
induce a man who has arms to pare and burn a muir, to submit to the
yet more toilsome task of cultivating youth. As Catholics confide in
the imputed righteousness of their saints, so did the good old Doctor
plume himself upon the success of his scholars in life, all of which
he never failed (and often justly) to claim as the creation, or at
least the fruits, of his early instructions. He remembered the fate of
every boy {p.027} at his school during the fifty years he had
superintended it, and always traced their success or misfortunes
entirely to their attention or negligence when under his care. His
"noisy mansion," which to others would have been a melancholy bedlam,
was the pride of his heart; and the only fatigues he felt, amidst din
and tumult, and the necessity of reading themes, hearing lessons, and
maintaining some degree of order at the same time, were relieved by
comparing himself to Cæsar, who could dictate to three secretaries at
once;--so ready is vanity to lighten the labors of duty.
It is a pity that a man so learned, so admirably adapted for his
station, so useful, so simple, so easily contented, should have had
other subjects of mortification. But the magistrates of Edinburgh, not
knowing the treasure they possessed in Dr. Adam, encouraged a savage
fellow, called Nicol, one of the undermasters, in insulting his person
and authority. This man was an excellent classical scholar, and an
admirable convivial humorist (which latter quality recommended him to
the friendship of Burns); but worthless, drunken, and inhumanly cruel
to the boys under his charge. He carried his feud against the Rector
within an inch of assassination, for he waylaid and knocked him down
in the dark. The favor which this worthless rival obtained in the town
council led to other consequences, which for some time clouded poor
Adam's happiness and fair fame. When the French Revolution broke out,
and parties ran high in approving or condemning it, the Doctor
incautiously joined the former. This was very natural, for as all his
ideas of existing governments were derived from his experience of the
town council of Edinburgh, it must be admitted they scarce brooked
comparison with the free states of Rome and Greece, from which he
borrowed his opinions concerning republics. His want of caution in
speaking on the political topics of the day lost him the respect of
the boys, most of whom were accustomed to hear {p.028} very
different opinions on those matters in the bosom of their families.
This, however (which was long after my time), passed away with other
heats of the period, and the Doctor continued his labors till about a
year since, when he was struck with palsy while teaching his class. He
survived a few days, but becoming delirious before his dissolution,
conceived he was still in school, and after some expressions of
applause or censure, he said, "But it grows dark--the boys may
dismiss,"--and instantly expired.[30]
[Footnote 30: [On December 27, 1809, a few days after Dr.
Adam's death, Scott writes to Mrs. Thomas Scott: "Poor old
Dr. Adam died last week after a very short illness, which
first affected him in school. He was light-headed, and
continued to speak as in the class until the very last, when,
having been silent for many hours, he said, 'That Horace was
very well said; _you_ did not do it so well;' then added
faintly, 'But it grows dark, very dark, the boys may
dismiss,' and with these striking words he
expired."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. i. p. 154.]]
From Dr. Adam's class I should, according to the usual routine, have
proceeded immediately to college. But, fortunately, I was not yet to
lose, by a total dismission from constraint, the acquaintance with the
Latin which I had acquired. My health had become rather delicate from
rapid growth, and my father was easily persuaded to allow me to spend
half a year at Kelso with my kind aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose inmate
I again became. It was hardly worth mentioning that I had frequently
visited her during our short vacations.
At this time she resided in a small house, situated very pleasantly in
a large garden, to the eastward of the churchyard of Kelso, which
extended down to the Tweed. It was then my father's property, from
whom it was afterwards purchased by my uncle. My grandmother was now
dead, and my aunt's only companion, besides an old maid-servant, was
my cousin, Miss Barbara Scott, now Mrs. Meik. My time was here left
entirely to my own disposal, excepting for about four hours in the
day, when I was expected to attend the Grammar School of the {p.029}
village. The teacher at that time was Mr. Lancelot Whale, an excellent
classical scholar, a humorist, and a worthy man. He had a supreme
antipathy to the puns which his very uncommon name frequently gave
rise to; insomuch, that he made his son spell the word _Wale_, which
only occasioned the young man being nicknamed _the Prince of Wales_ by
the military mess to which he belonged. As for Whale, senior, the
least allusion to Jonah, or the terming him an odd fish, or any
similar quibble, was sure to put him beside himself. In point of
knowledge and taste he was far too good for the situation he held,
which only required that he should give his scholars a rough
foundation in the Latin language. My time with him, though short, was
spent greatly to my advantage and his gratification. He was glad to
escape to Persius and Tacitus from the eternal Rudiments and Cornelius
Nepos; and as perusing these authors with one who began to understand
them was to him a labor of love, I made considerable progress under
his instructions. I suspect, indeed, that some of the time dedicated
to me was withdrawn from the instruction of his more regular scholars;
but I was as grateful as I could be. I acted as usher, and heard the
inferior classes, and I spouted the speech of Galgacus at the public
examination, which did not make the less impression on the audience
that few of them probably understood one word of it.
In the mean while my acquaintance with English literature was
gradually extending itself. In the intervals of my school hours I had
always perused with avidity such books of history or poetry or voyages
and travels as chance presented to me--not forgetting the usual, or
rather ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, Eastern stories,
romances, etc. These studies were totally unregulated and undirected.
My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a profane play or poem; and
my mother, besides that she might be in some degree trammelled by the
religious scruples which he suggested, had no longer the {p.030}
opportunity to hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, however, in
her dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of
Shakespeare, nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I sat up
in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment,
until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me it was
time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely
deposited since nine o'clock. Chance, however, threw in my way a
poetical preceptor. This was no other than the excellent and
benevolent Dr. Blacklock, well known at that time as a literary
character. I know not how I attracted his attention, and that of some
of the young men who boarded in his family; but so it was that I
became a frequent and favored guest. The kind old man opened to me the
stores of his library, and through his recommendation I became
intimate with Ossian and Spenser. I was delighted with both, yet I
think chiefly with the latter poet. The tawdry repetitions of the
Ossianic phraseology disgusted me rather sooner than might have been
expected from my age. But Spenser I could have read forever. Too young
to trouble myself about the allegory, I considered all the knights and
ladies and dragons and giants in their outward and exoteric sense, and
God only knows how delighted I was to find myself in such society. As
I had always a wonderful facility in retaining in my memory whatever
verses pleased me, the quantity of Spenser's stanzas which I could
repeat was really marvellous. But this memory of mine was a very
fickle ally, and has through my whole life acted merely upon its own
capricious motion, and might have enabled me to adopt old Beattie of
Meikledale's answer, when complimented by a certain reverend divine on
the strength of the same faculty:--"No, sir," answered the old
Borderer, "I have no command of my memory. It only retains what hits
my fancy; and probably, sir, if you were to preach to me for two
hours, I would not be able when you finished to {p.031} remember a
word you had been saying." My memory was precisely of the same kind:
it seldom failed to preserve most tenaciously a favorite passage of
poetry, a playhouse ditty, or, above all, a Border-raid ballad; but
names, dates, and the other technicalities of history, escaped me in a
most melancholy degree. The philosophy of history, a much more
important subject, was also a sealed book at this period of my life;
but I gradually assembled much of what was striking and picturesque in
historical narrative; and when, in riper years, I attended more to the
deduction of general principles, I was furnished with a powerful host
of examples in illustration of them. I was, in short, like an ignorant
gamester, who kept a good hand until he knew how to play it.
I left the High School, therefore, with a great quantity of general
information, ill arranged, indeed, and collected without system, yet
deeply impressed upon my mind; readily assorted by my power of
connection and memory, and gilded, if I may be permitted to say so, by
a vivid and active imagination. If my studies were not under any
direction at Edinburgh, in the country, it may be well imagined, they
were less so. A respectable subscription library, a circulating
library of ancient standing, and some private book-shelves, were open
to my random perusal, and I waded into the stream like a blind man
into a ford, without the power of searching my way, unless by groping
for it. My appetite for books was as ample and indiscriminating as it
was indefatigable, and I since have had too frequently reason to
repent that few ever read so much, and to so little purpose.
Among the valuable acquisitions I made about this time was an
acquaintance with Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, through the flat medium
of Mr. Hoole's translation. But above all, I then first became
acquainted with Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. As I had
been from infancy devoted to legendary lore of this nature, and only
reluctantly withdrew my attention, from the {p.032} scarcity of
materials and the rudeness of those which I possessed, it may be
imagined, but cannot be described, with what delight I saw pieces of
the same kind which had amused my childhood, and still continued in
secret the Delilahs of my imagination, considered as the subject of
sober research, grave commentary, and apt illustration, by an editor
who showed his poetical genius was capable of emulating the best
qualities of what his pious labor preserved. I remember well the spot
where I read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge
platanus-tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an
old-fashioned arbor in the _garden_ I have mentioned. The summer day
sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of
thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety,
and was still found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and
to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I
overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me, with
tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time,
too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not common
occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved
volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or
with half the enthusiasm. About this period, also, I became acquainted
with the works of Richardson, and those of Mackenzie--(whom in later
years I became entitled to call my friend)--with Fielding, Smollett,
and some others of our best novelists.
To this period, also, I can trace distinctly the awaking of that
delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never
since deserted me. The neighborhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if
not the most romantic village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to
awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in themselves,
but venerable from their association. The meeting of two superb
rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in song--the ruins of
an ancient abbey--the more {p.033} distant vestiges of Roxburgh
Castle--the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to
combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern
taste--are in themselves objects of the first class; yet are so mixed,
united, and melted among a thousand other beauties of a less prominent
description, that they harmonize into one general picture, and please
rather by unison than by concord. I believe I have written
unintelligibly upon this subject, but it is fitter for the pencil than
the pen. The romantic feelings which I have described as predominating
in my mind, naturally rested upon and associated themselves with these
grand features of the landscape around me; and the historical
incidents, or traditional legends connected with many of them, gave to
my admiration a sort of intense impression of reverence, which at
times made my heart feel too big for its bosom. From this time the
love of natural beauty, more especially when combined with ancient
ruins, or remains of our fathers' piety or splendor, became with me an
insatiable passion, which, if circumstances had permitted, I would
willingly have gratified by travelling over half the globe.
I was recalled to Edinburgh about the time when the College meets, and
put at once to the Humanity class, under Mr. Hill, and the first Greek
class, taught by Mr. Dalzell. The former held the reins of discipline
very loosely, and though beloved by his students, for he was a
good-natured man as well as a good scholar, he had not the art of
exciting our attention as well as liking. This was a dangerous
character with whom to trust one who relished labor as little as I
did, and amid the riot of his class I speedily lost much of what I had
learned under Adam and Whale. At the Greek class, I might have made a
better figure, for Professor Dalzell maintained a great deal of
authority, and was not only himself an admirable scholar, but was
always deeply interested in the progress of his students. But here lay
the villainy. Almost {p.034} all my companions who had left the High
School at the same time with myself had acquired a smattering of Greek
before they came to College. I, alas, had none; and finding myself far
inferior to all my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of
vindicating my equality than by professing my contempt for the
language, and my resolution not to learn it. A youth who died early,
himself an excellent Greek scholar, saw my negligence and folly with
pain, instead of contempt. He came to call on me in George's Square,
and pointed out in the strongest terms the silliness of the conduct I
had adopted, told me I was distinguished by the name of the _Greek
Blockhead_, and exhorted me to redeem my reputation while it was
called to-day. My stubborn pride received this advice with sulky
civility; the birth of my Mentor (whose name was Archibald, the son of
an innkeeper) did not, as I thought in my folly, authorize him to
intrude upon me his advice. The other was not sharp-sighted, or his
consciousness of a generous intention overcame his resentment. He
offered me his daily and nightly assistance, and pledged himself to
bring me forward with the foremost of my class. I felt some twinges of
conscience, but they were unable to prevail over my pride and
self-conceit. The poor lad left me more in sorrow than in anger, nor
did we ever meet again. All hopes of my progress in the Greek were now
over; insomuch that when we were required to write essays on the
authors we had studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in
which I weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in
the balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and
flimsy argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the
same time he could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of
out-of-the-way knowledge which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the
severe sentence--that dunce I was, and dunce was to remain--which,
however, my excellent and learned friend {p.035} lived to revoke
over a bottle of Burgundy, at our literary Club at Fortune's, of which
he was a distinguished member.
Meanwhile, as if to eradicate my slightest tincture of Greek, I fell
ill during the middle of Mr. Dalzell's second class, and migrated a
second time to Kelso--where I again continued a long time reading what
and how I pleased, and of course reading nothing but what afforded me
immediate entertainment. The only thing which saved my mind from utter
dissipation was that turn for historical pursuit, which never
abandoned me even at the idlest period. I had forsworn the Latin
classics for no reason I know of, unless because they were akin to the
Greek; but the occasional perusal of Buchanan's history, that of
Matthew Paris, and other monkish chronicles, kept up a kind of
familiarity with the language even in its rudest state. But I forgot
the very letters of the Greek alphabet; a loss never to be repaired,
considering what that language is, and who they were who employed it
in their compositions.
About this period--or soon afterwards--my father judged it proper I
should study mathematics, a study upon which I entered with all the
ardor of novelty. My tutor was an aged person, Dr. MacFait, who had in
his time been distinguished as a teacher of this science. Age,
however, and some domestic inconveniences, had diminished his pupils,
and lessened his authority amongst the few who remained. I think that,
had I been more fortunately placed for instruction, or had I had the
spur of emulation, I might have made some progress in this science, of
which, under the circumstances I have mentioned, I only acquired a
very superficial smattering.
In other studies I was rather more fortunate. I made some progress in
Ethics under Professor John Bruce, and was selected, as one of his
students whose progress he approved, to read an essay before Principal
Robertson. I {p.036} was farther instructed in Moral Philosophy at
the class of Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose striking and impressive
eloquence riveted the attention even of the most volatile student. To
sum up my academical studies, I attended the class of History, then
taught by the present Lord Woodhouselee, and, as far as I remember, no
others, excepting those of the Civil and Municipal Law. So that, if my
learning be flimsy and inaccurate, the reader must have some
compassion even for an idle workman, who had so narrow a foundation to
build upon. If, however, it should ever fall to the lot of youth to
peruse these pages--let such a reader remember that it is with the
deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of
learning which I neglected in my youth; that through every part of my
literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance;
and that 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 sound foundation of learning and science.
I imagine my father's reason for sending me to so few classes in the
College was a desire that I should apply myself particularly to my
legal studies. He had not determined whether I should fill the
situation of an Advocate or a Writer; but judiciously considering the
technical knowledge of the latter to be useful at least, if not
essential, to a barrister, he resolved I should serve the ordinary
apprenticeship of five years to his own profession. I accordingly
entered into indentures with my father about 1785-86, and entered upon
the dry and barren wilderness of forms and conveyances.
I cannot reproach myself with being entirely an idle apprentice--far
less, as the reader might reasonably have expected,
"A clerk foredoom'd my father's soul to cross."
The drudgery, indeed, of the office I disliked, and the confinement
{p.037} I altogether detested; but I loved my father, and I felt the
rational pride and pleasure of rendering myself useful to him. I was
ambitious also; and among my companions in labor, the only way to
gratify ambition was to labor hard and well. Other circumstances
reconciled me in some measure to the confinement. The allowance for
copy-money furnished a little fund for the _menus plaisirs_ of the
circulating library and the theatre; and this was no trifling
incentive to labor. When actually at the oar, no man could pull it
harder than I, and I remember writing upwards of 120 folio pages with
no interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of attendance on
the office were lightened by the power of choosing my own books, and
reading them in my own way, which often consisted in beginning at the
middle or the end of a volume. A deceased friend, who was a
fellow-apprentice with me, used often to express his surprise that,
after such a hop-step-and-jump perusal, I knew as much of the book as
he had been able to acquire from reading it in the usual manner. My
desk usually contained a store of most miscellaneous volumes,
especially works of fiction of every kind, which were my supreme
delight. I might except novels, unless those of the better and higher
class; for though I read many of them, yet it was with more selection
than might have been expected. The whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe
I abhorred, and it required the art of Burney, or the feeling of
Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic tale. But all that was
adventurous and romantic I devoured without much discrimination, and I
really believe I have read as much nonsense of this class as any man
now living. Everything which touched on knight-errantry was
particularly acceptable to me, and I soon attempted to imitate what I
so greatly admired. My efforts, however, were in the manner of the
tale-teller, not of the bard.
My greatest intimate, from the days of my school-tide, was {p.038}
Mr. John Irving, now a Writer to the Signet. We lived near each other,
and by joint agreement were wont, each of us, to compose a romance for
the other's amusement. These legends, in which the martial and the
miraculous always predominated, we rehearsed to each other during our
walks, which were usually directed to the most solitary spots about
Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags. We naturally sought seclusion, for
we were conscious no small degree of ridicule would have attended our
amusement, if the nature of it had become known. Whole holidays were
spent in this singular pastime, which continued for two or three
years, and had, I believe, no small effect in directing the turn of my
imagination to the chivalrous and romantic in poetry and prose.
Meanwhile, the translations of Mr. Hoole having made me acquainted
with Tasso and Ariosto, I learned from his notes on the latter, that
the Italian language contained a fund of romantic lore. A part of my
earnings was dedicated to an Italian class which I attended twice a
week, and rapidly acquired some proficiency. I had previously renewed
and extended my knowledge of the French language, from the same
principle of romantic research. Tressan's romances, the Bibliothèque
Bleue, and Bibliothèque de Romans, were already familiar to me, and I
now acquired similar intimacy with the works of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci,
and other eminent Italian authors. I fastened also, like a tiger, upon
every collection of old songs or romances which chance threw in my
way, or which my scrutiny was able to discover on the dusty shelves of
James Sibbald's circulating library in the Parliament Square. This
collection, now dismantled and dispersed, contained at that time many
rare and curious works, seldom found in such a collection. Mr. Sibbald
himself, a man of rough manners but of some taste and judgment,
cultivated music and poetry, and in his shop I had a distant view of
some literary characters, besides {p.039} the privilege of
ransacking the stores of old French and Italian books, which were in
little demand among the bulk of his subscribers. Here I saw the
unfortunate Andrew Macdonald, author of Vimonda; and here, too, I saw
at a distance the boast of Scotland, Robert Burns. Of the latter I
shall presently have occasion to speak more fully.
I am inadvertently led to confound dates while I talk of this remote
period, for, as I have no notes, it is impossible for me to remember
with accuracy the progress of studies, if they deserve the name, so
irregular and miscellaneous. But about the second year of my
apprenticeship my health, which, from rapid growth and other causes,
had been hitherto rather uncertain and delicate, was affected by the
breaking of a blood-vessel. The regimen I had to undergo on this
occasion was far from agreeable. It was spring, and the weather raw
and cold, yet I was confined to bed with a single blanket, and bled
and blistered till I scarcely had a pulse left. I had all the appetite
of a growing boy, but was prohibited any sustenance beyond what was
absolutely necessary for the support of nature, and that in vegetables
alone. Above all, with a considerable disposition to talk, I was not
permitted to open my lips without one or two old ladies who watched my
couch being ready at once to souse upon me,
"imposing silence with a stilly sound."[31]
[Footnote 31: [Home's _Douglas_.]]
My only refuge was reading and playing at chess. To the romances and
poetry, which I chiefly delighted in, I had always added the study of
history, especially as connected with military events. I was
encouraged in this latter study by a tolerable acquaintance with
geography, and by the opportunities I had enjoyed while with Mr.
MacFait to learn the meaning of the more ordinary terms of
fortification. While, therefore, I lay in this dreary and silent
solitude, I fell upon the resource of illustrating the {p.040}
battles I read of by the childish expedient of arranging shells, and
seeds, and pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies. Diminutive
cross-bows were contrived to mimic artillery, and with the assistance
of a friendly carpenter I contrived to model a fortress, which, like
that of Uncle Toby, represented whatever place happened to be
uppermost in my imagination. I fought my way thus through Vertot's
Knights of Malta--a book which, as it hovered between history and
romance, was exceedingly dear to me; and Orme's interesting and
beautiful History of Indostan, whose copious plans, aided by the clear
and luminous explanations of the author, rendered my imitative
amusement peculiarly easy. Other moments of these weary weeks were
spent in looking at the Meadow Walks, by assistance of a combination
of mirrors so arranged that, while lying in bed, I could see the
troops march out to exercise, or any other incident which occurred on
that promenade.
After one or two relapses, my constitution recovered the injury it had
sustained, though for several months afterwards I was restricted to a
severe vegetable diet. And I must say, in passing, that though I
gained health under this necessary restriction, yet it was far from
being agreeable to me, and I was affected whilst under its influence
with a nervousness which I never felt before or since. A disposition
to start upon slight alarms--a want of decision in feeling and acting,
which has not usually been my failing--an acute sensibility to
trifling inconveniences--and an unnecessary apprehension of contingent
misfortunes, rise to my memory as connected with my vegetable diet,
although they may very possibly have been entirely the result of the
disorder and not of the cure. Be this as it may, with this illness I
bade farewell both to disease and medicine; for since that time, till
the hour I am now writing, I have enjoyed a state of the most robust
health, having only had to complain of occasional headaches or
stomachic affections when I have been long without taking exercise,
{p.041} or have lived too convivially--the latter having been
occasionally, though, not habitually, the error of my youth, as the
former has been of my advanced life.
My frame gradually became hardened with my constitution, and being
both tall and muscular, I was rather disfigured than disabled by my
lameness. This personal disadvantage did not prevent me from taking
much exercise on horseback, and making long journeys on foot, in the
course of which I often walked from twenty to thirty miles a day. A
distinct instance occurs to me. I remember walking with poor James
Ramsay, my fellow-apprentice, now no more, and two other friends, to
breakfast at Prestonpans. We spent the forenoon in visiting the ruins
at Seton, and the field of battle at Preston--dined at Prestonpans on
_tiled haddocks_ very sumptuously--drank half a bottle of port each,
and returned in the evening. This could not be less than thirty miles,
nor do I remember being at all fatigued upon the occasion.
These excursions on foot or horseback formed by far my most favorite
amusement. I have all my life delighted in travelling, though I have
never enjoyed that pleasure upon a large scale. It was a propensity
which I sometimes indulged so unduly as to alarm and vex my parents.
Wood, water, wilderness itself, had an inexpressible charm for me, and
I had a dreamy way of going much farther than I intended, so that
unconsciously my return was protracted, and my parents had sometimes
serious cause of uneasiness. For example, I once set out with Mr.
George Abercromby[32] (the son of the immortal General), Mr. William
Clerk, and some others, to fish in the lake above Howgate, and the
stream which descends from it into the Esk. We breakfasted at Howgate,
and fished the whole day; and while we were on our return next
morning, I was easily seduced by William Clerk, then a great intimate,
to visit Pennycuik-house, the seat of his family. Here he and John
Irving, and I for their sake, were {p.042} overwhelmed with kindness
by the late Sir John Clerk and his lady, the present Dowager Lady
Clerk. The pleasure of looking at fine pictures, the beauty of the
place, and the flattering hospitality of the owners, drowned all
recollection of home for a day or two. Meanwhile our companions, who
had walked on without being aware of our digression, returned to
Edinburgh without us, and excited no small alarm in my father's
household. At length, however, they became accustomed to my escapades.
My father used to protest to me on such occasions that he thought I
was born to be a strolling pedlar; and though the prediction was
intended to mortify my conceit, I am not sure that I altogether
disliked it. I was now familiar with Shakespeare, and thought of
Autolycus's song--
"Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
[Footnote 32: Now Lord Abercromby.--(1826.)]
My principal object in these excursions was the pleasure of seeing
romantic scenery, or what afforded me at least equal pleasure, the
places which had been distinguished by remarkable historical events.
The delight with which I regarded the former, of course had general
approbation, but I often found it difficult to procure sympathy with
the interest I felt in the latter. Yet to me, the wandering over the
field of Bannockburn was the source of more exquisite pleasure than
gazing upon the celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling
castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to the feeling of
picturesque scenery; on the contrary, few delighted more in its
general effect. But I was unable with the eye of a painter to dissect
the various parts of the scene, to comprehend how the one bore upon
the other, to estimate the effect which various features of the view
had in producing its leading and general effect. I have never, indeed,
been capable of doing this with precision or {p.043} nicety, though
my latter studies have led me to amend and arrange my original ideas
upon the subject. Even the humble ambition, which I long cherished, of
making sketches of those places which interested me, from a defect of
eye or of hand was totally ineffectual. After long study and many
efforts, I was unable to apply the elements of perspective or of shade
to the scene before me, and was obliged to relinquish in despair an
art which I was most anxious to practise. But show me an old castle or
a field of battle, and I was at home at once, filled it with its
combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers by the
enthusiasm of my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near St.
Andrews, the spirit moved me to give a picture of the assassination of
the Archbishop of St. Andrews to some fellow-travellers with whom I
was accidentally associated, and one of them, though well acquainted
with the story, protested my narrative had frightened away his night's
sleep. I mention this to show the distinction between a sense of the
picturesque in action and in scenery. If I have since been able in
poetry to trace with some success the principles of the latter, it has
always been with reference to its general and leading features, or
under some alliance with moral feeling; and even this proficiency has
cost me study.--Meanwhile I endeavored to make amends for my ignorance
of drawing, by adopting a sort of technical memory respecting the
scenes I visited: Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch from a
tree--these constituted what I called my log-book; and I intended to
have a set of chessmen out of them, each having reference to the place
where it was cut--as the kings from Falkland and Holy-Rood; the queens
from Queen Mary's yew-tree at Crookston; the bishops from abbeys or
episcopal palaces; the knights from baronial residences; the rooks
from royal fortresses; and the pawns generally from places worthy of
historical note. But this whimsical design I never carried into
execution.
With {p.044} music it was even worse than with painting. My mother
was anxious we should at least learn Psalmody; but the incurable
defects of my voice and ear soon drove my teacher to despair.[33] It
is only by long practice that I have acquired the power of selecting
or distinguishing melodies; and although now few things delight or
affect me more than a simple tune sung with feeling, yet I am sensible
that even this pitch of musical taste has only been gained by
attention and habit, and, as it were, by my feeling of the words being
associated with the tune. I have, therefore, been usually unsuccessful
in composing words to a tune, although my friend, Dr. Clarke, and
other musical composers, have sometimes been able to make a happy
union between their music and my poetry.
[Footnote 33: The late Alexander Campbell, a warm-hearted
man, and an enthusiast in Scottish music, which he sang most
beautifully, had this ungrateful task imposed on him. He was
a man of many accomplishments, but dashed with a _bizarrerie_
of temper which made them useless to their proprietor. He
wrote several books--as a _Tour in Scotland_, etc.;--and he
made an advantageous marriage, but fell nevertheless into
distressed circumstances, which I had the pleasure of
relieving, if I could not remove. His sense of gratitude was
very strong, and showed itself oddly in one respect. He would
never allow that I had a bad ear; but contended, that if I
did not understand music, it was because I did not choose to
learn it. But when he attended us in George's Square, our
neighbor, Lady Cumming, sent to beg the boys might not be all
flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had no
doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord
was really dreadful. Robert was the only one of our family
who could sing, though my father was musical, and a performer
on the violoncello at the _gentlemen's concerts_.--(1826.)]
In other points, however, I began to make some amends for the
irregularity of my education. It is well known that in Edinburgh one
great spur to emulation among youthful students is in those
associations called _literary societies_, formed not only for the
purpose of debate, but of composition. These undoubtedly have some
disadvantages, where a bold, petulant, and disputatious temper happens
to be combined with considerable information and talent. Still,
however, in order to such a person {p.045} being actually spoiled by
his mixing in such debates, his talents must be of a very rare nature,
or his effrontery must be proof to every species of assault; for there
is generally, in a well-selected society of this nature, talent
sufficient to meet the forwardest, and satire enough to penetrate the
most undaunted. I am particularly obliged to this sort of club for
introducing me about my seventeenth year into the society which at one
time I had entirely dropped; for, from the time of my illness at
college, I had had little or no intercourse with any of my
class-companions, one or two only excepted. Now, however, about 1788,
I began to feel and take my ground in society. A ready wit, a good
deal of enthusiasm, and a perception that soon ripened into tact and
observation of character, rendered me an acceptable companion to many
young men whose acquisitions in philosophy and science were infinitely
superior to anything I could boast.
In the business of these societies--for I was a member of more than
one successively--I cannot boast of having made any great figure. I
never was a good speaker unless upon some subject which strongly
animated my feelings; and, as I was totally unaccustomed to
composition, as well as to the art of generalizing my ideas upon any
subject, my literary essays were but very poor work. I never attempted
them unless when compelled to do so by the regulations of the society,
and then I was like the Lord of Castle Rackrent, who was obliged to
cut down a tree to get a few fagots to boil the kettle; for the
quantity of ponderous and miscellaneous knowledge, which I really
possessed on many subjects, was not easily condensed, or brought to
bear upon the object I wished particularly to become master of. Yet
there occurred opportunities when this odd lumber of my brain,
especially that which was connected with the recondite parts of
history, did me, as Hamlet says, "yeoman's service." My memory of
events was like one of the large, old-fashioned stone-cannons of the
Turks--very difficult to load well {p.046} and discharge, but making
a powerful effect when by good chance any object did come within range
of its shot. Such fortunate opportunities of exploding with effect
maintained my literary character among my companions, with whom I soon
met with great indulgence and regard. The persons with whom I chiefly
lived at this period of my youth were William Clerk, already
mentioned; James Edmonstoune, of Newton; George Abercromby; Adam
Ferguson, son of the celebrated Professor Ferguson, and who combined
the lightest and most airy temper with the best and kindest
disposition; John Irving, already mentioned; the Honorable Thomas
Douglas, now Earl of Selkirk; David Boyle,[34]--and two or three
others, who sometimes plunged deeply into politics and metaphysics,
and not unfrequently "doffed the world aside, and bid it pass."
[Footnote 34: Now Lord Justice-Clerk.--(1826.)]
Looking back on these times, I cannot applaud in all respects the way
in which our days were spent. There was too much idleness, and
sometimes too much conviviality: but our hearts were warm, our minds
honorably bent on knowledge and literary distinction; and if I,
certainly the least informed of the party, may be permitted to bear
witness, we were not without the fair and creditable means of
attaining the distinction to which we aspired. In this society I was
naturally led to correct my former useless course of reading;
for--feeling myself greatly inferior to my companions in metaphysical
philosophy and other branches of regular study--I labored, not without
some success, to acquire at least such a portion of knowledge as might
enable me to maintain my rank in conversation. In this I succeeded
pretty well; but unfortunately then, as often since through my life, I
incurred the deserved ridicule of my friends from the superficial
nature of my acquisitions, which being, in the mercantile phrase, _got
up_ for society, very often proved flimsy in the texture; and thus the
gifts of an uncommonly {p.047} retentive memory and acute powers of
perception were sometimes detrimental to their possessor by
encouraging him to a presumptuous reliance upon them.
Amidst these studies, and in this society, the time of my
apprenticeship elapsed; and in 1790, or thereabouts, it became
necessary that I should seriously consider to which department of the
law I was to attach myself. My father behaved with the most parental
kindness. He offered, if I preferred his own profession, immediately
to take me into partnership with him, which, though his business was
much diminished, still afforded me an immediate prospect of a handsome
independence. But he did not disguise his wish that I should
relinquish this situation to my younger brother, and embrace the more
ambitious profession of the Bar. I had little hesitation in making my
choice--for I was never very fond of money; and in no other particular
do the professions admit of a comparison. Besides, I knew and felt the
inconveniences attached to that of a Writer; and I thought (like a
young man) many of them were "ingenio non subeunda meo." The
appearance of personal dependence which that profession requires was
disagreeable to me; the sort of connection between the client and the
attorney seemed to render the latter more subservient than was quite
agreeable to my nature; and, besides, I had seen many sad examples,
while overlooking my father's business, that the utmost exertions, and
the best meant services, do not secure the _man of business_, as he is
called, from great loss, and most ungracious treatment on the part of
his employers. The Bar, though I was conscious of my deficiencies as a
public speaker, was the line of ambition and liberty; it was that also
for which most of my contemporary friends were destined. And, lastly,
although I would willingly have relieved my father of the labors of
his business, yet I saw plainly we could not have agreed on some
particulars if we had attempted to conduct it together, and that I
should disappoint his expectations {p.048} if I did not turn to the
Bar. So to that object my studies were directed with great ardor and
perseverance during the years 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792.
In the usual course of study, the Roman or Civil Law was the first
object of my attention--the second, the Municipal Law of Scotland. In
the course of reading on both subjects, I had the advantage of
studying in conjunction with my friend William Clerk, a man of the
most acute intellects and powerful apprehension, and who, should he
ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by which he has been
hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the highest
degree. We attended the regular classes of both laws in the University
of Edinburgh. The Civil Law chair, now worthily filled by Mr.
Alexander Irving, might at that time be considered as in _abeyance_,
since the person by whom it was occupied had never been fit for the
situation, and was then almost in a state of dotage. But the Scotch
Law lectures were those of Mr. David Hume, who still continues to
occupy that situation with as much honor to himself as advantage to
his country. I copied over his lectures twice with my own hand, from
notes taken in the class; and when I have had occasion to consult
them, I can never sufficiently admire the penetration and clearness of
conception which were necessary to the arrangement of the fabric of
law, formed originally under the strictest influence of feudal
principles, and innovated, altered, and broken in upon by the change
of times, of habits, and of manners, until it resembles some ancient
castle, partly entire, partly ruinous, partly dilapidated, patched and
altered during the succession of ages by a thousand additions and
combinations, yet still exhibiting, with the marks of its antiquity,
symptoms of the skill and wisdom of its founders, and capable of being
analyzed and made the subject of a methodical plan by an architect who
can understand the various styles of the different ages in which it
was subjected to alteration. Such an architect has Mr. Hume {p.049}
been to the law of Scotland, neither wandering into fanciful and
abstruse disquisitions, which are the more proper subject of the
antiquary, nor satisfied with presenting to his pupils a dry and
undigested detail of the laws in their present state, but combining
the past state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing
clearly and judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes
which led to them.
Under these auspices I commenced my legal studies. A little parlor was
assigned me in my father's house, which was spacious and convenient,
and I took the exclusive possession of my new realms with all the
feelings of novelty and liberty. Let me do justice to the only years
of my life in which I applied to learning with stern, steady, and
undeviating industry. The rule of my friend Clerk and myself was that
we should mutually qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination
upon certain points of law every morning in the week, Sundays
excepted. This was at first to have taken place alternately at each
other's houses, but we soon discovered that my friend's resolution was
inadequate to severing him from his couch at the early hour fixed for
this exercitation. Accordingly I agreed to go every morning to his
house, which, being at the extremity of Prince's Street, New Town, was
a walk of two miles. With great punctuality, however, I beat him up to
his task every morning before seven o'clock, and in the course of two
summers, we went, by way of question and answer, through the whole of
Heineccius's Analysis of the Institutes and Pandects, as well as
through the smaller copy of Erskine's Institutes of the Law of
Scotland. This course of study enabled us to pass with credit the
usual trials, which, by the regulations of the Faculty of Advocates,
must be undergone by every candidate for admission into their body. My
friend William Clerk and I passed these ordeals on the same
days--namely, the Civil Law trial on the [30th June, 1791], and the
Scots Law trial on the [6th July, 1792]. {p.050} On the [11th July,
1792], we both assumed the gown with all its duties and honors.
My progress in life during these two or three years had been gradually
enlarging my acquaintance, and facilitating my entrance into good
company. My father and mother, already advanced in life, saw little
society at home, excepting that of near relations, or upon particular
occasions, so that I was left to form connections in a great measure
for myself. It is not difficult for a youth with a real desire to
please and be pleased, to make his way into good society in
Edinburgh--or indeed anywhere; and my family connections, if they did
not greatly further, had nothing to embarrass my progress. I was a
gentleman, and so welcome anywhere, if so be I could behave myself, as
Tony Lumpkin says, "in a concatenation accordingly."